Sweet release: Must-see movies for 2023
It bugs me a little that, with a few taps on my laptop, I can find out the release dates of films that are still two years away. Call me old-fashioned, but I reckon waiting until you have a wonderful script – and then starting production, is still the only way to make a film.
But if you know in 2022 exactly when a new Avengers movie is going to be released in 2024, then surely some part of the process – probably the scriptwriting – is going to be compromised to hit that release date.
Or, maybe, scriptwriters are just like the rest of us – and a looming deadline is the only thing that keeps them focused on the job.
And with that thought in mind, here’s a column on the films coming up in the first-half of 2023 that I’m most looking forward to.
Right at the beginning of the year, on January 5, please take everyone you love to see Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which knocked everyone for six at the 2022 International Film Festival. This live-action, stop-motion mockumentary about a snail (no, really) is just about the most inventive and unexpected kids’ movie I’ve seen in years. Which, of course, means adults love it on a whole other level. It’s gold.
On February 16, Marvel kick off their year with Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. Luckily, there’s a hilariously over-informative trailer to tell us that the film will see our heroes – plus Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathryn Newton, travel into a hidden realm – part of the multiverse maybe? And that Bill Murray lives there. The idea of a Murray cameo doesn’t excite me anything like as much as it might have a couple of years ago. But, see you there I guess?
Due on March 2, Sam Mendes’ (1917) awardsbait hopeful Empire Of Light has been overshadowed by Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, but it still looks like a sumptuous night out. The film is set in the 1980s, in England, against a backdrop of a decaying cinema and a fraying country – both in need of restoration and repair. Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones all appear.
The next week, Adam Driver battles dinosaurs in 65. Wahey!
John Wick returns on March 23 and the New Zealand-made Red, White and Brass – on the young Tongan men who started a brass band to score Rugby World Cup tickets in 2011 – opens seven days later. I did a few days’ work on Red, White and Brass – and it looked pretty joyous.
And on June 1, the sequel to one of the greatest animated films of the last few years drops.
The Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse trailer has been setting the fans on fire by appearing to show every iteration of Spider-Beings there’s ever been. It’s A LOT. The first film was fantastic. And I reckon this follow-up will be too.
The end of that month – the 29th – sees the completely unexpected release of a new Indiana Jones movie, The Dial of Destiny, with an aged Harrison Ford apparently battling it out in 1960s London and New York, among other places. The director is James Mangold, most famous for Logan. Which – spoiler – didn’t end well for Hugh Jackman. We’ll know in six months whether Ford is joining Jackman and Daniel Craig’s Bond in the oh-my-god-I-didn’t-see-that-coming hall of fame.
And look out for July 20 and the release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. And also Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The ‘‘battle of the bombshell’’ jokes will be thick on the ground. I figured I’d just get mine in early.
Also, that Barbie-meets-2001 A Space Odyssey trailer is a masterpiece. What a time to be alive.