Fall Arts 2019

TO INFINITY: Brad Pitt heads Neptune to confront his long-lost father in 'Ad Astra.'

They should create an algorithm with the power to predict nostalgia cycles. That way, film producers would know what year would be popular with an audience in the near future, and plan accordingly. We're in a deep '70s-'80s cycle now, unaffected by the box office failure of the 1970s set The Kitchen. The fall season includes nostalgia for the funk of Harlem and the squalor of Gotham.

The studly Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008) was an avatar of rap: "I was through with it before they knew what to do with it!'" A maker of XXX comedy records, the rhymester Moore was the creator of the indomitable and cross-platforming Dolemite, in several outlandishly euphoric LPs and blacksploitation movies. His Dolemite possesses unquenchable mojo: "Mule kicked me and didn't bruise my hide/a rattlesnake bite me and crawled off and died!" Moore was profiled by San Jose-raised documentarian Ross Guidici in The Legend of Dolemite: Bigger and Badder (2003); the upcoming Dolemite is My Name, with Eddie Murphy as Moore (September, Netflix) looks like a hit. (Prepare for it by watching Moore's sauteeing of The Exorcist, 1977's Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son in Law).

A far more menacing entertainer turns up in Joker (Oct. 4). Expect some sympathy for a comic book devil, with Joaquin Phoenix starring as just one more mama's boy who gets the mark of Gotham branded into him. The previews show an urban hellhole as bad as New York at its worst in the '70s. From The Hangover 3, we learned that Joker director Todd Phillips' idea of a joke is a giraffe getting decapitated, so there should be authentic darkness in this story of a man who laughs last.

Similarly, there'll be more merry pranks from that jolly Pennywise the Dancing Clown, as It, Chapter 2 hits theaters Sep. 5. On the roster of horror-clowns, the one and only Adolph Hitler tops the list. Jojo Rabbit is the story of a little Nazi boy upset to learn that his mom is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic; that's when he turns to advice from his imaginary pal Der Fuhrer (played by Taika Waititi, who directs).

More Stephen King horror in Doctor Sleep (Nov. 8), the sequel to The Shining; you don't get over the kind of things Danny Torrance saw at the Overlook Hotel easily. Dan (Ewan MacGregor) is all grown up, with a headful of demons and a taste for booze, just like dear old dad; the precariously sober telepath has gone to work in a New England hospice—a fine place to be besieged by angry ghosts.

Don't Let Go (Aug. 30) has Selma's David Oyelowo as a police detective who gets a phone call from the past—from his murdered niece; together they try to stop the crime before it occurs.

Ad Astra (Sep. 20) and Lucy in the Sky (Oct. 4) have thematic similarities: catastrophic space journeys that leave more questions than answers. Brad Pitt in Ad Astra heads to Neptune to find out what happened to his astronaut father—it seems to be some kind of Heart of Darkness in Space situation. Alienated by her space travels, the title's Lucy (Natalie Portman) has serious trouble adjusting to Earth. And later this year, Amazon Prime drops season four of the densest space TV series ever, The Expanse (Dec. 13).

The King and Queen descend upon Downton Abbey (Sep. 12) the film spin-off of the gun-blazing, two-fisted TV series. Pain and Glory (October) by Pedro Almodovar is a semi-autobiographical film about a director's decline in health and skills; Antonio Banderas stars. Knives Out (Nov. 27) is Rian (The Last Jedi) Johnson's emulation of Agatha Christie, with a group of murderous, dissembling family members getting grilled by a detective (Daniel Craig).

Where is My Roy Cohn? (Oct. 16)—the title comes from a bleat Donald Trump made when facing legal action—is a documentary about the phenomenally evil New York lawyer. Cohn started his career as one of Sen. Joe McCarthy's hatchetmen and ended up as a mouthpiece for the Mafia ... and Trump. Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) would have admired Cohn; Jolie once again dons the horns for Maleficent 2 (Oct. 18). Not evil, just mysterious and ookie: the animated Addams Family (Oct. 11) with Oscar Isaacs and Charlize Theron voicing Gomez and Morticia, and Snoop Dogg as the voice of It.

Fall film series include a program of revived epics at the Pruneyard Cinema (see page 48). First, the 10th Silicon Valley African Film Festival (Oct. 4-6), and then the 27th Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival (Oct. 27-Nov. 17). One of the best documentary festivals in the world—that's UNAFF, running at various South Bay locations Oct. 17-27. UNAFF 2019's schedule hasn't been announced, but the theme is "Scales of Justice." One special screening Nov. 11 is a reprise of Welcome to North Korea (2011), a revelatory documentary about that walled-off country, as seen by a group of Czech tourists who were expressly warned not to photograph the place. Being Czech, they smiled, nodded respectfully to authority, and did it anyway. Here's to disobedience as an essential element of cinema.