Happy fall! Some of what we’re looking forward to in September, October, and November, with sequels, a prequel, some based on books, some on true stories, and some are the prestige productions we will be seeing at the Oscars. The teams from two beloved classics are reuniting. In 1988, Tim Burton gave us “Beetlejuice,” and now Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara join him for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” with Jenna Ortega playing the daughter of Ryder’s character, Lydia. And Robin Wright and Tom Hanks, who starred in Robert Zemeckis’ Oscar-winning “Forrest Gump,” co-star again in a different story with Zemeckis directing. The trailer gives us a glimpse of some of the movie magic we’ll be seeing in a multi-generational family story called “Home,” showing their characters in their 20s.

We’re also getting a sequel to the DC Comics story of the Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and a prequel with the origin story of the Transformers, and a look at a different kind of origin story, the very first episode of “Saturday Night Live” in 1975.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an abusive reform school, Nickel Boys, comes to the screen with Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Jimmie Fails from “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.” And two family action comedies for Christmas!

Plus two of the most anticipated films of the year, releasing for Thanksgiving — part one of “Wicked” and “Gladiator 2.” Here’s a glimpse at what’s ahead.

September

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, and Tim Burton are back in another story of the ghost with the most. “Wednesday’s” Jenna Ortega joins the cast as the daughter of Ryder’s character.

His Three Daughters Elizabeth Olson, Natasha Lyonne, and Carrie Coon are three sisters who are very different but have to find a way to work together to care for their dying father.

I’ll Be Right There Wanda (Edie Falco) takes care of everyone. Who takes care of her?

My Old Ass Would your young self want to meet your older self? Would she listen? What would your older self want to tell your younger self? Aubrey Plaza gets a chance to find out when her younger self conjures her up.

Wolfs In “Pulp Fiction” there is a character called Wolfe, played by Harvey Keitel, who gets called in to fix dire and messy situations that seem un-fixable. In “Wolfs,” “Oceans 11” stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt play rival versions of that character who are forced to work together.

The 4:30 Movie Kevin Smith’s semi-autobiographical story is a nostalgic comedy about a group of teenagers in the 1980s.

Subservience An android housekeeper/nanny develops some dangerous ideas.

Omni Loop Mary Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri star in a time loop story.

Also of note in September: The Neo-noir “Killer Heat,” the origin story/prequel “Transformers One,” an acerbic Ian McKellen as “The Critic,” “Continue” with writer-director-star Nadine Crocker based on her own life and mental health challenges, “Hounds of War” stars Frank Grillo in the story of mercenaries on a suicide mission, and festival favorite “A Different Man” with Sebastian Stan as a man with a disfiguring disease who has an operation to become handsome

October

Joker: Folie à Deux Lady Gaga joins Joaquin Phoenix in this sequel to the latest version of Batman’s most famous villain.

Saturday Night We’ve been staying up late to watch “Saturday Night Live” for half a century now, and characters, catch phrases, and stars from the show, still produced by Lorne Michaels and still live, are enmeshed in our culture. Jason Reitman wrote and produced the story of the very first episode.

We Live in Time Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield star in a romance from A24 that seems to have a mystical element.

Goodrich Michael Keaton plays the title character, who has to ask his estranged adult daughter (Mila Kunis) to help him take care of the children he had with his second wife.

Piece by Piece Music polymath Pharrell Williams tells his story — with LEGOs.

Also of note in October: “House of Spoils” a spooky story about a chef, “Nickel Boys” based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Tom Hardy returns in “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Brothers,” with Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as twins on the run, “Things Will Be Different, a sci-fi thriller, and Saoirse Ronin in “The Outrun,” based on Amy Liptrot’s bestselling memoir

November

Conclave A powerhouse cast brings us inside one of the most secret places on earth — the selection of a new pope.

Here Robert Zemeckis reunites with his “Forrest Gump” stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in this multi-generational family saga.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever A remake of the beloved film based on the book about a riotous production features Judy Greer, Pete Holmes, and Lauren Graham.

Red One Santa is missing! And there’s only one person who can rescue him, Dwayne Johnson, of course, with some help from Chris Evans.

Spellbound A princess has to save the day when her parents are enchanted.

Wicked What were Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West like as teenagers? Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo play the young witches in a movie based on the beloved Broadway musical, inspired by The Wizard of Oz. (Part 1 of 2)

Gladiator II Back to the arena! This time with Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington.

On Labor Day we pay tribute to workers, especially those who have worked for better conditions for everyone. These movies can help us understand their challenges and their contributions. Last year, the writers and actors in Hollywood were on strike. This year, it’s the video game companies whose performers are striking. Some movies about labor and management:

Sally Field won an Oscar for “Norma Rae,” a real-life story about a courageous woman who helped mill workers form a union. It was inspired by Crystal Lee Sutton, a courageous advocate for workers’ rights.

Doris Day plays a union worker who falls for a new guy in management but doesn’t lose sight of the seven and a half cent raise the workers are bargaining for in the rollicking musical, “The Pajama Game.”

“Made in Dagenham” stars Sally Hawkins and and Rosamund Pike in the true and very heartwarming story of the British women who went on strike when they found that they were being paid far less by Ford Motor Company than the men.

“Pride”

I love this true story, about a group of LGBTQ activists who support the 1984 miners’ strike in Wales.

“10PM-Midnight: Working the Night Shift” is the story of the people who keep things going while the rest of us are asleep.

“Lifelines in the Lockdown” is a CBS News documentary from the early days of the pandemic about essential workers.

John Sayles’ “Matewan” tells the story of mine workers fighting for safer conditions.

“Harlan County USA” is a documentary about a strike by mine workers.

“Bread and Roses” is based on the real-life story of a strike by undocumented janitorial workers, with Adrian Brody as their lawyer.

“Salt of the Earth” was inspired by an actual miners’ strike against the Empire Zinc Co. and the cast includes real-life miners who were involved in the strike

In “The Devil and Miss Jones,” a big boss goes undercover as an employee in his department store and learns some lessons about the workforce. The terrific cast includes Charles Coburn, Spring Byington, and Jean Arthur.

We might be getting a sequel to the classic “9 to 5,” starring the iconic Jane Fonda, Lili Tomlin, and Dolly Parton. Is there a better bad boss than Dabney Coleman? Or a better song than this film’s title sung by Parton? In the meantime, watch the original and the documentary about how it was made and the issues today.

We like to pretend otherwise, but humans are very messy. Indeed, that is the reason we love stories; they give us reassurance that in the midst of all the uncertainty, all the mistakes, all the fear, there is some kind of pattern and some kind of meaning. I often quote writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz (“All About Ever”), who famously said that the difference between movies and life is that movies have to make sense.  Well, most of the time. Some movies, instead of creating the illusion that life is less messy, reflect and even relish the mess.

“Between the Temples,” directed and co-written (with C. Mason Wells) by Nathan Silver, is not going to pretend that life or its characters know what they’re doing and we are not going to get the satisfying resolution you might expect. Instead you will see an excellent cast play characters who try to find their way.

Jason Schwartzman plays Ben Gottlieb, a cantor at what appears to be a Conservative synagogue in upstate New York called Temple Sinai. A cantor is the member of the clergy who sings or chants liturgical music, leads the congregation in prayer, and, usually, teaches classes in Jewish practice and theology, often including coaching middle schoolers preparing for bar and bat mitzvahs. He prepares them for the ceremony at age 13, when they are called to read from the Torah for the first time and accept their identity and obligations as Jews.

Singing is central to the job of a cantor, and most of them are thoroughly trained in music. But Ben has been unable to sing since a terrible tragedy over a year before this movie begins. His wife died, and he is now living with his moms, Meira (Caroline Aaron of “Mrs. Maizel”) and Judith (Dolly De Leon of “Triangle of Sadness”). As the film begins, Sinai’s genial rabbi, who likes be called, familiarly, “Rabbi Pete,” (“SNL’s” Robert Smigel) is warmly encouraging, welcoming Ben back to the pulpit. But only a few strangled sounds come out of his mouth and he races out of the sanctuary consumed with shame and fear.

After a brief failed suicide attempt (the truck driver he wanted to run him over ends up giving him a ride), Ben goes to a bar, where he has no idea what to order. The sympathetic bartender offers him a chocolate-y drink called a mudslide. And it is there Ben is befriended by a widowed music teacher named Carla O’Connor (Carol Kane, utterly wonderful).

At first they are too tipsy to realize they know each other, or did know each other. She was Ben’s elementary school music teacher. Her support for his love of singing played a part in his choice of career. When she shows up at Sinai, asking to take bat mitzvah lessons, he is at first reluctant, but her warmth and sincerity lead him to agree and they begin a friendship.

The cinematography has a retro feel, with some oddly chosen and edited near-grotesque close-ups. This adds to a chilliness at the center of the movie that keeps us from engaging fully with the characters, in part because for people who say they take religion seriously, including two members of the clergy, a convert, and a woman who wants to make the commitment to learning to read the Torah for a bat mitzvah, no one seems to pay much attention to the teachings of Judaism. Rabbi Bruce is kind and supportive of Ben but completely swayed by the size of monetary contributions to the temple. We never get a sense that Ben cares about what he is teaching his students or that his commitment to keeping kosher is anything but habit. Most perplexingly, while he makes clear to Carol that a heartfelt speech showing what she has learned is as much a part of a bat mitzvah as reading from the Torah, somehow that completely disappears along with some of the other details of the ceremony and celebration. As far as we can see, Carol only learns the phonetics and melody of the Hebrew and does not even know what she is saying.

In most movies, each detail and character propel the story forward and reinforce the point. But movies like this one amble along in a shaggy fashion, each detail and each excellent performance give us hints of the lives that happen outside the borders of the screen. Some may find that disconcerting but others will appreciate it as a glimpse into relatably zig-zagy lives.

Parents should know that this film has a brief attempted suicide, drinking, drunkenness, and references to alcoholism and a sad offscreen death, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Why couldn’t Ben sing? What do you hope happens to him next?

If you like this, try: “I Heart Huckabee’s,” “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” and “Hey Hey, It’s Esther Blueberger”

Melodrama gets a bad rap. It is often associated with exaggerated characters and situations. But life has a tendency to be melodramatic, and a story like “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat” told in an unabashedly heartfelt fashion with a screenplay by (under a pseudonym) Gina Prince-Bythewood and director Tina Mabry, putting the melodrama in the context of enduring, unconditional friendship over the decades. When the character are played by superb performers, seeing how they respond to the direst challenges life can present makes us feel that we are a part of that friendship, at least until the movie ends.

Based on the book by Edward Kelsey Moore, the story goes back and forth in time between the late 1960s and the present. Odette ( Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor of “King Richard” and “The Clark Sisters”) tells us that one connection with her two friends is their unusual origins. Odette was literally born in a sycamore tree. Her mother, past her due date, was told by a woman said to have mystical powers to sit on the branch of a sycamore tree and sing a hymn, and Odette arrived too fast for her to climb back down. She says she was “born off the ground and cursed with a life of fearlessness.” She grew up to be a caretaker who put others’ needs before her own.

Clarice (Uzo Aduba of “Orange is the New Black”) rebelled against her mother, who cared only what other people thought and wanted her to “put on a face and play perfect. She grew up to be a talented pianist with a fierce sense of justice. Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan of “Love and Basketball’ and “The Family that Preys”) was born into chaos and abuse, her mother a careless party girl, her father one of many possibles. When teenage Clarice (Abigail Achiri) and Odette (Kyanna Simone) rescue Barbara Jean (Tati Gabrielle) from her abusive stepfather, the three girls form an unbreakable bond. Big Earl (Tony Winters), the wise and generous owner of the diner where the whole community hangs out, says they are as sparkly as The Supremes, and the nickname sticks.

As in films like “Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood” and “Now and Then,” and “Steel Magnolias,” it is the enduring friendship (with a few bumps along the way) that is the focus. The three women have to deal with some of the most devastating setbacks and losses imaginable. Through it all, they rely on the endless, unquestioning support of their friendship (with a few hard truths). Gorgeous performances from the three stars, strong support from Winters, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Russell Hornsby, and Mekhi Phifer as the men in their lives, and thoughtful, sincere work from Mabry and Prince-Bythewood never let the movie get soapy or overdone.

Parents should know that this film includes sad deaths, including murder of a child and an adult, serious illness, alcoholism, adultery, domestic abuse, and violent racism. Characters use some strong language and there are sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: Which friend is most like you and why? Which is your favorite? How was each one’s childhood reflected in their adult lives?

If you like this, try: the 2012 remake of “Steel Magnolias” and “The Color Purple”

Many thanks to Rachel for a wonderful conversation!