Here are the films to see this month, including Dwayne Johnson as an MMA star, the return of Daniel Day-Lewis and Julia Roberts in Luca Guadagnino’s campus drama.
The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson is synonymous with megabudget blockbusters, but he gets to prove himself as a serious actor in The Smashing Machine, a brooding indie biopic written and directed by Benny Safdie (the co-director of Good Time and Uncut Gems). Johnson stars as Mark Kerr, a mixed martial artist who won tournaments in the early days of the sport, before it became the global sensation it is today. As much as he revels in punching and kicking his opponents to a bloody pulp, the bouts take their toll on his physical and mental health, and he is soon fighting addiction as well as fighting other people. Emily Blunt co-stars as Kerr’s girlfriend. “It’s a film that feels gloriously alive,” writes Hannah Strong in Little White Lies, “earnest in its depiction of masculinity that is fragile rather than toxic while still grappling with the question of why anyone would choose to make a living in such a barbaric way.”
Released internationally from 2 October
Anemone
Daniel Day-Lewis hasn’t been in a film since Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread in 2017. He announced his retirement from the profession that same year, but, luckily for us, the most-acclaimed screen actor of his generation has been lured back into the film business by the prospect of working with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. Together, the two Day-Lewises have co-written Anemone, which Day-Lewis Jr directs Day-Lewis Sr in the starring role. He plays a former soldier who served in Northern Ireland many years ago, and has been living in isolation in the English countryside ever since. But now his teenage son (Samuel Bottomley) is in trouble, so his estranged brother (Sean Bean) has come to find him. Also starring Samantha Morton, this “intense, joyous, sorrowful, and sometimes absurd” film is “a truly extraordinary drama about brothers, mothers, and, yes, fathers and sons”, writes David Fear in Rolling Stone. “And it’s as much an introduction to a new talent as it is a reintroduction to a veteran one.”
Released on 3 October in the US and on 16 October in Australia
Roofman
Roofman was the nickname given by the media to Jeffrey Manchester, an army veteran who robbed a string of fast-food restaurants in the late-1990s by climbing on to their roofs and drilling down into the buildings. He was then arrested but later escaped from prison and hid himself in a toy shop, sleeping in its backrooms by day, and wandering around the shop at night. Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) has turned this stranger-than-fiction tale into a comedy drama starring Channing Tatum as Manchester, and Kirsten Dunst as a toy-shop employee he romances. David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter calls Roofman “a true-crime story that’s also a tender character study… with a delicate tone that makes room for lightness, comedy, romance and quietly searing melancholy”.
Released on 10 October in the US and internationally from 16 October
Tron: Ares
Tron films don’t get made very often. The first one, in which Jeff Bridges’ programmer was zapped into a world of sentient video-game characters, was released in 1982. The follow-up, starring Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, didn’t come out until 2010, ie, 28 years later. And it has taken another 15 years for work to finish on Tron: Ares, a sci-fi action adventure that stars Jared Leto as a digital being who materialises in the physical world. Still, maybe it’s for the best that this third film has taken so long, as its anxieties about artificial intelligence could hardly be more topical. “The interesting thing is that with each year that has passed, the idea actually becomes more relevant,” the film’s producer, Justin Springer told Comicbook.com. “This concept for a movie is more in the zeitgeist than it’s ever been, and… technologically, we’ll be able to do a better job now than we would have 10 years ago.”
Released internationally from 8 October
John Candy: I Like Me
John Candy was in more than 30 films, including Uncle Buck and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, before he died of a heart attack in 1994, when he was just 43. His co-stars loved him just as much as viewers did, which is why so many of those co-stars appear in this documentary directed by Colin Hanks. As well as the director’s dad, Tom Hanks, the actors who reminisce fondly about the Canadian comedian include Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy and Macauley Culkin, who saw him as a much-needed father figure. “It’s a sincere lovefest, warm without being cloying,” writes Beandrea July in IndieWire. “If you already loved John Candy, this doc will make you love him even more. If you were born after his time, it will be a lovely introduction.”
Released on 10 October on Prime Video
After the Hunt
Twenty-five years after Julia Roberts won a best actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich, don’t be surprised if she wins another for After the Hunt, a campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, Challengers). Roberts and Andrew Garfield play Alma and Hank, two philosophy professors at Yale University. They both expect to be promoted shortly – assuming nothing goes awry in their department – so when Alma’s favourite student (Ayo Edebiri) alleges that Hank has assaulted her, she isn’t sure how to react. The film “broaches every thorny topic of interest in today’s climate – cancel culture, consent, institutional misogyny and racism”, writes Iana Murray in The Skinny. “Roberts is superb in one of her best roles in years, masking vulnerability behind an intimidating wall that renders her unreadable. It’s apt for a film concerned with the corrosive power of secrets and the stories we tell about ourselves.”
Released on 10 October in the US and Canada, and internationally from 16 October
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Nothing to do with Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise, Kiss of the Spider Woman is adapted from Kander and Ebb’s Tony-winning stage musical, which was in turn adapted from the 1985 film and Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel. Most of it is set within the walls of a grubby prison cell in 1983, when Argentina was in the hands of a military dictatorship. Diego Luna plays Valentin, an activist who refuses to name his comrades. Tonatiuh plays Molina, his cellmate, who has been instructed to wheedle Valentin’s secrets out of him. To pass the time and to win Valentin’s trust, Molina tells him about his favourite film – and so we see scenes from a glamorous Hollywood musical starring a big-screen diva played by Jennifer Lopez. Peter Debruge writes in Variety that the latest iteration of Kiss of the Spider Woman has been “stunningly” crafted by Bill Condon, the director of Dream Girls and Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast. “Bleak as [it] may sound, the musical finds rare shards of light – and an unlikely connection – in the most despairing of places.”
Released on 10 October in the US
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Some films offer the perfect way to relax and unwind after a demanding day. And then there is If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a film so relentlessly stressful that, according to Chase Hutchinson in The Wrap, it “feels like a panic attack playing out over nearly two hours”. Rose Byrne won the best actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival for her nerve-jangling performance as a mother on the edge: her daughter is ill, faulty plumbing is wrecking her apartment, her absent husband (Christian Slater) keeps shouting at her on the phone, and her therapist (Conan O’Brien) is only making matters worse. Mary Bronstein’s black comedy is “as witheringly funny as it is disquieting”, says Hutchinson. “The way it sweeps you up in the overwhelming cacophony of motherhood, loneliness and life’s frequently absurd anguish is an astounding achievement… You only get a chance to exhale once it comes to a close.”
Released in the US on 10 October
It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi’s films are so boldly critical of Iran’s regime that he has been imprisoned and banned from film-making, but, miraculously, he has never stopped working. And he is still at the peak of his powers, as It Was Just an Accident demonstrates. The winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this farcical yet humane and deadly serious caper focuses on Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a mechanic who is convinced that one of his customers (Ebrahim Azizi) is the man who tortured him in prison. He wants to take his revenge, but as he was blindfolded while in custody, how can he be sure that he has found the right man? Tomris Laffly says in Elle: “Initially a revenge thriller, then an expansive and dignified interrogation of notions like vengeance, forgiveness, morality, and closure, this year’s deserving Palme d’Or winner makes an exquisite case for grabbing onto our humanity for dear life, whatever the circumstances might be.”
Released on 15 October in the US
Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, the respective director and star of The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, team up again in Bugonia for another twisted and sometimes gruesome comedy, this one a remake of a South Korean film, Save The Green Planet (2003). Stone plays the poised and polished CEO of a pharmaceutical firm that has mistreated its employees. One of those employees (Jesse Plemons) abducts her and locks her in his basement, so she assumes that he is angry about his working conditions. But there is more to the kidnapping than that: he is convinced that the CEO is actually a member of an alien race that has been monitoring the Earth. Radhika Seth writes in Vogue that “you’ll find much to enjoy in the heightened performances, pitch-black humour, bursts of gory violence and bizarre twists, including a mind-melting final sequence. Across a tumultuous, sometimes bumpy two hours, it’s quite the ride.”
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Released on 24 October in the US and Canada, and internationally from 30 October
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Are we moving on from the era when pop music biopics such as Ray, Walk the Line and Elvis would squeeze decades of a star’s life into two hours? Last year’s A Complete Unknown concentrated on the earliest years of Bob Dylan’s career, and now Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere dramatises an even shorter chapter of its subject’s life story. As played by Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), Bruce Springsteen is shown making just one album, 1982’s Nebraska. He is on the verge of superstardom, but he is also having a crisis of confidence. His solution: to retreat to his bedroom in New Jersey with a four-track recorder and an acoustic guitar, to work on a set of songs about blue-collar disappointment. Jeremy Strong (Succession) co-stars as Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, while Stephen Graham (Adolescence) plays his hard-drinking father in the black-and-white flashbacks to his 1950s childhood. “If some fans go in expecting the equivalent of a greatest hits package, think again,” writes Pete Hammond in Deadline. “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is the real deal, an intelligent, deliberately paced journey into the soul of an artist.”
Released internationally on 24 October
Hedda
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler was first staged in 1891, but Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) has updated the classic play in more ways than one. The writer-director has moved the action to an English mansion in 1954, where the newly married anti-heroine is throwing a long, lavish and increasingly chaotic party. Two other key changes to the text are that the title character (played by Tessa Thompson) is now a black woman in a predominantly white environment, and her ex-lover is now a woman (Nina Hoss). The most crucial update, though, is that DaCosta has made her adaptation an intensely stylish and sensuous affair, as embodied by its leading lady. It’s a “devilish thrill” to watch the “sultry” Thompson in a film “full of attitude, energy, and colour”, writes Kristy Puchko in IndieWire. “Sumptuous, hot, and challenging, this is a drama of love, sex, and regret that burns like a shot of whisky.”
Released in select US cinemas on 22 October, and then internationally on 29 October on Prime Video
Credit: BBC
