With the Labor Day holiday and cook outs now behind us, the world turns its sites forward to the Fall and leaves turning color, pumpkin-spice coffee drinks and rearranging one’s commute to avoid the return of school buses to the roadways. But it also means that Awards Season is upon us as the studios begin rolling out their prestige films to theaters. After a summer which saw blockbusters like Inside Out 2 and Daredevil And Wolverine starting to bring people back to the theaters, here are a baker’s dozen of films that we think audiences getting back into the habit of movie theater-going would do well with checking out.
His Three Daughters (September 6)
Drawn together by the impending death of their father, Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne star as sisters whose life paths took them in very different directions from one another. There never seems to be enough good roles for women beyond love interest or trope-subverting action hero badass, so this film – picked up by Netflix after it premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival promises some meaty performances from three great actresses in their prime. Writer/director Azazel Jacobs is adept at crafting compelling narratives with complex and complex but not-always-likeable characters and this seems like fertile ground for that here. If you miss the film in its limited run – presumably so Netflix can have it qualify for Academy Awards consideration – the film will hit the streamer two weeks later on September 20.
The Concierge (September 11)
An adaptation of an adaptation of Tsuchika Nishimura’s The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store manga, this animated story centers on Akino, a trainee concierge at the Hokkyoku Department Store, a department store that caters exclusively to anthropomorphic animals. The film debuted in June 2023 at the Annecy International Film Festival but is only finally getting a US release now. The trailer promises some light-hearted family fare that will be a nice change up in terms of story and tone from the usual output of American animation studios.
My Old Ass (September 13)
Maisy Stella stars as an eighteen-year-old who takes some mushrooms and finds herself face-to-face with her 39-year-old self in the form of Aubrey Plaza. What would you do if you had the opportunity to get life advice from your older self? Would you heed it? How would your older self react if your younger self ignored that advice? Lots of interesting potential, perhaps mostly in the possibility of making those in both age brackets – or maybe even a bit older, ahem – rethink how they view the others outlook on the world. With some laughs thrown in, of course.
The Substance (September 18)
Coralie Fargeat’s follow-up to her debut feature Revenge, The Substance promises a bit of body horror mixed with critique of the male gaze. Demi Moore stars as a woman who injects a miracle drug that rejuvenates her body into a decades younger version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. Needless to say that the miracle drug may have some unforeseen consequences. Early buzz out of its film festival run is already touting Moore’s performance as a career high.
Wolfs (September 20)
Another film getting a cursory Oscar-qualifying theatrical release before heading to a streaming service. This time, it’s Apple TV Plus is having George Clooney and Brad Pitt squaring off against each other as two underworld fixers who show up for the same job and are forced into an uneasy alliance. Given the breezy chemistry the two shared in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trilogy, it is easy to be excited to see these two sharing screen time again, especially considering that the premise inverts their relationship for this one.
Megalopolis (September 27)
Sometimes a passion project can be the pinnacle of an artist’s achievements and other times it can turn out to be nothing more than an embarrassing vanity project, perhaps best left unrealized. It is hard to say what we could be receiving with Megalopolis, a film that Francis Ford Coppola has been trying to get in front of cameras for decades. Word out of its Cannes premier was mixed, so we are still not quite sure what to expect. But there is one thing for sure; judging from the trailer, even if the film does turn out to be a dud, it will be a visually stunning dud.
Joker: Folie A Deux (October 4)
Director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix’s examination of the iconic comic book villain as filtered through Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy was a mega hit, earning over $1 billion at the box office. While the pair initially stated that they envisioned the film as a one-and-done, the lure of a sequel has brought them back to a pre-Batman Gotham City. This time, they are joined by Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, the Joker’s equally insane girlfriend. Although the film has been described by the studio as a musical, Phillips recently stated that “Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue. It’s just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead.” But that sounds like a musical to us.
We Live In Time (October 11)
Brooklyn director John Crowley is back with a new tale of lives lived with We Live In Time. Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star as a young couple who meet, fall in love, get married and the experience the highs and lows that life has to offer. Is there a twist? Is this high melodrama? Who knows? But the pedigree here already has us interested in seeing how this story unfolds.
Saturday Night (October 11)
We here at FilmBuffOnline are big Saturday Night Live fans. So needless to say, Jason Reitman’s examination of the ninety minutes between the dress rehearsal and live broadcast of the first episode of the iconic sketch series has been a film we’ve been looking forward to ever since it was first announced. That frantic hour and a half has been reported on in books about the show, but Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan sat down and interviewed a number of the cast and crew from that evening, so what we could be getting could be a strong realization of what happened as the clock inexorably ticked towards 11:30pm.
Anora (October 18)
Sean Baker has made a reputation exploring the lives of marginalized people on the fringes of society. And with Anora, it looks as if instead of just exploring their humanity in the face of their adversities, Baker is going to try and find some comedy as well. In this latest film a Las Vegas stripper impulsively and unknowingly marries the son of a Russian oligarch. It is only when his irate father arrives from Russia does she find out the truth. The trailer for this makes it look like a bit of a fast-paced, slapstick farce. It definitely seems to be a departure for the director and leaves us wondering if he can still retain the characters’ core humanity in the midst of the comedic chaos.
Conclave (November 1)
One of the most secret acts of the Catholic Church is the election of a new pope. When a pope dies, the Church’s cardinals gather in seclusion in the Vatican to pray, debate and vote on who should be the next leader of the Church. The entire process is kept hidden from outsiders, so naturally, there is much speculation as to how these deliberations transpire. Now toss in Ralph Fiennes as one of the chief cardinals and a secret that certain factions want to keep secret and you have the ingredients for some high drama from Edward Berger, the director of the recent All Quiet On The Western Front remake.
Here (November 1)
Director Robert Zemeckis has long had a fascination with experimenting with emerging filmmaking technologies and finding high concept stories to tell with them. With Here, Zemeckis takes Richard McGuire’s graphic novel – which takes a single point of view of a plot of land and tells the story of the rise of a house on it and the people who turn the house into a home – and brings it life, with his Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as the couple. The film will be a static camera position for the entire runtime, and it should be interesting to see how Zemeckis translates McGuire’s overlapping panel composition which showed the space in several different timeframes simultaneously.
Wicked (November 22)
The multiple Tony-award winning musical has been touted for a big screen adaptation almost since it opened on Broadway in May 2003. And while if it had happened sooner we might have gotten original Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth to immortalize their performances on celluloid, this adaptation from director Jon M Chu does feature Cynthia Erivo as the shy witch Elphaba who is destined to be labeled the Wicked Witch of the West, and Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland, her bubbly roommate and friend at Oz’s magic university. A note – Although the title doesn’t mention it, this is just the first part of a two-film adaptation of the musical, with the second part coming in November 2025. Why they aren’t calling these Wicked – Act One and Act Two is a mystery not even Oz the Great and Powerful has the answer to.
