Movies everyone will be talking about
WHAT’S that buzz? Is it the hum of the Millennium Falcon, warming up in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Or could it be the insistent, thrumming soundtrack of Sicario: Day of the Soldado? Or maybe the beating wings of Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp in Ant-Man and the Wasp?
From the season’s biggest blockbusters to the buzziest festival favourites just over the horizon, there’s a movie for everyone to talk about this year. Here’s our guide to the films that are already burning up your Twitter feed – and the ones that will be, in a couple months’ time.
Opening dates are for the US and are subject to change.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25) Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Joonas Suotamo.
Set 10 years before the action of the original Star Wars, during the ascendancy of the evil Empire and the rebellion against it, this rollicking heist story – part of an expanded universe that includes Rogue One – introduces us to a young Han Solo (Ehrenreich) and his backstory, including relationships with the smooth-talking Lando Calrissian (Glover) and the hirsute Wookiee, Chewbacca (Suotamo). Action and humour is plentiful. But the film, written by father-and son Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and directed by Ron Howard (after the original directors were fired), is just as much about relationships as revolution.
Ocean’s 8( June 8)
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina.
Bullock heads up the powerhouse cast of this all-female spinoff of the Ocean’s 11 trilogy, playing Debbie Ocean, the estranged sister of George Clooney’s master con artist, Danny Ocean. But the durable heist franchise, which targets the Metropolitan Museum of Art this go-round, has always proved itself to be full of surprises, so who knows?
Hereditary ( June 8)
Starring: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Milly Shapiro, Alex Wolff.
From the moment the trailer Incredibles2.
dropped for the feature debut of writer-director Ari Aster, it was clear that this deeply unsettling horror film – about the supernatural legacy of an old woman whose funeral sets the story in motion – had visual style to burn. Centring on a family of four with a history of mental illness and mysterious rituals, the movie’s unhinged mayhem is grounded by Collette’s tour-de-force performance.
Incredibles 2 ( June 15)
Starring: Voices of Holly Hunter, Craig T Nelson, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener, Samuel L Jackson.
Though 14 years in the making, Brad Bird’s follow-up to his Oscarwinning animated superhero comedy picks up where the 2004 story – which explored what it means to be ordinary and extraordinary – left off. “Supers”, as those with special abilities are known, are still banned, and Elastigirl (Hunter) becomes the public face of a PR campaign to rehabilitate their image. That leaves Mr Incredible as a reluctant stay-at-home dad, tending to his brood of three evermore X-Men-like kids.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ( June 22)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Justice Smith, Toby Jones.
When the titular dino-centric theme park is threatened by an active volcano, Pratt’s dinosaur researcher/ trainer returns to the island to attempt a rescue operation for the pre-
historic critters that live there. But when a potential home for the dangerous beasts back on the US mainland isn’t the sanctuary it seemed, the action-adventure movie morphs into something a little more subtle.
Ant-Man and the Wasp ( July 6) Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hannah John-Kamen.
Marvel just keeps ’em coming: In this sequel to the 2015 film about a teeny-tiny superhero – hugely entertaining, in proportion to its protagonist’s size – Hope Van Dyne, aka the Wasp (Lilly), joins forces with Rudd’s picnic-pest-size protagonist to rescue her mother (Pfeiffer) from an alternate dimension.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout ( July 27)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg.
Christopher McQuarrie seems to have something of a Tom Cruise fetish going, having written and/or directed multiple star vehicles for the ageless megastar. And for a director of action movies, what’s not to love? Cruise, who famously injured himself while jumping from one building to another, hauled himself up to complete the shot – on a broken ankle. That footage is in the finished film.
First Reformed (May 25)
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles (aka Cedric the Entertainer).
Writer-director Paul Schrader is back to form with a multilayered tale of hope, despair and everything in between. Ethan Hawke plays the Rev. Toller, a divorced military chaplain and grieving father, pickling himself in booze over the son he lost in Iraq, while trying to provide pastoral counseling to a troubled parishioner. When a violent act brings Toller closer to that parishioner’s wife (Seyfried), the story goes really deep, diving into issues of personal responsibility, punishment and the possibility – or impossibility – of salvation.
Under the Silver Lake ( June 29) Starring: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace.
Director David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to his breakout movie, the creepily elegant horror film It Follows, is something of a change of pace: When a young man (Garfield) befriends a mysterious neighbour at his Los Angeles apartment complex (Keough), and she disappears the next day, he sets off on a surreal search for her through a La-La Land populated, in the words of the film’s publicity material, by “dog killers, aspiring actors, glitter-pop groups, nightlife personalities, ‘it’ girls, memorabilia hoarders, masked seductresses, homeless gurus, reclusive songwriters, sex workers, wealthy socialites, topless neighbours and the shadowy billionaires floating above (and underneath) it all.”
Blindspotting July 20)
Starring: Daveed Diggs,
Casal.
Written by Diggs ( Hamilton) and his childhood friend Casal, this topical, emotionally charged film explores the nexus of race and class in an Oakland-set story of police brutality, white privilege and gentrification. Diggs and Casal, who grew up in Oakland, play Collin and Miles, best friends who work for a moving company. After Collin, a recently paroled ex-con, witnesses a white police offi-
Rafael cer shooting an unarmed black man, his frustration builds to a cathartic climax.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot ( July 20)
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black.
Joaquin Phoenix plays the late, mordantly funny cartoonist John Callahan, an alcoholic and paraplegic whose 1990 memoir, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, takes its name from the caption of one of the artist’s most famous – and polarising – drawings: A picture of a cowboy search party coming across an empty wheelchair in the desert. Phoenix seems like the perfect choice to embody Callahan’s contradictions.
Hotel Artemis ( June 8)
Starring: Jodie Foster, Sterling K Brown, Charlie Day, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Jenny Slate, Dave Bautista, Brian Tyree Henry, Zachary Quinto.
Set 10 years from now in a dystopian Los Angeles, the tale of a secret, members-only emergency room that caters to criminals may have the single best cast of the summer. Foster plays the Nurse to Brown’s Waikiki, a bank robber who’s fighting to save the life of his wounded brother (Henry). TheMeg.
Eighth Grade ( July 20)
Starring: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton.
Actor and stand-up comic Bo Burnham makes his feature filmmaking debut with this festival charmer about the experiences of an unpopular 15-year-old. As the film’s protagonist, Kayla, Fisher seems poised to break out of cinematic oblivion with her sweetly angsty performance.
The Meg (August 10)
Starring: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Winston Chao, Rainn Wilson.
The 1975 film Jaws set the gold standard for summer popcorn-horror with its depiction of a beach town terrorised by a huge marine predator. That subject resurfaces with a thriller about an expert deep-sea rescue diver (Statham) who must save the crew of a submersible vessel that has been attacked by a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark known as megalodon.
The Happytime Murders (August 17)
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Bill Barretta.
Call it Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets The Muppets. In a noirish Los Angeles inhabited – in a tense and unease standoff – by puppets and the humans who despise them, a puppet detective (Barretta) teams up with his human ex-partner (McCarthy) to investigate a series of murders targeting the cast of a 1980 children’s TV series, The Happytime Gang. The decidedly non-child-friendly film was directed by Brian Henson, the son of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson, and is the first release under his Henson Alternative label.