In a film landscape where every year’s box office charts are dominated by continuations, spin-offs, and reboots of existing intellectual properties, it shouldn’t be too surprising to see a sequel storm into the fall movie season to make a splash. Sure, there’s another big Marvel (by an Oscar-winning auteur no less) bombasting its way into multiplexes this weekend. That’s no shock. But the curious delight, however, is in A24’s clever counterprogramming: moving ahead the release date for Joanna Hogg’s sequel-of-sorts to her intricately-observed 2019 memoir, the Souvenir. 

A local film shot and set in Seattle, In the Company of Women is an occasionally interesting if ultimately misguided story that never manages to find a compelling narrative groove. 

The Beta Test is a chaotic and mysterious story of how one Hollywood agent receives a purple envelope containing a letter offering a sexual encounter with a stranger. The letter and the stranger soon become an obsession that will utterly consume his life. It is an all-encompassing piece of work, writer-director Jim Cummings’s most ambitious yet, a high compliment considering all that has already come before it.

A breezy if basic science fiction journey, Finch follows Tom Hanks traveling across an apocalyptic America to San Francisco with his dog and a robot in tow.