It's the beginning of a new movie year, and I expect that we have a lot of great movies coming our way. However, as always, there are titles that I'm anticipating less than others, and several that I'll be avoiding outright. I want to talk about some of these today.
Before we get started, I should explain that I write this post every year to throw a few lobs at lousy Hollywood moviemaking trends, and hopefully get the snark out of my system for the rest of the year. Please keep in mind that I sincerely hope that I'm wrong about all of the movies mentioned in this post, and that they beat the odds and actually turn out to be decent cinema. There have actually been a couple of examples of this over the last year or two, as COVID delays have given filmmakers more time to fine tune some of their iffier projects. However, it's likely this will be the last time you see discussion of any of these titles on this blog.
We start, as is tradition, with the horror genre. After David Gordon Green's last two "Halloween" films, I'm not particularly interested in what he's going to do with "The Exorcist." There's also another "Saw" film coming in October, tentatively titled "Saw X," which I guess means that "Jigsaw" and "Spiral" are being retroactively counted as the eighth and ninth films in that franchise. Meanwhile, the "Conjuring" universe continues to expand with "The Nun 2," "Evil Dead Rise" shows no signs of being groovy, and I am really hoping that Disney's newest attempt at a "Haunted Mansion" movie is not as bad as I think it's going to be.
That covers a lot of ill-considered sequels, but there are a lot more coming in non-horror genres. I have made my disappointment with "Book Club" pretty clear, but "Book Club 2 - The Next Chapter" will be rearing its head in May. I'm not necessarily opposed to "Meg 2: The Trench," but I worry that it's being helmed by Ben Wheatley, whose output has gone from bad to worse over the last few years. Also, nothing in his filmography suggests he has any proficiency with the necessary schlock required for this assignment. And at the end of the summer, prepare yourselves for a fourth "Expendables" film. I respect that Sylvester Stallone is still hanging in there, and good for Megan Fox for still getting work, but we do not need a fourth "Expendables" film. They have expended enough. They are expent.
Over on the superhero side of the slate, can we talk about "Kraven the Hunter"? Some might see "Morbius" as a fluke, but the truth is that none of Sony's non-Marvel Spider-man universe films have been very good. I'm a little curious to see what J.C. Chandor is going to do with a superhero film, but honestly Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing his third superhero role, and Ariana DeBose as a voodoo priestess does not sound good. And I guess we can't very well talk about superhero woes at the box office and not mention "The Flash," which has a release date in June and a star who is a walking public relations disaster. How do you do press for a film where the star has pending charges for felony burglary and can't seem to stop assaulting people in public? I'm pretty sure that "The Flash" will actually turn out to be a decent movie, and make a lot of money, but it may be time to just put the whole DCEU out of its misery and start over.
Finally, I didn't want to include children's films as a category because they're too few and far between at the theaters these days. But good grief, how is there already another "PAW Patrol" movie coming? We're barely recovered from the last one. Also, my sympathies to the lovely and talented Hailee Bailey, but the live action remake of "The Little Mermaid" is probably going to be terrible, because almost all of the other live action remakes of animated Disney films have been terrible. They're having Awkwafina voice the seagull, for pete's sake.
I'll have my most anticipated film lists up around March, after Sundance.
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