“American Honey”
Synopsis: A teenage girl joins a magazine-selling crew and travels the country with them.
What You Need To Know: With a five year gap after her underrated “Wuthering Heights,” Andrea Arnold came back at Cannes this year with her first U.S.-set film, the coming-of-age tale “American Honey,” and the return proved to be utterly welcome. That’s one of many reasons this is our Film of the Month selection. Something of a spiritual successor to “Fish Tank,” down to the Academy ratio look and stunning Robbie Ryan photography, it’s an epic, nearly three-hour encapsulation of youth, a film that Jessica Kiang’s review at Cannes called “nectar-hued, poignant, yet propulsive,” a film that “captures the experience of being young in a way that you don’t get to experience when you are young.” With a breakout turn from newcomer Sasha Lane, and one from Shia LaBoeuf that reminds us of why we all got excited about him in the first place, the film also won Arnold her third Jury Prize at Cannes.
Release Date: September 30th (Limited)
“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”
Synopsis: A young boy discovers a time warp into a mysterious island where an enigmatic woman runs a sanctuary for children with extraordinary abilities.
What You Need To Know: One of the hackier exponents of internet video has been the ‘What If A Director With A Signature Visual Style Made A Popular Pop-Culture Property’ variety. You know, ‘What if Wes Anderson Directed ‘Star Wars’?” or ‘What If Tim Burton Directed The X-Men?’ But our campaign against this scourge has been struck a devastating blow, because Burton has gone and directed his version of an X-Men movie, and it looks quite good. The once-beloved filmmaker has had a horrible run in recent years, but this adaptation of Ransom Rigg’s YA novel looks like it could be more palatable than most of his recent efforts. In part, it might help that he’s stepped away from staple actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and opted instead for a promising young cast anchored by the great Eva Green. Hopefully the Burton redemption starts here.
Release Date: September 30th
“Deepwater Horizon”
Synopsis: The true story of the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig that suffered a devastating fire and explosion that caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
What You Need To Know: After the success of “Lone Survivor,” we’re getting two team-ups from Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg in the coming months, and your happiness about that might vary a bit depending on how you felt about that military pic. Berg’s obvious talent as a filmmaker (see “Friday Night Lights” or “The Kingdom”) is sometimes overshadowed by a sort of moony-eyed worship of male heroics (see “Battleship”), and the story of “Deepwater Horizon” could potentially play into some of his worst instincts. But trailers have been undeniably stirring, he’s assembled a strong cast here, and there’s no denying the potency of the material or Berg’s potential to bring a docudrama-style approach to the disaster movie. Would we rather have seen J.C. Chandor, who was originally set to make the movie, do this? Sure. But we’re open to the idea that Berg could turn it into something gripping.
Release Date: September 30th
Honorable Mentions:
So many films come out every month that we can’t possibly fit even other worthy films to the main list. And so there’s Sundance movie “White Girl,” which our critic compared to “Spring Breakers” and “Kids” in the way it “speaks to youth in tailspin using its own prickly, audacious language, and in doing so announces [director] Elizabeth Wood as one of 2016’s most vital new voices in filmmaking.” Also from this year’s Sundance is the David Gordon Green co-scripted “Goat,” about fraternity hazing.
We called “Operation Avalanche” a “ripping good conspiracy theory yarn” after catching it at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. “Morgan” is the feature length debut from Luke Scott (son of Ridley), and it’s a well cast sci-fi thriller slightly in the vein of last year’s excellent “Ex Machina.” “London Road” is a quirky musical with all the dialogue sung as lyrics. It’s a noble attempt at something different, splicing in a real life murder case and also featuring a brief Tom Hardy appearance.
Drafthouse Films releases its first sequel onto the world with Danish grossout comedy “Klown Forever.” “A Man Called Ove” is the latest older audience skewing adaptation of a popular Swedish novel. “Tanna” is Australia’s entry for the foreign language Oscar. “Tharlo” features beautiful high contrast black and white cinematography and a charming lead performance in a simple but effective tale about a shepherd who’s forced to go through silly bureaucratic steps even though the city and modern life have no real place for him.
As usual, there’s a host of good looking docs this month. “The Lovers and the Despot” tells the story of Shin Sang-ok, one of South Korea’s most famous filmmakers and his wife, actress, Choi Eun-hee, in one of those truth is way stranger than fiction tales. Ron Howard directs a new doc about the most famous band ever, and here’s hoping he finds some fresh angles for “The Beatles: Eight Days A Week.” Also making the honorable mentions of our top 20 docs of the year so far was “Author: The JT Leroy Story.”