Film

Jane Austen’s enduring tale of love, family and social expectations gets a makeover on the big screen with a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility from Focus Features and Working Title Films opening in theaters Oct. 16.

Directed by Georgia Oakley and written by Diana Reid, the film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Twisters) and Esmé Creed-Miles (Hanna, The Doll Factory) as sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.

Following the death of their father, the Dashwood women are forced to leave their family estate after an inheritance arrangement leaves them with limited financial security. Relocated to a modest cottage in Devonshire, Elinor and Marianne confront the restrictions placed on women while navigating complicated romantic relationships and the expectations of their social world.

Edgar-Jones portrays the reserved and pragmatic Elinor, whose carefully guarded matters of the heart are tested, while Creed-Miles plays Marianne, whose passionate nature puts her emotions firmly on display. Her romantic idealism lands her in her own share of trouble.  Caitríona Balfe (Outlander) stars as their mother, Mrs. Dashwood, and Bodhi Rae Breathnach (Hamnet) plays youngest sister Margaret Dashwood and Fiona Shaw is Mrs. Jennings. Meanwhile, Frank Dillane, George MacKay, and Herbert Nordrum round out the cast.

Oakley’s adaptation emphasizes the sisters’ relationships much as their respective romances, while bringing a grounded approach to Austen’s early 19th-century world. The director wanted to move beyond an idealized vision of the period and create a setting that felt lived-in and authentic.

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Verity follows a young woman hired to ghostwrite bestselling author Verity Crawford’s next book. As she begins to discover more and more disturbing notes, she questions Verity’s wellbeing, Verity’s husband’s motives, and her own involvement in the whole thing as the lines between reality and fiction become more and more blurred.

Colleen Hoover is a much-maligned writer who is perhaps best known for It Ends With Us, a dramatic book with a somehow even more dramatic press tour involving star Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni. Between the arguments that derailed shooting, the competing cuts of the final product, and the refusal to acknowledge one another during the press tour, it’s hard to imagine any film being embroiled in that level of scandal. In direct contrast, Verity seems to be trying hard to remain as undramatic as possible.

Dakota Johnson, perhaps best known for her portrayal of Anastasia in the 50 Shades franchise, takes on the role of Lowen Ashleigh, the young ghostwriter, with Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, The Odyssey, The Devil Wears Prada) as the titular character Verity and Josh Hartnett (30 Days of Night, The Black Dahlia, Lucky Number Slevin) as her husband Jeremy. The film is directed by Michael Showalter, who previously directed Hathaway in her 2024 film The Idea of You (another book-to-movie adaptation that received mixed reviews).

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We’re way past making friends… the tagline of The Social Reckoning insists. And in the days of digital surveillance, the rise of artificial intelligence, and a growing disconnection between individuals, maybe we are.

The Social Reckoning was announced as an unexpected sequel to 2010’s The Social Network, a film exploring how Mark Zuckerberg (or “Zuck”) began the college networking site that would come to be known ubiquitously as Facebook. In the original, Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland, Now You See Me, The Squid and the Whale) plays Zuck everywhere from a struggling college student trying desperately to get people to join his site to a young mogul at the top of his game.

In the sequel, we get a look at Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice, Succession, The Trial of the Chicago 7) as Zuck nearly 20 years later, this time threatened when a young engineer Frances Haugen threatens to expose Facebook’s darkest secrets.  Played by Mikey Madison (Anora, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Scream), Haugen teams up with Jeremy Allen White (The Bear, The Iron Claw, The Mandalorian and Grogu) as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz to blow the whistle on the massive social networking conglomerate.

Directed and written by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Reckoning is sure not to pull any of its punches. If Zuck himself watches it, will he like it? Sorkin hopes so, but he’s “not optimistic.”

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What do we owe the person who is slowly disappearing?

Queen at Sea does not flinch from the question; however, the film-goer might. Director Lance Hammer follows a London family as dementia takes Leslie, and with her, a little more dignity every day. Her daughter Amanda (Juliette Binoche) fights to protect her. Her husband Martin (stepfather to Amanda) fights to stay beside her. It begins when Amanda walks in on her mother and Martin in an intimate moment, and her fear that Leslie can no longer consent sets off police, social workers, and a family torn apart.

The film settles in on one conversation: a social worker, Amanda, Martin, and Leslie. Four people, one table, hard questions. Martin, played by Tom Courtenay, tender and stubborn in equal measure, tearfully declares his love for his wife and best friend. Then he reaffirms their vows, and Leslie answers him. Anna Calder-Marshall, who earned the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance, plays that moment with eyes alive one second and vacant the next. It is tender.

Queen at Sea carries a tragic, wintry honesty and a call for awareness. As for the title, Hammer says “at sea” means lost, and when the matriarch is in peril, “the whole nation [family] is in trouble.”

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