The fall and winter movie season is the most exciting part of the year for film fans. Festival favorites—successful out of Venice, Toronto, Telluride, and New York—are finally getting distributed, the Oscar hopefuls are revving up their campaigns, and the indie darlings make their way to streaming. There are a lot of great titles during this exhilarating time of year, so let’s take a moment and parse through the noise and look forward to the best movies releasing this Fall.
The winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’or, one of the highest prizes in moviemaking, is Sean Baker’s newest film, Anora. Like most of his work, the film revolves around a sex worker, played by the always-brilliant Mikey Madison. This time around, it’s a modern-day spin on a Cinderella story, which has been praised as evoking screwball-comedy tropes in a typically Sean Baker humanistic way. It opens in theaters on October 18th.
On the less prestigious side, there’s Terrifier 3, the threequel in Damien Leone’s gruesome killer-clown franchise. The first film in the series, senior Xaver Alexander, a prospective film student and horror fanatic, explained, is a terse, low-budget piece of slasher ephemera, while the second film is a nearly 3-hour piece of gruesome self-indulgence. “Terrifier 3 will be as fun as [those movies always are] and seeks to find a good middle ground between the first 2 movies,” Alexander hoped. It opens October 11 in theaters.
Alexander is also looking forward to Joker: Folie A Deux, the sequel to 2019’s Joker. This time, it’s a musical, featuring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. The film received mixed reviews out of its premiere, proving to be even more polarizing than its predecessor. Audiences can make up their own minds about the Joaquin Phoenix star-vehicle when it opens on October 4th.
Back on the festival side, there’s Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, the 3-and-a-half hour World War II epic that premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It stars Adrien Brody as Jewish architect László Toth and follows his process of assimilation into America after his emigration from Hungary in 1947. The film received massive acclaim upon its premiere, with many critics calling it a modern-day American masterpiece. It opens in theaters, courtesy of A24, this December.
Staying in the land of the arthouse biopic, Chilean director Pablo Larrian, whose last film, the wildly underrated Augusto Pinochet satire El Conde premiered on Netflix last year, is returning to the biographical film with Maria, which stars Angelina Jolie as the legendary opera singer Maria Callas. Much like Larrian’s last two female-led biopics, Spencer and Jackie, this film promises to be as brilliant as it is challenging.
Two non-English language films include Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix, and Muhammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which was so impressive it was given its own, special award from the Cannes Film Festival Jury. The former is being distributed by Janus Films and the latter by Neon. Specific release dates are yet to be announced, but both films are slated for this year.
One of the films opening very late this year is Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu. An alternative Christmas release, Nosferatu is Eggers’s, the revered director of The Witch and The Lighthouse, reinterpretation of the classic vampire story, featuring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp amongst an eclectic ensemble cast. This is one of the drawing factors for Alexander, who expressed, “I’m very excited [for Nosferatu] because of the cast and [because] I love the director.”
Two November releases and will-be blockbusters are Wicked and Gladiator II. Wicked, adapted from Gregory McGregor’s novel and the long-running stage musical, opens in theaters on November 22. It features an ensemble cast, Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh among them, with Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the leads.
Gladiator II is a late-era work from renowned director Ridley Scott, with up-and-comer Paul Mescal and establishment titan Denzel Washington dawning the iconic Roman garb for this 20-years-on sequel. That delay, Oakdale Senior and Regal Cinemas employee Parker Pelletier shared, may be a cause for concern: “It’s been so long since the first one came out, I’m not sure how well they can follow the original storyline. While I’m excited to see how it turns out, I’m still skeptical.”
Some other, more under-the-radar offerings include Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, Oscar-winner Edgar Berger’s Conclave, Luca Guadagnino’s Daniel Craig vehicle Queer, the Cate Blanchet-led sci-fi dramedy Rumours, Joshua Oppenhiemer’s apocalyptic musical The End, Gia Coppola’s Pamela Anderson-led drama The Last Showgirl, and Best Picture winner Steve McQueen’s Blitz. These films, as well as many others not featured here, promise to make this year an exciting, unpredictable year for film.
