October film preview: Dwayne Johnson's Smashing Machine wrestles Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein
October is shaping up to be a packed month with new releases from Shane Black, Luca Guadagnino, Nia DaCosta, Edward Berger, Kathryn Bigelow, and more.
Photo: Netflix
After a relatively light movie year, Hollywood has prepared a cornucopia of new releases for both streaming and theaters during the harvest season. With two new releases from Richard Linklater, the first Shane Black and Kathryn Bigelow movies in nearly a decade, the return of Daniel Day-Lewis, and another game of Tron, October promises one of the most densely packed movie months of the year. Those are the treats, but the trick? A distinct lack of horror movies! Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is arguably the only creature feature hitting screens this month, and that’s being folded into Netflix’s auteur-packed Oscar package. Regardless, there are still plenty of exciting new releases this month, including new works from Kelly Reichardt, Nia DaCosta, and Jafar Panahi, whose Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident bows this month. Grab your pumpkin-shaped popcorn bucket and get ready to hit the movies with our October film preview.
Play Dirty (October 1)
Shane Black’s long-awaited follow-up to The Nice Guys (we’ll just politely forget about The Predator), his Donald E. Westlake adaptation Play Dirty teams Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield for a Big Apple pirate ship heist. Wahlberg leads a team of thieves, including a treacherous ex-lover (Rosa Salazar), on a caper to steal from the mafia, a billionaire, and an army. The trailer promises plenty of action and laughs, but points must be deducted for being a Prime Video streaming-only release.
The Smashing Machine (October 3)
Dwayne Johnson’s entire Oscar campaign rests upon whether audiences believe him as MMA legend Mark Kerr. Credit where it’s due: He looks more refrigerator than Rock in the trailer. Johnson is aiming for dramatic highs in Benny Safdie’s sports biopic about the rise and fall of a champion, with heavy prosthetics, a soft, high-pitched voice, and relationship troubles with Emily Blunt.
Anemone (October 10)
Returning to the big screen for the first time since 2017, Daniel Day-Lewis stars in a psychological drama directed by his son, Ronan. If anything’s going to bring him back to film, it might as well be a movie he co-wrote with his kid. Daniel Day-Lewis plays a hermit living in Northern England who gets an unexpected visit from his estranged brother (Sean Bean)—and the trailer teases the Daniel Plainview intensity that audiences crave from the actor.
After The Hunt (October 10)
Luca Guadagnino is back to his provocative ways with After The Hunt, a star-studded movie that dares to ask: Has #MeToo gone too far? A Yale professor (Julia Roberts) finds herself in a thorny scandal after a close friend and colleague (Andrew Garfield) is accused of assault by her star pupil (Ayo Edebiri).
