Dune 2 to a new Mad Max: films to watch...
only The Man Upstairs, who shares her talent for seeing these abandoned creatures, all CGI’d with the voices of, it seems, every star John Kraskinski has ever met, including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Matt Damon, Awkwafina, Jon Stewart and Steve Carell (as a giant, fuzzy purple IF named Blue). Bea and the neighbour friend set about trying to match the IFs with new children, which would seem to limit the new kids’ imaginations, but let’s not split hairs. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Krasinski created an online show called Some Good News, to bring something cheerful to the world, and he has said about If, “I want this to be Some Good News in movie form.” Released on 17 May
11. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
In 2015, George Miller revived the Mad Max franchise, a full 30 years after the previous instalment, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The resulting film could have been a legacy-tarnishing let-down, as so many belated sequels are – yet Mad Max: Fury Road wasn’t just acclaimed as the best of the series, but as one of the greatest action movies ever made. A further nine years on, Miller has directed another drag-racing spectacular set in the same post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland. This time it’s a prequel, with Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Furiosa, the character played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. Chris Hemsworth, barely recognisable under his prosthetic make-up, will be co-starring as the Warlord Dementus. As far as we know, Mad Max himself won’t be appearing, but let’s hope that we catch a glimpse of the most beloved character from Fury Road: the War Boy with a double-necked flamethrowing guitar. Released on 23 May
12. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
The rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, which began in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, has been strong commercially and creatively, with involving plots and motion-capture technology that makes the apes seem human. This fourth instalment begins 300 years after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), which ended with the death of Caesar, the role that earned such praise for Andy Serkis. Now the apes are calmly dominating humans (maybe we were asking for it?), when an evil, power-hungry ruler who calls himself Proximus Caesar emerges. Owen Teague (It) has the lead motion-capture role as an idealistic ape, Noa, who along with a young feral woman named Mae (Freya Allen) defies Proximus. Wes Ball, of the Maze Runner trilogy, takes over from Matt Reeves as director. Released on 24 May
13. Inside Out 2
Disney had a rough year in 2023, with many of its most high-profile films crashing and burning, so the studio’s executives must be hoping that they can repeat the success of Pixar’s Oscar-winning Inside Out, the seventh highest grossing film of 2015. The sequel, directed by Kelsey Mann and written by Meg LeFauve, takes us back inside the mind of a girl named Riley. She is now a teenager, so the emotions from the first film – Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust – are joined by a host of new ones. One of these is Anxiety (Maya Hawke), and the others are rumoured to be Embarrassment, Ennui and Envy. It’s slightly disturbing that the people at Pixar believe that our negative emotions greatly outnumber our positive ones, but maybe, after their difficult 2023, everyone in the company is beset by Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui and Envy themselves. Released on 14 June
14. Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1
Kevin Costner’s role as a rancher in the hit series Yellowstone was hardly his first Western. He won an Oscar for directing Dances with Wolves (1990), which also won best picture. He returns to the Old West, and directed, co-wrote and stars in this epic two-part film set in the 1860s, during the period before and after the US Civil War. Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington are among the large cast of more than 170, with Luke Wilson, Jenna Malone and Danny Huston among them, in a story that explores how the West was settled. In the trailer, the vast landscape looks spectacular but it’s vague on the story’s details: Costner rides across an open range, turns and aims a gun at an unseen enemy. But he once reportedly said the film debunks myths about the West, so there’s that. And he’s obviously taking his time, because these films are the first of a projected four in the saga. Chapter 1 is released on 28 June, Chapter 2 is released on 16 August
15. A Quiet Place: Day One
Day One is a spinoff of the creepily effective horror franchise about alien monsters with supersensitive hearing who kill humans as soon as they hear a pin drop. Set before the timeline of A Quiet Place Parts One and Two, this story takes us back to the start of the invasion. Lupita Nyong’o is the heroine, who is in noisy New York City when the attacks begin. Alex Wolff, Denis O’Hare and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) are also in the cast, along with Djimon Hounsou. His character is the only one to return from the earlier films, where he was seen as the leader of an island community whose small population silently escaped the chaos. John Kraskinski, who directed the previous films, came up with the story for this one, written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, which sounds like a smart choice. Sarnoski made the sharp, intense, sensitive drama Pig (2021) starring Nicolas Cage. Released on 28 June
16. Deadpool 3
This instalment of Marvel’s comic-action franchise, with Ryan Reynolds as the scarred tongue-in-check superhero hiding behind his costume and his wise cracks, is officially still untitled, although the high concept is clear: Deadpool Meets Wolverine. Hugh Jackman, who had said he would not return to the role after the character died in Logan (2017), changed his mind and plays Wolverine in a story set before the events of that film. (Time is always a moving target in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) Deadpool and Wolverine apparently have a bickering, buddy-movie dynamic, which Jackman has described by saying, “He’s the fast-talking quick-worded loudmouth, and my character just wants to punch him in the head.” Spoken like a man who understands his character. Emma Corrin plays a seductive villain, and the director is Shawn Levy, of the Night at the Museum movies. This should be a better fit for Levy than the recent debacle of a drama All the Light We Cannot See. Released on 26 July
17. Alien: Romulus
There have already been eight Alien films, including the two Alien vs Predator crossovers, but their quality has plummeted several light years since Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). The first film’s director, Ridley Scott, returned for the franchise’s two most recent instalments, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), but not even they could recapture the original spine-chilling magic. Can Fede Álvarez do a better job? The director of Don’t Breathe and The Girl in the Spider’s Web has promised a standalone monster movie that is set between the events of Alien and Aliens, and which has a new set of characters, unrelated to the ones we’ve seen before. Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) stars as one of “a group of young people on a distant world” who, presumably, find a batch of very strange-looking eggs... Released on 16 August
18. Beetlejuice 2
In 1988, Tim Burton’s supernatural comedy, Beetlejuice, introduced the world to Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a sleazy undead “bio-exorcist” who is employed by two ghosts (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) to scare away their house’s new owners. He had a smaller role than some of the film’s other characters, and he ended up being the villain, but Keaton’s livewire charisma made him a cult anti-hero, and he has since cropped up in an animated TV series, a musical and several video games. Now at last he is back in a big-screen sequel, released a mere 36 years after the first film. Many of the original actors are back, too, including Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. More importantly, Burton is directing again. With any luck, he’ll utilise the practical puppetry that gave the first film its oddball charm, rather than replacing it with 21st-Century CGI. Released on 6 September
19. Joker: Folie à Deux
There have been endless megabudget blockbusters about DC’s superheroes over the past decade, and yet the company’s most notable cinematic success was a gritty supervillain drama inspired by two Martin Scorsese films, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Co-written and directed by Todd Phillips, Joker told the story of a failed stand-up comedian, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who reinvents himself as Batman’s arch enemy. It won two Oscars, including one for Phoenix, and it became a billion-dollar hit, the highest grossing film ever with an R rating. The sequel features Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, the character played by Margot Robbie in the main DC universe films. And the word is that Joker: Folie à Deux is going to be a musical. That may sound like an absurd idea, but the first film sounded like an absurd idea, too, and who’s laughing now? Released on 4 October
20. Paddington in Peru
Paddington 2 is a rare phenomenon: a sequel superior to the film that came before it. When it came out in 2017, it earnt one of the highest ever ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and it quickly gained a reputation as a new family classic. Seven years later, could the third film in the series reach an even higher standard? The nerve-racking thing is that the director of Paddington 2, Paul King, and his co-writer, Simon Farnaby, have been busy making Wonka, and so a new team has been put in place, including Dougal Wilson, a commercials director who is making his feature-film debut. It could go either way, then, but it should be fun to see Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) visiting his Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) in the Home for Retired Bears in Peru, while the Brown family explores the Amazon rainforest with a guide played by Antonio Banderas. Released on 8 November
21. Alto Knights
This crime story, set in the 1950s, chronicles the rivalry between the mobsters Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, a fight so intense that Genovese tried to have Costello killed. The trick is that Robert De Niro plays both characters. It may be a stunt, but I’m there for it. The title refers to a New York social club that was a mob hangout, but the working title was The Wise Guys, which sounds familiar for good reason. The screenplay is by Nicholas Pileggi, whose non-fiction book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family was the source for Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Barry Levinson (who made The Wizard of Lies, starring De Niro as Bernie Madoff) directs here, with a cast that includes Debra Messing as Costello’s wife, Bobbie, and Sopranos veteran Katherine Narducci as Genovese’s wife, Anna. Released on 15 November