October movie magic: A bit of nostalgia, Halloween nightmares and bushfires too
The Dark Knight trilogy made $2.4billion at the box office worldwide.
Movie fans who love the big screen will have to wait another month before seeing Hollywood’s latest blockbusters – think Dune, No Time To Die – at their local cinemas.
But if you’re sick of streaming at home, and COVID restrictions have eased in your area, there’s a few delights to be had with popcorn and choc-top in hand.
Celebrated as one of the greatest trilogies in film history, according to Screenrant, Christopher Nolan’s universally acclaimed Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale – Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – is back on the big screen.
While the trilogy is accessible on streaming services, it’s not for the lounge room at home. Don’t do it.
For those nostalgic for the Batman franchise, the trilogy delivers up those big screen visuals and the surround sound it deserves, if only to enjoy the iconic Hanz Zimmer music score, which gives fans the chills to this day.
And to pluck out one scene that still resonates with the Batman Appreciation Society? Well that’s easy.
Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) to family friend and sometime girlfriend Rachel Dawes when she discovers who it is under the black triple-weave Kevlar batsuit: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”.
Quite right. There’s a lesson there for all of us.
Now, back to October, which is defined by the American holiday Halloween, where we remember the dead … good and evil.
Watch this with other people in your house, and make sure they sleep over! Photo: Netflix
There’s Someone Inside Your House – October 6 (Netflix)
If you’re looking for some classic high school horror, There’s Someone Inside Your House brings all the magic of a nostalgic adolescent scare as a group of Osborne High School friends try to find a masked killer who’s targeting students and exposing their secrets. Indiewire describes it as a “socially conscious Scream riff about a killer who takes cancel culture into their own hands (with the help of a Taser gun and a very large knife)”.
The Guilty – October 1
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a 911 emergency dispatch operator in Los Angeles who desperately tries to save a female caller in danger. A recent Rolling Stone review says: “It is all so unbearably stressful, very much to the movie’s point. The Guilty is designed, programmed half to death, to be a pressure cooker. Joe’s [Gyllenhaal] frustration is understandable, particularly as the picture grows clearer regarding that mysterious caller … the movie packs an odd little punch”.
A Fire Inside – October 7
This documentary takes us inside the 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires which killed 34 people and destroyed more than 18 million hectares of forest through NSW and northern Victoria. It centres on the story of a volunteer firefighter who drove his car into almost certain death. He survived and we’re given “an inspirational look at the way people respond to crisis and its true cost to the human spirit”.
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis – October 12
For something a little more uplifting and close to home, Convergence: Courage in a Crisis is a pandemic Netflix documentary. It’s a collaboration spanning eight countries and nine individual stories and starts at the beginning of the pandemic last year. Netflix says “activists and volunteers work through the darkest days of 2020, galvanising social change amidst chaos as governments start to fail local communities … This epic, globally spanning and deeply passionate documentary serves as a clarion call that great change can be born of crisis.”
Eiffel – October 14
Ever wondered how and why the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built? Well, you’ll find all the answers, and some romance and scandal, in this dramatic French biopic. Set in 1889, genius engineer Gustave Eiffel – who had already built the framework for the Statue of Liberty in New York, attracts the attention of the French government to build something grand for the World Fair that year.
The Last Duel – October 21
Who doesn’t love a good Matt Damon film. No, this isn’t another instalment of the Jason Bourne franchise. This time he’s found himself in medieval costume where he has to duel it out with Oscar-nominee Adam Driver (Star Wars, Marriage Story). The quarrelling lords find themselves at the centre of “a gripping tale of betrayal and vengeance set against the brutality and female oppression of 14th century France”.
Halloween Kills – October 28
The premise is this: “Evil dies tonight”. The Strode family thought they’d killed a masked monster in the basement of their house, but that was a big mistake. His so-called “ritual bloodbath” continues after he escapes, forcing the Strodes and other survivors to form a vigilante mob and hunt him down, “once and for all”.
Antlers – October 28
Another horror flick right on queue for Halloween, just to get everyone really in the zone. Directed by horror maestro Guillermo del Toro, fear surrounds an isolated town in Oregon after a teacher and her sheriff brother face off with a young student who has been feeding and looking after a legendary ancestral creature – with antlers, no less. Until he escapes.
Ron’s Gone Wrong – October 28
One for the kids. It’s not all documentaries and Halloween. This is the Pixar story of a boy and a robot. Barney, a socially awkward middle-school kid, and Ron, who is … “his new walking, talking, digitally-connected device, which is supposed to be his ‘Best Friend out of the Box'”. Voices of Zach Galifianakis (A Wrinkle in Time), Jack Dylan Grazer (Shazam!) and Olivia Colman (The Crown) elevate this animation so even the parents will enjoy it.