This post was originally posted on the DIASPORA newsletter on December 2, 2025.
As the year comes to a close, I am trying to cram as many FYC films into my eyeballs as possible before voting deadlines for the various critics organizations of which I am a member.
There are a lot of films because everyone is submitting their awards season fodder in hopes of being a strong contender for the long road of ceremonies ahead of us, all of which leads to the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026.
Some films caused a buzz at major film festivals throughout the year, such as Carmen Emmi’s ‘90s-set queer entrapment story Plainclothes starring Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey, which won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble. James Sweeney’s indie darling Twinless — which is also a queer-based narrative — cleaned up at Sundance, winning the Audience Award and nabbing a special jury award for star Dylan O’Brien. Both queer movies thrive in indie-friendly spaces.
The same goes for the quiet, powerful, and under-the-radar Gotham Award-nominated undocumented immigrant drama Preparation for the Next Life, Bing Liu’s (Minding the Gap) first narrative feature starring breakout Sebiye Behtiyar and Fred Hechinger.
The aforementioned films are unfortunately eclipsed by films with a larger awards season campaign budget or films that are tethered to legacy studios. Or they have marquee actors to sell the film, such as Ari Aster’s long, drawn-out neighbor vs. neighbor COVID drama Eddington starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal. The Ballad of a Small Player, starring Colin Farrell, is Edward Berger’s follow-up to Conclave, which is a dull disappointment. Its Macao setting is pretty to look at, but the details of the story are giving Asian fetishization. But I loved Tilda Swinton in it. Tilda Swinton in anything is refreshing.
Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine (which I also discussed in TL;DR) was set up to be Dwayne Johnson’s cinematic opus, but it was anything but The Wrestler for him. The biopic of UFC fighter Mark Kerr wasn’t bad — but it wasn’t great either. It also didn’t use Emily Blunt to her full potential. Meanwhile, Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams is what I like to call Malick-lite and is a beautiful, picturesque slow burn that drives impatience. The period piece glosses over the problematic story involving Joel Edgerton’s Robert, a logger and railroad worker, who is pretty much complacent when it comes to the death of fellow worker Fu (Alfred Hsing), who is an Asian immigrant.
If you want a gripping and entertaining Asian-fronted dark comedy, turn to Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, starring Lee Byung-hun as Man-soo, a man who recently lost his job at a paper mill after 25 years. Chan Wook paves his own Yorgos Lanthimos-esque road with No Other Choice, giving us humor, off-center storytelling, and an insightful dissection of capitalism, empathy, and the eroding human psyche in times of desperation.
There is an impressive roster of films this year that are jockeying for a shot at the coveted Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. There is a possibility that Chan-wook’s No Other Choice will follow in the footsteps of Parasite and nab the crown for International Feature and Best Picture — but. However, both categories are stacked, and No Other Choice has to contend with films like India’s submission, the gut-wrenching and simultaneously heartwarming Homebound, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and executive produced by Martin Scorsese.
Based on the New York Times article and true story, “A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway” by Basharat Peer, Homebound debuted in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and immediately received praise. Set in a village in northern India, two childhood friends, Mohammed (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa), have ambitions to find a life of stability and dignity as policemen. While they attempt to navigate the many obstacles to take the national police exam, their friendship is stretched to the limit.
Khatter and Jethwa deliver exceptional, moving performances and are the heart and soul of Homebound, shaping a universal story that tackles discrimination through the lens of the archaic caste system that impacts Mohammed and Chandan’s lives in more ways than one. Spanning a time period that includes the 2020 COVID pandemic, Homebound finely showcases the complex emotions that can come with brotherhood, something we don’t see in many Western movies.
Now we go from a beautifully devastating film about brotherhood to the opening night of Oklahoma!, Richard Linklater brings us the very OK Blue Moon. Spotlighting the final days of legendary songwriter Lorenz Hart (played with convincing, know-it-all flair by Ethan Hawke), Blue Moon takes place on March 31, 1943, the aforementioned debut of the now-iconic musical Oklahoma! Set in the New York institution Sardi’s, Hart runs into his ex: Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott). As one-half of the defunct Rodgers and Hart, the songwriting duo were purveyors of the Great American Songbook, writing many a stage production and songs, including the titular “Blue Moon”.
With his alcohol-induced behavior weighing him down, Rodgers found a new writing partner with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney)… and that is how Rodgers and Hammerstein and Oklahoma! came to be.
Blue Moon is one of two Linklater films in the awards season contender pool — the other being Nouvelle Vague. Almost entirely a “bottle episode”, Blue Moon paints a story of a man desperate to share his gift as a songwriter and love for music with others. It’s just unfortunate that everyone knows too much about his history. And sometimes, how one conducts themselves often eclipses talent. And because it’s a bottle episode, the film can be claustrophobic and makes you feel as anxious as Lorenz Hart’s pattern of speech.
I am forever a Linklater fan. On a scale of the Before franchise and Dazed and Confused, Blue Moon doesn’t fall too high on the spectrum not because it isn’t good, but because it’s what I expect from Linklater. The film struggles to find a rhythm that I could vibe with, but it’s clever in its portrayal of one of the most iconic songwriters in history.
So many films. So little time. Up next for my “Thoughts on…” series: Bugonia, Happy Birthday, Sentimental Value, The Perfect Neighbor, and Rental Family.
