I’m not much of a moviegoer but there are always a few films that catch my eye when fall rolls around. Between spooky films for Halloween, the period pieces that show up in time for peak awards consideration, and, sometimes, the December blockbusters, there will usually be one or two things that catch my eye. This year, though, five films have caught my eye. That feels like a record.
1. Underland (August 28) I was swept away by Robert Macfarlane’s book Underland when I read it a few years ago, but I had no idea they had made a documentary based on it until I saw it in the listings at a nearby indie theater. I was a bit disappointed to see that I could not immediately purchase tickets for it, so I’ll have to keep checking back. Though there aren’t really any caves where I live on the Great Plains and I’ve only ever been in one cave in my life (Cave of the Winds in Colorado when I was 12), I still find them interesting, and given that Robert Macfarlane is involved, this documentary is sure to be beautiful in pretty much every way. The documentary dives into underground spaces from tree root systems to storm drains to ice caves in melting glaciers to historic burial chambers. Underland the book provided so much information and insight about underground spaces most of us overlook and walk over without thinking about. This documentary promises to be just as enlightening. Underland is not showing in many theaters across the US. I don’t know if this is just for the premier and it will have a wider distribution later on. I’m just grateful it’s actually going to be in Nebraska so I can see it.
2. The Uprising (September 11) In the wake of the Black Death of 1348-50, English society underwent major changes despite the efforts of the king and Parliament to maintain the status quo. Workers were in high demand, and the workers were demanding higher pay. But the wealthy didn’t want to pay up and they set a low maximum wage then demanded even more taxes while prices for basic things like food and cloth kept going up. In 1381, the people had enough. A popular revolt broke out across parts of England, led by Wat Tyler among others. In London, it resulted in mass violence, the executions of political and religious leaders, and the burning of the Savoy Palace before the 13-year old King Richard II rode out to meet Wat Tyler and the other leaders and made a bunch of promises he never intended to keep to quell the revolt. When told from the peasants’ perspective, as this film appears to be doing, it is a tragedy, but it was a turning point when it came to social change in medieval England. This is the film I’m most hesitant about. Directors have spent twenty years using desaturated, cyan-toned palettes, dressing characters in gray rags and mud, and thinking they’re subversive for depicting a brutal era where the average person could expect daily, bloody violence. Sure, there were battles and crime in the medieval era, and crop failures could leave people struggling to survive, but I’m tired of the way my favorite historical time period is almost constantly being depicted in films. It’s no longer subversive to depict a gray, dark, and violent middle ages. That’s normal. To be subversive these days, you’d need to show the middle ages as full of color where people are at least occasionally happy. This is why I have zero interest in A24’s recent The Death of Robin Hood, wherein the director took a single short poem from the oldest surviving collection of Robin Hood tales and went “Look! Robin Hood was a violent figure, actually! We’re going to examine the violence of the era!”. And I side-eyed that approach because it’s akin to taking a single episode of something like The Wire or Breaking Bad and declaring that it represents the entirety of American society. I will be waiting for reviews on this one before I go to see it.
3. Victorian Psycho (September 25) Having just said that violent medieval movies frustrate me, I’m now going to talk about a violent Victorian-based film. There’s a difference, though. Directors don’t tent to regard themselves as being subversive for depicting the Victorian “as violent as it actually was, with every day being a brutal struggle for survival” (no, I’m not going to let that go). A movie set in the Victorian era is as likely to be a quiet romance or a comedy of manners as a violent crime drama. The Victorian era gets to have color, characters who bathe, and real food. Victorian Psycho is based on Virginia Feito’s 2025 novel of the same name. The premise is as follows: In 1858, Winifred Notty travels to Ensor Manor to serve as a governess. Then servants start to go missing and people begin to wonder about the strange new governess. It’s told from the point of view of Winifred herself, and though she says from the outset that ‘by Christmas, everyone in the household will be dead’, there is still a lot of ambiguity in the story until the last third, when events truly begin to go off the rails. The events go off the rails, not the book. Feito knows exactly what she’s doing. The novel is full of dry humor and though Winifred is unrepentant in her malevolence, you can almost understand her point of view and why she does what she does. Almost. Victorian Psycho is one of those weird little books that provides catharsis for those times when you just want to scream and throw heavy objects at anyone in sight but can’t because that is not a thing you can do without people worrying about your sanity.
4. Mārama Mārama premiered in New Zealand in February and then had a limited US release in April. I checked for weeks to see if it would be coming to a theater anywhere near me, and it never did. But a couple of weeks ago, I was on a local indie theater’s site and saw that Mārama would be showing there in October. Perfect. Mārama is a New Zealand-based gothic revenge horror film about a young Māori woman named Mary Stevens who travels halfway around the world to England in search of answers about her missing parents. She is hired as a governess by Nathanial Cole, who is eager for her to be part of his household in part because he has a colonizer’s fascination with the Māori people and their culture. Soon, Mary starts to realize that something is terribly wrong with the house. I’ve only seen a few reviews of Mārama, but they have had nothing but praise for it. I love the gothic in all its forms, especially when creators from around the world use it to tell stories relevant to them. Mārama deals with themes of anti-colonialism, cultural appropriation, and reclaiming one’s own culture and heritage. Every film still I’ve seen from it is gorgeous, and the musical score is wonderfully eerie. This is my most anticipated film of the year, and I am thrilled that I’ll get to see it in the theater.
5. Sense and Sensibility (October 16) It is, apparently, going to be an autumn of yearning, what with this new Sense and Sensibility movie and the Netflix adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I don’t have Netflix anymore so I won’t be seeing Pride and Prejudice, but I do plan to see Sense and Sensibility. I have heard a lot of complaints about the lighting in the trailer and the actresses’ messy hair, but I honestly don’t care about that. Most of the shots I’ve seen people complain about are nighttime interiors, so of course they’ll be darker than outdoor daylit shots. As for the hair? While it is perfectly possible to quickly put very long hair up without 21st century styling products and have it stay up and tidy all day (I would know, I do it every day), I’m still not bothered by messy hair. If that’s the worst we have to contend with in this adaptation, we’re doing great. Sense and Sensibility may not be my favorite of Jane Austen’s novels, but reading even my least favorite Austen novel is a fantastic time, and a good adaptation is also a good time. I’m looking forward to seeing Marianne and Elinor’s trials and travails as they adjust to their reduced circumstances and fall in love. My biggest concern is whether or not the writer, Diana Reed, will capture Austen’s wit. If she manages that, then I really don’t care if the sleeves on the dresses are historically accurate or not.
5. Dune, pt. 3 (December 18) I’ve been a Dune fan since I first read the book during an endless car ride through Iowa in winter when I was thirteen. Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies have been my favorites of all the adaptations I’ve seen, and I’m really hoping that he sticks the landing with this upcoming adaptation of the second book in the series, Dune Messiah, especially when it comes to Chani’s story. While I appreciate what Villeneuve did with her storyline at the end of Dune, pt 2, I’m curious as to how we get from there to where she and Paul appeared to be in the initial teaser, especially with the added information from the full trailer. What is going on there? I do appreciate how Villeneuve seems to be showing Paul Atreides as the villain of the whole story (Which he is. No one is really a “good” guy in this), and I’m excited to see what Anya Taylor-Joy and Robert Pattinson do with their roles, as Alia and Scytale are such bizarre characters. I think they’ll both do a great job. But mostly, I’m looking forward to seeing how everything plays out with Paul Atreides and his empire, given that Villeneuve has to give this an actual ending, while the book series continues on for a few more volumes. Will Dune, pt. 3 end the same way that Dune Messiah does? Will it have a hopeful note? Or have the Atreides wrought too much havoc on their empire for it to be fixed at the end of the film, especially given Alia’s state of mind at the end of Dune Messiah? I guess we’ll find out in December. There are one or two other movies that I’m curious about– Wicker for example– but they’re not priorities. I will wait for reviews before I decide whether or not I want to see them. I’m satisfied with this list. Traveling in Books is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Traveling in Books that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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