We come to another end of the calendar year for Hollywood, and 2025 provided us with some interesting insights into how the overall business is doing.  While 2025 did see some success at the box office for many films, the industry still is showing signs of overall weakness.  A lot of the lingering effects of the pandemic and strikes have stiffled a recovery at the box office, and a lot of hopes that this year would have been a smashing return to pre-pandemic norms were sadly unrealized.  Not only that, but 2025 also stirred up fears about what might be in the cards for the future of the movie business.  The proliferation of AI produced videos made a lot of industry professionals nervous that uses of this tech would start to lead to massive layoffs across many departments.  We are already seeing such a thing take place in the visual effects field, as many digital artists are being laid off now because many of their skilled positions are being replaced with AI software.  And the fact that big studios like Disney are now allowing their IP characters to be used in AI programs like OpenAI’s Sora video generator is only making things even more dire for people hoping to make a career for themselves in the movie business.  2025 was also a troubling year with regards to massive mergers and acquisitions leading to less competition in the market.  Paramount completed it’s multi-billion dollar merger with Skydance entertainment, which saw the legendary studio fall under the ownership of the extremely rich Ellison family, who wasted no time changing the culture around the studio and it’s subsidiaries, including stifling news stories on CBS News that were critical of the Ellison’s DC connections.  Even more troubling is the whole drama with Warner Brothers.  The legendary studio, which had a remarkable year in general with a string of massive hits, was put up for sale this year, with Netflix coming out as the preferred bidder, though Paramount/Skydance also is attempting their own hostile takeover.  Instead of having a year where it looked like the dust was finally going to settle over the film industry and things were going to seem like normal again, we instead had another disruptive one that may end up changing the face of Hollywood as we know it.

Moving past the year that was, it is now time to look at the year ahead.  The early months of 2026 for the most part looks a lot quieter than normal, with the latter half of the year being the one that seems more loaded with the heavy hitters.  That’s not to day that there’s nothing worth talking about in these next four months.  Like my previews of past years, I will be taking a look at a few of the most noteworthy coming attractions of this movie season, and breaking them into the movies that I believe are Must Sees, the ones that have me worries, and the ones I believe you should skip entirely.  Keep in mind, these are my own outlooks based solely on how I am responding to the movie’s early hype and the effectiveness of their marketing.  I have misjudged movies in the past, so keep that in mind too.  I primarily write these previews as a way of helping you the reader be more aware about what is on the horizon at the movies, and hopefully shine a spotlight on some movies worth discussing.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Early 2026.

MUST SEES:

PROJECT HAIL MARY (MARCH 20)

One of the more intriguing films to come out in the next few months is this Sci-Fi epic based on a novel from the same author who wrote The Martian, which of course because an acclaimed film from Ridley Scott.  Author Any Weir, as he demonstrated with The Martian, does an excellent job of taking complex scientific concepts around space exploration and wraps them around a compelling, easy to grasp storyline.  There’s real science behind his stories, but he also makes the characters interesting and relatable, and often time charmingly funny, and that’s a rare combination to make work in any story.  With Project Hail Mary, Weir expanded his storytelling beyond just interplanetary travel, and shows us a journey that takes us from Earth out into far out galactic exploration.  It’s also a very different story from The Martian.  While it has the same core basis, with a lone man learning to survive on his own, Project Hail Mary takes things into a much more other-worldly place.  What is going to be key to the film’s success is if they manage to nail the story’s main character.  Ryan Gosling seems to be the right match, given his talent for portraying lovable losers, though fans of the book say that he may be a bit too handsome and clean cut to play the character Ryland Grace that’s described in the book.  Still, Gosling is the kind of actor that can make us overlook that.  The other interesting thing about this movie is that it’s the first live action film in over a decade from the filmmaking team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; the guys behind The Lego Movie (2014) and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018).  Their last bout with the sci-fi genre didn’t work out too well, as they were fired from the Star Wars project Solo (2018), so hopefully we do get to see them finally put their stamp on the genre through their own style.  They certainly will help to make the film a lot funnier, but hopefully they nail the epic granduer that the story deserves as well.  Of all the Early 2026 movies coming up, this one certainly feels like the one that must be seen on the biggest screen possible.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (FEBRUARY 13)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes this newest adaptation of one of literature’s most famous love stories.  There have been many adaptations made of Emily Bronte’s iconic gothic romance over the years; most famously in 1939 with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.  This one in particular is coming from one of the more daring filmmakers working today.  This marks Emerald Fennell’s third outing as a director, after winning a screenplay Oscar for her debut with Promising Young Woman (2020), and then shocking us all with her scandalous follow-up, Saltburn (2023).  Saltburn in particular proved that Emerald was a filmmaker who was not afraid of crossing taboos in order to tell her story, and while it may have crossed the line for many people, it also won the respect of many more who found her daring vision very unique and exciting (myself included).  Now with her third film she is taking on an oft told story and hoping to put her own unique spin on it.  And to do it, she’s bringing on board some of her favorite past collaborators.  The dashing star of Saltburn, Jacob Elordi, is cast here as the iconic Heathcliffe, one of literature’s most dashing rogues.  The statuesque actor seems perfectly suited for the larger than life character that won the hearts of readers over the centuries, as is another one of Emerald Fennel’s favorites, Margot Robbie (her Barbie co-star) in the role of Cathy, the doomed love interest.  Emerald Fennel has been celebrated for her work as a writer, but I feel she has yet to get her due recognition as a visual storyteller as well.  Hopefully Wuthering Heights helps to change that, as it is the latest major Hollywood film to resurrect the long out of use Vistavision process, most recently put to great use in The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025).  Some of the visuals already shown in the trailer indicate that this movie is likely to be a visual feast for the eyes, with just a little bit of the weirdness we saw in Saltburn sprinkled in.  I hope this continues Emerald Fennell’s hot streak as a filmmaker, and that it shows that she can deliver on something traditional while at the same time modernizing it with her own eccentric style.

HOPPERS (MARCH 6)

A new film from Pixar Animation is always something to look forward to.  Sadly, they have also been an animation studio that’s been severely neglected in recent years.  Parent company Disney’s decision to drop three of their movies in a row onto streaming instead of playing them in theaters has sadly hurt their brand, and they don’t have the pull at the box office that they once had.  This was evident last summer when their newest film, Elio (2025) failed to ignite at the box office, making it the first non-pandemic effected movie in their whole history to fall short of $100 million.  And this was after Pixar set box office records the year before with Inside Out 2 (2024), which makes the future for Pixar look fairly grim as the pressure is going to be on them to rely more heavily on sequels than original films.  That seems to be what’s happening this next year as well, as it looks like Disney is going to invest more heavily in promoting next summer’s Toy Story 5, over the release of their next original film Hoppers.  It certainly is harder to get audiences excited for a film without brand recognition, even when the Pixar name is attached to it.  But I really hope that people give this movie a chance.  It should have an easier time selling to family audiences than Elio did, as movies with cute talking animals do quite well at the box office (see the success of Zootopia 2 for example).  The premise also seems to have some potential, with an Avatar style spin put on the main character infiltrating the animal kingdom and stirring up some trouble.  And people shouldn’t be so quick to declare the end of Pixar.  Despite it’s low box office, Elio was still a charming and fun little film, and my hope is that Hoppers is another pleasant surprise.  Pixar built up their reputation for being a story first studio for a reason, and I don’t think they would fail to do the same for another one of their original stories like this one.  So yes, Toy Story 5 is likely to be the movie that Disney and Pixar are going to bank more of their fortunes on, but I hope that Hoppers also convinces them that it’s worth investing in new ideas as well.

28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (JANUARY 16)

One of the more pleasant surprises of last summer was the long in the making sequel to a landmark zombie film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland.  28 Years Later reunited the team from the classic 28 Days Later (2002), and allowed them to imagine what the same world they created over 20 years ago would look like today.  The sequel was much less a continuation of the original narrative and more of a refresh of it’s original concept, showing us a world that has long adapted to their new norm under the threat of the rage virus that still lingers in the English countryside, terrorizing those who are left.  And what we got with 28 Years Later was a surprisingly poignant coming of age story surrounding a young boy named Spike (Alfie Williams), who would brave the dangerous zombie infested world in order to save his dying mother.  But, interestingly, it appeared that Boyle and Garland had a more ambitious plan in mind for this franchise.  Instead of just saddling themselves with just one new film, they planned out a whole trilogy, and even had another film shot simultaneously with the first one.  Now, only a short 7 months later, we get the next chapter of this story, picking up right where the last one left off.  Danny Boyle, unfortunately only committed to shooting one of the films, choosing to instead hand off the duties to someone else for the next film.  Nia DaCosta, director of Candyman (2021) and The Marvels (2023), got to step up and pick up the mantle, and it seems like she made a good fit because the movie definitely feels right in line with first film, especially in it’s wild visual style.  One of the exciting elements of this new film is that it’s going to expand on some of the most memorable elements of the first movie, including Ralph Fiennes Dr. Kelson and the flamboyant Jimmy Gang.  Let’s hope they continue to build on the potential of the original and lead into what will hopefully be a standout third film to close out this trilogy, though we may have to wait more than seven months for that one.

SEND HELP (JAUNUARY 30)

One movie that could be a sleeper hit is this new film from Sam Raimi.  After playing around in the MCU with his Doctor Strange sequel, this new film has Raimi working a bit closer to his roots as a filmmaker.  Sort of a Horrible Bosses meets Cast Away, the movie is a two hander about a woman who is stranded on an island with her nightmare of a boss.  The reversal of fortune narrative that plays out is nothing we haven’t seen before, but it will be interesting to see how a twisted filmmaker like Raimi works with it.  The movie also plays with the theme of isolation and how it affects the psyche of the characters, which is a field that Raimi helped to revolutionize with his Evil Dead movies.  He’s assembled an interesting cast here, with Rachel McAdams (working again with Raimi after appearing in Multiverse of Madness) and Dylan O’Brien, an actor who has been coming into his own recently after some critically acclaimed roles.  But what makes this movie look like it will be a lot more fun to watch is the fact that it doesn’t look like either of these characters are going to bond and learn to work together to survive.  Instead, it seems like Raimi’s going to play around with the idea that the isolation that these characters are dealing with is only going to lead to more friction, and that could lead to an engaging game of cat and mouse that could take the story down some dark paths.  Raimi has always been a filmmaker that has enjoyed toying around with flawed characters, and not letting them get off easy (see Drag Me to Hell), and it will be interesting to watch what he does with these two characters who are very much in the severest state of isolation imaginable.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE (APRIL 3)

Nothing that I say about these Mario movies is going to matter in the end, because like the first film this sequel is pretty much destined to be a billion dollar movie at the box office.  I wasn’t much of a fan of the first Mario Brothers movie and I feel like I’m going to have the same reaction to this new one.  But, I will say as far as directions to go with making a sequel in this franchise, adapting the popular Mario Galaxy games seems to be an ideal choice.  The Galaxy games are some of the most imaginative that Nintendo has ever made, and bringing that to the big screen is a smart choice.  It will be interesting to see the variety of different worlds they explore with this.  I also like the choice in new characters they are bringing in.  Because this is a Mario Galaxy movie, they obviously have to bring in Princess Rosalina as a key new character, and I like the choice of Brie Larson as the voice.  She can easily tap into a Disney Princess like warmth into her performance, but still leave some room for that Captain Marvel edge in there.  Also, I approve of the addition of Bowser Jr. as a new antagonist to the franchise, and that he’s being given the voice of Benny Safdie.  The highlight of the last film, Jack Black’s hilarious performance as Bowser, also looks to be a major part of this movie.  Unfortunately we still have to deal with one of the biggest flaws of the original film, and that’s the miscasting of Chris Pratt as Mario.  I’m sorry, but that vocal performance just does not fit and it’s distracting.  It doesn’t even sound like Chris is even trying anymore to sound Mario-like in this new film, and he just sounds like himself which he does in most of his other performances.  We’ll see if the movie does improve on the last one, but given that Illumination tends to double down on their comfort zones rather than pushing their limits as an animation studio, I doubt this movie is going to be that much more of a level up.

THE BRIDE (MARCH 6)

This is one of the more puzzling movies to come out in the coming months.  For this reimaging of The Bride of Frankenstein, one would think that it would be coming from some horror film auteur or art house outsider.  But no, this is coming from actress Maggie Gyllenhaal in only her second film as a director after 2021’s The Lost Daughter.  This seems like a wild departure for her; going hyper-stylized and delving into the grotesque.  I’m not saying that she couldn’t pull a movie like this off.  She may have been dreaming of doing this movie for a long time, and now that she has some clout as a film director she can finally show off her abilities as a visual filmmaker.  But, there is uncertainty if she can pull it off; it’s all going to depend on the execution.  A lot of what we see in the trailer comes across as a bit try-hard, and it just looks like she is not really doing enough to define her style and is instead trying to emulate other filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro and David Cronenberg.  She has assembled some good actors to help in her effort though.  Jessie Buckley is an interesting choice to play the titular Bride, and she’s an actress capable of delving into some weird places.  Also Gyllenhaal is working again with her The Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale, who seems well suited to play Frankenstein’s monster; although the flat top forehead seems a little too much as it feels out of place with this version of the character.  It does look like Warner Brothers has high expectations for this project, as they let Maggie film with IMAX cameras, and they’re planning on a 70mm IMAX roll out for the movie in the spring, something that is reserved for some of the most prestigious releases.  Can Maggie Gyllenhaal pull it off and take a big leap forward as an even filmmaker, or will this be another passion project gone wrong?

MERCY (JANUARY 23)

Another Chris Pratt film that could go either way.  One of the worries that I have about this movie is that it may end up mishandling the message of the movie, which is to be a cautionary tale about the uses of AI technology.  I can’t tell from the trailer which side it seems to be taking; is it a warning about the dangers of relying too heavily on AI to govern our lives, or is it an endorsement?  I have a feeling that this movie is not going to have a nuanced take, and is just merely using our current fascination with AI as a means of lamp shading an otherwise flimsy action movie.  My hope is that it can be better than that, and perhaps be a more subversive movie than we realize.  But, the trailer is not giving me a lot of confidence, and I doubt a movie critical of modern tech would get the greenlight at a studio run by one of the largest tech companies in the world, Amazon.  Hopefully, Chris Pratt is able to make the movie at least entertaining, and he’s getting to work opposite a heavyweight actress like Rebecca Ferguson, whose become a standout after appearing in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies.  The premise also has some promise, with Pratt’s character having to prove his own innocence against an all knowing AI program.  A lot will depend on the execution of the story.  There is potential for this to be a movie that’s smarter than it has any right to be, but at the same time it does look like it’s just going to favor loud and dumb action set pieces over thought provoking ideas about how much we are reliant on technology that does not exactly work in our best interest.

READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME (MARCH 27)

The first Ready or Not movie was a bit of a subversive surprise when it came out in 2019.  The horror thriller with comedic undertones wrapped it’s story around a twisted, deadly game of hide and seek and even added some satanic cabal elements to the mix.  It was also a movie that worked very well as a one off.  But, like all hit horror movies, a sequel is inevitable.  There are some things that are pleasing to see that this movie is doing.  It’s upping the stakes by making this a winner takes all contest.  Also, I do like the addition of actor Elijah Wood acting as an arbitor at the center of this operation.  Wood has been getting into his character actor phase of his career, and he looks like he’s having fun playing these weird enigmatic characters in movies like these.  Samara Weaving, who was the breakout star of the first film, also returns which is another plus.  The one questionable thing about this movie is that it seems like they are just repeating the same beats as the first movie.  A bunch of rich, Satan worshipping snobs are hunting our hero for sport and the keys to the kingdom, and our heroine has to find clever ways to stay alive and kill her would be killers.  Also, we get more people popping like bloody balloons as indicated from the trailer.  A lot of sequels run the risk of being too much like the first movie, which only spotlights the fact that some movies are better as one offs.  Hopefully, this sequel is able to squeeze just a bit more out of the premise.  A bit more world-building would help, like seeing just how far this Satanic network actually goes.  The inclusion of Elijah Wood’s character gives a hint of a grander world wide conspiracy at play, and that’s what I hope we get with this movie.  Because if it doesn’t, then we were better off just having the original and nothing else.

MOVIE TO SKIP:

MICHAEL (APRIL 24)

There are times when you can see a disaster coming from a mile away, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening.  That’s what this new biopic about the life of pop singer Michael Jackson feels like.  Musical biopics have become increasingly tired and cliched, and you can tell which ones are going to be bad when they are the ones that refuse to be truthful about their subjects.  Too many of these movies tend to be too reverential of their subjects, and only paint them in the most flattering light, and that has the end result of making them bland as a result.  That seems to be what we’re going to get with this Michael Jackson biopic.  Despite coming from an accomplished director like Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter like John Logan, this movie just seems to bee doomed from the start because it’s one that had to adhere to the wishes of the Jackson estate; meaning we are going to get the most whitewashed retelling of Michael Jackson’s story.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is coming from the same producer of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), another musical biopic that watered down it’s subject (the rock band Queen) to make them more palatable to mainstream audiences.  It doesn’t help that Michael is not being played by a professional actor, by Michael Jackson’s own real life nephew Jaafar Jackson (son of Tito) in his acting debut.  It’s obvious that this movie is just pure nostalgia bait, purely there to be a greatest hits account of Michael’s rise to fame without ever going in deep to explore who he was, and what may have led to the demons that led him to the darker chapters of his life.  A true exploration of Michael Jackson as a character may never actually come to pass, given the tight control his estate has over his image, and that unwillingness to be truthful has likely destroyed any chance of this movie ever standing on it’s own.

PRIMATE (JANUARY 9)

One of the sillier horror premises to come to us lately, this movie has a group of college aged kids being terrorized by a pet chimpanzee.  What caused this ape to suddenly go feral and murderous is honestly irrelevant.  You can just tell that the filmmaker’s pitch was what if we did a slasher pic, but with a monkey, and that’s what got greenlit.  The good thing is that it looks like they did the ethical thing and didn’t use a real life chimpanzee for the filming of this; instead relying on puppetry and CGI to bring him to life.  But, that’s the only good thing I’ll say about this movie, because everything about it looks ridculous and cheap.  The only value I can see audiences getting out of this is that it might be one of those so bad it’s funny kind of horror movies.  But there is no possible way anyone is going to be terrified by this movie.  It just seems so silly how the trailer is trying to make this premise feel like an intense thrill ride.  It’s all immediately undercut when you see the ape’s face flash onto screen.  The toy ape from Osgood Perkin’s The Monkey (2025) had more of a terrifying presence than this supposedly living ape.  And that movie was intentional in it’s use of comedy.  This one looks every bit like a joke, and I don’t think that was done intentionally .

SCREAM 7 (FEBRUARY 27)

Old franchises die hard it would seem.  Though the Scream franchise has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years, this new film is missing some of the ingredients that helped build up the newest generation of movies in the series.  One is the unceremonious departure of two of the new franchises main stars, Melissa Barrera because she was controversially fired for her pro-Palestinian post on social media, as well Jenna Ortega who quit in protest to show solidarity with Barrera.  It’s not a good look when a franchise stifles the free speech of it’s cast members.  Regardless, the filmmakers pressed on and greenlit this seventh film in the franchise without it’s newest stars.  This one seems to be leaning much heavier into nostalgia for the first movie, which is going to be celebrating it’s 30th anniversary in 2026.  Series mainstays Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox are returning, and surprisingly so is Matthew Lillard, whose character died in the original film.  This also marks the first film in the franchise directed by it’s original writer Kevin Williamson.  While he does bring some continuity to the franchise, he also is a far cry from the series’ original auteur, the late Wes Craven.  For one thing, it’s going to be difficult for this movie to shake off the controversy that was stirred up between movies, and I don’t think any nostalgia bait is going to win back fans who feel betrayed after seeing their new favorite lead actors being shown the door over censorship.

So, there you have overview of the movies of early 2026.  What is interesting about this season of movies is that it is largely devoid of major franchises.  Sure there are sequels like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Scream 7, but some of the other major franchises that placed stakes in the Winter and Spring in past years, like Marvel or the Legendary Pictures Monsterverse, are nowhere to be seen.  A lot of the biggest tentpole franchises are making their claim for the summer dates instead, and that is causing these next few months to be filled with more, big swing films like Project Hail Mary and The Bride.  We’ll see if this more wide opened field allows for some of this movies to shine a little brighter.  It was mixed in that regard over this last year, as some big swing originals like Mickey 17 failed to launch at the box office, while others such as Sinners did.  Regardless, the hope is that things will hopefully improve at the box office over the next year.  There’s a lot of uncertainty over the horizon, especially with regards to the ongoing situation at Warner Brothers.  Either way that it plays out, it will unfortunately mean that yet another studio will lose it’s independence in Hollywood, and there will be one fewer place for filmmakers to go to pitch their big new idea.  The proliferation of AI will also make things murky for a while.  The one thing that we can hope for is that audiences will choose wisely and give their money towards supporting movies that move the artform into a better place and also support movies that maintain that handcrafted touch.  And there will plenty of exciting things coming in the Summer season thereafter including Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (probably the movie I am most excited about for the whole year) as well as the next Steven Spielberg blockbuster and other hotly anticipated big screen spectacles.  Here’s hoping that 2026 proves to be a standout year at the movies, and one that helps to keep the theatrical experience alive for generations to come.

It’s been an odd summer season this year.  While the narrative going into the Summer season was that people were growing tired of comic book movies and remakes, lo and behold those two things ended up being the biggest winners, showing that nothing is ever certain at the box office.  As far as remakes go, Disney managed to soften the box office failure of Snow White (2025) from last Spring by seeing a massive turnout for Lilo & Stitch (2025), producing the only billion dollar grossing film out of Hollywood this year.  And while Universal’s How to Train Your Dragon (2025) remake didn’t do nearly as well, they still had a respectable worldwide gross over $600 million.  The comic book movie genre was also showing signs of strength.  James Gunn’s DCU launch got off to a pretty solid start with Superman (2025) becoming an undeniable hit.  For the first time in over a decade, DC managed to outdo their rival Marvel in direct competition, as the once mighty MCU was overall soft this Summer.  While neither Thunderbolts*  (2025) nor The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) were flops at the box office as both managed to recoup their production budgets, they still fell short of the average that Marvel used to hit in their prime.  But, the upside for Marvel is that their films are receiving critical praise once again, which hopefully is a sign that quality is returning to the studio.  In fact, critically speaking this has been a strong Summer season.  Of the top 10 movies at the box office this summer, only one had a negative rating on Rotten Tomatoes (Jurassic Park: Rebirth).  Otherwise, both critics and audiences have approved the output of Summer tent-poles this season, even if it’s not always reflected in the box office numbers.  One other interesting trend is the strong performance of the horror genre over this Summer.  With strong box office for movies like Final Destination; Bloodlines (2025) and Weapons (2025), we’re seeing the horror genre having a Golden Age at the moment.  The only flop of the year in horror was the disappointing MEGAN 2.0 (2025).  And to show just how unpredictable the Summer 2025 box office season has been, the #1 film at the box office this weekend was an animated Netflix movie that played for only 2 days, even after being available on their platform for 2 months before hitting theaters.

With the Summer season in the rear view now, it’s time to look at the year’s third and final act as we head into the Fall.  This is the time when Awards season starts to ramp up, but there are also a fair share of tent-poles on their way to theaters as well.  Like all the years past, I will be spotlighting a few of the movies that I believe will be among the most noteworthy of the Fall season.  They will be split between the Must Sees, the ones that have me worries and the ones to skip.  Keep in mind, I’m not picking winners and losers, as my track record can be a bit spotting in that regard.  These are the movies that I believe are worth talking about based on the strength of their marketing as well as the buzz surrounding them.  So, let’s take a look at the Movies of Fall 2025.

MUST SEES:

WICKED: FOR GOOD (NOVEMBER 21)

Last year, I didn’t have a lot of high expectations for the big screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked (2024).  But after I saw it for myself, I was surprisingly won over.  Wicked was a very pleasant surprise that really transcended it’s Broadway origins and delivered the goods for audiences of all kinds; even those who are not the biggest fans of movie musicals.  I believe that a large reason why I ended up warming up to the film is because of the excellent performances from the cast.  The leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande both did amazing jobs embodying the roles of Elphaba and Glinda, and they both received Oscar nominations based of the strength of those performances.  The plan was always to have the musical split up into two films, with the musical’s original intermission point being a natural point to split the story in too.  And with the help of the iconic “Defying Gravity,” Part One ended on a spectacular cliffhanger.  Now with Wicked: For Good, we get to complete the story.  From what I heard, Act II of Wicked isn’t quite as strong as Act I, but director Jon M. Chu and his team made a lot of creative changes in the first movie to help flesh it out into a fuller length, and a lot of those changes were for the better.  Hopefully, the same holds true for this film, and that the changes help to overcome the shortcomings that were there in the original stage musical.  One of the interesting things that this movie will be tackling is the introduction of Dorothy into the story.  This second part of the story takes place in the same time frame that the story of The Wizard of Oz is taking place, so it will be interesting to see how all that incorporates into the film itself.  The Wizard of Oz from 1939 is as iconic a film as Hollywood as ever made, and people are going to have expectations about that going in.  But, one thing for sure is that the Wicked franchise was given a solid foundation with the first movie’s success, and hopefully Wicked: For Good lives up to it’s title and then some.  Given that this was made at the same time as the first movie and retains all of the same actors and behind the scenes talent, it’s safe to say that this movie is in good, capable hands.  We will undoubtedly be off to see the Wizard one again.

ZOOTOPIA 2 (NOVEMBER 26)

Last Thanksgiving, the holiday box office turned into a competition between the musical Wicked and an animated sequel from Disney.  One year later, we are about to see history repeat itself.  Both Wicked and Moana 2 (2024) opened days apart, and instead of cannibalizing each other’s box office, both films managed to ride the wave of holiday audiences to equally strong grosses.  For Disney Animation, the success of Moana 2 was very well needed, as they had been struggling to generate a hit in the post pandemic theatrical market.  It not only was successful domestically, but it also got Disney above the billion dollar mark worldwide for the first time this decade; the last being 2019’s Frozen II.  Thankfully, coming up on the heels of Moana 2‘s success is another sequel to one of their biggest hits of the 2010’s.  Zootopia (2016) was not just a financial success for the animation giant, but it also won praise for it’s surprisingly nuanced social commentary.  It’s going to be hard to do something like that again given how the first movie managed to be such a surprise, but there’s still a lot of potential to be explored in this world.  One of the interesting ideas being presented in this trailer is the concept of the city of Zootopia dealing with the first arrivals of a new type of animal in their city; reptiles.  In particular, there is a snake that seems to be at the center of the story named Gary (voiced by Ke Huy Quan).  This could be a very interesting angle to explore.  Given that the first movie was an allegory for institutional racism in the the justice system, this story about reptiles arriving in the city of Zootopia may end up being about immigration, and how one side is unfairly judged as being outsiders when they are just looking to make a new home.  If that’s the angle, then this movie couldn’t be more prescient for our times, and it would be great for Disney to continue to use their Zootopia franchise to deliver these important messages in a way that audiences of all ages can pick up on.  Also, it will be great revisiting these characters again, especially with Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin both returning to their roles as Nick and Judy from the first film.  It would be hard to imagine this film not clicking as well as the first one did, especially with it’s ideal holiday season release date.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (SEPTEMBER 26)

Director Paul Thomas Anderson puts a lot of space between each movie project he works on, so you know when he finally has a new film coming out that it’s going to be something special.  His last film, Licorice Pizza (2021), was a nice return back to P. T. Anderson’s San Fernando Valley roots, telling an entertaining story about the denizens of the famous Valley who are on the outskirts of Hollywood.  His newest film also looks to be set in the heart of Anderson’s SFV, but the story is clearly very different.  While little in the way of plot details have been delivered in these early glimpses, it appears this is a story about revolutions and revolutionaries in a near future scenario.  This is actually going to be the first P. T. Anderson film with a production budget over $100 million, so it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of scope this movie has in it’s production.  He’s no stranger working with epic stories, as movies like Magnolia (1999) and There Will Be Blood (2007) have already shown, but those movies made the most out of limited budgets.  This is going to hopefully be something big for Anderson as a filmmaker if it’s been given a budget of that size.  One of the other exciting aspects of this film is that it’s going to be shot entirely with a film format that’s seeing a surprising resurgence: Vistavision.  After last year’s The Brutalist (2024), Vistavision seems to be in vogue once again, and I’m excited to see what a filmmaker of Anderson’s caliber does with this large format film stock.  It’s also going to be interesting seeing him work with an actor like Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time.  DiCaprio has been choosing some very interesting rolls in recent years, many of which like his part in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) that challenge his previous matinee idol image and allows him to play some truly oddball characters.  It’ll also be interesting to see him work off a cast that includes heavyweights like Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro.  It’s been a long wait for another P. T. Anderson movie, and it hopefully is worth it given the size of the meal he’s been preparing.

FRANKENSTEIN (OCTOBER 17)

One of the positive things that may come out of the surprise #1 box office weekend for Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters (2025) is that it may loosen the streaming giant’s notorious resistance towards theatrical releases for their slate of movies.  One other film that may loosen that even further is this new adaptation of the famed horror classic from one of Hollywood’s greatest directors; Guillermo Del Toro.  Guillermo already has had experience working with Netflix, as they were the distributors for his stop motion animated version of Pinocchio (2022), and that collaboration helped lead to an Oscar win for Best Animated Feature that year.  This prompted Netflix to greenlight his next film, a live action feature adapting Mary Shelley’s genre defining horror classic, Frankenstein.  But part of that contract with Netflix was that the movie had to receive a theatrical run before premiering on their streaming platform.  Del Toro makes movies intended for the big screen, and this was I’m sure a high demand on his part.  From what I’ve heard, this movie will be getting more than just a limited run, as it’s going to play in a healthy number of screens and for multiple weeks.  Given the strength of Del Toro’s name and the timely release of this movie just before Halloween in theaters, Netflix might not just have another #1 movie at the box office again; it could indeed have a true blockbuster success.  Even still, it’s great to see a visionary filmmaker like Guillermo Del Toro casting his eye on this classic story.  It’ll be interesting to see how distinct he makes his version from all the others.  We know already that he’s a devoted fan of the classic Boris Karloff version, but it appears that he’s sticking closer to Shelley’s original story with his adaptation.  Oscar Isaac is a perfect choice to play the role as the tortured titular scientist who decided to play God.  And though we haven’t seen his face appear just yet in the trailers, it will be interesting to see what statuesque actor Jacob Elordi brings to the role of the Creature.  Also, all of the typical Del Toro visual flourishes should make this a spooky feast for the eyes.  Let’s just hope that Netflix makes this theatrical run as special as it should be.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (DECEMBER 12)

Speaking of Netflix, they have another hotly anticipated film coming out this holiday season that may or may not get a theatrical run.  Rian Johnson’s trilogy of mystery movies continues with Benoit Blanc set to unravel another whodunit.  The original film was a huge box office success, but Netflix bought out the rights to the franchise from Lionsgate and since then limited it’s theatrical presence.  The second film, Glass Onion (2022) got a limited one week run in theaters, where it did quite well, and then quickly ended up on Netflix right after.  A lot of critics insist that Netflix left a lot of money on the table by not allowing Glass Onion to have more of a run in theaters like it’s predecessor.  Even still, the movie found it’s audience and did quite well on the streamer.  Now we get the third film in the series, with just a date announcement so far indicating when we’ll see it.  It doesn’t tell us any more than that, and it’s uncertain if that’s a theatrical date, or it’s streaming premiere date.  My hope is that we’ll still get a chance to see this film on the big screen since these Knives Out movies are ideal to watch with a full audience.  It’s great to see Daniel Craig returning to play the central sleuth once again, which has been a role that he’s very much made his own, and a wonderful departure from his years as 007.  And in the tradition of classic Hollywood whodunits, including the other Knives Out movies, this has a killer cast of famous faces.  Joing Craig here are Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Josh O’Connor, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Jeremy Renner (ironic given a great visual gag from Glass Onion).  It’s also quite interesting that this movie’s tone seems so completely different from Glass Onion, which was definitely a lot more comical in nature.  Wake Up Dead Man seems a lot more dark and gloomy, but then again that just may be the marketing of this movie.  Rian Johnson’s films thus far have been fun romps that actually offer up genuinely engaging mysteries.  I really do hope that Netflix gives this a theatrical run like the other two films and allows for audiences to experience the fun together.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH (DECEMBER 19)

Let me be clear, I have no doubt that this third film in the Avatar franchise is going to make all the money when it releases over the holiday season this year.  It’s just that the franchise may also end up not performing to expectations either.  Both Avatar (2009) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) came to theaters after a decade in development for each, which granted filmmaker James Cameron the time he needed to refine the movies to the way he wanted them, especially when it came to the visual effects.  And that resulted in both of them becoming among the highest grossing films of all time.  This will be the shortest gap we’ve seen yet in the franchise (just 3 years), and there’s a worry that this one won’t come into theaters as refined as the other two.  Now, to be fair, this movie was shot simultaneously with Way of Water, so all that Cameron has been working on in these last 3 years has been the post production, so hopefully it’s been a sufficient amount of time.  While the Avatar movies have been visually stunning without question, Cameron’s shortcomings as a screenwriter are still noticeable, and the movie may still underwhelm in terms of plot.  The novelty of the franchise also wears thin the longer a series goes, and not only is this not the end of what he has planned, but the movies themselves are getting longer.  Way of Water was a staggering 3 hours and 12 minutes in length (just two shy of Titanic), and it sounds like Fire and Ash is going to be another behemoth as well.  There are some things that do look interesting from this trailer.  The introduction of a new tribe of Na’vi, a volcanic region one that is antagonistic to the heroes of the story, is an interesting wrinkle to bring into this ongoing plot.  What this story-line needs is added stakes and more danger, and this sinister tribe seems like a good addition to do just that.  Also giving us more glimpses of the world of Pandora that we still haven’t seen is another way to keep this franchise fresh and interesting.  We know James Cameron will deliver on the visuals.  The only question is, can he still make us care about this story, or is the glow of the franchise finally starting to die out?  Cameron has managed to defy gravity before; let’s see if he can do it again.

TRON: ARES (OCTOBER 10)

It’s hard to believe that Tron has managed to survive so long as a franchise.  Started in 1982 with the groundbreaking original (a pioneer in computer animation), Tron remained dormant for decades until Disney decided to revive it with a long in the making sequel, released 28 years later.  Tron Legacy (2010), while not a runaway hit at the box office, still made enough to prove that the cult status of the original classic could indeed carry the Tron name into a lasting franchise.  It would, however, take another 15 years to decide the next move for where this franchise would go.  Now, we finally get a third Tron film and this one finally delivers on something that we wished we had seen before from the other films.  As Tron and Tron Legacy showed it’s characters being taken out of the real world and transported into a digital one, now we are seeing the reverse play out, with the digital world with all of it’s intimidating future tech coming into our world.  That’s a premise that does have a lot of potential, and credit to the filmmakers on this one for making the weapons of war from “The Grid” look extra intimidating.  But, this is also Tron we’re talking about; a franchise that has always been more style than substance.  Can this movie back up it’s darker theme and visuals with a story that is actually strong enough to make us feel the danger of this threat on humanity.  One of the biggest red flags coming with this film as well is that it stars Jared Leto as the titular Ares. Leto has been, to put it mildly, a somewhat controversial figure lately, and that may end up reflecting badly on the movie.  On the plus side, we do get Jeff Bridges returning once again, as he’s been the mainstay of this franchise from the very beginning, and it’s great to see him still involved.  Also, in keeping with the legacy of it’s predecessors, Tron: Ares is also getting a major contribution to it’s soundtrack from one of the most legendary rock bands of it’s generation: Nine Inch Nails.  It’s not just Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross doing the score; no, Trent got the whole band back together for this one.  Given that Tron Legacy’s Daft Punk score is one of the best from the last decade, NIN has big shoes to fill.  Hopefully, the movie is able to be more than just a soundtrack and cool visuals and manages to be something even better than the legacy it’s supposed to be a part of.

THE SMASHING MACHINE (OCTOBER 3)

Benny Safdie has proven alongside his brother Josh that they can take an actor not known for doing gritty dramatic work and give them the opportunity to show surprisingly deft acting.  They did it with Robert Pattinson in the groundbreaking Good Time (2017), helping him to shed off the sparkly vampire image he had from the Twilight films.  Then they gave Adam Sandler of all people the role of a lifetime in the chaotic Uncut Gems (2019), a movie that made us shockingly declare that Sandler was robbed of an Oscar nomination.  The Safdie’s unfortunately are not making films together as a team anymore, and both brothers are instead going solo this year.  Josh Safdie has his Timothee Chalamet starer Marty Supreme coming out on Christmas Day, while Benny has this biopic starring Dwayne Johnson coming out first in October.  The movie follows the story of pioneering UFC icon Mark Kerr as he becomes a star in the still fledgling and at the time still illegal in most places fighting league.  There’s an interesting story to explore with this figure, and Safdie definitely looks like he’s making it with a very grounded and gritty portrayal.  The only question mark is how well Dwayne Johnson is going to play the lead role.  Dwayne has been a movie star of note for some time, but dramatic work is a field we have yet to see him crack into.  Truth be told, his physical transformation into Mark Kerr is pretty impressive, and it’s a fun bit of irony for this icon of one wrestling league getting to play the part of an icon from another.  But, this could also turn into an exercise in ego that may end up reflecting poorly on the movie for all it’s good intentions.  While Johnson’s intentions in telling this story may be good, it’s also obvious that he’s using this as a way to get into the Awards contention, perhaps as a way to be seen as more than just an movie star but as a real actor.  Sometimes that can turn movies like this into a vanity project and unfortunately make it seem like pandering to the Academy.  I hope that’s not the case and that Dwayne Johnson actually does deliver a special performance here.  Like I said, the Safdies have a special gift in bringing out unexpected performances out of the unlikeliest of actors.

BUGONIA (OCTOBER 24)

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the least predictable filmmakers out there.  Sometime he can be infuriatingly dense as a storyteller, and then other times he delivers a fantastic dream like experience.  I for one have responded to some his movies in both ways.  I absolutely fell in love with his Oscar winning films The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things (2023), but also loathed his work on the confounding The Lobster (2015).  His last film, the triptych Kinds of Kindness  (2024) had a little of both; some great moments and some not so great.  He returns to single narrative storytelling with this new, puzzling film Bugonia.  There’s not a whole lot to really tell us what this movie is going to be about, and that has me worried about what it may end up being.  I’m hoping that it’s Yorgos at his best, but it also could be another Lobster situation.  I feel like I enjoy his movies a lot more when it’s not one of his own scripts.  Thankfully, he’s working with another writer’s script here; that being writer Will Tracy.  However, Yorgos’ best films both came from the same screenwriter, Tony McNamara, and he’s not involved here, so I’m wondering if it’s not the direction of Yorgos that I enjoyed from those movies but rather McNamara’s writing that made those films great.  McNamara didn’t work on Kinds of Kindness either, and there were parts of that film that I did enjoy, so maybe there’s something to Yorgos’ direction that I like too.  Thankfully, this film includes one of the best elements of Kindness and that the talents of actor Jesse Plemons.  Plemons continues to be one of the most daring actors working today, and he seems to work well with these kinds of oddball movies.  Yorgos Lanthimos is also reuniting again with what seems to be his favorite actress, Emma Stone, on what is now their fourth film together.  Poor Things still remains a highlight for both of them, so we’ll see if they are able to deliver on that same collaborative chemistry yet again.  My hope is that I can continue to count on Yorgos Lanthimos delivering movies that a worthwhile to watch and that I no longer have a dreaded feeling that he may make something too alienating for me to enjoy.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 (DECEMBER 5)

One movie that I can comfortably predict will be a bad film.  The first Five Nights at Freddy’s made a shocking amount of money in it’s first weekend before quickly falling off a cliff thereafter, and unfortunately, it prompted a quick production of this sequel.  This new film doesn’t look like it improves on anything from the already lame first movie.  The one new gimmick is some brief moments that call back to the format of the original video game, but that’s it.  It’s just more of the same.  It’s a shame that this movie is going to be the one that closes out the year for the horror genre, because horror has had one of it’s best years ever, both critically and at the box office.  While the genre has been doing great as a whole, it’s been a different story for the once might Blumhouse Studio.  The horror movie picture house started the year soft with the underwhelming box office of Wolf Man (2025), saw M3GAN 2.0 fall flat in the Summer, and now they have this to finish this disaster year with.  Given the reception that the original movie got after it’s first weekend, I would imagine that this film will also be an underperformer for Blumhouse, and it’s probably going to make them reconsider the kind of direction that they’ve been taking as a studio, especially as places like A24 and Neon have been redefining the meaning of horror in the last couple years, as well as Warner Brothers who had a great year with their horror movies like Sinners (2025) and Weapons.  The novelty of a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie has worn itself out, and I would imagine that this movie is not going to reverse that fortune either.  Better to spend the holidays away from another mediocre scare fest like this one.

ELLA MCCAY (DECEMBER 12)

Every year there seems to be at least one of those trying to hard kind of Oscar bait movies, and I think this might be the one for this year.  There’s some wonderful pedigree behind it.  It’s from Oscar winning writer and director James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, As Good as it Gets), marking his first new film in fifteen years.  It also stars Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, as well as a couple Oscar nominees like Woody Harrelson and James L. Brooks favorite, Albert Brooks.  Unfortunately, the result of all that talent seems to have delivered something annoyingly saccharine and lightweight.  Maybe this would have been a fresh take kind of comedy decades ago, but James L. Brooks doesn’t feel like he’s treading any new ground with this familial conflicts narrative, where the only new idea is that one of the characters is also the Governor of a state.  Brooks unquestionably a great filmmaker and the movies I mentioned before are undeniable classics, as well as what I believe to be his greatest film, Broadcast News (1987).  But, that was a long time ago, and it’s hard to regain that spark in your career in your twilight years.  Just look what happened with Francis Ford Coppola last year with the ill-fated Megalopolis (2024).  Please check out Brooks’ older classics first before you end up judging him on what I think will be an unfortunate pale imitation of his past work.

NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T (NOVEMBER 14)

Another pointless sequel to a franchise that already felt superfluous.  I’m surprised that this franchise about magicians who also dabble in high stakes heists has lasted as long as it has.  And the plots aren’t getting any better.  They are just adding more to the cast.  In this we have all the returning characters from before, but in addition to them we get Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt and The Holdovers‘ Dominic Sessa joining the already crowded team.  I’m happy to see the always great Rosamund Pike here as their new mark, but apart from that, everything looks boring and also ran as a heist movie.  It’s very much a poor man’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and it probably would have served better to just let this franchise go away quietly.  I know for one thing, it’s box office window is very short because it only has a week to make a splash before the juggernauts of Wicked and Zootopia 2 take over the rest of November and beyond.  You will see this and then you won’t.

So, there you have my outlook for the Fall 2025 season.  One thing that I unfortunately don’t have the insight for at the beginning of this season is what will be the Awards season heavyweights coming out around this same time.  The Awards season really doesn’t begin to hit it’s zenith until after the Fall film festival circuit is complete.  We’ll have a better idea about what will be up for this year’s accolades after both the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival have completed, as they have become some of the strongest bellwethers for the top winners.  At least we know that this year should conclude with some strong box office.  Avatar, Zootopia 2, and Wicked are going to be some undeniable winners at the box office, even if one or two might perform under their predecessors.  Some of the films that I think have the potential of surprising us this season could be P. T. Anderson’s One Battle After Another and possibly even Tron: Ares, depending on the strength of the star power behind them.  I’m also really hoping that Netflix decides to make a change in their policy regarding theatrical runs for their movies, as they have a strong slate of Fall films this year, especially with Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, as well as new films from Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Baumbach, and Richard Linklater.  That’s a lot of talent wasted by just sending their films to streaming.  As we’ve seen this week with Kpop Demon Hunters, if there’s demand for it people will flock to the theaters, even for a movie that’s already been streaming for over 2 months.  In any case, I hope that we have a strong finish to the year both in terms of the quality of the films as well as in box office returns.  I’ve shared my picks for some of the most interesting, but I’m also hoping for some surprises as well.  So, have a great Fall season and please keep showing up and supporting movies in the theaters.

The year has already been a roller coaster ride, and not just at the box office.  Focusing in on the state of movies for now, the last few months have been defined as being alarmingly weak at the box office, save for one unlikely savior.  The month of March was particularly marked with some alarming box office results.  In a month that has usually seen a strong performer or two taking advantage of those Spring Break crowds, this year’s March for the first time since Covid had failed to deliver a film that made over $100 million domestic.  This same time last year, we had two films reach that mark with Dune: Part Two (2024) and Godzilla vs. Kong: The New Empire (2024).  But this year, we had two of the costliest flops to to hit the screens in quite a while.  Warner Brothers’ ambitious sci-fi epic from auteur director Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 (2025) fizzled out pretty quickly beyond it’s opening weekend, and failed to recoup even a quarter of it’s original $100 million+ budget.  Then there was Disney’s Snow White (2025) which is going to be an even bigger financial loser for it’s studio, as Disney may finally be seeing it’s audience lose interest in their live action remake phase. Couple this with an under-performance from Marvel, with their recent film Captain America: Brave New World (2025) only barely reaching break even and a slew of other box office non-starters, 2025 is definitely starting off on the wrong footing.  But then came one of the most unexpected turnarounds in recent memory.  After three months of box office woes, suddenly theaters have been coming alive again with the surprising success of The Minecraft Movie (2025).  How the film is able to generate the box office it had had even with mostly negative reviews is certainly a mystery.  Some of it may be a Rocky Horror like phenomenon with audiences attending the films just for the trashiness of it all and to have the experience of seeing the movie with a rowdy crowd.  Whether people actually like it or not (and I certainly don’t) the good thing is that Minecraft is helping the movie theater industry weather what has been otherwise a bad start to the year.

Now of course it is time to look to the future and see what will be the movie that we’ll all be talking about in the Summer months ahead.  While the Spring has been a tough time at the box office so far, there are a lot of positive signs on the horizon that this Summer will fare a lot better.  Like in the years past, I will be going through this Summer’s most interesting coming attractions, and tell you which ones are the must sees, the ones that have me worried, and the ones that I think should be skipped.  Keep in mind, these previews are based on my own thoughts about the effectiveness of the marketing as well as the buzz that each one is generating before their respective releases.  My predictions don’t always pan out, and sometimes I may miss the mark and either overestimate or underestimate a movie.  The only thing I wish to make happen with these previews is to draw attention to the movies that are on the horizon in the hope that it helps all of you be informed about what to expect at the movies this upcoming season.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Summer 2025

MUST SEES:

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (JULY 25)

It’s a given every summer that when Marvel has a new movie coming out, people are going to want to pay attention.  After taking most of last year off with only one single theatrical release, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Marvel is back to it’s more ambitious release schedule of multiple films per year.  They had a hard time with Captain America: Brave New World this February, but that was a film long plagued by production problems.  This film and the other Summer release which I’ll spotlight later have not had as difficult a development and are actually arriving with a lot of positive buzz.  Of the remaining Marvel movies, it’s this one that looks to be something really interesting.  Marvel has attempted to bring comic books “first family” to the big screen twice before, and it hasn’t worked out yet.  2015’s Fant4stic was an especially miserable failure.  This time around, it does look like Marvel is making an effort to get this one right and do justice to the iconic characters of the Fantastic Four.  It’s interesting that they are starting their new version of the Fantastic Four in a different universe than the regular MCU.  While it’s an interesting call story wise, it does offer the creative team to make some bold choices in the world building.  The retro-futuristic world that they live in is visually very stunning; mixing high sci-fi with mid-century design.  Another positive sign is the comic book accurate look of Ben Grimm, aka The Thing.  Before, he was either an actor buried under a ton of prosthetic make-up, or in Fant4stic’s case, a terribly animated CGI monstrosity.  Here, his appearance is very close to how he looks in the comic books, while at the same time allowing for expressive features that help bring his personality out much better.  It helps that Emmy winning character actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also doing a great job of embodying the character.  Indeed, all of the Four members look right for the part, including Joseph Quinn as the Human Torch, Vanessa Kirby as The Invisible Woman, and Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic.  The fact that they’ll also be dealing with a galactic threat the size of the celestial earth-devouring Galactus should also make this quite the spectacle.  It took a while for Marvel Studios to finally get the rights back to bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU.  Let’s hope the third time is the charm for these four.

SUPERMAN (JULY 11)

While Marvel is preparing it’s summer roll out of highly anticipated titles, it’s rival studio DC is about to begin a new era.  Under the supervision of director James Gunn, we are about to see a relaunch of the DC Universe, and who better to get things started than the man of steel himself, Superman.  The Snyderverse Superman, played by Henry Cavill, always felt like he got the short end in the DCEU, as director Zack Snyder seemed much more interested in the Batman side of DC’s catalog.  For this new version, James Gunn himself is taking on the responsibility of launching Superman’s new era, and that seems to be especially a good sign for the future of the character.  One of the best things about James Gunn as a filmmaker is that he puts a lot of value in comic book tropes, and in particular, he embraces the sillier side that helps to make them so much fun.  He displayed that perfectly with his Guardian of the Galaxy trilogy at Marvel, and managed to carry that over to DC with his excellent The Suicide Squad (2021) and Peacemaker series.  What seems to be especially exciting about his new take on Superman is that he’s not wasting any time in building the world around him.  No more rehashing Superman’s already well tread back story.  For this movie, the DC Universe is already fully formed, and we are just jumping right in.  It’s probably smart, because the problem with the Snyderverse was that they were attempting to build everything up from scratch while at the same time speed running through all of the key story-lines, preventing anything from actually coalescing into a complete whole.  Here Superman (played by newcomer David Corenswet) shares this world with a lot more super heroes, including a Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and a few other in what looks like to be a big screen adaptation of the All-Star Superman comics.  Oh, and Krypto the super dog is also making his live action debut as well.  In contrast with the Snyderverse, the main goal of Gunn’s take on Superman is to return to the sense of fun that we had with the old Richard Donner/ Christopher Reeve classic, which is probably why there are hints of John Williams’ iconic score in the trailer.  Here’s hoping that James Gunn puts the DCU on a strong footing and brings about a bright new future with one of the greatest super heroes of all time.

THUNDERBOLTS* (MAY 2)

While James Gunn is getting his universe up and running over at DC, Marvel is preparing to introduce it’s own take on the Suicide Squad.  When the Avengers are unavailable, who does humanity turn to is the question being posed by this movie.  The answer is a grouping of misfits and outcasts with something to prove.  The team assembled for this version of the Thunderbolts are some of the characters that we’ve been introduced to along the way in the post Endgame MCU, many of whom have done something wrong in the past.  The team consists of former black widow Yelena (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour), phase shifting criminal Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), assassin Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and disgraced Captain America turned U.S. Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), all under the supervision of CIA chief Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).  The idea of assembling these tarnished figures together and hoping they have it within them to save the world is an appealing one to base a movie around, and certainly new ground for Marvel to cover in their movies.  I’m interested in seeing how these more hard edged characters work off each other, and the chance at redemption could lead to some very interesting character building.  We’ve gotten to meet these characters in various other films; now we’ll see how they function when they are in the spotlight.  I am especially excited to see David Harbour’s Red Guardian here, since he’s been one of the best new characters that Marvel has introduced in the last couple years, and he and Florence Pugh’s Yelena were easily the best parts of what was an otherwise forgettable Black Widow (2021) movie.  Bringing in Marvel veteran Sebastian Stan as his popular character the Winter Soldier should also offer up some fun character interactivity too.  But it will also be interesting to see how they fare against an enemy as powerful as Sentry (Lewis Pullman) in this story.  And what is the mystery behind the asterix in the title that they’ve been teasing about in the marketing.  These may not be A-list Marvel characters, but as we’ve seen with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the B and C list characters can make a movie a lot of fun when they have their own opportunity to shine.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (MAY 23)

In 1996, the first Mission: Impossible movie premiered with it’s star Tom Cruise in top action hero form.   Nearly 30 years and eight movies later, Tom Cruise is still delivering heart pounding action on a grand scale with this long running series.  But, with this new film, there seems to be a drive to the end of the road.  This was originally supposed to be Part II to the previous film, Dead Reckoning Part I (2023), but the filmmakers decided this movie should stand on it’s own, because it may not be the end of the franchise completely, but it’s quite possible that this will be the end for the character of Ethan Hunt.  There’s a finality that’s being presented in this trailer, showcasing all of the events that have led up to now, showing that it’s all been leading to this.  It’s understandable that Tom Cruise may want to step back from doing these movies now considering that he’s well into his sixties and probably can’t pull off the same amazing stunts anymore, though let’s face it, he’s lasted far longer than most in this business.  The only question is, how big of a bang does he want to go out on.  The previous movies had Cruise climbing the outside of the world’s tallest building, hang onto the side of a real plane in the air, piloting a helicopter solo, and in the last film riding off of a cliff on a motorcycle.  Every Mission: Impossible movie has had at least one stand out scene with Tom Cruise really putting himself into the action rather than using a stunt double.  We see some hints of what we might get in this movie, but how well will they stand against all the rest.  You would think that Tom Cruise wants to save the best for last.  Regardless, these movies are always a ton of fun to watch and here’s hoping that this movie at least measures up to all of the movies that have come before it.  The cast that he’s assembled through all the previous movies are all here, plus a few new faces.  I’m especially happy to see Ving Rhames still there because apart from Cruise, he’s the only actor to have appeared in all eight movies.  Whether this is the end, or the beginning of a new era, it will be a hard act to follow for Tom Cruise.  The Mission: Impossible franchise has been his own personal baby for decades and ever the showman, he’ll definitely want us to say goodbye in a grand finale.

ELIO (JUNE 20)

You can always rely on Pixar Animation to deliver some good-nature fun in the middle of the Summer season.  This film was originally supposed to come out last Summer, but was pushed back due to the post-Strike reshuffling of the schedule.  The delay may have worked out in it’s favor, because a year ago, the Pixar brand was not exactly on the strongest footing.  Lightyear (2002) under-performed in theaters, and Elemental (2023) started off poorly before managing to recoup thanks to word of mouth.  Releasing Elio right after this, an original story without a whole lot of per-existing interest from audiences at a time when the Pixar brand couldn’t help to lift it up, would have been a disaster for the already beleaguered studio.  Thankfully, the highly anticipated sequel Inside Out 2 (2024) took its Summer slot instead and gave Pixar a much needed win at the box office.  With a worldwide gross of over $1.5 billion, Inside Out shattered records and re-affirmed that Pixar indeed could still deliver at the box office.  This more positive environment should help Elio out.  It almost certainly won’t perform as huge as Inside Out 2, but it should have a pretty healthy run that will be on par with most of Pixar’s best movies.  It all depends on how well audiences respond to the story.  What they seem to be going for with this new film is a coming of age story with a child who can’t seem to make friends on Earth, so he instead tries to find his place off planet.  The character of Elio himself looks like he’s going to be a lot of fun to watch, especially when he begins to interact with all of the various alien species.  Pixar seems to perform at it’s best when it deals with the emotions of growing up and discovering one’s place in the world.  This is trope that has proved to work well for them in the past with movies like Coco (2017), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022).  We’ll see if Elio is able to live up to the other films.  It definitely looks like it’s going to be a visual feast as well, but of course that’s to be expected from Pixar.  It also marks the first solo directorial effort from Coco co-director Adrian Molina, so we know that it’s going to come from a filmmaker capable of making a movie that balances genuine emotion with a lot of fun mixed in.  Let’s hope that this renewed strength in the Pixar brand keeps going with this film and beyond.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

LILO & STITCH (MAY 23)

If there is one thing that seems to not be as safe a bet at the box office as it used to, it’s live action remakes of classic animated films.  Disney, which has been leading the charge with these types of movies, enjoyed some major box office success in the past decade remaking all of the major films in their animated canon.  Some like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Lion King (2019) even made the studio well over a billion dollars each.  But that box office domination seems to have lessened over time.  The Little Mermaid (2023) performed well domestically, but struggled internationally.  The Lion King prequel Mufasa (2024) also struggled to perform as well as it’s predecessor.  But what has especially thrown cold water on the remake craze at Disney is the disastrous performance of Snow White (2025), which has fallen rapidly off of the box office charts and will likely lose Disney money in the long run.  So, we may be seeing this very divisive trend possibly coming to an end.  Although, that does depend on the remaining remakes that are still in the pipeline.  This summer we are getting a remake of Disney’s late Renaissance era classic Lilo & Stitch (2002), which definitely has a lot to prove in the wake of Snow White.  The one thing that is in this film’s favor is that it makes a lot more sense remaking this film in live action compared to Snow White.  The original Lilo was one of Disney’s more earthbound films, even with all of the sci-fi elements, so it doesn’t take a whole lot to breath it into life in live action.  You don’t need to make lavish sets and costumes; all this movie needs to do is film on location in Hawaii and try to match the vibe of the original film as best it can.  And it does feel like the movie is managing to find that balance.  The CGI Stitch “live action” model does look very adorable, and original film director Chris Sanders returns to do the voice.  Even more importantly, the film seems like it found the right child actor to play Lilo with newcomer Maia Kaeloha.  The one thing that this movie needs to prove more than anything, and some that most of these remakes fail to accomplish, is justify it’s existence.  It has to stand up on it’s own in contrast with the original, and hopefully it can do that and be just as charming as well.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (JUNE 13)

Speaking of live action remakes of animated classics, Dreamworks is getting in on the action now.  Considering that Dreamworks hasn’t been around as long as Disney and hasn’t built up the same amount of classic films over that same time, it’s easy to see why they haven’t been jumping on the bandwagon themselves.  But that ends this Summer as they release their first live action remake through their parent studio Universal.  The original How to Train Your Dragon (2010) is undeniably one of the best films that Dreamworks Animation has ever made; probably the best.  And compared with most of the other Dreamworks movies, this one makes a whole lot more sense than others.  You don’t see a lot of sense trying to do Shrek (2001) in live action.  Dragon was a film that did strive for a bit of grittiness and life like texture to it’s story and world.  More than anything, translating the world of the original movie into live action, with it’s very Viking like aesthetic, seems very natural and the remake definitely feels like it’s doing a very one to one translation.  The film even has one of the original voice actors returning, with Gerard Butler reprising his role as King Stoick.  There’s just one thing that might end up hurting the film in the end, which are the dragons themselves.  The problem is that they still look too cartoonish, and it kind of breaks the life like aesthetic that this film is going for.  Toothless, the main dragon in this film, just looks like the same exact model as the character in the original film, just with a different skin texture.  It might have helped to have changed up the look of the character just a bit more.  Honestly, Disney seems to have matched that better in their Lilo & Stitch remake, as their Stitch does look like he fits better in live action.  Maybe the dragon’s animation might work better in the context of the film, but again, it has to justify it’s existence in contrast with the original.  The original film had an epic quality that is hard to replicate, and if they are just doing the same movie over again, it may not work out well because audiences already fell in love with the original.  We’ll have to see if this Dragon can indeed soar on it’s own.

28 YEARS LATER (JUNE 20)

For the most part, there are a lot of exciting things about this movie.  It reunites the original creative team behind the original, Danny Boyle directing from a script by Alex Garland.  It also puts together an impressive cast, with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes.  Plus it delivered one of the best movie trailers in recent memory, with a chilling montage of post-apocalyptic carnage underscored by a disturbing 1915 recording of a recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s powerful anti-war poem “Boots.”  The one thing that may unfortunately work against the film is that the trailer may have been too good.  I don’t know if the movie itself is going to display the same kind of artistic intensity that this trailer has.  Kudos to the marketing team that put this one out, because it’s almost a two minute long art piece within itself.  The re-team of Boyle and Garland, who last worked together on the original 28 Days Later (2002) over twenty years, should still make this movie a well crafted horror action film.  But I feel like the trailer may be misleading us into believing that this movie is going to be something that it isn’t.  I imagine that the real film is going to be more of a slow burn leading to some big set pieces.  The trailer seems to be preparing us for a much more intense experience.  We may still get that, but it’s going to feel very different than what the trailer showed.  Also, I’m pretty sure that Kipling poem appears nowhere in the final film; it’s just something that the marketing department thought would be cool to use in the trailer.  We’ll see how well this performs once it’s in theaters.  It’s a mid Summer horror film, which often has seen a lot of success in past years.  My hope is that the movie does live up to the promise of it’s intense marketing campaign.  It’s hard to get audiences excited in another zombie movie, which is itself a pretty over-saturated and diluted genre.  Perhaps that’s why the trailer had to go as hard as it does; to get us re-interested in this kind of movie again.

THE NAKED GUN (AUGUST 1)

Making this movie would easily be dismissed as sacrilege in most circumstances.  The original Abrahams and Zucker classic is one of the funniest comedies ever made and one of the iconic roles that turned Leslie Nielsen into an unlikely comedy legend.  But, over time both the Naked Gun franchise and the spoof comedy genre died off, so it’s unusual that a studio would want to pick it up again.  The one trying to make an attempt this time is producer Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy and Ted fame.  He clearly has a soft spot for Naked Gun and it’s clearly seen in his style of comedy.  So, it makes sense for him to be the new shepherd for this series.  And to take over the role of Frank Drebin from Leslie Nielsen, it makes sense to go with someone of the same ilk like Liam Neeson.  Neeson already has been within Seth MacFarlane’s circle with cameos in movies like A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) and Ted 2 (2015).  The only question is, can this movie still be funny?  The spoof genre died out for a reason, because the movies just kept getting less and less funny.  It’s hard to tell how well this movie will pull it off, but the trailer certainly shows that it will be trying for a goofy tone.  It might work out well, given Liam Neeson’s participation here, but it also might be a horrible mess too.  I’ll give the movie this, that O.J. Simpson joke in the trailer is legit very funny.  At least the movie is actually acknowledging the elephant in the room there.  Seth MacFarlane’s team probably understands that there is a lot to prove here, and they clearly have a reverence for the original and will try to do it justice here.  It certainly won’t be anywhere near as inspired as the original film, but if it can still make most of us laugh, than that’s a plus.  The worst thing they could do is make a Naked Gun movie without a single joke that works, and at least from the trailer we see that at least one joke does land.  I worry that we’ll get the former, but I do hope that we’ll at least get something fun and enjoyable

MOVIES TO SKIP:

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH (JULY 2)

Fool me once is how the phrase goes.  Jurassic Park was a one of a kind masterpiece that still holds up over 30 years later.  Since then, the franchise has failed time and again to recapture the magic of that original.  Even Spielberg could do it with The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), which is easily his worst film.  Jurassic World (2015) came closest to getting there with a fresh new take on the concept, showing us the park in a fully open to the public capacity, but the two sequels that have come after have squandered any of that good will by getting progressively dumber with each outing.  It seems that Universal Pictures is looking to soft re-boot the franchise again by starting fresh with a new cast.  Gone are the stars of the last three movies, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and instead we get Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali.  While the cast may be new, the same old action scenes look to be more of the familiar.  The premise of scientists and explorers putting themselves in harms way for the sake of studying these dinosaurs seems to be overplayed at this point.  What happened to the more intriguing concept of dinosaurs being let loose into our world that was established a few movies ago.  That seems to have gone nowhere and based on this movie, which chooses to show dinosaurs yet again confined to a remote island, the past continuity of the franchise really doesn’t seem to matter at all.  This movie is just more cash grabbing by the studio, wringing out every cent they can get from a franchise that has been fruitful for them in the past, but is continually running out of ideas.  For this franchise to survive beyond this, it’s better if the studio looks beyond formula and stop just trying to make the same movie over and over again.

FREAKIER FRIDAY (AUGUST 8)

I understand why Disney would be choosing to make this sequel now.  Lindsay Lohan seems to have gotten her life back together after a few years of scandal and hard living and is seeing a career rebound thanks to her well received holiday movies on Netflix.  And Jamie Lee Curtis is riding high after her Oscar win for the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).  And they both genuinely want to work together again on something.  Unfortunately, like many other sequels made decades after the fact, this movie is just merely doing the same plot over again, only they are including a new generation.  Chalk this movie up to being not a film for me.  I didn’t much care for the original either, nor the even more original film from the 70’s starring a young Jodie Foster that it was a remake of.  The only thing this movie may have going for it is the report between Lohan and Curtis.  They clearly are invested in doing this film.  But, the era in which this kind of movie could work seems like it has passed.  Another body swap comedy is a hard sell, even to a new generation.  I think it would have served better for Curtis and Lohan to re-team in a movie that was more original.  Fans of the original film may like this one, but as we’ve seen with recent Disney live action legacy sequels like Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) and Disenchanted (2022), it’s hard to pick things back up after a twenty year gap.  Not only have you aged up, but so has your audience, and the newer generation may not hold it in the same regard.  We’ll see if this sequel manages to keep things freaky all these years later.

SMURFS (JULY 18)

And here we have a movie that already just spells disaster.  When the trailer puts it in your face that “Rihanna is Smurfette,” you know that there is nothing else noteworthy to sell about this movie.  It’s not even the first time that there has been an attempt to jumpstart a Smurfs film franchise.  There was the live action adaptation from the early 2010’s and then the all animated one from 2017.  Is there anything they are doing differently for this new one.  Doesn’t look like it.  All that they seem to have done is add a different, Spider-verse style filter on the CGI Smurf models to make them look more hand drawn, and that seems to be it.  Otherwise it’s all the lame jokes that we’ve seen before.  Remember how they would replace a curse word with the word “smurf” to make it feel more edgy while still keeping it G-rated.  That’s pretty much what they are doing again.  Hopefully this movie ends up like the ones before and just fades into obscurity, but then again that may just lead to more re-boots again in the future.

So, there you have my outlook on the upcoming Summer movie season.  This will be an interesting Summer to observe at the movies, because it will be the first true season that’s unaffected by the strikes of 2023.  All of the re-shuffling of the schedule in the wake of the labor walk-outs has resolved, mostly in the last calendar year, so this will be the first Summer in a while that feels like it used to. Or at least that’s the hope.  The thing that still lingers over the industry is the uncertainty in the economy due to the tariffs and trade war going on.  One of Hollywood’s big worries is that the lucrative Chinese market may get cut off, which has been essential towards helping the studios recoup financially with their massive, some would say over-budgeted tentpoles.  China has been moving away from Hollywood in recent years and favoring more of their own domestic cinema instead, but if the trade war makes them even less inclined to play American made films in their country, that could have a devastating effect on the movie business here.  We’ll have to see how things turn out.  Can domestic box office be enough in an economy that is becoming less stable?  It does give Hollywood some hope that Minecraft is performing as well as it is right now, and we’ll see if that translates over the course of the rest of the summer.  There will be the usual standards like Marvel, Pixar and DC, but there are a bunch more films out there that I didn’t mention that could also be big surprises.  It’s going to be an interesting couple of months, and the hope is that outside influences won’t spoil too much of the fun we’ll have at the movies.  I certainly am going to try to have as much fun as I can, and I’ll continue to share my thoughts on these movies in the meantime.  So, have a great Summer season at the movies and let cinema be the thing that helps to lift your spirit through troubled times.

A year’s worth of preparation finally culminates this Sunday in the heart of Hollywood.  Every studio has put up their top tier campaign strategies into effect, but ultimately it all comes down to the final count that is a closely guarded secret in the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting offices.  It’s Oscar season and the town is at the edge of it’s seat seeing who the Academy will crown as the best that the industry had to offer in the last year.  Unlike the last two years where one movie was clearly going into the ceremony as a clear favorite, Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022 and Oppenheimer in 2023, this year’s Academy Awards has been a bit of a toss up.  There are several categories where a movie or performance is clearly favored above the rest, but the big one at the end of the night, Best Picture, is still without a front runner.  What has defined this year’s Oscar season, however, is a very contentious negative whisper campaign that has been aimed at taking down some of the perceived front-runners.  In one case in particular, the smear campaigning seems to have work, and for many, it was warranted.  When the nominations were announced a month ago, people were shocked by the strong showing of the Netflix produced Emilia Perez, a musical about a Mexican drug lord who transitions into a woman.  The movie garnered 13 nominations, only one off of the record, and it left many in the industry scratching their heads.  The movie’s critical reception was mixed and audiences were definitely not happy with it either.  Not only that, but the two groups of people that the movie was attempting to represent, Mexicans and the Transgender community, were also condemning the film, stating that it was a gross misrepresentation of them.  So, was this really the front-runner?  Only a few weeks after the nominations were announced, a scandal broke out where old racist tweets from the film’s star Karla Sofia Gascon resurfaced, and it created a backlash that has essentially killed any chance of Emilia Perez taking home the top prize at the Oscars, or much else.  Apart from this, there was even criticism leveled at another Oscar favorite, The Brutalist, because the production team used a bit of AI technology in post-production.  These different criticisms has made this one of the nastier Oscar seasons we’ve seen in quite a while.

Like every year, I will share my thoughts and personal picks for this year’s Academy Awards.  In particular, I will go in depth on the top categories and then do a quick rundown of all the remaining awards.  These are my personal thoughts, and not exactly my recommendations for placing bets; my track record is never flawless.  But, despite how well I do or do not pick the winners, I have made the effort to be as informed as possible, and that includes having seen most of the nominated movies, including all 10 of the Best Picture nominees.  I ever make an effort to see all of the nominated shorts.  So, with all that out of the way, let’s take a look at what to expect at this year’s Academy Awards.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Nominees: Peter Straughan, Conclave; Jay Cocks and James Mangold, A Complete Unknown; Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Lea Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi, Emilia Perez; RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys; Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John Divine G Whitfield, Sing Sing

The downfall of Emilia Perez is going to be felt across a number of categories in this Oscar ceremony, but even before then I feel it already had a slim chance in this category.  Overall, this is one category where a clear favorite has emerged, and that’s the suspense filled screenplay by Peter Straughan for the movie Conclave.  Based on the book of the same name by Robert Harris, Conclave’s screenplay is the quintessential wordy kind of script that features the kinds of things that Academy voters love; big monologues, intricate plotting, shocking twists, and extensive metaphorical subtext.  Covering the days leading up to the election of a new Pope, the movie shares a lot of parallel theming with the current political state of the world, so the film almost certainly is resonating with politically conscious Academy voters.  But is it deserving of the Oscar.  It’s not undeserving; Peter Straughan’s script is a taut and extremely well crafted piece of writing.  The one negative thing about it is that it isn’t particularly groundbreaking either.  It is a very standard, and well executed adaptation, that serves it’s purpose but doesn’t do anything that really is surprising or groundbreaking.  What really stands apart in this category for me is the screenplay for the prison drama, Sing Sing.  The movie, which shows us a story set around a true dramatic arts program at the Sing Sing prison in New York state, actually featured story input from former inmates who participated in the program.  One of those former inmates, Clarence Maclin, who also has a key role in the film, was nominated for his contribution towards the film’s story, which is an inspiring story in of itself.  Sing Sing is a wonderfully humane film that offers a much more subdued experience in comparison to the more bombastic Conclave, but even still it’s story and screenplay will hit a nerve because of the message behind it, showing the healing power of creating art.  Given it’s win already at the WGA Awards, this is Conclave’s Oscar to lose, and the movie’s recent SAG Award win also puts some more wind in it’s sails here.  But if Sing Sing manages to pull off an upset, it may lead to one of the most emotionally stirring wins we’ve seen in this category for a while.

Who Will Win: Peter Straughan, Conclave

Who Should Win: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John Divine G Whitfield, Sing Sing

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees: Sean Baker, Anora; Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist; Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain; Coralie Fargeat, The Substance; Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, and Alex David, September 5

Without a doubt, the most stacked category of the night.  If any of these movies had come out in different years, they’d all be front-runners, but alas they have to compete against one another.  If one movie clearly has the least chance of winning, it’s September 5, because it’s the most conventional of the bunch.  Jesse Eisenberg has won a lot of praise for his screenplay for A Real Pain, and it is conceivable that he might come away a winner here, given that he’s already well respected as an actor in the industry.  Coralie Fargeat also has earned a lot of praise too for her screenplay that manages to weave a sharp critique of the unforgiving beauty standards placed on women in the entertainment industry with the genre of body horror.  But ultimately, it comes down to the two movies that are also the front-runners in the Best Picture race.  Just to give you a head’s up, you’ll be seeing me pick The Brutalist a lot here, because it was far an away my favorite movie of the year.  But, my number two favorite movie of the year was Anora, which is also nominated here.  I ultimately want to side with The Brutalist, though the odds right now seem to favor Anora, based on it’s WGA win.  For me, The Brutalist just has so many complex layers to it.  It’s this fascinating deconstruction of the idea of the American dream while also being a fascinating portrait of an artist.  In addition, it also tells you about the history of architecture in the 20th Century, and how art was able to persevere after the atrocities of the War and the Holocaust.  Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s screenplay is also incredibly well paced, making the colossal three and a half hour length feel far shorter than it is.  If Sean Baker does in fact win this year, I’ll still be happy.  He’s always been an incredible writer and great observer of human behavior, and Anora is definitely his most assured screenplay to date.  But, for me The Brutalist, crafted by an incredible husband and wife team of Brady and Mona, to me is working on a whole other level.  It’s a tough race, but I’ll be satisfied either way.

Who Will Win: Sean Baker, Anora

Who Should Win: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Nominees:  Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain; Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown; Yura Borisov, Anora; Guy Pearce, The Brutalist; Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Many years you will see one nominee carve out an easy path to victory through a dominant presence in all of the bellwether awards leading up to the Oscars.  The closest thing that we have to a lock at this year’s Awards appears to be Kieran Culkin for his “supporting” role in A Real Pain. He has virtually swept through awards season, and there doesn’t seem to be any signs of any loss in that momentum.  If his name isn’t announced on Oscar night, it will be a stunning upset.  But, some would say that his presence here is cheating a bit.  His role in A Real Pain is really a co-lead with writer/director and star Jesse Eisenberg.  They share almost an equal amount of screen time in the movie.  The only reason it seems that Kieran was designated for the supporting actor category is because the studio Searchlight Pictures thought he would have a better shot at winning there, and it looks like they’re right.  And it’s not an undeserved win; he definitely is a standout in A Real Pain, and is a big part of why that movie is so beloved.  And he’s been a longtime fixture in Hollywood, having acted in movies since he was a child, alongside his famous older brother Macaulay Culkin.  But, for me, I feel like the more traditionally supporting performances of the nominees should be more deserving of the honor.  It was great to see Yura Borisov get recognized for his scene-stealing turn in Anora.  Jeremy Strong’s incredible performance as shadowy lawyer Roy Cohn in The Apprentice was also incredible, and the fact that he’s going up against his Succession co-star Kieran also adds an interesting wrinkle into this race.  But, for me, the performance Guy Pearce delivered in The Brutalist stands out above the rest.  Pearce, who surprising is nominated for the first time despite his active presence in Hollywood for decades, delivers a tour de force as a hot tempered business tycoon who both elevates and tortures Adrian Brody’s genius architect in the film.  His ability to balance the highs and lows of that character and making him a fully rounded personality in a film where he could have easily turned into archetype makes his performance extra special in the film.  So, Kieran Culkin is almost certainly going to win, but if someone else were to upset I would definitely want it to be Guy Pearce, which would certainly be a long overdue honor.

Who Will Win:  Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Who Should Win:  Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees: Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez; Ariana Grande, Wicked; Isabella Rossellini, Conclave; Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown; Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

If there has been anyone who has managed to escape the implosion of Emilia Perez’s disastrous Oscar season, it’s been Zoe Saldana.  Zoe has still been cleaning up in all of the other ceremonies this Awards season, and it looks like she is also a lock for the Oscar, though maybe not quite as strong as Kieran in the Supporting Actor race.  The only question mark is how the Emilia Perez backlash is hitting with the Academy voters.  Are they going to be as forgiving as the other Awards have.  On the surface, her performance certainly has all of the hallmarks of an Oscar winning role.  She not only has to span a wide range of emotions through her performance, but she’s also singing throughout the film (in Spanish!) and dancing with some often complex choreography involved.  Zoe’s background in ballet certainly helped in this regard, and despite the movie receiving a lukewarm reception from audiences and critics, her performance has been almost universally praised.  The other problem with her nomination, though, is that it is yet another co-lead role masquerading as a supporting performance.  It could be argued that the film actually centers more around her character than it does the titular Emilia Perez.  For me, I do think Zoe is deserving of the recognition, but her performance is not as impressive as some of the others.  The Oscars are unlikely to favor Ariana Grande’s performance as Glinda in Wicked, though she was very delightful in her hilarious scene-stealing performance in the blockbuster.  Isabella Rossellini brings a great sense of veteran aura to this category, but her excellent performance in Conclave is extremely brief (less than 7 total minutes).  And Monica Barbaro’s performance as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown is solid, but not particularly groundbreaking.  Once again, I hold up everything from The Brutalist in highest regard, and that includes Felicity Jones’ performance as the architect’s wife.  Her performance, like Adrian Brody’s and Guy Pearce’s works so magnificently with the operatic heights that the film sets to achieve, especially with the climatic confrontation near the movie’s end which is Felicity’s finest moment in the film.  With Zoe being an already beloved fixture in Hollywood, especially after being a part of major franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar, it seems like the industry is ready to give her some well earned laurels, but a Felicity Jones upset would be ideal too.

Who Will Win:  Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez

Who Should Win:  Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

BEST ACTOR

Nominees:  Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown; Ralph Fiennes, Conclave; Adrian Brody, The Brutalist; Colman Domingo, Sing Sing; Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

A week ago, I would’ve thought that this was going to be yet another race defined by a clear front-runner.  But a surprise upset in the Best Actor race at the SAG Awards has suddenly made this category a lot more suspenseful.  Adrian Brody has looked for a while to be the favorite here with his masterful turn as architect Laszlow Toth in The Brutalist, a man driven to create a great work of art at great cost to himself.  His performance is so multilayered and unforgettable that he certainly looked like he was gearing up for an easy win at this year’s Academy Awards.  But last weekend, the Oscar race was shaken up by Timothee Chalamet picking up the SAG award for his performance as musician Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.  It’s been a strong year for Chalamet all around, starting off with the strong holiday box office hold for his musical Wonka (2023), and then the colossal success of Dune: Part Two (2024) in the spring, and then finally culminating with the fruitful awards season release of A Complete Unknown.  Hollywood certainly loves it when an actor buries themselves into a performance as another famous celebrity, and Chalamet’s performance is certainly a strong one; points for being the rare actor in a musical biopic that does his own singing.  But, does he have enough momentum to beat Adrian Brody, the presumptive favorite.  The one negative that Brody has against him is that he’s the only one in this category that’s already won before, back in 2002 for The Pianist, becoming the youngest winner of the award to date.  Ironically, Timothee Chalamet could take that record himself this year, at his expense.  It’s all going to come down to these two, despite some exceptional performances from the other nominees; and bravo to the Academy for having the guts to nominate Sebastian Stan for his unflattering but complex portrayal of Trump.  Chalamet may be rising late, but I still see Adrian Brody winning his second Oscar here for a performance that truly stands as one of the most monumental seen on screen in a long while.  Given that the Academy voting closed days before Chalamet’s upset SAG win gives me a feeling that Brody’s victory may still be an inevitability, but who knows.

Who Will Win:  Adrian Brody, The Brutalist

Who Should Win:  Adrian Brody, The Brutalist

BEST ACTRESS

Nominees: Mikey Madison, Anora; Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here; Demi Moore, The Substance;  Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez; Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

This is without a doubt the most contested race of the evening, with two and maybe even three possible winners that could come away with the award on Oscar night.  First off, history was made this year with Karla Sofia Gascon becoming the first out transgender performer ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.  And that’s the only good thing I’ll say about her nomination, because she deserves no other praise given what the scandal has dug up.  Cynthia Erivo is justly praised for her incredible acting and singing as Elphaba in Wicked, though it’s unlikely going to be her night as well.  The other three performances are the ones that still have a good shot.  For me, the performance of the year belonged to Mieky Madison for her star-making role in Anora.  She is a force of nature in that film, and it’s been pleasing to see her star rise because of this movie.  After playing bit parts in movies like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Scream (2022), she took the opportunity to finally carry a movie in the lead and she ran with it.  Her character Ani is without a doubt my favorite from the last year, being both hilarious and at the same time real and grounded in a tragic sense.  Madison has done fairly well throughout awards season, picking up the BAFTA and Independent Spirit awards along the way.  But, she has to contend with industry veteran Demi Moore in what has been seen as a big comeback role for the former “Brat Pack” icon.  Moore finally achieved her first Oscar nomination after a nearly fifty year career in the movies.  It’s all the more remarkable that she’s nominated because The Substance is a fairly hardcore body horror movie that’s also sharply critical of the entertainment industry.  The fact that the Academy is overlooking all of that is a testament to the strength of Demi’s performance.  It seems likely that this is Demi Moore’s year, mainly because she’s a beloved fixture in Hollywood with a lot of friends in the Academy, and that this is a long overdue acknowledgement of her career achievements.  But, an upset win from Mikey Madison would certainly please me as well.  And it is possible that surprise Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres may also steal away a win from both of them for her highly praised performance in I’m Still Here.

Who Will Win:  Demi Moore, The Substance

Who Should Win:  Mikey Madison, Anora

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees:  Brady Corbet, The Brutalist; Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez; Sean Baker, Anora; Coralie Fargeat, The Substance; James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

This is another race that comes down to two likely choices, and they both just happen to be the directors of my two favorite movies of the year.  Brady Corbet delivered something of a miracle this year with The Brutalist, a monumental American epic with a three and a half hour run time that feels a fraction of that length and was also filmed on a minuscule $10 million budget.  Naturally, that impressive feat of direction would make him a runaway favorite here, but his competition is the equally impressive work done by Sean Baker on his film Anora.  Baker has been a favorite in independent film for a long time, with he beautiful Neo-realist portraits of people on the fringes of American society.  Anora is his most assured feat of direction yet; a complex story of rags to riches and back to rags that runs the gamut of tones, while at the same time expertly handling the escalating amount of absurdity that his characters go through.  After an already impressive body of work built up over the last decade, it seems that the Academy is ready to give Baker his due respect as a filmmaker.  Baker has already won the key bellwether honor of the DGA Award leading up to the Oscars; a precursor award that almost always goes to the eventual winner.  But it’s not always 100%.  Corbet would indeed be the one and only other nominee that could steal away the Best Director honor from Baker.  You look at a movie like The Brutalist, and it is a movie that exemplifies capital “D” directing.  It’s is tough choice to make, but I think that if we see an indication of Anora having a really good night if it picks up the Screenplay and Editing awards, it pretty much cements Sean Baker’s front runner status and will inevitably see him taking the top honor as well.  And it would be well deserved too.  I’ve been a fan of Sean Baker’s work since the amazing The Florida Project (2017).  Seeing him join the ranks of Best Director winners would be a great result to see, but I would also like that for Brady Corbet as well.  The actor turned director may only be on his third film, but what an impressive film it is, and one that I can see becoming a celebrated masterpiece years from now regardless of what happens at the Oscars.  The DGA honor tells me Sean Baker has a slight edge, but Corbet has a good chance to upset.

Who Will Win:  Sean Baker, Anora

Who Should Win:  Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

BEST PICTURE

Nominees: A Complete Unkonwn; Anora; The Brutalist; Conclave; Dune: Part Two; Emilia Perez; I’m Still Here; Nickel Boys; The Substance; Wicked

This is without a doubt one of the most contentious Best Picture races we have seen in years.  There’s no dominant front runner like Everything Everywhere All at Once or Oppenheimer.  This year, it is very much up for grabs from a variety of films in this category.  One thing is clear, despite it’s dominant showing in the nominations, Emilia Perez’s chances of winning the top prize are almost 0 the weeks of scandal it has gone through; and that’s probably a relief to most people out there.  Wicked and Dune: Part Two were definitely the blockbusters that were most deserving of a nomination from last year, but that’s about as close as they’ll get.  The Substance and I’m Still Here have better odds in other races, namely Best Actress and International Film respectively, and Nickel Boys is here for it’s uniqueness, but perhaps too small to get noticed beyond that.  And musical biopics have always fared better in acting categories, so that keeps it from the top as well, though it depends on how many Bob Dylan fans are in the Academy.  That leaves three movies with a very strong shot at collecting the top Prize.  With it’s recent wins at the BAFTA and SAG awards, Edward Berger’s Conclave seems to have picked up a bit of momentum late into the race.  Of the top of the field nominees, Conclave is the most conventional Oscar bait of the bunch, though it is still a fairly good movie worthy of being here.  If the Academy is looking to play things safe, this is the movie that would benefit; a good old fashioned, lavish studio made drama for mass audiences.   But. as we’ve seen in recent years, the Academy has been willing to honor outsiders as well.  That’s why, like Best Director, this comes down to a showdown between The Brutalist and Anora.  Both have numerous accolades built up already.  If Anora wins, it will be only the second Palme d’Or winner from Cannes to ever make it to a Best Picture win, the first being Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019).  And Corbet also won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his direction, as well as a Golden Globe.  It’s a tight race, but with the wins at the DGA, PGA and WGA, I feel like Anora has the edge.  Certainly, because it was my favorite movie of the year, I would like to see The Brutalist win, but since Anora was my second favorite, I’ll be very happy to see it win the night as well.

What Will Win:  Anora

What Should Win:  The Brutalist

And here is my quick rundown of all the remaining categories with my picks to win in each:

Best Cinematography: The Brutalist; Best Film Editing: The Brutalist; Best Production Design: Wicked; Best Costume Design: Wicked; Best Sound: A Complete Unknown; Best Make-up and Hairstyling: The Substance; Best Original Score: The Brutalist; Best Original Song: “El Mal” from Emilia Perez; Best Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two; Best Documentary Feature: No Other Land; Best Documentary Short: Incident; Best Animated Feature: Flow; Best Animated Short: Magic Candies; Best Live Action Short: A Lien; Best International Feature: I’m Still Here

The fact that we are going into this Oscar ceremony without a clear front-runner should make things a bit suspenseful for this year’s show.  We may get an indication of who benefited from the last minute momentum through some of the earlier categories, but this may also be one of those Oscar years where the Academy likes to spread the wealth, and the inevitable Best Picture winner will likely only be the victor with one or two other awards.  A lot of the time, I tend to feel better when my favorite movie of the year has little chance of winning, because then I’m not left heartbroken.  But this year is interesting because it’s my two favorite films at the top.  If Anora comes away victorious, it will be the second year in a row where my runner up favorite wins Best Picture; last year’s being Oppenheimer of course.  I doubt we’ll see the least deserving film of the Best Picture race, Emilia Perez, win the big award, but then again this is the same Academy that gave that honor to Green Book (2018) six years ago.  I think we’re pretty safe from an embarrassing, tone deaf move like that from the Academy since there are so many strong contenders that have risen to the top.  One thing for certain is that this is going to be a much different ceremony than what we’ve seen in past years.  Because of the wildfires that devastated the townships Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the Academy Awards is planning to hold a more subdued ceremony in respect for those who lost their homes; including many who work within the industry itself.  There will many acknowledgements of the brave work done by the firefighters and first responders who helped to save lives in the tragedy, and a plea to those watching at home to help support those who still need help putting their lives together.  I hope the show is able to balance this serious tragedy with the pomp and pageantry that the Academy Awards usually shows.  One thing I know for certain is that Conan O’Brien will deliver a fun and energetic atmosphere as well in his first hosting gig.  O’Brien’s ability to put on a good show no matter the circumstance has always been one of his strengths, and I’m excited to see what he does on Oscar night.  So, with all that said, I hope my choices pan out well this year.  I feel like Anora is the movie to beat at this moment, but it could definitely be a nail-biter by the end.  So, let’s hope for a good Oscar ceremony this year, and hopefully another good year at the movies leading up to the next one.

 

After the turmoil of the last few years at the box office, 2024 felt very much like a rebuilding year.  Covid is now becoming a distant but still haunting memory, and Hollywood for now has settled it’s fights with labor after the crippling strikes of last year.  But even still, the blow of those back to back crises have taken their toll on Hollywood and especially with movie theaters.  The hope was that after being rattled for nearly half a decade that the movie theater industry would finally see a rebound.  But, with the strike pushing back so many productions in the pipeline, there was a fear that the backlog would cause the preceding year, 2024, to feel very empty.  Movie theaters needs an abundance of product in order to survive, and because of Hollywood’s internal problems, the theatrical market was looking to have a possibly light year.  However, some surprising things did happen.  One was the resurgence of Disney, who bounced back big after a disastrous 2023, which saw many of their films crash hard at the box office.  This year, they managed to be the first studio to cross the $3 billion box office mark this decade, thanks to mega hits like Inside Out 2 (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and Moana 2 (2024), as well as with modest hits like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) and Alien: Romulus (2024).  And that’s quite the feat considering that they didn’t even release a single film in the Spring.  The other studios managed to fare well with some of their tentpoles too, with Universal scoring big with Wicked Part One (2024) and Warner Brothers doing well with sequels like Dune: Part Two (2024) and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024).  There were however some shocking flops as well, with once believed to be sure fire hits like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) and Joker: Folie a Deux (2024) both becoming massive flops.  And while there are positive signs of recovery, movie theaters are still expressing concern about the lack of consistent business throughout the year, and are hoping that Hollywood ramps up their production line once again to help keep the lights on at the movies.

As 2024 comes to an end, it is now that time once again to look ahead at what the next year brings.  With the re-building year that we experienced these past twelve months, which saw fewer movies but in general stronger performance from those that did stand out, the hope is that the groundwork has been set for an even bigger rebound in 2025.  Like past years, I will be taking a look at the upcoming movie of the Early 2025 season.  This includes my picks for the Must Sees, the ones that have me worried, as well as the movies that are worth skipping.  My choices don’t always pan out like I initially thought they would, so there might be a few surprises here.  My previews are purely my own gut readings about these movies based on how much interest I have in them based on the effectiveness or lack thereof of their marketing.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the movies of Early 2024.

MUST SEES:

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD (FEBRUARY 14)

You can always count on Marvel to deliver spectacle on the big screen, and given that they found some of their mojo again in 2024 thanks to the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, the hope is that they can carry some of that momentum into the new year.  2025 is going to be a major year for Marvel Studios, with three big tent-poles planned.  We will have to wait until the summer for Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but this winter season we do get a new chapter in the Captain America franchise started on the big screen.  Post Avengers: Endgame (2019), the dynamic of the character has completely changed, with Chris Evans retiring from the role of Steve Rogers (the original Cap) and the superhero known as the Falcon now picking up the Shield and assuming the role, with actor Anthony Mackie now getting that top billing.  It will be exciting to see how well Mackie does under the new title.  We already saw a glimpse of him as Captain America in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier where he managed to pull the part off pretty well, especially with the falcon wings now combined with Captain’s red white and blue uniform.  But what is interesting with this film is that it’s signaling a return for Marvel to a more hard edge thriller style for the franchise, like what we saw with Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).  There are some interesting new elements they are bringing in, like Harrison Ford assuming the role of Thaddeus Ross, which had previously been played by the late William Hurt.  Here, we finally see the payoff of the Red Hulk plot-line for Ross that was made famous in the comic books, and it’s pretty impressive so far from what we’ve seen of Harrison’s transformation into a Hulk from the trailers.  The effects used for Anthony Mackie’s flying moments also look intense and visceral as well.  I’m also interested in seeing how they finally pay off the return of Tim Blake Nelson’s villainous Leader, 17 years after he was first introduced in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.  Hopefully Marvel starts the year off strong with this blockbuster return of one of their most important Avengers.

PADDINGTON IN PERU (FEBRUARY 14)

A very different change of pace from the latest from Marvel Studios.  The first two Paddington movies have managed to earn the reputation of being some of the best family films ever made.  Some would even claim Paddington 2 to be one of the best sequels ever made, period.  Given that, the expectations are very high for this third film in the series.  The lovable marmalade eating bear returns once again, but this film has him returning to the place he originally came from; the jungles of Darkest Peru.  It’s a refreshing way to change up the formula for these movies, and hopefully the same good humor that defined the first two movies translates over as well.  Unfortunately, this film did not carry over the director of the first two, Paul King, who was busy at work creating the hit musical Wonka (2023).  It did carry over much of the same cast though.  Ben Whishaw continues to give Paddington his warm and disarmingly kind voice.  Hugh Bonneville is also once again on board as the frustrated but kind Mr. Brown.  This movie does bring in some exciting newcomers into the cast, including the always charming Olivia Colman as a singing nun, and Antonio Banderas as a river boat captain.  The only worry I have with this film is that the last movie maybe has set expectations too high, and that this threequel may not live up to what has come before.  Hopefully the film still remains entertaining.  It’s that rare movie that is meant for kids, but is so clever in it’s execution that it also provides a lot of entertainment for adults as well.  I think as long as they remain true to the heart of the characters and their story, this third Paddington movie should still manage to be a fun time at the movies.  And taking him out of his comfortable domestic life in England and putting him back into the perils of the jungle may just be the exciting little adventure this series need to keep itself going.

MICKEY 17 (MARCH 7)

So here is a movie that I already talked about at length over a year ago.  The reason I’m talking about it again is because shortly after my last preview, Mickey 17 got pushed back a full year and more from it’s original release.  Now closer to the actual release, we actually have a lot more information about what kind of movie we are getting, and it’s a bit of a surprise.  Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho is known for making films with a darker tone, so it’s surprising that with this new sci-fi film that it appears he’s making a comedy.  It’s certainly not what you’d expect as the follow-up to something like Parasite (2019).  But, at the same time, it looks like it’s going to be a fun movie as well.  What really gets me in this trailer is the performance that Robert Pattinson is giving.  Pattinson has been spending the last decade trying to shake off his Twilight past, and he’s managed to make it work out by taking on all these quirky character roles, and his work here in Mickey 17 is very much a huge departure from his Twilight films.  I love the weird, high pitched voice he’s giving Mickey here, because it sounds like nothing you’d expect someone like him talk like.  The fact that he’s so jaded about dying, because he keeps being replaced with new clone bodies, also is a hilarious aspect he’s added to this character.  But the question will be if Bong Joon-ho manages to nail the tone of this film.  He’s had comedic moments in this movies before, but I don’t think he’s embraced this kind of level of absurdism.  It’s definitely an experiment for the groundbreaking director that’s worth checking out.  I’m also excited to see how actors like Mark Ruffalo, Toni Colette, and Steven Yuen also work within this story.  Hopefully the extra year of waiting was worth it, and the extra information we now have about this movie gives it a whole new level of intrigue that I hope makes this a truly unique film experience.

SINNERS (APRIL 18)

Perhaps the most mysterious movie lined up for release in the next couple of months, this new film from Black Panther director Ryan Coogler looks to be a very provocative cinematic experience.  Sinners reunites Coogler with his frequent leading man Michael B. Jordan (whose appeared in all of his movies so far) and shows him playing a man desperately trying to survive some evil presence in what looks to be the Prohibition Era American South.  What the characters are up against remains vague so far; Zombies, vampires, we haven’t been told yet.  But Coogler is certainly paying homage to horror movies of the past like Night of the Living Dead (1968) with some of the visuals he has shown briefly so far in the trailers.  Coogler has proven himself to be a capable genre director in the past, with his Black Panther movies perfectly displaying his command of the super hero genre.  It will b really interesting to see how well he applies his skills to horror.  It’s also interesting what film stocks he’s using here.  The movie looks like it’s being shot on film with large formats in mind.  The dramatic scenes appear to have been shot with 70mm Panavision, giving that extra bit of super widescreen like what we saw with Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015).  And meanwhile, the action scenes have been filmed in 70mm IMAX.  So, with those two large formats being used, it seems like Ryan Coogler wants this movie to be a major spectacle, and I am excited to see the finished results on the biggest screen possible.  It’s a good move trying to sell this movie on it’s atmosphere and sense of mystery, rather than just spelling out what kind of danger is lurking in the shadows.  And hopefully that fruitful collaboration between Coogler and Jordan continues to yield success for both of them here.  Let’s hope that when this mystery unravels that it makes for one hell of a scary movie in the end.

WOLF MAN (JANUARY 17)

One of the best decisions that Universal Studios has made in the last 10 years was to abandon their DOA Dark Universe plans, and hand off their stable of classic movie monsters over to more capable hands in the horror genre.  Blumhouse has become the beneficiary of the classic Universal monsters, and they began their successful collaboration in 2020 with their adaptation of the Invisible Man.  The modern day re-imagining of the classic movie monster created one of the best horror movies of the last few years and it showed Universal that you don’t need to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into this kind of franchise in order to create a cinematic universe.  All you really need to do is make your movies scary, and as Blumhouse has demonstrated with their own house style, less can be more.  The director of The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell, has been granted yet another classic Universal monster to work with; the Wolf Man.  Just like what he did with Invisible Man, Whannell is stripping the story down to just the basics and using all of his tricks in building suspense and atmosphere in deliver the scares.  I like the fact that the movie is a simple cabin in the woods story focusing solely on a single family.  Christopher Abbott is the father whose bloody encounter with the monster leads him to go through a terrifying transformation, causing him to become the titular Wolf Man.  It’s a smart way to tell this story, by keeping things personal, with the father coming to the horrible realization that he’s slowly loosing his humanity, and his wife (Julia Garner) becoming increasingly terrified that the man she loves is becoming more and more a threat to the safety of her and their daughter.  I hope that Leigh Whannell manages to deliver again with this re-imagining of the Wolf Man story, and that both Universal and Blumhouse continue to work with their remaining stable of characters in this same simple but effectively creepy manner.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

SNOW WHITE (MARCH 21)

This remake of Disney’s very first feature length animated film has been contentious to say the least.  It’s coming out at a time when audiences are generally growing tired of Disney’s trend of remaking their old classics, viewing many of them as shameless cash grabs.  Currently, the sequel to one of those remakes, Mufasa: The Lion King (2024) is struggling at the box office, showing that the era where these kinds of movies were able to mint money for Disney may be over now.  At the same time, this movie has been plagued with production woes, which caused the budget to swell out of control and led to a delay of over a year from it’s originally planned Spring 2024 release.  It’s been said that in order to recoup their costs, Disney will need this movie to gross over $600 million, which is going to be difficult given that audiences seem to have moved on from the Disney remakes.  And if all that weren’t bad enough, this movie has become a hot potato subject in the annoying present “culture war” debates, purely because the film’s star, Rachel Zegler, has been outspoken about her feelings about what it means to be a Disney Princess in the modern era.  Zegler is certainly entitled to her opinion, and I honestly have no problems with the things she has said, but there are plenty of other bad faith critics out there online who are grinding their axes anxiously waiting to tear this movie apart.  I myself have a lot of worries about this film, mainly due to my own lack of enthusiasm for the Disney remakes trend.  But, at the same time, I also had these same worries about their The Little Mermaid (2023) remake last year, and ended up being pleasantly surprised and charmed by that movie.  My hope is that Snow White  will surprise me in the same way.  I like Rachel Zegler as a performer and I think she can pull off the role of Snow White well enough, especially as a singer.  The casting of Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen also looks to be interesting.  Can’t say I admire the CGI dwarves though; hopefully they work better in the final film.  Things may turn out bad for this one, and I’m dreading the discourse around it.  After the good year that Disney had in 2024, I don’t want to see them end up with another black eye at the box office.

DOG MAN (JANUARY 31)

One thing that has bothered me in recent years is the inconsistency that we’ve seen from Dreamworks Animation.  Once one of the vanguard studios in the animation industry, the brand has taken a hit with quite a few misfires in recent years; much more so than their rivals Disney, Pixar, and Illumination.  Sure they still put out a hit film every now and then, like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) and this year’s The Wild Robot (2024), but these hits will often be offset by a lackluster sequel like Trolls: Band Together (2023) or a full on flop like Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (2023).  My worry is that this will also be the case for their next film, Dog Man.  Based on the popular children’s book series, this new film copies the illustrated look from the novels, which does look appealing enough.  But it also seems like it retains the same entertainment level of the books as well, which is mainly catering first and foremost for kids.  There’s nothing wrong with choosing that as the target audience, but Dreamworks Animation at their best doesn’t just make movies for younger audiences; they make them for all ages.  As stated before, there are movies like the Paddington films that transcend their G-rated appeal and are able to give enough entertainment to audiences no matter their age.  Many Dreamworks movies in the past have done that as well too.  But with movies like Dog Man, they seem to be pandering to a specific audience, and that to me says that they are limiting their creativity in the process.  I could be wrong, and this movie may in fact have just as much humor and charm to appeal to both the parents and their kids.  It’s just not coming across like that in the advertisement.  My hope is that Dreamworks manages to find that spark again to bring them up to the level of Pixar and Disney, especially at a time when both of those studios are delivering billion dollar movies again.

LOVE HURTS (FEBRUARY 7)

It has been pleasing to see the career revival of Ke Huy Quan in recent years.  The former child actor famous for playing Data in The Goonies (1985) and Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) has made a remarkable comeback as an adult, especially with his Oscar-winning turn in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022).  Now, he gets to be a top billed star in his own action movie.  Having worked as a stunt coordinator for several years, Ke Huy Quan is no novice when it comes to performing action scenes, and it appears that many of the set pieces in this upcoming film feature him doing many of his own stunts, which is impressive.  I think another plus is him putting a upbeat, happy-go-lucky spin on the character, which could make it a fun time.  It’s also great to see in the trailer that Ke’s fellow Goonie Sean Astin has a supporting role in this film, possibly marking the first time they’ve actually been in a movie together since The Goonies almost 40 years ago, which would be quite the reunion.  The only thing I worry about is that this kind of genre may have been played out too much already.  The John Wick films constantly has to refresh itself with every film to keep the premise from growing stale, and the plot for this film feels a little too close to the Bob Odenkirk film Nobody (2021).  Hopefully, Quan’s magnetic charm is able to carry this film.  It’s not so much the performance that I worry about but rather the action scenes themselves.  Hopefully, given that this movie is from the same production company behind Nobody and Violent Night (2022), they are going to keep things fresh and make the action set pieces unique and fun to watch.  They definitely have the right actor in place, who knows a thing or two about fight choreography, and he’s at a point in his career where people are excited to see him on the big screen again.  He’s long overdue for a starring role, and hopefully Love Hurts is that fun kind of violent spectacle that lives up to the high standards of the genre.

THE LEGEND OF OCHI (FEBRUARY 28)

When it comes to A24, you certainly take a risk with what kind of movie you’re going to end up watching.  And that has been the appeal of A24, the fact that they do make the kinds of movies that no one else will make, mainly due to so many of them being just so insanely weird.  But, not all of their movies are home runs.  Sometimes you do get that odd movie that just doesn’t land.  This new fantasy film sees the studio launching into a more family friendly territory than what we usually see from them.  The movie definitely takes it’s inspiration from family adventure films like E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), but with a much more art house flavor to it.  There are things that I find really appealing about this film.  One, you can’t go wrong with Willem Dafoe in your cast.  And second, I like the fact that the creature in this film looks to be a physical puppet instead of a CGI creation.  It’s nice to see one practical effect used in this film.  The only thing that bothers me is that there seems to be a vaguely AI art feel to the film, particularly with the impressionistic environments.  I’m hoping that this is an intentional artistic choice, and not the filmmakers trying to cut corners using AI in place of actual hand made effects.  The practical effect of Ochi tells me that this film is leaning more into real effects than CGI, so hopefully it’s just a coincidence that the art style looks like AI art.  The problem is that AI art is at a phase where it creates this odd blended look to it that softens the image and makes it feel in a way soulless, because it’s created by algorithms and not by a trained artistic eye.  It unfortunately reflects bad on a movie like this, where a softer look is probably intentional.  My hope is that the visuals work more cohesively in the finished film, because it does look like a charming movie, and another example of A24’s commitment to unique visions in cinema.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

A MINECRAFT MOVIE (APRIL 4)

It’s kind of insane how many movies based on video games have included actor Jack Black in them.  He played Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and also voice Claptrap in this year’s Borderlands (2024), and neither film was very good.  The same seems to likely also be the case with this adaptation of the popular block building game, Minecraft.  Given that the game itself is just an open world sandbox, there isn’t much of a narrative to draw from, so the makers of this movie just decided to copy the Mario Bros. formula instead.  Jack Black plays the avatar character of the game, Steve, who we learn here came from the real world and has been living in the Minecraft world because of reasons we don’t know about yet; nor really care either.  The film also brings in a weird assortment of supporting characters, including the additions of Jason Mamoa and Danielle Brooks to the mix.  Jack Black is there to be his same old persona, which I guess you’re getting what you paid for with that.  He’s a fine comedic presence sometimes, but man I wish he would stop taking paycheck roles like this and actually make something that better uses his talents as an actor.  I get the feeling that too many of the jokes in this movie will fly over the heads of people who have never played the games.  The re-imagining of the world itself even feels off, adding more textural detail to a game whose mass appeal is it’s retro simplicity.  Coming off of the massive failure that was Borderlands, Jack Black probably doesn’t want to be associated with yet another failed adaptation of a video game, but that’s sadly what may end up being the case again here.  And this time, he can’t hide himself behind a CGI animated character anymore.

FLIGHT RISK (JANUARY 24)

Another film that I talked about before in a preview, before it got switched to a later release date after I published the article.  In general, my feelings towards this movie hasn’t changed in the interim.  I still see it as a major step down for both Mark Wahlberg and director Mel Gibson.  Gibson continues to burn through all the good will he may have had left in Hollywood with his self-indulgent choices as an actor and filmmaker, and it seems like this is the only kind of movie he’s now capable of making.  He’s gone from the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Braveheart (1995) to making a B-movie action thriller.  Mark Wahlberg is also seeming to be an actor just spinning his wheels as a performer, taking safe familiar roles that coast on his name rather than actually doing anything challenging.  Hopefully both men get out of their own bad habits and actually make movies that are better suited for their talents.  This movie looks like it’s dead on arrival, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that Lionsgate pushed it out of the competitive Fall Season and left it in the dumping ground that is late January.  We’ll see if it’s better than it looks on the surface, but something tells me that this one is not going to be lighting up the box office, and hopefully it makes the two men behind it become more reflective of how their talents are being wasted.

NOVOCAINE (MARCH 14)

In contrast with Love Hurts, here we have an action comedy example of trying too hard.  The film’s premise is that the main character feels no pain, so he’s able to fight without the experience of pain affecting his state of mind.  Jack Quaid is a likable enough actor, but here I don’t quite buy into him being a capable action star the same way that I do with Ke Huy Quan.  With Quan, you already know going in that he has martial arts training and a background in stunts.  Here, Quaid definitely is not the one doing the stunts.  What you have to rely upon then for this film’s premise to work is it’s sense of humor, and again judging by this trailer, that seems to be lacking as well.  This kind of premise could work, but it requires more believable stunts as well as an actor with a bit more of a off-kilter personality.  Jack Quaid seems to be playing this character as too much of a milquetoast every-man.  Perhaps there might be a bit more to this movie, but it just looks to be playing it too safe.  This needed a far more absurdist take on the material.  In a genre now dominated by the John Wick’s of the world, your action comedies need to stand out more, and that requires taking a whole lot more chances.

So, there you have my preview of the movies coming out in Early 2025, pending any last minute release date changes.  One thing that’s noticeable is the lack of major tentpoles in the month of March.  Sure, there’s Mickey 17  and Snow White set for release, but it’s a noticeably emptier month than what we have usually had.  It’s the key Spring Break period of the year, so the studios have used March as a way of generating some early box office wins while people on on their holiday.  This past year we saw this as the place where blockbusters like Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) were able to find their audiences and generate some strong box office.  But this year, things feel a lot less bountiful in the Spring.  This might be the residual effect of the strikes, as the backlog of projects has created a gap in the pipeline of movie releases, and Hollywood no longer has any movies left available that they were able to delay until the strikes were over.  Hopefully, this doesn’t leave the rest of the year in a weaker state.  2024 was a year with a lot of positive signs of recovery for the theatrical business, and the hope is that this momentum will continue into 2025.  Big movies like Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners should help give the box office a boost, but movie theaters will need many more movies to outperform expectations going into the new year.  The hope is that by the time Summer rolls around that things will especially begin to sizzle at the box office and that hopefully movie theaters will able to endure what may be a lighter than usual Spring season.  In any case, there are a lot of movies that I personally am looking forward to in 2025, and in some cases I won’t have to wait too long as some of my Must Sees are definitely found in these early months ahead.  So, have a Happy New Year and let’s all have a fun time going to the movies in 2025.

The Summer of 2024 proved to be an unexpected couple of months at the box office.  The month of May, which typically kicks of the Summer with a bang ended up being more of a whimper.  With no Marvel film in it’s first week, Hollywood had to rely on the Ryan Gosling/ Emily Blunt vehicle The Fall Guy (2024) to open up the season; a feat that it sadly didn’t have the muscle to pull off.  But what really got Hollywood sweating was the surprisingly weak Memorial Day weekend box office.  The highly anticipated prequel film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) not only under-performed on the usually big ticket weekend, but it ended up becoming a massive flop, even despite glowing reviews from both critics and audiences.  This began to spread talk around the industry that the theatrical market was in trouble and that Hollywood was in for a massive downturn in box office in what looked to be a very weak summer.  But, perhaps all of us were too quick to give up on the box office for Summer 2024, because once we entered June, things actually took a turn for the positive.  There was surprisingly strong box office results for the sequels Kingdom of the Planet of Apes (2024) and Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) that helps to buoy the box office for a few weeks more.  And then came the box office savior that Hollywood needed.  Inside Out 2 (2024) not only exceeded expectations, it has broken down every conceivable record there is for an animated movie at the box office.  This is an inspiring story on it’s own, as Pixar needed a win after seeing it’s brand take a hit post-pandemic after the misguided decision to send their films straight to streaming for two years.  This summer proved that the Pixar brand is still strong and they weren’t the only battered brand to see a comeback.  Marvel had it’s biggest hit in years with the record-setting release of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), giving parent company Disney the two undisputed champions at the Summer box office by a mile with it and Inside Out 2.  That’s a relief to the Mouse House after the tough year they had in 2023.  There were also several surprisingly strong box office returns for movies like Twisters (2024), It Ends With Us (2024), A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) and Longlegs (2024), and what looked initially like a bleak Summer season in the end became a bright moment for movies in general.

So, with a Summer season that proved to be better than expected now behind us, it’s time to take a look at what’s ahead for us in the Fall.  Like in past years, I will be looking at select movies that I think are the ones that are Must Sees, the ones that have me worried, and the ones that I think you should skip.  Keep in mind my track record is not perfect, so some movies may end up being better than I expected or be less than I expected.  My choices here are based on my own expectations from what I have gathered from the hype surrounding these movies as well as the effectiveness of the marketing.  So with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Fall 2024.

MUST SEES:

MEGALOPOLIS (SEPTEMBER 27)

This movie has me intrigued more than any other coming out in the months ahead.  It goes without saying that Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest film directors of all time.  I’m sure that any list made of the greatest movies of all time will have at least 3 Coppola movies on it.  But, in recent years, Francis has stepped away from Hollywood, choosing instead to make small art films like Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011).  While it is sad that one of the greats of Hollywood has been left behind by the industry due to his purity of vision, he has nevertheless revered by the industry, so whenever he makes something new people still take notice.  This year, we are finally getting able to see what is undoubtedly his most ambitious film in years.  Megalopolis has been a passion project of his that he’s been persistently bouncing around for 20 years.  When you look at the very out there premise, you can see why Coppola struggled to get the financing for the film.  In the end, he put his own money into the project, making this one of the biggest self-financed films in history.  The fact that this movie exists at all in a final form is a miracle in itself.  But, is it a miracle that may have consequences for it’s creator.  The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to a mostly mixed reception.  Some critics loved it while others found it to be a baffling mess.  Given it’s nature, I can easily see this movie dividing audiences once it makes it’s way to theaters; which even there became a struggle as it took a while to find a distributor until Lionsgate thankfully stepped in.  I really do hope it turns out to be better than expected because this is a movie that I’ve been hearing about for such a long time and I’m thrilled to see it become a reality.  It’s been a while since we’ve seen Coppola work on this kind of scale and I think it’ll be worth it to see the “great master” take one final big swing.  The visuals look great, and the all star cast that includes Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman looks really impressive.  I hope this movie delivers on it’s promise.  The man who gave us The Godfather Parts I and II, as well as Apocalypse Now (1979) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) is one of the last swing for the fences filmmakers left of his generation, and even if it may be a mess, it’s a mess that I must see to fully appreciate.

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (OCTOBER 4)

Five years ago, Warner Brothers and DC put out a somewhat controversial comic book film that centered around the famed “clown prince of crime.”  Some saw it as a brilliant deconstruction of one of comic books and cinemas greatest villains that also tapped into some intriguing social commentary.  Others thought it was exploitative and convoluted in it’s approach towards creating a fully fleshed out characterization of it’s central character, as well as being derivative of too many other movies like those of director Martin Scorsese.  But the one thing that nobody could dispute was the powerful performance given by Joaquin Phoenix as the titular psychopath, earning him a well deserved Oscar for Best Actor that year.  In the years since, the movie has continued to be controversial, with a lot of people worried that it has been co-opted by reactionary thugs on the internet who clearly misread the intention of the movie and believe that the movie supports their own twisted and bigoted agendas.  Which is why I’m pleased to see the direction that returning director Todd Phillips and company have decided to go with for this sequel by making it a musical.  Nothing would upset the edge lords who embraced the first movie more than to see this franchise turn into a song and dance extravaganza.  I can already see the click bate reactions by this crowd complaining that “Joker’s Gone Woke” and I’m so eager to see that crowd meltdown over this movie.  I respected the first movie well enough without outright loving it.  I do think turning this kind of story into a musical is an interesting angle and I’m intrigued to see how it’s executed.  It would be interesting to see if the musical numbers feel like the musicals of the same era that the original Joker was trying to evoke, like say emulating the movie of Bob Fosse or other kinds of grounded, gritty musicals.  Or are we going to see some old school Hollywood musical sequences like Singin’ In the Rain (1952) had.  Having Joaquin Phoenix back is a plus, and I’m interested to see how handles the musical aspect.  We know Lady Gaga can carry her own, and I’m interested to see what she does with the character of Harley Quinn.  This movie is taking a risk to be sure, with the possibility of alienating part of it’s fan-base, but that’s the kind of gamble I like to see from Hollywood.

MOANA 2 (NOVEMBER 27)

It’s been a tough couple of years for Disney Animation.  Their last truly blockbuster hit was pre-pandemic with Frozen II (2019).  Since then they’ve been putting out completely original films, and none of them have been lighting up the box office.  Sure, the pandemic had something to do with the reversal of fortune, and the move to streaming has altered audience patterns, especially with Encanto (2021), which became a smash hit once it started to stream on Disney+.  But, the back to back flops of Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023) have put a damper on the animation powerhouse, with the latter being especially disappointing as it was supposed to be the studio’s big 100th anniversary project.  Disney Animation really needs something to turn it’s fortunes around, and that means relying on that dirty word again; sequels.  It’s understandable to think that Disney is selling out by falling back on sequels rather than adding something new to the mix, but new things are what we’ve been getting for the last couple years, and it’s not working.  To help rebuild themselves back to where they were, they need to go with what’s worked before, and they have a reliable winner with Moana (2016).  The original film was a smash hit, and has only gained in esteem in the years since.  It is the most streamed movie not just on Disney+, but across all platforms, which is quite a feat so it makes sense that Disney would want to make a sequel given the original’s staying power.  The film thankfully returns the original cast, including Auli’i Cravalho as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as Maui.  While the sequel looks like it will be covering some of the same territory as the first, it does appear that it will offer some new thrills to the mix, including the hint of a yet to be revealed villain.  One thing that sadly will not be present in this movie are new songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Hopefully the new songwriters are capable of living up to the high standards set by the first movie, which included now beloved classics like “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome.”  The one thing you can count on is that the Disney animators will still make this movie a visual feast, and I certainly am eager to hit the high seas again with Moana and Maui.

NOSFERATU (DECEMBER 25)

Merry Christmas from the Dark Side.  This isn’t the first time someone has attempted to update F.W. Murnau’s chilling and now century old horror masterpiece for the modern day.  Werner Herzog famously remade Nosferatu in 1979 with Klaus Kinski as the titular vampire.  But, if there was ever a right person to make another attempt at re-creating the spooky horror of this classic story, it’s the man behind terrifying films like The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019).  Robert Eggers is a director that has done a magnificent job of putting style back into horror, and what better way to show off what he can do than to pay homage to the movie that set the standard for the genre.  The film does look like it will be a visual feast, but I also appreciate just how much Robert is trying to create the most unsettling visuals that he can with this version of the story.  The shadow of a hand stretching over the city is an especially evocative visual, and one that is clearly a nod to the original, which was very much reliant on the use of shadows for conveying the supernatural.  The trailer wisely keeps things vague, because I’m sure the studio would like to keep a few of the scares secret, but those familiar with the original film will definitely pick up on the story itself.  Thankfully one of the withheld secrets is what the lead vampire, Count Orlock will look like.  We know he is being played by Bill Skarsgard, who’s no stranger to playing iconic movie monsters.  But I’m wondering if his look will be akin to the original creation by actor Max Schreck in the original, or are we getting a different Nosferatu.  Ironically, frequent Robert Eggers collaborator Willem Dafoe is also in this movie, taking on the Van Helsing type role, who 24 years ago was nominated for an Oscar for playing Max Schreck in the film Shadow of the Vampire (2000).  It will certainly be quite an experience, especially with this coming out on Christmas Day in one of the wildest out of season movie premieres in a while.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (SEPTEMBER 6)

It looks like the Fall season may be kicked off with a bang with the “ghost with the most” running the show.  Legacy sequels that come out way beyond the release of the original can be a huge risk, but it helps when the same people who made the original are on board.  There has been talk of a Beetlejuice (1988) sequel for over 30 years, and now it has finally become a reality.  The question is, can it still spook up the same mix of laughs and scares.  It’s been five years since Tim Burton last released a film in theaters, the ill-fated remake of Dumbo (2019), but in the meantime he managed to find his mojo once again with the hit Netflix series Wednesday, of which he produced and directed half of the episodes.  The positive sign is that he is bringing on board the creative team from the Wednesday series to help him craft this sequel, including the shows writers as well as the star Jenna Ortega.  What is also pleasing is that Tim Burton is making an effort with this film to primarily use practical effects instead of computer animation, so that the movie will feel authentic and in the same spirit of the original.  This includes long neglected effects like stop motion and complex prosthetic make-up, which were key components of creating the world of the original Beetlejuice.  But of course, you can’t do a Beetlejuice sequel without the man who brought him to afterlife in the first place, Michael Keaton.  Keaton is certainly a much older man now, but Beetlejuice is the kind of character where that doesn’t matter and it looks like he is slipping right back into that iconic striped suit like he never took it off.  And if he can play Batman again, why not also play Beetlejuice while he still can.  Another plus is that Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara are also returning to reprise their roles as Lydia and Delia Deetz.  And the new cast including Justin Theroux and (hello again) Willem Dafoe all look like they will be a lot of fun in their roles.  Let’s hope that the long wait is worth it and that Tim Burton is able to deliver yet another thrilling and funny adventure with the recently departed.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

GLADIATOR II (NOVEMBER 22)

It is remarkable that in his mid-80’s Ridley Scott is still capable of making epic scale films for the big screen.  At the same time, he has also been a bit hit or miss in recent years.  For every The Martian (2015) or The Last Duel (2021) that lands, there is an Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) or Napoleon (2023) that doesn’t.  He also has a very shaky track record when it comes to creating franchise follow ups, as the movies Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) failed to reignite the Aliens franchise.  So, there’s a bit of doubt surrounding whether he is able to create a follow-up to his Oscar-winning epic Gladiator (2000).  There are a lot of variables that are working against this movie, chief among them is that there is no Maximus in this sequel.  The iconic central character of the original ends up dead at the end, so where do you go from there.  Of course, it would be a tall order to have Russell Crowe reprise the role in a different way, as he is much older and out of shape now.  So, what this movie does instead is to take the child character from the first movie, the son of the Emperess Lucilla (played by Connie Nielsen) and have him aged up and in the role of a gladiator inspired by the memory of Maximus.  I will say that the casting choices in this movie are intriguing.  I’m especially interested in seeing how Denzel Washington performs in this swords and sandals style epic.  He may feel too modern and out of place, but then again I just saw him kill it as Macbeth only a couple years ago so he might surprise people.  I also am interested in seeing Pedro Pascal perform in this movie, playing a general in service to two corrupt emperors that have taken over after the death of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).  What remains to be seen is if Paul Mescal can fill the big boots left by Russell Crowe, who won an Oscar for his performance.  Maximus is one of the most iconic movie heroes of the last quarter century.  Also, it’s hard to say if a movie like Gladiator needs a second chapter, as the first one felt so complete.  Hopefully Ridley Scott still has it in him to deliver yet another grand epic on that same level again.

MUFASA: THE LION KING (DECEMBER 20)

If you’ve been reading my blog for at least the last five years, you’ll recall that I absolutely hated The Lion King (2019), Disney’s so-called “live action” remake of their animated masterpiece.  What frustrated me was that the movie was just a copy and paste job that added nothing to the experience, and in fact robbed the story of it’s strength by having the characters be animated in this naturalistic style that robbed them of any personality.  So, you’re probably wondering why I have this movie here and not in the movies to skip category.  Well, I still have plenty of reservations about this movie, primarily with how it still uses that unappealing photo realistic character animation for the animals.  But, at least with this film they are working with an original story, rather than copying beat for beat the same plot of the original film.  Sure, it’s a prequel, telling the back story of Mufasa and Sacr so we aren’t really going to cover any unknown territory.  But at least now I don’t have to negatively contrast the beats of this film with those of a vastly superior movie.  One other intriguing aspect of this film is that it is being directed by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk).  Getting a prestige, art house filmmaker like him to jump on board is a bold move on Disney’s part, and it might make this a bit more of a deeper film that it normally would be.  At least that’s the hope.  I am worried that this could be the kind of movie that could sully Barry Jenkins’ reputation as well if it still feels like a cash grab the same way that the first one did.  My hope is that Jenkins is capable of finding a rich and meaningful story with this film that transcends the limitations of the medium and well exceeds expectations.  The track record of Disney remakes is pretty shoddy, and the sequels to those remakes fare even worse.  Here’s hoping the gamble of giving this project over to a filmmaker of Barry Jenkins’ caliber helps to make this Lion King prequel roar.

WICKED (NOVEMBER 22)

One has to wonder if the Broadway to cinema pipeline has run dry.  There have too many stage musical translations recently that have failed to light up the box office.  One of the last true blockbuster musicals that has yet to get the cinematic treatment is finally making it’s way to theaters, and it is a lot to digest.  One thing that worries me is that the film looks a bit overproduced.  It seems like a whole lot of the budget went into the make-up, costuming, and the production design.  But, here’s the problem; it doesn’t give off any authenticity.  Overproduced movies never feel like they are lived in worlds; the artificiality just overwhelms everything else.  You do admire the hard work that the technicians put into building all of the sets and costumes, but unless people connect with the story, no one will care.  And that’s the vibe I am getting with this cinematic adaptation of Wicked.  The trailer seems to be going out of it’s way to hide the fact that this is a musical, which should be the biggest selling point for this movie.  We all know about Wicked from Broadway, so why aren’t they showing us a clip from a musical number.  Perhaps it’s a sign that the studio is concerned with the final product of the musical numbers.  Hopefully this isn’t the case.  One of the pluses of this film is the stellar cast that’s been put together.  I’m not quite sure about Ariana Grande as Glinda, but Cynthia Erivo is one of the most powerful belters working in musicals today, so her casting as Elphaba should be something in the movie’s favor.  The casting of Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard is another inspired choice, and I’m happy to see Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh here as well.  With all that, it’s still unclear if this movie is going to be able to stick the landing.  The Broadway musical is beloved by many, as is the classic 1939 film that made The Wizard of Oz famous in the first place.  That classic film still feels magical, and most of all tangible in how it depicted it’s magical world.  You would think that over 80 years later we would be able to still make the land of Oz feel like a magical place.

VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (OCTOBER 25)

The iron grip that Sony holds on their rights to the Spider-Man side of the Marvel Universe has not been delivering anything good recently, outside of animation that is.  Morbius (2022) was a disappointing mess and Madame Web (2024) may be an all timer for one of the worst comic book films ever.  The only success that the Sony Spider-Verse has had in live action is with their collection of Venom films.  Though those movies have been a success at the box office, they still are far from the level of quality that we’ve seen from the MCU.  They still have the same convoluted plots and underwhelming action of all the other failed films in the Sony franchise.  The only saving grace has been actor Tom Hardy in the leading role as Venom and his alter ego Eddie Brock.  Hardy may be acting in trashy movies, but he’s still giving it his all and he’s managed to make the characterizations of these characters work.  This new film, Venom: The Last Dance, appears to be where Sony is looking to close out the Venom franchise.  Tom Hardy looks like he’s still having fun in the role, which is a good sign.  But, there are some red flags that show up in the trailer.  One of the big issues is the moment where it looks like they are retconing the stinger from the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home  (2021), where Hardy’s Eddie has been transported briefly into the MCU, where he accidentally deposits part of his symbiote suit, which we thought may be a tease for other problems in that universe later.  But as seen in the trailer, it looks like they are saying that that universe was not the MCU at all but instead is the same universe that they Venom movies have always existed in, thereby shutting down any possible multiverse connections in future.  It gives us the sense that Sony is continuing to go rogue in defiance of the plan that Marvel Studios has been laying out, and I think it’s doing a disservice to their own franchise and the character of Venom.  The hope is that Tom Hardy can still at least keep this movie entertaining, but it’s a shame that Sony has undercut their own cinematic possibilities by refusing to play nice with the rest of the Marvel Universe.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

KRAVEN THE HUNTER (DECEMBER 13)

Speaking of Sony’s endless string of mediocre Marvel films, here we have a new film dedicated to one of Spider-Man’s most famous foes.  This movie was already delayed one whole year, mostly due to the ongoing labor strikes that drove down box office in general, but the massive delay also indicates that Sony didn’t have a lot of confidence in this one carrying the torch immediately after the strike had ended.  The pattern from the Sony Marvel films has been one of completely missing the point why people want to see comic book movies in the first place.  We aren’t concerned about the origins of these characters and why they became who they are.  We just want to see them either be the heroes or villains they were meant to be.  One thing is noteworthy about all of these Spider-Verse films that we’ve seen from Sony; a distinct absence of Spider-Man himself.  That’s because the Spider-Man that everyone loves is in the MCU, putting him out of reach unless Sony plays ball with Marvel.  They are never going to be able to spin-off a cinematic universe on the same level with just the side characters of the Spider-Man comics.  We don’t care about Kraven the Hunter as the main character.  We want to see him fight one on one with Spider-Man, and this movie will definitely not deliver on that.  The casting of Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a bit strange for this character, as he seems to be a fair bit too young for what should be a seasoned hunter.  Maybe there will be some decent action scenes, but the trailer just gives us the same generic style that we’ve seen from all the other Sony Spider movies, where they feel like they are ashamed to be adapted from a comic.  The MCU showed that audiences are embracing of the campy and colorful aspects of comic books.  The Sony films feel like throwbacks to the era of super hero movies that were trying too hard to feel grown up as they grounded their characters too much in reality.  For Kraven, he should be a formidable villain and not just another generic anti-hero.

FLIGHT RISK (OCTOBER 18)

It’s a painful to watch one career downward spiral manifest on film.  This new thriller is giving us two.  Mark Wahlberg’s recent choices in film roles have seen him fall more and more off from his career highs.  He seems to be distancing himself more from Hollywood as he’s become more spiritual in the last couple of years.  Now, it is possible to be more in touch with one’s faith while at the same time continually challenging themselves as an artist, but Wahlberg seems to be distancing himself a bit too much and that is putting a limit on the kinds of roles that he’s taking.  It’s a similar downward trend that this film’s director, Mel Gibson, has gone through and both of them show no signs of changing anytime soon.  Both Wahlberg and Gibson could do so much better, and have so in the past, but their egos have gotten in the way and have led them to attaching their names to schlock like this.  In Gibson’s case, he’s never really gotten out of the rut he put himself in through his own bad behavior, and Wahlberg seems too concerned about his own image that he’s stopped taking risks.  I guess this movie exists because they like working together (this is their third collaboration) and it’s not a bad thing to work with the people you trust the most.  But, both of these guys should take a more introspective look at where their careers are, because this kind of movie should be beneath them, and yet here they are.  But if Wahlberg feels comfortable acting with one of the worst bald caps I’ve seen in recent memory, then it seems to me that he’s not ready to be the risk taker he once was again, and the same goes with Mel who said yes to having Mark wear that bald cap.

RED ONE (NOVEMBER15)

Another painful reminder that star power does not guarantee that a movie will be good.  This Christmas themed action movie feels like it’s late to the party by a couple of years.  Nothing is going to surpass the hilariously over-the-top Violent Night (2022), which was one of the best possible examples of bringing Christmas theming to recognizable action movie tropes.  Given that this is a production from Dwayne Johnson’s own company, Seven Bucks, it’s clear that it’s little more than a star vehicle for him.  It might have been funnier if he were in the Santa role, but no he gave to J.K. Simmons, which even isn’t the first time that the Oscar-winner has played St. Nick.  What makes this trailer especially cringe is the very obvious indication that neither Dwayne nor his co-star Chris Evans have any on screen chemistry.  Evans looks like he was dropped in from an entirely different movie, and his personality is merely looking at all the Christmas themed elements around him and finding it all weird.  That’s pretty much it; no other punchline.  Overall, it just looks like an excuse for an easy paycheck for everyone involved, so I highly doubt this will turn into a new Holiday classic.  There are far better action movies with Christmas theming to them (the aforementioned Violent Night is highly recommended).  I would imagine this movie will be out of theaters not long after we cut our Thanksgiving turkeys, falling well short of the Christmas season that it is hoping to capitalize on.

So, there you have my outlook of the upcoming Fall Season at the movies.  Of course, there are many other films that have yet to make it through the Fall film festival circuit that could become some big deals in the months ahead as the Awards Season heats up.  While the Fall hasn’t exactly been producing big Oscar winners recently (the last two Best Picture winners came out in the Spring and Summer of their respective years), it still is a fertile ground for some movies that no doubt will be talked about for next year’s awards.  I’m certainly interested to see what surprises come up in the next few months.  My favorite movie of 2023, The Holdovers, wasn’t even one of the films on my radar when I did my preview of Fall from last year.  Of the films that I spotlighted in this preview, I would imagine that few are going to be deemed awards worthy, and my excitement is more about anticipating the chance to see them for the first time.  Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis will be one of those experiences that I have to see for myself in a theater, even if there’s the chance that I might not like it.  The fact that the movie even got made is kind of miraculous and that in itself is the allure.  I’m also eager to see how audiences respond to Joker: Folie a Deux, which could be it’s own spectacle.  And my hope is that movies like Gladiator II and Wicked are better than expected.  Given that both movies are releasing on the same day, we could see another Barbenheimer situation arise due to the strange counter-programming, though I doubt either will achieve the same box office levels, given that Moana 2 is likely going to crush both over the same holiday weekend.  There’s a lot of interesting stories waiting to happen this fall, and I will be heading out to the movies quite a bit in the next couple of months.  Hopefully this Fall continues the same box office recovery that we saw happen this Summer.  We may not have the same kind of blockbusters, but a good healthy box office spread across all films will be great for theaters in general.  Here’s hoping for a good finale to the year 2024 at the movies, and an even better future going into 2025.

This upcoming summer season is likely going to be very different from the last couple we have had.  Coming out of the pandemic affected years, the summers of 2022 and 2023 looked pretty close to the kinds of Summer movie seasons that we were used to in the decade before.  The big movie studios were lining up their tentpole features once again in a big way, with all the Summer months booked with the kinds of movies that were ideal for bringing in audiences.  Or at least that’s what the studios were hoping for.  While the selections of movies felt like Hollywood was back in the Summer season groove, the box office results were not indicative of a return to normal for the industry.  Some would say that audiences were still hesitant about going back to the theaters post-pandemic, but there was also the effect of the push towards streaming.  Things had changed drastically in the last couple of years, and this year has shown that Hollywood is beginning to readjust somewhat to the new norms.  There are decidedly fewer large tentpoles coming out in the upcoming months, which shows that Hollywood in general is slowing things down.  Of course, the sparsity of this Summer’s tentpoles also has to do with the months long delays in production due to last year’s labor strikes.  We are getting fewer movies because Hollywood either had to push back a number of films or cancel them all together, and it’s a situation that the studios only have themselves to blame.  The ones who unfortunately suffer the most out of this situation are the exhibitors, who unfortunately may have to lower their expectations about having a big Summer season this year, or find clever ways to draw more people into the cinemas during the next few months.

Even still, there are some movies worth getting excited about in the days ahead.  With the competition being less fierce week to week, there’s a good chance that a lot of these Summer movies may take off and become big hits with strong legs at the box office.  Like I do every year, I will be breaking down the Summer movie season with the movies that I think will be the Must Sees, the ones that have me worried, as well as the Movies to Skip.  These picks are solely based on my own level of interest in each movie based on my reactions to the buzz surrounding the film and the effectiveness of it’s marketing.  My track record has been hit and miss over the years, as some of my good picks have turned out to be bad, and vice versa.  I do feel confident about the movies I’m about to discuss below, and my hope is that it provides you the reader with an informed guide of the movies that will be talked about over the Summer movie season.  So, with all of that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Summer 2024.

MUST SEES:

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (JULY 26)

Easily the most eagerly anticipated movie of the Summer season.  Things have changed a lot since the last time Ryan Reynolds has suited up as the “merc with the mouth.”  The former studio that was the home of the Deadpool franchise, 20th Century Fox, has since been merged into The Walt Disney Company, which is the home of all the others Marvel characters.  Now, Deadpool no longer has to exist on an island separated from the rest of the MCU due to franchise rights; he now has free reign to play in the same sandbox as the Avengers.  This will be the third Deadpool movie, following up on 2018’s Deadpool 2, and the first with Marvel Studios now in creative control.  A lot of people worried that Marvel, and by extension Disney, were going to ruin the character by cleaning up his act to make him more presentable to family audiences who watch their movies.  But thankfully Kevin Feige and the other Marvel heads understand what has been Deadpool’s appeal and they have come to the conclusion that if it isn’t broke, than don’t fix it.  This will be the MCU’s first ever R-Rated film, and it definitely looks like Deadpool’s penchant for edgy material is making the transition intact.  Even more exciting is the fact that Ryan Reynolds is bringing another friend from the Marvel/Fox films to come and play with him.  Hugh Jackman is once again donning the Adamantiam claws as Wolverine, a character he has now played over a 24 year period.  A lot of the excitement for this movie is no doubt do to seeing the two icons finally sharing the screen together (especially after all the teasing that Deadpool made at Wolverine’s expense in the first two movies) and also due to the fact that both are finally making their debuts in the MCU.  We only have hint in the trailer as to how the characters are going to factor into the greater MCU storyline, and I feel like Marvel is still holding many surprises close to the chest.  We’ll definitely have to watch the movie to find out what all that will be, but the fact that we get more of Deadpool and Wolverine on the big screen is enough to get us all excited for the Summer to start.

INSIDE OUT 2 (JUNE 14)

I feel like Disney has been trying to pay an apology to their Pixar Animation wing over the last year.  Last year’s Elemental (2023) was one of the few Disney tentpole films that actually exceeded expectations, managing to build on word of mouth and turn a modest profit at the box office, as opposed to other movies from Disney last year like The Marvels (2023) and Wish (2023) which crashed hard at the box office.  Disney recognized that their Pixar brand was still one of their most valuable assets and that it was time to stop neglecting it.  After pushing many of Pixar’s films onto streaming during the pandemic, this Spring they finally put those films out into theaters for the first time.  It may not have been much as the number of screens were limited, but it was a message from Disney that they recognized that Pixar’s films do indeed belong on the big screen.  Elemental made a big difference in changing the perception of Pixar’s value at Disney, and this year it looks like Pixar will indeed be roaring back to the top of the box office with their sequel to one of the biggest hits ever.  Inside Out 2 picks up right where the last film left off with the emotions that live inside the head of a young girl about to head into uncharted waters of puberty.  This new film expands the roster of characters with more complex emotions moving in and taking things over very quickly, including Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment.  The first Inside Out (2015) did a remarkable job of taking complex concepts like emotional psychology and brilliantly wove it into an engaging and funny story that represented Pixar at their best.  It will be nice to revisit this world again, and the next stage of this concept should be interesting as it explores how emotions change as we grow older.  It’s great to see Pixar regain it’s valued state in the Disney company, no longer as the easily tossed aside brand shipped off to Disney+, and my hope is that Inside Out 2 puts Pixar back on top of the box office as well.

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (MAY 10)

One of the best franchise resurrections to have occurred in recent years has to be the return to prominence of the Planet of the Apes series.  Once revered as a classic science fiction franchise, the series became more and more irrelevant and mocked for it’s often cheap look, with the apes merely being actors in cheap masks rather than the impressive make-up effect that once set the series apart.  Since then, technology has caught up and has gone beyond what make-up effects can do.  The Caesar trilogy as it is now known pushed the boundaries of motion capture performance, allowing the acute mannerisms of an actors performance be fully translated into the highly detailed model of a realistic looking ape.  Thanks to the incredible talents of an actor like Andy Serkis and the digital wizards at Weta Digital, Caesar was one of the most impressive CGI characters to have ever been put on the big screen, capable of carrying the franchise on his own and re-inventing it.  This new film in the franchise seems to be carrying on the franchise to the next level.  The motion capture technology looks to have been improved upon even more, with the apes now able to speak and having it look impressively natural.  It’s great to see the Planet of the Apes franchise actually take what they’ve built before and push it even further.  What is especially exciting with this new film is that it’s going even further with the world-building.  This film takes place many years after the death of Caesar and shows us the world of humanity completely overtaken by the natural world, with the apes building up their first attempts at an advanced civilization.  Director Wes Ball, who previously worked on the Maze Runner franchise, has a knack for blending the natural world and the mechanical world in a visually beautiful way.  This film could definitely be one of this Summer’s most epic adventures and it will be interesting to see if this is another big step for the Planet of the Apes franchise as it begins a new generation.

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (MAY 24)

George Miller shook up Hollywood in a big way when he unleashed his long anticipated fourth film in the Mad Max franchise; 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.  Hailed as a masterpiece for it’s impressively mounted action sequences, many of which that were done with real practical stunts, the movie propelled the veteran Australian director back into the spotlight and had many fans eagerly anticipating what he would do next.  Apart from a detour into a smaller scale fantasy flick with 2022’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, Miller very much was eager to return to the desert for more adventures in the world of Mad Max.  But, instead of focusing on the Road Warrior himself, Miller was interested in exploring more of the story of the other hero who stood out in the mayhem that was Fury Road; the one armed heroine known as Furiosa.  Played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, the character Furiosa became an instant fan favorite, and it definitely felt like she was a character capable of carrying on with her own series.  Well, Miller believed that was the case too, and we now have Furiosa commanding her own film.  Because this movie tells us Furiosa’s backstory, she needed to be played by a younger actress, so Anya Taylor-Joy has stepped into the role, doing her best to live up to what Charlize laid the groundwork for.  She looks up to the task, but what I think may be the even bigger draw for this movie is the larger than life villain she is going to face off against.  Her adversary is a mad man named Dr. Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth who seems to be going full blown Australian in his demented, off-the-wall performance.  It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth working off of each other, and the trailer shows a lot of the crazy, intense action that Miller has already demonstrated himself as being the master at.  Can it live up to high bar of Fury Road.  Let’s hope so, because it’s been a while since we’ve had a crazy ride like that worth taking.

KINDS OF KINDNESS (JUNE 21)

So, Yorgos Lanthimos has finally made the cut into my “must see” category.  After being a little cautious going into his last couple of movies based on the bad experience that I had with The Lobster (2015), I can now say that I am now excited to see what Yorgos has cooking for us next.  And he is not wasting any time either.  Right on the heels of his multiple Oscar winning feature Poor Things (2023), he has this new film heading to theaters right in the middle of summer.  What’s interesting with Kinds of Kindness is that it finds the director working again with contemporary set story, after spending his last couple films in period settings with Poor Thing and The Favourite (2018).  Even still, it looks like he’s still applying his odd ball sense of humor based on the trailer.  We don’t really get much of an idea about what the story will be in the teaser, but I imagine it will be some kind of darkly comic narrative with echoes of the Coen Brothers mixed in.  One of the big pluses for this film is that it is the third collaboration in a row between Yorgos and actress Emma Stone, who is also coming fresh off an Oscar win for Poor Things.  Emma has become something of a muse for Mr. Lanthimos as his best work in the past decade has been with her in the cast.  Both of them are coming off of the high of their recent Oscar success, and will be interesting to see the encore they have with this feature.  At the same time, the movie also has a few other alum from Lanthimos’ other films, including Poor Thing’s Willem Dafoe and The Favourite’s Joe Alwyn, plus an impressive cast of newcomers like Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau being brought into this weird mix.  Of all the counter-programming, art house fare being mixed in this Summer, I feel like this one will be the stand out and hopefully it’s one that hopefully continues to help me become more of a Yorgos Lanthimos fan.

MOVIES THE HAVE ME WORRIED

TWISTERS (JULY 19)

It’s hard to know exactly what kind of movie we are going to get with Twisters.  It seems odd that Universal would be making a sequel to their 1996 blockbuster after almost 30 years, but here we are.  The original, which was little more than a two hour demo reel for cutting edge for the time environmental CGI animation, isn’t exactly screaming out for a second chapter.  But, that’s exactly what we’re getting, and the only thing that seems to have been upgraded is the visual effects now catching up to the present day.  Other than that, it looks like we are getting the same story all over again, just with new actors.  The original film was notoriously corny and one dimensional, but over time that became part of it’s charm as audiences look to it now as an unintentional comedy.  I don’t know how much this sequel is going to lean into that, because it could go either way.  It could play things loose and have a little fun with itself, or it could take itself way too seriously and become something of a joke.  One thing that could be a negative for this movie is that it doesn’t have quite the same level of star power as the last, with the likes of Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman bringing some personality into the film.  None of the actors in this new one look bad per say, but I don’t think there is anything to really hook onto with their characters, except maybe the one played by Glen Powell, who is clearly stepping into the same type of role that the late Bill Paxton filled in the original.  Powell is on a career upswing right now after appearing in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and the surprise rom com hit Anyone But You (2023), so that might be something working in the movie’s favorite.  I think it’s safe to say that much like the orginal Twister, this is going to end up being a pretty dumb movie.  Let’s just hope that it’s the fun kind of dumb that can at least make it an entertaining ride at the cinema.

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA (PART 1 – JUNE 28 / PART 2 -AUGUST 16)

When Kevin Costner makes a movie, it seems like it’s go for broke every time.  The Actor/Director is a passionate filmmaker, and that is something to be admired.  However, he is someone known to be his own worst enemy on set; often being fatally self-indulgent.  His passion has paid off before in some of his movies, such as the Oscar winning Dances With Wolves (1990), but also at the same time his name has been connected to some of the most notorious flops in movie history, such as The Postman (1997).  His next film will indeed be a major test for Mr. Costner, as he returns to the Western genre that loves.  This two part epic saga is releasing less than two months apart from each other this Summer, which is going to be quite an experimental release strategy.  The last time I recall two interconnected movies being released in the same year, it was for the Matrix sequels, and it didn’t work out so well for those movies.  Really, any Western is going to be a hard sell for audiences, given that it’s not a huge money making genre at the moment.  So this movie is indeed going to be a gamble, and that could prove disastrous for Kevin if it doesn’t work out, because he apparently has a significant amount of personal investment put into this project.  There is no doubt that he’s going to make a beautiful looking movie with impressive panoramic shots; you can see that from the trailer.  But, the worry is that Costner’s penchant for self-indulgence could turn this into a fairly dull experience too, with too much time padded with unnecessary subplots and repetitive pacing.  Hopefully it’s more engaging than that.  One of Costner’s more underrated films was the Western Open Range (2003), which had a very memorable shootout in the finale.  My hope is that both parts of Horizon carries that same kind of engaging action, and that all of Costner’s better impulses as a director are utilized, with the indulgences kept in check.

ALIEN: ROMULUS (JUNE 16)

At first the instinct is to roll your eyes at the aspect of there being another film in the Alien franchise.  The series honestly hasn’t found it’s footing since James Cameron’s action packed sequel Aliens (1986).  This new movie on the other hand does show some promise.  From the looks of this teaser, it does appear that the series is returning to it’s horror movie roots.  In a sense we are getting the old school haunted house of horrors style Alien, the kind that director Ridley Scott brilliantly realized in the 1978 original.  Of course, that’s what the trailer is having us believe will be the case, and it could end up being a misdirect.  We’ve been tricked before into believing that Aliens was redefining itself with a new direction, including a couple directed by Ridley Scott himself.  But other than James Cameron’s beloved sequel, none of them panned out.  One thing that does show promise with this movie is that it’s being directed by Fede Alvarez who made the thriller Don’t Breathe (2016), which is a film that plays upon surviving in claustrophobic situations.  Perhaps he’ll make that work well in this movie too, which indeed would be truer to the spirit of the original Aliens.  We’ll have to see if the new direction works out in the end.  It’s been too long since an Alien movie has truly felt scary.  The image of a swarm of facehuggers attacking the crew of the ship certainly is an unsettling image.  Plus this movie looks dimly lit and filled with steam, which is a definite call back to the original film’s mood setting environments.  There’s always the worry that these franchise revivals are just more empty promises, but here the desire to bring this series back to it’s roots is something worth holding out hope for.

BORDERLANDS (AUGUST 9)

It’s a good time right now to be in the business of adapting video games into film.  The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) broke all sorts of box office records, while Sonic the Hedgehog has been enjoying a surprisingly successful run of it’s own with his franchise.  On the television side, we’ve also seen acclaimed adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout hit the airwaves.  Now this Summer we are getting a big screen adaptations of one of the most popular shoot-em-up games from the last decade; Borderlands.  The movie has some promise to it, with an all-star cast attached to it, including a couple Oscar winners like Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis.  The movie also looks to be faithfully recreating the look of the video games, which had a sort of comic book art style to it.  The one thing that worries me about this film is that it seems to be trying to hard to be another Guardians of the Galaxy rip off.  Maybe that’s just the way it’s being marketed, but there definitely seems to be a Guardians vibe in the movie’s sense of humor.  And yeah Eli Roth is a talented filmmaker, but he is no James Gunn.  The reason Guardians of the Galaxy works so well is because James Gunn’s unique voice comes through so well in the incredible balance between the humor of the movie and the emotional resonance beneath the surface.  This movie just seems to be aping the humor of the Guardians  movies, but is missing the heart.  I hope I’m wrong, and that the movie is more substantive than that.  But if it is just another copycat, it will be a huge waste of a beloved video game IP that certainly has the potential to be the next big action movie franchise.  Let’s hope what ends up saving this movie is a harder, possibly R-rated edge that eschews close to the game itself, and that it’s not watered down for general audiences.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

KRAVEN THE HUNTER (AUGUST 30)

In an environment where comic book movies are universally on the decline, the Sony Spider-Verse is easily scrapping the bottom.  Apart from the successful animated projects they have going on and the Tom Hardy led Venom movies, the Sony Spider-Man adjacent movies have been the laughing stock of the industry.  2022’s Morbius seemed to have set a new low for the franchise, but that was until we were subjected to the mind-numbingly bad Madame Web this Spring.  Things don’t look too much better going into this Summer with their next film based on the famous Spider-Man adversary, Kraven the Hunter.  The movie was actually due to premiere last Fall, but it was pushed back almost a full year partially due to the on-going strikes, but also because the overall field was just too oversaturated with comic book movies.  I don’t feel like the delay is going to help this movie either, because the look of it still has that cheap, low effort feeling that we got from Morbius and Madame Web.  The only upside is an R-Rating, which will make the violence a bit more brutal.  But it’s becoming increasingly sad watching Sony desperately trying to stretch out their stranglehold on the Spider-Man IP by making sub par films based on characters only loosely connected to the webslinger.  They are itching to get another proper Spider-Man movie into production again, and it’s sad that we have to suffer through this cynical cash grabs in the meantime.  The next animated Spider-Verse movie or MCU connected adventure can’t come soon enough.

TAROT (MAY 3)

Speaking of low effort, here we have yet another horror movie trying to bank off of an already known property.  This one uses Tarot cards as the basis for it’s horror elements, and the whole thing just looks like more of a gimmick than an actual movie.  The trailer pretty much is showing us the standard jump scare fare we see from a dozen other horror movies, but the things that the characters are supposed to be scarred by seem especially unimaginative.  When you make movie monsters that are supposed to be iconic, they have to be distinct and I don’t see creatures like The Magician or The Hermit catching on with audiences.  I know that there was a successful horror movie based on the Ouija board game, but that one only worked because it had a visionary in the horror genre like Mike Flannagan behind the camera.  I highly doubt that Tarot is going to be any more than the movie we have here.

DESPICABLE ME 4 (JULY 3)

It sadly has become the case in recent years.  Illumination Animation has consistently put out subpar movies that are light on story and heavy with sophomoric humor, and they never seem to strive to be any better than what have become.  And even still, appealing to the lowest common denominator, they still make a billion dollars with every film they make.  I just don’t get it.  I understand that these movies are not meant for me, but I’ve seen so many other animation studios branch out and try to do bolder things.  Illumination just sort of sticks in their lane, which I guess has worked out for them, but they are creatively inert as a studio.  And lo and behold, we get yet another entry in their flagship Despicable Me franchise, with of course those cash cow Minions playing a central role.   I haven’t watched anything in this franchise beyond the first film and nothing about the marketing of Despicable Me 4 makes me want to jump back on board either.

So, there you have my preview of the upcoming Summer movie season.  It’s going to feel much different this year with the smaller sampling of tentpoles that we’re used to.  Marvel, which usually puts out multiple films a year, is giving up their entire calendar year solely to Deadpool and Wolverine, which is a telling sign about the changing dynamics of the industry at this moment.  We probably would’ve had a different Summer this year had the studios not wasted so much time trying to wear out the striking workers to no avail.  And the sad thing, it’s the already struggling theatrical market that bears the burden of a slower year at the box office.  It’s unfortunate, but at the same time, there needed to be a shift made in the way movies were being distributed.  The old way was just not working anymore in a post-pandemic environment, and 2023 say many potential blockbusters crash at the box office because too many of them were underperforming because of their massive budgets and lack of interest from audiences.  2024 will hopefully be a year of healing, and perhaps we may find in this year a better sense of what the future may hold for the industry as it starts to find it’s footing again.  I doubt this Summer will see another Barbenheimer phenomenon, but there could be some fun surprises at the box office.  My only hope is that the movie theaters are able to weather what will likely be another depressed year at the box office, and hopefully there will be enough strong performers at the box office to drive up business.  I can imagine Deadpool being a big draw, and sadly yes even the Minions in Despicable Me 4; I still don’t like them, but I know movie theaters owners do because they’re good for business.  And hopefully the ratio of box office successes is parallel to what movies are actually good this year.  With Barbenheimer, we got two great movies that could also make a lot of money for their studios.  My hope is that the movies this Summer follow that lead and are able to be great movies themselves.  So, I hope my guide has been helpful.  Have a wonderful Summer and a good time at the cinema.

The time has come again to hand out the gold in the heart of Hollywood as we arrive at the industry’s biggest night.  Though we are well into the new year now, the Academy Awards do feel like the final curtain to the year prior when it comes to the movies.  It’s the Awards ceremony that definitively gives us the snapshot of where the film industry is at the current moment, and this year’s Oscars certainly marks the end of one of the most tumultuous in cinema history.  What defined the year of 2023 more than anything else was the months long Writers’ and Actors’ strike, and while it did result in much needed beneficial gains for the creative community, it also shook up the release calendar on the back end of the year, when Hollywood puts out it’s Oscar contenders.  There were many films garnering for attention that still got released during the strike, but without the benefit of having the cast out in the circuit promoting them a lot of those potential contenders ended up getting no attention at all and were mostly forgotten by year’s end.  Some distributors even decided to give up and pushed their movies to the following year.  Who knows how different this year’s award season would’ve been had the strikes not happen.  While that may be a question to speculate in the years ahead, this year’s Oscars definitely reflects the affect of 2023’s other major event which was the “Barbenheimer” effect at the box office.  Not only did the two high grossing saviors of last summer dominate the box office, but both Barbie and Oppenheimer ended up with a healthy amount of awards recognition too from the Academy, with one in a pretty good position to take Best Picture.  It’s fitting that the Academy recognized the importance of what “Barbenheimer” did for the industry.  The Academy has been seen as very out of touch with the average audience for a long time, and that has been reflected in the dismal ratings for the ceremony on television in recent years.  Hopefully they learned this year that a movie being a blockbuster doesn’t always mean it’s unworthy of an Oscar, and the hope is that this year the Oscars ceremony will also get that “Barbenheimer” bump.

What follows are my in-depth breakdowns of all the top categories, as well as my quick list of all the others.  For these top ones, I will provide my commentary and reveal not just who I think will win, but also who I would like to see win, which sometimes diverges.  My track record is not 100%, but I do observe the trends and momentum leading up to Oscars night, so I try to make the best educated guess I can on these picks.  I even go out of my way to see as many of the nominated films as possible, including the short subjects.  So, with all that said, here are my picks for the 2024 Academy Awards.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Nominees: Cord Jefferson, American Fiction; Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Barbie; Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer; Tony McNamara, Poor Things; Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

Perhaps the most stacked category of the night.  Any one of these nominees would be the hands down favorite in any other year, and the fact that they all have to compete against one another is unfortunate.  In one case, the Oscars made a misstep, putting the screenplay for Barbie in the Adapted category, when it is far from an adaptation.  The explanation was that Barbie is a pre-established IP before the movie, but anyone who has seen the film knows that it’s story was purely from the imagination of Greta Gerwig, as well as her co-writer and real life partner Noah Baumbach.  This is also one of the many categories pitting the two “Barbenheimer” films against each other.  While Oppenheimer‘s script is an excellent one, with Christopher Nolan adapting a 700 page biography into a compelling and intense three hour film, it’s also clear that the film’s better strength is in it’s direction, so this is a case where Barbie actually has the edge.  But, it’s looking like that it too will come up empty handed.  A lot of the momentum in this category seems to be shifting in Cord Jefferson’s direction.  Jefferson’s cinematic debut is winning raves across the board, and in particular for it’s witty and satirical screenplay, poking fun at the way race is addressed in the publishing world.  His screenplay is sharp tongued, but also has a great deal of subtlety in it’s character building moments.  While it likely will be the winner, I do find myself more drawn to the more risk taking scripts.  Tony McNamara’s Poor Things script has some of the most hilarious “WTF” lines of the year, and it does a great job of mixing the absurd with the profound.  Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is also a brilliant example of writing through subtext, as he perfectly captures the banality of the evil found in the casual conversations from the Nazis he observes in the film; finding the power in the things not said.  But honestly out of the bunch, I found Greta and Noah’s examination of the dynamics of femininity and masculinity through the famous toy brand to be the most impressive writing achievement in this field of nominees.  Who knew that Barbie would end up being the best statement film of the year?

Who Will Win: Cord Jefferson, American Fiction

Who Should Win: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees:  Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall; Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer, Maestro; Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, May December; Celine Song, Past Lives; David Hemingson, The Holdovers

Here we have a category with far more clear favorites.  While Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik’s May December may have gotten a lot of buzz going into awards season, the fact that this is the sole nomination that the film received pretty much tells you that it’s not favored to win.  Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer’s Maestro is a charming love letter to a legendary artist, but it’s also fairly formulaic as far as biopic screenplays go, which hurts it’s chances as well.  With those two flashy Netflix movies out of the way, the remaining nominees are representative of the strong year in independent cinema we had in 2023.  Celine Song’s understated Past Lives was a critical darling that stuck with critics and Academy voters all year.  But it’s modest showing in the other categories shows that a nomination is about as far as the movie is likely to go in this category.  For right now, the momentum seems to be behind the Palme d’Or winner from Cannes, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall.  Triet’s crime drama showing the process of a murder trial unfolding from investigation to ultimately the verdict is a captivating watch, and the screenplay is very precise in the way it uses language as a part of the mystery.  It certainly is the movie that makes you think the most while watching it, and it’s satisfying that Justine Triet doesn’t give you an easy answer as to what actually happened either.  As good as Anatomy of a Fall’s script is, my favorite in this category has to be the script for the movie that I named as my favorite for the year.  David Hemingson’s screenplay for The Holdovers is this beautiful throwback to the subdued character driven comedies of the 1970’s, fitting perfectly with the visual aesthetic that director Alexander Payne gave the movie.  It is the perfect blend of drama and humor with just the right amount of edge to keep it from growing schmaltzy.  And he should get the award for some of the best written insults of the year, which Paul Giamatti delivers to perfection.  While it’s chances are fading, I would like to see The Holdovers make an upset win here.

Who Will Win: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall

Who Should Win:  David Hemingson, The Holdovers

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Nominees:  Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things; Robert DeNiro, Killers of the Flower Moon; Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer; Ryan Gosling, Barbie; Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction

For all the comic book movie nerds out there, it is funny to see this as a competition between Iron Man and the Hulk, with Robert Downey, Jr. and Mark Ruffalo both nominated here.  While Ruffalo’s performance as a petty womanizer in Poor Things was certainly a delight and deserving of awards recognition, it seems he is likely to see his fellow Marvel alum take home the gold this year.  Robert Downey, Jr. has had one of the best redemption arcs of anyone in movie history, coming from a near career destroying set of scandals and drug addiction to eventually headlining in the biggest movie franchise ever.  Winning an Oscar would be yet another distinction to help cement Downey’s remarkable career resurrection.  Playing former Atomic policy chief and later adversary of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, Downey’s performance is big and memorable, and it demonstrates all the best qualities we’ve seen out of him as an actor.  This is his third nomination, and all signs show that he is likely to win.  But, as much as I loved Robert Downey’s performance in Oppenheimer, the performance that impressed me the most in this category was Ryan Gosling as Ken.  Comedy roles are often overlooked by the Academy, especially with the broad, cartoonish type of comedy that we see in Barbie, so it’s a real testament to Gosling’s comedic chops that he managed to get nominated for his performance.  It is far and away one of the funniest performances we’ve seen in years, with Ryan Gosling commanding every moment and being absolutely perfect in the role of the insecure Ken doll that messes up the harmony of Barbieland in the film.  His “I’m Just Ken” musical performance may in fact be my single favorite scene in any movie of last year.  As hard as it is to be nominated for a comedic performance, it’s even harder to actually win.  Still, I think that Gosling is the closest competition that Downey has in this category; a true “Barbenheimer” showdown.  But, like what is expected for this upcoming Oscar night, Oppenheimer has the edge in this category.  And it will be a deserved win for Robert Downey, Jr. whose career turnaround really is a remarkable story in itself.

Who Will Win:  Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer

Who Should Win:  Ryan Gosling, Barbie

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees:  America Ferrera, Barbie; Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers; Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer; Jodie Foster, Nyad

Here we have the most locked down Award of the night.  From the beginning of the Awards season to now, Da’Vine Joy Randolph has dominated this category, winning pretty much everything.  Her role as the warm-hearted boys academy cafeteria cook Mary Lamb in The Holdovers has been celebrated across the board and it’s the kind of nuanced performance that really grabs the attention of Academy voters.  I couldn’t agree more.  The moment you first see her character in The Holdovers, you instantly want to know more about her, and Ms. Randolph delivers a tour de force performance that perfectly aligns with the overall tone of the film.  I’m happy she’s getting all of this due recognition as it means that The Holdovers is guaranteed at least one Oscar this year.  I don’t see any of the others in this category denying her the Award.  The only one who might have the most outside chances of an upset might be America Ferrera for Barbie, who was the surprise nominee this year.  There’s an outside chance that her surprise nomination could lead to an outside win, but it seems unlikely.  I think one of the reasons that America got the nomination was because of that viral moment in Barbie where she gives the big speech about the pressures of being a woman today that pretty much spelled out the main thesis of the film.  It’s a deserving nomination to be sure, as are the other nominees.  Danielle Brooks was a bright spot in an otherwise unnecessary remake of The Color Purple.  Emily Blunt stole the show in her brief scenes as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, leading to a first ever nomination.  And Jodie Foster was an expected stand out in the inspirational Nyad.  But Da’Vine Joy Randolph clearly stood out the most this year, with a performance that is equal measures devastating and inspiring, while also filled with charming humor.  You can count on her making the Awards season sweep, with an almost sure thing Oscar becoming the jewel in her crown.

Who Will Win:  Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Who Should Win:  Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

BEST ACTOR

Nominees:  Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer; Colman Domingo, Rustin; Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction; Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers

This is a tough category for me, because it involves pitting my two favorite movies of the year against each other.  Two favorites have emerged in this category since the nominations were read, and in the last couple weeks, the race has actually flipped a bit in favor of one over the other.  Initially, Paul Giamatti looked to be the favorite, with his win at the Golden Globes (and his subsequent after party trip to In-and-Out Burger that went viral).  But, in the last few weeks, Cillian Murphy has been racking up wins at the BAFTAs and the SAG Awards.  As of right now, it looks like Murphy is benefitting from the overall momentum behind Oppenheimer going into the Oscars, and he seems to be pulling away right now.  I do indeed like Cillian Murphy’s performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer.  It would be fitting that Murphy earns his Oscar for a Christopher Nolan film, as the two have been frequent collaborators on multiple movies.  And given how so much of the film’s success is dependent on his performance, given that he’s in nearly every scene of the three hour epic, the fact that the movie was the box office hit that became shows just how well his performance hit it’s mark.  It certainly wouldn’t upset me if Cillian Murphy wins the Award.  But, my favorite performance here comes from my favorite movie of the year.  Paul Giamatti’s career has been made up of a remarkable string of memorable, quirky characters, and sadly this is only the second nomination he has ever gotten (and first for a Lead role).  Winning here would really be a great acknowledgement for a career of outstanding character roles, but it’s also just a recognition for a phenomenal performance that achieves the right balance between hilarious and heartbreaking.  And man does he put some punch into those intellectual sounding insults.  At this point, I feel that some of that goodwill within Hollywood that Paul Giamatti has built up over the years could lift him to the top, but right now Oppenheimer is looking to have a big night and that will likely be the tide that lifts Cillian Murphy over the edge as well.

Who Will Win:  Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Who Should Win:  Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers

BEST ACTRESS

Nominees:  Annette Bening, Nyad; Carey Mulligan, Maestro;  Emma Stone, Poor Things; Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon;  Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall

Again, this is a category where it looks like two favorites have emerged.  And this one is a bit more competitive than Best Actor going into the home stretch.  Overall this is a strong category with deserving nominations for all.  A special shout out to German actress Sandra Huller, who is nominated here for Anatomy of a Fall, but also delivered another standout performance in the Best Picture nominee The Zone of Interest; a breakout year for her for sure.  Right now, this is a race between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone, and it’s hard to say who has the edge.  Both won the Golden Globes in their respective Drama and Musical/Comedy categories, but since then Lily has picked up the SAG award and Emma has picked up the BAFTA.  If I were to put my pulse on the race right now, I would say this is going to go to Lily Gladstone.  Hollywood loves to make history at the Oscars ceremony, and a win for Lily would give them that moment as she would be the first Indigenous actor to ever win an Oscar.  It would be a deserving honor too, as she was definitely the standout in Martin Scorsese’s expansive Western epic, outshining even big heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro in the film.  But, as much as I liked Lily Gladstone’s performance and would cheer a historic win for her on Oscar night, I do feel the best performance this last year belonged to Emma Stone in Poor Things.  Her performance in this oddball re-imagining of Frankenstein is a performance unlike anything I have seen before, and it really takes a committed and fearless actress to convincingly put it off.  Emma Stone, reuniting with director Yorgos Lanthimos after making The Favourite together, makes the character of Bella Baxter one of the most unique big screen protagonists I seen in a long while, and where she takes this character in the film is a wild journey.  And yet, she manages to nail even the more dramatic parts as well alongside the goofy moments.  It’s my favorite performance across all categories at this year’s Oscars, so I definitely am rooting for Emma Stone to prevail.  But, a win for Lily Gladstone wouldn’t upset me either, and it would be a long overdue Award for the Native Indigenous community who have long deserved recognition for their contributions to cinema.  Her win will also likely be the sole Award for Killers of the Flower Moon at this year’s Oscars, so it’s hard to completely count out the Scorsese effect as well.

Who Will Win:  Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

Who Should Win:  Emma Stone, Poor Things

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees:  Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer;  Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest;  Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall;  Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon;  Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things

This is another one of the easy to call categories.  That not to say that the other nominees here are slouches.  It’s remarkable that Martin Scorsese is still being recognized in this category this late into his career, showing that he hasn’t lost his magic touch at all, having now been nominated in 6 different decades.  Yorgos Lanthimos made perhaps his biggest leap yet as a visual storyteller with his dreamlike aesthetic placed upon the world of Poor Things.  And Jonathan Glazer delivered one of the most chilling Holocaust films ever with a movie that remarkably shows very little carnage but conveys the horrors instead brilliantly through atmosphere and sound.  Justine Triet delivers a brilliant dissection of the French legal system in action through Anatomy of a Fall, though I feel her nomination should have been filled by Greta Gerwig for Barbie.  But, it’s been clear to anyone going into this Awards season that this is going to be Christopher Nolan’s year.  The Holdovers topped my list this year because I thought it was the best written movie of the year, but Oppenheimer was my number two and it was undeniably the best directed movie of the year.  Nolan has always been pushing the boundaries of the cinematic artform, creating these monumental films that are more than just a movie; they are events.  A huge proponent of IMAX photography, he made Oppenheimer as must see film in theaters, and that helped to contribute to it’s nearly $1 billion box office.  There has been a groundswell for years for the Academy to honor Christopher Nolan for the advancements in cinema that he has made.  The reason we have 10 nominees for Best Picture is because the Academy overlooked Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), so that’s a profound legacy he has left right there on it’s own.  Thankfully, Oppenheimer is one of those undeniable achievements that no one can argue isn’t deserving of the Oscar for Directing.  It may have taken a while, but Christopher Nolan should finally get that long overdue recognition from the Academy.

Who Will Win:  Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Who Should Win:  Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

BEST PICTURE

Nominees: American Fiction; Anatomy of a Fall; Barbie; Killers of the Flower Moon; Maestro; Oppenheimer; Past Lives; Poor Things; The Holdovers; The Zone of Interest

Thankfully this was another year where I managed to see all 10 nominees in a theater; even the one made for Netflix (Maestro).  And I was happy to see that 6 out of the 10 were movies that appeared on my own Top 10.  In fact, 4 of my top 5 are present in this category, and each makes a good case for being Best Picture.  However, from the looks of it, Oppenheimer is coming into the Oscars as a heavy favorite.  It has swept through all the Guild awards (except the strike delayed WGA) which is a tell tale sign of a big night at the Oscars.  It just remains to be seen how big of a night.  It might be a big winner like last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), or it could be a case where the Academy likes to spread things around.  Are there any movies that could challenge Oppenheimer for the night’s top prize.  With the second most nominations, it would seem that Poor Things could be in the best position.  There’s also Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon to contend with as well as Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, both of which tackle issues that appeal very much to the tastes of the Academy.  The other half of “Barbenheimer” could even arguably muster a surprise win as Barbie was the undisputed box office champ of last year, and is credited for saving the theater industry during the contentious strike period.  Right now, Oppenheimer feels unstoppable with all the bellwether awards in it’s pocket, but at the same time I don’t feel it’s locked down as much as Everything Everywhere All at Once had a year ago.  Weirder things have happened before at the Oscars.  I of course would love to see The Holdovers come out on top, but it’s Best Picture chances faded pretty early, and it’s got a better chance anyway in the acting categories.  In the end, I feel that Hollywood is keen on honoring the phenomenon that was “Barbenheimer” in some way, and Oppenheimer is the movie that best represents what the Academy is looking for.  It’s the kind of movie that the Academy used to love in the 90’s, that being the “prestige blockbuster;” a lavish prestige film that manages to have crossover with audiences and become a huge moneymaker as well as an Awards contender (Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator).  Oppenheimer hopefully re-sparks that trend as the business really has missed that kind of movie for a long time.  Oppenheimer should be the big winner of the night; the only question is how big?

What Will Win: Oppenheimer

What Should Win:  The Holdovers

And here we have my quick rundown of all the remaining categories with my picks to win in each:

Best Cinematography: Oppenheimer; Best Film Editing: Oppenheimer; Best Production Design: Poor Things; Best Costume Design: Barbie; Best Sound: The Zone of Interest; Best Make-up and Hairstyling: Poor Things; Best Original Score: Oppenheimer; Best Original Song: “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie; Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One; Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol; Best Documentary Short: The Last Repair Shop; Best Animated Feature: The Boy and the Heron; Best Animated Short: Ninety-Five Senses; Best Live Action Short: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar; Best International Feature: The Zone of Interest

There are a number of things that I hope we’ll see happen at this year’s Oscars.  One, I hope there is acknowledgement of the hard fought for changes that the strikes brought to the creative community this last year.  It seems unlikely, given that the guild members would like to move on and the studio heads would like to forget.  But this was a monumental thing that happened in 2023, so so mention of the progress made in the industry would be ideal.  The Academy also needs to understand that the ceremony is about the people and the movies that they make.  Don’t try to turn the Oscars into it’s own spectacle.  The Oscar winners will provide that for the ceremony itself.  The Academy has been tinkering with the format too many times in recent years, and every new gimmick they try just does not work; especially the one where they cut out and pre-taped the “lesser” categories before the start for the show.  What people want to see are the movies and celebrities they care about getting the highest recognition from the industry and that’s all the Oscars need.  I’m seeing a trend in recent Awards shows like the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards where they’ve trimmed the fat and just presented the Awards without needless sketches and montages to pad out the run time.  Last years Oscars was another example of a well paced awards that felt trimmed down without having to cut out any of the categories from the broadcast, and sure enough that was reflected in the ratings.  It should also help that two of the nominees this year were the highest grossing movies of the year.  “Barbenheimer” saved the box office last year, so let’s see if it can do the same to the Oscars as well.  I’m hopeful for a more positive direction with the Academy Awards, where prestige and blockbuster don’t have to be relegated to separate camps.  Last year revealed a significant change in what audiences want to see and it’s reflected in the nominees this year.  It looks like the theatrical comeback is becoming more and more cemented as a reality in Hollywood, as streaming was far less represented at the Oscars this year.  So, while it appears that Oppenheimer is the movie to beat at this year’s awards, there still could be plenty of surprises, and it should make for an all around exciting Awards presentation this year.  Here’s hoping for a great show at the 2024 Academy Awards.

2023 was a strange year for the movies.  I don’t think anyone saw the outcome of this year coming, especially not myself.  This year saw many once dominant forces at the box office fall off hard; from Marvel, to DC, to Indiana Jones, to Fast and the Furious, to Mission: Impossible.  This summer would have been one of the most disastrous on record had it not been for the unlikeliest of saviors; the unexpected box office power duo of Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer.  But the biggest story of the past year was undoubtedly the behind the scenes labor battles that shook up the industry for nearly half a year.  The Writer’s Guild of America went on strike in early May and the Screen Actors Guild followed them to the picket line soon after in July, creating the largest strike period in Hollywood history.  For six months, Hollywood was ground to a halt as the studios and the unions dueled over the direction of the industry’s future.  Thankfully, the unions came out victorious, receiving fair deals that achieved most of the goals that they desired to have on their new contract, chief among them protections from AI and revised residual compensation reflective of the growing streaming market.  However, because the studios unnecessarily dragged their feet on making this new deal with the unions, it created a six month backlog in production that unfortunately is going to be felt throughout Hollywood for years to come.  The studios as a result are pushing back even more of their upcoming releases because of this delay, which is already giving more headaches to film distributors and theaters, who themselves are still in recovery mode post-pandemic.  It was a year overall of a lot of pain for the industry, as studios had to reconcile with the fact that their big push into streaming was not panning out like they expected and that they had neglected to fairly compensate their talent with fair share of that expansion, leading to an overall downturn in quality across the industry.

2024 is expected to be a year of re-building for many of the studios as they re-assess their futures.  Disney for the most part is taking the first half of the year off as they moved their Spring releases of Snow White and Pixar’s Elio to 2025.  Given how their 2023 went, with a string of disappointments, it’s probably for the best that they hedge their bets in order to regather their strength.  Warner Brothers and Paramount are even considering a merger in order to salvage their fortunes after wasting billions on chasing fortunes on streaming.  Because of last year’s strike, we are seeing a much less robust Spring season this year, as most films that were supposed to come out in the months ahead have been pushed back to accommodate for the backlog created by the strikes.  Some of the movies coming out in Early 2024 are even movies that were supposed to come out in 2023, but were unable to meet their release because the strike prevented the cast from assisting in the promotion of the films, which did have an effect on the overall box office of this Fall’s slate.  Still, there are enough movies to talk about in the early part of this upcoming year.  Like always, I will be discussing the must sees, the movies that have me worried, and the movies to skip of the early film season.  These previews are purely my own takes based on the level of buzz and effectiveness I see with the marketing, and my predictions can be off sometimes when all is said and done (and oftentimes have).  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Early 2024.

MUST SEES:

DUNE: PART TWO (MARCH 1)

Without question the must see movie of Early 2024, and possibly all of the year itself.  This is a movie that we should have already seen already, but because of the strike Warner Brothers decided they couldn’t have this movie make it’s November 3rd release date without the all-star cast there to help with the marketing.  Sadly, this took the highly anticipated second chapter to the Oscar-winning original out of awards contention for this year.  If this movie released on schedule, who knows how different the Awards season chatter would be right now.  Still, thankfully it’s a movie that we are still getting anyway and hopefully the extra four months will be worth the wait.  Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021) was an unexpected triumph of cinema when it first released, managing to gross over $100 million at the box office even in a still pandemic affected market and despite Warner Brothers misguided day and date theatrical and streaming release strategy at the time.  The film also managed to snag an impressive four Oscars in the technical categories, and was nominated for Best Picture, which thankfully ensured that this second part would be greenlit.  It seems short-sighted now that the studio didn’t film these movies back to back ala Lord of the Rings, as the first film only covers half of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi masterpiece.  But, Villeneuve now gets to complete the story, and it looks like he’s done so in spectacular fashion.  The movie definitely demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and I’m sure it’s going to dominate like no other in IMAX.  What I’m looking forward to are the newest additions to the cast, including Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Austin Butler as Feyd-Ruetha, and the legendary Christopher Walken as the Emperor.  And with Wonka doing well at the box office right now, Timothee Chalamet has some box office wind in his sails leading up to the release of this film.  Here’s hoping Denis Villeneuve sticks the landing with his monumental sci-fi epic.

CIVIL WAR (APRIL 26)

Alex Garland is without a doubt one of the most unique voices to emerge in science fiction writing over the last couple decades.  Starting off with writing films like 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2005) and Dredd (2012), Garland in the last decade has started to work behind the camera as a director and has shown equal prowess as a visionary filmmaker as well.  His unique voice has tackled common sci-fi tropes in interesting new ways, like examining the dangers of AI run amok in Ex Machina (2015), or looking at an alien invasion unlike any we’ve seen before on the big screen with the trippy Annihilation (2018).  His newest film is much less out of this world science fiction and more of a speculative, future history story that sadly feels all too relevant to our time.  Civil War showcases what a wartime conflict would look like in modern times if it broke out in the United States.  This is certainly the most ambitious project that Alex Garland has taken on to date (same with the studio making it, A24).  But the interesting angle that Garland is going with in this movie is seeing the conflict through the eyes of war correspondents.  This angle is a smart one to take because it allows the movie to remain grounded in a believable reality as it puts the audience right in the middle of the conflict.  It’s not a movie concerned about the sides being taken, but rather gives us a look at the ugliness of war, transposed into a place that hasn’t seen conflict on it’s soil since the last Civil War.  Having war correspondents be the witnesses of this conflict is also smart, because it helps the movie remain focused on it’s story rather than getting bogged down in world-building, which most other Hollywood blockbusters would fall victim to and get cluttered.  Hopefully Garland is able to deliver on the promise of this premise.  It will be interesting to see the responses to this film, considering that we are about to enter another contentious and divisive election cycle that by all accounts will be ugly.  Perhaps Alex Garland is giving us the wake-up call that we need to understand the dark path we are headed towards, given who we might put into office.

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (APRIL 12)

I know this is a weird one to pick, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to include a little junk food in the diet.  Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse has gone through a bit of an evolution over the last decade, and one that I think has worked out for the better.  The big problem that I had with the Gareth Edwards directed Godzilla (2014) that launched this franchise was that it took itself too seriously.  The best part of the movie was always when the titular King of the Monsters showed up, but sadly those moments were few and far between.  Instead, the movie had us following the human characters, who were all sadly generic and uninteresting, despite being played by some great actors.  The introduction of King Kong into this franchise with Kong: Skull Island fared better because it gave us the audience more of what we wanted; more time with the central monster and more definable personalities among the human characters.  When we finally got the team up film we were promised with Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Legendary seemed to finally have the winning formula, and that was to embrace the sillier side of this franchise.  What matters at the end of the day with these films is that we get to see the two iconic monsters share the screen and that the movie knows to let all the other stuff like character development and plot melt away.  In other words: just let them fight.  Godzilla vs. Kong was a nice bit of cheesy fun that we desperately needed after the worst of the pandemic.  Thankfully, it looks like the people at Legendary Pictures are sticking with the formula and still leaning into the sillier side of this franchise.  You can tell that by introducing a new pink color power set for Godzilla that this franchise is in no hurry to get this franchise grounded back into reality, and that is a bit refreshing.  I know Godzilla purists are going to complain, especially after the release of Toho’s acclaimed Godzilla Minus One.  But, given the lack of true entertainment in this early part of the year, it will be nice to have at least one movie that understands it’s limits as pure popcorn entertainment and rolls with it.

MICKEY 17 (MARCH 29)

This movie releases in a mere matter of months, and yet we still know so little about it, or seen anything other than a 30 second teaser released over a year ago.  But, there is still a lot to be excited about with this upcoming film.  For one, it’s the first film directed by Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho after his history making Parasite (2019) became the first film ever not in the English language to win Best Picture.  Also netting a Best Director win for himself, Bong Joon-ho garnered a lot of attention in the last couple years with regards to what he would do next.  Interestingly, he has decided to not make another film in his native Korean language like he did with Parasite.  Instead he’s making a film in English, which is not new for him, considering that he’s done it before with Snowpiercer (2014) and Okja (2017).  What is especially exciting is that his newest film is also a return for him to the science fiction genre.  His last foray into pure science fiction was Snowpiercer, which was in my opinion one of the best sci-fi films of the last decade.  What we know of the plot is based on what we know of the source material; the novel of the same name by Edward Ashton, which involves cloning and deep space exploration.  But, what isn’t known is what Bong Joon-ho will bring to the story with his own vision.  It’s also a good sign that he is working with a very outside of the box thinking kind of leading man with Robert Pattinson.  Pattinson has taken on many quirky roles in the past, so it will be interesting to see how well he works under Bong Joon-ho’s direction.  Hopefully more information and another trailer releases for this movie soon, because it will be interesting to see what a unique filmmaker like Bong Joon-ho does with the confidence that a fresh Oscar win gives him going into his next project.

THE BOOK OF CLARENCE (JANUARY 12)

When you attempt to satirize religion and scripture in any way, you better be prepared to walk through a gauntlet of eggshells.  But, if you manage to find that right balance, you can come up with some truly legendary comedy, as Monty Python and Mel Brooks have shown us in the past.  Writer and director Jeymes Samuel takes aim at the time period of Jesus Christ, but it looks like he wisely avoids turning Christ into the target of his punchlines.  Instead, what it looks like he’s doing with The Book of Clarence is to make a statement about modern day Influencer Culture by putting it within the context of a biblical time period.  Here we see the titular Clarence become jealous of Jesus’ clout, and he attempts to scam his way into becoming the Messiah so that he can emerge beyond Christ’s shadow.  It’s an interesting angle that could also extend a critical eye towards organized religion, which itself is built upon the show boating and scamming that is synonymous with influencer culture.  It’s uncertain exactly what angle Jeymes Samuel is going to go with in his film, but it certainly looks like there’s going to be some hilarious situations that satirize the things we know from scripture and that time period.  It definitely looks like Samuel is drawing inspiration from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) with some of the tone, and I hope he’s ready for some of the firestorm that may erupt in response to this movie.  Jeymes already delivered an interesting deconstruction of the American Western with The Harder They Fall (2021), framing it through a Black American perspective (and it features one of the most hilarious visual gags I’ve seen in recent memory).  Hopefully he delivers the same kind of intelligent satirical eye to this story with a biblical center.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (MARCH 29)

Try as they might, Hollywood has yet to match the one of a kind magic that was the comedy/horror masterpiece called Ghostbusters (1984).  Over the last 40 years, there have been sequels and multiple reboots, but nothing has yet to come close to the original, and it’s probably the case that nothing ever will.  The 1989 sequel has moments, but lacks the same novelty and focus.  The 2016 remake is a textbook example of how not to re-start a franchise as it courted controversy that it was not prepared to tackle, and sadly it negatively impacted the chance to bring true inclusivity into the casting of the franchise.  Jason Reitman, son of the late Ivan Reitman who directed the original classic, decided to bring his own voice to the franchise and pick up where his dad left off.  His 2021 reboot was different in tone, taking the lore and story a bit more seriously than past efforts, which is honestly closer to the original vision of the franchise’s co-creator Dan Aykroyd.  But, even though it was a marked improvement over the 2016 version, it still was a movie that relied too heavily on nostalgia for the past.  Seriously, we’re just going to rehash Gozer again as the main threat?  Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife still did well enough to get a sequel greenlit by Columbia.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire does earn some points by trying something different; with the Big Apple being threatened by an ice storm brought upon by a supernatural force.  It’s also interesting that they managed to get everyone back, not just from the last film, but even the legacy actors as well (even the always elusive Bill Murray).  Still, I feel this is a franchise that still has a lot to prove in order to find it’s way out of the shadow of the original classic.  It’s been 40 years and still nothing so far convinces me that Frozen Empire will be the movie that will justify a whole new generation of Ghostbuster movies to get excited about.

ARGYLLE (FEBRUARY 2)

Talk about over-exposure.  The above trailer seems to be attached to every movie playing at the multiplex at this very moment, so if you are someone like me who visits movie theaters on a regular basis, this trailer has been played ad nauseum for several months now.  Now, that doesn’t mean that the end result could end up being terrible, but the fact that Universal and Apple Studios are flooding the market with advertisement for this film is not a good sign either.  The latest film from Matthew Vaughn comes as new territory for the director, but still working within a genre he has a lot of experience with.  Vaughn has spent the last decade building up the Kingsman franchise and this is his first original film in a long time.  There are positive and negative signs for this movie based on Vaughn’s recent track record.  For one thing, he has demonstrated a knack for taking actors not typically known for appearing in action movies and giving them a stand out action set piece that changes everything you thought you knew about them.  The now famous one shot church fight scene with Colin Firth in Kingman: The Secret Service (2015) was a perfect example of this.  In Argylle, it looks like he’s doing the same with his leads, Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom you wouldn’t expect to see in elaborate action set pieces.  At the same time, Vaughn’s track record has been a bit spotty.  His sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) was a disappointing mess that sqaundered all of the goodwill of the first movie, and though it was a bit better, the prequel titled The King’s Man (2021) still couldn’t course correct well enough to salvage the waning franchise.  Hopefully Matthew Vaughn is able to get his mojo back with Argylle, but given the zealous marketing campaign so far, I’m not seeing a lot of positive signs.

KUNG FU PANDA 4 (MARCH 8)

At least one thing works in Dreamworks Animation’s favor this spring.  They no longer have to share the box office with their indsutry rival Pixar, Disney has moved their previously planned Spring 2024 release of Elio to Summer of 2025.  Still times are troubled for Dreamworks Animation.  The studio has failed to generate the same kind of energy at the box office that it once did in the last decade.  2023 was an especially rough year for all of the Animation titans.  Disney’s Wish (2023) failed to ignite over the Thanksgiving weekend, and Dreamworks saw it’s two 2023 releases, Ruby Gilman: Teenage Kraken and Trolls Band Together both underperform expectations, the former becoming the lowest grossing film in the studios’ 25 year history.  It’s a sad result given that they ended the previous year on a high note with their best film in years with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).  Thankfully for Dreamworks, their next film on the release calendar is the fourth film in one of their most resilient franchises.  Jack Black returns as the lovable Po the Panda and in this adventure he is facing off against a shape-shifiting villain voiced by Viola Davis.  While the Kung Fu Panda films have always been well-animated, they’ve been a little inconsistent when it comes to story.  In my opinion, I thought the first one was alright, I loved the second one, and thought the third one was bland and forgettable.  Thus far, this fourth film really lacks anything new or interesting to hook me back in.  Maybe long time fans will be more interested than me, but for me a film franchise on it’s fourth round needs to have something more interesting than a new villain of the week to justify it’s existence.  Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was a movie sequel that really went above and beyond what was called for with it, and to see Kung Fu Panda just revisiting the same routine just feels uninteresting to me.

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (FEBRUARY 9)

This is one of those movies that could honestly go either way.  We could be witnessing the birth of a new cult classic in horror comedy, or it could be an embarrassing dumpster fire that bodes ill for all involved.  One of the red flags is that it’s written by Diablo Cody.  Cody, an Oscar-winner for Juno (2007) has in the past had a bad habit of using cringey slang words in her dialogue that make her scripts sound way out of touch with the age groups that she’s trying to connect with.  But, when used well, she can write some very funny and excessive genre films, particularly in this horror comedy mode.  One of the interesting things about Lisa Frankenstein is that it marks the directorial debut of Zelda Williams, daughter of the late great Robin Williams.  A movie like this is a big swing for a first time director, but it looks like a bold statement as well to signal that Ms. Williams is ready to put her voice out there as a filmmaker.  One thing that might be a plus for the movie is that it looks like the kind of film that Tim Burton used to make but no longer does, and thankfully Zelda Williams is coming in to fill that void.  The whole tone of the movie also seems to be refreshingly tougne in cheek, which hopefully doesn’t spoil the movie as a whole, as some horror comedies sometimes lack the right amount of laughs or scares to work as well as they should.  One thing that I do like in the trailer is that the main lead, Kathryn Newton, is really aiming for the fence with her performance; vamping it up in a deliciously comical way that could go a long way in making this movie work.  It all comes down to the execution, and hopefully all of these talented ladies pull it off and knock ’em dead.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

MADAME WEB (FEBRUARY 14)

Given the disappointing year that they experienced, Marvel is sitting out most of the next year with only one official MCU title getting released in 2024; the eagerly anticipated Deadpool 3.  While disappointing to fans, this is honestly a much needed break that Marvel desperately needs in order to recalibrate and get their mojo back.  Sadly, it seems like Sony Pictures didn’t get the memo with their own licensed Marvel films in the Sony Spider-verse.  In 2024, Sony is set to release at least 3 films all connected to their fledgling Spider-Man adjascent cinematic universe, all mostly centered around some of the webslinger’s rogues gallery of villains.  In the summer we get a movie devoted to Kraven the Hunter (2024), which was pushed back from a fall release this year during the strike, and in Fall 2024 we get the third film in the Venom franchise, starring Tom Hardy.  But before all that, we get this movie devoted to one of the most obscure Spider-Man characters in the Marvel canon.  Madame Web tells the origin story of the mystical being central to the multiversal storylines of which Spider-Man is a part of.  There’s not much to say about this movie other than it representing Sony really scrapping the bottom of the barrel in order to fill out their, I guess you can call it “Venomverse.”  Sadly, apart from Tom Hardy’s quirky performance and the stellar animated Spider-Man films, nothing about the Sony produced Spider-verse films have stood out.  Madame Web’s agressive blandness is not going to convince anyone that Sony is on their right track with their franchise, and considering that it’s the same studio responsible for the train wreck that was Morbius (2022), it’s highly likely that this movie is only going to compound the already dire state that comic book movies are in right now.

MEAN GIRLS (JANUARY 12)

Truth be told, this was never my kind of thing to begin with, but even still, a movie like this feels doomed and unnecessary.  Basically it is adaptation of a Broadway musical version of the original 2004 film.  While I’m sure that long time fans of the original will be excited to see this, I also think that it’s likely going to disappoint a lot of people too.  For one thing, it’s just rehashing a story we already know, but doing so 20 years after the fact.  A lot of the things that felt fresh and relevant in the original are going to feel dated in 2024.  Also, the movie is attempting to adapt a musical made for the stage, but still film it like the original film.  I have a feeling it’s going to take away some of the pagentry of live performance that most musicals benefit from, and make the dance and song numbers feel awkward.  That’s what happened with the very unpleasant Dear Evan Hansen (2021) film, and I am already getting the same uncomfortable vibe from this trailer.  Can pros in the cast like Jon Hamm and Tina Fey pull this movie out from that unfortunate association, or are we looking at another Evan Hansen fiasco.  Unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of parallels so I imagine we are in for another bad musical experience.

THE BEEKEEPER (JANUARY 12)

What the hell happened to David Ayer.  The action movie director was on the rise in the early 2010’s with two acclaimed movies back to back; the cop drama End of Watch (2012) and the WWII action flick Fury (2014).  When he was next given the offer to direct Suicide Squad (2016) for DC, it appeared that David Ayer was on the track for big things.  But even despite seeing Suicide Squad earn a healthy box office return, many thought his adaptation of the comics was severly lacking and uneven.  It didn’t help that his follow-up, the critically panned Bright (2017) for Netflix, also failed to live up to expectations.  Since then, David Ayer has sunk down to being a B-movie director once again, with his 2020 film The Tax Collector performing poorly even by pandemic standards. His next film looks to be continuing his slide down into further irrelevancy, as he is working on yet another Jason Statham vehicle that looks nothing more than another paycheck movie that the star can sleepwalk through.  One would hope that David Ayer can find that special project that can once again help him climb back into the upward career trend that he once enjoyed, but sadly this movie does not look the kind of movie to reverse those fortunes at the moment.

So, there you have my preview of the movies coming out in Early 2024.  It’s going to be a quiet start to the year, with very few studio driven releases of note.  Definitely Dune: Part Two is the movie that is going to dominate most of the conversation this Spring if it lives up to the high expectations that we have for it.  It’s just a shame that a grandiose movie like that had to be a victim of the studios’ mismanagement of their response to the strikes.  A lot of the missing presence of big films during these next few months is largely due to the studios misreading the situation and thinking that they could wait out the unions in order to squeeze them into negotiating towards lower terms on the deal.  It didn’t work, and now the studios have few films to show off and boost their quarterly profits in the early part of next year.  The only ones who seem to be moving forward into the next year without disruption to their schedules are the indie producers like A24, because they did the right thing and negotiated fair deals with the unions independent of the big studios, allowing them to continue production while the rest of the industry was shut down.  So, it’s going to be an overall quiet season where the movies that really shine will likely be the smaller, independent films.  Still, there are bigger movies that are certainly out there to see.  Because they’ve decided to take a time out to regroup throughout this opening part of the year, Disney is actually using this time to right a cinematic wrong and allow the three Pixar films that went straight to streaming during the pandemic (Soul, Luca, and Turning Red) to finally have full theatrical releases as a make-up to the one division in their company that defied the slump and overcame a bad start to become a sleeper hit with last year’s Elemental.  My hope is that 2024 is a healing year for Hollywood, which has gone through a rough couple of years both through circumstances they couldn’t control (the pandemic) and through a force that they should’ve handled better than they did (the strikes).  And then hopefully after that, we’ll see the industry booming again in 2025.  For right now, I hope my preview has given you a good sense of what to expect in the next couple of months.  Here’s hoping for a good start to 2024 at the movies even with all the turmoil that the last year has carried over into it.

We are near the end of another Summer movie season, and it’s one that had an outcome that I don’t think anyone expected.  At the top of the summer season, I’m sure many prognosticators of the movie industry believed that the Summer season was going to be dominated by tried and true franchises that have carried Hollywood to glory in the past.  These included of course new movies from Marvel, Pixar, Transformers, Fast and the Furious, DC, Mission: Impossible, and Indiana Jones.  From the beginning of the Summer, it seemed like Hollywood was going to hit it big with their heavy hitters.  Unfortunately for most, it was a season flooded with disappointments.  The performances of this Summer’s box office was defined by a string of movies that either performed well under expectations to just downright flopping.  Marvel did about as well as expected with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and their co-production with Sony Animation, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse outperformed expectations.  But, other films like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Fast X, and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One, could not make up for their extravagant costs with sub-par box office.  And then there is the case of DC’s The Flash, which is going to go down as one of the biggest flops in box office history, possibly costing Warner Brothers to suffer a quarter of a billion shortfall on that film alone.  But, the summer was also defined by another odd occurrence that actually proved to be a savior for movie theaters.  The “Barbenheimer” phenomenon will absolutely go down as one of the craziest “out-of-nowhere” things to happen in Hollywood ever.  Both Barbie and Oppenheimer were entering the Summer season with no one expecting much of them, but online communities took notice of the odd counter-programming that each offered with the same release date and decided to turn it into an event.  Thanks to this, both films are now set to become the biggest box office successes of the year, with Barbie now well above a billion globally, and Oppenheimer likewise is climbing the charts in a way that a three hour R-rated biopic shouldn’t.

One other unfortunate thing that has also defined this summer season is the ongoing strike by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA unions.  Even after 3 months of picketing, it looks like neither side is willing to budge, and it is beginning to deeply affect the industry as a whole.  It’s likely that some of the soft box office numbers for this season is due to the lack of publicity that the studios is missing out on with their actors joining the picket lines.  The lack of traction in the negotiations are also affecting the upcoming release schedules in the near future, as movie and show productions right now have been put into a months long freeze.  Because of this, the studios are pushing back movies into next year, much to the frustration of movies fans.  Believe me, when I was gearing up to write this preview for the Fall Movie season, it was going to look a lot different, as one of my most anticipated Must See films, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, was suddenly pushed back to March of next year by Warner Brothers.  It makes me wonder if any of the films that I still have on this preview will be bumped to next year as well.  Hopefully, a fair deal is struck soon and the films we still have set for this Fall still make it to theaters on time.  In any case, here is my preview of the films of Fall 2023, broken into my Must Sees, the Movies That Have Me Worried, and the Movies to Skip.  Keep in mind, these choices are just based on my early impressions based on the film’s marketing and general advance hype.  My predictions don’t always pan out (I really underestimated Barbie this summer), but I hope it’s helpful for all of you for what to expect in the upcoming months.  So, let’s take a look at the Movies of Fall 2023.

MUST SEES:

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (OCTOBER 20)

If there has been a streaming provider that has navigated the waters of the streaming “gold rush” wisely, it has been Apple.  The entertainment wing of the tech giant is not as financially strained as the other major Hollywood studios, given that they are funded by the biggest corporation in the world.  But, Apple has also chosen their projects wisely; opting for quality over quantity.  The Apple TV+ library of content may not be robust, but they have thus far gained notoriety for award winning productions, including the first ever Best Picture win for a streamer (2021’s CODA).  This year, Apple Studios is making it’s biggest push ever into mainstream success with a pair of highly anticipated epics from two Hollywood legends.  Not only that, they are giving these movies wide theatrical runs before they move to streaming; a strategy that I hope catches on.  First, there is Martin Scorsese’s new epic based on the best-selling historical novel of the same name from author David Grann.  Killers of the Flower Moon looks like another ambitious exercise for the legendary filmmaker; taking his expertise in exploring the seedy underworld of organized crime, but filtering it through the lens of the American Western.  This film about the Osage Nation murders in 1920’s Oklahoma looks to be gritty and multi-layered exploration of greed and violence that Scorsese is the undeniable master of.  Given the already strong buzz out of the Cannes Film Festival where it premiered, it looks like Scorsese has another winner on his hands.  The director unlike many of his other contemporaries has been more embracing of streaming, as his last film The Irishman (2019) released through Netflix, and I think it’s because streaming platforms have allowed him more creative wiggle room than the established Hollywood studios have given him.  Hopefully the near 3 1/2 hour runtime doesn’t scare off audiences; maybe Oppenheimer’s success could be a good sign.  But with a cast that includes two of Scorsese’s favorites (Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro), plus a potentially star-making turn for Lily Gladstone, and supporting performances from heavy hitters like Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, and recent Best Actor winner Brendan Fraser, this should very much be a movie that is going to light up the screen and show that Scorsese in deed is not losing any of his edge.

NAPOLEON (NOVEMBER 22)

Here we have Apple Studios other big epic gamble for this Fall season.  It’s quite the flex that not only are we getting a new Scorsese film from Apple this year, but also a new Ridley Scott film as well.  Scott has been hit or miss over the last decade, but when he’s got a project that works to his strengths (lavish period production values and epic scale battles) he definitely delivers.  His last historical epic, The Last Duel (2021), while not a financial success still was a winner with critics and it showed that he indeed has some of the old Gladiator magic left in his arsenal.  For his lavish biopic of the notorious French general turned emperor, Scott re-teams for the first time in over twenty years with his Gladiator star, Joaquin Phoenix.  Phoenix has been on a roll lately with his Oscar-winning turn in Joker (2019) as well as a collection well received notices in indie films from A24 like C’mon C’mon (2021) and Beau is Afraid (2023).  Phoenix is certainly the ideal choice to take on this larger than life historical figure and it will be interesting to see what he and Scott bring to the film in telling his story.  Naturally, you can expect this movie to have some incredible visuals, which is expected of a filmmaker with the resume that Ridley Scott has.  Apparently, this has been a long in the making project for Scott, who has been circling this project for decades.  It’s probably why he was intent on working with Apple on this, because they were likely less concerned about the cost than other studios.  That way Scott could make the film grittier and harder hitting than the usual PG-13 he’s been required to deliver in the past.  And thankfully like Killers of the Flower Moon, Apple is giving Napoleon a full theatrical run, partnering up for distribution with Sony Pictures (Moon is released through Paramount).  That way, we’ll be able to still see good old fashioned Ridley Scott directed epic battles on a huge screen, like we always should.

THE MARVELS (NOVEMBER 10)

Marvel Studios managed to hold it’s own in a very unforgiving Summer for most franchises.  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 did about as well as many people hoped, though it wasn’t anything record-shattering.  And despite being looked at as a box office disappointment, this February’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s $476 million worldwide gross is something that I’m sure most other studios wish they had right now.  Even still, there are troubling signs for Marvel that they are still grappling with.  The Phase Four line up that wrapped last year with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) didn’t sizzle at the box office like past Phases of Marvel, and critically the studio is suffering from far less enthusiasm than before.  The box office numbers are solid, but not exceptional, and it seems like Marvel is becoming a victim of their own astronomical success.  At the core of their problems seems to be that they are over-stretched, with too many plates being served with not enough ingredients; something that is only being compounded with the multiple projects exclusive to Disney+.  Even still, Marvel movies are still events that warrant attention, and this sequel to the hit movie Captain Marvel (2019) has an interesting element that helps it to stand out.  This film is the first to incorporate central characters that were already established in the Marvel Disney+ series line-up; in this case Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) from the show of the same name, and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) from Wandavision,  joining to team up with Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) herself.  Thankfully for Marvel, these two characters are from two of the more successful and critically acclaimed Disney+ shows, so their inclusion here is likely more of a benefit than a hinderance.  Captain Marvel is certainly a divisive film amongst fans, but with so much of the world and character building out of the way, this sequel has the benefit of actually letting the story stand on it’s own.  Director Nia DaCosta has stated that her film is going to be more geared toward a looser, more emotional character driven side, which might be a good change of pace for Marvel after a string of formulaic exercises.  And given that Dune: Part Two’s move has opened up a bunch of large format screens for the movie, it might be the box office hit that Marvel needs to recharge it’s momentum.

DISNEY’S WISH (NOVEMBER 22)

The animation landscape has shifted pretty dramatically.  Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks, once the hallmark brands of the industry have struggled post-pandemic to gain back the family audiences that once turned them into reliable box office power houses.  In the meantime, upstart Illumination has enjoyed back to back monster hits like Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) and The Super Marion Bros. Movie (2023), and Sony Animation hit both critically and at the box office with Across the Spider-Verse.  Some are saying that these once powerful brands days are numbered, but I don’t think it’s the studios that are the problem, but more that family audiences are more inclined to go back to the theaters for something they know will entertain their kids than something they are not sure about.  Minions, Mario and Spider-Man all succeeded because they already had built in audience awareness.  Original animated films unconnected to built in franchises are what audiences are struggling to embrace.  Disney’s Encanto (2021) was thought to be a box office disappointment, but a few months later, we were all signing about not talking about Bruno. This year, Pixar’s Elemental (2022) likewise also found it’s audience slowly over time, turning around their box office fortunes from costly flop to sleeper hit.  The films aren’t the problem, it’s getting audiences confident in the studio brand again to make them take their kids to the theater instead of waiting for streaming.  Disney’s Wish is such a movie that could achieve this by having the studio return to their strengths from past films.  It’s a musical fairy tale, which has always been Disney’s strongest suit.  It’s also experimental in it’s art style, emulating hand painted cel animation in 3D computer animation, which owes a bit to the Spider-Verse influence.  Having recent Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose on board voicing their new Disney princess is another plus.  And given that this is their release for the 100th anniversary, Disney is also likely to put in some meta elements centered around the story point of the wishing star in the film, like a cameo or two.  Disney’s had mixed results post-pandemic with their string of original films, but Wish might have the right mix of originality and familiar elements to help make it a new animated classic that brings the legendary studio back to the top.

NEXT GOAL WINS (NOVEMBER 17)

Taika Waititi has been one of the most prolific comedic filmmakers as of late, with a very enviable track record to back that up.  One of his movies, Jojo Rabbit (2019) was in my opinion not just one of the best comedies of the last decade, but also one of the best movies period.  He’s also been a key voice in the Marvel Studios stable of directors, having re-invented the Thor franchise with Thor: Ragnarok (2017).  His follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) was much more divisive, though I found myself not minding it too much.  His next upcoming film, however, finds him returning to his roots as an early comedy filmmaker.  The common thread through most of Waititi’s films is an appreciation for lovable losers, and that’s the theme at the core of this film.  In Next Goal Wins, he is telling the story of the Samoan National Football team, which historically had the worst score ever in international competition; losing 31-0 to Australia.  Despite mining all the comedic potential of how bad this team can be, there is a warm human story to be told here as well, about a community often looked down upon by the rest of the world and how they manage to remain bonded together through adversity.  It’s also a lot about how an outsider, namely the new head coach played by Michael Fassbender, learns more about the essence of the game by seeing the literal worst players in the world find so much fulfilment by being on that field as a team.  Taika is so masterful at balancing those moments of hilarity with heart and hopefully this film carries over some of that great mix of both that he so expertly weaved into Jojo Rabbit.  From the trailer alone, we can definitely see that at the very least there will be some pretty hard laughs in there.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

WONKA (DECEMBER 15)

Well, with Dune: Part Two off of the 2023 calendar, this is actor Timothee Chalamet’s one and only chance to deliver a hit this season at the box office.  This film is going to be fairly controversial in many ways.  It is taking a beloved literary and film classic and attempting to tell a back story that I don’t know if anyone was clamoring that much for.  Here we are getting the story of how Willy Wonka came to be the eccentric “candy man” that we all know from the classic Roald Dahl tale, delivered as a big musical extravaganza.  It’s not the first time that this story has been revisited before on the big screen.  Tim Burton famously brought his own vision to the famous story, but unlike this film, Burton’s version was it’s own thing, acting more as a unique adaptation of Dahl’s novel, and less of a re-make of the beloved 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder.  This film, however, is deliberately tying itself to that original film version, and that may be a risky thing to do correctly.  First of all, Chalamet has some very big shoes to fill, as Gene Wilder’s performance as Willy Wonka is viewed by many as iconic and without comparison.  Johnny Depp’s version of Willy Wonka very much fell short compared to Wilder’s performance, and that’s the same kind of harsh scrutiny that is about to come Chalamet’s way.  Chalamet is also not known as a song and dance performer, so he is going to have to disprove a lot of naysayers out there.  On the plus side, this film is being directed by Paul King, the man behind the beloved Paddington films, and this kind of movie is something that very much plays to his strengths.  Hopefully the team behind this film can make it stand well on it’s own, but given the pedigree of story they are working with, the bar is going to be set pretty high.

A HAUNTING IN VENICE (SEPTEMBER 15)

You’ve got to hand it to Kenneth Branagh; he is a persistent filmmaker.  His adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries has become a little franchise that could on it’s own despite some heavy obstacles along the way.  2017’s Murder on the Orient Express became a modest hit at the time, but it’s follow-up Death on the Nile (2022) was a pandemic and scandal plagued production that limped into theaters in early February and was quickly dismissed.  It’s surprising that after all that Branagh was still able to keep going with the continuation of these films, and do so as quick as he did.  At least this time around, his film is not being dogged by pandemic delays or one or two problematic actors in the cast.  A Haunting in Venice, the third film in this Poirot franchise, seems to be playing it more safe after Death on the Nile; modest in scale with less of an all-star cast than previous movies.  Even still, Branagh is still making some surprise choices in his casting of this movie, with performers as diverse as Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, and newly crowned Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh in the cast, alongside with himself returning as the “world’s greatest detective.” What is interesting though is the big shift in tone.  For this movie, Branagh is far more leaning into horror movie tropes, which is a departure from the tone this series has had up to now.  Is it something that may breathe new life into this series of movies, or is it a doomed “hail mary” play that likely won’t capture any cross over appeal.  I certainly don’t think that Branagh’s making a straight up horror movie here, but then again it could end up being surprisingly dark comparatively for this kind of movie.  Thus far, this Poirot franchise has been a mixed bag, and never quite as exciting as the trailers have made it out to be.  But, I’m willing to see if a fresh approach actually does something good here.  Branagh has demonstrated his capability of being an experimental and venturous filmmaker before.  Maybe it might be interesting to see him explore a darker side.

POOR THINGS (DECEMBER 9)

This is the kind of movie that honestly go either way for me.  I have in the past responded to films from Yorgos Lanthimos in very opposite ways.  I distinctly hated his 2015 film, The Lobster, but I loved his 2018 film, The Favourite.  It seemed to me so unbelievable that I could have such polar opposite opinions to movies from the same director like that, but I guess he’s just that kind of filmmaker.  I feel like this new film of his will likely drive me to either extreme as well.  It is certainly a movie that is going to take some risks, and likewise challenge it’s audience.  It’s hyper-stylized, and I almost think that this might be a bad thing, especially considering that production design on this film feels a bit too much like AI generated art for some tastes.  One thing that could indeed be the film’s best element is the cast.  Emma Stone, who worked well with Lanthimos in The Favourite, takes the spotlight here and seems to be relishing the opportunity to go weird with this Frankenstein-like origin to her character.  Mark Ruffalo also seems refreshingly oddball, which is a nice departure for him, and I do get a laugh out of his awkward reading of the line “Oww” in the trailer.  And of course, if you are going to go weird with your movie, casting Willem Dafoe is always a good choice.  One other thing that I think works in Lanthimos’ favor is that he’s once again working with another writer’s script (The Favourite’s Tony McNamara) which I think is the winning formula.  I find Lanthimos’ own screenplays to be too self-indulgent, so I think he works better adapting a screenplay that is not his own, because his strengths better lie in his direction.  We’ll just have to see if this film falls on the Best or Worst list by the end of the year.

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM (DECEMBER 20)

Most of the major film studios are having a bad year, but DC is having an extraordinary bad year.  The aforementioned The Flash is a box office flop for the history books, and the other entries from the DCEU franchise that includes Shazam: Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle have not faired any better.  Before James Gunn takes the reigns of the future of the DC cinematic universe, there is one film left from the old regime that is still in the pipeline.  Aquaman (2018) was surprisingly the biggest box office success of the DCEU era, becoming the only film of that franchise to gross over a billion worldwide.  One thing that worked to it’s advantage was that it was able to coast on the wave that was the peak year for the super hero movie genre, 2018, which also saw the likes of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ant-Man and the Wasp all making big money at the box office.  Sadly for Aquaman, the heydays of that money train are over, and it’s been especially rough for DC.  It also feels like the movie is doomed even before it hits theaters, not just because of the shake-up in management of DC, but also from the news that the movie has had to go through multiple re-shoots, all of which have ballooned the already high budget of this movie.  Is there anything that can help this Aquaman sequel avoid the same terrible fate of the rest of DC’s 2023 slate.  On the plus side, Jason Momoa is still a generally liked movie star, as opposed to the “star” of The Flash, and his star power could still conceivably help carry the film.  Also, Warner Brothers is remarkably as of right now still sticking with the Christmas holiday release date for this movie.  If Dune: Part Two was acceptable to push to the Spring but Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was not, it must show a level of confidence that Warner has in this film; at least that’s the hope.  We’ll have to see if DC is going to close this chapter right, or if it’s the final pathetic nail in the coffin of the doomed DCEU.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (NOVEMBER 17)

If there is something that the last Summer season has shown us, it’s that reviving long dormant film franchises is not a winning formula anymore.  Indiana Jones and Transformers learned that the hard way, and I think that the same is likely going to happen to The Hunger Games franchise as well.  In the early 2010’s, Hunger Games was certainly a force to be reckoned with, but once it got into the latter entries in the series, the fuel was definitely starting to run out, and now The Hunger Games no longer feels culturally relevant anymore.  Still, the people at Lionsgate seem to think that there is more to mine from this property and that’s why they are adapting this prequel to the original series.  This to me seems like a big mistake because one, Hunger Games is no longer the power house that it used to be, two, just by knowing the events of the original films we know how this movie will end, and three, the series’ central heroine Katniss (whom was the main thing that hooked in fans from the beginning) is not involved in any way.  Basically, this movie is trying to lure audiences back on the concept and the world alone, which I don’t think is enough to bring audiences on board.  For the original films it was the characters, and in particular Jennifer Lawrence’s performance as Katniss that became the big draw.  There are some heavy hitters on board here, like Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage, but I don’t see them drawing back any of the series’ past fans.  For a series that already had a short shelf life, I feel like this will be a quickly forgotten chapter.

TROLLS BAND TOGETHER (NOVEMBER 17)

I mentioned before that Dreamworks, along with Disney and Pixar, have had a rough time lately at the box office.  But, unlike the other two studios which has bright spots on the horizon with original concepts and experimentation, Dreamworks’ future slate looks pretty unremarkable with more formulaic sequels for the foreseeable future.  This is even despite having their best film in years last Winter with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.  This summer, they had their biggest failure with Ruby Gilman; Teenage Kraken, and up next on the slate is the third film in their tepid Trolls franchise.  The first Trolls (2016) was a modest if unremarkable box office success, and their follow up, Trolls World Tour (2020) got sidelined from theaters altogether by the pandemic, sending it straight to streaming.  This film looks like it’s just a repeat of the formula and not adding anything substantial artistically or thematically to the franchise, which is something that the best sequels should do (Puss in Boots; The Last Wish being a shining example).  Like the other movies, this film seems more geared towards selling an album than making a memorable film, and it’s unfortunately another sign of Dreamworks losing it’s edge as one of the hallmark names in animation.

EXPEND4BLES (SEPTEMBER 22)

Speaking of another franchise that has lost it’s potency over the years, we are now getting another Expendables movie, nearly 9 years after the last one.  The original concept when this franchise was started was fun enough, with Sylvester Stallone assembling a team made up of some of the most legendary action movie stars all in one movie; including having himself, Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis share the screen for the first time.  Two more sequels added even more star power like Jean Claude Van Damme, Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, and even Harrison Ford to the roster.  But, time eventually ran out, and a lot of those movie stars either fully retired, or became less interested in returning.  So now it’s just Stallone, Jason Statham and whatever C-Lister they can rope in left.  Part of the appeal of this series is now gone, and it just looks like a tired retread of a now irrelevant series.  Of the cast, only Statham has any real star power left, and even here it seems like he’s phoning it in.  Probably better to have left this team retired.

So, there you have my outlook of the Fall 2023 movie season.  Given the uncertainty brought on by the ongoing stalemate of the dual strikes hitting Hollywood right now, I fear that this will be a movie season that will see a lot of movies struggle at the box office.  Given the dramatic move of Dune: Part Two this week, it seems worrying that no breakthrough is expected anytime soon.  The studios are shamelessly trying to shift blame to the striking talent, but the writers and actors don’t have the power to move movies off of their release dates; that’s entirely on the studios.  I don’t know if they are intentionally doing this as a ploy to weaken the union’s position in the eyes of the audience, or if they are that dependent on star power to sell a movie to audiences.  None of this is deterring the solidarity of the unions, and if anyone is hurt in the crossfire, it’s the movie theaters themselves.  They have had to fight tooth and nail to keep afloat through the pandemic era, and now they are once again in a panic by the effects of strike.  Unlike the pandemic which was a global crisis, the economic impacts of this stalemate in the strike negotiations is entirely a self-inflicted wound for Hollywood.  Had the studios just come forward with a fair deal that took into consideration the things that are important to all their creative workers, they wouldn’t be in the precarious position they are in now.  The unions are not asking for a whole lot (less than 1% of the studios yearly profits) and yet the studios’ greed has ended up costing them billions.  I hate to go off on a rant like this, but sadly we are seeing pettiness on the part of Hollywood executives spoiling what could have been a stellar year at the box office.  Hopefully the whole thing gets resolved soon so that we don’t see any more of our most anticipated movies get pushed further back.  Hopefully there are some good surprises that come out of the Fall festival circuit that helps to make the upcoming awards season interesting.  And with all this considered, let’s hope the Fall Movie season of 2023 makes us happy and eager to go back to the movies again.