It may not yet feel like it in your neck of the woods, but fall really is just around the corner. In not too much time at all, the air will be getting crisp, the days short, and your drinks pumpkin-spiced. And as we transition into that autumnal season, one question remains on movie lovers’ minds: will our upbeat feeling toward cinema change too?
The summer was certainly a rollercoaster. A bleak May where several quality Hollywood tentpoles flopped caused much soul-searching in the industry about what would come next. Yet what did come turned out to be, surprisingly, pretty good news as the summer rebounded to at least numbers equivalent to 2022 (if down from last year) with a slew of popular sequels and franchise extensions embraced via Bad Boys 4, Inside Out 2, Deadpool 3, Alien 7, and A Quiet Place 0.5.
Yet the question remains whether the good vibes will carry over to sweater weather where there will certainly be more franchised IP movies, but also some perhaps more ambitious original movies. Some will be appropriately horrific as we move into spooky season, others lighthearted appropriate for the Yuletide, and some will be arriving with Oscars on their mind. Also with last year’s labor strikes slowing down the pipeline, the options and potential for some surprises has thinned. Still, we’ve gathered a first-look at what to expect between now and the end of the year.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
September 6
Whether you’re ready or not, it’s about to be showtime again when Michael Keaton, Tim Burton, and Winona Ryder return to their cult comedy classic nearly 40 years(!) after the original. While that might give some trepidation, the fact Burton is also emphasizing a return of charmingly rudimentary in-camera techniques and stop-motion effects for his vision of the afterlife (which were antiquated even in 1988!) is an encouraging sign. So is the fact that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has found promising new blood to the series like Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Wednesday breakout Jenna Ortega.
We will know soon enough if this is still the ghost with the most, but seeing Keaton in that cadaverous makeup still makes us smile, even if the look on the face of his reluctant bride-to-be, Lydia Deetz, is anything but enchanted.
The Front Room
September 6
The first A24 horror film of the fall season is also one of the most intriguing mysteries the genre has to offer this spooky season. Blessedly free of being a sequel or prequel, the film is based on a short story in Susan Hill’s The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories, and is written and directed by Sam and Max Eggers, brothers of the famed Robert. While it’s their directorial debut, Max notably co-wrote with Robert the latter’s arguably most popular film, The Lighthouse.
With The Front Room, Brandy (yes, that Brandy) stars as Belinda, an expecting mother who reluctantly accepts to take in the stepmother (Kathryn Hunter) of her husband (Andrew Burnap). Expected to walk a similar line between the psychological and supernatural as Lighthouse, The Front Room‘s marketing materials make it unclear what is responsible for the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Belinda and her mother-in-law, but we don’t expect both of them to be in that house by the end of the pregnancy.
Transformers One
September 13
Did you ever want to see a movie about how Optimus Prime and Megatron were actually BFFs growing up before leading rival Autobot and Decepticon tribes? Well, you’re about to! And because it’s from director Josh Cooley, whose Toy Story 4 miraculously proved to be just as good as the celebrated trilogy that preceded it, we’re at least open to the idea of riding along.
The new film also promises to step away from the nostalgia that has beset so much other ‘80s IP, with new voice talent like Chris Hemsworth (as Prime before he was Prime), Brian Tyree Henry (Megatron before we knew thee), and Keegan-Michael Key (Bumblebee back in his youth) promising to shake things up.
Speak No Evil
September 13
James Watkins and Blumhouse Productions’ Americanized remake of a 2022 Danish psychological thriller by the same name will certainly raise eyebrows for anyone with a Shudder subscription. Lauded as one of the decade’s genre darlings due to its shocking ending and queasy tension, Speak No Evil doesn’t necessarily call out for a remake. But considering Watkins is the director who once gave us Eden Lake, and that the redo stars James McAvoy in a peach of a part, we’ll at least stay open to the idea.
In the film, a young family with one child (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are on holiday when they meet a charming if eccentric family of about the same age led by a charismatic father (McAvoy) and a perhaps overly obedient wife (Aisling Franciosi). One family is invited to spend a long weekend with the other where miscommunications and possible microaggressions give way to something potentially far more sinister…
Wolfs
September 20
More than 10 years after appearing together in Burn After Reading and closer to 20 years since completing the Ocean’s Trilogy, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are palling around again in Wolfs. It’s a hybrid of comedy, drama, and thriller from director Jon Watts—the latter of whom appears giddy to have a brief break from Marvel Studios shenanigans following three Spider-Man movies starring Tom Holland.
In Wolfs, the actor who once played Michael Clayton gets to return to his role as a “fixer,” albeit this time with seemingly a lot less conscience. Clooney is again “Mr. Fix It” for a shady company, but when one job finds him overbooked with Brad Pitt in a similar profession, unlikely odd couple/buddy comedy hijinks ensue. The movie has a lot of pedigree and an $85 million price tag. It’s strange, then, Apple chose to release it in theaters for only one week ahead of its Sept. 27 premiere on Apple TV+.
The Substance
September 20
The genre breakout hit of Cannes where it took home the Best Screenplay prize, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance has been wowing cinephiles and critics for months. It also is a body horror film where the metaphor definitely goes more than skin deep. Starring Demi Moore in one of her most celebrated roles, the picture follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a health industry celebrity with her own aerobics show—or at least she had one until she turned 50 and was unceremoniously fired.
Down and out while facing the not-so-secret double standards placed on women of a certain age, Elisabeth agrees to take a miracle substance from a strange, experimental lab filled with mad scientists. The substance will grant her a new body that’s “younger, more beautiful, more perfect,” but she has to agree to switch between her perfect, nubile self (played by Margaret Qualley) and her older fleshy vehicle every seven days without exception. So of course she doesn’t…
Never Let Go
September 20
Alexandre Aja, director of High Tension (2003), Crawl (2019), and several other horror cult classics returns to the genre with the enigmatically named Never Let Go. The film stars Halle Berry as a single mother who raised her children to fear the desolate woods around them and an evil spirit that resides there.
With elements of both the post-apocalyptic familial drama found in the Quiet Place franchise as well as the slippier psychological terror of an M. Night Shyamalan thriller, the film raises the question of whether Berry’s mother is protecting her children or brainwashing them about an unseen evil out there. The answer to that mystery might be worth the price of admission.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
September 20
Try as they might, for tens of millions of people, you’ll never be able to replace Christopher Reeve as Superman. He was the person who made us believe a man could fly. He also was able to make us believe he can get back up and lead, even after crashing fatefully down to Earth.
Such is the tragedy and beauty of Reeve’s life, an actor who studied at Juilliard, defined what a superhero performance could be, was passionate about a myriad other styles and opportunities in this life, and who was forced to overcome a bitter paralysis after a horse riding accident. All of this is recounted in Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s upcoming documentary, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.
Megalopolis
September 27
The fine line between what is good and bad press is about to be tested to its limit with the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s long-anticipated Megalopolis. It’s likely the final film in a career filled with classics. Think The Godfather Trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s also a film released in a maelstrom of conflicting reports, accusations of allegedly inappropriate behavior, notoriously mixed reviews out of Cannes, and even a disastrous trailer that attempted to challenge its naysayers with… AI-generated fake quotes intended to strike back at long dead film critics.
All of this, however, is a prelude to the actual film: a sprawling epic intended to last throughout the ages like Coppola’s best films. Whether it succeeds or not will likely not be measured in the week, month, or year of its release. But all of that will add interesting context to a film noticeably about the hubris of an artist, in this case an architect (Adam Driver), who in a stylized vision of the future that imagines the U.S. as a crumbling Roman Empire, attempts to reinvent his medium and change the world—and is pillared by the powers-at-be for his efforts. Is it audacious visionary work or a misbegotten ode to its own director’s ego and vanity, analogous to Coppola’s worst misfires like One from the Heart? That debate will rage on soon enough.
The Wild Robot
September 27
Filmmaker Chris Sanders made two of the most impactful animated movies in this century when he wrote, directed, and guided Lilo & Stitch and then How to Train Your Dragon to the big screen. His odd foray into live-action (with a CG dog) via Call of the Wild is also a little underrated in our book. So seeing him return to animation for an original concept as bold as The Wild Robot is worth taking stock of.
In this film, Lupita Nyong’o provides the voice of a robot named Roz. This automation crash lands on an island ostensibly devoid of intelligent life. Yet as she comes to care for an orphaned baby goose, she and hopefully audiences will take a larger appreciation in the natural world. This dichotomy, between technology and nature, life and actually being alive, promises something a tad more ambitious for the all-age set. We hope it sticks the landing better than Roz’s ship.
Lee
September 27
If you enjoyed Alex Garland’s Civil War earlier this year, you might want to keep an eye out for Ellen Kuras’ Lee, a new biopic about the legendary war photographer name-dropped more than once in that speculative fiction. Although there’s nothing speculative about the real Lee Miller, a one-time fashion model who transitioned into an unflinching war photographer and correspondent for Vogue magazine during the Second World War.
In Lee, Kate Winslet portrays the woman holding the camera with an appropriately steely gaze. Her journey from reluctant socialite to frontline junkie received mostly positive notices at TIFF last year, and comes with a starry supporting cast which includes Alexander Skarsgård, Noémie Merlant, Andy Samberg, Josh O’Connor, and Marion Cotillard.
Apartment 7A
September 27
The influence of Rosemary’s Baby on horror films in 2024 has been striking after the back-to-back releases of Immaculate and The First Omen. Now Paramount itself is returning to the grand dame of demonic pregnancy horror tales with their direct prequel to the 1968 masterpiece, Paramount+’s Apartment 7A. Given how that classic was released when abortion was still illegal in most states, it is likely no accident Rosemary is back in the zeitgeist in 2024, and in Natalie Erika James’ new film, we will see a more bitter example of its parable through the troubled pregnancy of Terry Gionoffrio (Julia Garner).
A minor character in the original Rosemary, where we’re told she was a drug addict who struggled with depression, Garner’s protagonist is revealed to also be an ambitious dancer with big city dreams when she moves into the famed Dakota apartment complex in the 1960s. It is there she meets familiar neighbors like Roman and Minnie Castevete (now Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally). They would be nosy by any standard, but as Terry’s world turns increasingly surreal and hellish, it becomes clear they want to share more than sugar or a cup of tea…
Joker: Folie à Deux
October 4
Five years after Todd Phillips’ unlikely stealth mashup of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy made $1 billion by smearing its dark nihilism with comic book makeup, the filmmaker is back to continue Arthur Fleck’s reign as the poster boy for social alienation and isolation. Perhaps most intriguingly, though, is that in this one Fleck’s self-described Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) will not be so alone.
Ostensibly an adaptation of the famous comic book and animated love story between Joker and Harley Quinn (played now by Lady Gaga), Joker: Folie à Deux looks closer to the “mad love” stories of an earlier generation of crime films. Movies like Bonnie & Clyde and Gun Crazy where two kindred spirits find wholeness by breaking bad together appear to be the touchstones now. And they will find that completion by way of… musical numbers? While the first Joker seemed to want to play Scorsese’s hits, there might be something a little more innovative going on with this version of a Joker and Harley duet.
Saturday Night
October 11
Saturday Night Live is such a cultural institution in 2024 that it’s almost impossible to remember it was once part of the counterculture—or at least hailed from that direction when it reconfigured what mainstream American comedy was in the 1970s. Doing a bit for sketch comedy what the British invasion did for rock ‘n roll in the ‘60s, SNL was a landmark for the baby boomer generation and turned seeming schlubs like Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi into stars—although Chevy Chase and his high opinion of himself went Hollywood before any of them.
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night zeroes in on exactly the 90 minutes before that bomb went off, and folks like Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Belushi (Matt Wood), Chase (Corey Michael Smith), and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) really were “not ready for primetime players.” It also depicts the show’s birth as a particularly painful one with Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) depicted as a one-man crusader fighting the system. We’re not sure if it was quite that rigged against him by NBC, but conceptually a film that focuses on a couple hours, instead of decades, in its ensemble’s life is a smart way to compress a biopic into a cinematic pressure-cooker. One wonders if the last words will be “Live from New York…”
Piece by Piece
October 11
Another biopic taking a very novel approach to its material is Piece by Piece, the latest “Lego movie” that is also “a true story.” We suspect that story is more than a little embellished to fit the often irreverent and heartwarming aesthetic associated with animated Lego film, and yet Piece by Piece will nonetheless be an account of Pharrell Williams’ life, complete with Williams providing his voice and playing himself.
It’s a conceptually innovative way to approach such material, seemingly acknowledging the artifice (and selective memory) of most biographical films while also finding a fresh way to use American animation to tell meaningful all-age yarns. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen, but we welcome the attempt, especially with a voice cast that also includes Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Daft Punk, and writer-director Morgan Neville as themselves.
Terrifier 3
October 11
Love ‘em or be repulsed by ‘em, Damien Leone’s Terrifier flicks have gone to the beat of their own bloody drum and carved a nice little niche for themselves in the slasher subgenre. Terrifier 3 promises to be more of the same, only now Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) getting to massacre sweet innocents as they drift off to sleep on Christmas Eve. Buyer beware: it’s going to be gratuitous, gross, cruel, and probably celebrated by gore hounds.
Smile 2
October 18
Likely the big mainstream horror movie for this Halloween season is Parker Finn’s Smile 2, the sequel to his surprisingly bleak and happily mean-spirited 2022 hit. In that film, a psychologist discovers there’s no escape from her own traumatic demons, both metaphorical and metaphysical after a demon who drives its victims to suicide latches onto her. It seems the chain will start again in 2024, this time for a pop star (Aladdin’s Naomi Scott) who could traumatize a whole hell of a lot more people if she lets the grinning ghoul drive her to self-destruction on stage.
Like so many other “curse movies,” the delicious tension of the first Smile derived from us not knowing the demon’s modus operandi, what it really looked like, or how it finally took possession of its victims’ minds and bodies. We also were given faint hopes that Sosie Bacon could save herself. Can Smile 2 elicit the same dread and fear after the first movie more or less gave the game away? It’s unclear, but we’re sure there will be plenty of smiling faces before this thing is over.
Venom: The Last Dance
October 25
There was a time when the Venom character was considered one of Spider-Man’s greatest villains and a creepily delusional fiend prone to stalking people he became infatuated with. Yeah, that’s all gone after Tom Hardy’s unlikely rom-com reimagining of the character. Three movies into playing Eddie Brock and his symbiotic better half, old Mr. Toothy is now an amusing and unlikely queer icon, as well as a superhero of sorts in this low-rent franchise alternative to Disney’s more polished MCU efforts.
Venom: The Last Dance leans into that spectacle, with the threequel and alleged conclusion of a trilogy finding the pair on the run. They’re fugitives like they’re Bonnie and Clyde or the leads of True Romance. Yeah, there’s more symbiote violence and fighting, but also a symbiote-horsie and musical numbers! If it’s the last dance, then it’s going out with a foot-stomper.
My Dead Friend Zoe
November 1
One we can personally vouch for as being an under-the-radar indie worth discovering is Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ My Dead Friend Zoe. An Audience Award Winner at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, My Dead Friend Zoe amounts to a lifelong mission for Hausmann-Stokes, who served five years in the U.S. Army, including a combat tour in Iraq where he earned a Bronze Star. In the nearly 20 years since, he’s sought to use his talent as a filmmaker—he was accepted to USC while still in the military—to tell a more complex veteran’s story.
My Dead Friend Zoe is definitely that, walking a fine line between dark comedy and familial drama while focusing on two women vets who can joke about pop culture, life, and their time in Afghanistan… even though one of them is technically dead. Amounting to a curious buddy film between Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Zoe (Natalie Morales), two women with a history that’s left Merit haunted by Zoe’s ghost (or a traumatic rendering of it), the film also is a showcase for Ed Harris as Merit’s Vietnam era grandfather, whose ideas of sacrifice and duty creates an illuminating generational conflict. The film is poignant but never saccharine. Check it out.
Conclave
November 8
Selecting a new Pope is still treated as a holy and sacred act. While we know the rituals and protocols the Catholic Church practices when a conclave of cardinals convenes in Rome, sharing the spiritual responsibility of picking the next heir to the throne of St. Peter, the actual politicking and biases remain obscured by medieval secrecy.
Edward Berger, fresh off All Quiet on the Western Front, attempts to lift the veil in this starry political thriller with a seeming hint of conspiracy. Just how did the previous Pope’s holy ascent to the pearly gates occur? The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, a more liberal-minded priest who has been tasked against his wishes with presiding over this conclave where relatively progressive factions (led by the likes of Stanley Tucci) compete over the fate of the Church’s doctrine with antiquated and conservative sects (including John Lithgow). With a cast that also includes Isabella Rossellini, it’s “a bottle episode” thriller where all the players are bottled into the most famous church in the world.
Red One
November 15
Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans’ long forthcoming Red One is finally upon us. And while this Christmas family movie/action flick hybrid might look like something those guys would star in for Netflix, believe it or not this is really coming to theaters courtesy of Amazon MGM.
Like many of the beloved Christmas movies, Santa (J.K. Simmons) is real in Big Red One… and he’s been kidnapped. So the head of North Pole Security (Johnson) must turn to the world’s most notorious bounty hunter (Evans) to find a surprisingly buff St. Nick and save Christmas. With a setup that sounds curiously like an old South Park episode, and an aesthetic that includes muscular CGI polar bear bouncers and a Krampus, we’re not sure what to make of this. But director Jake Kasdan helmed Johnson’s unexpectedly winsome Jumanji flicks, as well as the perennially timely Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, so we’re willing to leave out some milk and cookies and see what happens.
Heretic
November 15
A24’s next fall horror movie looks pleasantly cozy at a glance, right down to holiday season favorite Hugh Grant’s loving, actual smile. Hence the wicked appeal of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ approach. The duo who wrote the first draft of the original A Quiet Place (as well as the less loved 65) return with another honey of an idea. A couple of sheltered and religious proselytizers (Sophia Thatcher and Chloe East) attempt to convert Grant’s charming family man who invites them for pie into his home—his wife is making it just off-screen!
But after entering his house, they realize the smell of fresh pie is from a scented candle, a wife is nowhere to be seen, and the front door is locked. They’ve entered a sinister and mysterious game about faith where the rules are not clear, but Grant’s warm smile is suddenly much more hellish. Is he trying to convert them or study them like rats in a maze?
Gladiator II
November 22
There are a few reasons to be skeptical about Gladiator, not least of which is that it is a sequel released 24 years after the first movie became an instant classic and unlikely Best Picture winner at the Oscars. But Sir Ridley Scott is still Sir Ridley Scott, and while last year’s Napoleon was a bit of a mess (though an entertaining one in our book), Scott remains the greatest living filmmaker for worldbuilding epics, particularly in an ancient context. And returning to the height of the Roman Empire should prove once again to be a visual feast, as teased in the first trailer’s reveal that this time they’re putting Roman triremes inside a water-logged Colosseum.
The sequel follows Lucius (Paul Mescal), the little boy from the first movie who grew up not to become emperor. Instead he’s a cast aside nobleman sunken to slavery and death in the arena. But his thirst and talent for killing Romans wins him a powerful friend in Denzel Washington’s owner of gladiatorial slaves. It also once again places the eyes of an empire on a single warrior. With a cast that includes Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, and the original movie’s Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, the good Roman woman who honored a slave before her fallen emperor and brother, there are a lot of reasons to anticipate a spectacle worthy of bread and circuses.
Wicked
November 22
The most popular Broadway musical of the 21st century—yes, even more so than Hamilton—is finally making it to the big screen this November, and no matter what you say about the state of the musical genre in the 2020s, it is sure to be an event. Universal Pictures is so confident in that perception they even rather dubiously cut the three-hour stage musical into two films, with this Thanksgiving’s Wicked probably needing to be retitled “Wicked: Act One.”
The act also includes a lot of vocal pyrotechnics with Cynthia Erivo stepping into Elphelba’s famed hat and green paint, while pop star and former child actor Ariana Grande takes over the popular vocal flights of Glinda. The film promises to be a glitzy production, replete with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh in supporting roles, and an expensive budget to fill Wicked’s Oz with CG wonderment. We have some reservations about the approach, but count us among the defenders of Jon M. Chu’s ebullient In the Heights adaptation of three years ago. And ultimately, there is no denying the laws of gravity… or power ballads.
Moana 2
November 27
Eight years after Moana confirmed the Disney princess movie is back to stay following Frozen’s runaway success, the Polynesian chieftain is also getting her very own sequel. Hopefully, they thread the needle of the plot this time a little better than they did on that sequel. In Moana 2, the eponymous character (still winningly played by Auli’i Cravalho) is beckoned by the call of her wayfinding ancestors to ancient forgotten seas beyond Oceania. She will face pirates, new threats, and the return of everyone’s favorite demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson).
The appeal is obviously less the story than the thrill of adventure as Moana’s journeys into the horizon—all while bouncing off Maui. That, plus some likely musical bangers from Lin-Manuel Miranda who nailed the assignment in 2016, will almost certainly make this one of the big multiplex events of the holiday season.
Y2K
December 6
Another genre pic from A24, Y2K proves millennial and even older zoomer nostalgia is finally here, because the Y2K “bug” is getting a movie. Except in Kyle Mooney’s directorial feature debut, the bug is real, malevolent, and out to get the kidz! By mashing together the obvious Superbad setup—two high school nerds (Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison) want to go to an epic New Year’s Eve bash and party with one of their crushes (Rachel Zegler)—with the post-apocalyptic comedy, Mooney finds a way to channel the same irreverent chaos he brought to SNL digital shorts to feature length time capsule of the 1999/2000 changeover.
Y2K will put every bit of turn-of-the-century pop culture under a rose-tinted lens, from the timeless (Third Eye Blind) to the tasteless (Sisqo and Limp Bizkit too). Its kitchen sink approach, like its comedy, creates a tonal madness that a certain type of audiences will want to get knocked down by.
Nightbitch
December 6
After helming two diametrically opposed character studies based on real people, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, director and writer Marielle Heller is taking a hard turn into the direction of the surreal and thrilling. That at least seems to be the approach elected by Heller’s screenplay, which is based on a Rachel Yoder novel of the same name. And the tantalizing new project stars Amy Adams.
In the film, Adams plays a woman who pauses her career to be a stay at home mom. The change in direction doesn’t appear to be a smooth one, though, as boredom and resentment leads to surrealist, and perhaps magical, thinking when at night… Adams’ character turns into a dog. Yeah. Is it really happening or a fantasy? Well…
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
December 13
There might be only one ring to rule them all, but competing rights between Warner Brothers’ film license and Amazon’s TV one promises plenty of LOTR projects for years to come. Also like Amazon’s The Rings of Power, WB’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is based on Tolkien’s lengthy appendices at the end of the third volume. In this case, the film finds an intriguing backstory about why Helm Hammerhand built Helm’s Deep (after punching a dude so hard he killed him!), and turns it into an anime epic.
With legendary Japanese animator Kenji Kamiyama (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) directing, The War of the Rohirrim looks visually stunning and harkens back to the graceful melodrama of ‘80s and ‘90s animations about far away kingdoms. It also gives a character who is tangentially important in Tolkien’s text—Helm’s daughter—a pivotal role in proving why the women of Rohan are called shieldmaidens.
Kraven the Hunter
December 13
With Kraven the Hunter, Venom: The Last Dance, and Madame Web, Sony will have given us three of their Spidey-less Spidey villain movies in a single year. Aren’t we blessed? In the case of Kraven the Hunter, Marvel’s greatest big game hunter is turned… into a conservationist? He at least doesn’t like the way his daddy (Russell Crowe) hunts in the wild.
Luckily, Kraven is played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson at his hunkiest as a natural world superhero who will fight his father, the supervillain the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola), and perhaps others while also romancing Calypso (Oscar winner Ariana DeBose). To be completely fair, director J.C. Chandor has made some great films (A Most Violent Year, Margin Call, All Is Lost), so there are reasons to stay a little open-minded. So you joining this safari?
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
December 20
Paramount Pictures’ success with Sonic the Hedgehog is really remarkable when you step back and recall the first trailer for the first film in 2019. The one where Sonic, uh, didn’t look like Sonic. Fan backlash seemed to be at a fever pitch. But one short delay and a CGI revamp later, the first Sonic the Hedgehog became a family favorite, especially for parents who had fond memories of their own childhoods watching Jim Carrey as the Riddler in the ‘90s.
Now Paramount and director Jeff Fowler are all in on knowing how to service fans, with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 looking to be the most Sega video game-like yet. With marketing emphasizing fan favorite Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves) joining the series as the new big bad, and Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) now acting as full-time superheroes, Sonic 3 looks as if it blasted straight out of a Sega Dreamcast. Plus, Carrey’s back as Eggman and more eggy-shaped than ever before!
Mufasa: The Lion King
December 20
We still cannot fully explain how Barry Jenkins, the brilliant and thoughtful filmmaker behind Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, wound up directing a follow-up to Disney’s The Lion King remake, but that talent alone will keep us from immediately swiping left. The film, indeed, appears to have a structure reminiscent of one of the greatest continuations ever, The Godfather, Part II, since Mufasa is reported to act as both a sequel and prequel.
Admittedly the marketing seems to suggest it will lean much harder on the latter aspect, recounting how Mufasa as a young cub (Aaron Pierre) turned out to be an orphan adopted by a clan of lions, including Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the lion who would be Scar. We’re not sure about giving Scar a sympathetic backstory either, but our curiosity in figuring out why Jenkins is doing this movie keeps us interested enough to see it.
Babygirl
December 20
There’s not a lot to know at the moment about Babygirl. But when you couple its awards-friendly talent with the fact A24 slated it for the holiday season, you feel automatically compelled to keep an eye on it. Babygirl is the next project from Halina Reijn, who directed 2022’s viciously funny satire/thriller, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and it stars the obviously not-so-infantilized Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who embarks on an affair… with her intern (Harris Dickinson). The cast also includes Antonio Banderas and Sophie Wilde, and is expected to make a splash at Venice.
Nosferatu
December 25
There have been a lot of Dracula movies as of late, but if one filmmaker is going to find a way to make the legendary vampire scary again, it will probably be Robert Eggers. The period movie perfectionist has been able to strip the witch archetype, as well as the vengeful Viking, down to their foundational origins, and remaking F.W. Murnau’s silent 1922 masterpiece has remained one of Eggers’ dreams since 2015. Now it comes to fruition in this provocative-looking reimagining of Murnau’s German Expressionist twist on the tale of a traveling vampire warlord.
In what is virtually a fairytale-like setup at this point, Nosferatu follows a solicitor (Nicholas Hoult) who travels to the remotest regions of the Carpathians to sell some property in his hometown to an apparently eccentric nobleman: Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). But the undead noble has more lascivious designs in mind for the clerk’s port of origin, and for the clerk’s young wife (Lily-Rose Depp), than just a change in scenery. In a film promised to be filled with blood and shadow, and a strange fatalist connection between youth and Death himself, Nosferatu will seek to make you once more fear the children of the night.
A Complete Unknown
December 25
Almost 20 years after James Mangold defined the musical biopic formula—or at least crystallized it for Walk Hard—the filmmaker returns to carve another baby boomer myth. A Complete Unknown promises to print the legend of Bob Dylan with a splashy, award-friendly turn by Timothée Chalamet as the iconic folk singer.
We’ll admit it’s hard not to think about the beats that Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash, or John C. Reilly’s Dewey Cox, paced through while watching the first trailer for A Complete Unknown, and its story of “the future” coming out of nowhere, but there is a certain coziness to Mangold’s old-fashioned filmmaking when applied to such stories. That the cast also includes Elle Fanning, Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro, and Scoot McNairy certainly helps.
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