Fall Movies Preview

High-profile fantasies, a fresh batch of bio-pics, and new films from Netflix.
Ad Astra Harriet and The Irishman
Illustration by Max Dalton

The New York Film Festival, at Lincoln Center (Sept. 27-Oct. 13), is the city’s main movie event, and this year’s edition includes a trio of films from Netflix. The festival’s opening-night offering is Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” starring Robert De Niro as a hit man whose exploits connect with politics—in particular, the real-life disappearance, in 1975, of the union leader Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino). Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Anna Paquin co-star. Noah Baumbach’s romantic drama “Marriage Story,” the festival’s centerpiece, stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as an actress and a playwright going through a bitter divorce; Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta co-star. Among the festival’s main slate of films will be the French actress and director Mati Diop’s first feature, “Atlantics,” a drama set in Dakar, Senegal, about a young woman named Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) who confronts supernatural disturbances when her family thwarts her relationship with a construction worker (Ibrahima Traoré).

Bio-pics, as ever, are prominent among fall releases, but this year’s batch covers a distinctive range of historical figures. “Harriet” (Nov. 1), directed by Kasi Lemmons (who wrote the script with Gregory Allen Howard), stars Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery, liberated hundreds of other enslaved Africans via the Underground Railroad, and worked on behalf of women’s suffrage. Janelle Monáe, Joe Alwyn, and Leslie Odom, Jr., co-star. Renée Zellweger plays Judy Garland in “Judy” (Sept. 27), which is centered on the singer’s performances in London in 1968, the year before her death. It’s directed by Rupert Goold; Rufus Sewell co-stars, as Garland’s husband Sid Luft, and Jessie Buckley plays her assistant. In James Mangold’s drama “Ford v Ferrari” (Nov. 15), Matt Damon plays the car designer Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale plays the race-car driver Ken Miles, who, in the mid-sixties, joined forces to take part in the twenty-four-hour Le Mans competition. “Hustlers” (Sept. 13), written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, is based on the true story of a group of New York strippers who teamed up, after the 2008 financial crisis, to extract money from rich men by any means necessary. Constance Wu, Cardi B, and Jennifer Lopez star; Julia Stiles plays a journalist reporting on their deeds.

High-profile fantasies extend from outer space to Gotham City. James Gray’s science-fiction drama, “Ad Astra” (Sept. 20), is the story of an astronaut (Brad Pitt) who undertakes a dangerous mission to find his father (Tommy Lee Jones) deep in space. Liv Tyler, Ruth Negga, and Donald Sutherland co-star. In Pedro Almodóvar’s movie-centered drama “Pain and Glory” (Oct. 4), Antonio Banderas plays an aged director whose creative and personal struggles unleash a torrent of memories, including ones involving his mother (Penélope Cruz). The South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s thriller “Parasite” (Oct. 11) follows members of a poor family in Seoul who, under false pretenses, move into a rich family’s palatial home. “Joker” (Oct. 4), the latest installment in the Batman series, stars Joaquin Phoenix in a tale of the villain’s turn to the dark side. Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, and Marc Maron co-star, and Dante Pereira-Olson plays Bruce Wayne. ♦