5 Things Every Man Should Know About This Week - 5 October

Given that we’ve already had Netflix’s Pablo Escobar drama Narcos and Matthew Heineman’s documentary Cartel Land, it’s been a busy year for insights into the Mexican drug trade. Adding to that list is Sicario, a crime thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent, who is recruited to an elite taskforce – led by a wise-cracking agent (Josh Brolin) and an enigmatic “consultant” (Benicio Del Toro) – to track down one of Mexico’s biggest drug lords.

While the plot is nothing to base a criminology thesis on, Villeneuve does a great job of transferring the tense, brooding tone of his earlier work (notably 2013’s brilliantly bonkers Enemy) to a much grander scale. If you haven’t had your fill of narco fun for this year, Sicario comes recommended.

Sicario is out on 9 October

The first season of The Leftovers was enjoyably miserable breath of fresh air: a disaster drama with a big premise that was nevertheless character-driven. Set three years after a undisclosed global event in which 2% of the world's population disappeared, the HBO series contained havoc-wreaking deers, silent cults – led by the unsettling Ann Dowd – and Christopher Eccleston playing a priest. Let's just say it was low on the laughs. 

While the first season was based upon Tom Perotta's source novel of the same name, season two is its own beast, following Justin Theroux's Kevin Garvey who brings his family to Jarden, Texas, the only US town where nobody disappeared. That it's all from the mind of Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof may (unfairly) make a lot of people groan, but don't lament just yet; early word suggests season two's a cracker.

The Leftovers airs on Sky Atlantic from 5 October

Following Morrissey's (apparently) final UK shows taking place a few weeks back, it's now over to co-songwriter Johnny Marr – and his guitar – to assume the role of Smiths member it is worth seeing solo. And right on cue, this week sees not only the start of a UK wide tour but the release of Adrenalin Baby, a double album filled to the brim with 17 live performances plucked from Marr's gigs over the last three years.

"I wanted to capture the atmosphere and feeling of the last couple of tours. It’s been a special time and the album is a document for fans who were there, and for people who haven't seen me and might want to check out what the shows are about," commented Marr, suggesting that, unlike his novel-writing ex-lead singer, here is one light that won't go out.

Adrenalin Baby by Johnny Marr is released on 9 October

It's that time of year again; the time where Hollywood, as they say, comes to London. The capital's equivalent to Cannes and Venice Film Festival (albeit with added grey and probable rain) has come along to brighten up an otherwise sullen October – and this year, the BFI London Film Festival is bigger than ever.

Suffragette – and it's ensemble – are opening proceedings, but it's the intervening films that excite the most: premieres of High-Rise, Black Mass and Trumbo will bring Tom Hiddleston, Johnny Depp and Bryan Cranston to London, while the closing night gala screening of Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs – which has already all-but guaranteed Michael Fassbender a Best Actor nomination  – is one to look out for.

In the meantime, we'll let the numbers speak for themselves: 240 films. From 72 countries. 16 cinemas. 12 days. With selected tickets left, there are a whole host of hidden gems to unearth.  

The BFI London Film Festival starts on 7 October and runs right through to 18 October. You can buy tickets here; you can find out which films we're most excited for here 

Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s unlikely that the men in overcoats shuffling towards the grimier movie theatres on New York’s 42nd Street and in Times Square stopped to admire the graphic design work that went into the posters adorning their walls at the time. But that doesn’t mean that, looking back at them now, there isn’t a certain aesthetic chutzpah to the marketing devices of the late 20th century’s sexploitation movies.

Which is probably what Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who made slick 2011 neon-and-gorefest Drive, was attracted to when he bought an extensive collection of US film posters. Refn has now chosen a sampling of them – specifically those which “aroused”, “shocked” or “frightened” him – for a book to be published imminently under the title The Act of Seeing. (The task of captioning them is nobly undertaken by British horror film expert Alan Jones.)

The book – which unsurprisingly focuses mostly on work from the late Fifties to the Seventies – features such eye-popping titles as 1973 grindhouse stalwart The X-Rated Super Market and 1975 nunsploitation flick Confessions of a Female Monk And really, perusing its pages, who couldn’t get lost for hours in the delicate pencil shading of the artwork for 1965’s Hot Blooded Woman or the clever decoupage for Orgy of Revenge (1970)?

The Act of Seeing by Nicolas Winding Refn is out on 5 October