Steven Spielberg returns to his childhood, Ryan Coogler returns to Wakanda and James Cameron returns to Pandora in just some of the films coming out this fall, following what was generally perceived as a blah summer for movies. And these listings are just a start. Some titles, like “Causeway,” with Jennifer Lawrence, and the Cannes prizewinner “Close,” hadn’t settled on release dates by press time.
And it should be noted: This is a highly select list of noteworthy films. Release dates are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.
TERRA FEMME Courtney Stephens (a director of the experimental documentary “The American Sector”) presents travelogues shot by women from the 1920s to the ’50s. It’s an essay film, of sorts, although Stephens will narrate it in person at two screenings at Anthology Film Archives. (Sept. 15 in theaters)
THE AFRICAN DESPERATE The artist Martine Syms makes her feature-directing debut with this film about a graduate student (Diamond Stingily) on her last day of art school. It closed last spring’s edition of the New Directors/New Films series. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
CASABLANCA BEATS Nabil Ayouch directed this drama about a former hip-hop artist teaching Moroccan youth to rap. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
CONFESS, FLETCH Is Jon Hamm the 2022 equivalent of Chevy Chase circa 1985? Not exactly: Greg Mottola (“Superbad”) directed Hamm as the sleuth I.M. Fletcher in a fresh adaptation of the second novel in the author Gregory Mcdonald’s mystery series. The comedian Roy Wood Jr. and Kyle MacLachlan are in the cast. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on demand)
DO REVENGE Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke put a high school comedy spin on “Strangers on a Train”; each one plays a student who sets out to get payback on the other’s enemies. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)
DRIFTING HOME Hiroyasu Ishida directed this anime feature about two friends in a housing complex that somehow winds up floating through an ocean. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)
FOUR WINTERS Julia Mintz directed this documentary, which features interviews with surviving partisans who fought the Nazis from the woods of Eastern Europe. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
FROM THE HOOD TO THE HOLLER Charles Booker, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky this fall, is profiled in a documentary. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Sept. 30 on demand)
GOD’S COUNTRY Thandiwe Newton plays an academic in a remote area of the West who faces hostility from hunters who insist on parking on her property. Julian Higgins directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Oct. 4 on demand)
GOODNIGHT MOMMY Naomi Watts stars in a remake of an Austrian horror film released here in 2015. In that movie, which Jeannette Catsoulis praised in The New York Times as a “carefully controlled creep-out,” twins begin to suspect that the woman who has returned from the hospital, her face wrapped in bandages, is not, in fact, their mother. (Sept. 16 on Amazon)
MOONAGE DAYDREAM Brett Morgen (“Jane”) compiled this prismatic, all-archival survey of the career of David Bowie. It’s said to be the first cinematic portrait supported by the singer’s estate and uses what are described as rare materials. Screenings in Imax theaters are planned. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
PEARL If you saw Ti West’s retro-horror film “X” in theaters earlier this year and stayed through the credits, you would have caught a surprise teaser for this prequel, which stars West’s co-writer, Mia Goth, as a younger version of the farmer’s wife she also played — albeit unrecognizably — in one of her two roles in the first movie. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
RIOTSVILLE, U.S.A. When this nonfiction feature from Sierra Pettengill played at the New Directors/New Films series last spring, Manohla Dargis described it as “a mesmerizing documentary essay that tracks American anti-Black racism through a wealth of disturbing, at times super-freaky 1960s archival footage.” (Sept. 16 in theaters)
SEE HOW THEY RUN Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell plays police partners investigating a murder in the 1950s London theater scene. Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson and David Oyelowo also star. Tom George directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
THE SILENT TWINS Based on the 1986 nonfiction book by Marjorie Wallace, this drama concerns twins who for much of their lives did not speak, except with each other. Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance star. Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”) directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
THE WOMAN KING In a drama drawn from the history of the Agojie, also known as the Dahomey Amazons, Viola Davis plays a general leading an army of women in a fight to protect their West African kingdom from slavers in the 19th century. Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega also star. Gina Prince-Bythewood directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND The documentarian Iliana Sosa pays tribute to her grandfather, who is nearly 90, as he builds a house in Mexico. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on Netflix
ME TO PLAY This documentary watches as two actors with Parkinson’s disease prepare a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” (Sept. 20 on Fandor)
ESCAPE FROM KABUL A year after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, this documentary assembles footage and recollections from people who were present during the evacuation at the airport in Kabul. (Sept. 21 on HBO Max)
MEET CUTE Per the title, Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson meet in a manner that is cute. Or have they already met cute? A time machine is involved. (Sept. 21 on Peacock)
RAVEN’S HOLLOW That’s not just any raven. William Moseley plays Edgar Allan Poe during his time as a West Point cadet, before he found fame as a writer. The young Poe stumbles into a mystery. (Sept. 22 on Shudder)
THE AMERICAN DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES Abigail E. Disney, who directed with Kathleen Hughes, serves as an onscreen guide to an examination of income inequality in the United States, not sparing her family’s own business ventures. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
ATHENA Dali Benssalah plays a young man whose brother dies after an encounter with police. His other brothers and his neighborhood grapple with their response. Romain Gavras directed. The filmmaker Ladj Ly, who shared a prize at Cannes in 2019 for “Les Misérables,” is among the screenwriters. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)
BANDIT In a feature inspired by a real case from the 1980s, Josh Duhamel plays a robber who pulls off heists across Canada. He also goes into business with a loan shark (Mel Gibson). Elisha Cuthbert co-stars. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)
BLANK A writer secludes herself to get some work done, and the android there, having gone on the fritz, really wants her to finish her project. Natalie Kennedy directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)
CARMEN Natascha McElhone plays a woman in Malta who, at 50, leaves the church she has pledged herself to since her teenage years and finds romance. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)
CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY When you hear the name Lena Dunham, you don’t exactly think 13th century — but that’s when this irreverent costume picture, which Dunham adapted from Karen Cushman’s novel and directed, is set. Bella Ramsey plays a rebellious teenager whose father tries to marry her off. With Lesley Sharp, Sophie Okonedo and Joe Alwyn. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Oct. 7 on demand)
DON’T WORRY DARLING Florence Pugh plays a 1950s housewife who lives with her husband (Harry Styles) in a company town that, apart from the desert scenery, has a certain affinity with Stepford, Conn., judging from the trailer. Olivia Wilde co-stars and directed this thriller, which also features Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne and Chris Pine. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER You thought Smokey and the Bandit had the greatest beer run? Not so. Zac Efron plays Chick Donohue, a New Yorker who in 1967 traveled to Vietnam to bring brews to his American soldier pals. Peter Farrelly, seemingly splitting the difference between his comedies and the earnestness of “Green Book,” directed. With Russell Crowe and Bill Murray. (Sept. 23 in theaters; Sept. 30 on Apple TV+)
INVISIBLE DEMONS The documentarian Rahul Jain (“Machines”) looks at the impact of pollution and climate change in Delhi. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
A JAZZMAN’S BLUES Tyler Perry wrote, produced and directed this decades-spanning story of two lovers (Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer) in the South. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)
THE JUSTICE OF BUNNY KING In a drama from New Zealand, Essie Davis (“The Babadook”) plays a down-and-out mother scrambling to avoid breaking a promise to her daughter. Thomasin McKenzie plays her niece. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
LOU Jurnee Smollett plays the mother of a kidnapped girl and Allison Janney the neighbor who helps her retrieve her. Anna Foerster directed, and J.J. Abrams is among the producers. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)
MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY The celebrated Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán directed this documentary about the efforts for social change catalyzed by the protests that began in his country in 2019. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
NOTHING COMPARES Sinead O’Connor looks back on her singing career and the height of her fame in the 1980s and ’90s. Kathryn Ferguson directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Sept. 30 on Showtime)
ON THE COME UP Based on a novel by Angie Thomas (“The Hate U Give”), the actress Sanaa Lathan’s feature-directing debut centers on a teenage rap artist (Jamila C. Gray) who is faced with pressure to sell out. (Sept. 23 on Paramount+)
PETROV’S FLU The dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov directed this fever dream of a film, based on a novel by Alexey Salnikov and centered on a comics artist (Semyon Serzin) in the grip of the grippe. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
RAILWAY CHILDREN In Britain this was known as “The Railway Children Return,” a sequel to the 1970 film “The Railway Children.” It’s set in 1944 and finds Jenny Agutter playing an older version of a character she originated as a teenager. (Sept. 23 in theaters)
SIDNEY Reginald Hudlin directed this documentary on the career of Sidney Poitier, who died in January. It includes interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on Apple TV+)
BLONDE A faintly recognizable Ana de Armas embodies one of the most recognizable women on the planet — Marilyn Monroe — in this much-anticipated, NC-17-rated adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel. The film comes from Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”), in his first dramatic feature in a decade. Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody also star. (Sept. 28 on Netflix)
ARGENTINA, 1985 The Argentine director Santiago Mitre (“Paulina”) directed this legal drama based on the work of Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who prosecuted members of the junta that had controlled the country from 1976 to 1983. (Sept. 30 in theaters, Oct. 21 on Amazon)
ART & KRIMES BY KRIMES Alysa Nahmias directed this portrait of Jesse Krimes, who made artwork in prison and managed to get it to the world outside. Now out of prison, he had his work featured in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
BROS Billy Eichner stars in — and wrote, with the movie’s director, Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) — this rom-com about two men, seemingly opposites, falling for each other. Universal is billing it as the “first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love.” Judd Apatow is among the producers. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
DEAD FOR A DOLLAR One of the few remaining filmmakers who knows his way around a western, Walter Hill directed this story of a bounty hunter, an outlaw and an abducted woman. Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe and Rachel Brosnahan star. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
GOD’S CREATURES In an Irish village that runs on oyster harvesting, a mother (Emily Watson) has to face a truth about her son (Paul Mescal), who has just returned home. Aisling Franciosi (“The Nightingale”) also stars. Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, who collaborated on “The Fits,” directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)
THE GOOD HOUSE An alcoholic Massachusetts real estate agent (Sigourney Weaver) and a man from her past (Kevin Kline) get back together. Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
HOCUS POCUS 2 Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy reprise their roles as witches in a sequel to “Hocus Pocus” (1993). (Sept. 30 on Disney+)
I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE In an essay film that considers how the disabled perceive the world and are perceived, the director Reid Davenport shot this debut feature from his own perspective as a wheelchair user. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
MONA LISA AND THE BLOOD MOON A woman who has escaped from a mental institution (Jong-seo Jun, from “Burning”) joins forces with a heavily Brooklyn-accented mother (Kate Hudson) in New Orleans for a crime spree in the latest film from Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)
MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”) finds out how to get her pal (Amiah Miller) a — well, you know. (Sept. 30 on Amazon)
SIRENS Rita Baghdadi directed this documentary, well regarded at Sundance, about an all-female thrash metal band in Lebanon. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
SMILE You’ve heard of six degrees of Kevin Bacon? How about six degrees of a … weird chain curse that causes victims to see creepy smiling faces before they die? Into this chain enters a doctor played by Sosie Bacon, daughter of the actor and Kyra Sedgwick. It sounds like “The Ring” with grins instead of a videotape. (Sept. 30 in theaters)
October
MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE Jaeden Martell plays a teenager whose friendship with a billionaire (Donald Sutherland) continues after the older man dies and is buried with an iPhone. John Lee Hancock directed this adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. (Oct. 5 on Netflix)
AMSTERDAM Based on a trailer, the writer-director David O. Russell’s first feature since “Joy” (2015) will be maddeningly difficult to classify, genre-wise. It comes described as a historical crime epic involving three friends (played by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington). A dead body is involved, as are many other starry names: Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert De Niro and even Taylor Swift. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
BATTLEGROUND This documentary from Cynthia Lowen had its world premiere at Tribeca in June, less than two weeks before the Supreme Court handed down its decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The movie chronicles the work of anti-abortion activists who were trying to achieve that goal. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
HELLRAISER The director David Bruckner (“The Night House”) resurrects a gender-swapped Pinhead (now played by Jamie Clayton) in a remake. (Oct. 7 on Hulu)
LAST FLIGHT HOME The documentarian Ondi Timoner made this portrait of her father, Eli Timoner, who chose to end his life under a California law that permits certain terminally ill patients to do so. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE Mila Kunis stars in this adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s 2015 novel, about a magazine writer coping with the aftermath of a sexual assault she experienced as a teenager. Knoll wrote the screenplay. Mike Barker directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)
LYLE, LYLE, CROCODILE The titular anthropomorphic reptile of Bernard Waber’s children’s books comes to the screen as a computer-generated creation surrounded by real actors. The pop star Shawn Mendes provides his voice and sings songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“The Greatest Showman”). Javier Bardem and Constance Wu are among the actors appearing in the flesh. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
ONODA: 10,000 NIGHTS IN THE JUNGLE This epically scaled yet cerebral biopic tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who until 1974 labored under the delusion that World War II was still happening and continued to prosecute it in his way from an island in the Philippines. (Coincidentally, Onoda is also the subject of Werner Herzog’s recent debut novel.) Arthur Harari directed. Yuya Endo and Kanji Tsuda play Onoda at different ages. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
THE REDEEM TEAM Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and others look back on how the United States’ basketball team won the gold in the 2008 Olympics. Jon Weinbach, a producer on the Michael Jordan series “The Last Dance,” directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)
TÁR The actor-filmmaker Todd Field won acclaim for directing “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Little Children” (2006) but hasn’t stepped behind the camera to make a feature since then. That changes with this film, about the (fictitious) conductor of a German orchestra. Cate Blanchett no doubt brings the requisite intensity to the title character. (Oct. 7 in theaters)
TO LESLIE Andrea Riseborough plays a Texas mom who wins the lottery, squanders the proceeds, turns to booze — then tries to get her life back in order. Allison Janney, Stephen Root and Marc Maron also star. (Oct. 7 in theaters and on demand)
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes (his first was for “The Square” in 2017) for this sendup of the very, very, very wealthy and vain, a group that includes two models (played by Charlbi Dean, who died at 32 in August, and Harris Dickinson) and a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric) — all passengers on a cruise liner with a Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson). (Oct. 7 in theaters)
DARK GLASSES The giallo maestro Dario Argento is still spilling blood in his 80s. His new thriller concerns a prostitute and a boy who are on the trail of a serial killer who wronged them both. Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter, has a supporting role. (Oct. 7 in theaters; Oct. 13 on Shudder)
THE CURSE OF BRIDGE HOLLOW Marlon Wayans and Priah Ferguson play a father and daughter who try to save Halloween from vivified holiday decorations. (Oct. 14 on Netflix)
DECISION TO LEAVE The South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“The Handmaiden”) won the best-director prize at Cannes for this labyrinthine thriller, which centers on a detective (Park Hae-il) who becomes infatuated with a woman (Tang Wei) who may or may not have murdered her husband. (Oct. 14 in theaters)
HALLOWEEN ENDS Does it really? Come now. This franchise will never end. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes one more whack at killing the killer. David Gordon Green takes one more whack at directing. (Oct. 14 in theaters)
THE OTHER TOM Laura Santullo and Rodrigo Plá directed this drama about an El Paso mother who stops medicating her son for A.D.H.D. and risks losing custody of him. (Oct. 14 in theaters)
PIGGY A girl (Laura Galán) who is bullied by her peers lucks out, in a way, when they are kidnapped. She has to decide whether to reveal the culprit. Carlota Pereda directed. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)
ROSALINE Tom Stoppard gave us “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Now Hulu gives us “Rosaline,” which in the same spirit views the events of a major play (“Romeo and Juliet”) from the perspective of a peripheral character: the Capulet girl Romeo pined for before Juliet. And in this telling, Rosaline (Kaitlyn Dever) tries to get him back. Isabela Merced and Kyle Allen play the star-cross’d lovers. (Oct. 14 on Hulu)
SELL/BUY/DATE In a movie said to combine documentary and dramatization, Sarah Jones, who wrote and performed a 2016 show of the same title at City Center, investigates the nature of sex work. (Oct. 14 in theaters)
SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES When it was shown at MoMA’s To Save and Project series earlier this year, this little-known 1987 documentary was billed as “having languished in a closet for 30 years.” Directed by Walter Saxer, a longtime production manager for Werner Herzog, it captures life at a penal colony in the Peruvian jungle. (Oct. 14 in theaters)
STARS AT NOON The second English-language feature from the French director Claire Denis (and her second feature of the year, after “Both Sides of the Blade”) pivots on the relationship between an American journalist (Margaret Qualley) and a British oil company consultant (Joe Alwyn) in Nicaragua. Their sweaty trysts play out against a backdrop of international intrigue. Denis shared the Grand Jury Prize (basically second place) at Cannes this year. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)
TILL Chinonye Chukwu, who won the top prize at Sundance for “Clemency,” directed this biopic, centered on the efforts of Mamie Till Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) to seek justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall). (Oct. 14 in theaters)
THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL The children’s book series by Soman Chainani becomes the start of a potential “Harry Potter”-esque movie franchise. Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie star as best friends at a new (and magical) school. Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington chaperone. (Oct. 19 on Netflix)
V/H/S/99 If the fifth film in this horror-anthology franchise has already reached 1999, we must be due for “D/V/D” soon. (Oct. 20 on Shudder)
AFTERSUN The Scottish director Charlotte Wells’s debut was one of the big discoveries in Cannes this year. It follows a young father (Paul Mescal) and his daughter (Frankie Corio), who normally lives with her mother, on a vanishingly brief resort getaway that will lastingly shape her impressions of her dad. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
ALL THAT BREATHES Shaunak Sen’s documentary, which won the top international-documentary prize at Sundance, concerns two brothers in India who work to protect and care for black kites, a type of bird. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
AMERICAN MURDERER An F.B.I. agent (Ryan Phillippe) pursues a con artist (Tom Pelphrey). Idina Menzel and Jacki Weaver also star. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Oct. 28 on demand)
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN Martin McDonagh’s new film isn’t a sequel to his “In Bruges,” but it does reunite Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, who resume their acerbic bantering as two friends who no longer get along. With Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
BLACK ADAM Dwayne Johnson plays the latest DC Comics character — who has the powers of Egyptian gods — to get a big-screen feature. Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan co-star. Jaume Collet-Serra directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER In a documentary version of a talk she has given, the filmmaker Nina Menkes (“Queen of Diamonds”) takes viewers through a wide variety of film clips to examine how sexism has been encoded in basic film grammar. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
DESCENDANT Margaret Brown’s documentary involves the search for the Clotilda, the last-known ship that brought enslaved people to the United States, and the Mobile, Ala., residents who are descendants of those aboard. (Oct. 21 on Netflix)
FACE A 2009 feature from the director Tsai Ming-liang gets a belated run in New York, as part of a retrospective of Tsai’s work at the Museum of Modern Art that was itself postponed by the pandemic. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
MY POLICEMAN The lives of a policeman, a teacher and a curator intertwine in the 1950s and again in the 1990s. Harry Styles ages into Linus Roache, Emma Corrin into Gina McKee and David Dawson into Rupert Everett. Michael Grandage directed this adaptation of the novel by Bethan Roberts. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Nov. 4 on Amazon)
RAYMOND & RAY Ethan Hawke and Ewan McGregor play half brothers. Their father’s funeral offers an opportunity to figure out where they stand. Rodrigo García directed. (Oct. 21 on Apple TV+)
THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER — FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE This documentary concerns the cross-generational friendship between the two singers of the title — Tucker a pioneering country-music star, Carlile a fan who wrote an album for her. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
ROUGE The Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan’s 1988 feature — with Anita Mui as a ghost looking for the man (Leslie Cheung) she loved in the 1930s — finally gets a New York run. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
2ND CHANCE Turning to documentaries, Ramin Bahrani — nominated for an adapted screenplay Oscar for “The White Tiger” — examines the legacy of Richard Davis, who devised the contemporary version of the bulletproof vest. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
SLASH/BACK Aliens arrive at 66 degrees north — or more specifically, a hamlet in Nunavut where teenagers are prepared to fend them off. Nyla Innuksuk directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters and on demand)
TICKET TO PARADISE Julia Roberts and George Clooney play ex-spouses who hate each other but join forces on the cusp of the wedding of their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) to prevent her from getting married. Ol Parker directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
VOODOO MACBETH Made by a whopping 10 directors working collaboratively, this film dramatizes the making of Orson Welles’s famed “voodoo Macbeth” production, staged in 1936 in Harlem with an all-Black cast. With Inger Tudor and, as Welles, Jewell Wilson Bridges. (Oct. 21 in theaters)
THE GOOD NURSE Jessica Chastain is the title character, who investigates whether a string of patient deaths might have been murder. Eddie Redmayne plays the object of her suspicions. It’s based on a nonfiction book. Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“Last Night in Soho”) wrote the screenplay. Tobias Lindholm directed. (Oct. 26 on Netflix)
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT The latest screen version of Erich Maria Remarque’s chronicle of German soldiers during World War I has the soldiers speaking their native language. (Lewis Milestone’s Oscar-winning 1930 film with Lew Ayres was in English.) The cast includes Felix Kammerer and Daniel Brühl. Edward Berger directed. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)
ARMAGEDDON TIME James Gray’s latest film, filled with elements of barely veiled autobiography, centers on an artistically inclined Jewish boy (Banks Repeta) growing up in Queens in 1980, and on his friendship with a Black classmate (Jaylin Webb) who doesn’t get the same breaks he does. Anthony Hopkins plays the protagonist’s British-born grandfather, and Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play the boy’s parents. (Oct. 28 in theaters)
CALL JANE The second of two films to be released this year about the Jane Collective, a group of women in Chicago who provided abortions before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. “The Janes” was a documentary; this is a dramatization, with Elizabeth Banks as a woman who seeks out the group for an abortion and subsequently joins the women who run it. Sigourney Weaver co-stars. Phyllis Nagy (the screenwriter of “Carol”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)
HOLY SPIDER Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the best-actress prize at Cannes for playing a journalist in Iran on the trail of a serial killer the police seem to be in no hurry to catch. Ali Abbasi (“Border”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)
THE NOVELIST’S FILM It’s the South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s custom to premiere two films every year. (“Walk Up,” his other 2022 offering, is playing at fall festivals.) Lee Hyeyoung plays a writer who aspires to make a movie. The Hong regular Kim Minhee co-stars. (Oct. 28 in theaters)
PLEASE BABY PLEASE A couple of Lower East Siders (Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling) witness a gang killing in the 1950s. Amanda Kramer directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)
RUN SWEETHEART RUN Long-delayed since its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, this thriller stars Ella Balinska as a woman terrorized by her date (Pilou Asbaek). Shana Feste directed. (Oct. 28 on Amazon)
WENDELL & WILD Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key reunite to provide voices for two demons who try to persuade a teenager to help break them out of their demonic realm. Peele wrote it with Henry Selick (“Coraline”), who directed. Angela Bassett and James Hong are also in the vocal cast. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)
November
THE BOX In Mexico, a teenager preparing to bury his father begins to wonder if his dad is still alive. Lorenzo Vigas directed. (Nov. 4 in theaters)
ENOLA HOLMES 2 Millie Bobby Brown returns as a sister of Sherlock Holmes who now has a detective agency of her own. Henry Cavill, David Thewlis and Helena Bonham Carter also star. (Nov. 4 on Netflix)
GOOD NIGHT OPPY “Oppy” is Opportunity, a rover that roamed Martian craters from 2004 until its “death” in 2019. This documentary tells Oppy’s story. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 23 on Amazon)
I’M TOTALLY FINE Jillian Bell plays a woman who believes her best friend (Natalie Morales) has died — only to have the pal return, possibly as a space alien. (Nov. 4 in theaters and on demand)
MEMORIES OF MY FATHER Fernando Trueba directed this adaptation of a book by the Colombian novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince, about the author’s father (played by Javier Cámara), a doctor engaged in political activism in the 1970s. (Nov. 4 in theaters)
SALVATORE: SHOEMAKER OF DREAMS Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) directed this biographical portrait of the shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo, working from his 1955 memoir. Michael Stuhlbarg narrates. (Nov. 4 in theaters)
SOMETHING IN THE DIRT The directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also wrote and star in this determinedly lo-fi and paranoid science-fiction feature. It revolves around two men who witness what they think is a supernatural occurrence, an event that sends them spinning into elaborate theorizing. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 22 on demand)
UTAMA The winner of the top prize for an international dramatic feature at Sundance, Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s film is set in the Bolivian highlands, where an Indigenous couple (José Calcina and Luisa Quispe) confront the problems posed by a drought. (Nov. 4 in theaters)
WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Daniel Radcliffe dons some seriously curly locks to play the parodist singer, in a movie that is itself a parody of a biopic. (Nov. 4 on Roku)
FALLING FOR CHRISTMAS A skiing accident results in amnesia (and, presumably, the possibility of a fresh start) for a vain hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan). (Nov. 10 on Netflix)
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER After Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020, Marvel Studios opted not to recast his role, King T’Challa, in this sequel to “Black Panther.” The character is dead in the new film, which concerns how Wakanda moves forward without him. It also stars Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o. Ryan Coogler returns as director. (Nov. 11 in theaters)
A COUPLE In a career that includes more than 40 documentaries, Frederick Wiseman has seldom made features that could qualify as dramatized. But in “A Couple,” the actress Nathalie Boutefeu, who shares screenplay credit with the director, plays Sophia Tolstoy, wife of Leo Tolstoy, to explore a famous marriage. (Nov. 11 in theaters)
THE FABELMANS If Steven Spielberg’s last name evokes the idea of a story, it’s not too much of a stretch to get from there to “Fabelman” — the surname of Spielberg’s alter-ego family in an autobiographical feature inspired by his childhood. Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen and Gabriel LaBelle star. Tony Kushner wrote the screenplay with Spielberg. (Nov. 11 in theaters)
IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? Elvis Mitchell, a former film critic for The New York Times, directed this documentary on the American revolution in Black filmmaking in the 1970s. Among the interviewees are the filmmaker Charles Burnett (“Killer of Sheep”), Samuel L. Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg. (Nov. 11 on Netflix)
MY FATHER’S DRAGON Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book — about a boy who ventures off to rescue a baby dragon — becomes an animated film directed by Nora Twomey, of the Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner.” (Nov. 11 on Netflix)
THE SON In a companion piece to “The Father,” which won Anthony Hopkins a second Oscar, this Florian Zeller film concerns, naturally, the relationship between a father (Hugh Jackman) and his troubled teenage son, who returns to his life just as he is settling in with a new son and a new partner (Vanessa Kirby). Hopkins and Laura Dern also star. (Nov. 11 in theaters)
IN HER HANDS The documentarians Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen assemble a portrait of Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of the Afghan city of Maidan Shahr at the time of filming — and, not incidentally, in her 20s and a woman in a country without many women in power. The documentary follows her through American forces’ withdrawal from the country last year. (Nov. 16 on Netflix)
BAD AXE That’s Bad Axe, Mich., where the documentarian David Siev’s parents, one a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, own a restaurant and must grapple with the economic realities of the pandemic and the protests that convulse the city in the wake of the George Floyd killing. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)
EO The Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (“Deep End,” “Moonlighting”) riffs, with a bit of a hallucinatory spin, on Robert Bresson’s French classic “Au Hasard Balthazar” with the tale of an itinerant donkey who along its journeys becomes a passive witness to human cruelty. When Skolimowski shared the jury prize at Cannes, he thanked all six donkeys who played the role by name. (Nov. 18 in theaters)
THE INSPECTION For his first dramatic feature, Elegance Bratton, who has worked as a documentarian and street photographer, wrote and directed this autobiographically inspired film about a gay Black man’s time in basic training in the Marines. Jeremy Pope plays Bratton’s alter ego, Bokeem Woodbine a sergeant and Gabrielle Union the protagonist’s mother. (Nov. 18 in theaters)
THE MENU Mark Mylod, a regular director on “Succession,” is at the helm of this story of a couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) who travel to an island for an evening of molecular gastronomy and end up getting something closer to “The Most Dangerous Game.” Ralph Fiennes plays the chef. (Nov. 18 in theaters)
THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING Nuptials become the occasion for an airing of intrafamilial loathing and reconciliation in a comedy that stars Kristen Bell and Ben Platt as siblings and Allison Janney as the matriarch. (Nov. 18 on Amazon)
SHE SAID The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book on how they broke their landmark article about sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein gets a film adaptation. Zoe Kazan plays Kantor and Carey Mulligan plays Twohey as they try to convince women to talk on the record. Maria Schrader directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters)
SLUMBERLAND The “Red Sparrow” filmmaker Francis Lawrence directs Jason Momoa as an outlaw in a fairy tale of sorts in which he assists a girl in navigating a dream world. (Nov. 18 on Netflix)
THERE THERE Working under pandemic restrictions, Andrew Bujalski (“Support the Girls”) makes a film that consists entirely of conversations; it’s best not to say anymore. Lili Taylor and Lennie James play a couple whose post-one-night-stand discourse kicks off the movie; Molly Gordon and Jason Schwartzman appear elsewhere. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)
DEVOTION Jonathan Majors stars as Ensign Jesse L. Brown, the first Black aviator in the United States Navy, and Glen Powell — barely out of the skies since “Top Gun: Maverick” — plays Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., his partner on a dangerous mission during the Korean War. J.D. Dillard directed. (Nov. 23 in theaters)
BONES AND ALL Timothée Chalamet bites into a meaty role as a cannibal drifter. Taylor Russell plays the woman who loves and road-trips with him in a film that reunites Chalamet with his “Call Me by Your Name” director, Luca Guadagnino. It’s based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis. (Nov. 23 in theaters)
NANNY Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature, the winner of this year’s United States dramatic competition at Sundance, concerns a Senegalese immigrant (Anna Diop) who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family. During the festival, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film kept her “rapt from the start with its visuals and mysteries, its emotional depths and the tight control” maintained by Jusu. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 16 on Amazon)
STRANGE WORLD Disney pays tribute to 1950s science fiction movies with an animated feature about the Clade family, a clan of explorers investigating an uncharted region. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Gabrielle Union provide some of the Clades’ voices. (Nov. 23 in theaters)
THE SWIMMERS Sally El Hosaini directed the opening-night film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a dramatization of the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini, two sisters from Syria. Yusra competed on the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Olympics. (Nov. 23 on Netflix)
DISENCHANTED After finding a storybook life in New York in “Enchanted,” Giselle (Amy Adams), finds that many years later, the bloom is off the rose. So she and her husband (Patrick Dempsey) move to the suburbs. With Maya Rudolph. Adam Shankman directed. (Nov. 24 on Disney+)
December
FRAMING AGNES Using the story of Agnes, a transgender woman who took part in studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, as a jumping-off point, this combination of documentary and dramatization examines how trans history is written. (Dec. 2 in theaters)
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER This time, Emma Corrin embodies D.H. Lawrence’s unfulfilled British noblewoman. Jack O’Connell plays the gamekeeper she takes up with. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre directed. (Dec. 2 on Netflix)
SPOILER ALERT: THE HERO DIES Michael Showalter, who mined thematically similar territory in “The Big Sick,” directed this adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir of a longtime relationship altered by a terminal illness. Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge and Sally Field star. (Dec. 2 in theaters)
VIOLENT NIGHT You might have thought the weirdest appearance of Santa Claus this season was by the actual democratic socialist of that name from North Pole, Alaska, who ran for a seat in Congress. But it could be in this movie, which stars David Harbour as Santa Claus, who is fortunately making his rounds when mercenaries attempt a home invasion. The “Atomic Blonde” and “John Wick” producers had a hand in this. (Dec. 2 in theaters)
WOMEN TALKING Women in a religious colony wrestle with their beliefs after a series of sexual assaults by the men. Sarah Polley directed and wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel. The cast is formidable: It features Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, among others. (Dec. 2 in theaters)
THE WONDER When an 11-year-old girl in the Irish Midlands seems to live for months without eating food, a British nurse (Florence Pugh) investigates. Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”) directed this adaptation, set in the 19th century, of a novel by the “Room” author Emma Donoghue. (Dec. 7 on Netflix)
EMPIRE OF LIGHT The writer-director Sam Mendes, reuniting with the cinematographer Roger Deakins (who has hopefully gotten some rest after the gymnastics of “1917”), directs what is described as story about the “magic of cinema.” It’s set in Britain in the 1980s. Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward star. (Dec. 9 in theaters)
GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO The “Nightmare Alley” filmmaker, who shares directorial credit (if not the title) with the animation director Mark Gustafson, mounts a stop-motion version of the story of the puppet who became a boy. Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton are in the vocal cast. (Dec. 9 on Netflix)
SOMETHING FROM TIFFANY’S “And I said, ‘What about ‘Something From Tiffany’s’?” Zoey Deutch stars in a comedy about an errant engagement ring. Daryl Wein directed. (Dec. 9 on Amazon)
THE WHALE The plot of Darren Aronofsky’s latest movie bears more than a slight resemblance to that of his film “The Wrestler” (2008). Brendan Fraser plays an overweight teacher who wants to make amends with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things”). Samuel D. Hunter wrote the script, adapting his own play. (Dec. 9 in theaters)
A MAN CALLED OTTO In what, after “Elvis,” is turning out to be a year of stunt casting for America’s most affable actor, Tom Hanks has to be convincing as, get this, a curmudgeon, albeit one who thaws a bit when he meets a new neighbor. Mariana Treviño also stars. Marc Forster directed. (Dec. 14 in theaters)
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER It is now 2022. More years have elapsed between the release of “Avatar” (2009) and this much-awaited sequel than had elapsed between “Avatar” and “Titanic” (1997) — and that was considered a very long gap. Is James Cameron working faster or slower than the technology evolves? He’d better pick up the pace on “Avatar 3” if he hopes to finish it while movie theaters still exist. (Dec. 16 in theaters)
BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s feature “Birdman,” was subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” But as a phrase, “False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” definitely rivals that in sheer opacity. The film’s plot involves a journalist who returns to his native Mexico, where he is, per the official summary, pushed to “an existential limit.” Daniel Giménez Cacho stars. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)
THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI Rory Kennedy, the documentarian who earlier this year made a case (or, rather, a movie) against Boeing, memorializes a deadly volcanic eruption that occurred in New Zealand in 2019. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)
I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY Naomi Ackie stars as Whitney Houston in this biopic of the soaring-voiced pop star. Stanley Tucci plays the architect of her career Clive Davis, who is one of the movie’s producers. Kasi Lemmons directed, from a screenplay by Mr. Biopic, Anthony McCarten (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything”). (Dec. 21 in theaters)
PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH Antonio Banderas once again lends his voice to the footwear’d feline — not the fairy-tale character, exactly, but a part of the extended “Shrek” cinematic universe. Olivia Colman and Salma Hayek Pinault purr alongside him. (Dec. 21 in theaters)
CORSAGE Technically, in 1878, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) could not have heard “As Tears Go By” with a harp as instrumentation — or, for that matter, been photographed as a movie subject on flexible film. (This was still the era of plates.) But these sorts of anachronisms crop up periodically throughout the director Marie Kreutzer’s interpretation of Elisabeth’s life. (Dec. 23 in theaters)
GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the detective with a French name and a Foghorn Leghorn drawl, as a character in “Knives Out” put it, has another mystery on his hands. The cast (and, probably, suspect list) includes Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn and Jessica Henwick. (Dec. 23 on Netflix)
LET IT BE MORNING A Palestinian man returns to the village of his upbringing for a wedding, and he is trapped there, with the rest of the residents, when Israeli forces blockade the area. Eran Kolirin directed this adaptation of a novel by Sayed Kashua. (Dec. 23 in theaters)
LIVING The director Oliver Hermanus and the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, serving here as the screenwriter, remake Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” in an idiom not wildly removed from that of Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” Bill Nighy plays a postwar civil servant in London whose great ambition, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, is to build a playground. Aimee Lou Wood and Tom Burke co-star. (Dec. 23 in theaters)
THE PALE BLUE EYE Adapted from the novel by Louis Bayard, this is the second fall film set against the backdrop of Edgar Allan Poe’s formative years at West Point. Like “Raven’s Hollow” (see above), “The Pale Blue Eye” has the precocious Poe finding himself in the middle of a mystery. Harry Melling plays Poe, Christian Bale is a detective, and Gillian Anderson and Lucy Boynton co-star. Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”) directed. (Dec. 23 in theaters)
BABYLON The writer-director Damien Chazelle returns to La La Land — or, more precisely, Hollywood — to imagine the drama that unfolded in the movie industry during the transition to sound. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva have their names on the marquee. (Dec. 25 in theaters)
ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL The stage musical version of Dahl’s novel gets the screen treatment (with the same director, Matthew Warchus). Alisha Weir plays the title character and Lashana Lynch the warmhearted Miss Honey. Emma Thompson — whose fat suit has already prompted chatter over questions of representation — plays the gorgonlike Miss Trunchbull. (Dec. 25 on Netflix)
THEY CLONED TYRONE John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris play characters who stumble on some sort of government conspiracy. It’s a secret, even from us, but an educated guess is that it involves someone named Tyrone getting cloned. Juel Taylor directed. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)
TURN EVERY PAGE Lizzie Gottlieb, daughter of the famed editor Robert Gottlieb, directed this portrait of her father and his friendship with Robert A. Caro, who is still toiling away on the final volume of his multi-book Lyndon Johnson biography, a volume that Gottlieb, in his 90s, hopes to edit. (Dec. 30 in theaters)
WHITE NOISE Adam Driver plays the chairman of a college department in the field of “Hitler studies”; Greta Gerwig is his wife, who may be experiencing strange memory lapses. Together, with children from other marriages and the TV always humming, they confront environmental disaster and their fear of mortality in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 postmodern novel. Don Cheadle and Raffey Cassidy co-star. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)
Compiled with the assistance of Gabe Cohn and Shivani Gonzalez.
