12 of the best films to watch this October

Released on 24 October in the US and Canada, and internationally from 30 October

Disney

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Are we moving on from the era when pop music biopics such as Ray, Walk the Line and Elvis would squeeze decades of a star’s life into two hours? Last year’s A Complete Unknown concentrated on the earliest years of Bob Dylan’s career, and now Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere dramatises an even shorter chapter of its subject’s life story. As played by Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), Bruce Springsteen is shown making just one album, 1982’s Nebraska. He is on the verge of superstardom, but he is also having a crisis of confidence. His solution: to retreat to his bedroom in New Jersey with a four-track recorder and an acoustic guitar, to work on a set of songs about blue-collar disappointment. Jeremy Strong (Succession) co-stars as Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, while Stephen Graham (Adolescence) plays his hard-drinking father in the black-and-white flashbacks to his 1950s childhood. “If some fans go in expecting the equivalent of a greatest hits package, think again,” writes Pete Hammond in Deadline. “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is the real deal, an intelligent, deliberately paced journey into the soul of an artist.” 

Released internationally on 24 October

Amazon MGM Studios

Hedda

Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler was first staged in 1891, but Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) has updated the classic play in more ways than one. The writer-director has moved the action to an English mansion in 1954, where the newly married anti-heroine is throwing a long, lavish and increasingly chaotic party. Two other key changes to the text are that the title character (played by Tessa Thompson) is now a black woman in a predominantly white environment, and her ex-lover is now a woman (Nina Hoss). The most crucial update, though, is that DaCosta has made her adaptation an intensely stylish and sensuous affair, as embodied by its leading lady. It’s a “devilish thrill” to watch the “sultry” Thompson in a film “full of attitude, energy, and colour”, writes Kristy Puchko in IndieWire. “Sumptuous, hot, and challenging, this is a drama of love, sex, and regret that burns like a shot of whisky.” 

Released in select US cinemas on 22 October, and then internationally on 29 October on Prime Video

—  

If you liked this story, sign up for the Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can’t-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.

For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.