COMING ATTRaCTIONS CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS
Space, sequels, spinoffs, remakes, crooks and more await film fans,
There’s a good old-fashioned space race at the movies this fall. Never mind the U.S. rumblings about putting a woman on the moon, or the recent un-womanned missions from Israel, China and India to our nearest celestial neighbour. Cinema will take us to space. (Release dates, like launch dates, are subject to change.)
The race kicks off with Ad Astra (Sept. 20), James Gray’s long-gestating sci-fi thriller — he announced it at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2016 — that stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut in search of his lost-in-space father. Next up is Lucy in the Sky (Oct. 4), directed by Noah Hawley and starring Natalie Portman as an astronaut whose return to Earth creates a strain in her family life. Similarly themed is Alice Winocour’s Proxima, starring Eva Green as a woman trying to be a good mother while training for a mission to the space station. It premières at the Toronto International Film Festival but has no North American release date.
Closer to home is The Aeronauts (Dec. 6), reuniting Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) as 19th-century scientists striving to break the French balloon altitude record while pushing the frontiers of meteorology. And even longer ago in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Dec. 20) closes out a space saga 42 years in the making.
With all the space-themed movies this fall, you could be forgiven for thinking Gemini Man (Oct. 11) is a prequel to First Man, chronicling the brave astronauts of Project Gemini. In fact it’s a sci-fi tale from Ang Lee, with Will Smith playing an aging assassin pitted against his younger clone. And moving from space to time brings us to Terminator: Dark Fate (Nov. 1), which also leads to ...
SEQUELS, SPINOFFS AND REMAKES
No season is without its share of reboots. Doing the least to hide itself is Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (Oct. 18). Other blasts from the past include Rambo: Last Blood (Sept. 20), Jumanji: The Next Level (Dec. 13), Charlie’s Angels (Nov. 15) and Little Women (Dec. 25). There’s also a straightup sequel in Downton Abbey (Sept. 20) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (Oct. 18).
The realm of the horrific includes Joaquin Phoenix’s turn in Joker (Oct. 4), the sequel Zombieland: Double Tap (Oct. 18), a remake of 1974’s Black Christmas (Dec. 13), a Shining sequel called Doctor Sleep (Nov. 8) and a sequel to 2016’s The Boy called Brahms: The Boy II (Dec. 6).
MORE HORROR
There are also some original frights this season, not least The Lighthouse (Oct. 18), Robert Eggers’ spooky followup to The Witch. There’s also the cabin-fever horror The Lodge (Nov. 15), the sci-fi thriller Freaks (Sept. 13) and in the bizarre category of horror-documentary, Wrinkles the Clown (Oct. 4), about a Florida man who hires himself out as a deliberately scary clown. Which makes a nice segue into ...
REAL LIFE
Tom Hanks plays saintly TV personality Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Nov. 22), while Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce are The Two Popes (Nov. 22) and August Diehl portrays an Austrian conscientious objector to the Second World War in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (Dec. 13). Conflicts and their aftermaths are all over the screen this fall, with 1917 (Dec. 25) and Midway (Nov. 8) bringing two world wars to life, while Officials Secrets (Sept. 13) dramatizes a whistleblower’s attempt to stop the 2003 invasion of Iraq and The Report (Nov. 15) follows an investigation into the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11.
Two very different lawyers inhabit Just Mercy (Dec. 25), with Michael B. Jordan as crusading legal activist Bryan Stevenson, and Where’s My Roy Cohn? (Oct. 4), which looks at the life of Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel and later Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Bombshell (Dec. 20) dramatizes the story of the female Fox News employees who brought down CEO Roger Ailes. And in a more innocent vein, Ford v Ferrari (Nov. 15) tells of the birth of the 1966 Ford GT40 racing car, while Judy (Sept. 27) gives us a late-in-life Judy Garland, played by Renée Zellweger.
ANIMATED
There aren’t many animated pictures opening this fall, but you probably don’t need more than Disney’s Frozen II (Nov. 22), which will almost certainly dominate the box office for the rest of the year. Lesser CGI fare includes The Addams Family (Oct. 11), Spies in Disguise (Dec. 25) and Playmobil: The Movie (Nov. 22), clearly looking to muscle into Lego’s territory. If there’s a perfect title for a movie about hustlers, it would have to be Hustlers (Sept. 13), based on the true story of a group of New York strippers convicted of stealing from their clients. Other ne’er-do-wells include Ian McKellen in The Good Liar (Nov. 15), Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems (Dec. 25), Robert De Niro in The Irishman (Nov. 28) and potentially everyone in the all-star cast of Knives Out (Nov. 27). Ansel Elgort plays a witness to a bombing in The Goldfinch (Sept. 13), while Edward Norton is a ’50s private detective in Motherless Brooklyn (Nov. 1), Naomie Harris a rookie cop in Black and Blue (Oct. 25) and Chadwick Boseman a disgraced NYPD detective in 21 Bridges (Nov. 22). And for sheer criminal mastermindery there’s Joon-ho Bong ’s Palme d’Or winner Parasite (Oct. 25), about a poor family preying on a wealthy one. Not everything fits in a neat box. How to categorize Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (Oct. 18), in which a German boy interacts with an imaginary friend who is also Hitler? We’ll stick it in the “other” category, alongside Superintelligence (Dec. 20), a comedy starring Melissa McCarthy and an A.I.; Mister America (Oct. 11), a political satire with comedian Tim Heidecker; John Cena in the family comedy Playing with Fire (Nov. 8); and Pedro Almodóvar’s latest and most personal film, Pain and Glory (Oct. 18).
There’s also family drama starring Isabelle Huppert in Frankie (Nov. 8); the strange sci-fi Little Joe (Dec. 6); a romantic thriller called Queen & Slim (Nov. 27); and the movie musical adaptation of Cats (Dec. 20). And finally Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Dec. 20), a best-screenplay winner at Cannes, one of my favourite films of the year so far, and proof that outside the box is sometimes where the treasure lies.