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September 12, 2025 
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Hi, movie fans!
It’s been an especially busy fall festival season, perhaps because production has ramped back up since the Hollywood strikes of 2023. Whatever the reason, we on the film desk were kept on our toes at the Toronto International Film Festival, which began last Thursday.
Among the highlights were “Christy,” a biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as the pioneering boxer Christy Martin, who put her sport on the map even as she was contending with horrifying domestic abuse.
At the premiere in Toronto, the response went through the roof, wrote my colleague Kyle Buchanan, who added that she “could contend this Oscar season. But is it too late for an effective career rebrand?” He was referring to the sense that she’s become a pop culture flashpoint thanks to side gigs like an American Eagle jeans ad. “Sweeney has a tough battle ahead if she wants to be seen more as an actress than a celebrity,” he added.
Interestingly, one film that is really popping at the moment hasn’t been on the festival circuit. That’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.” Early reactions to the ambitious, action-packed tale are very positive, but it is also politically minded and Buchanan sat down with the cast, led by Leonardo DiCaprio, to get a sense of how they thought audiences would react. Co-star Sean Penn’s response? “I think that it might be one of those times where you get to work on a movie and it really becomes a gift for audiences in the way that the best things are.”
That conversation is one of several stories in our preview of the fall season. Also worth checking out is our list of 80 movies we’re looking forward to. I told you it was a packed season!
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STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS |
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