Spooky season is officially upon us, and this month’s new releases are in tune with the change of weather. There’s a gothic dark comedy, several science fiction survival stories and a war journalist biopic. The leaves are falling; the topics are somber.
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ (Sept. 6)
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE | Official Trailer – YouTube
The “ghost with the most” is born again. A long-awaited sequel to one of Tim Burton’s directorial crown jewels, 1988’s cult hit “Beetlejuice,” brings back Winona Ryder as fang-banged goth gal Lydia Deetz, Catherine O’Hara as her fire-haired mother and Michael Keaton as the titular zombified demon. “Wednesday” star Jenna Ortega, often dubbed a Gen Z version of Winona, joins the cast as — fittingly — Lydia’s daughter. Danny Elfman’s bombastic score is back too, as is Burton’s angular and unmistakable production design.
‘His Three Daughters’ (Sept. 6)
His Three Daughters | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube
The second flick on this list that is about the inevitability of death, Azazel Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters” depicts the tricky time in a person’s life when they must begin to care for a parent. Three acting titans — Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen — star as estranged sisters who reunite around their father’s sick bed. “Jacobs gamely captures the out-of-time emotional shearing and bizarre mundanity of palliative care, how the walls, memories, hours warp and metastasize around waiting for the inevitable,” said The Guardian.
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‘Lee’ (Sept. 27)
LEE | Official Theatrical Trailer | In Theaters September 27 – YouTube
“Lee” marks the directorial debut of Ellen Kuras, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer best known for shooting “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” The biopic is led by Kate Winslet (reteaming with Kuras after “Eternal Sunshine”) who plays photojournalist and World War II correspondent Lee Miller. The real-life Miller began her career as a model for Vogue before enlisting as a photographer to cover the war for the magazine; the film follows her perilous journey. The star-studded cast includes Alexander Skarsgard, Andy Samberg and Marion Cotillard.
‘Megapolis’ (Sept. 27)
Megalopolis – Official Trailer (2024) Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza – YouTube
Francis Ford Coppola’s new epic took decades to make and loads of his own money to fund. It has been marred by recent controversies about the director forcibly kissing extras on set. And yet, the latest project from the visionary behind “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” is also supposed to be unlike anything else coming out this year (or perhaps this century).
Set during the collapse of an imagined American empire “while referencing the fall of Rome,” said Variety, the film is a work of “absolute madness,” said Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri. “There is nothing in ‘Megalopolis’ that feels like something out of a ‘normal’ movie. It has its own logic and cadence and vernacular.” Time magazine’s Stephanie Zacharek called the film “so weird, so ungainly and yet in some places so glorious that anyone who squints at it and says, ‘I don’t get it’ is playing right into its wiggy strategy.” Ultimately, the critic added, “I’ll take a messy, imaginative sprawl over a waxen, tasteful enterprise any day.” It stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito and Aubrey Plaza.
In the mood for something lighter after all this list’s darkness? Take heart with Dreamworks’ new animation “The Wild Robot,” based on a New York Times-bestselling middle grade novel by Peter Brown and directed by Oscar-nominated Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon”). The story follows Roz, a robot voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, who is accidentally stranded by his kind on an uninhabited island. Well, uninhabited by humans: The robot makes friends with foxes, ducklings and deer. Sanders said he took inspiration from Disney classics and Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki, resulting in a style described as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest,” said Variety.
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