What to Watch This Weekend: The Witches Will Win the Box Office. The Best-Reviewed New Movie Is a Korean Alien Invasion.

Fall starts this weekend, and for the first time in seven weekends the movie at number one will not have a spider on it. Practical Magic 2 is projected to open between $30 million and $40 million, which ends the reign of Spider-Man: Brand New Day on the same weekend that film takes the all-time domestic record. That is the headline. It is not the most interesting choice at the multiplex.

Five wide releases opened between Wednesday and Friday, plus an Oasis concert film. We previewed the month in our September theatrical guide. This is the weekend-only version.

The one to see: Hope

Na Hong-jin made The Wailing, the film that got a lot of people to take Korean horror seriously, and then made nothing for ten years. Hope is the return. It premiered in competition at Cannes in May, and NEON put it in American theaters on Wednesday with almost none of the noise a movie this strange deserves.

The setup is a remote harbor town cut off by wildfires. Something is found on the edge of it, the police chief (Hwang Jung-min) and a rookie officer (Hoyeon of Squid Game) go looking, and a hunting party heads into the forest after it. The visitors they find are motion-captured and voiced by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about a Korean creature feature.

The reviews are the best of any wide release this weekend: 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across more than 100 critics, with a Metacritic score of 66. They are also unusually consistent about the shape of the thing. Time Out's Phil de Semlyen wrote that "for a solid hour or so, Na Hong-jin plays a blinder" and called it great when it is being Predator or Tremors and rotten when it turns into Prometheus. Gizmodo's Isaiah Colbert put it this way: "If a person could marry the first act of a movie, I would bend the knee to Hope." The knock is creature effects in motion. The praise is daylight action nobody else is staging right now.

It is rated R, runs 157 minutes, and cost a reported $46 million. If you buy one ticket this weekend, this is the one you will still be arguing about in October.

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The prestige swing: The Uprising

Paul Greengrass has spent two decades pointing a handheld camera at real history (United 93, 22 July). The Uprising takes the method to 1381. Andrew Garfield plays a ploughman who snaps under Richard II's poll taxes and helps light the Peasants' Revolt, with Jamie Bell as the radical priest John Ball and Cosmo Jarvis as Wat Tyler. Focus Features opened it Thursday. Rated R, 128 minutes.

Critics are split down the middle at 57 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and the same on Metacritic. They agree Garfield is terrific, the battle scenes are immersive, and the pacing never lets up. What divides them is the shaky-cam in a medieval setting and, more pointedly, an ending that reveals the whole film as an origin story for Robin Hood. HeyUGuys called that "a baffling swerve." Go for the first two hours and decide for yourself about the last ten minutes.

The comfort pick: Practical Magic 2

You already know whether you are seeing this. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are back as the Owens sisters, Susanne Bier directs, and the film opened Thursday to an estimated $3.5 million to $4 million in previews, ahead of Bullock's The Lost City on its way to a $31 million debut. Warner Bros. spent a reported $75 million and is tracking for $30 million to $40 million from around 4,000 theaters, which would nearly triple the 1998 original's $13.1 million opening.

The Rotten Tomatoes score has settled in the mid-30s, a few points above the original's 29 percent, with the recurring note that 130 minutes is too many. We covered the cast, the book, and the one missing character in our Practical Magic 2 preview. If the first film is an October ritual in your house, none of that matters.

The Saturday-night B-movie: Runner (and the one to skip)

Runner is 97 minutes, rated PG-13, and exactly what the poster promises. Alan Ritchson plays a former soldier turned courier with a donated liver, a dying kid at the end of the route, and a cartel in between. Owen Wilson is the chatty handler riding along. TheWrap said the pair "take a run at B-movie greatness," Variety called it passable, and most agree the chemistry is the whole movie. That is enough for a Saturday night.

The one to skip is The Fix, the Liam Neeson and Zachary Levi thriller about ex-CIA operators chasing $25 million hidden in a Tehran hotel wall since 1981. It runs 142 minutes, and The Hollywood Reporter's word for it was bloated.

For the Britpop faithful: Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger

Disney's documentary about the 2025 Oasis reunion tour is in select theaters and IMAX now, ahead of a Hulu and Disney+ run later this year. It has rehearsal-room access, stadium footage from a tour that grossed more than $400 million, and the first joint interview Liam and Noel Gallagher have given in more than 15 years. Consequence graded it a B and argued the fans, not the brothers, are the real stars. It runs 123 minutes.

The couch pick: A Killer Story on HBO Max

HBO's Thursday true crime slot goes to A Killer Story, a three-part series that follows journalist Joe Sexton across six years and three trials in the case of Dana Chandler, accused of killing her ex-husband and his girlfriend in 2002. The first chapter is streaming now, with new episodes September 17 and 24. If you want a movie instead, Heretic, Hugh Grant's conversation-as-horror chamber piece, landed on Hulu this week.

The record falls on Sunday

Spider-Man: Brand New Day entered the week at roughly $925 million domestic and needs about $12 million to pass The Force Awakens at $936.7 million. Tracking has its seventh weekend at $10 million to $11 million, so the likeliest moment is Sunday, almost ten years after the Star Wars film set the mark. We covered what the record means in our piece on the ten-year reign of The Force Awakens. The Odyssey should cross $600 million in the same window, a number Christopher Nolan had never touched domestically.

One more thing to watch from afar: the Toronto film festival opened Thursday night with Being Heumann, Siân Heder's first film since CODA, starring Ruth Madeley and Mark Ruffalo in the story of disability rights activist Judy Heumann. Awards season officially starts now.

Whatever you choose, log it. A weekend with a Cannes competition title, a Greengrass epic, and a new all-time box office champion is exactly what a movie tier list is built for. Rank them head to head on Shortlist, then see whether the community agrees that Brand New Day belongs at the top of our Spider-Man movies ranked list or just at the top of the charts.

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