Honestly, 2024 might be the year that does it. ‘It’ being save cinema (Barbenheimer who?). A quick survey of the films awaiting us over the next handful of months is already filling us with glee, clapping our little hands, ready to go to the movies.
There are some big blockbusters on the docket: Ridley Scott's Gladiator sequel starring an ascendant Paul Mescal, Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa, and Hugh Jackman's coming back for his second final go at playing Wolverine in the Deadpool threequel. But there is also some delicious indie fare, not least tennis throuple outing Challengers and swoon-worthy Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding…
We're gonna be eating well.
Poor Things
12 January
We could hardly think of a more joyous way to kick off 2024 than Yorgos Lanthimos' beautiful Oscar-nominated concoction Poor Things – a whirling, distorted, technicolour adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel of the same name. Starring Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, the subject of a Frankenstein-esque experiment best left undisclosed if you're one of the very few that hasn't yet seen it or already formed an opinion, this wonderfully funny and viscerally delightful film is a true celebration of how blessedly brilliant it is to be alive. Mark Ruffalo, for his part, is also very funny and sexy in this film: with an accent for the ages. You can watch Poor Things on Apple TV+.
All of Us Strangers
26 January
Britain's great cinematic translator of the modern queer experience, Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years, the TV show Longing) returns with a Rizla-paper-delicate rumination on gay loneliness, love, and how grief lingers like a spectre in the corner of the room.
It's part ghost story, part nocturnal romance, part late-stage coming-of-ager. Andrew Scott stars as Adam, a depressed screenwriter working on a new script inspired by the death of his parents. For research, he visits his childhood home on the outskirts of London, only to find his mum and dad — Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, respectively — are seemingly alive and well, looking exactly as they did thirty years ago. Meanwhile, a steamy tryst blossoms with a stranger (Paul Mescal) in Adam's empty apartment complex.
It's stirring, and achingly felt. One of those movies to not see with your dad (or anyone else who you're embarrassed to watch unflinching gay sex scenes with, or endlessly cry in front of). And it's sure to stand as one of the best of the year. You can watch All of Us Strangers on Disney+.
The Zone of Interest
2 February
The Zone of Interest is only the British auteur's fourth film in his 23-year-long, eclectic directorial career (he also made 2000's Sexy Beast, 2004's Birth and ScarJo's thrilling 2013 sex-alien-murderer movie, Under the Skin.) It's also, arguably, his best, if “best” is the appropriate adjective for a holocaust movie that terrifies you into a hypnotised tremor with its pounding sound design and haunting visuals. And we rarely see inside the camp: loosely based on Martin Amis' novel of the same name, The Zone of Interest tells the story of the Nazi genocide from the perspective of the camp commandant — and his doting family — who live next door. You'll never want to watch it again. You can watch The Zone of Interest on Amazon Prime.
The Iron Claw
9 February
Who knew Zac Efron could get so swole? In The Iron Claw, he's like a gigantic, walking bicep. But his hulking frame isn't (entirely) the point of the film, which is a biopic of the Von Erich wrestling dynasty — a family of professional wrestlers beset by tragedy, not least the sons. Efron is a brilliant Kevin Von Erich, the slightly more fortunate star of the fraternal pack; Jeremy Allen White portrays Kerry, Harris Dickinson plays David, and Stanley Simons plays Mike. A tearjerker through and through, with plenty of 1980s dad rock bangers. You can watch The Iron Claw on Apple TV+.
Spaceman
1 March
In which Adam Sandler plays a Czechoslovakian astronaut who befriends a giant alien spider voiced by Paul Dano (no, we're not kidding). Here's another sombre space drama, directed by Chernobyl helmer Johan Renck, confronting the eerie loneliness of the cosmos. In Spaceman, said isolation looks to be both literal and a metaphor for the broken romantic bonds between Sandler's Jakub Procházka and his Earthbound wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Sandler has killed it whenever he's played it straight recently — see also: Uncut Gems, Hustle — so, as big proponents of the ongoing Sandlernaissance, we can't wait for this one. You can watch Spaceman on Netflix.
Dune: Part Two
1 March
Victim to the writers' and actors' strikes in Hollywood, Dune: Part Two was originally set to land in late 2023. Nevertheless, months later, the release date for Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to his gargantuan sci-fi epic has finally arrived, with this one posed to centre on Zendaya's Chani, the Freman warrior we glimpsed through Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet) visions in the first one. Dune MVP Jason Momoa doesn't return for the sequel as far as we know, owing to his character being very dead — but clued-up stans of the original Frank Herbert books might just be expecting a cameo… You can watch Dune: Part Two in cinemas now.
Drive Away Dolls
15 March
We are cackling with gleeful excitement about Drive Away Dolls, Ethan Coen's solo debut as director. Starring indie darlings Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Stars at Noon) and Geraldine Viswanathan (Bad Education, The Broken Hearts Gallery), this road movie caper following two friends who skip town together only to find a mysterious … something … in the trunk of their car is set to be the first in what Coen's called his ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy’. Truly, long live the lesbian B-movie. What a time to be alive. Pedro Pascal is in it too! You can watch Drive Away Dolls in cinemas now.
Road House
21 March
Remember Road House, the 1989 action flick feat. Patrick Swayze? Well, that’s fine, because if you're in need of a refresher, Jake Gyllenhaal has teamed up with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman to give us a remake that amps up the budget and gives us a lot more boat explosions than the original. Gyllenhaal will play Elwood Dalton, a punch-happy former MMA fighter who’s down on his luck.
Unable to turn down a job, he soon finds himself working as the muscle at a road house in the Florida Keys. This is a Doug Liman picture after all, so it’s not long before trouble brews and real-life boxer Conor McGregor shows up as one of Dalton’s hot-heated rivals. Come for Gyllenhaal in full action star mode, stay to see him and McGregor effectively just beating the shit out of each other. You can watch Road House on Prime Video.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
22 March
Who ‘ya gonna call? Ghostbusters: Afterlife, for all of its focus on fan-service and nostalgia bait, was a lot of fun, switching out the old proton pack for one newly charged. Frozen Empire brings back the new characters we were introduced to in Afterlife — Paul Rudd’s Gary Grooberson, Carrie Coon's Callie Spengler, Finn Wolfhard's Trevor Spengler, Mckenna Grace's Phoebe Spengler, among others — with the O.G.'s returning, too. As far as we know, this one sees the Spenglers move to New York and restart the Ghostbusters from the iconic firehouse, when a new evil arises. You can watch Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in cinemas now.
Io Capitano
5 April
This timely, oft-somber drama charts the Homeric odyssey of two Senegalese boys, Seydou and Moussa, who leave their hometown of Dakar with the promised land of Italy in their sights, chasing a deeply human dream: a better life. Their perilous journey sees them traverse arid desert and furious seas. They're captured, extorted and exploited by traffickers. Terror abounds, but so does hope. We saw it at the Venice Film Festival, and it's a gloriously shot picture by Matteo Garrone, who has made one of the most impactful, moving films about the European migrant crisis in recent years. No wonder it was nominated for a Best International Feature Film Oscar. You can watch Io Capitano in cinemas now.
Monkey Man
5 April
Dev Patel as director and Jordan Peel on production duties – what an electric combo. In Monkey Man, the former’s debut, we’re introduced to “Kid”, played by Patel, who’s part of an underground fight club in which he wears a Gorilla mask every night (hence the film title) while getting beaten to a pulp by other more popular fighters for cash.
Eventually, “after years of suppressed rage”, Kid finds a way to “infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite.” Essentially, it’ll be a satisfyingly bloody revenge film with plentiful punching and Patel in full action mode. The film was originally slated to be released via Netflix, but is now being theatrically released through Universal (hallelujah). You can watch Monkey Man in cinemas now.
Civil War
12 April
Alex Garland looks set on taking a pause from directorial duties while he writes the upcoming 28 Years Later movies for Danny Boyle, leaving Civil War as the Ex Machina and Annihilation auteur's potential directorial swansong. You don't get much more timely than a film about the United States descending into violent chaos and in-fighting on the cusp of the most consequential American election of many lifetimes. Fingers crossed Garland hasn't done a Charlie Brooker on us and predicted the future. Hold onto your butts. (Oh, and it stars the husband-wife duo of Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons.) You can watch Civil War in cinemas now.
I.S.S.
26 April
With the world rapidly going to hell in a hand basket, it's curious to imagine what the astronauts up in the International Space Station might be thinking of our puny goings-on below. Extending that thought exercise: what would they do if, say, World War III struck while they were onboard with their global comrades, and the Earth below them was engulfed by nuclear hellfire? Can't imagine it would make for comfortable conversation at the international dinner table. I.S.S. is a new thriller imagining exactly this scenario unfold, the crisis made worse by orders that arrive from the competing space agencies to neutralise the others. You can watch I.S.S. on Amazon Prime.
Challengers
26 April
Another movie whose 2023 premiere was delayed by the actors' strike, Challengers is an increasingly prolific Luca Guadagnino's (best known for Call Me by Your Name) follow-up to Bones and All, trading out the star power of Timothée Chalamet for the equally strong Hollywood allure of Euphoria's Zendaya. This one's also for the bisexuals: Challengers centres on a hot, feisty love-triangle-of-sorts between Zendaya's Tashi, a one-time tennis star whose career was ended by a freak accident, and her two muses, husband/international tennis ace Art (Mike Faist) and their long-time pal/international tennis flop Patrick (Josh O'Connor). Believe us, “banger” is the appropriate term. You can watch Challengers in cinemas now.
The Fall Guy
2 May
Barbie gave us the “Ryan Gosling being goofy” itch, and it seems like The Fall Guy will be here to scratch it, although it is a movie by David Leitch, who last gave us Bullet Train, so expect a hefty serving of action with that comedy. Gosling will play a Hollywood stuntman who, after a year off from the business, is called back into action when the big star of his ex-girlfiend's new movie (star played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, girlfriend by Emily Blunt) goes missing and he is seemingly the only person with enough disregard for mortality to go looking for him. But when the mystery deepens, the danger verges on more genuinely life-threatening than all that Hollywood smoke and mirrors. You can watch The Fall Guy in cinemas now.
Love Lies Bleeding
3 May
Already setting hearts on fire all over Twitter, Love Lies Bleeding is only director Rose Glass's second feature (after Saint Maud) but she's raked in one of the biggest stars we have – Kristen Stewart. A romantic thriller that follows a gym manager from a criminal family (that's Stewart) who falls hard for a bisexual bodybuilder (an incredibly ripped Katy O'Brian) heading to Vegas, it is the kind of film that challenges you to ask, what more could we want? The implications of this … too sexy to behold. You can watch Love Lies Bleeding in cinemas now.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
10 May
As The Simpsons' Troy McClure once sang: “Oh my god, I was wrong / It was Earth all along / You've finally made a monkey out of meeeee…” Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth instalment of the franchise reboot trilogy, imagining Earth ruled by hyper-intelligent apes in the wake of a devastating pandemic which all but leaves humankind extinct. This one is set 300 years into the future, when humans have become a feral race hunted and enslaved by their simian overlords — such as was the case with Charlton Heston's 1968 original. Whether this one will have a big, Statue of Liberty-sized twist at the end is yet to be confirmed. You can watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in cinemas now.
Hoard
17 May
Joseph Quinn hive, rise up: with Stranger Things' Eddie Munson soon to dominate our screens in A Quiet Place: Day One, Gladiator 2 and, next year, as the Human Torch in the new Fantastic Four movie, this might be the last (or only) chance you get to see him flex his acting chops in a proper indie flick. Hoard stars Quinn as a layabout ex-foster kid in his early 20s who pursues a queasy relationship with his foster sister, Maria, portrayed by newcomer Saura Lightfoot Leon, who you might've also seen in Masters of the Air. A sticky, delightfully gross coming-of-ager which has made director Luna Carmoon one to watch on the British indie scene. You can watch Hoard in cinemas now.
Furiosa
24 May
Hmm, let me just Google how long it's been since Mad Max: Fury Road came o— Christ alive, we're getting old. Furiosa is George Miller's long-awaited fifth instalment in the Mad Max franchise, this one tipped to be a direct prequel to the Tom Hardy-starrer, focusing instead on the mechanically limbed bodyguard played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron. Being a prequel, Theron doesn't return — instead Furiosa will be portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy, hot off a string of hits in The Queen's Gambit, Last Night in Soho and The Menu. Chris Hemsworth appears as a new villain with a very Mad Max-y name, Dementus. Rumours suggest the budget is north of $150 million, at least half of which has been earmarked for Hemsworth's digitalised dad bod.
The Beast
31 May
If you're into contemporary French arthouse cinema — who isn't! — likelihood is that Bertrand Bonello, the film festival fave who directed the likes of Nocturama and Zombi Child, will be one of your main guys. Now he comes forth with a bat-shit spin on near-future sci-fi, La Bete, or The Beast to those of us who didn't pass our French GCSEs. Long story short, it's about a woman who decides to purge herself of her emotions. Starring Lea Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda and Dasha Nekrasova.
Hit Man
7 June
It’s been approx 84 years since Hit Man first premiered at the Venice Film Festival and had critics waxing lyrical about how good it is, but it finally, finally has a release date. Fans of Anyone But You hunk and human capybara Glen Powell have been eagerly awaiting the actor’s first star vehicle and it’s set to land on Netflix in the middle of the year. Based on a real life Skip Hollandsworth true crime article and helmed by Boyhood director Richard Linklater, Hit Man follows a mild-mannered professor who discovers he’s able to successfully pose as a contract killer for the police. It looks like precisely the kind of slyly funny comedy-drama hit only someone like Linklater can pull off, and with Powell in the driver's seat, we couldn't be more intrigued.
The Crow
7 June
It's impossible to uncouple the legacy of The Crow from the tragedy which undergirds it — the death of star Brandon Lee, killed on set by prop gun in a terrible accident. Such is why the dark, brooding superhero property has remained untouched since the original was release almost 30 years ago. Now ex-Pennywise Bill Skarsgård steps into the titular role: a murdered musician who returns to avenge the deaths of himself and his fiancée (played, in this version, by FKA Twigs). They're complimented in the cast by Isabella Wei, go-to character actor Danny Huston, Laura Bim, Sami Bouajila, and Peaky Blinders' Jordan Bolger.
The Bikeriders
21 June
Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, sexy motorcycle gang – for those of you who are already thinking, ‘sold’, keep your engines revved for this summer, when The Bikeriders lands in cinemas. Inspired by a 1967 photobook of the same name by Danny Lyon – depicting the lives of a Chicago motorcycle club called the Outlaws MC – Jeff Nichols' film portrays the rise and fall of an entirely fictional gang, as it evolves into something far more dangerous than its subculture origins. Sexy and gritty and cool, this seems to promise everything we want from a trip to the movies.
Kinds of Kindness
28 June
The last time Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos teamed up together, for Poor Things, Stone wound up taking home the big golden guy for Best Actress – so you know they're a dream team. This summer, they’ll be getting weird again for Kinds of Kindness, a film which, aside from the above batshit trailer, we don’t actually know that much about plot-wise but which has been described by Lanthimos as “a contemporary film, set in the US – three different stories, with four or five actors who play one part in each story.” Willem Dafoe will also be starring, alongside Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, Euphoria's Hunter Schafer, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn (The Favourite) and Mamoudou Athie.
A Quiet Place: Day One
28 June
If you’ve seen A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequel A Quiet Place: Part II (2020), you’ll already know the premise: our characters are living in a world inhabited by blind extraterrestrial aliens with an acute sense of hearing, hence the need to be quiet. In this much-anticipated prequel, we’re taken all the way back to the start, to ground zero, to see how it all began (how did we not know how it began?). From the trailer, the film looks like an absolute cortisol fest: burning bridges, creepy-ass spider-looking aliens and a lot of screaming and running for your life. It also stars Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, and Alex Wolff, so you know it’s going to be good.
Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One
28 June
Kevin Costner's back, baby! Okay, that's probably not something you're going to be shouting from the rooftops unless you're a Middle American dad, and/or lover of the Western, and/or a Waterworld apologist — which is all to say a Middle American dad. But the stakes are seldom higher than with Horizon, an epic four-part movie series directed by Costner and partially funded from his own bank account; he has reportedly put his 10 acres of top-tier private California coastline on the line to get the film(s) off the ground. We don't know much other than that Costner stars, it's full to the brim with some of our favourite character actors (Michael Rooker! Danny Huston! Thomas Haden Church! Dale Dickey!), and it'll be set on the American frontier during the Civil War. It's set to be followed by Chapter Two in late August.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
3 July
No one tell the Crazy Frog but Axel Foley, Eddie Murphy's renegade copper from ‘80s action-comedy gem Beverly Hills Cop, is coming out of retirement. According to an official synopsis supplied by the streamer, it’ll see Murphy return as Axel, teaming up with his daughter (Taylour Paige) and a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to crack a conspiracy in L.A. Look, who isn't getting in on the legacy sequel money nowadays?
MaXXXine
5 July
It's '80s Hollywood and adult film star Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) is on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream movie scene. However, just as her star begins to rise, a serial killer, the Night Stalker (based, presumably on the real Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, who terrorised California in the 1980s) threatens to topple everything she's built so far. By the looks of things it's a slick, stylish affair, and if you've already watched the other two slashers in Ti West's X trilogy – Pearl (2022) and X (2022) – then you won't need to be sold on this one. But even if you haven't, MaXXXine looks like it'll stand up all on it's own.
Twisters
19 July
We've had our fill of legacyquels over the last decade, from Blade Runner 2049 to Creed and Top Gun: Maverick — the last one especially being an unexpected banger. Glen Powell will surely hope that he can make IP gold again with Twisters, the decades-in-the-making sequel to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton's tornado thriller about a group of swashbuckling storm chasers caught in a mighty Oklahoma storm. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who rose to prominence with his work on the gorgeous migrant drama Minari, we're projecting sunny skies for this return to meteorological suspense.
Deadpool & Wolverine
26 July
Remember when Hugh Jackman hung up the Wolverine claws and bid farewell to the character in the devastatingly affecting tragedy Logan? Yeah, well he's back. Ryan Reynolds (always at the scene of the crime) managed to rope in his longtime frenemy for the R-rated superhero's third outing, although apparently, it takes place before Logan laid the character to rest. Who knows. Anyway, Deadpool 3 was announced a few years back with a release date sometime in 2024. We're still waiting for confirmation of when, but with superhero fatigue hot on the minds of Hollywood execs, we can't help but feel they'll be banking big on the foul-mouthed superhuman.
Borderlands
9 August
Can you believe that this film was first announced in 2015?! In the near decade since, there's been endless shakeups: director changes, actor switch-arounds, an audience screening from two years ago. But now, Borderlands, based on the very popular video game of the same, finally has a release date. Starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee-Curtis, Jack Black and Gina Gerson, this one looks like a hyper-colourful, cyber-punk adjacent romp through the galaxy, replete with bunny ears, swishy red hair and a lot of explosive robot sounds. Is this the year of the video game live-action remake? Looks like it.
Alien: Romulus
16 August
Presumably not named after the scraggiest of the Roy kids in Succession, the next instalment in the Alien series is set to take it back to its roots — taking place between the 1979 original and its hotly rated sequel, Aliens. We don't know a lot about it at present, beyond the official log line, which describes it as a story about “a group of young people on a distant world, find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” Which is all to say that yes, this is an Alien movie. Cailee Spaeny of Priscilla fame stars, with David Jonsson (Industry) and Isabela Merced (Madame Web).
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
6 September
At this point, we might have to consider the theory that Jenna Ortega was built in a Tim Burton lab with the express purpose of starring in all of his remakes. Having already dominated Netflix with her take on the Addams Family's goth girl Wednesday, she's next going to be starring in the long-time-coming sequel of Beetlejuice.
The film will bring back most of the original classic's cast, including Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and, of course, the gross ghoul himself Michael Keaton. It will also bring in new faces in the form of Monica Bellucci and Willem Defoe. Not much is known about what this follow-up will be about, so we'll just have to let anticipation haunt us in the meantime.
Joker: Folie à Deux
4 October
In 2019, Joker — Todd Phillips' King of Comedy-fication of the Crown Prince of Crime — chuckled its way from a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (that festival's award for Best Film) to a Best Actor win for Joaquin Phoenix at the Oscars, plus a swathe of other nominations. MUBI tote carrying cineastes were up in arms; we thought it was pretty good. This sequel looks to capitalise on the chaos, introducing Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, the Joker's love interest, in a musical aping Golden Age oldies like Singin' in the Rain. “Send in… the clowns…”
Wolf Man
25 October
Girls' Golden Retriever boyfriend Christopher Abbott — last seen as a man who thinks he's a goat post-lobotomy in Yorgos Lanthimos' latest Oscar courter, Poor Things — is turning once again to the animal kingdom in this seemingly modern adaptation of Wolf Man, one of the classic slate of Universal Monsters. He'll be directed by Leigh Whannell, who helmed the successful modernisation of The Invisible Man, which starred Elizabeth Moss as a woman terrorised by her ex in a high-tech invisibility suit, replete with timely social commentary. Expect the same sort of spin on a classic movie myth, with added societal subtext, here.
Gladiator 2
22 November
Treat that date as a placeholder for now. Filming had moved ahead for Gladiator 2 in Malta back in June and July, but the actors' strike forced production to a halt. Whether it comes in November as presently planned (we'll see) or later on, it'll surely be worth the 20-odd year wait.
Paul Mescal takes the combat pit in place of Russell Crowe, whose Maximus Decimus Meridius took his revenge and subsequently died in the first one. Barry Keoghan was attached at one point, but was replaced by The White Lotus' Fred Hechinger. The cast also includes screen legend Denzel Washington, Hollywood's favourite character actor Djimon Hounsou, internet daddy Pedro Pascal, Stranger Things' Joseph Quinn and bona fide British stage royalty Derek Jacobi.
Mufasa: The Lion King
20 December
We'd usually have absolutely zero interest in another “live-action” Disney remake, but Mufasa: The Lion King has our interest for one reason — and one reason only. That's Barry Jenkins, the indie filmmaker who rose to fame after Moonlight won Best Picture at the Oscars ahead of Damien Chazelle's La La Land. You'll remember the cock up with the announcement.
His movies are brilliant, and this is the first one he has directed in over five years, after a brief detour to television with Prime Video's The Underground Railroad. Who cares if it's a live-action sequel to The Lion King that no one really asked for? (We say that, but 2019's The Lion King made over 1.6 billion quid at the global box office, so maybe we know about as much as the flies buzzing around a pile of warthog dung.)
TBC:
I Saw the TV Glow
Now available in the US. UK release date TBC
You’ve probably seen the words I Saw the TV Glow flying around ever since the A24 horror-thriller started conjuring unusual levels of buzz at this year’s Sundance festival, with a recent Guardian review calling it “remarkable”, “brilliant” and “loaded with meaning yet light on its feet.” But what is it actually about? According to the synopsis it sounds both uber-nostalgic and very of the moment: “Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.” With a trailer awash in neon splatters and soundtracked by indie gems courtesy of Alex G, I Saw the TV glow has all the makings of a new cult favourite. US viewers won’t have to wait for long – it’s out across the pond on 3rd May, but a UK release date has – classically – yet to be announced.
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola hits the French riviera with his 100 million dollar-plus passion project in May, taking the Adam Driver starring Megalopolis to the sunny climes of the Cannes Film Festival. Driver has called the film “undefinable,” and the official log-line makes it sound absolutely batshit bonkers cray-cray: “An accident destroys a New York City-like metropolis already in decay. Caesar, an idealist, aims to rebuild the city as a sustainable utopia, while the venal mayor, Frank Cicero, has other plans. Coming between the opposing men and their visions is Frank's socialite daughter, Julia. Tired of the attention and power she was born with, Julia searches for her life's meaning.”
Bird
Barry Keoghan's next big move after nakedly strutting his stuff in the halls of a dusty manor house? Decidedly more downbeat, if the previous works of its director Andrea Arnold are anything to go by. (Her last movie, Cow, was a documentary about — you guessed it — a cow.) There's nowt known about this one as it stands, but it'll see Keoghan play off against German indie superstar Franz Rogowski, known to MUBI-tote flashing BFI-goers as the bicurious fuckboy who broke Paddington's heart in 2023's Passages. It plays at Cannes in May, which suggests a UK release will come before the end of the year.
Oh, Canada
Richard Gere returns to the arms of his American Gigolo director Paul Schrader in Oh, Canada, which sees him play a tormented writer on the brink of death; Jacob Elordi subs in for Gere in flashback scenes. Uma Thurman is also set to star, as will Michael Imperioli, hot off the heels of his White Lotus-inspired screen renaissance. This one also premieres at Cannes next month, so we would similarly expect it to come to cinemas for us normies by the end of the year.
Anora
Sean Baker's The Florida Project is one of the best films not just about the Sunshine State and its curious juxtapositions, with the poor crammed into decrepit motels in the shadow of Disney, but too the wider challenges faced by the forgotten American underclass. It's a beautiful movie, and few American filmmakers have both such visual verve and enormous empathy for the country's economically deprived; see also his Tangerine, about a trans sex worker in L.A., and Red Rocket, with Simon Rex's pornstar on the wane.
Such is why we're stoked about Baker's latest, Anora, set to debut at Cannes in May as part of the hotly contested competition line-up, alongside the likes of David Cronenberg (as below) and Francis Ford Coppola (above). Starring Scream's Mikey Madison, she'll play a “young sex worker from Brooklyn” who “marries the son of a Russian oligarch,” per its official log line.
The Shrouds
In the 21st Century, Canadian master of the macabre David Cronenberg has loved working in (blood) spurts. He made three movies between 2011 and 2014, before taking an eight year sabbatical, returning in 2022 with Crimes of the Future, mining his traditional thematic interests (which can be essentially distilled down to “the human body is so gross, guys”) for a muscular return to form. Now just two years later comes The Shrouds, which sounds really fucking creepy and also poignant — which is to say, maybe Cronenberg at his best. La Haine's Vincent Cassel stars as a man mourning his dead wife who “invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds.” Is it giving you Black Mirror vibes, too? Well, it was originally conceived as a Netflix series.
Parthenope
The eyes of Letterboxd heads around the world are set on Parthenope, the latest movie from Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, a guy you can always trust to make more hits than misses. His last film, The Hand of God, was a partially autobiographical coming-of-ager about a young Neapolitan hit by a tragic event in his mid-teens; little is known about this one other than that it boasts a notable English name in Gary Oldman. The director has given almost nothing away, simply describing it as about a woman called Parthenope “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth.”
Maria
Look, we can't pretend to be intimately familiar with the life story of Maria Callas; having died in the late ‘70s, she was a bit before our time. But a brief scan of her Wikipedia entry gives up the goods as to why she has piqued the interest of Pablo Larraín, director of Princess Di psychological horror Spencer and Jackie O biopic Jackie. Considered one of the greatest opera singers of all time, her life was beset by tragedy, scrutiny in the press… and she had an affair with Aristotle Onassis, ie. the guy who would later shack up with the former first lady. Perhaps this is the next step towards a Pablo Larraín cinematic universe? Will Natalie Portman appear in a brief post-credits cameo? The cherry on the icing on the cake: Angelina Jolie stars as the eponymous soprano, with film awards nerds tipping her for an Oscars renaissance.
The Apprentice
Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi has made monsters his schtick, from the fairytale trolls of Border to The Holy Spider being inspired by the true crime story of an Iranian serial killer. (His movies have played at the world's biggest film festivals, and such arthouse bonafides saw him recruited for an episode of The Last of Us.) Unsurprisingly, then, his next film will see him take on a slobbering ogre with an orange tint — otherwise known as, heh, Donald Trump. Starring Captain America: The Winter Soldier's Sebastian Stan and Succession's Jeremy Strong, the movie is set to chart the rise of Trump in ‘70s and ’80s New York, mentored by conniving lawyer Roy Cohn.
Find all of the most anticipated TV shows of 2024 here.
