With summer not quite over and fall itching to get started, September is when the movie industry bridges the gap between mostly lighter popcorn fare and more prestigious award-seeking efforts.
Sept. 4
‘Legend of the White Dragon’Sept. 6
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’No one was expecting or clamoring for a sequel to the 1988 original but, once it was announced, fans began to get excited. Returning are director Tim Burton, and actors Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton, who’s the title character. New additions include Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and Jenna Ortega as the Ryder character’s daughter.
This drama, a festival favorite from 2022, was written, directed, produced by and stars Nadine Crocker as a woman coming to terms with a recent, self-inflicted traumatic event. The film currently has a 100 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In what appears to be a reworking of “A Thousand Acres” (1997), itself an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” this family drama stars Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as estranged sisters who return to their childhood home to care for their ailing father.
Suggesting an update on the 1970s “Walking Tall” franchise, this action drama from filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier stars Don Johnson, James Cromwell, and AnnaSophia Robb. A simple bail posting leads to the uncovering of widespread corruption in a small, sleepy Southern town.
Sept. 13
‘The 4:30 Movie’Sept. 20
‘Wolfs’Co-producers George Clooney and Brad Pitt combine forces as competing corporate “fixers” mistakenly hired for the same job. With writer-director Jon Watts helming of the last three live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe “Spider-Man” movies, it will be interesting to see what he does with a lower budget and a more realistic, adult audience-oriented project.
Suggesting a riff on “The Elephant Man,” filmmaker Aaron Schimberg’s offbeat comedy stars Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson as two versions of the same man. Pearson, who in real life is afflicted by a rare disease (neurofibromatosis), is the pre-op version with Stan playing the cured incarnation.
This sci-fi dramatic comedy has a great premise. Mary-Louise Parker stars as a woman approaching middle age who is afforded the opportunity to go back in time to rearrange her past and become the person she dreamed of in her youth.
Sept. 27
‘Megalopolis’Decades in the making, this reimagining of the fall of the Roman Empire set against a modern-day Manhattan backdrop from writer-director-producer Francis Ford Coppola could be an epic triumph or a multimillion-dollar train wreck. The all-star cast includes Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Talia Shire, and Shia LaBeouf.
Alex Wolff, Lewis Pullman, Halle Bailey, and John Malkovich lead an ensemble cast in this edgy class warfare drama about the member of a snooty college fraternity, whose lifestyle choices are questioned when he starts dating a woman deemed not good enough.
What to Watch (for)
In 2022 and 2023, September proved to be worst for the domestic box office in those years, and there is no reason to think 2024 will be any different. Some blame back to school, others summer movie fatigue, but I think, again, it’s because a bridge or holding pattern month.The closest to a sure thing on this list is “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” for the reasons mentioned above. Everything else is either a niche or genre production, or franchise extension. Even “Wolfs” with mega-watt co-leads Pitt and Clooney is 50/50 at best.
Over the past 11 months, Apple Studios have released six straight box office bombs (“Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Napoleon,” “The Family Plan,” “Argylle,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “The Instigators”). In the first week of August Apple decided “Wolfs” would only have a one-week theatrical run before going on-demand permanently. This is somewhat odd as a sequel is already in the works. There has to come a time when the board of directors are going to figure out feature films just isn’t the company’s forte and the plug will be pulled.
