“The Velvet Underground”
From “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” the glam rock obsessed, “Velvet Goldmine,” and the Bob Dylan film, “I’m Not Here,” Todd Haynes’ love affair with rock n’ roll culture is well documented. His latest effort is a doc about rock’s most discordant, trailblazing group. “The Velvet Underground” isn’t much of a surprise as much as it is a logical career continuation. Lou Reed’s seminal New York underground band helped pave the way for punk, post-punk, and a host of other subgenres. Our Cannes review raved, calling the film “superb” and to be “experienced at top volume.”
Release Date: October 15 via Apple TV+.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”
Ruben Fleischer’s gonzo 2018 superhero saga “Venom” was terrible, but it found an unexpected second life as a queer allegory and Letterboxd user favorite. In the sequel, ‘Let There Be Carnage,’ now directed by Andy Serkis (a marked improvement), Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock/Venom. At the same time, new faces to the franchise include Naomie Harris, Stephen Graham, and the great Woody Harrelson as the killer villain, Carnage, briefly glimpsed in the first movie’s post-credits teaser. Will it be just as hellaciously weird?
Release Date: October 15 via Sony (for now, it seems poised to push into 2022).
“Dune”
A lot is riding on Denis Villeneuve’s epic, take on Frank Herbert’s landmark sci-fi tome “Dune,” which costs upwards of $200 million and hopes to launch a franchise in cinemas and on TV, but that’s why there’s a stacked cast that includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem and many more. “Blade Runner: 2049” was a rather big expensive disappointment for Warner Bros, and the studio will definitely be hoping they can avoid the same fate with “Dune.” Helping achieve their aim with something that looks incredible is composer Hans Zimmer and DP Grieg Frasier.
Release Date: October 22 via Warner Bros.
“The French Dispatch”
Wes Anderson’s been promising an anthology-esque film for years, and he finally delivers in “The French Dispatch”: a fanciful triptych of journalistic tall tales unfolding in the fictional, Anderson-ized French magazine and city of Ennui-Sur-Blasé. The film has an all-star cast which includes Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and has already received huge accolades when it premiered in Cannes earlier this year.
Release Date: October 22 via Searchlight Pictures.
“Jackass Forever”
A recent GQ profile of Johnny Knoxville and “Jackass” summed it up well: If you’re pushing 50 and you’ve miraculously survived all kinds of dangerous stunts, why on god’s green earth would you tempt fate again? Well, this is “Jackass,” and clearly, it’s forever (even though this is the last one). Bam Margera won’t be back (he’s suing cause they kicked him to the curb for alleged substance abuse), but these films are always a lot more thrilling and hilarious than you remember them. If nothing else, those who buy a ticket will be treated to the sight of Johnny Knoxville getting K.O.’d by a bull.
Release Date: October 22 via Paramount.
“Antlers”
American filmmaker Scott Cooper generally tackles stories about the failures, trauma, and potential redemption of men through the lens of genre: crime, war, music, etc., But his latest is unusual for him: a supernatural horror that stars the great Keri Russell. Playing an Oregon schoolteacher who discovers that one of her students may be harboring a fearsome creature inside their family home, expect “Antlers” to play best as a moodier alternative to the more mainstream likes “Halloween Kills.” A bonus is that the film sees Cooper reuniting with “Black Mass” co-stars Jesse Plemons and Rory Cochrane. Gullermo del Toro produces.
Release Date: October 29 via Searchlight Pictures.
“Last Night In Soho”
Edgar Wright’s usually cheeky and playful cinema gets dead serious with the psychological thriller, “Last Night In Soho,” which looks to be as disquieting and rigorously stylized a film as the British writer/director has ever given us. Thomasin McKenzie stars as an upstart fashion designer looking to make a name for herself in London before she finds herself unwittingly transported back to an ominous shadow version of 196’s Soho. Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, and Terence Stamp co-star, and Wright fans should know to expect a creepier, less comic, more giallo-influenced outing from the normally comical filmmaker.
Release Date: October 29 via Focus Features.
October Honorable Mentions:
Those in the market for more modestly scaled fare in October will want to seek out “Falling For Figaro,” a feel-good flick about an aspiring opera singer that stars “Patti Cake$” breakout Danielle Macdonald, and also the grisly-sounding, Elijah Wood-starring “No Man of God,” about the relationship that eventually blossomed between serial killer Ted Budy and FBI agent Bill Hagmaier. Genre mavens will want to seek out the quirky-sounding, Nebraska-set high school slasher “There’s Someone Inside Your Home,” the latest from “Creep” director Patrick Brice, and also “Army of Thieves,” a fun-sounding heist-movie spin-off of Zack Snyder’s “Army Of The Dead,” starring and directed by that film’s anointed comic relief, Matthias Schweighöfer. Argentinian filmmaker Amalia Ulman‘s darkly comedic “El Planeta” sounds great too. Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (who already “Drive My Car” earlier this year) returns with a “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.”
Elsewhere, there is 20th Century Studios’ animated sci-fi family item “Ron’s Gone Wrong,” a doc about accomplished civil rights activist Pauli Murray from “RBG” directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen, plus “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” and “The Addams Family 2” if you need some light family entertainment to take the kids to.
NOVEMBER
“The Harder They Fall”
A new revisionist Western that boasts one of the most stacked casts of this or any year? Yes, please. Jonathan Majors and R.J. Cyler star alongside established pros like Idris Elba, Zazie Beetz, Lakeith Stanfield, Delroy Lindo, and Regina King. It goes without saying that this will not be your father’s gunslinger epic, but all the same, we can barely contain our excitement. Directed by Jeymes Samuel, produced by Jay-Z and Lawrence Bender, and lensed by Sean Bobbitt (“Shame”) and Mihai Mălaimare Jr. (“The Master”). Premieres at the London Film Festival in October.
Release Date: November 3 via Netflix.
“The Beta Test”
Writer-director Jim Cummings made a memorable impression with his cringe-y small-town comic tragedy “Thunder Road,” and his latest, a queasy-sounding black-comedy horror, sounds like another one of the upstart filmmaker’s uncompromisingly funny lo-fi visions. Cummings is a poet of insecure masculinity, and while “The Beta Test” shifts gears into a more insider-showbiz vein, thematically speaking, it sounds very much like an anxious, squirmy Jim Cummings film. Our Tribeca review called it a “clever and multi-layered film that’s also about deceit, dishonesty, the panic of even the possibility of facing consequences.”
Release Date: November 5 via IFC.