The 50 Most Anticipated Films Of The Fall Season

“Loving”
Director: Jeff Nichols (“Mud”)
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll, Michael Shannon
Synopsis: Based on a true story, this shows the long fight that Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter had to fight after they were arrested and sent to prison for violating Virginia’s laws about interracial marriage.
What You Need To Know: Though he’s been a filmmaker of enormous promise for a decade now, Jeff Nichols hasn’t quite had a home run yet; there’s an enormous amount to love about “Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter,” “Mud” and “Midnight Special,” but all have flaws that have stopped them connecting with larger audiences, it seems. But expect that to change momentarily with “Loving,” which won rave reviews at Cannes and looks all but certain to be a major awards player in the next six months. For the first time seeing the director tackle a true story, and one that is sadly relevant this year, Jess’s review at Cannes called it “as polished a film in terms of craft and performance as Nichols has ever made,” it has a number of excellent performances, including a “mesmerizing” one from the film’s breakout Ruth Negga, and it ultimately proves to be a “heartfelt and strangely convincing testament to a truth that sometimes sounds naive: love wins.” Expect to hear a lot about this one.
Release Date: Nov 4th

“Arrival”
Director: Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”)
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma
Synopsis: When alien ships land on Earth, language expert Louise Banks is tasked with finding a way to communicate with them.
What You Need To Know: As if to warm up for the “Blade Runner” sequel, Denis Villeneuve goes sci-fi for the first time with “Arrival,” an adaptation of Ted Chiang’s short story by “Lights Out” writer Eric Heisserer. But this is much more “Close Encounters” than “Independence Day” as far as first contact stories go, with a truly global scope and a thoughtful approach with more than one surprise in store. Villeneuve’s on a good run (and continues to work with the very best DPs, with “Selma” and “A Most Violent Year” shooter Bradford Young on board here), but this might be the first time that one of his scripts has been as strong as his directing talents, at least if the early draft that we read hasn’t been messed with too much. And Paramount are apparently super high on the film, which bodes well. Could this be this year’s equivalent to “The Martian” or “Gravity,” whip-smart sci-fi that plays at both the box office and the awards count?
Release Date: Nov 11th

“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”
Director: Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain”)
Cast: Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin
Synopsis: After surviving a fierce battle in Iraq, Billy Lynn and the other surviving members of his squad are invited to a halftime show at a Dallas Cowboys football game.
What You Need To Know: Ang Lee has never been one to shrink from a challenge: he made an awards-friendly martial arts movie with “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,”, he brought gay romance into the mainstream with “Brokeback Mountain,” he turned an unadaptable novel into a triumph with “Life Of Pi.” But “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” might be his toughest task yet. First, it attempts to make a big mainstream studio film about the war in Iraq, which audiences have resoundingly fled from in the past, and second, it attempts to make the 3D, HFR technology that everyone hated so much with “The Hobbit” connect with audiences. And it’s doing all this with one of the year’s most eccentric casts, with a complete newcomer headlining a cast including Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin and Chris Tucker. Nine times out of ten, Lee’s gambles pay off, and while we might be a little bit cautious of the occasional “Taking Woodstock,” we’re hopeful that Lee can pull it off.
Release Date: Nov 11th

“Elle”
Director: Paul Verhoeven (“Robocop”)
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Christian Berkel, Anne Consigny, Virginie Efira, Laurent Lafitte
Synopsis: A successful woman survives a horrific sexual assault, and tracks down the man who was responsible.
What You Need To Know: With ten years passing since his last film, “Black Book,” and the director well into his 70s, we’d started to worry that we wouldn’t see another movie from the great Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. But he roared back at Cannes this year with “Elle,” a film that’s one of his best, and one of the most daring films of the year. As Jess wrote in Cannes, where the film went down a storm, “The cinema of the #problematic may have just found its ‘Citizen Kane,’” with the film being a “massively complex genre thriller” that’s able to “make you laugh at all the wrong things.” And its center is Huppert, who’s rarely been better with a performance of “such lightness, such wit, such bright disingenuous eyes” that it could even figure into the Oscar conversation. It’s sure to spawn a thousand thinkpieces, but the debates should be just as much as the movie.
Release Date: November 11th

“Paterson”
Director: Jim Jarmusch (“Stranger Than Paradise”)
Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman
Synopsis: A slice of the life of a bus driver and amateur poet in Paterson, New Jersey.
What You Need To Know: Some filmmakers drop off and disappoint as they get older, but some refine and perfect their work more and more as they go on, and on current form, Jim Jarmusch definitely fits into the latter category. His last film, “Only Lovers Left Alive,” was an absolute joy, and he’s followed it up with “Paterson,” which Jess called in Cannes “a tiny little film, sharp in every detail, but minuscule, like a portrait on a grain of rice.” Toplining the now globally-famous Adam Driver (the villain in a little movie you probably heard of about wars in space), who gives a “perfectly modulated” performance, it’s a film of seemingly modest aims, about “finding the beauty in everyday things,” a tribute to the everyday that should be an unlikely feel-good hit with anyone that sees it. Let’s hope Jarmusch’s amazing late-career runs just keep on going.
Release Date: December 28th

“Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them”
Director: David Yates (“Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows”)
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Colin Farrell
Synopsis: In New York in 1926, Newt Scamander accidentally unleashes a suitcase full of magical creatures, threatening to cause a war between the magic and muggle communities.
What You Need To Know: Will the sequel fatigue that’s been sweeping Hollywood extend to the continuation of one of the biggest franchises in film history? That’s the question that Warner Bros will be nervously pondering in the months to come, because it feels like anticipation for Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them” has been on the muted side so far. Written by J.K. Rowling herself (her first screenwriting credit), and intended to launch a new trilogy, this looks at the wizarding world in the U.S. in the 1920s, with some gorgeous Jazz Age production design at work, while the cast is intriguing (Samantha Morton and Ezra Miller play the villains as well), but it doesn’t feel like pulses are racing yet. Will Potter-mania over the recent publication of the “Cursed Child” playscript help to kick things into motion?
Release Date: November 18th

“Manchester By The Sea”
Director: Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count On Me”)
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Mol
Synopsis: After his brother’s sudden death, Lee returns to his hometown to help raise his nephew.
What You Need To Know: We worried that the extended nightmare around his second film as director, “Margaret,” might have put Kenneth Lonergan off making another movie. After all, he’s an enormously successful and acclaimed playwright, a medium that actually seems to appreciate his brilliance, and making a film might just seem like two much trouble. But fortunately, Lonergan stuck at it, and “Manchester By The Sea” looks likely to have a much greater response than his poorly-treated previous pic, given the ecstatic response at Sundance. Something of a return to the feel of his debut “You Can Count On Me,” it’s as “shaggy” as “Margaret,” according to our review from Sundance, but pleasingly unconventional, with a series of scenes that are “each more tear-jerking than the last,” and becoming “more fraught with meaning” as it goes on. With a big Oscar push planned, particularly for star Casey Affleck, this could finally see Lonergan get the respect he’s long been due from the film world.
Release Date: November 18th

“Nocturnal Animals”
Director: Tom Ford (“A Single Man”)
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon
Synopsis: A woman receives a book from her ex-husband about a family under siege, and tries to discern the meaning of the gesture.
What You Need To Know: It’s annoying when someone who is great at one thing turns out to be great at another, and so it was deeply irritating when legendary fashion designer Tom Ford turned his hand to filmmaking, and made something as good as “A Single Man” was. Seven years on, he’s back, with an adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel “Tony And Susan,” and it seems like a fairly major kind of departure in an exciting way, a meta-narrative that promises something between Charlie Kaufman and Michael Haneke. It’s ambitious stuff for sure, but Ford’s script must have been pretty good to attract a stellar cast, also including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ellie Bamber and Laura Linney, while Focus bought the rights for one of the biggest deals ever. It’ll be one of the highest profile bows at Venice – we’ll find out soon if Ford has a sophomore slump, or goes on to further greatness.
Release Date: November 18th

“Allied”
Director: Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”)
Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Lizzy Caplan, Jared Harris, Matthew Goode
Synopsis: During World War 2, an American spy and a French resistance officer fall in love and marry, but after the war, they suspect that they might not have been everything they said they were.
What You Need To Know: While “Flight,” his first live-action film after over a decade of dicking about with creepy-looking performance capture animation, proved to be a box office hit and picked up a couple of Oscar nominations, Robert Zemeckis’ follow-up “The Walk” was an unmitigated disaster, tanking disastrously at the U.S. box office and failing to make any kind of awards splash. But Zemeckis should be on safer territory here, with a WW2 spy romance penned by Steven Knight (“Locke,” “Peaky Blinders”), led by a couple of A-list stars. It’s said to be a throwback to films like “Casablanca,” but it’s been kept under wraps otherwise so far, at a time of going to print anyway. So long as this is more watchable than the last A-list period romance that Pitt starred in, “By The Sea,” this could be one of the big crossover hits for grown ups of the season.
Release Date: November 23rd

“Moana”
Director: Ron Clements & John Musker (“Aladdin”)
Cast: Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Jemaine Clement, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger
Synopsis: In ancient Oceana, young Moana teams up with demi-god Maui to find a legendary island.
What You Need To Know: When John Lasseter was handed the keys to the studio, it marked the beginning of a remarkable turnaround for Walt Disney Animation Studios, which had seemed all but irrelevant in the mid-00s. Hit after hit has been delivered since the start of the decade, including current all-time-top-grossing animation “Frozen” and this year’s surprise smash “Zootopia,” and it’s hard not to see that continuing with this fall’s Thanksgiving treat, “Moana.” Essentially doing for water and the Pacific what “Frozen” did for snow and Norway, with a welcome burst of diversity and The Rock finally getting to play himself – i.e. a Samoan demigod — this already looks charming, and that’s before you get to the directors, who are Disney legends also behind “The Little Mermaid” and “Hercules,” and the music, a collaboration between Mark Mancina, South Pacific band Te Vaka’s Opetaia Foa’i, and man of the moment, “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Release Date: November 23rd