The leaves will soon be turning, the prestigious trailers are starting to roll out, and the film industry is making the least money it has since right after 9/11. In short, the fall movie season can’t arrive soon enough.
It’s going to arrive with a good bit of fanfare this year, starting early with the eagerly anticipated release of IT on September 8th. Before the year is over, we’ll see new films from Guillermo Del Toro, Steven Spielberg, Richard Linklater, George Clooney, Rian Johnson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and a murderer’s row of other big names. We’ll see some of the best stuff that this year’s Cannes Film Festival had to offer. We’ll see the requisite stories of historical figures alongside fresh new tales of triumph and anguish alike. After two years of eager waiting, we’ll even know what happened after Rey held that lightsaber out to Luke.
It’s unlikely that we won’t see a few disappointments along the way; the ridiculous expectations and hype cycles that tend to surround every would-be award winner during the year’s final third practically guarantee it. But there’s a lot to anticipate this year, perhaps even more than normal, from dark comedies to an original Pixar entry to the knowledge that there’s still at least one movie not on our or any other site’s radars that will yet emerge from the woodwork to surprise us all. The end of the year may also herald a return to the near-Arctic tundra we at CoS trudge through on our way to the office, but it also means that some of the best films of the year are on the way. That’s worth getting excited about, as it always is.
–Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
Film Editor