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.

The first third of the year is coming to an end with the hot summer months upon us in a weeks time.  So far, the late winter/early spring movie season has provided us with some answers about the state of the theatrical market so far in the year 2023.  Predictions about this year being one of booming recovery for the theatrical business has proven correct as ticket sales at the box office are booming.  They still haven’t reached the pre-pandemic heights of 2019, but they are very much on their way to getting back to where things should have been.  One of the most pleasing results has been many of the studios second guessing their exhibitions plans for their slate of movies, and films that were once slated for streaming, like New Line’s Evil Dead Rise (2023) that came out this month, or DC’s Blue Beetle (2023) releasing this summer, are now getting full blown theatrical roll outs instead.  Streaming studios like Amazon and Apple are even committing to theatrical releases now for the foreseeable future.  This is very good news for a market that only a couple years ago was on life support during the pandemic.  Certainly, streaming is not a dying market under these new circumstances, but when studios are seeing movies like The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) grossing a billion dollars worldwide in less than a month, you can see why they are starting to believe there is money to be made once again on the big screen.  Sure, there are the movies that failed to live up to expectations this year too, like Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and DC’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods (2023), but the positive signs are out-numbering the negative ones, and the forecast looks good not just for a good Summer movie season, but a great one.

Like all the years past, I will be looking at the movies of the up-coming Summer movie season.  These include my picks for the Must Sees, the Movies that Have Me Worried, and the Movies to Skip.  My choices here are based on my own level of enthusiasm for the movies spotlighted here and are not a forecast for how I think these movies will perform in the months ahead.  My predictions have turned out to be wrong before, because movies often have a way of surprising us and that’s why I like discussing them here.  My choices on these previews basically stem from how well they are being marketed, as well as the general level of hype that has followed them through their journey towards their releases.  Keep in mind, there are a lot of movies coming out in the months ahead, and if I leave a bunch out, it’s because of the limited amount that I allow in this article, and not because the movie isn’t worth discussing.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Summer 2023.

MUST SEES:

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (JUNE 30)

This will likely be the most discussed film of the Summer season.  Movies in the Indiana Jones franchise have been few and far between since their 1980’s heyday.  After a near 20 year absence, producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg brought Indy back to the big screen in 2008 with the fourth entry Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Unfortunately, Crystal Skull was a divisive film that left the fanbase very disappointed, though the movie has it’s defenders (which I’m not ashamed to say I am one of).  Longtime fans of the series lamented the fact that their beloved franchise ended on such a sour note, and the fact that Dr. Jones’ actor Harrison Ford was getting into his senior years made the likelihood of another film to correct the situation was very slim.  However, with Disney taking over Lucasfilm in 2012, they also inherited the Indiana Jones brand with it, and they were not just going to sit on a property that valuable.  Plans were already drawn up for another film, but the question remained; would Harrison Ford want to play Indy one more time?  To the delight of everyone, he said yes.  When this movie comes out, Harrison will be 80 years old, which is a pretty old age to be taking on a challenging role like Indiana Jones.  But it appears that the movie is accounting for that.  This is a movie centered around an aging adventurer who, to his misfortune, is being sucked into another adventure.  One positive sign is that the reigns of this franchise have been given over to director James Mangold, who has before delivered a poignant swan song to a long time cinematic icon with the movie Logan (2017).  If anyone can deliver a beautiful capper to the Harrison Ford era of Indiana Jones that can please all audiences, it’s him.  And Ford, despite his age, does look like he’s back in fine form for this film.  The return of series mainstay John Rhys Davies as Sallah is another good sign, as well as new additions to the cast like Mads Mikkelsen and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.  Let’s hope the final adventure for Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones is the stuff of legend.

OPPENHEIMER (JULY 21)

There are few people who can drive audiences to the movie theaters solely on his name alone.  Christopher Nolan is one of those filmmakers, and this summer we are getting his latest big screen epic.  This is his first film since his departure from his previous home studio Warner Brothers after the public feud over the release of his last movie Tenet (2020) during the pandemic.  Universal quickly swooped in to get the rights to his next highly anticipated project, which is a movie that seems right up his alley.  It seems only natural that the filmmaker known for his big, IMAX screen sized spectacles would want to make a movie about the creation of the atomic bomb.  In particular, Nolan is interested in the man who made the atomic bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, here played by Cillian Murphy, Nolan’s most frequently spotlighted actor.  One of the most exciting things about this movie is that it finds Nolan working with a historical event again, which he did a remarkable job of recreating with his movie Dunkirk (2017).  He also has assembled an impressive cast for this film.  One of the best things that after standing out in so many scene-stealing supporting performances in other Nolan movies, Cillian Murphy is finally taking the lead part, and so far he looks to be making the most of the assignment.  He’s also got plenty star studded support for the likes of Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Gary Oldman, and so many more in this film.  But, the thing we will most likely be lining up for this movie for is in seeing the big IMAX screen moments that Christopher Nolan is famous for.  Supposedly, his team found a way to recreate an atomic blast solely through practical effects and without the aid of CGI.  That’s something I am dying to see how they pull it off.  The trailer is wisely leaving that explosive moment unseen for now, with teases towards what it might appear like.  For this one, you can bet that I am going to be watching it on the biggest screen possible; giving what can only be described as the closest thing to witnessing a real atomic explosion without the destruction that entails.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (JULY 12)

It has been said that over the last year that Tom Cruise is the man who saved the movie theater industry.  Though you can’t say that he did it single handedly, as James Cameron also had a hand with his blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), but there is no doubt that Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick (2022) was an instrumental film in helping to bring audiences back to the cinemas in a big way.  The over a billion dollars made on that film alone was a huge boon for the Summer box office from last year, and remarkably, Cruise did it without what is considered his marquee franchise.  This year, however, we do get the next installment of Tom Cruise’s most prized franchsie, Mission: Impossible, and it does indeed look like he is continuing his track record of upping the ante with each new film.  Like Christopher Nolan, Tom Cruise is a stickler for capturing as much in the camera as he possibly can without having to rely on visual effects.  And in each of the Mission: Impossible movies, Cruise performs most of his own stunt work.  One thing that he tries to do in each movie is to have at least one stunt that has never been attempted before, and each one is more death-defying than the last.  He’s climbed the tallest building in the world, held onto the side of a plane as it takes off, and climbed under the body of a helicopter as it was hovering in mid air.  For this film, the standout stunt involves Cruise running a motor cycle off a cliff; a stunt so complex that Paramount Pictures released a theatrical teaser spotlighting the making of this stunt just on it’s own.  It’s a fair assessment to say that Tom Cruise has helped to save the movie going experience because every movie he makes now demands to be seen on the big screen; no exceptions.  While Top Gun: Maverick had it’s own impressive action sequences, I do think Cruise saves his best work for the Mission: Impossible franchise, and it will be interesting to see how big this new installment will be.  Considering that this is the first of a two part story arc, it would appear that this is a go for broke cinematic experience that Cruise is gearing us up for, and I certainly can’t wait.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (MAY 5)

Now let’s talk about the movie that is set to kick off the Summer movie season in a week’s time.  This highly anticipated movie almost didn’t happen, and it’s road to reality had to clear a few unexpected hurdles.  First off,  director James Gunn suddenly found himself fired from the project in it’s early days after right wing provocateurs tried to cancel him because of his left wing views with a revelation of decade old inappropriate jokes.  Marvel’s parent company Disney later realized their mistake and a few months later invited Gunn to come back to the project.  However, in that time James had already crossed over to rival DC Films, and had accepted the directorial reigns of their newest Suicide Squad film.  Still, Gunn did want to close the book on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise that he shepherded to success his own way, so he did agree to return once his obligation to DC was complete.  However, things got delayed again because of the pandemic, and Gunn continued to develop more for DC as a result, including the acclaimed series Peacemaker.  Eventually, Warner Brothers and DC were so pleased with James Gunn’s work, that he is now being given the keys to the kingdom, masterminding the entire slate of projects coming up in the foreseeable future for DC.  So, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will be something of a swan song for Gunn’s time at Marvel.  Thankfully, it looks like both Marvel and Gunn are making the most of it with a film that looks to close the book in an emotionally satisfying way.  It’s hard to tell if this is the end for any of these characters in the MCU, but it definitely looks like the end for this team, and hopefully the movie delivers on a satisfying conclusion to the journey that they have been on together.  I also hope that the movie still maintains that weird Gunn sensibility that helped to distinguish the movies from all the other Marvel films.  Avengers may be Marvel’s crown jewel, but Guardians has been a bright shining diamond right alongside it, and let’s hope the trilogy keeps that gem shining bright in it’s final chapter.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE (JUNE 2)

When Sony Animation released their film Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse back in 2018, it was a breathe of fresh air for animation.  In an era dominated by the likes of Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and Illumination, Spiderverse was a massive game-changer because it was unlike any other animated movie we had seen before.  With this unique hybrid of 3D computer animation and a hand drawn, comic book aesthetic, Spiderverse was the most monumental shift in animation style that the industry had seen since Toy Story (1995) kick started computer animation.  Now, all the other studios are attempting to incorporate the Spiderverse style into their own films.  Most notably Dreamworks incorporated the style into their recent Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2002), and it resulted in the struggling studio’s best film in over a decade.  It also looks like the same style is being utilized in other upcoming movies like Nickelodeons’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Disney’s Wish.  But, amidst all that, it looks like Sony is continuing to build upon what they already accomplished with their first Spiderverse film.  The animation in Across the Spiderverse looks incredible and even more wild than what we saw in the first movie.  It also offers up an interesting continuation of Miles Morales’ story, as he finds himself in a whole world filled with other Spider-Men.  It’s great to see key mulitversal friends returning like Spider Gwen (Halie Steinfeld) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), and the introduction of an antagonistic Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac) is an exciting addition.  My hope is that this section of the Spider-Man cinematic universe continues to surprise much like it’s predecessor did, maintaining the same level of humor and drama that made that film so special.  It will also be interesting to see if there is any crossover that happens in this film with it’s MCU counterpart, given that they are also playing in the Multiverse as well.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

THE LITTLE MERMAID (MAY 26)

There are plenty of things that have me worried about this upcoming remake of Disney’s animated classic.  First, and most obviously, Disney has a pretty dismal track record with their live action remakes.  For every good one that they manage to make (Cinderella, Pete’s Dragon) they have a dozen more that are utter failures (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Pinocchio).  It’s hard to tell which side The Little Mermaid will ultimately fall on, but the odds aren’t good.  Secondly, I worry about the backlash that may result from this film.  The movie already has created a firestorm because of the casting of an actress of color in the role of Ariel.  The racist comments that have surrounded the film online have been ugly thus far, and I worry that it will only get worse once the movie is out, especially if the movie ends up not being good like so many of Disney’s other remakes.  The last thing I want to see are racists and misogynists feeling emboldened because of a film staring a woman of color in a leading role failing to succeed at the box office.  So far, very little is giving me confidence that this film will break Disney’s losing streak with these remakes.  The most disturbing part are the realistic depictions of characters like Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle.  Didn’t Disney learn the lesson from The Lion King that photo realistic looking animals in their remakes don’t emote the same way that their cartoonish counterparts do, and it just ends up ruining the emotion of the story as a result.  The one thing that does give me hope is Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel.  It doesn’t matter what skin color she has; as long as she plays the part well, she can succeed in this role.  And from the trailer, she definitely has the perfect singing voice for the part.  Her powerful rendition of “Part of Your World” is prominently featured in the trailer, and boy does she sound fantastic.  Hopefully Disney can pull it off, but there are still a lot of factors working against them here.

THE FLASH (JUNE 16)

Normally, this movie would have been a definite must see.  Not only is it the first big screen film centered around one of the most famous comic book super heroes, the Flash, but it also features plenty of nostalgia driven treats that many genre fans have been eagerly awaiting for years for.  So, why is there a big cloud of uncertainty around this film.  The issue has to do with the star of the film, Ezra Miller.  In the years leading up to this film’s release, Miller has been caught up in numerous scandals that have not only caused them to lose their position as the Flash as well as involvement in the DC comics plans in the future, but they are also likely going to be facing future jail time for a crime spree that perhaps sullied their name in the business forever.  Through all that turmoil, it’s any wonder that this movie is getting released at all, especially in light of Warner Brothers pulling the plug on Batgirl which wasn’t plagued by scandal.  It’s perhaps because so much money was poured into this movie beforehand (to the tune of over $200 million) that DC couldn’t just make up for cancelling it without suffering a huge loss (even after tax breaks).  At the same time, insiders within the industry who have seen it, including new DC head honcho James Gunn, have been singing it’s praises.  In all likelihood, this movie may end up being one of the best superhero movies ever made, but in getting it out into theaters, it may also unfortunately enrich the profile of Ezra Miller, who by all accounts we’ve seen so far is a fairly rotten person.  One plus for this film is that it marks the return of Michael Keaton into the role of Batman, 30 years after he last wore the cape and cowl.  That alone might make the movie worth supporting.  In any case, here’s hoping all the insider hype is real and that the whole Ezra Miller situation won’t end up ruining the experience.

BARBIE (JULY 21)

One thing that can definitely be a mine field when it comes to the Summer movie season is the high concept comedies based on a popular brand.  Coming to theaters this year is a live action comedy centered around the Barbie doll.  It’s hard to tell so far if this is a concept that will have any legs (so to speak) as a blockbuster film.  The movie has a stacked cast behind it, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling leading the way as Barbie and Ken, and it even has enlisted acclaimed director Greta Gerwig to bring the concept to life.  The movie trailer gives off some Lego Movie vibes, which can be a good or bad thing.  The good thing is that we’ve seen something like this work before with Lego, where a movie managed to successfully take the toy brand and build a compelling story around.  The bad thing is that Barbie may not be a brand that is compatible with the kind of humor needed to make a movie like this work.  It’s colorful and seems to play around with the Barbie legacy to be sure, but can that be sustained through a full movie.  And my worry is that it might be too big of a swing for someone like Greta Gerwig to take.  She’s excelled so far with smart, female driven dramas like Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), but with Barbie, she may have sadly been saddled with an unfortunate commercial driven project that might stifle her creative sensibilities.  I hope I’m wrong, and that her sharp witted creative voice comes through in this movie and elevates it beyond just the concept itself.  It certainly looks like the cast is committed to the act, especially Gosling who looks like an affably dim Ken.  Here’s hoping that this one is lively fun time, and not a waste of creative talent in the pursuit of easy money based on name recognition.

HAUNTED MANSION (JULY 28)

One thing I’ll say about this one is that it can’t do any worse than the horrible Eddie Murphy headlined original form 2003.  For a while, the failed Haunted Mansion adaptation put a stop to Disney seeking to build other franchises around their most popular theme park attractions.  Released mere months after the surprisingly successful Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), The Haunted Mansion bombed horribly, and afterwards Disney just put their efforts on expanding the Pirates franchise, until that inevitably ran it’s course too.  But, it looks like they are once again beginning to dip their toes again in more theme park adaptations.  An adaptation of Jungle Cruise (2021) did reasonably well enough in a pandemic effected theatrical environment to give Disney confidence in the potential, and once again they looked at giving the Haunted Mansion a second chance.  Now, it’s not the first time they’ve attempted a re-start to this franchise.  For years, Guillermo Del Toro wanted to do his own adaptation as he has been a big fan of the ride since childhood, and it’s clear it has left an impression on his own Gothic cinematic style.  But, for whatever reason, that version stalled and instead the job went to director Justin Simien.  Simien considers himself a devoted fan of the ride too, and he was once a Disneyland cast member during his college years, so he’s not coming at this material from an outsider position.  The only question is, can he faithfully adapt the ride into a film.  The thing that gives me pause is the jokey nature of this trailer.  Haunted Mansion certainly doesn’t need to be a serious film, as the ride itself features it’s own fair share of gags sprinkled within the spooky atmosphere.  But, go too far with the comedy, and you end up with what the original 2003 version gave us, which was neither scary or funny.  That being said, the film does have a strong cast including Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Lakeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito and newly crowned Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota.  Here’s hoping it’s a swinging wake and not dead on arrival.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (JUNE 9)

One thing that I hate to see is a franchise fall back into bad habits after finally getting things on the right track.  The Transformers franchise, after a long time, managed to finally shake off Micheal Bay as it’s chief creative force.  Under his watch, which stretched across 5 films, the franchise just became an incoherent mess, with nothing but loud, destructive mayhem as it’s chief characteristic.  But, once Bay left the series behind, the franchise decided to go a different route with the spin-off prequel Bumblebee (2018).  And the result was the best Transformers movie ever.  It was great to finally see a character driven movie made within this franchise that actually put one of the Auto-Bot heroes front and center as opposed to the obnoxious human characters and give him a heartwarming story to humanize him.  The movie also went out of it’s way to make the character animation of the Transformers look much better than the did before, with the character models of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime actually looking more like their original animated versions from the 80’s.  Sadly though, Bumblebee didn’t perform well at the box office, being outshined that holiday season by DC’s Aquaman (2018), and it looks like the Transformers franchise is going back to the Michael Bay style with their newest film, sacrificing character development for action set-pieces.  I hope I’m wrong, and that the Bumblebee effect managed to influence the franchise for the better, but given what the trailer is selling, it looks more like they are recycling more of the old Bayhem tricks in order to reclaim what they think made the franchise in the first place.

FAST X (MAY 19)

Truth be told, I’ve never gotten into the Fast and the Furious franchise, and the few attempts that I’ve made to give the series a chance have always left me cold and indifferent.  I don’t see anything about this 10th installment that convinces me that things will be any different.  The problem for me is that the franchise just seems to be bloated now with a packed to the gills cast that’s been built up through the whole franchise.  Not only are they not thinning the herd, but they are even bringing back characters once thought to be dead.  And I seriously don’t care about any of it at all.  The one thing that could be entertaining for me with this film is the addition of Jason Momoa as the new villain, because he has enough charisma to make things fun and interesting.  But given that the cast is so big at this point, even including legendary actresses like Rita Moreno and Helen Mirren in the mix, I don’t see how any of them can stand out and still leave room for anything interesting to happen in the story.  My guess is that this film will absolutely pail in comparison to what we are likely going to see from the Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible movies this Summer, which are both master classes in action filmmaking.  Over the course of ten films in a twenty year span, I have yet to be wowed by this franchise and I don’t see anything thus far in Fast X that will win me over.

RUBY GILLMAN: TEENAGE KRAKEN (JUNE 30)

When I first saw this trailer, I thought that it must be from one of those fledgling, up-and-coming studios that try to make a name for themselves with quirky animation and bizarre concepts.  I was shocked to learn that this was the next film up from one of animations’ vanguard brands, Dreamworks.  I know Dreamworks has been struggling as of late, having fallen way off from it’s Shrek fueled heydays.  But, just this last holiday season, they delivered their best film in a long while, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which gave hope that the studio was finding it’s magic again.  It is hard to believe that a sequel to a spinoff to a franchise that has long become dormant would become a box office and critical hit like that, but The Last Wish showed strong legs at the box office and showed that Dreamworks could still deliver the goods.  Sadly, this looks like a step backward for them.  I imagine that this is based on a popular YA series, but it seems like a project that is ill suited for a studio like Dreamworks.  They should be putting their efforts into bolder animation like that found in The Last Wish, instead of chasing after the tween market.  Considering that this is coming out weeks after the far more interesting Pixar film Elemental (which just nearly missed my Must See list), I worry that it’s just going to undermine Dreamworks reputation even further in comparison right at the moment when they seem to be finding their way again.  Hopefully it may be a surprise, but it looks so generic from watching this trailer that I don’t see a positive outlook for this one.

So, there you haver my preview of the Summer 2023 season at the movies.  Given that I left off something as big as the new Pixar film off of my shortlist of Must Sees tells you that this is going to be a stacked Summer season.  I’m certainly hoping for a lot of good things with the movies that are coming out this Summer, like seeing Indiana Jones and the Guardians of the Galaxy getting the royal send-offs they deserve as franchises.  I hope that The Little Mermaid manages to break the bad habits of Disney remakes and hopefully avoids the toxic backlash that I fear is coming it’s way.  I hope that Tom Cruise yet again wows us with things we’ve never seen before, nor dare try ourselves, on the big screen.  And I hope the promise of Christopher Nolan’s visual representation of an atomic blast on an IMAX sized screen is just as monumental that I hope it will be.  There are also a lot of other movies that I hope get some positive attention on the big screen as well this year that are the big blockbuster draws.  One of those is the new Wes Anderson movie, Asteroid City.  Also, my hope is that the predictions for this year at the box office prove true and that we will see theater business return to the levels we witnessed prior to the pandemic.  The last two years have seen sporadic box office highs, but this year we will hopefully see success across the board, with every studio (majors and minors) getting strong returns on their investment.  It’s safe to say that this is one of the strongest line-ups of movies we’ve seen in a while, so it’s likely that movie theaters will have one for the record books once the Summer season is over.  If the robust business seen so far in this first term of 2023 is any indication, bolstered by the likes of Mario, Ant-Man and John Wick, the forecast should prove to be true.  The theatrical industry was battered by the pandemic, but like a Phoenix from the ashes, it is alive again and will hopefully live strong for a long time to come.

The time has come again.  With 2022 standing as a recovery year for the film industry after the subsiding of the Covid-19 pandemic, the same sort of return to normalcy is also happening with the biggest Awards show of the season.  The Oscars, after spending the last couple years in a later to early spring time slot, is now settling back into it’s late winter placement, creating a much tighter frame for Awards season to build momentum for any certain movie.  But, apart from scheduling, the make-up of these Oscars are also looking more like Awards seasons of the pre-pandemic past, and then some.  For the first time in a long while, the year’s top grossing movies are contending in the Best Picture race; those films this year being Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).  Neither has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, but still it’s a good sign that the Academy is beginning to recognize that it’s in their best interest to acknowledge that blockbuster films beloved by the masses are deserving of these honors too.  Apart from those two films, the overall race this year is a very interesting collection of different kinds of movies that typically are overlooked by the Academy; a good sign of different attitudes taking hold within the Academy ranks.  It will remain to be seen if the actual award winners reflect those changing attitudes, or if the Academy will still default towards their safe bet choices.  Like in years past, I will be taking a look at the top eight categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, and Adapted Screenplay) and give you my thoughts as well as my pair of picks; those who I think will win, and those who I think should win.  Keep in mind, I’m an amateur when it comes to picking winners with a so-so track record, and my own biases certainly come into play, so don’t put any money on my choices here.  I will say that I make these picks having seen all the nominated movies, so I at least come to this with an informed mind.  With all that said, let’s take a look at the nominees for the 2023 Academy Awards.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Nominees: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell, All Quiet on the Western Front; Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery; Kazuo Ishiguro, Living; Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks, Top Gun: Maverick; Sarah Polley, Women Talking

Pretty easy to dismiss off the bat is Top Gun: Maverick.  Even the most die hard fans of the movie will admit that the blockbuster film’s best asset was not it’s screenplay.  And there is no doubt that it will be well represented in the technical awards categories.  Usually every year, one of the blockbuster movies sneaks into a screenplay competition, and this was the one for this year.  Rian John follows up his nomination for Knives Out (2019) with another nod here, and his satirical sleuth sequel is definitely the kind of smart and twisty script that the Academy loves.  Unfortunately, being the only nomination for that film probably hurts it’s chances here.  Novelist Ishiguro gets his first nomination for screenwriting here, but it’s for a movie that many acknowledge is not as strong as the Japanese original made by Akira Kurosawa.  What I think has the advantage in this race is Sarah Polley’s Women Talking.  It’s a screenplay where the dialogue is the driving force of the movie, as the whole film is essentially a prolonged debate between women deciding whether or not to leave their Mennonite colony after years of abuse.  The themes of the film will probably resonate strongly with Academy voters as well, given the political climate and the reckoning over the last few years with regards to the #MeToo movement.  Polley is certainly deserving of the honor, but my own favorite in this category is the one film nominated not in the English language.  The screenplay for All Quiet on the Western Front breathes new life into the nearly century old anti-war novel and really brings the harrowing horrors described on the page to terrifying life.  But what is special in the movie is the way it expertly humanizes it’s characters and makes every moment they share on the battlefield all the more agonizing.  On top of that, it expertly weaves in the ticking clock of signing the armistice treaty that ultimately ends WWI.  I’m sure that Sarah Polley will be the victor here, given her victory already at the WGA awards, but if All Quiet has a good night overall in the other categories, it could be a surprise spoiler here, and one that I would be happy to see win as this was indeed one of my favorites of the year.

Who Will Win: Sarah Polley, Women Talking

Who Should Win:  Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell, All Quiet on the Western Front

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin; Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, The Fablemans; Ruben Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness; Todd Field, Tar

One of the big narratives that has emerged out of this Oscar season is the dominance of Everything Everywhere All at Once.  The film that came out in theaters in March, around the same time as the Oscars last year, and stuck around in people’s minds long enough to lead all other Awards nominees, is not only not loosing steam going into Oscar weekend, but it also seems to be gaining momentum.  The film, if it keeps this up, could be one of the biggest winners at the Oscars in recent memory and this could indeed be one of their pick-ups in an overall successful night.  The Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert), as they are known in the industry, have already picked up the WGA award (a strong precursor), so they are likely to do the same at the Oscars barring any surprise upsets.  It’s overall a strong category, as each screenplay is for a film nominated for Best Picture.  My favorite film of the year, The Fablemans, is recognized here, but it’s a screenplay that may be too middle of the road for the Academy this year; though it is interesting that this is Spielberg’s first screenplay nomination in 45 years, the last being for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).  A possible spoiler here could be Martin McDonagh’s pitch black comedy The Banshees of Inisherin, which I would certainly agree is one of the cleverest scripts of the year.  But, it’s also very bleak compared with the rest, which is why the Academy may overlook it.  However, my pick here would be the screenplay that took the longest to write.  Todd Field supposedly worked on the script for Tar over a 12 year period, refining it multiple times until it became the intricate character study that the final film became.  Of the nominees here, it’s the least showy script, playing much more with subtleties of character, but like his two other films In the Bedroom (2001) and Little Children (2006), the brilliance of Tar is in the unexpected and ruthless turns it takes.  So, if Everything Everywhere has a big night, expect it to win here, but Tar for me would make for the most satisfying of upsets.

Who Will Win:  Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Who Should Win:  Todd Field, Tar

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Nominees: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin; Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin; Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway; Judd Hirsch, The Fablemans; Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

As we get into the acting categories, let’s get the most sure thing out of the way.  This one is Ke Huy Quan’s to lose.  All the way through Awards season, Quan has been the favorite for this award, not just for the great performance he gave in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but also because of the incredible narrative of his own real life comeback story.  He was a child actor in the 1980’s, best known for playing Short Round opposite Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), but he quit acting as a teenager because of the lack of good roles for Asian actors in Hollywood at the time.  After over 30 years out of the spotlight, working mostly behind the camera with stunt choreography, he was inspired to return to acting after having seen the hit film Crazy Rich Asians (2018), which was a movie that he believed showed him that there were better opportunities now for Asian actors in the business.  He miraculously landed a role immediately upon returning, and his return has been met with universal praise across the board.  Thus far, he has been a darling of the awards season, bringing people to tears with his heartfelt acceptance speeches, and there is little doubt that he’ll also be doing the same on the Oscar stage.  The Academy loves a comeback story, and his is one of the most inspiring in recent memory.  Are there any spoilers in this race.  The only ones I can think of might be the duo of actors nominated here from Banshees of Inisherin;  Barry Keoghan and Brendan Gleeson, who like Quan are first time nominees here.  They both give great performances, but they also don’t have the comeback story factor putting wind in their sails.  I for one will absolutely be happy to see Ke Huy Quan win, and not just because of my fandom for Temple of Doom.  His performance is clearly the standout in this category, and it will be a wonderful cap to an improbable comeback story that has defined his road to Oscar.

Who Will Win:  Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Who Should Win:  Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees:  Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Hong Chau, The Whale; Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin; Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once

We go from the surest thing to the category that is probably the most open-ended.  The supporting actress race is interesting for a variety of reasons.  One, the nomination of Angela Bassett is historic because it’s the first acting nomination ever for a film from Marvel Studios; a big feather in the cap for the brand which has been trying hard and coming up short over the years in getting the Academy’s attention.  For a while, Bassett also looked like the favorite in this race, but fellow industry veteran Jamie Lee Curtis is coming on strong in the last couple of weeks, buoyed by her win at the SAG awards.  Both Angela Bassett and Jamie Lee Curtis have storied careers over many decades working in Hollywood, and a win for either would be a strong acknowledgement of their contributions to cinema over the years.  But, neither are a sure thing either, as there is the opportunity for an upset here as well.  Jamie Lee Curtis’ co-star Stephanie Hsu may not have the same stacked resume, but her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once is the one that stands out a bit more in the film, and is far more layered and experimental than many of the other nominees here.  But my own personal choice would be Kerry Condon for her tragi-comic performance in The Banshees of Inisherin.  Here clear-minded character in that movie is a wonderful counterbalance to the understated lunacy of her male co-stars, and she especially excels at making her character feel fully human and lived in as part of the film.  It’s hard to say which way the category will go, but if Everything Everywhere All at Once has a huge night, it might lift the tide in Jamie Lee Curtis’ favor, given her career up to now, and she’ll be deserving too.  It’s honestly better to be an established movie star in this category this year than a fresh newcomer, and that’s something that could put either Bassett or Curtis on top in the end.

Who Will Win: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Who Should Win: Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin

BEST ACTOR

Nominees: Austin Butler, Elvis; Bill Nighy, Living; Brendan Fraser, The Whale; Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin; Paul Mescal; Aftersun

Interesting thing to note, everyone in this category is a first time nominee, which is surprising for some given that actors like Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser and Bill Nighy have been around in the movies for decades.  As of right now, one of the fresher faces is carrying the momentum going into Oscar night.  Austin Butler is following in the footsteps of other past winners in this category who won for playing a famous figure in a biopic.  In this case, he is looking to be the odds on favorite for his transformative performance playing “the King” himself, Elvis Presley in the Baz Luhrmann directed film Elvis (2022).  Don’t get me wrong, he is amazing in the movie and clearly the highlight of that film by a wide margin.  But, like most awards given to actors for playing famous figures in entertainment, is the academy really rewarding the performance, or the transformation.  I honestly feel like Austin Butler will win her, but for all the wrong reasons.  The Academy are just suckers for performances that are imitations, and it sadly leads to more original performances that are more deserving getting overlooked in the process.  Case in point, I feel like the buzz around Butler’s Elvis transformation is going to take away from the absolutely groundbreaking work done by Brendan Fraser in The Whale (2022).  Fraser, like Ke Huy Quan in the supporting category, is having a triumphant comeback story unfolding this year, after returning from a long hiatus with a renewed sense of what he wants to be as an actor.  His performance in The Whale, completely disappearing into the persona of a dying 600 pound man, is one for the ages, and I would love it if it gone the due recognition from the Academy.  We’ll see if the Oscars can break out of it’s comfort zone and help give Fraser’s comeback story a powerful benchmark with an Oscar win, but we’ve also seen this scenario play out before, and it’s likely they’ll go with the safe pick of Austin Butler for his noteworthy but still standard performance as Elvis.

Who Will Win: Austin Butler, Elvis

Who Should Win: Brendan Fraser, The Whale

BEST ACTRESS

Nominees: Ana de Armas, Blonde; Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie; Cate Blanchett, Tar; Michelle Williams, The Fablemans; Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

This category certainly drew some controversy immediately after the nominations were announced.  Andrea Riseborough’s out-of-the-blue nomination took everyone by surprise, and the unlikelihood of her inclusion in this category even drew speculation of unlawful campaigning on her behalf that led to her nomination.  The probe turned up no wrongdoing, but unfortunately Ms. Riseborough’s nomination is unfairly tainted by the controversy that surrounds it; with even more controversy surrounding it because it came with the exclusion of Actresses of color in this category, including Viola Davis for The Woman King (2022) and Danielle Deadwyler for Till (2022).  But, Riseborough has little chance of winning here, as the category is pretty much a two woman race going into the final stretch.  Cate Blanchett came into Oscar season as an early front runner, with her virtuoso performance as the titular figure in Todd Field’s Tar.  Her character, Lydia Tar, is a fascinating figure all the way through the movie and it’s an utterly original kind of performance from the legendary performer; fearlessly taking on a character that in many ways is hard to like as she sinks deeper into self-destruction throughout the movie.  But, in recent weeks the groundswell of support for Everything Everywhere All at Once has also lifted up it’s star Michelle Yeoh to being a potential spoiler in this race.  If Yeoh wins, it would be historic as she would be the first Asian actress to ever win the Oscar for a Leading Role, and that would be a landmark too good for the Academy to pass up.  Still, Blanchett is an icon in Hollywood, and many consider her performance in Tar to be her best yet.  She may still yet be the victor, but I would love to see history made with Michelle Yeoh this year.  I’ve loved her work since seeing her in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and all the way through Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and many other great performances.  We’ll see how mighty Everything Everywhere All at Once’s dominance is at the Oscars.  Despite having liked the movie Tar more, I still would love to see Michelle Yeoh win the Oscar here, just because her performance is the more dynamic of the two, and I also like seeing history made at the Oscars.

Who Will Win:  Cate Blanchett, Tar

Who Should Win:  Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin; Ruben Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness; Steven Spielberg, The Fablemans; Todd Field, Tar

One would expect the Daniels to be triumphant here given that they have picked up the lions share of past Awards this season, including the indicative DGA award.  That’s quite the feat for a team that is only on their second feature film (the first being Swiss Army Man).  It’s also not unusual for the award to be shared by two individuals; it’s happened twice before in 1961 with West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins) and 2007 with No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen).  If Everything Everywhere All at Once has a monster of a night, this will be an easy one to call.  Is it the one that I choose.  I do love what the Daniels have done and their win would be a great boost for filmmakers that work outside of the studio system with visions that cannot be so easily pigeon-holed within this industry.  But, given my own bias here, my own favorite runs contradictory to that idea as he is the most insider-y of Hollywood insiders; Steven Spielberg.  The Fablemans was my favorite movie of the year and Spielberg’s direction was the work that impressed me the most of any movie this last year.  It is amazing how well Spielberg’s style works so well in even telling the personal story of his own life.  All of Spielberg’s trademarks are there in the movie, and it takes on a whole different level knowing that the film is a self-portrait.  Another worthy alternative in this category is Todd Field, whose subtle work on Tar shows that he hasn’t lost any of his directorial talent in the 16 years he was absent behind the camera.  So, I do expect the Daniels to win here, but I also would love to see my favorite movie win something at this Oscars, and I feel Spielberg is the best shot it has in the ceremony as a whole, and I would indeed love to see a possible upset here, but it’s highly unlikely, and it’s not like Spielberg hasn’t won here before.

Who Will Win:  Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Who Should Win:  Steven Spielberg, The Fablemans

BEST PICTURE

Nominees:  All Quiet on the Western Front; Avatar: The Way of Water; Elvis; Everything Everywhere All at Once; The Banshees of Inisherin; The Fablemans; Top Gun: Maverick; Triangle of Sadness; Tar; Women Talking

Some interesting developments this year in the Best Picture race.  Not only are the two highest grossing movies of the year represented, but this also shows a shift from trends in recent years that favored movies from streaming platforms.  Only one movie on this list (All Quiet of the Western Front) was made by a streaming producer; Netflix in this case.  All the others were made for theatrical distribution.  During the pandemic years, up to half of the nominees had been streaming exclusives, which shows just how much the dynamic has changed in favor of the theatrical model.  I personally think this is a strong field, mainly because 5 of the 10 nominees made it onto my list this year.  Of all of these, I of course would like to see my favorite movie of the year, The Fablemans, take home the top honor, though I do recognize that this is now a long shot prospect.  Everything Everywhere All at Once has had the strongest legs I’ve seen in the Oscar race in very long time.  Typically, the movie that earns the most nominations at the beginning of the race loses momentum by the time that the awards are given out, but that doesn’t seem to be happening with Everywhere, as it is sweeping up the precursor awards left and right.  A full guild award sweep is always a strong indicator that the same film will win Best Picture here, but stranger things have happened before to “sure things” in the past (La La Land for example).  We’ll have to see how much the Academy’s ranked choice voting system plays a factor, and if some of the older Academy voters are able to wrap their heads around the weirdness of Everything Everywhere.  I do expect that Everything Everywhere All at Once has enough goodwill behind it to get past the goal line, and the question will not be so much if it can will, but how big of a win will it have throughout the ceremony.  More traditional Oscar films like Fablemans or Tar, or even Elvis could play spoiler, but safe money is on Everything winning the night overall.

What Will Win:  Everything Everywhere All at Once

What Should Win:  The Fablemans

And now to quickly run down all the other categories with my picks for what and who I think will win:

Best Cinematography: All Quiet on the Western Front; Best Film Editing: Everything Everywhere All at Once; Best Production Design: Elvis; Best Costume Design: Elvis; Best Sound: Top Gun: Maverick; Best Make-up and Hairstyling: The Whale; Best Original Score: Everything Everywhere All at Once; Best Original Song: “Naatu Naatu” from RRR; Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way of Water; Best Documentary Feature: Navalny; Best Documentary Short: Stranger at the Gate; Best Animated Feature: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio; Best Animated Short: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse; Best Live Action Short: Le Pupille; Best International Feature: All Quiet on the Western Front

So there you have my picks for the 2023 Oscars.  In the Best Picture race, I can definitely say that I had a positive reaction to each of the nominees, with 5 in particular making my Top 10 for the year.  Those 5 will certainly be the ones that I’ll root for at this year’s ceremony.  One thing to look out for is if Everything Everywhere All at Once is picking up a lot of Awards early in some of the down ballot categories.  This will give an indication of how much momentum it took into the final stretch of the voting, and if it looks as good as it has in the last couple of weeks, we might see the biggest Awards winner in this ceremony in a long time.  It won’t be Titanic (1997) or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) big, but given how light Best Picture winners have been lately (like last year’s CODA with just three wins) a night with a movie winning as many as 5-6 or more would be great to see.  Since it’s March release last year, Everything Everywhere All at Once has been the talk of Hollywood ever since, and it would be natural if it swept all the way to the top of the pack at this years Oscars, considering how much it stuck with so many people.  For the most part, I hope this is a year where the Academy Awards gains a bit of it’s respectability back.  The last couple years have been defined by missteps and controversy.  Sadly the only thing that people remember about the last Oscars was the slap that Will Smith gave presenter Christ Rock on stage; a disgusting act that sadly overshadowed the show overall.  It should be a ceremony that looks more like Award shows of the past, with Covid protocols no longer needed to keep people in the Dolby Theater spaced apart.  One thing I’m definitely looking forward to is how RRR‘s (2022) show-stopping dance number “Natuu Natuu” gets translated onto the Oscar stage.  If it’s even remotely like what we saw in the movie, we are in for a good show come Sunday.  Here’s hoping for a good Oscar ceremony that sees deserving and even historical wins, as well as a general positive improvement in the audience interest in the awards overall.  And of course, let’s look forward to seeing what may show up at the Oscars a year from now after all the movie premieres lined up in the months ahead.

The year that was 2022 has come to a close, and once again we have seen another year where the movie industry has been thrown upside down in ways that many people would not have expected at the beginning of the year.  Though still off from pre-pandemic levels, 2022 saw a strong return of business to movie theaters, buoyed by the holiday 2021 hold-over of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) in early January, the mid-Spring successes of DC’s The Batman (2022), Uncharted (2022) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), and of course the summertime phenomenon that was Top Gun: Maverick (2022), ultimately closing out strong with James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).  At the same time, the streaming market for the first time showed some cracks in their near flawless sheen for the first time, with Netflix seeing it’s first ever subscriber contraction, which led to a general slow down across the board in the blue sky outlook of the whole streaming craze.  While the beginning of the year promised big things for the streaming giants, the end of the year finds many of them starting to tighten their belts and re-thinking their futures.  In addition, two of the biggest movie studios went through tumultuous upheavals that could also cast a cloud over the next year.  Disney resorted to the drastic firing of their CEO after a disastrous quarterly misstep in their economic performance, and Warner Brothers completed their merger with Discovery Media by cancelling multiple projects across their media empire, including a few in the can films like Batgirl.  Certainly, Hollywood is a much different place now than it was a year ago, with a lot of uncertainty going into the next year.  One of the things that no doubt is going to need to be figured out in 2023 is how the studios will be able to balance their output in both theaters and on streaming, and where they’ll be able to get their money’s worth out of the performance from both with their catalogue of titles.

Before I continue to look back on the year that was 2022 (please wait one more week before I publish my Top 10) it’s time to check out what’s coming up in the early part of 2023.  Like my other movie previews, I will be taking a look at the Must Sees, the movies that have me worried, and the Movies to Skip.  I am by no means the best handicapper (I underestimated Top Gun: Maverick last year) so take my assessments with a grain of salt.  My thoughts are generally on how anticipated these movies are based on the early hype and the effectiveness of the marketing, when it comes to my own tastes anyway.  There could be a lot of surprises in store, so I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.  So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the Movies of Early 2023.

MUST SEES:

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (FEBRUARY 17)

The Ant-Man franchise has up to this point been the runt of the litter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  While the movies are good, the franchise has been largely been mildly received by audiences and has been only successful enough to justify it’s existence, with Ant-Man’s more important adventures taking place in the Avengers movies.  By comparison, the Ant-Man franchise is low stakes and more geared towards laughs.  But, that looks to change with this third film in the franchise.  The stakes are much higher as Ant-Man, the Wasp, and their family end up stuck in the Quantum Realm, a mini-universe existing underneath our own.  The Quantum Realm has been involved in past films in the MCU, mainly in the Ant-Man films and playing a crucial part in the plot of Avengers: Endgame (2019), but here in Quantumania, we are getting the chance to fully explore it for the first time.  This film launches off what Marvel is calling their Phase 5, and it’s kind of surprising that they would give such an Avengers level event to a character like Ant-Man, who for the most part has been one of Marvel’s more affable characters.  But, at the same time, it seems appropriate because the Ant-Man movies thus far have been leading it’s hero to a moment like this, as playing around in the Quantum Realm no doubt has it’s consequences.  It will be interesting to see how Paul Rudd plays his character in this new tone for his story.  The visual representation of the Quantum Realm also looks stunning as well, with epic scope that we certainly have not seen in any Ant-Man movie thus far.  But what is going to be most significant about this movie is that it will introduce us to the next big bad of the whole MCU; the successor to Thanos as you will.  That character is the multi-dimensional tyrant Kang the Conqueror, played with menacing energy by rising star Jonathan Majors.  Majors has already played a variant of Kang in the Loki Disney+ series named “He Who Remains,” but this will be his full debut as the full blown iconic comic book villain, and it will be exciting to see what he does with the part.  Big things are in Marvel’s future, and it’s certainly exciting to see them help elevate their Ant-Man side of the universe in the process.

CREED III (MARCH 3)

Speaking of upcoming movies with Jonathan Majors in it, we get the third installment of this franchise spin-off of the Rocky series.  While the original Creed’s director Ryan Coogler has been busy building the majestic world of Wakanda over at Marvel, the Creed franchise has surprisingly remained strong on it’s own.  The sequel Creed II (2018) managed to avoid the sophomore slump and held it’s own both critically and at the box office.  Now, we get the third installment, with the film’s star Michael B. Jordan for the first time pulling double duty behind and in front of the camera.  In his feature directorial debut, it seems fitting that he would take on this role in the franchise as his predecessor Sylvester Stallone also directed a couple films in the franchise, on top of writing the screenplay for the original Rocky (1976).  Jordan has been a steadfast believer in this franchise since day one, so I definitely believe that the franchise is in good hands with him at the helm.  And one of the best story choices that him and his team seemed to make is crafting a new adversary who has a past history with Adonis Creed; a one time surrogate brother who’s shady past has built up years of resentment.  All of this will no doubt lead to a volatile show down in the ring, which is where the Rocky and Creed movies have always excelled at leading up to.  Jonathan Majors is a perfect choice to play this role, being a perfect match for Michael B. Jordan both physically and as a performer.  Quantumania will no doubt showcase Major’s acting chops, but Creed III will show both his accomplished acting as well as his incredible physicality.  One thing this trailer doesn’t show us however is what has happened to Rocky Balboa.  I know it’s not his franchise anymore, but you do hope that the movie does give a shout out to the Italian Stallion.  Stallone certainly is still around and can still pop in for a cameo.  We’ll see what the movie has in store for us, and I hope the Rocky question will have a satisfying answer.  But, there is no doubt that Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors will be giving us one hell of a show once the gloves are on and the bell has rung.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (MARCH 24)

Thus far one of the most exciting series of action films to have come out of the last decade has been the John Wick series.  And surprisingly, even 3 films in, the franchise has yet to run out of steam.  That’s pretty impressive for a franchise that is mostly just stunt work and gun fight choreography.  What this series has managed to do so well thus far is build upon it’s world with each installment; constantly raising the stakes while at the same time doing some incredible world-building around it.  It’s been fascinating to see more layers being added to this underground society of assassins and hit men, all with their own codes, network of bureaucracy, and even currency.  And at it’s center, a fascinating figure in John Wick (played by a career best Keanu Reeves).  Now, we continue the adventures of Mr. Wick, the man you call to kill the boogeyman, who has vendetta to settle with the High Table itself that betrayed him.  For the most part, the plot itself doesn’t matter, and that’s what’s refreshing about this series.  It’s just an excuse to set up the next mind-blowing fight scenes that honestly are works of art from the standpoint of stunt coordination.  The fact that Keanu Reeves is still putting himself physically into these kinds of on screen fights as an actor pushing 60 is really impressive, and it gives Tom Cruise some competition.  But, a hero is only as good as the opponent he faces, and in this one, martial arts movie legend Donnie Yen has joined the already stacked cast.  It will be fun to see what the John Wick team does with his talents as an on screen stunt performer.  Returning cast members Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne are also pleasing to see here.  But of course, it all comes down to Keanu Reeves and what he is able to bring to the table.  Can Keanu continue to keep up the pace of the series up with yet another adventure with John Wick?  As long as he keeps making these movies fun, there is little doubt that this will be a rollicking good time.

SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS (MARCH 17)

Alas, this looks likely to be a relic of a Cinematic Universe that no longer exists over at DC.  As the comic book giant re-assesses it’s cinematic future amid the shake-up at Warner Brothers, with Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn now taking creative control of the DC universe plans, what was once known as the Zach Snyderverse era of the DCEU is now dead.  2023 will see the last remnants of that cinematic universe roll out into theaters, including the very troubled Flash movie in the summer and an Aquaman sequel in the Fall.  But first up, we get this sequel to what was honestly one of the bright spots of the dour Snyderverse years at DC.  When Shazam (2019) first came out 3 years ago, it managed to strike that right balance between big action spectacle and charming goofy comic book wonder that DC had honestly struggled to find in most of their DCEU movies.  It was honestly the kind of movie that DC comic book movies should have been over the last decade and sadly was too little too late to salvage what ultimately was an unsalvageable mess.  Thankfully, the movie did well enough to warrant a sequel, with much of the original team still in tact.  Zachary Levi and Asher Angel both return as the young man Billy Batson and his super-powered form.  It also looks like the original film’s refreshing sense of humor is translating over, as well as it’s earnestness.  While so many of the Snyderverse DC movies were serious to fault, Shazam was the one film that seemed to understand that it was a comic book movie first and foremost and it fully embraced the silly side of comics that all that entails.  It will be interesting to see how the movie works in the new foes played by Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, and how the movies is able to build off the last Shazam storyline.  As long as it doesn’t lose sight of what made the first film work in the first place  this will hopefully close out this chapter of the character Shazam on the big screen in a good way.

COCAINE BEAR (FEBRUARY 24)

This could either be one of the dumbest ideas for a movie, or one of the greatest.  Based on an actual recorded incident, the movie’s title pretty much tells us what we’re in for here.  It’s a wild bear that accidently consumes a bunch of cocaine.  And this movie basically speculates on what kind of chaos would ensue as a result.  For the most part, the trailer gives us a pretty good idea of the tone that the filmmakers are seeking with this scenario; pretty much using the premise for violent and gory slapstick comedy.  The film does boast a pretty interesting cast, many not really known for broad comedy.  This includes the late Ray Liotta, in what is likely his last film role, shot before his untimely death earlier this year.  As long as the movie understands that it can’t be taken seriously under any means, and just sticks with the absurdist tone, it might actually work.  There is a danger of them straining one joke over an entire movie and robbing it of it’s effectiveness.  What I think may be key to getting this movie right is the way that the human characters are portrayed.  If they seem to remain broad, cartoonish caricatures like they seem to be in the trailer, it could make the movie as a whole a lot funnier.  It’s all about who’s falling victim to this cocaine crazed bear and how silly their bloody deaths may end up being.  The talent involved could be the key to that, as there are some quality comedic performers here, including the grossly underrated character actor Isaiah Whitlock Jr., with his pitch perfect line reading, “Man, you f$%#ed.”  Hopefully, Cocaine Bear makes good on the promise of it’s premise and delivers something that we rarely see on the big screen these days; a good laugh out loud comedy.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE (APRIL 7)

This movie in particular has one major aspect to worry about.  On the surface, there looks to be a lot going right for this movie.  Adapting the legendary video game series is a daunting task, but the movie looks visually dazzling with characters on model and the attention to detail at a very impressive level.  So, why are people worried about this movie.  Because thus far, people are concerned that the role of the titular plumber himself may have been miscast.  Chris Pratt is no stranger to doing voices in animated films, including his charming roles in The Lego Movie (2014) and Pixar’s Onward (2020).  But, his voice just seems like an obvious mismatch for the role of Mario.  Mario has for many years been voiced in the video games by vocal artist Charles Martinet, who gave Mario a high pitched, Italian accented voice that is very distinctive.  In this case, it looks like Illumination Animation and Nintendo are chasing after a bigger name for the role instead of finding the right voice for the character.  To be fair, the rest of the cast is filled with name actors, but for some of those, like Charlie Day playing Luigi and Jack Black playing Bowser, there seems to have been more effort into getting the voices to match the character they are playing.  For Chris Pratt as Mario, there seems to be far less effort.  Mario just sounds like every other character that Chris has played in movies.  His voice can work in animated films, but the characters he has played have often been better geared towards his strengths.  Hopefully the samples of his performance that we have heard so far are not indicative of the whole movie.  The film does look like it is doing justice to the distinctive visuals of the iconic Nintendo franchise.  Let’s just hope that they have done right by their marquee character as well.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (MARCH 31)

Attempting to launch a new franchise is always tricky, especially in what seems to be a dying genre on the big screen like the Fantasy epic.  The days when the likes of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter ruled the cinemas are long over, so it’s odd that one the most notable titles in nerd all of nerd culture is attempting to step in now to begin it’s own big screen franchise.  Dungeons and Dragons of course is a decades old table top role playing fantasy game that continues to be popular with nerds everywhere, but has yet to cross over into mainstream popularity.  A failed attempt to start-up a cinematic franchise was made in 2001, just a week after The Lord of the Rings launched into cinemas, with a laughably bad movie adaptation starring Jeremy Irons and Marlon Wayans.  You would think that would deter any other attempts, but it looks like Paramount Pictures is going to make a go at it.  One thing that does work in the movie’s favor is it’s atypical cast.  The film includes actors as varied as Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Rege-Jean Page, and Hugh Grant.  Chris Pine can certainly carry a big action epic with a lot of charm as he demonstrated in the Star Trek series.  In general, it seems like the movie is going for a bit of a Guardians of the Galaxy in a fantasy realm feel, which can be a good thing if done right.  I haven’t played D&D myself, so I’m not all that familiar with the lore of the world in the game and cannot attest to the accuracy in which it’s being portrayed in this film.  My hope is that the characters and the sense of fun that we potential for in this trailer carries through into the final film, and at the same time, hopefully it manages to translate the game without disgracing the fanbase that holds the game very dear.  It’s a treacherous world for making a new kind of fantasy epic, so let’s hope this film is up to the quest.

KNOCK AT THE CABIN (FEBRUARY 3)

It’s always a flip of the coin when it comes to the movies of M. Night Shayamalan.  The director who very much likes his puzzle box, Twilight Zone style thrillers, either makes some great films like The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), or he makes some truly terrible movies like The Village (2004), The Happening (2008) or After Earth (2013).  Despite a lot of hatred leveled his way, he has still managed to press on and continue to make movies his way with his own voice, for good and bad.  It’s hard to know which way his next film, Knock at the Cabin will fall.  There is some promise in the premise, but the execution could end up making the film fall short.  Shayamalan tends to overwrite his movies, or make the line readings of his actors feel strange and off.  One of the that is promising in this movie is the presence of Dave Bautista.  Bautista has been one of the most surprisingly versatile actors in recent years, capable of comedic performances in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and the recent Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), as well as dramatic turns in movies like Blade Runner 2047 (2017) and Dune (2021).  Psychological thrillers is something we have yet to see him wrap his muscular arms around until now, so it will be interesting to see how well he works under the direction of Shayamalan.  He certainly brings the right intensity that could work for the role.  Shayamalan is working with a wide range of themes here; religious zealotry, same sex relationships, apocalyptic signs, etc.  All of it may again be beyond his grasps as a director, but it will be interesting to see him try to make the experiment work.  Shayamalan can often frustrate his viewers, but when he does finally manage to make one of his films work, it can be quite the big screen journey.  Let’s hope that it’s one of those kinds of Shayamalan movies.

M3GAN (JANUARY 6)

The first official movie week of 2023 starts off with a movie that is either going to hit it big with audiences, or is going to flounder in it’s own absurdity.  M3gan’s biggest charge against it is that it’s not terribly original.  We are basically just looking at a Child’s Play  for the digital age.  The trailer pretty much leads us towards expecting things to go exactly like they did when it was Chucky the doll causing mayhem.  To the movie’s credit, the doll faced M3gan is an effectively creepy design.  It’s movements, which are more human like as the movie goes on do have a creepy factor too.  But, the movie has a lot more to prove beyond that, which unfortunately from the trailer looks like your standard slasher fare.  Coming off what was actually a banner year for horror movies, with films like X, Pearl, Barbarian, and Smile all earning both critical praise and healthy box office, M3gan needs to show it’s more than just another creepy doll movie and put 2023 on a good start when it comes to the kind of horror movies that can bring back audiences in droves.  Chucky is one of the most famous horror movie icons, so it’s going to be tough to make this new character stick out against his legacy on the big screen.  It can be done, but given that this is a January release, a notorious dumping ground for movies that studios want to bury, the odds are that this movie is likely not going to be the next great horror classic.  But, it could also be a surprise as well, so we’ll just have to find out next week what side of the coin M3gan ends up landing on.

MOVIES TO SKIP:

PLANE (JANUARY 13)

Oh Gerard Butler, why do you make it so easy to lower our expectations.  Butler for a while now has contented himself to being in low budget action flicks with increasing absurdity to their plots.  There have been some bright spots on his resume like Greenland (2020) and Copshop (2021), but for the most part he has been in tough guy action mode since starring in Olympus Has Fallen (2013) nearly a decade ago.  This new film finds him playing an airline pilot who gets caught up in a kidnapping plot with Filipino guerilla war lords, and he must team up with a convicted convict that his plane assigned to transport in order to survive and save the other passengers.  Combine this with one of the most laughably generic titles, and you get what will likely be the year’s most absurd action film, and not in a good way.  Butler continues to phone in these kinds of performances, which is too bad because the good movies that I gave examples of before show that he can still be a good actor when he wants to commit.  But, movies like this are more of what he seems more comfortable acting in, and it’s a a career trajectory that I don’t think does him any favors.  There’s a chance this could be one of those so bad it’s good kinds of movies, but chances are it’s exactly the kind of bad we’d expect from Gerard Butler.

80 FOR BRADY (JANUARY 6)

It’s sad when you see some of the greatest actresses to have graced the silver screen reach their paycheck collecting phase during their twilight years.  That’s the case with this screwball comedy that seems especially late to the party, as it’s glorifying quarterback Tom Brady when he was still in a New England Patriots uniform; something that is already outdated by a couple years.  Not only that but the title is wrong for these particular actresses.  Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are indeed in their eighties, at 85 and 83 respectively, but Sally Field is still under the bar at the age of 76 and Rita Moreno is remarkably still acting at a spry 91.  I love all of these actresses based on their years of great performances, with 3 out of the 4 being Oscar-winners, but man is this kind of movie well beneath their talents.  The sight of a blonde, botoxxed Jane Fonda is also very unsettling to see as well.  This is clearly a movie aimed at the over 60 crowd and no one else (maybe a few die hard Brady fans).  Otherwise, this is a wayward hard pass that goes completely out of bounds for me.

SCREAM VI (MARCH 10)

As if this franchise hasn’t already wrung out it’s last bit of mojo left, now we get the 6th film in the franchise.  The reason this movie is likely going to flounder is because it’s the first without series mainstay Neve Campbell.  Every movie up to now has centered around the character of Sidney Prescott, including the last one which was released only just last year.  That’s a pretty quick turnaround for the franchise, and I doubt this series has the kind of creative juices to take this premise out for yet another spin.  The truth is, the franchise ran out of surprises after the second film, to where even series creator Wes Craven could no longer maintain the suspense factor anymore.  It’s just the same thing over and over again; people killed by a knife wielding murderer in a ghost-face costume, while the survivors offer up some meta commentary about horror movie tropes while they happen to them.  We all know the formula by now, and the filmmakers just seem content to rehash them again.  Without Neve Campbell’s central presence, does this series have anything left to distinguish itself with.  My guess is not.

So there you have my thoughts on the upcoming movies of the first four months of the year.  Unlike last year, which was seeing some of the lingering effects of the pandemic years affecting the number of movies available for release, this year looks to be a far more robust one at the cinemas.  March in particular looks like the Spring Break seasons of old, with big studio titles coming out every week that month.  Not only that, but there’s a Marvel movie in February, which should definitely give late Winter box office a needed boost.  But, it’s the Summer season that looks even more jam packed.  I’ll cover it more once the Summer season gets closer, but we should expect big things from the returns of franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy and Mission Impossible, as well as the next big epic from Christopher Nolan, and Harrison Ford’s one last adventure as Indiana Jones.  For these Spring months, we’ll get a good sense of how the rest of 2023 will play out.  One thing that seems to be certain is that movie theaters will see it’s best post-pandemic year yet, just based on the quantity of movies that are coming to theaters in the next year.  Hopefully this helps to increase business to a point where it convinces the studios that the movie going experience is alive and well and the best possible place to see a return on their investment on their big tent-pole movies.  With the streaming platforms in a bit of a flux, this is certainly the time for the cinematic experience to re-affirm itself.  Let’s hope for a lot of good things to happen in 2023, both on the big screen and in the real world itself.  I hope this preview gives you all a good idea of what’s ahead, and may all of you have a lot of fun watching movies in the next year.