Changing leaves, longer sleeves, the bright-yellow blur of school buses: Everywhere you look over the next few weeks, there will be signs that summer is winding down. Movie lovers have other ways of telling that the season is over and a new one is beginning. Following four months of almost nothing but splashy special-effects entertainment, theaters start serving films for grown-ups again — the serious dramas, biopics, and festival favorites that characterize what’s come to be known as awards season.
At last, a little nourishment! Not that the fall-movie calendar is devoid of popcorn pleasures this year or any other. The next four months will bring plenty of mass-appeal blockbuster fare — long-gestating sequels to Hollywood spectacles, last dances for Marvel and DC supervillains, musicals from Broadway and Disney. It’s just that these studio attractions will play down the hall from smaller, tougher, weirder films.
Those include the most-talked-about titles from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including the big winner and also a divisive, decades-in-the-making epic from a New Hollywood legend mired in controversy. Below, we’ve singled out 20 of the most exciting, notable, and/or buzzy movies coming to a theater (or streaming platform) near you between Labor Day and New Year’s. Taken together, they make up the menu for a more balanced moviegoing diet — the kind you can rarely cobble together during the junk-food buffet of the warmer weeks.
In the meantime, enjo.