MY WORLD OF TRUTH

Director Paul Feig has been one of the most successful directors of comedy of the past decade – with Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy and Ghostbusters, he not only delivered massive laughs but also revealed the huge, and almost always neglected, audience for raunchy, sometimes gory, female-driven comedies. Now he’s leaving comedy behind to direct what appears to be a thriller in the vein of Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. A Simple Favor is based on the 2017 Darcey Bell novel of the same name, and stars Anna Kendrick as a woman who becomes obsessed with a stylish acquaintance played by Blake Lively, who may hold some dark and deadly secrets – and then she vanishes. Could her handsome husband – Crazy Rich Asians star and BBC World News’ Travel Show host Henry Golding – have done her in? Will we receive an answer as to why Lively, equipped with a cane, appears dressed like Madonna in Britney Spears’ Me Against the Music video? Twists and turns lay ahead. Released 13 September in Hong Kong and Singapore, 14 September in Taiwan, Romania and the US and 20 September in Australia and the UK (Credit: Lionsgate)

In 1980s Detroit, Richard Wershe Jr fell into an organised crime ring that sold drugs. And then he became an FBI informant. Not the most unusual story there’s ever been, except for this: Wershe was 14 years old. By age 16 his relationship with the US federal government as an undercover informant had ended and he started selling cocaine himself, becoming a kingpin. This unusual true-crime story is now the film White Boy Rick, given new grit and urgency by Yann Demange, director of the grittily urgent story about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, ’71. Richie Merritt stars as the title character, British actress Bel Powley plays his sister, Matthew McConaughey his father, Bruce Dern his grandfather and Piper Laurie his grandmother. With a cast that strong, White Boy Rick should truly be a one-of-a-kind crime thriller. Released 14 September in the US, 19 September in France, 20 September in Portugal and 27 September in Argentina (Credit: Sony)

Sadly this is not the biopic of Gaetano Donizetti we’ve all been waiting for. Nor a fascinating look at the lives of castrati. What Bel Canto really is, is something like Die Hard meets Callas Forever. Julianne Moore stars as an opera singer who performs at a swanky soiree hosted by a wealthy businessman (Ken Watanabe) in a Latin American country currently embroiled in a civil war. Rebels storm the location of the party and take everyone hostage – but what follows appears to be a sensitive look at the rebels and their grievances. They are no one-dimensional Hans Gruber-type baddies. And it turns out that the government may want a fortissimo solution: they might storm in and kill everyone, hostages included, just to score a PR victory against the rebels. Somehow, though, Julianne Moore has to resolve this situation through the power of her voice. Does it sound cheesy? Why, it sounds like a formaggian delight. Released 13 September in Russia and 14 September in the US (Credit: Screen Media Films)

From Dan Fogelman, the creative mastermind of the ritualistic weepfest that is the US TV show This Is Us, comes this new dramedy about a gorgeous man (Oscar Isaac) who falls in love with a gorgeous woman and they do gorgeous things together whilst pursuing their romance and saying things like “I may not be equipped to be loved this much.” So if the pretentious title makes you think that this will be a vérité experience, think again: Fogelman appears to be angling for the job of chief executive at a greeting card company and not attempting a revival of neorealism. However, if you like crying on command, Life Itself will be for you. If you don’t, this writer, who lost many followers after he tweeted irreverent bon mots about This Is Us, suggests you keep your snark to yourself. Also on hand, Antonio Banderas and Mandy Patinkin, apparently having a contest as to who can grow the more impressive beard. Released 21 September in the US and Canada, 27 September in Singapore and 28 September in Estonia (Credit: Amazon Studios)

If you enjoyed the tinny player-piano version of Black Hole Sun on Westworld you’ll love the music-box rendition of Tainted Love in this new comedy-Western. But what a change for director Jacques Audiard, the auteur behind such powerfully dramatic films as A Prophet, Rust and Bone and the Palme d’Or winner Dheepan. The Sisters Brothers is a tongue-in-cheek romp, which like the 2011 Patrick Dewitt novel that inspired it, is a picaresque of droll incidents strung together like knots in a hangman’s rope. Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly are siblings working as hitmen in 1850s Oregon who are hired by a mysterious figure named the Commodore to kill the man (Riz Ahmed) who apparently stole from him. But when they actually meet the alleged thief, the brothers decide to change their plans. A good Western is hard to find these days. A good comedy-Western is even harder to find (see: the stunning creative and box-office failure that was Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West). But if anyone could pull it off, it could be Audiard. Released 19 September in France and 21 September in the US and Canada (Credit: Annapurna Pictures)

Undoubtedly, M.I.A. has been one of the most original popstars of the past 15 years, someone capable of packaging radical politics – her father was closely related to the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka – in radio-friendly formats. Songs like Jimmy, Mango Pickle Down River, Bad Girls and, of course, her smash hit Paper Planes are somehow deeply Sri Lankan while also functioning as pastiches of various global styles, creating an entirely new transnational sound –as well as being powerful earworms. No wonder music apparently hasn’t been enough to contain her creativity: she’s shot over 700 hours of home-video footage over the course of her career, and from that vast treasure-trove, her friend and former art-school classmate Steve Loveridge edited a documentary portrait of her life. The Film Stage’s Leonardo Goi says the resulting film, which will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, “offers an intimate pre- and-post-stardom bio-doc that feels just as magnetic as the artist it dissects onscreen." Released 21 September in the UK and Ireland and 28 September in the US (Credit: Cinereach)

One of the most gratifying developments in recent cinema history has been the mutual mid-career renaissances of Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. Both look as good as they ever have and their talents have matured significantly. Now we get to see them together in Destination Wedding, a romantic comedy about two singles – Ryder and Reeves – sorely missing having a plus-one in their life, who are invited to a friend’s wedding. Ryder’s character is the ex-girlfriend of the groom, and she’s still pining. Reeves appears to have a case of acute melancholia – and he’s sporting his hair from the John Wick movies, so bloodshed may be at hand. (Or at least jokes that kill.) The two of them hate each other and curse the connubial fates that threw them together to endure a spectacle of matrimonial bliss – surely a post-wedding hook-up is in order? Released 6 September in Greece and Hungary, 7 September in Estonia, 17 September in Lithuania and 20 September in Singapore (Credit: Regatta)

Idris Elba debuted this Jamaican gangster thriller he directed – his first time behind the camera – at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It received mixed reviews but a couple of critics suggested that, in its portrait of a young Kingston hired-gun travelling to London it had something to say about post-colonialism and what it means to be black in Britain – plus, the dialogue is in full Jamaican patois for maximum realism. “It’s an alluring, muscular debut soaked in authenticity in both its settings Kingston and London],” writes [Screen Daily’s Fionnuala Halligan. “This is a nicely-shot, -cast and -told period story of black Britain – when so few exist – with a geniality that cuts through some of its bleaker moments… [for Elba as a director], it’s a righteous debut.” Released 31 August in the UK and Ireland (Credit: StudioCanal)

So-called “conversion therapy” centres for LGBT youth are often shunned – though not rendered extinct – today, but in the 1990s they were still a thriving business. In the US especially, Evangelical Christians would send their LGBT children to camps and retreats offering pseudo-scientific ‘medical’ treatments to turn gay kids straight. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for US Drama at the Sundance Film Festival in January, The Miseducation of Cameron Post examines the experience of teenagers forced to attend one such programme, led by a fiercely homophobic conversion-therapy proponent played by Jennifer Ehle. Chloë Grace Moretz plays Cameron Post, a teen who’s strongly considering running away from the clinic – and, presumably, from her family has well. “The film is] an ‘It Gets Better’ story of salvation in which [director Desiree Akhavan] films the teens’ bonding earnestly, with a sense of hope akin to that of John Hughes,” writes [Tomris Laffly for RogerEbert.com. “There’s not one mediocre performance in the film,” writes Lara Zarum for The Village Voice. “Ehle is terrifically severe as the ruler of her little clan; as the film beautifully, and painfully, illustrates, when there’s no one to turn to, you turn on yourself.” Released 7 September in the UK and Ireland (Credit: FilmRise)

Warner Bros was once a studio considered legendary for its output of cartoon shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd – now they barely produce any animation at all. But their few theatrically-released animations the past few years have been stellar, notably The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie. Other than 2016’s already-forgotten Storks and the recent superhero parody Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, Smallfoot is the first non-Lego animation released by Warner Bros in 15 years. It humourously dramatises the reverse of an urban legend: that “bigfoot,” a furry creature of icy mountains and coniferous forests – in the Himalayas known as a yeti – exists and has even been documented on film (always in blurry, obviously fake photographs). Smallfoot tells the story of a yeti (Channing Tatum) who is trying to prove to his fellow bigfeet that humans, are smallfeet, and exist – they think humans are myths. If only this didn’t look so derivative – you half expect seeing one of the yetis making the “Dreamworks Face”. Released 20 September in Australia, 27 September in Brazil, Hong Kong and Singapore and 28 September in Turkey, South Africa and the US (Credit: Warner Bros Pictures)