Top Cultural Experiences to Explore This Autumn

If you only catch one, catch: Gladiator II

15 November

Has Paul Mescal got what Russell Crowe had? Director Ridley Scott thinks so, picking the young Irish heart-throb to topline a new swords-and-sandals adventure set in ancient Rome and based on the legacy of the characters from Scott’s 2000 Oscar-winner. Mescal plays Lucius, grandson of Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris’s character in Gladiator), who finds himself forced into the arena.

Speak No Evil

12 September

The Danish original of Speak No Evil was a shocking lo-fi horror with an almost unspeakably cruel mystery involving a mute child at its core. This new version looks to have been given the glossy Blumhouse treatment with a likable cast (James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi, Scoot McNairy) playing the two sets of parents who vibe with each other on a family holiday and decide to maintain the friendship, to the huge later regret of one couple.

In Camera

13 September

Biting yet playful, this brilliant debut about a would-be actor’s awful auditions announces director Naqqash Khalid as the kind of talent sorely missing from UK film. Back in the day, British cinema had the likes of Nic Roeg producing formally inventive film-making, while the so-called “angry young men” drew attention to injustice. But why not do both? In Camera manages just that, with sly brilliance.

Wolfs

20 September

Brad Pitt and George Clooney are some of the last real blue-chip movie stars out there, and ever since Ocean’s Eleven it’s been a treat to watch them team up and turn on the old-school charm. In this action comedy, they reunite after 16 years to play rival fixers assigned to the same job.

The Substance

20 September

A fading celebrity partaking of an out-there new black-market anti-ageing drug? We simply don’t believe it. Demi Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, the star of an aerobics show fired on her 50th birthday because of her age, in this body horror from French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, which premiered to acclaim at the Cannes film festival.

Joker: Folie à Deux

4 October

Two years after the events of Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is back – and this time he’s got Lady Gaga on board as the music therapist at Arkham Asylum who falls hard for the patient who killed off a talk show host live on air. So far, so comic-book sequel. But hang on to your hats: this one is a musical. And no, that’s not a joke.

The Apprentice

18 October

Drawing on Donald Trump’s career as a real-estate businessman in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes from the Marvel films) does his best impression of the Donald, with Jeremy Strong (Kendall from Succession) as Roy Cohn, the ferocious lawyer who, among many other unsavoury achievements, was a mentor to Trump. A real horror-villain origin story.

Timestalker

18 October

You’ve seen her on screen in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Sightseers, and you might have caught her low-budget directorial debut Prevenge, about a pregnant serial killer. Now Alice Lowe is building on the promise of that film in this British comedy about an obsessive love reincarnated across the ages. The new romantic era is a particular highlight.

Anora

1 November

A new movie from Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) is always cause for celebration. So we’d recommend getting excited about this Pretty Woman riff even if it hadn’t also won the Cannes film festival’s Palme d’Or, earlier this year. Mikey Madison plays the sex worker who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, who is none too thrilled to hear about his new daughter-in-law.

Wicked

22 November

It’s always the way: you wait all year for a musical and then two come along at once (see: Joker: Folie à Deux). This long-hyped stage-to-screen adaptation of the Broadway smash-hit Wizard of Oz riff stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum.

Source: The Guardian, The Observer, Particle News