November Movie Preview

Foreign/Drama - dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
In theaters November 25

Writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is no stranger to winning awards. Drive My Car won Best Screenplay at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and the Best International Feature Oscar. His follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, took home the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, he presented his first film made outside of Japan, and, like his previous films, it earned recognition from the jury, with stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto sharing the Best Actress prize. It was a fitting acknowledgment, as Hamaguchi's three hour drama focuses on the friendship formed between Marie-Lou (Efira), the innovative director of a Parisian elder care facility, and Mari (Okamoto), a Japanese theater director battling cancer. It's a multilayered look at the power of compassion, and another thought-provoking work from one of our best working directors.

Drama - dir. Sian Heder
In theaters November 6 / streams on Apple TV November 13

Siân Heder's follow-up to her Best Picture winner, CODA, is a portrait of disability rights activist Judy Heumann and the work undertaken by her and her fellow protestors to demand action on Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. In adapting Heumann's memoir, Being Heumann: The Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, Heder and co-writer Rebekah Taussig focus on the 28-day occupation of a San Francisco federal building in 1977. Ruth Madeley stars as Heumann, and Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O'Brien have supporting roles in what The Film Maven's Kristen Lopez declares "an essential piece of disabled cinema" that is "both a vital and bittersweet example of a history that's been ignored for decades."

Comedy/Drama - dir. Pedro Almodóvar
In theaters November 13 (wider November 25)

Returning to his homeland after 2024's The Room Next Door, Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar has produced a metafictional self-critique about a film director (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who takes inspiration from tragedies suffered by those closest to him. His latest script is about Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a filmmaker whose life mirrors his own. While not as critically acclaimed as Parallel Mothers or Pain and Glory, Bitter Christmas still offers plenty of the director's boldly colored charms.

Documentary/Music - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Roadshow release begins November 20

Director Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to last year's Best Picture Oscar winner, One Battle After Another, is a concert film capturing Geese lead singer Cameron Winter's solo show at Carnegie Hall in December of 2025. While PTA has directed numerous music videos and the music documentary Junun, this is his first concert film. Critics who saw the film at its New York Film Festival premiere were impressed, and audiences who want to see it in theaters will need to plan ahead as the film's 35mm prints travel across North America from theater to theater. Until then, fans can take a listen to the live album recorded at the concert, featuring three songs not on Winter's critically acclaimed 2024 album Heavy Metal.

Comedy/Drama - dir. Jordan Firstman
In theaters November 6

Before premiering his debut feature in Cannes, Jordan Firstman might have been known for his online antics, as the star of Sebastián Silva's Rotting in the Sun (if you're an indie film fan), or as a supporting player in TV comedies I Love LA or English Teacher. Now he's the writer-director-star of an award-winning film and a nominee for the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director. This funny, crowd-pleasing tale stars Firstman as a washed-up party promoter thrust into adulthood when he 's presented with an eight-year-old son (Reggie Absalom) he never knew he had.

Drama - dir. Simon Stone
In theaters November 20 (wider December 11)

Andrew Scott stars as Scottish actor Ian Charleson (best known on the big screen as Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire) in the latest from director Simon Stone (The Dig). Written by Stephen Beresford (Pride) and Ethan Silverman, this biopic focuses on Charleson's last role, portraying Hamlet on stage while living with AIDS. Scott's performance has earned raves, and he's joined by a strong ensemble that includes Olivia Colman as his stern doctor, Peter Mullan as father, and Johnny Flynn as his director, Richard Eyre.

Action/Comedy/Drama/Thriller - dir. David Fincher
In IMAX theaters November 25 / streams on Netflix December 23

Brad Pitt reprises his Oscar-winning role from 2019's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood in this 1977-set sequel that finds Pitt's Cliff Booth, now a Hollywood fixer, getting mixed up with talent agent Karen Crosby (Elizabeth Debicki), her client Charlie Peters (Scott Caan), his wife Toni (Carla Gugino), football star turned actor Roderick "Hot Rod" Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and a pair of gangsters played by Matt Groove and JB Tadena. Written again by Quentin Tarantino but directed by David Fincher, it's a collaboration between two unique American filmmakers who rose to prominence in the 1990s. Will their styles mesh? Word from Tarantino's screening of the first 17 minutes at AFI Fest was positive.

Foreign/Action-Adventure/Sci-Fi/Horror - dir. Takashi Yamazaki
In theaters (and IMAX) November 6

Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki's sequel to his 2024 Oscar winner and Metacritic Must-See Godzilla Minus One picks up two years later in 1949 as Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) strive to rebuild their lives in a recovering Japan. Unfortunately, a new threat is on the horizon as King Ghidorah battles our favorite radioactive monster.

Action/Thriller - dir. David Leitch
In theaters November 13

David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, The Fall Guy) directs this R-rated action-comedy about a crew of bank robbers who livestream their crimes, making them targets of a veteran FBI agent (John C. Reilly). Expect plenty of car chases and shootouts for a cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Anna Sawai, Pete Davidson, Tati Gabrielle, and Christian Slater. Well, maybe not Slater—he plays a crooked banker.

Action-Adventure - dir. Francis Lawrence
In theaters (and IMAX) November 20

After the success of The Long Walk, director Francis Lawrence returns to the world of Panem for the sixth time. Set 24 years before the events of the first film (the only Hunger Games film not directed by Lawrence), Sunrise on the Reaping tells the story of the 50th Hunger Games in which Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada here, Woody Harrelson in the original set of films) forms an alliance with fellow tribute Maysilee Donner (Mckenna Grace), hoping to topple President Snow (Ralph Fiennes). Jesse Plemons plays a young Plutarch Heavensbee (previously played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), while Elle Fanning appears as Effie Trinket and Kieran Culkin takes on Caesar Flickerman. Also expect original stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson to appear in some capacity as Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch.

Drama/Comedy - dir. Peter Farrelly
In theaters November 6 (wider November 20)

With his latest, director Peter Farrelly uses his crowd-pleasing (and Oscar-winning) template for Green Book to tell the story of the making of Rocky. Written by Peter Gamble and starring Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone, it's an underdog story about the making of the ultimate underdog movie. In a slightly fictionalized way, the film chronicles Stallone's battle to star in the film he wrote, and the restrictions put on the production by skeptical studio execs. The ensemble includes AnnaSophia Robb as Sallone's first wife Sasha Czack, Matt Dillon as Frank Stallone, Jay Duplass as director John Avildsen, and Stephan James as Carl Weathers.

Drama - dir. Beth de Araújo
In theaters November 20 (wider December 4)

Writer-director Beth de Araújo's follow-up to her 2022 Sundance debut, Soft & Quiet, won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize & U.S. Audience Award (Dramatic) at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Mason Reeves stars as 8-year-old Josephine, who witnesses a violent crime in Golden Gate Park. As she struggles to come to terms with what she has seen, her parents, played by Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, find themselves unable to console her as they confront what is required of their daughter in order for justice to be served.

Drama/Comedy/Sports - dir. David O. Russell
In theaters and streams on Prime Video November 18

Arriving simultaneously in theaters and on Prime Video, the first film in four years from controversial filmmaker David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) stars Nicolas Cage as legendary NFL coach, TV commentator, airplane avoider, and turducken enthusiast John Madden (whom you may know best as the man who lent his name to a wildly successful series of video games, a topic that is another one of the film's major focuses). Also starring in the biopic are Christian Bale (playing former Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis), Kathryn Hahn, John Mulaney, Sienna Miller, and Shane Gillis.

Drama/Thriller - dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
In theaters November 20

After nearly dying from COVID complications in 2021, exiled Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev returned to this year's Cannes Film Festival with an adaptation of Claude Chabrol's 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife (also the inspiration for Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful). Co-written with Simon Lyashenko and set in 2022 Russia as their invasion of Ukraine escalates, this thriller follows Gleb, a privilege, unscrupulous businessman, as he battles fears that his wife is cheating on him and demands from his superiors to send employees off to war. Already a winner of Best Screenplay in 2014 for Leviathan and the Jury Prize in 2017 for Loveless, Zvyagintsev left Cannes this year with his highest prize yet, the Grand Prix.

Comedy/Drama - dir. Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson
In theaters November 6 (wider November 13)

The new film from Saint Frances and Ghostlight filmmakers Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson takes place in 2002 Arkansas, where Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) struggles to recalibrate her life after losing her charismatic best friend, Callie (Chloe Coleman). As she grieves, she's drawn to Callie's mother, a classical pianist played by Sophie Okonedo. Iman Vellani and David Hyde Pierce also star. The latest by O'Sullivan and Thompson is likely to join their previous collaborations as a Metacritic Must-See.

Drama/Thriller - dir. James Gray
In theaters November 13 (wider November 20)

Writer-director James Gray (Armageddon Time) returned to the Cannes competition this year for the sixth time in his career with this personal portrait of a family in 1986 New York who become entangled with the Russian mob. Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson play Irwin and Hester Pearl. They have two sons and a good life, but when Uncle Gary (Adam Driver), a retired NYPD officer, offers Irwin a way to make their life a little better, he takes it, putting everything they have at risk. It's another poignant family drama wrapped up in a crime thriller from the director of Little Odessa, The Yards, and We Own the Night.

Foreign/Drama - dir. Lee Chang-dong
Streams on Netflix November 6

The first film in eight years from acclaimed Korean director Lee Chang-dong (Burning) collected the second-place Grand Jury Prize at Venice a few months ago. There, critics also raved about this tale of socioeconomic differences and hidden desires between two married couples—a documentary filmmaker and her well-off husband, and an unemployed worker and his wife—making it one of 2026's best-reviewed films. It'll be South Korea's official Best International Feature submission for the upcoming Academy Awards, where it could contend against fellow Netflix film La bola negra.

Documentary - dir. J.M. Harper
In theaters November 6 (more cities November 13)

As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial director J.N. Harper took home the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival for this look at the Vietnam War's first Black special operations team. Inspired by veteran Ed Emanuel's 2003 book Soul Patrol: The Riveting True Story of the First African American LRRP Team in Vietnam, Harper reunites the the living members and tells their stories through first-person testimony, archival footage, and reenactments, resulting in a compelling recreation of forgotten history.

Action/Comedy/Drama/Thriller - dir. Martin McDonagh
In theaters November 6

John Malkovich took home the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in writer-director Martin McDonagh's follow-up to The Banshees of Inisherin. Malkovich plays Chris, an aging CIA agent, who, along with his partner Lee (Sam Rockwell), spends time on Easter Island prior to the 1973 Chilean coup. Steve Buscemi plays their Santiago-stationed bureau chief, and Parker Posey, Tom Waits, Mariana di Girolamo, and Ailín Salas round out the cast. It's another banter-filled crime flick from the director of In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Sci-Fi - dir. Kogonada
In theaters November 6

Shot over three weeks in Hong Kong, the latest from writer-director Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang) is a reset after his recent foray into big-budget studio filmmaking, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, turned into a misfire. Michelle Mao plays Zi, a young woman suffering with a condition that manifests in visions of her future self. Haley Lu Richardson plays L, who kindly offers to walk Zi home. On the way, they cross paths with Min (Jin Ha), a friend of L's who is a researcher at a neurology center. Shot by cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, the film features music by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.

WANT MORE FILMS?
View our Movie Release Calendar for a complete list of titles headed to theaters, VOD, and streaming in November and beyond.