After a sparse sputtering pipeline of movie content following 2023 strikes and 2024 threats of same, an array of festival films and several high-profile “tent pole” multiplex motion pictures are finally about to be unleashed or streamed to the viewers of America.

Here’s our signature Silver Screen Capture take on ten categories of films to anticipate in the waning weeks of fall 2024. Nightbitches, green witches, barn burners and page turners plus many other surprises await on the big and small screen between September and December. Some are potential guilty pleasures, and others are Oscar ceremony bound! Grab your designer popcorn dispenser, and don one of those fancy moving seats (or just see movies straight-up like I do!), and get ready for some curious cinematic clusters.

Horror films are generally a highlight of fall, and with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the Speak No Evil remake continuing domination in cinemas through Halloween, there are some others ready to exhibit like a jump-scare around the bend. Looking ahead, we get The Heretic with Hugh Grant as a nasty homeowner who terrorizes two visiting missionaries; Apartment 7A, a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby starring Julie Garner of Ozark as a struggling dancer in NYC finding herself drawn into dark forces; and the Nosferatu passion project remake of the 1922 silent film by cult film favorite Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse) in which an ancient Transylvanian vampire (Bill Skarsgård of It and Barbarian) stalks a haunted young woman in 19th-century Germany. The latter wouldn’t be an obsessive gothic love story without a small part played by Eggers muse Willem Dafoe.

There’s no shortage of sequels this season, with Joaquin Phoenix reprising his Oscar-winning role of “Joker” Arthur Fleck opposite Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux. Director Todd Phillips is back at the helm. Two years after the events of the 2019 film, Joker is now a patient at Arkham Asylum, falls in love with his fetching fellow inmate, and the two experience musical madness as the antihero’s followers start a movement to liberate him. Director Ridley Scott returns to his Oscar-winning sword and sandals territory as well, with Gladiator II. The story follows Lucius (cerebral actor Paul Mescal, in his first all-out action arena), the former heir to the Roman Empire, who becomes a fighter after his home is invaded by the Roman army, led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Denzel Washington co-stars as a cunning mentor to our hero. Moana 2 continues the popular 2016 Disney animated adventure, reuniting the primary voice talents of the first film as our heroine is chosen by the ocean to battle the dreaded underworld gods and save the world. Curiously, although this is still a musical, this time she’s dreaming of the water without songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Two young actors with hoards of Internet fans and stans each have two prestigious films respectively coming out this fall Sebastian Stan plays a young Donald Trump being mentored by Roy Cohn Jeremy Strong in 70s and 80s New York in The Apprentice. The actor also plays A Different Man with neurofibromatosis undergoing surgery for a fresh start who becomes fixated on an actor with the same condition playing his real life story in a stage production based on his former life. Saoirse Ronin plays a woman coping with alcohol addiction in The Outrun, an autobiographical memoir of a Scottish journalist in a performance lauded at springs Sundance Film Festival She next stars in Steve McQueen’s WWII set film Blitz, in which she plays a distraught mother searching for her defiant son on a dangerous adventure in London. Will these two young stars compete against themselves for awards with this many dramatic takes in the mix?

Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket) is getting lots of buzz for his Cannes Palm d’Or winner Anora, a comedy drama starring actress Mikey Madison in the title role of an exotic dancer. The film follows her beleaguered romance with the son of a Russian oligarch. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins takes on Disney photorealistic animation with Mufasa: The Lion King, both a prequel and sequel to the 2019 remake of the 1994 traditionally animated film. The musical drama is notable for the film debut of Blue Ivy Carter. And if there’s anyone who hasn’t heard, Francis Ford Coppola of Apocalypse Now and Godfather saga fame is releasing his self-funded dystopian opus of ideas, Megalopolis, in IMAX theatres. This epic indie stars Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, John Voight, Aubrey Plaza and more as a battle begins to rebuild a city after disaster. It’s pretty likely to polarize many audiences, but the promise of an unhinged fever dream from such a renowned director in a very experimental mode has been catnip for intrigued cinephiles. (Some of us have already visited Coppola’s Georgia hotel to spy artifacts).

Joaquin and Gaga aren’t the only crooners of fall, as an anticipated quartet of films in the pop, folk, opera and Broadway idioms are warming up for arrival. Musician Pharrell Williams tells the rhythmic story of his life and times via the LEGO aesthetic in the unconventional documentary Piece by Piece, featuring five new songs by the artist. Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Gwen Stefani also appear in mini-fig form. The Spanish language Emilia Pérez by French director Jacques Audiard is a musical crime comedy based on Audiard’s own opera libretto. The fearsome cartel leader Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self. This musical odyssey follows the journey of four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. Selena Gomez also has a buzzed-about role! The first half of the hit Broadway Land of Oz prequel musical saga Wicked comes to the screen with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as mismatched university roommates (the former is a green outcast) who discover a scandal in the Emerald City. The anticipated film is directed by Jon M. Chu, who helmed the little-seen but glorious adaptation of In the Heights after the hit Crazy Rich Asians. Wonka star Timothée Chalamet, who already earned praise this year in the Dune sequel, takes on the central role of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold (let’s hope it’s more Walk the Line than Indiana Jones 5!)

Actresses are getting some superb showcases this year, and one of the most talked-about is the return of Demi Moore in The Substance, a cautionary tale as a fading celebrity and TV aerobics star who decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself, unknowingly giving her horrifying side effects. In addition to Moore’s audacious and vanity-free performance, Margaret Qualley is superb in this one. Angelina Jolie stars as Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s Maria. It is the third and final film in Larraín’s trilogy of 20th century iconic women movies following Jackie and Spencer. Jolie is said to have a mesmerizing return to form in this psychological drama set during Callas’ final years in ’70s Paris. Nicole Kidman won the Venice Film Festival playing a high-powered CEO embroiled in a scandal in the erotic thriller Babygirl. Her character’s affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson) sets off the plot of a film that explores the complexities of power dynamics and sexuality within a professional setting.

Get out your handkerchiefs for a heartwarming good cry. Robert Zemeckis reunites his Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here, a story covering the events of a single spot of land and its inhabitants, spanning from the past to well into the future. De-aging effects will factor in, and we trust there will be no Polar Express eyes. Rachel Morrison’s inspiring sports biopic The Fire Inside chronicles female boxer and mixed martial artist Claressa “T. Rex” Shields played by Ryan Destiny alongside Brian Tyree Henry. The story takes place during the training for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are paired in the romantic comedy drama We Live in Time, and Will Ferrell and longtime friend Harper Steele are the central characters of Will & Harper, a documentary road trip in which the comedian learns more about his friend’s gender transition. The filmmakers initially considered deliberately creating comedic moments but instead decided to let funny moments occur spontaneously along the touching journey.

Many legends of the fall film line-up are part of sprawling ensembles. Cooper Hoffman, Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennottand Dylan O’Brien are among the young cast of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which chronicles the lunacy and real-time story about the night of the 1975 premiere of long-running TV comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live. Another movie, September 5, transports audiences to the 1972 Munich Olympics, when an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes. Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Ben Chaplin are among the cast. The psychological thriller Conclave, directed by Edward Berger (2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front), takes audiences inside the decisions of a cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) tasked with organizing the election of the successor to the deceased Pope as a secret is revealed. This dramatic tale also includes Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rosellini.

The high-brow offerings continues with Julianna Moore and Tilda Swinton in Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s first American-language feature, The Room Next Door. In the film, a woman’s strained relationship with her mother fractures completely when a misunderstanding drives them apart. Jesse Eisenberg directs and co-stars with Kieran Culkin A Real Pain about two mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd couple’s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist traces 30 years in the life of László Tóth (Adrian Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust. After WWII, he emigrates with his wife (Felicity Jones) to the United States, where things do not go as planned. Set during the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson, adapted by Malcolm Washington from the August Wilson play, stars John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins and Samuel L. Jackson. The film follows the lives of a Pittsburgh family and a family piano heirloom decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor. Many who have seen the film say Deadwyler is a standout. And Luca Guadagnino, who already made a splash this year with the sexy tennis drama Challengers, returns with Queer, starring Daniel Craig in a romance set in ’40s Mexico. Not to be outdone by Kidman in Babygirl, Craig’s entanglement is also with someone much younger, played by Drew Starkey of Outer Banks.

There are an array of book adaptations coming to the screen. Undoubtedly many don’t measure up to their source material, but some will be revelations. The Nickel Boys movie directed by feature film newcomer RaMell Ross, is famously told from the camera’s first-person youth point of view. The story follows two African American boys sent to an abusive reform school called the Nickel Academy in ’60s Florida. Amy Adams stars in Nightbitch, adapted and directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), the tale of a motherhood descending into mayhem with an “is it real or is it metaphor?” transformation into canine form. The latest Lord of the Rings adaptation is animated and subtitled The War of the Rohirrim and involves defending a kingdom from an army 183 years before the events of the live-action film trilogy. In a season in which Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong have films too, their Succession show dad Brian Cox plays the voice of the hot-tempered king in the fantasy adventure. Finally, based on a book series of the same name, The Wild Robot is an anticipated animated science fiction survival story directed by Chris Sanders with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the title character, an abandoned robot that was washed onto a forest island and learns to adapt to the new environment, partially by using her processing ability to learn how to communicate with native animals, and becomes an adoptive mother of a goose voiced by Kit Connor. Buoyed by a cast menagerie of stars playing animal characters (Catherine O’Hara as an opossum, Pedro Pascal as a fox, Ving Rhames as a falcon and more), it is set to be an unassuming cult sensation.