Coming Soon: October 9th Releases

The focus here has remained on director Joe Wright's continual defense of casting Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, a Native American princess in the works of J. M. Barrie, though there's an entirely different aspect of the movie to discuss: Are audiences interested in this origin tale? Box-office researchers and prognosticators say "not so much" and we saw a great line in one of the first reviews that read "[the story] explains that which needed no explanation." We do feel like Wright has created an incredible-looking take on Neverland, and that Hugh Jackman's performance alone should make the movie worth viewing, but we also feel as though Pan could be the first box-office disappointment of the fall.

Robert Zemeckis's photorealistic take on Philippe Petit's high-wire walk goes into wide release this week.

We're sort of feeling this small-town dramedy, a definite throwback to that sugar-sweetened era between Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. That audience still exists and they are criminally underserved by Hollywood, so the spinster Ave Maria Mulligan might nestle in for a good, long shelf life.

A collaboration between Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin, and Michael Fassbender is worthy of all the advanced attention that Steve Jobs has received, and we freely admit that we're so, so happy we've never seen that Ashton Kutcher movie so our imagination is free from bad movie-going experiences and having to make any comparisons. Also, we don't have to sit through anything about iOS 9 or the Apple Watch.

The difference between this slasher and the recent Abigail Breslin/Wes Bentley movie is: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, and company feel it's better to serve the horror audience some comedy with their homage to the 'final girl' trope. The cast is letter-perfect and director Todd Strauss-Schulson has a feel for comedy, so we're crossing our fingers for a true neo-classic experience.

Sebastian Schipper's single-shot crime epic has earned raves all over the world (it was a big winner at the Berlin International Film Festival) and having held our breath through the trailer many times, it's become one of the top movies on our fall radar. The soundtrack by Nils Frahm sounds like it deserves its own awards, too.