The 15 fall movies I’m most anticipating

Festival favorites and more films that I can’t wait to see.

As I said last week, Labor Day officially starts the fall movie season. Throughout the last week, I’ve been getting the early word on the stuff premiering in Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, and while there’s undoubtedly some FOMO, I know I’ll be seeing all of these movies, most likely in the next two or three months. 

In the meantime, here are the movies I’m most looking forward to seeing this fall. I’m not predicting how good they’ll be, but I’m just going by who’s involved, what I know, and what I anticipate about them.

I’m not including Megalopolis since I’ve written about it enough and am actually scheduled to see it in just two weeks. Also, I’m not especially excited about Wicked, Venom 3, or the live-action Lion King prequel. 

Anora

Director Sean Baker has given us first-rate movies like Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket in recent years; his latest film is Anora, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May. It stars Mikey Madison from Better Things and the climax of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as a sex worker who marries the scion of a Russian oligarch family. This comes out October 18, through NEON.

The Brutalist

This year’s big super-ambitious epic is the latest film from Brady Corbet, best known for Vox Lux. More than three hours long, The Brutalist covers 30 years in the life of Laszlo Toth, an architect who survives the Holocaust and then comes to America. Starring Adrien Brody as Toth and Guy Pearce as his mysterious benefactor, The Brutalist has gotten outstanding notices in Venice. A24 picked it up but has no release date yet. 

Nickel Boys 

Based on the novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys is directed by RaMell Ross, who previously made the acclaimed documentary Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, and is the story of two boys sent to an abusive reform school in the Florida of the 1960s. It was picked up by Amazon and is set for release in October. 

The End 

In 2013, Joshua Oppenheimer directed The Act of Killing, which I consider the best documentary of the current century. Aside from a follow-up called The Look of Silence, Oppenheimer hasn’t been active for a while. Now, he’s back with his first-ever fiction film, an “apocalyptic musical” starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon. Despite a muted reception from Toronto, I’m excited about this; NEON grabbed it, but there’s no date set yet. 

Saturday Night 

This is Jason Reitman’s movie about the very first night of Saturday Night Live in 1975. The trailer was divisive, the whole premise has been questioned, but I can’t wait anyway. This is one of those movies I will enjoy picking apart when it arrives in theaters in mid-October. 

Eephus 

It has been a while since there has been a great baseball movie, but I feel great about this film from Carson Lund, which debuted at Cannes. It’s been called Goodbye Dragon Inn, only in an amateur baseball league. The film includes an eclectic cast from legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman to Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione to former Major Leaguer Bill “Spaceman” Lee. This will be at the New York Film Festival, but I’ve heard nothing about release plans. 

The Shrouds

David Cronenberg has been on a hell of a late-career run, and that’s set to continue this fall with The Shrouds. It’s another art-house horror movie starring Vincent Cassel as the inventor of a technology that allows the living to monitor the dead. This one was originally developed as a Netflix series before it fell apart and became a film instead. There’s no release date yet. 

Rap World 

While not a festival hit like most things on this list, this one has lots of buzz, too. Co-directed by comedian Conner O'Malley & Danny Scharar, this is a 2009-set mockumentary about a group of rappers trying to record an album in one night. Rap World has been having one-off showings in various cities, and I’m not exactly sure when we’ll all get to see it. 

A Complete Unknown 

Yes, we already had an official Bob Dylan biopic (Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There) and an all-time classic set in the New York folk milieu of the early 1960s (the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis). But now there’s James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, telling the story of Bob (Timothée Chalamet) going electric. I know there’s plenty of skepticism about this, but Mangold is a consistent pro, and the trailer didn’t look bad. This is out at Christmas.