12 of the best films to watch in October 2024

From Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix pairing up to Anna Kendrick making her directorial debut and a Donald Trump biopic, here are the unmissable movies to see this month.

In 1978, Rodney Alcala was a contestant on a US television game show, The Dating Game, where he “won” a date with another guest, Cheryl Bradshaw. But Alcala was a serial killer who had murdered five women, and had already served two prison sentences for child molestation. This appalling true-crime story is the subject of Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman Of The Hour. Kendrick herself plays Bradshaw, who puts up with all manner of sexist and predatory behaviour as an aspiring actress in Los Angeles before she encounters the “Dating Game Killer” (Daniel Zovatto). “A charming, kitschy 70s-set exploration of gender dynamics quickly gives way to an unnerving, suspenseful stranger-than-fiction tale,” says Meagan Navarro at Bloody Disgusting. “Kendrick’s incisive vision, blending horror and humour with nonlinear storytelling, makes for an authentic, poignant and unsettling debut.” 

Released on 18 October on Netflix internationally

When somebody looks at you with a broad grin on their face, and then kills themselves, that means that a demonic “Smile Entity” has cursed you to do the same thing yourself within a week. That was the premise of Parker Finn’s debut feature film, Smile, a supernatural horror movie that cost a mere $17 million (£12.7m), but made $217 million (£162m) at the box office in 2022. Suddenly it was studio executives who had broad grins on their faces, and a sequel was inevitable. Lukas Gage, who co-stars with Naomi Scott, claims that shooting Smile 2 was so frightening that it made him sick. “It was the first time I’ve ever been on a set where I was genuinely afraid,” he said on The Jess Cagle Show. “It was so gory and so disgusting. I’m not even just lying. The crew was terrified filming because Parker Finn knows that genre so well.”

Released from 18 October in cinemas internationally

For hundreds of years, the all-female haenyeo divers of South Korea’s Jeju Island have harvested seafood from the ocean floor by swimming to the depths without oxygen. Their magical yet dangerous lives would have provided enough material for a documentary on their own. But The Last of the Sea Women – which is directed by Sue Kim and produced by Malala Yousafzai – takes an urgent new turn when the Japanese government announces plans to dump radioactive wastewater into the sea, and the divers are forced to become globe-trotting eco-activists. The result is “a sturdy and impeccably warm documentary with a simple assignment: to show you the human cost of environmental disaster and to care about the marginalised communities most directly impacted by it”, says Kayleigh Donaldson in Pajiba. “By the end of this film, you’re ready to march on the streets with the haenyeo, and root for them to continue their great work for generations to come.”

Released on 11 October on Apple TV+ internationally

One of the most acclaimed films of 2024, Nickel Boys is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was in turn inspired by real events. Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson star as Elwood and Turner, two inmates in a Florida reform school in 1962. The brutality of the institution extends to the torture and murder of the children there, and only Elwood and Turner’s friendship keeps them going. What separates Nickel Boys from previous films set in reform schools is that the director, RaMell Ross, shows events almost entirely from the two friends’ perspectives, so the viewer seems to see everything through their eyes. David Ehrlich says in IndieWire that Nickel Boys is “as major and memorable an achievement as any American film this decade… a rare testament to the transformative potential of cinematic adaptation (Ross co-wrote the script with Joslyn Barnes), and a staggeringly beautiful reminder that America’s most enduring narratives are only subject to change when people are invited to look at them in a different light”. 

Released on 25 October in the US

The films in the so-called “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” haven’t always done well. To be less tactful about it, Morbius and Madame Web were both disasters. But audiences have taken to one of Spidey’s villains-turned-anti-heroes, Venom, largely thanks to Tom Hardy’s dual performance as a shambling investigative journalist, Eddie Brock, and the gleefully destructive alien “symbiote” which bonds with him. In the third and final odd-couple blockbuster in the series, giant monsters from the symbiote’s home planet land on Earth, so the stakes – and the budget – are higher than ever. “By the third one, we’ve been given so much creative support to push it,” Hardy told Jeff Conway at Forbes. “I think you got to swing for the fences with these things. It’s the last one and we want to go out with a bang, and lay the foundations for optionality and possibilities because it’s been such a great ride.”

Released from 25 October in cinemas internationally

A four-time Oscar nominee, Saoirse Ronan hasn’t had a major dramatic role for a few years, but she could be in line for a fifth Oscar nod soon. In November, she is in Steve McQueen’s Blitz, and before that she stars in this adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir, directed by Nora Fingscheidt. Ronan plays a young biologist who sank into alcoholism while she was studying in London. After a stint in rehab, she returns to her family home in Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands. The rugged flora and fauna might aid her recovery, but her divorced parents (Stephen Dillane and Saskia Reeves) might complicate it. “This sometimes devastating, but ultimately hopeful drama… feels bracingly authentic,” says Emma Simmonds in The List. “The Outrun might be stunningly shot and alive to the healing power of home, but it’s also beautifully unsentimental on Rona’s relationships with her family and the local area.”

Released on 2 October in France, 4 October in the US, and 5 October in Germany

If this year’s Netflix adaptation of One Day left you hankering for some more British romantic tragicomedy, look no further than We Live in Time, directed by John Crowley (Brooklyn). Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star as two thirtysomething Londoners – he a breakfast cereal marketer, she an ambitious chef – who have a passionate, rom-com-worthy relationship, until she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The twist is that Nick Payne’s screenplay keeps cutting between three different periods, so the best of times bump up against the worst of times. Hankies at the ready! “There’s an achingly palpable, playful chemistry between Pugh and Garfield that leaps off the screen,” says Michael Rechtshaffen in The Hollywood Reporter. “But they also refuse to shy away from letting their characters’ less attractive qualities bleed through… seldom has such an unflinchingly honest take on mortality felt so transcendently life-affirming.”

Released on 11 October in the US

The latest screwball comedy-drama from Sean Baker (The Florida Project) won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and it’s sure to pick up more trophies throughout awards season. In particular its star, Mikey Madison, deserves to be on every “best actress” shortlist there is. She plays Ani, a Russian-American strip-club dancer who catches the eye of Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), an oligarch’s ridiculously spoilt son. He offers to pay her to be his girlfriend for a week, but Anora is no Pretty Woman-style fairy tale. It’s far tougher, earthier, more farcical and more hectic than that – and all the better for it. “Sean Baker’s powerful, spirited and rollicking Anora… is nothing short of pure movie magic,” says Tomris Laffly at RogerEbert.com. “His smartly interwoven urban machinations make you giggle and inexplicably tear up on repeat (sometimes within the same sequence), while somehow keeping you acutely aware of the sorrow that is bound to rise to the surface.”

Released on 18 October in the US

Pharrell Williams’s biggest single, Happy, was on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack, so it’s appropriate that this documentary about his life and music isn’t shot on film or video: it’s a cartoon, animated in the style of The Lego Movie. Directed by Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), Piece By Piece is a… errr… blockumentary, featuring the voices of Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg and others. They all remember how Pharrell was discovered in Virginia and went on to produce countless pop hits. But they all appear as brightly coloured Lego figurines. “Pharrell’s rags-to-riches story is a familiar tale re-energised not just with his unique sound but the basic decision to animate his life,” says Radheyan Simonpillai in The Guardian, “so that it can thrive with his imagination and hit so many visual grace notes…  A hilarious, propulsive and disarmingly joyous ride”.

Released on 11 October in the US and Canada

How would the leaders of the free world fare in a zombie apocalypse? That’s the question asked by this delirious political comedy set during a G7 summit. Co-directed by Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson, the film features Cate Blanchett as the German chancellor and Charles Dance as the US President. Along with their fellow prime ministers and presidents, they lounge around the grounds of a stately home in Germany, attempting to write a joint statement about their grand plans. But then a thick fog descends, and some 2,000-year-old mummified bog people stumble out of the gloom. A joint statement might not be enough to save the day. “The ineffectiveness of rhetorical politics and symbolic diplomacy is kookily but ruthlessly skewered in a wildly entertaining shaggy-dog satire,” says Guy Lodge in Variety, “scoring consistent belly-laughs with a mixture of broad goofball gags, puckish surrealism and more pointedly topical critique”.

Released on 18 Oct in the US

The year’s most provocative film, The Apprentice chronicles how a certain Mr Donald J Trump became a real-estate mogul in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. As played by Sebastian Stan, the young Donald is a bumbling naif who doesn’t know how to realise his sky-high ambitions until he meets Roy Cohn, a proudly vicious attorney played by Jeremy Strong (Succession). Ali Abbasi has directed an “entertainingly salacious tragicomedy [that] charts that master-pupil dynamic in forensic detail,” says Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. But your opinion of the film will depend on your opinion of Trump. The Apprentice, says de Semlyen, “is either an inspiring Secret of My Success tale of bromance, entrepreneurship and reinvention or a gruesome origin story for a capitalist goblin who sheds his few human qualities in pursuit of the mighty dollar, depending on who’s watching”.

Released on 11 October in the US and Canada, and 18 October in the UK

In 2019, Todd Phillips’ Joker turned the superhero movie on its head. Not only was the film about a supervillain (played by Joaquin Phoenix, who won a best actor Oscar), but it was a gritty urban psychodrama which detailed the protagonist’s anguished despair. The sequel ventures even further from typical Batman blockbuster territory. Joker: Folie à Deux is almost all set within the walls of an asylum and a courtroom, and when Arthur/ Joker starts singing and dancing with Harleen Quinzel/ Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), the film turns into a full-blown musical. “Folie à Deux is just as edgy and disturbing as its forerunner,” says Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent, “replicating the idea of modern American cities as terrifying powder kegs perpetually on the cusp of explosion. This ingenious and deeply unsettling film rejects comic-book conventions in favour of psychological depth. The genius of it is that we can’t help but care for Arthur, even during the film’s most apocalyptic and violent moments.”

Released from 4 October in cinemas internationally