Movies to watch in October, from 'Joker: Folie à Deux' to 'Saturday Night'

'Joker: Folie à Deux' (2024) directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn

Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix, in 'Joker: Folie à Deux,' are merely two stars lighting the screens this month

(Image credit: BFA / Warner Bros / Alamy)

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'Joker: Folie à Deux'
'The Outrun'
'Saturday Night'
'Anora'
'Hard Truths'

published 2 October 2024

The box office's summer slump is over. As awards season inches closer, a slew of Oscar hopefuls are hitting theaters. This month's new releases include a hotly anticipated DC Comics sequel, a comedy about the real-life premiere of 'SNL' and a possible first Oscar win for four-time nominee Saoirse Ronan.

'Joker: Folie à Deux' (Oct. 4)

The eagerly-awaited sequel to Todd Phillips' 2019 "Joker" is yet another intimate look at the DC Comics supervillain. The film's subtitle, "folie à deux," is French for "madness of two" and "used to refer to shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder," said Screen Rant. The phrase encapsulates the relationship between Joker/Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, reprising his Oscar-winning role) and his toxic lady love Harley Quinn/Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga). When they meet as patients at Arkham State Hospital — Arthur will soon be on trial for his past crimes as Joker — they become partners in crime. Promising more painted smiles and apparently several sequences set to song, the sequel could almost be called a musical, if it were not for the director's protests. "Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue," Phillips said to Variety. "It's just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead."

30-year-old Irish actor Saoirse Ronan has already been nominated for four Oscars, but many critics are betting her turn in "The Outrun" will earn Ronan her first win. Based on a best-selling addiction memoir by Amy Liptrot and directed by Nora Fingscheidt, "The Outrun" stars Ronan as an alcoholic named Rona. After attending rehab, she leaves London and returns home to Orkney, an isolated and starkly beautiful archipelago. "With its angular, fractured structure, extended poetic longueurs and preoccupation with birdwatching," the movie "feels like a refreshingly unconventional spin on a familiar theme," said The Guardian.

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"Saturday Night Live" premiered on October 11, 1975, and as fast-paced and off-the-cuff as modern day episodes of the late-night sketch comedy show might seem, the first run was even more so. Based on the true story of the chaotic 90 minutes preceding the first 'SNL' broadcast and directed by comedy veteran Jason Reitman ("Juno"), "Saturday Night" features real-life TV pioneers like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Lorne Michaels all portrayed by younger actors. "It's a thriller-comedy, if you can call that a genre," Reitman said to Vanity Fair. "I always describe this movie as a shuttle launch, and the question was, 'Would they break orbit?'"

Indie darling Sean Baker ("The Florida Project") is back with an addition to his string of raw, sympathetic sex worker stories. "Anora" follows Ani (Mikey Madison), a stripper who begins a whirlwind romance with a young client named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a powerful Russian oligarch. Following their shotgun wedding, goons sent by Ivan's father show up to pry the couple apart. "'Anora' has next to nothing to do with romance, and almost everything to do with the kind of working-class heartache that a modern Hollywood studio would never even try to get right," said IndieWire. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, the first American film to do so since Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" In 2011.

Acclaimed English theater-director-turned-filmmaker Mike Leigh is known for making tough little films about working class people that employ lots of improv and allow actors to invent their own characters. The star of Leigh's "Secrets & Lies" (1996), Marianne Jean-Baptiste, is his muse once more in "Hard Truths," this time playing a misanthrope named Pansy who cannot seem to get along with anyone. "Leigh's films can feel shaggy and unstructured on first viewing, and 'Hard Truths' is no different," said Variety. "But there's profound poetry in every scene."

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Anya Jaremko-Greenwold has worked as a story editor at The Week since 2024. She previously worked at FLOOD Magazine, Woman's World, First for Women, DGO Magazine and BOMB Magazine. Anya's culture writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jezebel, Vice and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.