Catching Up with the Critics, Part II (Fall 2025)

As we were headed into the summer movie season last May, I took the opportunity to watch some early-year gems that certain critics had championed but I hadn’t gotten a chance to see. Part I introduced me to a bunch of under-the-radar films, including two potential best-of-the-year contenders in Eephus, Carson Lund’s warm and hilarious treatment of an amateur baseball game in small-town Massachusetts, and Misercordia, the latest far-far-far-offbeat crime picture from Stranger By the Lake director Alain Guiraudie. 

With prestige season gearing up and critics awards right around the corner, it’s time once again to devour as many acclaimed films as possible, and it’s also worth poking around for the much smaller independent and foreign films that won’t get the attention they deserve. And for that, I’ve turned to a roster of trusted colleagues, namely Justin Chang, Sam Adams, Jeannette Catsoulis, Alison Willmore, and our own Keith Phipps. This slate includes documentaries about Russian journalists and the fight over a filmmaker’s legacy, a psychodrama about a Tom Ripley type in the music world, a star-crossed romance in New York’s Chinatown, and the Moroccan rave scene. All of them are worth seeing, and two are likely to turn up on my end-of-the-year list. Read on… 

Sirât (dir. Oliver Laxe) 

The critic: Justin Chang, The New Yorker
How to watch: Currently in NY/LA for a one-week awards run. Opens Winter 2026. 
List-worthy?: A top-three lock. 

Premise: At an outdoor rave in southern Morocco, Luis (Sergi López) and his young son (Bruno Núñez Arjona) search for Luis’ missing daughter, passing out flyers to various attendees. When a small band of ravers suggest that she may turn up at an event deeper into the country, father and son follow them into the desert, setting off a journey of survival through a treacherous, militarized North African landscape. 

Justin’s thoughts: “The movie begins in exhilaration and concludes in despair, and what unfolds in between is an experience of singularly turbulent and transfixing power; for sheer visceral excitement and sustained emotional force, I haven’t encountered its equal this year.” 

My thoughts: An instant cult classic. First, there’s the novelty and propulsive kick of this Moroccan rave subculture—the music, by Kangding Ray, sets an uniquely transporting tone—and the band of misfits who choose to traverse this semi-apocalyptic terrain in search of the next experience. There’s also the touching fish-out-of-water dynamic of Luis, a late-middle-aged father who’s the polar opposite of a scenester, working his way into a community that embraces him, despite their differences. But as Sirât travels further into the desert and threats emerge from both the narrow mountain passes and from a more amorphous military threat, the tension ramps up considerably, and suddenly this North African “Burning Man” scenario edges into something closer to The Wages of Fear by way of Mad Max, stringing together a series of unforgettably harrowing setpieces. Yet as unreal and abstracted as it sounds, Sirât also feels like a movie of the moment, capturing the rootlessness (and tenderness) of modern-day nomads who are living in exile from a cruel society. 

Lurker (dir. Alex Russell) 

The critic: Alison Willmore, Vulture
How to watch: Streaming on Mubi. Rentable on the usual services. 
List-worthy?: No, but the lead performance merits serious attention.

Premise: After shrewdly ingratiating himself to ultra-hip pop musician Oliver (Archie Madekwe), retail worker Matthew (Théodore Pellerin) gradually finds his way into Oliver’s inner circle as a documentarian and idea man. Though Matthew overcomes some initial pushback from the yes-men types in Oliver’s entourage, his parasocial attachment to the star beings to manifest itself in increasingly unsettling ways. 

Alison’s thoughts: “Lurker is about the giddiness of being adjacent to celebrity — about the rush of followers you might get after being featured in someone big’s Instagram Stories, about being whisked off to London for a show, about being in the bubble alongside a star, even a minor one.”

My thoughts: The obvious touchstone for Russell’s directorial debut is The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Matthew as a fake-it-til-you-make-it imposter who flatters and cajoles his way into the narcissistic Oliver’s life, then goes to disturbing lengths to secure his place in it. The modern-day trappings of Lurker are persuasively rendered, with a keen sense of how a musician’s image (and the profile of hangers-on like Matthew) is stoked through social media hits and the care and feeding of internet algorithms. Yet it’s Pellerin’s depiction of Matthew as a needy, calculating fame-barnacle that keeps Lurker on edge, because he’s just affirmative enough to Oliver’s ego to blind the star from the not-rightness that the rest of his entourage sees more easily. At the same time, Matthew’s habit of critiquing Oliver—or, at least, wielding the stick when the carrot won’t do—suggests that artists don’t benefit from surrounding themselves with sycophants. You may not need Matthew skulking around your house, but you shouldn’t hope to get fluffed all day, either.