11 movies to check out on Netflix in October

You all seem to like movies featuring Tom Cruise in a cockpit, right? So check out director Doug Liman’s action-comedy American Made, which stars Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life commercial pilot who smuggled drugs for the Medellín cartel in the 1980s. The A.V. Club’s Jesse Hassenger writes, “American Made has such style and energy that its hasty patchwork of a narrative becomes a kind of charm unto itself, even when it means losing track of talented actors.” The movie grossed $134 million globally and Cruise’s performance impressed critics.

Jordon Peele’s Oscar-winning psychological thriller Get Out is about a Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who makes the grave error of accompanying his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) on a trip to her family estate where unspeakable horrors take place. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd writes, “Opening at a time when White supremacists have crashed the White House, Peele’s clever, incisive foray into genre cinema makes a point much more frightening than any jump scare or torture chamber: Being Black in America is often its own horror movie.” The movie also stars Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, and teaspoon-stirring Catherine Keener.

Jordan Peele’s disturbing Us follows Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) and her family on vacation to Santa Cruz, where they encounter their evil doppelgängers. The movie—starring Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker—became a critical and commercial sensation ... and is legit scary. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd writes, “Us proves, if nothing else, that Peele has become a blockbuster visionary, fully in control of his craft. It’s a privilege to step back into the funhouse of his imagination.”

Brother is an adaptation of the David Chariandy novel of the same name about the relationship between two siblings, Francis (Aaron Pierre) and Michael (Lamar Johnson), in Toronto’s 1990s hip-hop scene. The drama, written and directed by Clement Virgo, debuted at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It won 12 Canadian Screen Awards—Canada’s version of the Oscars—including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Performance in a Film, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Fans of ’80s and ’90s erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct should check out Fair Play, the directorial debut of Chloe Domont. When a desirable promotion at a cutthroat financial firm opens up, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich)—who work at the company and are a couple—struggle to adjust to the shifting dynamics in their relationship and must face the consequences of success at any price. This provocative look at greed and modern gender relations scored highly with critics.

The Conference is a Swedish horror-comedy directed by Patrik Eklund about a group of municipal employees on a team-building work retreat who not only have to deal with coworker tension but a masked killer with an unapologetic disregard for the employee handbook. Not many Swedish horror films make it Stateside but don’t count them out; the good ones include Let The Right One In and Häxan. The Conference adds comedy to the horror, which only piques our interest even more.

Seth Rogen plays a journalist who reunites with his childhood crush (Charlize Theron) who just happens to be running for president in the political comedy Long Shot directed by Jonathan Levine. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd writes of this unlikely underdog fantasy, “Theron is marvelous. She conveys the poise, intelligence, and compassion that would make Charlotte a viable candidate, all while meting out glimpses of the down-to-earth person you could see actually falling for someone like Fred. If the two stars have chemistry, she goes above and beyond generating it.”

The documentary The Devil On Trial, directed by Christopher Holt, sheds light on the only murder trial in U.S. history to use “demonic possession” as a legal defense. Pictured above and featured in the doc are Ed and Lorraine Warren, self-professed “demonologists” who figured prominently in the case and were played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which is based on this story. The doc explores our fear of the unknown and includes eyewitness accounts of allegedly possessed people.

Bill Burr, Bobby Cannavale, and Bokeem Woodbine play the titular “old dads” who sell their company to a Millennial and struggle to relate to a post-Reagan reality and changing cultural norms. Directed and co-written by Burr, Old Dads is one of those generational-clash comedies that makes its Gen X leads seem like they just dropped in via a hot tub time machine from 1987. Becoming a father later in life reportedly inspired Burr to pen the script.

David Yates’ crime drama Pain Hustlers is based on the 2022 book of the same name by Evan Hughes. Emily Hunt plays high school dropout Liza Drake, who gets a job at a failing pharmaceutical company in Florida only to get tangled up in a criminal conspiracy. The movie also stars Chloe Coleman as her daughter, Chris Evans as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and Andy Garcia as Liza’s boss, as well as Catherine O’Hara and Jay Duplass.

Sister Death is a Spanish horror movie directed by Paco Plaza and set after the Spanish Civil War. Aria Bedmar plays Narcisa, a newbie nun with supernatural gifts who shows up at a school for girls—formerly a convent—to become a teacher. A series of strange occurrences pulls back the veil on the terrible secrets that haunt the school’s inhabitants. Sister Death also opens the 56th Sitges Film Festival in Spain on October 5.