Not since the pandemic of 2020 (and 2021, 2022…) has the film calendar looked this uncertain. A dual strike from the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild has barred many creatives from promoting their movies, causing some studios to pull their slate from festival competitions and the 2023 awards season. They’ll pause for another day while so many others wait in limbo. But if the titles that graced the film festivals of Telluride, Toronto and Venice these past few weeks are any indication, then you have many fine films to look forward to this fall season.
FESTIVALS
Denver Silent Film Festival
Sept. 22-24, Denver Film Center
2510 E. Colfax Ave. $15 (GA) / $75 (festival pass)
Naturally, we’ll start in the past. Why? Because there’s just something magical about silent films. Unhindered by language, untethered by national borders, silent films are like mathematics: universal in every way. And back for the 10th anniversary, the Denver Silent Film Festival rediscovers those eternal messages. Helmed by film critic, historian and professor extraordinaire Howie Movshovitz, DSFF screens 16 comedies, dramas and works of historical fiction from Austria, Germany and the U.S. with live musical accompaniment and plenty of contextual introductions. There’ll even be a series of shorts from CU Denver’s Department of Film and Television students that’ll play nicely alongside the films of 1923. Denver Film Center, Sept. 22-24.
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Boulder Jewish Film Festival
Nov. 2-12. Dairy Arts Center
2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Tickets: $18-$25
Also celebrating a 10th anniversary, the Boulder Jewish Film Festival (BJFF) brings the best in Jewish cinematic storytelling to the Dairy Arts Center for 10 days of screenings and discussions. Curated by Kathryn Bernheimer, BJFF celebrates Jewish heritage through movies, documentaries and shorts. This year’s opening-night movie is Rock Camp: The Movie, about David Fishof — son of a Holocaust survivor, a proudly observant Jew, and all-round mensch — who dreamed up a way for amateur musicians to play, write, record and perform with some of the best rock musicians of all time, including Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, Jeff Beck, Roger Daltry, Brian Wilson and Nancy Wilson.
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46th Denver Film Festival
Nov. 3-12. Denver Film Center
2510 E. Colfax Ave. $80+
Though the program won’t be released for another month, you can bet that the Denver Film Festival will be your first chance to see some of the biggest movies closing out the year and your only chance to see a great many international and independent flicks on the big screen. Spanning multiple venues and screening hundreds of titles across 10 days, the Denver Film Festival is a must for Front Range moviegoers.
FILMS
The Creator
Opens Sept. 29
English-born director Gareth Edwards made a name for himself with the low-budget Monsters in 2010. Four years later, he helmed the reboot of the Godzilla franchise and made one of the best installments since the series began. Big-budget spectacles with heart and an international cast are his hallmark, and that’ll continue with The Creator, a futuristic thriller set during the war between humanity and artificial intelligence. We’ve seen this story before, but like Godzilla, Edwards promises more than the same old same old.
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Anatomy of a Fall
Opens Oct. 13
French filmmaker Justine Triet has been making narrative features for a decade. But it wasn’t until her latest, Anatomy of a Fall, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May that she achieved international recognition. Anchored by Sandra Hüller (who excelled in 2016’s Toni Erdmann), Anatomy of a Fall blends family drama with a whodunit plot and is sure to bring out the true crime lovers and the art-house crowd alike.
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Killers of the Flower Moon
Opens Oct. 20
For years, the teaming of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio was only eclipsed by the legendary movies Scorsese and Robert de Niro made together. Now, all three join forces for the cinematic adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction book, which chronicles a series of suspicious murders of Osage people after oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma. Lily Gladstone co-stars, as does BW’s own arts and culture editor, Jezy J. Gray, in a small principal cast role.
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NYAD
Opens Oct. 20.
You might not know of Diana Nyad, but you should. She was the long-distance swimmer who, at the age of 26, tried to swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida. That swim was scuttled after currents pushed Nyad off course, but she wasn’t the quitting kind. So she tried the swim again four decades later at 64. Annette Bening stars as the headstrong and cantankerous Nyad, Jodie Foster plays her equally assertive friend and coach, and documentary filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi — best known for their Oscar-winning Free Solo — jump into the narrative waters for a genuine crowd-pleaser.
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Fingernails
Opens Nov. 3
Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou’s debut feature, Apples, had the dubious distinction of premiering in the thick of a global pandemic. Naturally, his follow-up is sure to garner a bit more attention. Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed play clerks at a compatibility clinic where couples can test their romantic match by having their fingernails removed. It’s lo-fi sci-fi with a too-narrow focus, but the performances, which also include Luke Wilson and Jeremy Allen White, are outstanding.
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Napoleon
Opens Nov. 22
Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix have some big shoes to fill. In addition to Abel Gance’s 1927 monumental epic, Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick’s failed attempt to bring the diminutive emperor to the big screen cast a long shadow. But that hasn’t stopped Scott and Phoenix from throwing their hat in the ring for their spin on the man who came from nothing and briefly ruled everything. Vanessa Kirby stars as Josephine, and a wonderfully continental cast back the leads.
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