New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Top40-Charts picks 10 films coming out this month, including The Girl on the Train, this year�s Palme D�Or winner and a Marvel adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch!
The Girl on the Train
Based on the bestselling 2015 novel of the same name by Paula Hawkins, this mystery thriller stars Emily
Blunt as one of the most striking characters in recent fiction. Alcoholic divorcee Rachel thinks she witnesses a murder from the window of a train; nothing is clear in what follows as she navigates events in a wine-induced haze. Directed by Tate Taylor (The Help, Get on Up) and written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary), The Girl on the
Train follows Gone Girl in "a shake-up of the literary trend of airport thrillers". Taylor wanted to create a feeling of noir, saying that "The characters are compelling, and figuring them out is just as important as figuring out what happened." On general release from 7 October. (Credit: Universal Studios)
American
Honey (Credit: Credit: Universal Pictures)
British director Andrea Arnold won an Oscar for her 2005 short film Wasp: she followed that up with the 2006 feature Red Road, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes. Her next film Fish Tank shared that honour - as did American Honey, which follows a teen (Sasha Lane) who signs up to join a "magazine crew" touting subscriptions door-to-door around the US. Those groups have been criticised for their working practices in the past; Arnold was inspired by a 2007 article in the New York Times to make a film about them. American
Honey has been praised as "a vibrant road-trip movie", which "captures those conflicting emotions - both the pain of living hand-to-mouth and the unexpected joy of finding one's tribe - with vivid detail". Starring alongside Lane (discovered by Arnold on a beach) is Shia LaBeouf: as Vulture comments, "If you think LaBeouf is a joke, you need to see him here. There's wildness there, but acting centers him. He's magnetizing." Arnold described what inspired her: "A lot of Americans see these [people] as throwaways. I just wanted to show that they're not throwaways. I don't wanna get on any kind of soapbox, but I feel like that's not a way to live. It is an amazing place to be where you can show something that perhaps doesn't get seen." Released 7 October in Canada and 14 October in Ireland and Norway. (Credit: Universal Pictures)
The Birth of a Nation (Credit: Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures)
It's the season for the Oscar hopeful, and none has had a more tortuous path than this period drama about the slave Nat Turner, who led a rebellion in Virginia, US in 1831. The directorial debut of Nate Parker was universally acclaimed when it premiered at Sundance in January, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and was snapped up by Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million (£13.5m) - the largest deal signed at the festival since its launch in 1978. Yet Parker - who also co-wrote and co-produced the feature, and stars as Turner - was embroiled in controversy in August when 1999 rape charges against Parker and his co-writer resurfaced. Parker was acquitted in 2001, but one of the film's stars
Gabrielle Union - herself a victim of rape - has spoken out about the allegations. Before the news emerged, the film was being touted as an Oscar frontrunner: its title was intentionally borrowed from the 1915 film by DW Griffith, with Parker saying that "I've reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America". Critics were positive at Sundance. "A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease," said Variety. Released 7 October in Canada and the US. (Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures)
My Life as a Courgette (Credit: Credit: Rita Productions)
My Life as a Courgette
Selected as Switzerland's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, this stop-motion feature drew praise when it premiered at Cannes. The feature debut from director
Claude Barras was adapted from the young adult novel by Gilles Paris by the French screenwriter Céline Sciamma (Girlhood, Tomboy). Despite its humorous title, the animation doesn't hold back: Courgette is recovering from the death of his alcoholic mother at an orphanage, while his love interest witnessed her parents' murder-suicide. As Variety put it, "He's allowed to be melancholy, and at times, the movie feels as blue as the bags under his eyes, the emotional equivalent of spending the recess hour staring out a rain-streaked window. Capturing and conveying that mood without lapsing into downbeat or depressive territory is harder than it sounds, but My Life as a Courgette finds that balance." According to The Hollywood Reporter, "this lovingly told and gorgeously rendered story... is nonetheless not exactly a tale for all ages". Released 19 October in France, 26 October in Belgium and 28 October in Sweden. (Credit: Rita Productions)
I,
Daniel Blake (Credit: Credit: BFI)
I,
Daniel Blake
Ken Loach's latest won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, with Variety arguing that I,
Daniel Blake "is one of Loach's finest films, a drama of tender devastation", in which Loach employs "his bone-deep empathy for the desperate and the downtrodden". Telling the story of a joiner in Newcastle (played by comedian Dave Johns) who crosses paths with a young single mother (Hayley Squires) and her two children, it's "as timely today as was Kes in the late '60s", according to Sight and Sound. "It's a spare film, muted in colour and unflashy - and it's all the more powerful and urgent for it," says Time Out, claiming "it shares its purpose with some humour and a whole load of passion and fury". Released 21 October in Poland and 26 October in Belgium and France. (Credit: BFI)
Doctor Strange (Credit: Credit: Marvel Studios)
The latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe stars
Benedict Cumberbatch as a former neurosurgeon who learns magic after his hands are damaged in a car accident. The film has been described as psychedelic, and according to Cinema Blend "is expected to be one of the most visually exciting movies this franchise has produced". It has a strong cast: Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams co-star in what "promises to be slightly darker fare thanks to its… director, the horror-film vet Scott Derrickson". On general release from 25 October. (Credit: Marvel Studios)
Frantz (Credit: Credit: Mandarin Films)
Frantz
François Ozon's period war drama has been called "Ozon's best film in years… astonishingly beautiful and inquisitive". A remake of screwball comedy master Ernst Lubitsch's anti-war drama Broken Lullaby - released 14 years after the World War One Armistice - it "plays like classic melodrama", according to Variety. "Soft-pedalling the pacificism", the French director has added a new second half to the story of a woman (Paula Beer) mourning her dead fiancé (Anton von Lucke, who appears in flashbacks). The Guardian praised Beer, claiming that "Ozon is often at his best when working with women, and he has a fabulous talent in Paula Beer… she's stunning in the role". Released 6 October in Switzerland, 20 October in Greece and 21 October in Austria. (Credit: Mandarin Films)
Mascots (Credit: Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix)
Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show) focuses on the world of the competitive mascot in his latest improvised comedy. While Guest's films have been labelled 'mockumentary', he rejects the term, calling it "the word that shall not be spoken". The British-American director's intention is not to mock, but to explore subcultures in a documentary style: he told the LA Times "I'm drawn as well to the lower echelons of things, because it struck me a long time ago that it didn't really matter on what level people were working on anything, it was just as important to them as the people working on what's perceived as a higher level… The people are just as nervous, just as excited. The stakes are just as high." He explains how he felt discovering a website dedicated to shoelaces. "That was very enjoyable to me. That someone was so deeply into this, and it wasn't a joke… And I thought, thank you." Mascots stars many of Guest's regular troupe of actors including Parker Posey, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins and Chris O'Dowd: according to The Wrap, the film "isn't a revelation or a new high-water mark for Guest - but it is a demonstration of how good he is at this kind of stuff". Released 13 October in Argentina, Brazil and Spain. (Credit: Scott Garfield/Netflix)
'13th (Credit: Credit: Kandoo Films/Netflix)
'13th
The first documentary to open the New York Film Festival (where it received a standing ovation), '13th is named after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which theoretically outlawed slavery.
Director Ava DuVernay (Selma) "makes the case that the institution of slavery in
America was effectively replaced by the mass incarceration of black people in our prison system", according to Vanity Fair: the scrolling text in its trailer states "What you see on the news is a story 150 years in the making". A mix of archival footage and testimonies from activists, politicians and historians, including
Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander, Van Jones and Newt Gingrich, the film ranges from DW Griffith's 1915 The Birth of a Nation to the current
Black Lives Matter movement. "By the time her movie ends," says The New York Times, "DuVernay has delivered a stirring treatise on the prison industrial complex through a nexus of racism, capitalism, policies and politics. It sounds exhausting, but it's electrifying." Available to stream on Netflix from 7 October. (Credit: Kandoo Films/Netflix)
Aquarius (Credit: Credit: SBS Productions)
At Cannes this year, Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendonça Filho and the cast and crew of Aquarius staged a protest against the suspension of the country's president Dilma Rousseff. Since then, he claims the interim government is attempting to punish him by giving the film an 18+ classification (damaging the film's commercial prospects) and appointing a critic of Mendonça's to the committee selecting Brazil's submission for the foreign language Oscar. Several film-makers have withdrawn from the Oscar selection process in protest at the appointment, while others have resigned from the committee. Regardless of which film is selected to represent Brazil, Aquarius could have another Oscar nomination: according to Variety, "Sônia Braga's performance was raved in Cannes, leading many to count her as a strong leading actress possibility". Braga plays a woman who refuses to leave her apartment after developers circle - The Guardian praised Aquarius as "a densely observed and superbly acted portrait of a woman of a certain age". Released 1 October in Canada, 7 October in South Korea and 14 October in the US. (Credit: SBS Productions)
