So here we are. One more weekend of rubber masks and fog machines, one more loop of the horror movies you’ve already seen three times, and then Saturday night the porch lights go dark and Halloween packs itself back into the attic for another year. Good. I love a monster as much as anybody from Woodbury, but I’ve been waiting for what comes next, because November is when Hollywood stops playing around and the marquee finally gives you something worth the price of a ticket.
And this November, the marquee is practically speaking our language.
The one that matters most around here
Start with the one that matters most around here. “I Play Rocky,” opening in select theaters November 6 and everywhere November 20 from director Peter Farrelly, is a movie about the making of “Rocky” — the single greatest piece of mythology this region ever exported, the story of a Philly nobody who goes the distance. Anthony Ippolito plays a young Sylvester Stallone, broke and stubborn, trying to convince a town full of people who know better that a club fighter from Kensington deserves to be a movie star. I don’t need to tell you why that one lands different on this side of the river. We’ve been running up those museum steps in our heads our whole lives.
If that’s the heart, “Madden” is the gut punch of nostalgia. David O. Russell’s film lands November 18 on Prime Video, with Nicolas Cage — yes, Nicolas Cage — as John Madden and Christian Bale as Raiders owner Al Davis. In a region that treats football like a second religion and a 2-5 Eagles season like a family crisis, a movie about the man whose voice taught half of us how to watch the game is going to hit a nerve. Cage as Madden is either going to be a disaster or the best thing he’s done in a decade, and I genuinely cannot wait to find out which.
Go sit in the dark with strangers — it’s the best thing we do.Vinny Vinci
For the serious-cinema crowd
The serious-cinema crowd isn’t left out either. November 6 brings Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a pitch-black comedy with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA officers sent to Easter Island in 1973 — already being whispered about as an Oscar hopeful, which from the man who made “In Bruges” is a whisper I take seriously. The same day, Takashi Yamazaki follows up his astonishing “Godzilla Minus One” with “Godzilla Minus Zero,” and if it’s half as good as the last one, bring an extra napkin for the tears you weren’t expecting at a kaiju movie. And quietly, maybe most importantly, there’s “Being Heumann,” Siân Heder’s drama about disability-rights pioneer Judy Heumann, with Ruth Madeley in the lead — in theaters November 6 before it heads to Apple TV the following week.
(A small, dumb pleasure for the shore faithful: among last week’s releases was a film literally titled “Wildwood.” No, it’s not about the boardwalk. Let me have this one anyway.)
See one on a real screen
Here’s my actual plea, though, and you knew it was coming. See at least one of these on a real screen. Not the phone. Not the laptop balanced on a laundry basket. South Jersey still has honest movie houses with sticky floors and good sound, and the way you keep them alive is by showing up in November instead of waiting for the thing to hit streaming in February. The candy’s almost gone. The lights are about to come up. Go sit in the dark with strangers — it’s the best thing we do.
Based on reporting from Boston.com’s fall movie preview and studio release calendars. Release dates are subject to change.