This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Among the sure signs of fall — leaves turning color, kids returning to school, football games appearing on our televisions — Hollywood has its own indications that autumn has arrived:
• Literary adaptations outnumbering comic-book adaptations.
• Heavy dramas about pressing social issues.
• Tom Hanks playing someone noble.
• Amy Adams playing someone earnest.
• Michael Keaton playing anything. (He's starred in the last two Best Picture winners, "Spotlight" and "Birdman.")
All of that and more will land on movie screens between now and Christmas, as Hollywood studios give pursuit of major awards a higher priority — but still not as high a priority as making money. (After all, there are still movies coming from the Marvel, Harry Potter and "Star Wars" universes.)
The 91 titles in The Salt Lake Tribune's Fall Movie Preview have a little of everything: comedy, drama, action, family fare, horror, thrills, documentaries and everything in between. Any movie fan should be able to find something of interest.
Opening dates are tentative and subject to change.
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Oscar contenders
In "Arrival" (Nov. 11), directed by Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario"), Amy Adams plays a linguistics expert brought in by the government to try to communicate with aliens in a UFO. Adams also stars in "Nocturnal Animals" (Dec. 9), the directorial return of fashion designer Tom Ford ("A Single Man"), as a gallery owner who fears the violent novel written by her ex-husband (Armie Hammer) is a veiled threat against her.
Director-star Nate Parker was the toast of this year's Sundance Film Festival with "The Birth of a Nation" (Oct. 7), a fiery account of Nat Turner, the slave-turned-preacher who led one of the biggest slave rebellions in the antebellum South. Racial issues of more than a century later are played out when an interracial couple (Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga) go to court to defend their marriage in "Loving" (Nov. 23).
More true stories: In the Clint Eastwood-directed "Sully" (Friday, Sept. 9), Tom Hanks stars as Chesley Sullenberger, the veteran pilot who became a hero when he safely landed his disabled jet in the Hudson River; Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in Oliver Stone's "Snowden" (Sept. 16) as the NSA whistleblower on the run from his own government; Miles Teller plays boxer Vinny Pazienza, trying to come back after breaking his neck in a car crash, in director Ben Younger's drama "Bleed for This" (Nov. 4); Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, who turned McDonald's into a fast-food superpower, in "The Founder" (January).
A 19-year-old Iraq War soldier (Joe Alwyn) is brought home for a victory tour, and his flashbacks of the war's horrors are quite different than what Americans perceive about the war, in "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" (Nov. 11), directed by Ang Lee ("Life of Pi") and starring Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel and Steve Martin.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle, who wowed with his breakthrough "Whiplash," follows with "La La Land" (Dec. 2), a musical about a jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) who romance and tap dance through Los Angeles.
Casey Affleck stars as a man who must take care of his late brother's son (Lucas Hedges) in writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's Sundance hit "Manchester by the Sea" (Nov. 18).
Jessica Chastain stars as "Miss Sloane" (Dec. 9), about a D.C. lobbyist who takes on her toughest fight: to push gun-control legislation through Congress.
Denzel Washington directs "Fences" (to be determined), an adaptation of August Wilson's play about a father (Washington) raising his family in a racially divided America of the 1950s. Viola Davis co-stars.
In the fantasy "A Monster Calls" (to be determined), directed by J.A. Bayona ("The Impossible"), a boy (Lewis MacDougall) summons a tree monster (with the voice of Liam Neeson) to cope with his mother's terminal illness.
Martin Scorsese directs "Silence" (to be determined), a harrowing tale of Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) risking death and persecution as they seek their mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17th-century Japan.
Drama
A divorcee (Emily Blunt) thinks she sees something sinister with a perfect couple in the mystery "The Girl on the Train" (Oct. 7), an adaptation of Paula Hawkins' best-seller. A woman (Rachel Weisz) with a habit of changing identities upends the life of an old flame (Michael Shannon) in the mystery "Complete Unknown" (Sept. 16).
With a cast that includes Mark Wahlberg and Gina Rodriguez, director Peter Berg's "Deepwater Horizon" (Sept. 30) chronicles the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil-rig disaster that killed 11 people and created the worst oil spill in American history. Berg and Wahlberg also collaborated on "Patriots Day" (Dec. 21), a drama about the events of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, centering on Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman).
Historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) must defend herself in court, and prove that the Holocaust happened, when a famous denier (Timothy Spall) sues her for libel in "Denial" (Oct. 21), based on Lipstadt's memoir. A German prosecutor (Burghart Klaussner) battles his own government to find Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's "Final Solution," in "The People vs. Fritz Bauer" (Friday, Sept. 9).
More true stories: The tragedy of Utah's Nutty Putty Cave is re-enacted in the locally made "The Last Descent" (Sept. 16); the World War II drama "Hacksaw Ridge" (Nov. 4), directed by Mel Gibson, profiles medic Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor; "Lion" (Nov. 25) tells the story of Saroo Brierley (Dev Patel), who was lost on the Kolkata streets at age 5 and adopted by an Australian family, and who returns to India 25 years later to find his birth parents; Rebecca Hall plays "Christine" (to be determined) — Christine Chubbuck, a Florida TV reporter who infamously staged her own suicide on the air.
Ewan McGregor directs and stars in "American Pastoral" (Oct. 28), adapting Philip Roth's novel of a man (played by McGregor) whose middle-class normality shatters because his daughter (Dakota Fanning) joins a radical political movement. Natalie Portman makes her directing debut in "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (Sept. 16), in which she portrays the mother of acclaimed Israeli author Amos Oz during the last years of British rule of Palestine.
Four lives — two lawyers (Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart), a married woman (Michelle Williams) and a ranch hand (Lily Gladstone) — intersect in a Montana town in Kelly Reichardt's "Certain Women" (Oct. 28). One life, of a young gay black man, is seen at three points in his life in Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight" (October, to be determined), which got raves at this month's Telluride Film Festival.
A man (John Krasinki, who directed) returns home, his pregnant girlfriend (Anna Kendrick) in tow, to visit his ailing mom (Margo Martindale) in "The Hollars" (Sept. 23). Kate Winslet stars in "The Dressmaker" (Sept. 30) as a woman returning to a rural Australian town, sewing machine in hand, to prove good fashion is the best revenge.
A wild teen (Sasha Lane) joins a traveling magazine sales crew, led by a charismatic guy (Shia LaBeouf), for cross-country mayhem in Andrea Arnold's acclaimed "American Honey" (October, to be determined). A college freshman (Ben Schnetzer) follows his brother (Nick Jonas) into fraternity life in the harrowing "Goat" (Sept. 23).
Eddie Murphy takes a rare dramatic role in "Mr. Church" (Sept. 16) as a chef who comes to work for a dying woman (Natascha McElhone) and her daughter (Britt Robertson). Will Smith gets serious in "Collateral Beauty" (Dec. 16) as an advertising exec whose life goes into a tailspin after a tragic event.
In the Italian drama "Mia Madre" (Sept. 30), a filmmaker (Margherita Buy) deals with a troubled shoot, a problematic American actor (John Turturro), and her mother's failing health. "Aquarius" (to be determined) stars Sonia Braga as a Brazilian widow who's the last resident of an apartment building a company wants to tear down.
Action
The Marvel Cinematic Universe takes a turn toward the surreal with "Doctor Strange" (Nov. 4), with Benedict Cumberbatch as an injured neurosurgeon who learns about a hidden world of alternate dimensions. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling takes her wizarding world back to 1920s New York with "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (Nov. 18), as creature expert Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) accidentally lets loose some nasty magical beings.
Director Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") remakes the classic Western "The Magnificent Seven" (Sept. 23), starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt. Pratt also stars with Jennifer Lawrence in the science-fiction romance "Passengers" (Dec. 21), with the two playing people awakened 60 years too soon on a spaceship heading to a distant colony.
Tom Cruise returns as Lee Child's tough-as-nails homicide investigator in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" (Oct. 21), this time framed for a crime and uncovering a government conspiracy. In "Inferno" (Oct. 28), Tom Hanks reprises his role of symbologist Robert Langdon, the hero of "The Da Vinci Code," this time battling amnesia and unearthing a global plot tied to Dante's "The Divine Comedy."
In the crime thriller "The Accountant" (Oct. 14), Ben Affleck is a detail-obsessed guy who uncooks the books for his shady clients.
A Mexican (Gael Garcia Bernal) crossing into Arizona encounters a racist border vigilante (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the cat-and-mouse thriller "Desierto" (Oct. 14). A luckless man (Matthew McConaughey) and a geologist (Edgar Ramirez) go into the Indonesian jungles for treasure in the thriller "Gold" (December, to be determined).
Romance and wartime intrigue meet in "Allied" (Nov. 23), when an American intelligence officer (Brad Pitt) and a French Resistance fighter (Marion Cotillard) meet in North Africa and, later, in London. Cotillard co-stars in "Assassin's Creed" (Dec. 21), starring Michael Fassbender as a man discovering a secret society of killers, in an action-fantasy flick based on the video-game series.
Science fiction gets romantic in "The Space Between Us" (Dec. 21), with Asa Butterfield as a teen who is born in weightless space and raised on Mars, then comes to Earth to find the girl (Britt Robertson) he met online.
A couple (Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall) hire a young woman (Jaz Sinclair) as a surrogate mom in the thriller "When the Bough Breaks" (Friday, Sept. 9). A mother (Halle Berry) stops at nothing to retrieve her abducted son in "Kidnap" (Dec. 2). In Paul Verhoeven's French thriller "Elle" (to be determined), Isabelle Huppert plays a sexual-assault victim trying to track down her rapist.
An isolated child psychologist (Naomi Watts) must save a young boy ("Room's" Jacob Tremblay) during a deadly snowstorm in the thriller "Shut In" (Nov. 11). Tremblay also stars in "Before I Wake" (to be determined) as an orphaned boy whose nightmares turn real, to the shock of the couple (Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane) who adopt him.
Want to get scared? "Blair Witch" (Sept. 16), a sequel in which more college students return to the woods where the kids from "The Blair Witch Project" disappeared, was made in secret and may revive the "found footage" genre.
More franchise horror: "Rings" (Oct. 28) brings back the long-haired Samara and the fatal videotape, while the prequel "Ouija: Origin of Evil" (Oct. 21) puts the supernatural board game in the hands of a con-artist mom (Elizabeth Reaser) and her daughters.
Even more horror: Kate Beckinsale finds something in the attic in "The Disappointments Room" (Friday, Sept. 9); a teen (Max Records) battles his murderous urges when he finds out his neighbor (Christopher Lloyd) has a dark secret in "I Am Not a Serial Killer" (Friday, Sept. 9); a family are trapped in their home and forced to play a life-and-death game in "Keep Watching" (Dec. 2); "The Bye Bye Man" (Dec. 9) is a mystery figure who's behind the evil behind some of humankind's most unspeakable acts; and a bridegroom is possessed during his wedding in the Polish/Israeli horror comedy "Demon" (to be determined).
And, just in time for Christmas, Felicity Jones leads a band of rebels trying to steal the plans to the Death Star in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (Dec. 16), the first stand-alone story in the franchise.
Comedy
The long-absent Warren Beatty directed and wrote "Rules Don't Apply" (Nov. 23), a romance set in 1958 Hollywood, between an aspiring actress (Lily Collins) and a young driver (Alden Ehrenreich) — both of whom work for the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes (played by Beatty).
An awkward teen (Hailie Steinfeld) confronts the ultimate social disaster — her brother (Blake Jenner) dating her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) — in the coming-of-age comedy "The Edge of Seventeen" (Nov. 18). In the raunchy "Why Him?" (December, to be determined), a father (Bryan Cranston) learns his daughter (Zoey Deutch) is engaged to a super-rich, and super-weird, guy (James Franco).
In "Bridget Jones's Baby" (Sept. 16), Renee Zellweger returns as the perplexed British singleton, juggling two men (Colin Firth and Patrick Dempsey) and the news that she's preggers.
An armored-car driver (Zach Galifianakis) falls in with an alluring co-worker (Kristen Wiig) and a group of thieves (led by Owen Wilson) to pull off a heist in the comedy "Masterminds" (Sept. 30), directed by Utah's Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite"). Galifianakis and Isla Fisher play a stuck-in-a-rut couple who find their new neighbors (Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot) are spies in "Keeping Up with the Joneses" (Oct. 21).
Tyler Perry's grandma character battles killers and reins in unruly teens in "Boo! A Madea Halloween" (Oct. 21). Thanksgiving brings together five generations of a dysfunctional family, with Danny Glover as the patriarch, in "Almost Christmas" (Nov. 11).
"Bad Santa 2" (Nov. 23) brings back Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and his elf sidekick, Marcus (Tony Cox), to knock over a charity at Christmas. A branch manager (T.J. Miller) throws an "Office Christmas Party" (Dec. 9) when his CEO sister (Jennifer Aniston) threatens to close the branch, in a comedy that includes Jason Bateman and Kate McKinnon.
Three adult sisters take in their 13-year-old half-sister in the Japanese comedy-drama "Our Little Sister" (Friday, Sept. 9). A grumpy widow strikes up an unexpected friendship with his young new neighbors in the Swedish "A Man Called Ove" (Oct. 21). The acclaimed German comedy-drama "Toni Erdmann" (to be determined) centers on a father (Peter Simonischek) who uses pranks to reconnect with his estranged adult daughter (Sandra Hüller).
Family
Disney takes an animated trip to Polynesia with "Moana" (Nov. 23), with a young woman (voiced by newcomer Auli'i Cravalho) setting sail for a legendary island, aided by the demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) and music, some of which was written by "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. (A Best Song Oscar could complete Miranda's EGOT checklist.)
In live-action, Disney tells the story of a Ugandan girl (Madina Nalwanga) who strives to become a world chess champion in "Queen of Katwe" (Sept. 23), starring Lupita Nyong'o and David Oyelowo.
A teen (Asa Butterfield) discovers a group of very special kids in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (Sept. 30), director Tim Burton's adaptation of Ransom Riggs' novel. Another teen (Griffin Gluck) rebels against the rules in the comedy "Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life" (Oct. 7).
"Trolls" (Nov. 4) is set in the music-filled world of the big-haired doll figures, with a voice cast led by Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick. Music bursts forth in "Sing" (Dec. 21), in which a fast-talking koala (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) organizes a singing competition that draws all manner of animal talent.
Big birds have switched from delivering babies to delivering packages in the computer-animated "Storks" (Sept. 23). The computer-animated "The Wild Life" (Friday, Sept. 9) retells the Robinson Crusoe story from the viewpoint of the animals he befriends on his desert island. The makers of "A Cat in Paris" return with "Phantom Boy" (Friday, Sept. 9), in which a disabled boy astrally projects himself around New York and uncovers a crime boss's plans.
Documentary
A grand literary hoax — in which a 30ish writer created the persona of a teen drug addict — is chronicled in "Author: The JT Leroy Story" (Sept. 23). In "The Eagle Huntress" (to be determined), a 13-year-old Kazakh girl trains to become the first female in 12 generations to hunt with eagles.
Ron Howard relives the Fab Four during their concert-giving years in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week" (Sept. 16). Filmmaker Adam Nimoy profiles his father, Leonard, and his indelible "Star Trek" character in "For the Love of Spock" (Friday, Sept. 9).
In "Kevin Hart: What Now?" (Oct. 14), the stand-up comic performs in the Philadelphia Eagles' home stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, before 50,000 people. On the opposite end of the performance spectrum, "Hillsong: Let Hope Rise" (Sept. 16) follows Hillsong United, the Christian megaband from Australia, in concert and on the road.
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