Verity to Digger: 12 of the best films to watch this October

From a dark thriller adapted from a Colleen Hoover novel to a satirical farce about an eccentric oil billionaire, here are the films to watch and stream at home this month.

Tom Cruise has spent the last decade becoming Hollywood's premier action hero, showing off his daredevil stunts – and his energetic running – in Mission: Impossible, Jack Reacher and The Mummy. But now, it seems, he's ready for a change. His new film, Digger, is a bizarre satirical farce from Alejandro G Iñárritu, the Mexican director of Amores Perros, Birdman and The Revenant. Cruise – yes, that's him beneath the prosthetic make-up – plays an eccentric oil billionaire named Digger Rockwell. His company has caused a climate change-related catastrophe, so the US president (John Goodman) gives him the job of undoing the damage, with the help of his sister (Sandra Hüller) and a government scientist (Riz Ahmed). Can he save the world? And will audiences pay to see Cruise swearing and clowning, rather than jumping off buildings?

Released on 1 and 2 October internationally

Ang Lee's 1995 film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was nominated for seven Oscars, so it's brave of anyone to make another big-screen version of the same novel. On the other hand, Austen fever is raging once again. In December, there's a new Netflix mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, and this month sees the release of a wistful, atmospheric Sense and Sensibility directed by Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean). Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles star as the Dashwood sisters, who are pushed out of their family home after their father's death. George Mackay, Herbert Nordrum and Frank Dillane play the sisters' suitors, Edward Ferrars, Colonel Brandon and John Willoughby. And Fiona Shaw steals the show as their hearty benefactor, Mrs Jennings. The BBC's Molly Gorman says that the film is "visually stunning, and the naturalistic cinematography of England's countryside sets a romantic tone".

Released on 16 October in the US and Canada, and internationally throughout October

Verity is the fourth film in the last three years to be adapted from a Colleen Hoover novel – the biggest one being 2024's mega-hit, It Ends with Us – but it has its own darkly thrilling tone. Anne Hathaway stars as the titular Verity, an author who is left comatose by a car accident, halfway through writing the final novel in her best-selling series. Her husband (Josh Hartnett) hires a ghost-writer (Dakota Johnson) to finish the job, but once she moves into the couple's house, she suspects that Verity might not be as badly injured as she appears. "It's way different than the other Colleen Hoover books," Hartnett said in an interview with Lauren Veneziani. "It's sexy, it's mysterious and it's a little bit gothic and a little bit scary, and it's wild. And I think it's going to be surprising for audiences."

Released on 1 and 2 October internationally

This Halloween's creepiest-looking horror film has an impeccable pedigree. It's adapted from a novel by Josh Malerman (Bird Box), directed by Rob Savage (Host), and produced by James Wan (Saw, Insidious, and countless other Hollywood chillers). It also offers two Jessica Chastain performances for the price of one. She plays Ursula, who is devoted to their eight-year-old daughter, Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark). And she plays Ursula's demonic doppelganger, who talks to Bela when no one else is around. "The whole thesis of this book is, well, what if this actually happened to you and your family?" Savage said in Empire. "What would you actually do? What decisions would you make, that aren't movie decisions? Real-life decisions."

Released on 8 and 9 October internationally

The Social Network was one of the best films of 2010. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, it was a sparklingly intelligent drama about the founding of Facebook (now Meta), and all the legal wrangles that followed. Now comes a sequel of sorts. Once again scripted by Sorkin, who has also taken over as director, The Social Reckoning tells the true story of Frances Haugen, a Facebook employee who leaked an internal document revealing the harm caused by social media. Haugen is played by Mikey Madison, in her first role since she won the best actress Oscar for Anora. Jesse Eisenberg isn't returning as Mark Zuckerberg, but Jeremy Strong from Succession is a worthy replacement. Sorkin said in the New York Times that Strong effectively became Zuckerberg while they were filming. "I told all the other actors in his scenes: 'Guys... he is going to treat you the way he imagines Mark treats the people around him.' And that's what happened. You cannot argue with the results."

Released on 9 October in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland

What's a medieval fisherwoman to do when she is too smelly to attract a potential husband? In this bawdy romantic fantasy, adapted by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson from Ursula Wills-Jones's short story, the answer is simple: the fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) pays her village's basket-maker (Peter Dinklage) to weave her a husband out of twigs. The plan works remarkably well. Not only does the wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) come to life, but he proves to be a caring and attentive partner. But what will the locals make of this unlikely match? "Wicker is a wild surprise of a film," says Gregory Nussen in Screenrant, "an endlessly beautiful fairy tale brought to life by yet another astounding performance by Olivia Colman and exquisitely shot and designed."

Released on 23 October in the US, and on 30 October in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Spain

Fjord was the winner of this year's Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. And if there was a prize for the most controversial film, Cristian Mungiu's drama would have won that, too. Sebastian Stan (Marvel's Winter Soldier) and Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value) play a couple – one Romanian, one Norwegian – who move with their five children to a remote village in Norway. The locals are suspicious of the newcomers' intense Christianity. And when one of the children is seen with bruises on her face, her parents have to defend themselves against charges of child abuse. "Mungiu has pulled off… a subversive act in this age of rightward drift and intolerance," says David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter, "just by making the conservative Christians unimpeachable compared to the insufferably holier-than-thou finger-pointing liberals." 

Released on 9 October in the US, 16 October in Canada, and 13 November in the UK

Eight years on from Lee Chang-dong's last film, Burning, the Korean writer-director returns with another piercingly sharp picture of power dynamics and social divisions. It's a drama about two couples, one of them (Cho Yeo-jeong and Zo In-sung) comfortably wealthy, and the other one (Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu) struggling ever since the husband lost his factory job. When the middle-class woman starts making a documentary about her working-class counterpart, the film raises uncomfortable questions about the connections and the barriers between them. "It all makes for a slower burn, less tumultuous companion piece to Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite," says Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. "Together, they form a bleak triptych of modern fables that show society stratifying in increasingly insurmountable ways."

Released on 23 October in the UK, US, Ireland, Canada and Japan (and then on Netflix in November)

Edmund Hillary tends to be remembered as the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest in May 1953, but the final ascent was a two-man effort that relied on a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. Jennifer Peedom's spectacular adventure, Tenzing, concentrates on Norgay (Genden Phuntsok) – although his friendship with Hillary (Tom Hiddleston) is central to the inspirational story. Oddly enough, it's not the only film set on the slopes of Mount Everest this October. There's also Everest: The Other Side (released on 30 October in the US), a breathtaking documentary from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, Nyad). Climbing the highest mountain in the world isn't enough for its subjects, Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson. They want to scale Everest's steep north face – and then ski all the way back down. Vertigo sufferers should give both films a miss.

Released on 9 October in the US and UK, and on 16 October on Apple TV

A Minecraft Movie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Resident Evil, Five Nights at Freddy's… films based on video games have been bigger than ever in the 2020s, so it's no surprise that Capcom's beloved hand-to-hand combat game is getting another shot at the big screen. But will this version pack a bigger punch than the 1994 attempt with Kylie Minogue and Jean-Claude Van Damme? The good news is that the actors look the part, including Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji, plus Jason Momoa as the green-skinned Blanka. And it seems to have an appropriately surreal, comedic spirit, thanks to Kitao Sakurai, the director of Bad Trip and The Eric André Show. "Everybody wanted to get behind creating a movie that didn't feel like an off-the-shelf video-game movie," Sakurai said in Empire. "I was brought on to make something that didn't feel conventional, and they really let me do my thing."

Released on 15 and 16 October internationally

La Bola Negra is directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, aka Los Javis, but most cinema-goers will be more familiar with its producer, Pedro Almodóvar, and its guest star, Penélope Cruz, who has a dazzling cameo as a 1930s cabaret star. An homage to a lost novel by the great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, it's a lavish period drama that cuts between 1932, 1937 and 2017, as a young gay academic explores how queer history has been erased in Spain. "This decades-spanning love odyssey is as impressive as it is moving," says Rafa Sales Ross in Little White Lies, "grabbing at the visceral nature of Lorca's genre-bending work to mould its staggeringly boisterous cinematic equivalent."

Released on 16 October in the US and Canada, and on 6 November in the UK

Alex Gibney, the director of the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, has made what could be his masterpiece: a four-hour documentary about the world's richest man, Elon Musk. It's an epic saga that covers Musk's evolution from Silicon Valley wannabe to car manufacturer to controversial trillionaire. Musk himself has dismissed it as "a hit piece that misses and makes the fatal sin of being boring", but he could be biased. Whether or not you're a fan of the tycoon, this explosive profile is anything but boring. Owen Gleiberman in Variety calls it "a lacerating and important watch, grounded in Alex Gibney's supremely insightful but user-friendly mastery of the documentary form".

Released on 16 October in the US

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