Education satires, a peasant revolt and an unlikely biopic highlight upcoming movie releases
With the kids back in school and movie theaters buzzing with their best audience numbers in years, September might be the perfect time to catch a matinee. These six upcoming features should be on your list of possibilities.
2022’s “Fall” was an unexpected low-budget hit with a simple premise — two best friends climb to the top of a television broadcast tower in the middle of nowhere, get stranded and must figure out a way down. In the sequel, Jax (Harriet Slater) links up with her late sister Shiloh’s friend Luce (Arsema Thomas) to embark on an insanely dangerous trail in Thailand, where they are soon stranded by a rain-driven rockslide. With a “great” concept, directors Michael and Peter Spierig’s film “looks like it’ll have a ton of high-tension moments,” said Anthony Nash at Coming Soon. (in theaters Sept. 2)
Andrew Garfield is billed simply as “The Ploughman” in the new film from director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Supremacy”). It tackles the historically consequential 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England against King Richard II (Woody Norman), driven by overtaxation and oppression. Cosmo Jarvis stars as Wat Tyler, the real historical figure at the heart of the uprising. The film, including a siege of London filmed in the signature shaky-cam Greengrass style, has “modern parallels in the anger, inequality and desire for justice that fueled the 14th-century uprising,” said Sophie Miller at Rolling Stone. (in theaters Sept. 10)
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Featuring one of those film concepts whose poor taste is part of the pitch, “Bad Apples” stars Saoirse Ronan as Maria, a struggling young elementary school teacher who inadvertently imprisons Danny (Eddie Waller), the class bully, in her basement when neither the principal (Rakie Ayola) or Danny’s father, Josh (Robert Emms), seem capable of controlling his destructive behavior. She then plays dumb as a massive law enforcement operation is launched to find him. This “warped, needling and sometimes bitterly funny” film is an “odd, wicked little amorality tale,” said Guy Lodge at Variety. (in theaters Sept. 18)
Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell) is a cerebral 12-year-old with a Greek mythology obsession whose father, Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), returns from prison and immediately assesses his son as soft and sets about trying to toughen him up, much to the consternation of Lil Ant’s mother, Lozita (Danielle Brooks). Director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s film, full of metaphors and magical realism, unfolds like a cinematic poem. A “gorgeously composed” coming-of-age story, it is “defined by a bracing sense of wonder and an evocatively delivered humanism,” said Robert Daniels at Roger Ebert. (in theaters Sept. 18)
Looking to take its place alongside the great education satires like “Election,” director Giselle Bonilla’s movie follows Doug (Will Brill), an elementary school’s embittered theater teacher who uses his annual production to sabotage efforts to become a blue ribbon institution by staging a deranged musical about 9/11.
All because he discovers the object of his affections, Abigail (Gillian Jacobs), is involved with the slick Principal Brady (Rob Lowe). A film about “kids play-acting a previous generation’s trauma,” its “exuberant, hand-made quality” plays like a student film, though in the best possible way,” said Bilge Ebiri at Vulture. (In theaters Sept. 18)
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Moviegoers of a certain age surely remember the brief run of a show called “To Catch a Predator” hosted by Chris Hansen in which actors play underage kids who lure predatory men in conjunction with law enforcement, amounting to a nationally televised series of sting operations. “Primetime” tells this pretty insane story as a “dark-but-oddly-zany bio-thriller” starring Robert Pattinson as Hansen, said Iana Murray and Jack King at GQ, and its “cultural relevance and basis on real events could be accessible enough to take Pattinson all the way to the Academy Awards.” Skyler Gisondo and singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers costar as an actor and a decoy in the stings. (in theaters Sept. 25)
David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.
