Summer at the cineplex brings with it blockbuster franchises and potential tentpoles. The holiday season brings broad comedies and Oscar bait. Labor Day weekend brings bupkis. And the third weekend in October? That's when studios traditionally throw everything else at the wall to see if anything sticks, and almost none of it ever does.

Yes, it's long. Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's so relentlessly downbeat that its only real laugh comes from a man pouring whiskey on the floor for his dog to lick. But I found Blade Runner 2049 overwhelming in the best possible way – a sci-fi dazzler of such intricate plotting, grand themes, visual wonder, and technical and performance-based pleasures that even though I was wiped out by the finale, I felt instantly ready to watch it again. Fun, of course, is always in the eye of the beholder, and while I don't know what it says about my personally beheld eye, Villeneuve's staggering achievement was about as much fun as I've yet had at the movies this year.

Barry Seal, the subject of director Doug Liman's action comedy American Made, was a real-life drug smuggler and DEA informant who weighed roughly 300 pounds and was said to be nicknamed “El Gordo,” which translates as “The Fat Man.” Naturally, because his story is now a Hollywood movie, a typically buff and ageless Tom Cruise portrays Seal – not under the actor's Tropic Thunder prosthetics, but behind aviator glasses and that iconic ear-to-ear grin suggesting Top Gun 2 has landed sooner than expected. Yet the biggest problem with this diverting, fundamentally unsatisfying film isn't that Seal is being played by Cruise. It's that American Made is being played by The Wolf of Wall Street.

With his excitability, thinned-out physique, heavy regional dialect, and seemingly lid-less popping eyes – plus a makeup job (or computer touch-up in post-production) making him look a good decade younger than his actual 36 years – Jake Gyllenhaal starts this inspirational drama acting up a storm. To Green's and the actor's immense credit, though, it winds up downgraded to a persistent yet subtle rainfall, with the occasional gusts, when they hit, feeling intensely earned. It's an Oscar Bait role, but Gyllenhaal doesn't give an Oscar Bait performance – merely an exceptional, Oscar-deserving one.