The awards seasons is heating up with high-profile limited releases in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut Urchin, and Sundance and Berlin premiering comedy-drama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. They join Kathryn Bigelow’s A House Of Dyamite on 200 screens and Jennifer Lopez-starring Kiss Of The Spider Woman movie musical in wide release. Documentary The Dating Game from China, a favorite on the festival circuit, is in LA. Neon doc Orwell: 2+2=5 by Raoul Peck expands to 51 theaters.
Amazon MGM Studios begins the rollout Guadagnino’s psychological thriller After The Hunt starring Julia Roberts at six locations in New York (Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, Angelika, Lincoln Square) and Los Angeles (AMC Burbank, The Grove, Century City), expanding next week. With Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny, it premiered at the Venice (see Deadline review) and was the opening night selection at the New York Film Festival. Roberts is a college professor who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light. Written by Nora Garrett.
Cannes-premiering Urchin starring Frank Dillane opens in limited release in NY (IFC Center) and LA (AMC Burbank, Century City). At 96% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, Deadline review here. On the streets of London, Mike is hustling to get by. Roadside evangelizers won’t let him sleep in peace, his slippery friend won’t pay up the money he stole, and before long, he finds himself in trouble with the law. As he struggles to reintegrate into society, shuffling between gigs as a line cook and a trash collector, he must balance a newfound sense of community with his own itch for self-destruction. Distributed by 1-2 Special, the new label launched by Jason Hellerstein, a co-founding executive of Sideshow where he worked on acquisitions and marketing of Drive My Car, EO, All That Breathes, All We Imagine as Light and Flow. Expands regionally next week.
A24’s Sundance-premiering If I Had Legs I’d Kick You by Mary Bronstein toplined by Rose Byrne with Conan O’Brien opens on four screens in NY (Lincoln Square, Angelika) and LA (The Grove, Century City). Byrne has been heralded for her performance, winning the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin International Film Festival. Byrne stars a woman with her life crashing down around her attempting to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist (O’Brien). Certified Fresh at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. See Deadline review.
Roadside Attractions is out with Jennifer Lopez-starring film adaptation of 1993 Tony-winning musical Kiss of the Spider Woman on 1,330 screens from. Premiered at Sundance, Deadline review here. Dreamgirls and Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon returns to the movie musical. Valentín (Diego Luna), a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna (Lopez).
Netflix is giving Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller House Of Dyamite a 200 screen release including the Paris, Angelika and Alamo Drafthouse in NYC, and The Egyptian, iPic Westwood, Alamo Drafthouse, and Los Feliz in LA, ahead of its Oct. 24 streaming debut
Premiered at Venice, Deadline review here. The Oscar-winning director and producer of 2008 Best Picture-winner The Hurt Locker and 2012 Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty is back with with her first feature since Detroit eight years ago. Written by Noah Oppenheim, former journalist and NBC News president. When a sole missile is launched at the United States, a race against time begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond as the clock ticks with less than 20 minutes before it hits its target. Stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Gabriel Basso.
The Dating Game, the Sundance documentary by Violet Du Feng that’s received a riotous welcome on the festival circuit, is set in China where eligible men vastly outnumber women. It follows Zhou, Li, and Wu, three bachelors embarking on a seven-day dating camp led by Hao, one of China’s most sought-after dating coaches, in a last-ditch effort to find love. From Fish + Bear Pictures, it starts a series of U.S. screenings with a weeklong run at Laemmle Glendale in LA.
Picturehouse opens Re-Election, written and directed by and starring Adam Saunders, in NYC at Regal Union Square. High school haunts everyone in one way or another. For Jimmy Bauer (Saunders), it was losing the race for class president senior year, 1995, which caused him to drop out. Now a 40-something underdog working in a memorabilia store owned by his dad (Tony Danza), Jimmy heads back to high school for his missing class credits and to finally win the election.
Doppelgänger Releasing, the genre label of Music Box Films, is out with Mr. K limited as of Oct. 8 in New York at the IFC Center, expanding after. Directed by Tallulah H. Schwab. Stars Crispin Glover as a down-on-his luck traveling musician stuck in a maze-like, remote hotel. Glover will appear at the IFC or Q&As this weekend and at the American Cinematheque Los Feliz 3 in LA October 21.
Yoav Potash documentary Among Neighbors from 8 Above opens at the Quad in NYC, expands to LA next week. One of the last living Holocaust survivors from the small Polish town of Gniewoszów, along with an aging eyewitness, break decades of silence about Jews who were murdered there six months after the Nazis were defeated. Their stories are brought to life with hand drawn animated sequences and touches of magical realism.
There Was, There Was Not from Suncatcher Productions and Watermelon Pictures, Emily Mkrtichian’s debut feature documentary, opens at the DCTV Firehouse in NYC for a weeklong run. Follows four Armenian women fighting the erasure and ethnic cleansing of their homeland of Artsakh. At LA’s Laemmle Glendale next week and rolling out with opening Q&A’s in all markets.