The Fabelmans (Movie)

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      Steven Spielberg Gets Personal in ‘The Fabelmans’

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      Over more than 50 years, Steven Spielberg has directed movies about every subject under the sun. Sharks, dinosaurs, extraterrestrials both friendly and not, pirates, spies, soldiers and heroes both historical and imaginary. Not many filmmakers can match his range. But one subject Spielberg has avoided is himself.Until now. “The Fabelmans” is a disarmingly, at times painfully intimate movie about a family closely modeled on the Spielbergs. It’s a portrait of the auteur as a young man that also tells the story of an unraveling marriage. Sammy Fabelman, played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle, is the only son and oldest child of Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), who move from New Jersey to Arizona and then Northern California in the 1950s and ’60s. As Sammy discovers his cinematic vocation — shooting movies at home, at school and with his Boy Scout troop — he witnesses Mitzi’s deepening unhappiness and Burt’s inability to deal with it.Written with Tony Kushner, his collaborator on “Munich,” “Lincoln” and “West Side Story,” “The Fabelmans,” which opens in theaters this weekend, takes Spielberg into uncharted narrative territory. I spoke with him this month via video call about his journey into his own past, and also about the present and future state of the movies. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.“The Fabelmans” tells a story you’ve obviously lived with for a very long time. I was curious about what made it finally rise to the surface.The impetus to actually get serious about telling it on film didn’t seriously occur to me until the pandemic.When the pandemic first hit, some of my kids flew in from the East Coast, and they all took up residence in their old bedrooms and Kate [Capshaw, his wife] and I got a lot of our family back. It was very disconcerting not to go into work. Directing is a social occupation, and I’m very used to interacting with people every single day. I was not really acclimating to the Zoom world very well.I had a lot of time on my hands. I used to get in my car and drive for hours — all around Los Angeles, up Pacific Coast Highway, over to Calabasas, over near Twentynine Palms. And that gave me more time to think about what was happening in the world.I started thinking, what’s the one story I haven’t told that I’d be really mad at myself if I don’t? It was always the same answer every time: the story of my formative years growing up between 7 and 18.From left, Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera and Julia Butters as the Fabelmans, fictional versions of the Spielbergs. Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentYou’ve dealt with families before. You’ve dealt with a childhood in the suburbs before, with divorce, but never literally from your own experience. Was it hard to go there?“Close Encounters” was about a father’s voluntary separation from the family to pursue a dream at the expense of losing his family. “E.T.” was a story of a kid who needed to fill the hole that a separation had dug out of his life, and he just happened to fill it metaphorically with this little squishy guy from outer space.This story was no longer going to be about metaphor. It was going to be about lived experiences, and what was difficult was facing the fact that I might really tell the story. In theory, it was easy to talk to Tony Kushner about, would you collaborate with me in trying to arrange all these interesting disparate experiences into a movie narrative?When we started writing this — Tony in New York, me in L.A. on Zoom — it started to become real, something that was tactile and triggering in all of these memories. It did become very difficult.It’s hard to hold someone’s hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about. Neither in a written autobiography, which I’ve never done, or on film. But we got into those tender trenches.You’ve dealt with Jewish themes and topics before, certainly in “Schindler’s List” and “Munich,” but this is the first time you’re going into a specifically Jewish American experience.I didn’t experience antisemitism growing up in Arizona, but I had a major experience with it completing high school in Northern California.Friends would always call me by my last name. So, the sound of Jewishness always rang in my ear when my friends would call across the hallway, “Hey Spielberg,” and I was very self-conscious about that.Being Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood. Being Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish. But when I was making those little 8-millimeter movies in school, at first my friends thought it was kind of weird.It was sort of unprecedented. Nobody had cameras except a Japanese 8-millimeter camera that parents usually controlled, and they were only used for family home movies and things like that. But I was basically weaponizing my social life with a camera to curry favor with these athletic, popular kids who eventually all wanted to be in my movies.In a way, the camera was a social passport for me. I was passionate about telling stories, but I was also passionate about belonging to something that I hadn’t been invited to belong to ever before. So, making these little movies was like a magic pill in a way.His co-writer, Tony Kushner, gave the director the “comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAntisemitism is a specter in this movie that to some extent is chased away, which reflects the feeling of a lot of Jewish Americans in that time — a kind of optimism about their prospects in America. That hits a little differently in the present, when there seems to be a resurgence of antisemitism in some of its most toxic forms.Antisemitism is only coming back because it’s being encouraged to come back. It’s not coming back because it ebbs and flows over the decades, but there has been an invitation to a toxic dance based on antisemitism being part of an ideology of separation and racism and Islamophobia and xenophobia, and it’s come barreling back. A lot of people who probably never had much of an antisemitic thought but did feel toward people of color — they felt differently, let’s say, than my sisters and I were ever raised to believe or feel, and suddenly antisemitism becomes part of the package. It’s been weaponized and it’s been encouraged more and more since 2015 or ’16.I was struck by what you said about the camera as a way of belonging. For Sammy Fabelman, the camera is his way to get closer to people and to be included, but it’s also what separates him from people because he’s in the position of the observer.I’m not going to spoil plot developments for readers, but there’s a very important truth about his parents’ marriage that Sammy discovers because of what he sees through the camera. I don’t know if that’s really what happened or if it’s a metaphor for how cinema works.No. It really happened. That was one of the toughest things, I think, that I had to sit down and decide to expose, because it was the most powerful secret my mom and I shared since my discovery when I was 16. Sixteen years old is too young to realize that my parents are people, and also, the struggle not to hold that against them.I’m also struck by the way it was discovered, because one thing that I’ve always thought about you as a filmmaker is that you convey a lot of emotional and psychological information by means other than dialogue — through body language or facial expressions or the unspoken energy passing through the scene. What’s remarkable about this film is it shows you doing that by accident, or maybe instinctively.I think it was probably instinctively because as my wife always says, there are no accidents. She said, you know, you couch that in a joke, but there are no jokes.That’s very Freudian.The thing is, I was always in control of the movies I was making even as a 12-year-old kid. I was in control of all my films until this moment where I discovered I had no control over the information that was pulverizing for a 16-year-old kid. It’s something I’ll never forget, and it’s something my mom and I talked about for decades afterward.Do you think that made you want to reassert control over what you were doing, over the stories, over the images?Exactly. And maybe even make those images happy and friendly. I’ve not been in therapy. I went to my father’s psychiatrist to try to get a letter that I was crazy, so I wouldn’t have to fight in Vietnam. That was the only time I ever went to an analyst. By the way, it turned out he was very pro-Vietnam and would never write me the letter, and I wasted two months, three days a week, while I was going to college.So movies, and my relationship with Kate and my kids and my closest friends and with the stories I choose to tell, that has probably been as therapeutic as anything I could have done in Freudian or Jungian therapy.Was it different to be working with actors who are playing people very close to you and a version of you?I’m trying to phrase this in a way that will make sense to you. When I tried to cast “The Fabelmans” like every other movie — with the best actors I could find that fit the role — I realized that wasn’t going to work, that there was going to have to be more about the familiar and less about the accomplished. Meaning, I was looking for great actors, but I needed actors that had already, in other films, struck me as similes for my mom and dad, and obviously, with less objectivity, struck me as similar to myself. As much as we can ever judge ourselves to really go out and find somebody like us.So it became much, much harder, and I needed to know them in a different way. I needed to already have felt, oh, something about her reminds me of Mom and there’s something about him that reminds me of Dad. So, that limited the playing field. I considered a lot of actors, but my eventual choice came down to actors that were great like Paul Dano and Michelle Williams. Two of the finest actors I’ve ever worked with.After more than 50 years, this is the director’s most personal film yet. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWere there particular performances of Paul’s and Michelle’s that struck you?My favorite performance up to that point of Michelle Williams was “Blue Valentine,” but the most forthright performance, more different than anything she ever done before, was when she played Gwen Verdon in “Fosse/Verdon.” I realized, Oh my God, she can really step far away from everything I’ve ever seen her do to completely reinvent herself through a character, and that gave me tremendous encouragement.There’s also the fact that Mitzi herself is a performer, a musician and dancer, and that part of her personality is very important and poignant in the film.She was a performing artist, but she was also, as a mother, a performing artist of a mother. Just to give you a little insight: She was so much more peer than parent that my three sisters even from a very young age refused to call her Mom or Mommy and only called her Lee, her first name. I’m the only one that called her Mom or Mama. And that’s because she wanted to be part of the gang and wasn’t necessarily interested in being the truant officer of the family or the responsible caregiver. She wanted us to look at her like one of us.That I think comes through in the movie and there is also just the temperamental contrast between Mitzi and Burt. The movie is partly about their discovery and their son’s discovery that they’re fundamentally mismatched.My dad, like me, couldn’t sing on key, but he loved classical music and he appreciated her artistry as a pianist and a classical music lover. Their mutual love was classical music.I remember being dragged to [Philadelphia Orchestra] concerts. I didn’t understand classical music as a kid. It was scary. It was intimidating, and it was way too loud. My mom and dad were in heaven sitting together with me in the middle. Often they would hold hands across my lap, and Mom and Dad would get tears in their eyes, but that’s where it stopped. My dad’s side of the brain beyond that was science. My mom’s side of the brain beyond that was performing art.This is a movie about movies and also a movie about the history of movies: it begins with Cecil B. DeMille and ends with John Ford. The way I read that, because I’m a film critic, is that you’re tracing the tradition of moviemaking that you’re a part of.I see the showman in myself that was C.B. DeMille, but I’ve always loved John Ford’s compositions. I’ve both studied and been very aware of his compositions. Ford was a hero of mine, and I got such great instruction from him, which he sort of made more of a bollocking than anything else. But I didn’t come out of that saying, Oh my God, he scared me to death. I came out of that so inspired.I was only about 16 when I met him, and I didn’t know anything about his reputation, how surly and ornery he was and how he ate young studio executives for breakfast. That only came later when people began writing more about him. I felt I really escaped that office with my life.I was watching that and thinking a lot about the current uncertain state of movies and that experience of being overwhelmed by something on the big screen — that’s the primal moment in this movie and may not be something that future generations will have.Yes, but there’s been stages throughout history where we’ve seen how Hollywood has countered the impact of losing a great market share of the audience to TV. In the early ’50s they invented CinemaScope and then 3-D [became popular].They had something on NBC called “Saturday Night at the Movies” [beginning in 1961] and you didn’t have to go out to a movie on Saturday night. You could stay home and watch television because NBC was designing films especially for audiences that didn’t want to leave the house. This is nothing new.The pandemic created an opportunity for streaming platforms to raise their subscriptions to record-breaking levels and also throw some of my best filmmaker friends under the bus as their movies were unceremoniously not given theatrical releases. They were paid off and the films were suddenly relegated to, in this case, HBO Max. The case I’m talking about. And then everything started to change.I think older audiences were relieved that they didn’t have to step on sticky popcorn. But I really believe those same older audiences, once they got into the theater, the magic of being in a social situation with a bunch of strangers is a tonic.Those audiences, I believe, left the theater if the movie was good and said aren’t you glad we went out tonight to see this picture? So, it’s up to the movies to be good enough to get all the audiences to say that to each other when the lights come back up.Spielberg would like to see streaming services give movies a longer theatrical run. That said, if he were making “The Post” today, he’d consider Apple or Netflix just so he could reach more viewers.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesI wonder about what kinds of movies people will go out to see vs. what they prefer to stay home to watch and how the industry in whatever shape it’s in figures that out.The industry is trying to figure that out right now. I found it encouraging that “Elvis” broke $100 million at the domestic box office. A lot of older people went to see that film, and that gave me hope that people were starting to come back to the movies as the pandemic becomes an endemic. I think movies are going to come back. I really do.Certainly, there’s no question that the big sequels and movies from Marvel and DC and Pixar and some of the animated movies and horror films still have a place in society. And hopefully comedies come back, because you can’t laugh as hard at home as you can in an audience.I don’t watch a lot of my movies with audiences, but my wife said you have to watch “The Fabelmans” at Toronto. We can sit in the back row, but you have to watch once, and it was a great experience. I was terrified, but the movie plays to a big audience of 2,000 people, and in the funny parts, it played like a big comedy.I think there has to be a concerted effort on the part of movie directors to demand that the streaming services footing the bill for most of these films give their movies a chance to be exhibited theatrically and not just in four theaters to qualify for awards. It’s going to have to come from all of us — the WGA [the Writers Guild], the DGA [the Directors Guild] and eventually the academy.When you’re first starting out, and a streaming service gives you a chance to direct your first movie, of course the streaming service is going to call the shot, but I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t like their movies to be shown on a big screen. I don’t know anyone that would say, no, I’d rather it be shown on an iPad or in a living room.Certain movies are perfectly suitable to the iPad or the living room. So the decision that executives and executives like myself at Amblin Partners have to make is: Do we consign this movie to a streaming service or this other movie to a four- or six-week theatrical window? Those are decisions that I am making based on my other job, which is running a small film company.That sounds like something fairly new, given especially that theatrical seems to be, and already was, I think, before the pandemic, dominated by franchises, tentpoles, by the movies that exhibitors know will make money for them. It just seems a narrower slot to get these kinds of non-I.P. movies into theaters.Yeah. We don’t want these chains to file Chapter 11. We want theaters to stay open. By the same token, and speaking very honestly, I made “The Post” [about the Pentagon Papers] as a political statement about our times by reflecting the Nixon administration, and we thought that was an important reflection for a lot of people to understand what was happening to our country.I don’t know if I had been given that script post-pandemic whether I would have preferred to have made that film for Apple or Netflix and gone out to millions of people. Because the film had something to say to millions of people, and we were never going to get those millions of people into enough theaters to make that kind of difference. Things have changed enough to get me to say that to you.A number of films that I think were wonderful works of cinema seem to have their moment and then vanish into the algorithm.We started amassing libraries [of films on home video] the same way we would amass LPs as I did as a kid. My film collection vastly outnumbered my LP collection.But today, it’s all in the cloud, and we don’t have the shelf space anymore to put our beloved movies as part of the cultural heritage that inspired us to become better people, to find values that movies can communicate often faster than your parents can. What I miss is the hard copy. I miss the antiquity that I can hold in my hand and put into a player, but I’m an old-fashioned guy.I’m 75 years old. I know what it’s like to possess something that I adored. I know what it’s like to possess the LP of [the score for] “Lawrence of Arabia” and then years later to have the actual DVD of it. I treasure that. More

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      In Toronto, Films by Women About Women, but That’s Where the Similarities End

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      The Toronto International Film Festival returns to business mostly as usual with throngs of excited attendees and some of the year’s most anticipated new movies.Each year, filmgoers of all persuasions, casual viewers and true believers both, descend on the Toronto International Film Festival to sample and to gorge. Cannes has the red carpet, Telluride has Oscar contenders and Sundance has the next big thing, maybe. Toronto has bulk. It’s stuffed with movies of every type, size, style and ambition. Some are destined for immortality and others will enter the Oscar marathon that has already begun. Still other titles will languish on streaming platforms; some of these will deserve better fates.The festival, which ends Sunday, returned to full capacity this month after two years of severely limited in-person screenings. With mask mandates and other restrictions lifted, the crowds in theaters felt close to prepandemic levels, though not at their crushing worst. The throngs outside its main locations were marginally thinner, too, though they surged like tidal waves for the flashiest guests, notably Taylor Swift (accompanying her suitably titled 10-minute “All Too Well: The Short Film”) and Harry Styles (one of the stars of the gay period romance “My Policeman”).“Harry, Harry, Harry!” I heard one afternoon, as I rushed to a screening, past men and women racing toward a scrum of security personnel and parked black S.U.V.s. If Swift and Styles start making more movies and in-person appearances, theatrical distribution might have a chance to recover. Toronto may not do glamour all that well, but over the years it has transformed into an essential industry destination partly by “eventizing” itself, creating an 11-day spectacle for attendees and gawkers alike while serving as a launchpad for new movies like “The Woman King,” which opens Friday.Viola Davis in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King.”Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesToronto skims a lot of cream from other festivals, giving audiences early peeks at the major titles that will be much discussed in coming months. And while journalists can often preview these offerings back home, it’s a singular experience seeing new movies with packed audiences, witnessing how jokes land and surprises shock. One movie that’s guaranteed to play extremely well is Laura Poitras’s elegantly structured documentary about the photographer Nan Goldin, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” which just won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. A personal-meets-the-political portrait that goes deep on Goldin’s opium-epidemic activism, it left the audience audibly moved; the distributor should hand out tissues with every ticket.Spotify should ready itself for an uptick in streaming of Louis Armstrong’s music. One highlight of my festival week was the documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” which was directed by Sacha Jenkins, son of the filmmaker Horace B. Jenkins. (Apple has the documentary, but Sacha Jenkins said before one screening that it would also open in theaters.) Drawing on Armstrong’s vast personal archive — including reels of his taped musings — the movie builds beautifully into a portrait of a genius as well as the country that he graced and that didn’t give him the love he deserved. The music is of course brilliant, though some critics wanted more musicology to go with it.The audience I saw “Louis Armstrong” with seemed thrilled. The hothouse environment of festivals can be wildly misleading simply because people are so pumped to be in attendance, which can make widely reported metrics like the duration of standing ovations meaningless (boos are far more instructive). But watching a movie with other festivalgoers invariably heats up and enlivens a room, creates an electric vibe, though it helps when directors introduce their work. Steven Spielberg did just that for the premiere of “The Fabelmans,” a wistful coming-of-age story about a young film lover who grows up to become, well, you know.Paul Dano, left, Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord and Michelle Williams in “The Fabelmans,” about Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentWritten by Spielberg and his frequent collaborator, Tony Kushner, the story tracks the awakening, cinematic and otherwise, of the young Sammy (played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle). The kid is the least interesting part of the movie, which perhaps sounds funny and even insulting but makes sense given that it’s about someone who grows up to make larger-than-life (Spielbergian!) fantasies. The father is played by Paul Dano, who seems to have borrowed Michael Stuhlbarg’s voice for the role, but the movie is anchored by Michelle Williams’s sensitive performance as the mother, Mitzi. Williams’s affecting intensity gives the movie regular shocking jolts of passion, attenuating its otherwise overly easy, overly familiar flow.“The Fabelmans” didn’t set the festival on fire; its restraint and lightly elegiac mood are unlikely to get most pulses racing, even if these qualities serve it extremely well. As he did in his version of “West Side Story,” which was also written by Kushner, Spielberg embraces a kind of poetic realism in “The Fabelmans” that I’m still getting a handle on. He’s looking at his own life through the mist, as you would expect. And while he shows the tears, if not necessarily the snot, Spielberg is also, in his singular way, engaging with some of the corrosive truths about his childhood, particularly with respect to Mitzi. It’s an interesting movie that I look forward to revisiting.Mitzi Fabelman is just one of the many women characters who made this year’s Toronto memorable. Another is Lib Wright, the brisk British nurse played by a strong Florence Pugh in the period drama “The Wonder.” Directed by Sebastián Lelio from Emma Donoghue’s novel, it follows Lib as she journeys to an isolated village in 19th-century rural Ireland, where she’s been employed by some stern local men to observe a girl, Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), who’s said not to have eaten in months. Is her fast a miracle, a scam, or something else? Not all of Lelio’s choices work, specifically his decision to call attention to the movie’s artifice (it opens and closes on a soundstage), but its horror and righteous fury are undeniable.Florence Pugh in “The Wonder,” set in 19th-century Ireland.NetflixPart of what made the bounty of all these women characters so pleasurable is that a fair number appear in movies directed by women. In the not-distant past, women often felt boxed in by their subjects, though especially by their modest resources. That’s less the case now, and day after day at Toronto, you could watch all manner of female-driven pictures, from spectacles to chamber pieces. Some women were as recognizable as your own life (if generally more interesting) and others were entirely, engagingly different. For someone who makes a living primarily writing about movies made by men with men and for men, it was especially gratifying.That was the case even when the movies didn’t entirely work or felt off the mark. I can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of “Emily,” a moving, sexually charged drama about Emily Brontë directed by the actress Frances O’Connor. Certainly I never heard about some of the wilder things that this Emily (an excellent Emma Mackey) does throughout her tumultuous, tragically abbreviated, dramatically inflected life. Even so, with its performances, its unabashed romanticism and visual choices — landscapes, textures, gleaming light and bodies — the movie persuasively opens up an artistic consciousness, showing how Brontë became the writer that she did. However fanciful its portrait of the artist as a young woman, it’s very effective.Alice Diop’s electric contemporary drama “Saint Omer” turns on a very different question of truth. Set partly in a French courtroom, it centers on a young writer, Rama (Kayije Kagame), sitting in on the trial of another woman, Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), who’s admitted to drowning her baby. Intellectually galvanizing and emotionally harrowing, the story explores motherhood, race and postcolonial France with control, lucidity and compassion. It’s an extraordinary work that’s all the more impressive because it’s the first fiction feature from Diop, who’s an established documentarian.“Saint Omer” will be on the slate in the forthcoming New York Film Festival and so will “The Eternal Daughter,” from the British filmmaker Joanna Hogg. It too concerns motherhood, though in a different register and to dissimilar ends. It focuses on a relationship between a mother-and-daughter duo, similar characters who are both played with distinct nuance by Tilda Swinton. The story largely takes place at a grand hotel where the two have come for an intimate, progressively more fraught getaway. Over the course of the story, the time frame subtly, at times comically, shifts, as does the relationship, which — like Swinton’s twinned performances — proves devastating. More

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      The Eight Film Festival Movies That Got the Biggest Awards Boost

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      “Women Talking,” women fighting, a pair of Brendans and more: After Toronto, Venice and Telluride, here are the titles and performances in the conversation.Who are the front-runners, the dark horses and the long shots? After major film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, where most of the year’s remaining prestige films have screened, the awards season has finally begun to come into focus.There are still a few significant contenders yet to debut, like Damien Chazelle’s glitzy Hollywood drama “Babylon,” and the industry is buzzing that Apple will soon announce a year-end release for its big-budget slavery drama, “Emancipation,” even though the film’s leading man, Will Smith, was banned from attending the Oscars for the next decade. And some tantalizing questions from these festivals still linger, like whether “Glass Onion,” the rollicking sequel to “Knives Out,” can score the best-picture nomination that the first film missed out on.But in the meantime, here are the eight films that came out of the fall festivals with the biggest awards-season pop.‘The Whale’There are few things Oscar voters prefer more than a transformational role and a comeback narrative, and this season, Brendan Fraser’s got both. In Darren Aronofsky’s new drama, Fraser wears a prosthetic bodysuit to transform into a 600-pound shut-in named Charlie, who attempts to reconnect with his angry daughter (Sadie Sink) as his health falters. Interest is high in the 53-year-old actor’s return to the limelight, and every time a clip hit social media of the emotional Fraser soaking up applause in Venice and Toronto, a young generation raised on his heroics in “The Mummy” reliably made those videos go viral. Though some festival pundits have taken issue with the film’s depiction of an obese protagonist, awards voters will still be wowed by Fraser’s work, making him this year’s prohibitive best-actor favorite.‘The Fabelmans’Steven Spielberg’s new film about his own coming-of-age was warmly received in Toronto, where Michelle Williams won best-in-show notices as Mitzi, the theatrical mother of the movie’s young Spielberg stand-in. Expect the actress to pick up her fifth Oscar nomination and, if she is run as a supporting performer, her first win. Even before its festival debut, awards watchers thought Spielberg’s film would land at the top of their best-picture prediction lists, but the film isn’t juggernaut-shaped — it’s lighter, more intimate and an appealing ramble in a way that people might not have anticipated. That may mean that the field is still open for a best-picture favorite to emerge, or perhaps “The Fabelmans” could sneak its way there in the end without earning the resentment accrued by an early-season front-runner.‘The Woman King’ and the Art of WarViola Davis leads a strong cast into battle in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action epic inspired by real women warriors.Review:  “‘The Woman King’ is a sweeping entertainment, but it’s also a story of unwavering resistance in front of and behind the camera,” our critic writes.Viola Davis: As our reporter visited her on the set, Davis spoke about how powerful it was to watch Black women transform into warriors.Director Q&A: In an interview with The Times, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet.Anatomy of a Scene: Prince-Bythewood had the actors perform their own stunts in the film. In some cases, that meant pulling off flips to the dirt as well as wrestling scenes.‘Tár’It’s been 16 years since Todd Field last directed a film, but expect his third feature, “Tár,” to hit the Oscar-nominated heights of his predecessors, “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children.” It will certainly be one of the year’s most talked-about movies: The story touches on hot-button topics like cancel culture and #MeToo as it follows a famed conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose career begins to crumble when her past catches up with her. Blanchett earned career-best raves at Venice for the role — and taught herself German, piano and conducting to boot — so a third Oscar is well within reach. Still, a strong year for best-actress contenders will make Blanchett’s battle a fierce one.‘The Banshees of Inisherin’Five years after “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” earned Oscars for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, the writer-director Martin McDonagh is back with a dark comedy whose cast could run the table, too. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are longtime friends whose relationship is severed in the most baffling way, and Farrell’s constant attempts to mend the rift push their petty grievances into the realm of tragedy. Both men are wonderful and will probably earn their first Oscar nominations, but if voters really flip for the film — and I suspect they will — then the supporting performers Kerry Condon (as Farrell’s sister) and Barry Keoghan (as a cockeyed friend) will be in the mix as well.‘Women Talking’This Sarah Polley-directed drama about Mennonite women in crisis was Telluride’s most significant world premiere this year, and in that Colorado enclave, which regularly draws a large contingent of Oscar voters, “Women Talking” did quite well. With a sprawling ensemble cast that includes awards favorites Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy — as well as three-time best-actress winner McDormand in a small role — “Women Talking” should nab several nominations, even though some of the male viewers I spoke to after the film’s Toronto screening proved surprisingly resistant to the film’s feature-long debate about sexual violence.‘The Woman King’Forget “Women Talking,” how about women fighting? This old-fashioned action epic from the director Gina Prince-Bythewood played through the roof in Toronto and stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, an all-female group of warriors defending their kingdom in 1820s West Africa. Davis is an Oscar winner (with three more nominations, too) who called “The Woman King” her magnum opus while introducing the film, and a performance this passionate and athletic should be in contention all season. But a notable box-office haul will be crucial to the film’s fate (it opens Friday), since even bigger action films like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are due at year’s end and will be following Oscar-nominated predecessors.‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’The expansion of the best picture race to 10 nominees has made room for all sorts of previously snubbed movies, from Marvel spectaculars to Pixar tentpoles. But when will a documentary be nominated for best picture? Laura Poitras’s new film, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” beat all fiction narratives at Venice to take the Golden Lion, the fest’s top award, and this portrait of photographer Nan Goldin as she protests the wealthy Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis will be distributed by Neon, the company that managed an Oscar first with the Korean-language best picture winner “Parasite.” At the very least, “All the Beauty” will be a strong contender for the documentary Oscar that Poitras won for her 2014 film about Edward Snowden, “Citizenfour.”‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’This A24 film from the directing team Daniels opened way back in March, but you’d hardly know that based on the major festival tributes to its star, Michelle Yeoh, in both Toronto and Venice. A flag was planted in both places: This indie hit has now entered its awards-campaign phase, and since the fall festivals didn’t produce major front-runners in the picture and directing categories, expect “Everything Everywhere,” to gun for recognition in both races as well as the supporting actor category (where Ke Huy Quan could be this year’s Troy Kotsur), original screenplay and more. Yeoh’s best-actress nomination is almost certain, though she’ll face plenty of competition from Blanchett. Both women were handed dazzling signature roles this year, and their race should be the season’s most exciting. More

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      In ‘The Fabelmans,’ Steven Spielberg Himself Is the Star

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      But it’s Michelle Williams who burns brightest in this film based on Spielberg’s childhood, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” is the movie every fall film festival was dying to have, but only Toronto got it. And at the Saturday-night premiere, the collective excitement was making people lose their minds.It wasn’t just the enthusiastic audience, many of whom had come straight from the well-received premiere of the “Knives Out” sequel “Glass Onion.” And it wasn’t just the giddiness of Cameron Bailey, who runs the Toronto International Film Festival, as he introduced the filmmaker for the first time. Even Spielberg himself got carried away in the madness.“I’m so glad I came to Toronto,” he said. Thank you, Steven. Same. #TIFF22 pic.twitter.com/wLAwQW58IW— Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) September 11, 2022
      “I’m really glad we came to Toronto!” exclaimed the 75-year-old director, noting that this would be the first time a film of his had played at a film festival. That claim would appear to sweep away the New York Film Festival showings of “Bridge of Spies” and “Lincoln,” the Cannes premieres of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “The BFG,” and the South by Southwest bow of “Ready Player One,” but hey, sometimes you’ve got to clear the table before you can set it.And at least his lie felt emotionally true, since the stakes were so significant: By landing “The Fabelmans,” Toronto could fortify itself after two pandemic-diminished years, while Spielberg could claim the friendliest possible audience for his most personal film yet.Written by the director and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, “The Fabelmans” is an only slightly fictionalized retelling of Spielberg’s own coming-of-age. Sammy Fabelman (played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle) is a movie-mad kid who stages increasingly elaborate short films that star his sisters, classmates and semi-supportive parents. His dad, Burt (Paul Dano), is too swept up in his computer-programming job to understand Sammy’s artistic inclinations, but his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a free spirit who never got to realize her dreams of working as a pianist and encourages Sammy to follow his bliss.Their mother-son bond is strong, and when Sammy films her dancing on a family trip and later shows her the edited footage, Mitzi beams. “You see me,” she says. But Sammy sometimes sees too much: As he gets older, he notices that Mitzi’s strong bond with her husband’s best friend (Seth Rogen) borders on an emotional affair. And as the family moves from New Jersey to Arizona and then finally to California, the ties that bind begin to fray.I found “The Fabelmans” to be only secondarily Spielberg’s origin story; primarily, it’s a look-at-what-she-can-do Michelle Williams vehicle, and the actress really goes for it, attacking this part like someone who knows she’s been handed her signature role. Based on Spielberg’s late mother, Leah, Mitzi is a dramatic personality, prone to flights of fancy and intense mood swings, and at any given moment, she’ll laugh, cry, sing or pack the kids into the car for an impromptu tornado chase. You love her, but she’s a lot — on this, the viewer and Sammy both agree — and Williams finds exactly the right moments to dial back the bigness and remind you that there is something private and vulnerable at the core of this very outgoing woman.Spielberg told the Toronto crowd that he’d had Williams in mind to play his mom ever since he saw her work in “Blue Valentine” (2010), which earned Williams the second of her four Oscar nominations; if she is campaigned as a supporting actress for “The Fabelmans” (as I suspect she will be, despite her ample screen time), this could very well propel the well-respected 42-year-old to her first win, just a year after Spielberg’s “West Side Story” actress Ariana DeBose topped that same race.Spielberg films always have plenty of Oscar upside, and “The Fabelmans” will be a strong contender in the picture and directing categories (and could even score a nod for Judd Hirsch, who puts in a scene-stealing cameo as Mitzi’s uncle), but the film is gentler, shaggier and more intimate than some of his other awards-season juggernauts, and there’s no need to oversell it at this early date. Even Spielberg, sensing all the hype in the room, sought to downplay speculation that “The Fabelmans” served as any sort of magnum-opus finale.“This is not because I’m going to retire and this is my swan song,” he told Toronto. “Don’t believe any of that!” More

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      159 Films, for Every Taste, Coming This Fall

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      From art house to hellhouse and back, here’s a select list of the most anticipated titles this season, including “The Fabelmans,” “White Noise” and more.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)Diamond Stingily in “The African Desperate,” from the artist Martine Syms. Dominica Inc.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)A scene from the documentary “Riotsville, U.S.A.,” which uses archival footage from the 1960s.CineticSEE 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 NetflixME 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)Olivia Wilde, left, appears in and directed Nick Kroll and Chris Pine in “Don’t Worry Darling.”Warner Bros.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)Ana de Armas goes blond for “Blonde,” from Andrew Dominik.NetflixARGENTINA, 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)Luke Macfarlane, left, and Billy Eichner in the rom-com “Bros.”Universal PicturesBROS 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+)Kathy Najimy, left, Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker are back for “Hocus Pocus 2.”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)OctoberMR. 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)Christian Bale, left, Margot Robbie and John David Washington team up for “Amsterdam.”20th Century StudiosBATTLEGROUND 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)Constance Wu, Javier Bardem and Winslow Fegley take a reptile for a ride in “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.”Sarah Shatz/Sony PicturesONODA: 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)Cate Blanchett as a conductor in “Tár,” directed by Todd Field.Focus FeaturesTO 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)Park Hae-il, left, and Tang Wei in the newest film from Park Chan-wook, “Decision to Leave.”MubiHALLOWEEN 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)Jamie Lee Curtis goes one last round — we think — with Michael Myers in “Halloween Ends.”Universal PicturesSTARS 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)Dwayne Johnson makes his bow as the title character in “Black Adam.”Warner Bros.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)Harry Styles and Emma Corrin in “My Policeman,” set in the 1950s and the ’90s.Parisa Taghizadeh/Amazon StudiosRAYMOND & 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)Jessica Chastain is a caregiver who doesn’t necessarily trust her colleagues in “The Good Nurse.”JoJo Whilden/NetflixALL 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)Sweetie (voiced by Ramona Young) and Sister Helley (voiced by Angela Bassett) in “Wendell & Wild.”NetflixNovemberTHE 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)Luisa Quispe in “Utama,” set in the drought-stricken Bolivian highlands.Kino LorberWEIRD: 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, reads adaptations of writings by 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)Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman are exes in “The Son.”Sony PicturesIN 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)Carey Mulligan, left, and Zoe Kazan as reporters on the Harvey Weinstein case. JoJo Whilden/Universal PicturesSLUMBERLAND 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)Jonathan Majors, left, and Glen Powell as aviators in the military in the 1950s. Eli Adé/Sony PicturesBONES 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)Taylor Russell, left, and Timothée Chalamet in the cannibal love story “Bones and All.”Yannis Drakoulidis/MGMNANNY 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)The real-life sisters Nathalie, left, and Manal Issa play Syrian sisters in “The Swimmers.”Laura Radford/NetflixDISENCHANTED 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+)DecemberFRAMING 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)The documentary “Framing Agnes” takes a closer look at trans history.Kino LorberLADY 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)From left, Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, Liv McNeil, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Kate Hallett, Rooney Mara and Judith Ivey in “Women Talking.”Michael Gibson/Orion ReleasingTHE 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)Brendan Fraser is a father hoping to reconcile with his daughter in the drama “The Whale.”A24A 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)Bill Nighy is a buttoned-up civil servant facing the end of his life in “Living.”Ross Ferguson/Sony Pictures ClassicsTHE 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. 31 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)Adam Driver stars in “White Noise” alongside, from left, Greta Gerwig, May Nivola, Sam Nivola and Raffey Cassidy.Wilson Webb/NetflixCompiled with the assistance of Gabe Cohn and Shivani Gonzalez. More