This Friday essentially sees the summer movie season come to an end with the release of ‘War Dogs’, ‘Ben-Hur’, and ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’. Since I wrote that article a few weeks ago about the disappointing nature of the summer we’ve had a few notable releases. ‘Jason Bourne’ made a few dollars but was a disappointment critically. ‘Suicide Squad’ broke the record for opening weekend box office in August but crashed hard and was savaged by critics. Last week finally saw a couple movies come out that had some positive buzz with ‘Sausage Party’ and ‘Pete’s Dragon’ but neither made a huge splash monetarily. As the weather starts to gradually cool off the movies at the theater start to shift from big budget popcorn flicks to more significant stories with an eye towards the Academy Awards. Of course there are still some of those big budget blockbusters but its not every weekend exhausting moviegoers. I’m sure some of the best movies to come out over the next four months aren’t even on my radar yet but I’ve pulled the titles that jumped out to me for this fall. The best season for movies is upon us, lets hope most of these live up to their potential.

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The Light Between Oceans (September 2nd) – Director Derek Cianfrance is two for two in my book and I’m excited to see if he can make it three straight hits to start his career. I loved 2010’s depressing look at love and marriage ‘Blue Valentine’ as well as ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ which came out a couple years later and chronicled the small epic of a rivalry between a criminal and a police officer. This time around he’s adapting a book about a couple in Australia who recover a baby who has washed ashore and how raising her effects their relationship. The cast is great with Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz, and last year’s breakout actress Alicia Vikander. The trailer gave me enough to feel confident that the film will have some dramatic heft and I look forward to seeing if it earns any award show nominations.

Sully (September 9th) – Clint Eastwood doesn’t have a very good track record of late despite ‘American Sniper’ making a bunch of money and getting award nominations but its hard not to be intrigued by a movie based on the pilot who crash landed his plane in the Hudson River, with said pilot being played by Tom Hanks. Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, and Anna Gunn round out the cast. I expect that I will be disappointed yet again by the 86 year old director but I’m always waiting to see if he can get back to what he was doing in the mid-2000’s.

Blair Witch (September 16th) – Formally titled ‘The Woods’ before surprising fans at a comic-con screening with the news that this horror movie is actually a direct sequel to the classic original ‘The Blair Witch Project’. The buzz after that screening was very positive and while that doesn’t mean all that much, its like shooting fish in a barrel, I’m bullish on the director/writer team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett. They were behind two very good horror/thriller’s ‘The Guest’ and ‘You’re Next’ and have only seen their prospects rise in the meantime.

The Magnificent Seven (September 23rd) – ‘Seven Samurai’ is one of my favorite films and its story is so good that it has seen many versions of it remade with a different skin. ‘The Magnificent Seven’ was a 1960 Western version of it and now that film is being remade. Last year saw two plays on the story at both ends of the spectrum with Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ and Adam Sandler’s ‘The Ridiculous 6’ and I expect this one starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onofrio to fall somewhere in the middle. Hopefully closer to the former, I expect it to be a fun film.

American Honey (September 30th) – The American film debut from UK director Andrea Arnold, who made one of my favorite movies of 2009 with ‘Fish Tank’, won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Sasha Lane, and Riley Keough its a road trip movie about a girl who gets involved in a magazine sales crew led by LaBeouf. The trailer plays a little bit like ‘Spring Breakers’ with crime mixed with partying. Count me in.

The Girl on the Train (October 7th) – I’m sure there are people who know a lot more about this one than me going into it since its based on a best selling novel. All I’ve heard is that its this year’s ‘Gone Girl’ which I was a huge fan of. Granted, Tate Taylor is not David Fincher but he’s not nobody either. ‘Get On Up’ was an underrated James Brown biopic that people should check out and ‘The Help’ was handled better than I expected it to be. Emily Blunt is always entrancing, Rebecca Ferguson is coming off her breakout performance in ‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’, and Justin Theroux is great on ‘The Leftovers’. Reading the plot synopsis I’m reminded of ‘Strangers On A Train’ the great Alfred Hitchcock film. One can only hope.

Doctor Strange (November 4th) – The Marvel Cinematic Universe keeps on chugging along while the DCEU is still looking for their first real success and ‘Doctor Strange’ is the next movie in phase three following ‘Captain America: Civil War’. Marvel has done a good job alternating between sequels to established characters and teams and introducing new heroes to the fold and here they’re going to enter the magic realm with Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch. The trailers have looked great with ‘Inception’ style trippy imagery and action sequences. Scott Derrickson is directing which is the only thing that gives me pause. So far he’s directed mostly mediocre horror movies but it seems Marvel is a well oiled enough machine that he can be a workable cog in it. Mads Mikkelson plays the villain and the rest of the cast includes Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Arrival (November 11th) – Denis Villanueve is coming off of last year’s action thriller ‘Sicario’ and has the ‘Blade Runner’ sequel in the works because of it. But before we see what he does with that he’s giving us a sci-fi drama about humans trying to communicate with aliens after multiple spacecrafts touch down on earth. Amy Adams stars as a linguist who leads a team with Jeremy Renner as a mathematician and Forrest Whitaker as an Army Colonel into one of the spaceships and the trailer already had me tense. I’ve enjoyed every movie I’ve seen from Villanueve including ‘Enemy’, ‘Prisoners’, and ‘Incendies’. He’s on his way to joining the elite when it comes to Hollywood directors.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (November 18th) – I haven’t been wowed by the trailers for this and I’m still not exactly sure the reason for its being but its still a big budget movie set in the Harry Potter universe so I feel like I have to see it. David Yates returns to direct after helming the last four of the Potter movies and Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne leads the way. The real reason to anticipate it is that J.K. Rowling herself wrote it. It may just be a cash grab to keep this money making franchise rolling for Warner Brothers but the creative team behind it indicates they’ll at least put some real effort into making it good.

Manchester By the Sea (November 18th) – Probably the movie with the most positive critical buzz coming out of the Sundance film festival in January. Casey Affleck stars as a man who has to return to his home town after his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies suddenly to take care of his nephew. Michelle Williams is also in the movie directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who’s two previous films ‘You Can Count On Me’ and ‘Margaret’ were very good indies. The movie currently holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 91 on Meta Critic, well on its way to awards contention.

Nocturnal Animals (November 18th) – I don’t have much to go on here other than the plot synopsis: “An art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband’s novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a veiled threat and a symbolic revenge tale.” That sounds intriguing and then you have the cast which includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Laura Linney, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, and Armie Hammer. Tom Ford is directing his follow up to ‘A Single Man’ which found its way into awards contention in 2009. He has a great visual style and gets great performances from his actors if his directorial debut is to be believed.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (December 16th) – Last December Star Wars announced it’s return with a bang as ‘The Force Awakens’ smashed box office records. After Disney purchased LucasFilm they announced that they would release a new Star Wars film every year alternating between official Skywalker episodes and standalone spin-offs. ‘Rogue One’ is the first of those spin-offs, essentially a prequel leading directly into ‘A New Hope’ as the rebels steal the plans for the Death Star. Gareth Edwards directs coming off of his ‘Godzilla’ reboot where he proved he can shoot destruction on a grand scale with great results, story aside. Felicity Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelson, and Forest Whitaker lead the ensemble cast and the trailers look great, putting the action on the ground level.

Assassin’s Creed (December 21st) – I’ve already written about the lack of any quality coming out of the video game genre, blindly naming ‘Assassin’s Creed’ as one of the five best with only seeing one trailer, but hopefully this can put it on the map that it is possible to make a good one. Justin Kurzel brings some gravitas in his follow up to last year’s ‘MacBeth’ with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard joining him. Jeremy Irons and Brendan Gleeson round out the cast. Its interesting that a cool looking action movie is slated to come out in December during the last push for awards contenders. But then again, so did ‘Point Break’ last year so we’ll see.

Passengers (December 21st) – This looks like its hoping to be this year’s ‘The Martian’, a fun sci-fi drama with a light comedic tone. It has two charismatic leads in Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence who are playing astronauts that are in a deep sleep during a 120 year mission only to wake up due to a malfunction with 90 years left. Aside from making a bunch of babies I guess they’ll have to troubleshoot a way to survive the situation. Morten Tyldum is the director, following up ‘The Imitation Game’ which got him some recognition but I didn’t really care for it that much.

Loving (Late 2016) – One of my favorite directors, Jeff Nichols, goes from not releasing a movie since 2013 to releasing two in 2016. Earlier this year he came out with ‘Midnight Special’ a Spielberg-esque sci-fi film about a kid with mysterious powers on the run from the CIA and a religious cult. It was a good movie worth checking out but it got away from Nichols’ roots and was ultimately my least favorite movie he’s made. ‘Loving’ premiered at Cannes to rave reviews and should be in contention for some loving from the awards voters. It stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as an interracial couple who get sent to prison just for getting married and it follows their battle through the legal system. I’m excited for Nichols’ profile to rise, he could be one of the next generation of great directors.

Silence (Late 2016) – Last but certainly not least is the next film from legendary director Martin Scorcese. He’s going from the rowdy, hilarious ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ to a quiet drama about two Jesuit Catholic priests who travel to Japan to spread the word and find themselves facing violent persecution. Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver are two of the three recognizable names in the cast with Liam Neeson being the third. Perhaps he can finally get back to being a real actor instead of getting paid to act tough and painfully run in generic action movies. I wonder how much longer the 73 year old director can keep putting out quality work but I’m here to find out and savor each one until the run ends.

What movies are you most looking forward to?

Bob Phelan
Bob Phelan

BSL Analyst

Bob is a co-host of ‘On the Verge’ an Orioles podcast focused on the O’s farm system here on BSL. He used to run the baseball blog ‘The Oriole Report’ before transitioning to podcasting about movies, TV, Video Games, and MMA. ‘The Redbox Report’ movie podcast was started in 2013 followed by ‘The Redbelt Report’ MMA podcast in 2016. Bob has also written for Konsume.com and BaltimoreSportsReport.com and delivers mail for a living in Baltimore County. Follow him on Twitter @TheOrioleReport.

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