October film preview: Taylor Swift hits the multiplex, the Exorcist sequel finally arrives, and more

Cast: Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Ellen Burstyn

Director: David Gordon Green

Director William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece The Exorcist basically invented the modern concept of the blockbuster—sorry, Jaws—and turned horror into a respectable genre. So when the time came for a direct sequel—not the lame follow-ups that cluttered multiplexes for years—after a 50-year wait the directing and co-writing reigns were handed to ... the guys who rebooted Halloween? If The Exorcist: Believer is going to honor a groundbreaking original that was nominated for 10 Oscars, director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride had better up their game considerably, especially since the horror genre is now overflowing with sophisticated, clever, and scary content. The Exorcist: Believer’s ace in the hole is Ellen Burstyn, returning to the franchise for the first time since the OG Exorcist. She once again plays Chris MacNeil, the mother of Regan (Linda Blair), the first film’s vomit-spewing 12-year-old. In the new film, Leslie Odom Jr. stars as a widower trying to save his possessed daughter (Lidya Jewett) with the help of Burstyn and Ann Dowd. We’re definitely intrigued by The Exorcist: Believer, mostly because we’re deathly curious as to whether Green and company can pull off a sequel worthy of an undisputed classic. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser

Director: Martin Scorsese

David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 nonfiction book Killers Of The Flower Moon shed long-overdue light on one of the darkest and most troubling chapters in American history. Now the story is about to get an even harsher spotlight in director Martin Scorsese’s epic film adaptation, also titled Killers Of The Flower Moon. In the book and the film, members of the Osage Indian Nation are murdered after oil is found underneath their Oklahoma land, which makes them some of the richest people on the planet. Coincidence? We think not. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, the husband of an Osage woman (played by Lily Gladstone), and Robert De Niro plays William Hale, a local cattleman with designs on the Osage’s oil-rich land. Jesse Plemons is a lawman with the BOI (the precursor to the FBI) entrusted with discovering who’s doing the killing. The film was well received when it premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, which should get the ball rolling for an awards season run. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen

Director: Nahnatchka Khan

Of all the riffs we could imagine on 1985’s Back To The Future, a slasher comedy from Blumhouse TV would not have been our first thought. And yet here comes Totally Killer, a high-concept laugher that, if the Funsville trailer is any indication, has all sorts of targets in its satirical sights. Directed by Nahnatchka Khan (Always Be My Maybe), the film skewers time travel movies, horror movies, and ’80s movies. Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) stars as a woman who accidentally travels back in time 35 years to the night when the Sweet Sixteen Killer slaughtered three teen girls. Stuck in the past, she partners with the teenage version of her mother (Olivia Holt) to find the killer before he kills again … for the first time. Modern Family’s Julie Bowen co-stars in a film that looks to be quite a lark in a Prime Video and chill kinda way. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, Jurnee Smollett, Alan Ruck, and Mamoudou Athie

Director: Maggie Betts

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned courtroom drama and there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned David vs. Goliath story; combine them both and you’ve got The Burial. Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones stars as the little guy fighting the corporate takeover of his funeral home. Fellow Oscar winner Jamie Foxx stars as personal injury lawyer Willie E. Gary. The film is based on an actual Mississippi court case from 1995 but we’re not here to see yet another true story unfold with the barest wisp of fidelity to real events. We’re here to see two Oscar winners go toe-to-toe and—according to reports from the Toronto Film Festival where the movie premiered—the racial and socioeconomic overtones that give The Burial an added frisson of contemporary relevance. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Jack Lacy, Kiefer Sutherland, Lance Reddick

Director: William Friedkin

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is worth watching based on pedigree alone. It’s the final film from the late director William Friedkin, who reinvented the action thriller with 1971’s The French Connection and practically invented the modern horror film with 1973’s The Exorcist. It’s based on the 1952 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk that was already made into a 1954 movie starring Humphrey Bogart. If all those years sound way too long ago, then credit Friedkin for updating the text so its courtroom dramatics take place post-9/11. The broad strokes, however, remain the same: it involves the court martial of a naval lieutenant (here played by Jake Lacy) on trial for mutiny after relieving his superior officer, Commander Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland), of duty when high winds threatened the safety of their mine sweeper. The film, dedicated to the late Lance Reddick (the John Wick series), who plays the presiding judge, predominantly unfolds in the courtroom, allowing Friedkin to turn up the rhetorical heat, trapping us inside a room where morality is never black or white, and one man’s mutiny is another man’s sole chance at survival. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Taylor Swift

Director: Sam Wrench

If you’re a Taylor Swift fan who either caught her Eras tour, or if you missed her shows because Ticketmaster famously botched the sales, or because you couldn’t afford resale tickets that reached as high as $20,000 per seat, then Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film is for you. In what will undoubtedly be Barbenheimer II (without the “heimer” part), the film is tracking for a box office opening weekend of some $100 million. It’s directed by concert film veteran Sam Wrench (Billie Eilish Live At The O2) and, assuming he pointed the camera in the right direction, the film should be spectacular. Swift is beyond a generational talent and her shows on this tour have been massive in scale and massively well-received. So get those chants ready and don’t skimp on the friendship bracelets because AMC has upgraded its ticketing system to ensure that buying seats won’t be the hair-pulling, home-mortgaging experience it was with Ticketmaster. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud

Director: Justine Triet

Part mystery, part legal drama, Anatomy Of A Fall is generating buzz, particularly for the riveting performance of lead actress Sandra Hüller, who plays a famous author put on trial for murder after her husband falls from their attic to his death. Director and co-writer Justine Triet uses the framing of the criminal case to examine a failed marriage (the title works both literally and metaphorically) and the complex personalities at the center of it. Foreign films like All Quiet On The Western Front and Parasite have been nominated in the Best Picture category at the Oscars in recent years, so it wouldn’t be a shock if the French-language Anatomy Of A Fall, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, lands there this year as well. [Cindy White]

Cast: Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans

Directors: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin

If Annette Bening doesn’t earn her fifth Oscar nomination for her role as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad in Netflix’s Nyad, we’re going to start flipping tables. At 64 years old, Nyad, in real life and as portrayed by Bening, overcame fears of inadequacy and aging to realize her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida without the benefit of a shark cage, which had protected previous swimmers attempting the same 100-mile feat. Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster co-stars as Nyad’s coach and friend while Rhys Ifans plays the navigator helping Nyad chart her course and keep her safe. Nyad was directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin who gave us the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, so look for plenty of tense, realistic moments as Nyad faces jellyfish, a shark, and bruising storms to reach her goal. Inspirational stories of overcoming impossible odds are nothing new. But Nyad has the benefit of featuring the once-in-a-lifetime pairing of two acting heavyweights. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Director: Alexander Payne

Alexander Payne reunites with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers, an intimate comedy set at a New England boarding school during winter break in 1970. Given the delightfully retro feel of the trailer, we’re expecting the film to be a throwback tribute to filmmakers of the era like Hal Ashby and Robert Altman, who mixed wry comedy and heartfelt drama with a humanist sensibility. Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly teacher who stays behind at the school over the holidays because he has nowhere to go. His solitude is disrupted by the two other holdovers, a troubled student (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Together, the three of them find unlikely common ground within the walls of the empty academy. [Cindy White]

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Sophie Charlotte

Director: David Fincher

Any new project from director David Fincher is cause for excitement, but The Killer reunites him with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, so basically we’re in line for this already. Based on the French graphic novel of the same name, Michael Fassbender plays a professional hitman seeking vengeance after the bad guys looking for him leave his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) near death instead. The movie was respectfully received at this year’s Venice Film Festival but we’re not concerned. The idea of the cool, methodical, and precise Fincher directing a film about a cool, methodical, and precise hitman is just too perfect. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy García, Catherine O’Hara, Jay Duplass, Brian d’Arcy James

Director: David Yates

Contemporary thrillers about pharmaceutical companies are pretty rare (Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is the first that comes to mind), so score one for Pain Hustlers, directed by David Yates, who gave us four Harry Potter films and three Fantastic Beasts epics. Emily Blunt plays a high school dropout and single mom who gets caught up in a conspiracy after she’s hired to work at a floundering pharmaceutical start-up. The film is based on Evan Hughes’ New York Times Magazine article, The Pain Hustlers, and his subsequent novel, The Hard Sell. Figure on thrills mixed with a takedown of Big Pharma and harsh commentary on the opioid crisis. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: John Cena, Alison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba, Christian Slater, Alice Eve

Director: Pierre Morel

John Cena continues his quest to become the next big-budget, self-effacing action hero leading man with Freelance. Cena plays a long-retired Special Forces operator who takes a gig protecting a journalist interviewing a dictator in a war-torn country. When a military coup breaks out, Cena must protect them both. The movie is directed by Pierre Morel, who is not known for comedy, but he did direct Taken so the action should be aggressively blowy-uppy. Alison Brie, who’s always terrific in smaller-scaled comedies, looks ready to take the action heroine leap. Freelance, which co-stars Juan Pablo Raba and Christian Slater, has disposable breezy fun written all over it. [Mark Keizer]

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Mary Stuart Masterson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio

Director: Emma Tammi

Chuck E. Cheese has always been some sort of horror show, whether you find subpar pizza and dubious children’s play equipment frightening, or simply find the idea of having a rodent as a mascot for a food establishment objectionable. So it’s not much of a surprise that someone (in this case, game developer Scott Cawthon) would take that idea and twist it to its logical extreme, i.e., imagining a world in which the animatronics at a kids’ pizza joint come to life at night and kill people. That’s the basic idea behind Five Nights At Freddy’s, the 2014 video game that exploded into a giant cross-media franchise. The film adaptation has been in the works since 2015, which is not a great sign—and neither is its simultaneous theatrical and Peacock release. Still, with Jason Blum and his horror hit factory Blumhouse attached as producers and a massive built-in fanbase, FNAF might just surprise us. Kind of like a homicidal animatronic bear lurking in the shadows of a dark restaurant, waiting to stab the nearest security guard. [Jen Lennon]