The movie calendar, like
the seasons, follows clearly established patterns. The winter months are the
dumping ground for bad movies. Who wants to go to the movies in February
anyway? Spring and summer are blockbuster seasons, when Marvel and DC relentlessly
cram 2-3 franchise movies each down our collective throats. Now, however, we’re
into the fall movie season and movies that adults might actually enjoy. With
this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the big movie releases for the end
of September and October.
September
30
Deepwater
Horizon—The
latest Peter Berg-Mark Wahlberg collaboration (see also last year’s Lone Survivor) tells the story of the
crew of the offshore oil rig, Deepwater
Horizon. The rig, which exploded on April 20, 2010, triggered the largest
oil spill in American history. The explosion killed eleven of the one hundred
twenty-six crew on board. The rig sank thirty-six hours later, but continued
spilling 4.9 million barrels oil into the Gulf of Mexico until July 15, 2010,
causing irreversible damage to Louisiana’s coastal ecosystems and resulted in
billions of dollars worth of fines to BP and the other companies that ran the
rig. The film, focusing on the immediate aftermath of the explosion, slides
neatly into Wahlberg’s movie sweet spot—ordinary guy caught up in extraordinary
circumstances. Hopefully he doesn’t try a Southern accent.
October 7
The Birth of
a Nation—Nate
Parker stars and directs this retelling of a slave uprising in Virginia in
1831. Parker plays Nat Turner, a literate slave preacher who led some seventy or
so slaves in rebellion against their masters in Southampton County, Virginia. A
white militia eventually quelled the rebellion, but not before the deaths of
some 55-65 whites. The film looks to be a worthy companion piece to 2013’s Twelve Years a Slave that told the story
of a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film’s title is a
deliberate play on W.B. Griffith’s Birth
of a Nation that premiered in 1915 and portrayed African Americans as
animalistic predators seeking to destroy good, white Christian Americans.
Parker’s film seeks to reverse nearly a century of Hollywood minimizing or
ignoring the horrors of one of America’s original sins.
The Girl on
the Train—This
mystery thriller stars Emily Blunt as an alcoholic who hasn’t taken to her
divorce particularly well after discovering her husband cheated on her with
another woman. Her drinking and general instability get her caught up in a
missing person’s investigation where (SHOCKER) she goes from witness to
suspect. The film seems bent on capitalizing on the psychological and mystery elements
that made last year’s Gone Girl so
popular. The real question is whether the film can take its pulpy origins and
make something entertaining.
October
14
The
Accountant—According to the film’s description, Affleck (in a non-Batman
role) plays an accountant who is more interested in his spreadsheets than in
dealing with other people. He works as a forensic accountant for various criminal
organizations, shielding their money from the Federal government. He is pursued
by a Treasury agent (J.K. Simmons) and the standard chase movie hijinks seem to
ensue. The rest of the promising cast includes Anna Kendrick, Jeffrey Tambor,
and John Lithgow. Whether the film can rise above what seems to be a rather
formulaic plot remains to be seen.
October 28
Inferno—If you’d
forgotten that there was another one of these Dan Brown novels/movies coming,
we can’t blame you. Angels and Demons came
out in 2009 and garnered only a 37% from Rotten Tomatoes. It did, however, make
$485 million dollars, so maybe we can understand why Sony Pictures insisted on
another sequel. The plot seems to be exactly identical to the two previous movies
down to the conspiracies, threats to humanity, and a disposable female sidekick
(we’ve gone from Audrey Tautou to Ayelet Zurer to Felicity Jones). So at least
you know what the movie will be about, not that we’d recommend actually seeing
it however.
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