It seems the closer we get to October, the more it feels like studios are rushing out a bunch of new releases that don’t quite fit under the umbrella of the Halloween season.
This week is especially jam-packed with new titles, both in cinemas and on the small screen. However, don’t expect many big studio tentpoles or high-profile films. Instead, this week’s lineup is filled with smaller mid-to-low-budget dramas, indies, and genre films all fighting for your attention.
Meanwhile, on the TV front, a ton of shows are returning for their second seasons this week, making the small-screen lineup much busier than usual. So there’s plenty to choose from. Scroll down, take a look, and see what makes your must-watch list this week.
🎥 In Theaters This Week
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🎥 The Transformers: The Movie: 40th anniversary
(Thurs, Sept 17th thru Mon, Sept 21st — 4K re-release)
One shall stand, one shall fall... and an entire generation may still need a minute to catch their breath. The Autobots and their leader, Optimus Prime, are hit hard by a devastating Decepticon assault just as the planet-devouring Unicron embarks on a path of destruction across the galaxy, leaving Hot Rod to step up and claim the Matrix of Leadership. The late Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, and Orson Welles make up the voice cast. 40 years later, the battle is heading back to theaters in 4K. Now Autobots, roll out!
🎥 Last Train to Fortune
(Thurs, Sept 17th — limited release; in NY)
Malcolm McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, a bookish English schoolteacher stranded on his way to a new job in the frontier town of Fortune. After outlaw Jedidiah Dooley (James Paxton) robs him, Cecil makes the gunslinger an offer: get him safely to town and take his first month’s pay. Gunfights, jailbreaks, saloons, and an unlikely friendship follow as two men with very different educations discover they might have something to teach each other.
🎥 Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
(Thurs, Sept 17th — limited release)
Salman Rushdie survived the 2022 attack that left him with life-altering injuries, but recovery meant more than simply healing. Drawing on his memoir Knife, Alex Gibney’s documentary combines Rushdie’s reflections with personal footage filmed by his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, capturing the private work of rebuilding his life. The result looks beyond the violence itself to a writer reclaiming his voice and control of his own story.
🎥 Resident Evil
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
A routine delivery turns into one very bad night for Austin Abrams’ medical courier, Bryan, as a biological disaster sends him racing through an increasingly dangerous city. Zach Cregger, the filmmaker behind Barbarian and Weapons, directs this standalone reinvention of the survival-horror video game franchise. Turns out working the night shift can always get worse.
🎥 The Weight
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
Ethan Hawke stars as Samuel Murphy, a widower in 1930s Oregon who is sent to a brutal prison and offered one very dangerous way out. Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) wants Samuel and several other inmates (Austin Amelio and Avi Nash) to smuggle stolen government gold out of a remote mine, survive the trip, and maybe earn their freedom. Julia Jones joins them as an Indigenous runaway in director Padraic McKinley’s period thriller, where the promise of liberty starts looking a lot like a death sentence.
🎥 Bad Apples
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
Saoirse Ronan stars as Maria, a primary-school teacher pushed to the breaking point by one violently disruptive student. Desperate to get her classroom under control, she makes a drastic choice that actually seems to work... for a while. But solving one problem only creates a much bigger one. Directed by Jonatan Etzler, this dark comedy-thriller follows Maria as one bad decision leads to another, eventually sparking a citywide search for a missing boy whose whereabouts she knows all too well.
🎥 Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
A simple attempt to fix the pumpkin patch goes very wrong when Shaun and the flock accidentally unleash a mysterious creature on Mossy Bottom Farm. With Halloween fast approaching, strange things start happening, the Farmer disappears, and Shaun has to lead the others through eerie woods and unexpected dangers to put things right. Aardman Animations brings its trademark stop-motion charm to this adventure, where even a little farmyard mishap can turn into a full-blown monster problem.
🎥 Without Blood
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Salma Hayek Pinault plays a woman who has spent years living with the loss of her family after a devastating war. Her search for answers brings her face-to-face with a man, played by Demián Bichir, who may know what really happened. Written and directed by Angelina Jolie from Alessandro Baricco’s novel, the drama turns that meeting into something far more complicated than revenge, as both are forced to confront memory, guilt, and whether the truth can bring any kind of peace.
🎥 The History of Concrete
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Concrete is everywhere. But getting people to sit through a documentary about it is the harder sell. After How To with John Wilson, filmmaker John Wilson sets out to turn one of the most ordinary, seemingly unexciting materials around us into something worth watching. That plan quickly starts to crack, turning the project into a funny, self-aware look at filmmaking, creative compromise, unexpected connections, and what happens when real life becomes more interesting than the movie you thought you were making.
🎥 The Musical
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Tony Award winner Will Brill stars in this dark comedy as Doug, a frustrated playwright stuck teaching middle-school theater while his career goes nowhere. Things get worse when his ex and fellow schoolteacher (Gillian Jacobs) starts dating the school’s painfully ordinary principal, played none other than by Rob Lowe. Fed up and nursing a bruised ego, Doug decides revenge is the only answer. His plan: stage an outrageously inappropriate student musical to trash the principal’s good name, using his entire classroom of innocent kids as unwitting accomplices.
🎥 Tiny Fugitives
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Summer camp is temporary. At least, it’s supposed to be. A reckless group of 12-year-olds decides they’d rather stay for good than go back to ordinary life, putting them on a collision course with Bob, Johnny Knoxville’s 50-year-old lifer counselor, who is determined to stop them. Michael Lewen directs this irreverent comedy about adolescent independence and increasingly elaborate sabotage, with Blake Anderson and Jay Baruchel joining the chaos.
🎥 Sunny Dancer
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey plays Ivy, a 17-year-old cancer survivor who is ready for everyone to stop defining her by what she’s been through. Her parents have other ideas, sending her to a summer camp for young people affected by cancer; something Ivy quickly dubs “Chemo Camp.” Writer-director George Jaques turns that unwanted summer into a warm, irreverent coming-of-age story about finding people who understand her without pitying her.
🎥 April X
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Heated Rivalry breakout Connor Storrie trades hockey sticks for black-market body parts in this sci-fi noir thriller. He stars as Bax, a hustler searching for his missing twin sister, April (Lilly Krug), in a futuristic post-Soviet city where dreams can be recorded and memories stolen. His search pulls him deeper into a neon-lit underworld where every clue brings him closer to the truth... and further into danger.
🎥 You Had to Be There
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Before Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and Broadway turned them into household names, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer all found themselves in the same 1972 Toronto production of Godspell. Filmmaker Nick Davis looks back at the friendships, timing, and creative spark that came out of that show, and how one unlikely stage production helped bring together a group that would go on to leave a huge mark on entertainment.
🎥 Who’s Watching
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
An awkward office crush turns into something much darker in this psychological horror thriller from Cursive frontman Tim Kasher. Zachary Ray Sherman stars as Caleb, a socially isolated coworker who decides to make a “documentary” about Krista, played by Gracie Gillam. What he calls fascination starts looking more like surveillance, then stalking, as his camera becomes one more excuse to keep pushing past boundaries he has no business crossing.
🎥 Ghost in the Shell: 30th Anniversary
(Fri, Sept 18th — re-release, 4K restoration)
Major Motoko Kusanagi and Section 9 are hunting the Puppet Master, a mysterious intelligence that can hack human minds and rewrite identity. Mamoru Oshii’s landmark 1995 anime, adapted from Masamune Shirow’s classic manga, mixes cyberpunk action with noir atmosphere and questions about what makes someone human. Three decades later, its ideas about artificial intelligence, manufactured bodies, surveillance, and digital identity feel less like distant science fiction and more like the world catching up to the movie.
🎥 My Brother’s Wedding
(Fri, September 18th — re-release, 4K restoration)
One of the great voices of American indie cinema, Charles Burnett has spent decades making films that never quite got the attention they deserved. Now his 1983 cult classic is getting a new 4K restoration and another shot at finding its audience. Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, and Gaye Shannon-Burnett, the film follows an aimless young Black man caught between family obligations, neighborhood loyalty, and a future he still hasn’t figured out.
