FALL BACK TO NORMAL?
MOVIES MAKE THEIR BID TO LURE US INTO THEATRES
In any other year, the September release of a new Marvel movie, coupled with the film festival triumvirate that is Toronto/ Venice/telluride, would signal the start of another exciting fall movie season.
But of course 2021 is not any other year. Mired in a pandemic that refuses to go quietly, the festivals have rebounded somewhat from last year, but remain scaled-down events with mask mandates and vaccination requirements. And Marvel’s Shangchi and the Legend of the 10 Rings was originally set for release last February, before continued theatre closures pushed the studio’s entire slate farther into the future.
Still, this autumn promises a host of new releases, even if many of them have been kept on ice for what feels like years. Case in point: No Time to Die had its debut delayed from November 2019 to April 2020 after the departure of director Danny Boyle. It’s been waiting out the pandemic since then. Its latest tentative release date is Oct. 8.
So here are some of the new releases we can (fingers crossed) look forward to in the weeks ahead. Dates are subject to change, but you knew that:
THE BIG GUNS
In addition to No Time to Die (Oct. 8), this year’s fall season features several releases that seem engineered to tempt audiences back into theatres. They include Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune (Oct. 22), Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, with Matt Damon and Adam Driver (Oct. 15), Edgar Wright’s spooky-looking Last Night in Soho (Oct. 22) and a new Matrix movie, Resurrections (Dec. 22). Also Wes Anderson’s whimsical
The French Dispatch (Oct. 22), which needs to be seen on a big screen to appreciate its design. Why no Spider-man? He’s got his own category.
SUPERS
Spider-man returns in No Way Home (Dec. 17), while the Marvel machine continues to churn out content with Eternals (Nov. 5), not to mention Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Oct. 15). We’re going to add The King’s Man (Dec. 22) to this list, since it feels like a superhero franchise in the making.
MUSIC
Broadway musicals come to the big screen with Dear Evan Hansen (Sept. 24) and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (Dec. 10). David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee, gets a much-deserved onenight-only big-screen showing (Sept. 16). And Aline (Nov. 26) tells the story of a French-canadian singer with more than a passing resemblance to Céline Dion. Which leads us into ...
BIONICS
It’s celebrities playing celebrities! Jessica Chastain stars in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Sept. 17), about
televangelist Tammy Faye Baker, while Kristen Stewart delivers a pitch-perfect accent as Princess Diana in Spencer (Nov. 5) and Will Smith plays Richard Williams, father to tennis stars Venus and Serena, in King Richard (Nov. 19). Meanwhile, Kristin Booth plays a housewife trying to clear her husband’s name in Marlene (Oct. 22).
HORROR AND HORROR ADJACENT
James Wan (Saw, Aquaman) returns to his horror roots with Malignant (Sept. 10), while Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Hostiles) delivers his first horror with Antlers (Oct. 29). On the lighter side of the scary spectrum comes Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Nov. 19). Speaking of which ...
FOR THE KIDS
This fall sees the release of two ghoulish animated tales, The Addams Family 2 (Oct. 1) and a fourth Hotel Transylvania, Transformania (Oct. 1). Disney has Encanto (Nov. 24), about a little girl who’s the only one in her family without magical powers. And there’s a My Little Pony movie (Sept. 24).
SCIENCE FICTION
In I’m Your Man (Sept. 24), a woman agrees to live with a humanoid robot for three weeks, while a human-machine relationship of a very different sort powers the French film Titane (Oct. 1). Mayday finds a young woman transported to a war-torn land, while in Night Raiders (Oct. 8), a mother tries to rescue her daughter in a future dystopia. And did we mention Dune?
DRAMA AND ALL THAT
Not everything fits into a neat genre category. Oscar Isaac and Willem Dafoe star in the gambling-themed The Card Counter (Sept. 10). We also find Dafoe in Guillermo del Toro’s newest, Nightmare Alley (Dec. 3). Couples deal with tragedy in Mass (Oct. 15). Blue Bayou (Sept. 17) tells the story of a Korean adoptee growing up in the Deep South. Maria Chapdelaine (Sept. 24) is the fourth film adaptation of the 1913 French romance novel, while Mothering Sunday (Dec. 3) is the fourth adaptation of a Graham Swift novel. The Many Saints of Newark (Oct. 1) is the prequel to The Sopranos. Kenneth Branagh plumbs his past for the ’60s-set Belfast (Nov. 12). In the cranky-old-guys category, there’s Michael Caine in Best Sellers (Sept. 17) and Clint Eastwood in Cry Macho (Sept. 17). Finally, winning the prize for craziest title of the season is a comedy out of Romania titled Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn (Nov. 26).