Prepare thyself for vampire fascists, demonic crime lords, and a trip to the chocolate factory.
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Around here, the Venice Film Festival marks the start of the fall movie season. Stars will glide in on gondolas and unveil some of this year’s most promising titles, including new movies from some of our favorite directors — Sofia Coppola (Priscilla), David Fincher (The Killer), Michael Mann (Ferrari), and Pablo Larraín (El Conde) among them. Most will hit U.S. theaters in the weeks and months to come alongside the likes of Killers of the Flower Moon, Dune 2, and Ridley Scott’s take on Napoleon. Strap in for awards season, in other words, though this fall is packing more than just statue bait. Did you know we’re now up to ten Saw movies? Ten! A24, meanwhile, has made its first musical: Dicks: The Musical, which until recently we’d been calling F**king Identical Twins. And Harmony Korine will surely bamboozle us all with Aggro Dr1ft, a film shot all in infrared(?) and at least partly preoccupied with demonic crime lords and swords(??). There’s too much weird and great and silly stuff coming to squeeze into one paragraph. So we’ll let Vulture’s esteemed movies writers guide you from here.
“A lot has happened since my big fat Greek wedding,” says Nia Vardalos in the trailer for the third installment in what is now officially a cinematic franchise. In this one, Vardalos and her clan head to Greece for a family reunion in honor of her late father, Gus, played by Michael Constantine, who died in 2021. John Corbett, a man who truly knows his lane, is back again as another much-beloved love interest of the early aughts. (In theaters September 8.) —Rachel Handler
Kenneth Branagh’s latest Hercule Poirot mystery adapts one of Agatha Christie’s lesser-known works, 1969’s Hallowe’en Party, and ports the action (a murder at a séance) from a small English village to Venice. Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey, and Branagh’s Belfast boys Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill are among the suspects — or, perhaps, the victims. (In theaters September 15.) —Nate Jones
In this Big Short–esque, Craig Gillespie–directed financial biodrama — the highest-profile project in an onslaught of GameStop-related limited series, documentaries, TV movies, docuseries, and feature films headed to the screen — Paul Dano portrays Keith Gill, the securities broker who brought Wall Street to its knees in 2021. He grew an initial $53,000 investment into a $48 million fortune by relentlessly cheerleading junk stock from GameStop across social media and Reddit threads — inspiring a grassroots amateur-investor revolution that wrested power away from hedge-fund managers to stranglehold the options-trading market. Think: Moneyball for shitposting stonks bros. (In theaters September 22.) —Chris Lee
In this dystopian sci-fi thriller from Welsh Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, AI is the enemy. John David Washington plays an ex-special forces agent in a world of robots-versus-humans warfare tasked with a mission to assassinate the elusive mastermind behind advanced artificial-intelligence tech that could either obliterate mankind or finally enable lasting peace. Traveling into the “dark heart of AI-occupied territory,” however, David discovers the weapon he’s hunting is but a small child (or at least a cyborg in kid’s clothing), triggering some latent paternal instinct. From there, at least judging from its trailer, there are more tonal similarities to Children of Men than The Terminator. (In theaters September 29.) —C.L.
Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose (in theaters September 1), Perpetrator (streaming on Shudder September 1), The Good Mother (in theaters September 1), The Equalizer 3 (in theaters September 1), The Nun 2 (in theaters September 8), Sitting in Bars With Cake (streaming on Prime Video September 8), Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (in theaters September 8), Rotting in the Sun (in theaters September 8), Satanic Hispanics (in theaters September 14), Love at First Sight (streaming on Netflix September 15), A Million Miles Away (streaming on Prime Video September 15), El Conde (streaming on Netflix September 15), Outlaw Johnny Black (in theaters September 15), Elevator Game (streaming on Shudder September 15), The Inventor (in theaters September 15), The Saint of Second Chances (streaming on Netflix September 19), Expend4bles (in theaters September 22), Stop Making Sense (in theaters September 22), Cassandro (streaming on Prime Video September 22), Drive-Away Dolls (in theaters September 22), Barber (in theaters and on demand September 22), It Lives Inside (in theaters September 22), No One Will Save You (streaming on Hulu September 22), Spy Kids: Armageddon (streaming on Netflix September 22), Dicks: The Musical (in theaters September 29), The Kill Room (in theaters September 29), Saw X (in theaters September 29), She Came to Me (in theaters September 29), Flora and Son (streaming on Apple TV+ September 29), and Fair Play (in theaters September 29 and streaming October 13).
It already showed at Cannes to many hosannas and some controversy, and yet Martin Scorsese’s nearly four-hour adaptation of David Grann’s history about the Osage murders of the 1920s continues to be one of the most anticipated films of the year. That’s partly because it unites longtime Scorsese actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro onscreen in one of the director’s movies for the first time. The film itself is spectacular and complicated: It isn’t the true-crime mystery the book was, nor is it really a western or a gangster movie. Rather, it’s the story of a tragic, bizarre, heartbreaking marriage. And despite all the fine work by the bigger names in the cast, at the center of it all, carrying so much of the film’s emotional weight, is Lily Gladstone, who will surely be a major star by the time this year is over. (In theaters October 6.) —Bilge Ebiri
When it premiered at Cannes, there was little doubt that Justine Triet’s existential procedural was headed for a big win; it wound up with the Palme d’Or. Can it break through with a broader audience when it opens in the U.S.? Bet on it: This impeccably acted tale of a German academic suspected of murder in France after her husband’s death from a mysterious fall isn’t just a thoughtful exploration of the nature of uncertainty and innocence — it’s also a riveting courtroom drama that often prompts mid-movie applause whenever it shows. And not just for the absolutely infectious cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” from the Hamburg-based Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band that plays repeatedly throughout the movie. (In theaters October 13.) —B.E.
Sofia Coppola, the maestro of movies about women adjacent to power, turns to what looks like an ideal topic: Priscilla Presley’s relationship with Elvis Presley, which began when she was the painfully young age of 14. Coppola has cast the baby-faced Cailee Spaeny as her star (Jacob Elordi plays the King), and is drawing from Presley’s own 1985 mem
