This month in culture: October 2024

Joker: Folie à Deux

In theaters October 4

Set in the aftermath of the first Joker film, Folie à Deux returns to Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in the Arkham State Hospital as he faces trial for five murders. While under treatment, he meets and falls in love with fellow patient Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, a woman obsessed with his Joker alter ego. The sequel is a smudgy Seventies crime noir deviation from the canonical material of DC Comics characters Joker and Harley Quinn; this Joker does not become the Clown Prince of Crime. With no Batman in sight, Joaquin Phoenix engages in a chaotic pas de deux with Lady Gaga as he stops taking his medication and descends into an MGM dreamscape of musical fantasia. As a murderous Sonny and Cher, the Joker and Harley explore the powerful intoxication of love and madness. Director Todd Phillips has crafted a pastiche that rapidly cycles through many iterations —musical, psychological thriller, comedy, love story, drama. True Gothamites can catch a double feature of Megalopolis and Folie à Deux (filmed with IMAX cameras), this fall.

-Calla Di Pietro

La Máquina

Hulu, October 9

Gael García Bernal enters the ring as Esteban “La Máquina” Osuna, an aging boxer fighting out the last of his luck. With the help of his best friend and manager, played by real-life collaborator Diego Luna, he hustles one final fight, a last chance at securing a victorious legacy. The stakes rise, however, when the pair unite against a shared enemy to fight for their lives. Hulu’s first Spanish-language series breaks apart the machine of Mexican boxing culture to show powerful forces at play. It is also an acting reunion for friends and business partners Luna and García Bernal, whose production company La Corriente del Golfo is behind the six-episode series. The duo, first seen together in 2001’s Y tu mamá también, have a powerful partnership both onscreen and off.

-CDP

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

Netflix, October 10

Lara Croft is back, but the nerds are unhappy. Like many franchises beloved by the Comic Con crowd, the Tomb Raider franchise has been hit by the same sanitizing crew as Star Wars, at least according to internet commentary. The new animated series shows a much more emotional and dispirited Croft, missing her signature dual pistols, rather than the capable, cocky, tank-top wearing archaeologist fans fell in love with. We’re not sure this series will end up satisfying the fans, but there are a few different IP mining projects in the works involving Tomb Raider, including a new live-action series on the way from Amazon Prime. Hopefully sooner or later someone recaptures the swaggering attitude of the original game and movies.

-Zack Christenson

Disclaimer

Apple TV+, October 10

A journalist who exposes the dark secrets of others has a dark secret she wants to keep hidden. A novel, from an anonymous author, unexpectedly shows up, with details of said dark secret. The journalist spends seven episodes trying to bury the truth. That’s what’s in store with the upcoming Disclaimer, a psychological thriller from director Alfonso Cuarón starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen. The series is based on a book of the same name; its trailer doesn’t reveal much other than that it’s dark, moody and ominous. Pair that with a journalist who has a problem with the truth — and I’m in.

-ZC

Shrinking

Apple TV+, October 16

Season two of Shrinking finds Jason Segel’s grieving therapist Jimmy handling the repercussions of the unorthodox guidance he doled out in the first season. Despite occasionally helping with therapeutic breakthroughs, Jimmy’s cavalier advice crosses professional and legal boundaries, putting his role as father, friend and therapist at stake. With a lesser crew, Shrinking could be another tale as old as time: the shrink needs a shrink. However, creators Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence build on that framework to explore loss and love, consequence and forgiveness through a critically acclaimed Greek chorus of characters including Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Lukita Maxwell and Michael Urie.

–CDP

Flight Risk

In theaters October 18

Who can hate a good plane action flick? Con Air, Air Force One, Executive Decision and of course Snakes on a Plane… now we get a new one from our two favorite Catholic evangelico-thespians, Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg. Directed by Gibson in his first time back in the chair since Hacksaw Ridge, Flight Risk features a balding and psychotic Wahlberg as a hit man who’s hijacked a plane carrying a mob informant (Topher Grace) and his US Marshal escort (the non-US Michelle Dockery). Combine all that with a script that made the Black List of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood, and we’re excited for yet more mindless fun above 10,000 feet.

-ZC

Rivals

Hulu, October 18

Dame Jilly Cooper’s novel Rivals alights on the screen as a soapy, cheeky, Champagne bubble of a romp through the landscape of the British elite. Set in the heyday of 1980s excess, the eight-part series centers around the world of independent television in 1986. On lavish estates and in uber-chic boardrooms of yesteryear, machinations of power unfold as neighbors turned foes battle for control beyond what their far-reaching privilege already affords them. Rivals is a party with a dress code: hair and egos must be high, suits and rapport must be sharp, and diamonds and stares are best served cold.

-CDP

What We Do in the Shadows, season six

FX, October 21

FX’s cult vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows is back for one last bite. The show, from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, centers on a group of vampires from Europe tasked with taking over America. So far they’ve managed… part of Staten Island. And the comedy makes fine use of British national treasures Matt Berry, Kayvan Novak and Natasia Demetriou, who have been well known across the pond for the last two decades. Expect a surfeit of celebrity cameos: past seasons have featured Tilda Swinton, Wesley Snipes and Mark Hamill. Bat!

-Matt McDonald

Nickel Boys

In theaters October 25

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is about a friendship that grows out of hardship as two boys come of age at a reform school in Florida. Based on the harrowing experiences of men who attended the historic and notoriously abusive Dozier School for Boys, the story follows the growing bond between Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner as they navigate the brutality of their institution and its administrators. Directed by RaMell Ross, co-written by Ross, Whitehead and Joslyn Barnes, and starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

-CDP

Venom: The Last Dance

In theaters October 25

Are you a cinemagoer who was left wanting more by Venom: Let There Be Carnage? Have you been crying yourself to sleep every night since you saw it, mourning the fact that you wouldn’t know what happened to Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the symbiote that shares his body? Well wipe away those tears: Venom: The Last Dance is coming to your screen this month, thanks to the merciful producers over at Sony. I can tell you three things about this film: it will feature Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple and House of the Dragon’s Rhys Ifans; it will conclude the Venom trilogy, and it will win the Academy Award for Best Picture next spring.

-MM

The Diplomat, season two

Netflix, October 31

Netflix’s runaway hit is back for season two, promising even more intrigue as it picks up the pieces of the explosive finale. After an Emmy-nominated first go, Keri Russell returns as Kate Wyler, US ambassador to the United Kingdom and nearly ex-wife of rising political star Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), managing an active crisis. Kate must now go above and beyond the call of duty to prove that the danger she was sent to intercept is coming from familiar sources. Things are never quite what they seem in the murky world of politics, and Kate finds herself in a life or death situation.

-ZC

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 2024 World edition.