Steven Spielberg, Trans History, Action Sequels

Filmmakers’ real-life stories are fictionalized in some noteworthy new movies, including “The Inspection” (Nov. 18), written and directed by Elegance Bratton.

- Richard Brody

 It’s the drama of a homeless gay man ( Jeremy Pope) who, facing rejection from his devoutly religious mother (Gabrielle Union), joins the Marines and confronts violent persecution during basic training. Steven Spielberg considers his own childhood in “The Fabelmans” (Nov. 11); Gabriel LaBelle plays young Sammy Fabelman, a budding filmmaker, with Paul Dano as the boy’s father and Michelle Williams as his mother. In “The Eternal Daughter” (Dec. 2), Joanna Hogg returns to characters from her two “Souvenir” movies, a filmmaker named Julia and her mother, Rosalind; in the new film Tilda Swinton plays both women, whose relationship is tested by Julia’s plan to film Rosalind—and by a visitation from a ghost.

Musicals appear in many forms, starting with Kasi Lemmons’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” (Dec. 21), a bio-pic about Whitney Houston, starring Naomi Ackie; Stanley Tucci plays the record producer Clive Davis.

Damien Chazelle’s new film, “Babylon” (Dec. 23), is a cinema-centric fantasy, set in nineteen-twenties Hollywood, in the early days of talking pictures. It stars Diego Calva and Margot Robbie as aspiring actors and Brad Pitt as a famous one. Steven Soderbergh returns to direct “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” (Feb. 10), the third film in the series, again starring Channing Tatum.

It’s good news that there are documentaries featured prominently amid the season’s high-profile releases. In Laura Poitras’s