10 MUST- SEE FALL MOVIES
You’ve weathered a summer full of iffy movies. Congrats. Now on to the good stuff.
The fall brings a combination of Oscar bait, popcorn fare and A- list names to theaters, and this year’s crop features Tom Hanks fighting deadly plagues and making historic landings, Renée Zellweger revisiting her British singleton, and Ben Affleck following his stint as Batman with a talented math man.
USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt offers 10 movies not to miss in September and October.
SULLY
( Sept. 9) STARS: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
PLOT: Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ( Hanks) is forced to land an airline flight on New York’s Hudson River, then deals with the aftermath involving media scrutiny and internal investigators.
THE SKINNY: The biopic centers on the heroic pilot but doesn’t forget his first officer, Jeff Skiles ( played by Eckhart), who stood by Sullenberger during the trying times after “The Miracle on the Hudson.” The real Skiles “told me everything that happened in terms of him psychologically: getting PTSD, losing weight, ( having) sleepless nights, blaming himself, going over it with a fine- tooth comb if he could have done anything differently,” Eckhart says. “He has a pretty good attitude about it. He knows there has to be one face to the story, and that face is Sully.”
BRIDGET JONES’S BABY
( Sept. 16) STARS: Renée Zellweger, Patrick Dempsey, Colin Firth DIRECTOR: Sharon Maguire
Now in her 40s and PLOT: entrenched as a news producer, Bridget Jones ( Zellweger) finds out she’s pregnant but doesn’t know if the father is her ex Mark Darcy ( Firth) or new American beau Jack Qwant ( Dempsey).
Back for a third go as THE SKINNY: Bridget — her first in 12 years — Zellweger finds she’s as relatable as ever. “No matter how you grow and move on, you don’t have it all figured out,” the actress says. “I felt a connection to her and the inner dialogue of her struggles.” And while Bridget is less naïve now and more accomplished, she retains her hopeful optimism and self- deprecating sense of humor. “She still has her challenges, and she’s still perfectly imperfect.”
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
( Sept. 23) STARS: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke DIRECTOR: Antoine Fuqua
PLOT: A diverse bunch comes together to protect a widow ( Haley Bennett) and her town from a sociopathic land- grubbing villain ( Peter Sarsgaard).
THE SKINNY: The latest take on the concept, originally introduced in the 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai and popularized with 1960’ s The Magnificent Seven, finds the title group headed by bounty hunter Sam Chisolm — a quieter role than Washington has had in the past. “There’s a brewing vengeance inside of him,” Fuqua says. And it made sense to pair him with Chris Pratt’s chatty gambler Josh Farraday. “Having him and Denzel together is such a contrast — it really comes off strong on the screen.” The director also says to look out for Martin Sensmeier as Native American warrior Red Harvest: “All the girls go crazy over him.”
QUEEN OF KATWE
( Sept. 23) STARS: Madina Nalwanga, Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo DIRECTOR: Mira Nair
PLOT: With the help of her coach ( Oyelowo), chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi ( Nalwanga) becomes famous in her Ugandan hometown and has ambitions of becoming a world champion.
Nair has lived in KampaTHE SKINNY: la for 27 years but didn’t know of the real Phiona’s exploits there until recently. “I’m inspired by those who are considered marginal to any kind of society, because they are the ones in my view who have the most resilience and most inspiration for how to survive,” the director says. Nair also fashioned some of her dialogue from sessions playing chess with Phiona. “She would look at me and say, ‘ Mira, you must consider the other side of the board’ as I would make a reckless move. It was a great mantra for life.”
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
( Sept. 30) STARS: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Samuel L. Jackson DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
PLOT: After a death in the family, troubled teenager Jacob ( Butterfield) happens upon an orphanage run by a strict governess ( Green) that houses a bevy of youngsters with extraordinary abilities.
THE SKINNY: While she’d gladly play a table or a tree in a Burton film, Green says her Miss Peregrine is “kind of a Mary Poppins on speed,” one who leans sexier and less sinister than the headmistress in Ransom Riggs’ book. “She smokes a pipe, she uses a crossbow. She’s bonkers in a lovely way.” Even better, her character’s peculiarity is that she transforms into a falcon, which meant some extra CGI and wire work. “I wish I could just turn into a real bird,” Green says. “You do the somersaults and have people pulling wires and stuff and you feel like a moron, but it works. It’s kind of magical.”
THE BIRTH OF A NATION
( Oct. 7) STARS: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King DIRECTOR: Nate Parker PLOT: After feeling the overwhelming oppression around him, Nat Turner ( Parker) leads a violent revolt of fellow slaves against their white owners in pre- Civil War Virginia. THE SKINNY: Parker, who also co- wrote the script, was inspired to tell the tale of Turner’s 1831 rebellion because of the way he and other slaves maintained their humanity amid social and physical control. “They had to find ways to exercise their right to be human beings — if nothing else, with each other,” Parker says. Turner “had a family, he had a wife, he had a child, and he was willing to sacrifice all of that for a people and a future and generations that he could not even share that progress with.” The movie is widely regarded as an Oscar contender, though its chances could be hurt by the recent revelation that Parker was acquitted of rape in college.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
( Oct. 7) STARS: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux DIRECTOR: Tate Taylor
PLOT: Rachel Wilson ( Blunt) becomes obsessed with a couple ( Bennett and Luke Evans) she sees on her commute to work but becomes embroiled in a mystery when the woman vanishes and she thinks she saw what happened.
THE SKINNY: Blunt loved that the protagonist in the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best- seller is a blackout drunk. “She’s so self- destructive and so damaged and certainly not any kind of feminine ideal,” says the actress, who found out she was pregnant with her second child a week before filming started. “I was like, ‘ Well, there’s no chance I can be Method with this one at all.’ ” Rachel also is an unreliable narrator with a dark past and a violent history who can’t trust her own memories, Blunt says. The story is “less about her being Nancy Drew trying to find who did it and more about her trying to make sure she didn’t do it.”
THE ACCOUNTANT
( Oct. 14) STARS: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J. K. Simmons DIRECTOR: Gavin O’Connor PLOT: Math savant Chris Wolff ( Affleck) cooks the books for various criminal organizations, and after going legit, he helps an accounting clerk ( Kendrick) for a robotics company when she finds a huge financial discrepancy. THE SKINNY: For O’Connor, the movie is an unconventional splicing of action thriller and in- depth character study with an atypical hero: “( Chris) is on the spectrum. He’d be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. That doesn’t preclude you from wanting to connect with people.” The chance to depict genius “can be a license to show off with actors,” O’Connor says. “What Ben did was not only restrained but deeply honest ( in creating) the beating heart inside the guy and how he breathes.” There’s also an “incongruous love story” between Affleck’s and Kendrick’s characters, the director says. “She’s attracted to his genius and she’s touched by his loneliness.”
JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK
( Oct. 21) STARS: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Robert Knepper DIRECTOR: Edward Zwick
PLOT: Former military man Jack Reacher ( Cruise) comes to the aid of a friend ( Smulders), goes on the run from the government and tries to get to the bottom of a conspiracy.
THE SKINNY: Reacher is a good- guy loner with a lot of gravitas “who has cut himself off from the past,” Zwick says. But the new sequel suggests “an inner emotional life that maybe tries to hint at someone who has left the world and is now forced to be in it.” Part of Reacher’s back story is unspooled — for example, he comes to grips with having a 15- year- old daughter ( Danika Yarosh) — and Cruise is invested in all of it. “Every actor tries to access parts of himself for each role,” Zwick says. “The great ones seem to have infinite resources of things, and he does it in a very interesting way.”
INFERNO
( Oct. 28) STARS: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
PLOT: Struggling with amnesia, globetrotting symbologist Robert Langdon ( Hanks) teams with physician Sienna Brooks ( Jones) to stop a world- threatening bioweapon before it’s released in the wild.
THE SKINNY: Playing with a plot featuring a plague fashioned on Dante’s Inferno, Howard saw a fresh visual approach to tackling author Dan Brown’s popular character from The Da Vinci Code. “The clue path is actually buried in hell and Robert Langdon’s sense of hell and even a hallucinogenic hell on Earth,” the director says. The psychological thriller lets Hanks’ hero deal with a personal crisis “while stripped of his superpowers,” and Sienna gives the main character depth by being his equal. “She may be a different gender and a generation younger, but it’s like looking in an emotional and intellectual mirror.”