It's that time again! Now that the movie year is coming into sharper focus, I can look ahead at what films I'm anticipating for the rest of 2023. I wait until March because release dates are fickle things You may notice the absence of "Spider-verse" and "Killers of the Flower Moon," which were both on last year's list.
As always, I'm splitting this feature into two posts, one for the mainstream studios film with bigger budgets, that everybody hears about, and one for the foreign, indie and art house fare that may break through to the mainstream eventually, but only the cinephiles anticipate this far in advance. Netflix and Apple releases are categorized with the studio films.
Here we go:
Renfield - I'm fully expecting this to be a bad movie, but the people involved are way too much fun. Nicolas Cage is playing Dracula. Nicholas Hoult is making a play for comedic leading man status, and I'm rooting for him. Director Chris McKay doesn't have the best track record, but I loved "The Lego Batman" movie, and I'm fully onboard for some goofy supernatural antics. Sure, this probably isn't going to be as good as any version of "What We Do in the Shadows," but I'm confident it'll be good for a few easy laughs. And sometimes that's all I really need.
Wes Anderson Double Feature - Thanks to scheduling weirdness, we're looking at the likely possibility of a year with two new Wes Anderson films. "Asteroid City" will not be Anderson's first science fiction film, but a rom-com set in a desert town that becomes a magnet for stargazers during an important celestial event. The cast list is massive, of course. Late in the year, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," an anthology film based on a Roald Dahl short story collection, is due on Netflix. The cast is also massive, but more British. Unlike "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Henry Sugar" will be in live action. And I can't wait.
Barbenheimer - The second it was announced that Christopher Nolan's "Oppenhiemer" and Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" were going to release on the same day, the internet went wild. And when we started getting the set pictures for "Barbie" and the cast announcements for "Oppenheimer," things got more wild. These films couldn't be more different, and yet both are making a case for their potential greatness in the best possible ways. "Barbie" has the best teaser trailer I've seen in years. Frankly, I'm tempted to take July 21st off of work and enjoy a double feature with my fellow film nerds.
Nimona - Blue Sky Studios was a casualty of Disney's acquisition by Fox, and their mostly finished animated film, based on the ND Stevenson "Nimona" comic, was shelved. Fortunately, Netflix and Annapurna stepped to acquire and complete it, albeit with a new team of directors. Because of the LGBT themes and older audience, "Nimona" was not a good fit with Disney, but Netflix has become a dependable purveyor of solid young adult media over the past few years. It's always encouraging when one of these lost productions finds a home, and there have been more and more lately.
Maestro - Bradley Cooper's sophomore film as a director will be a biography of the beloved conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (who was Lydia Tár's mentor, by the way). Cooper will star as Berstein in a prosthetic nose, with Carey Mulligan playing his wife. This could be a disaster, as the weakest parts of "A Star is Born" involved Cooper putting too much emphasis on his own performance in that film. Cooper's a good actor in the right role, but I don't know if he'll be up to the challenge here. In any case, he's got an awful lot of talented people around him, and I can't wait to see the results.
Chalamet for the Holidays - I wouldn't call myself a Timothee Chalamet fan, but he's been very good at picking projects lately. I'm looking forward to "Dune Part 2," where he'll face off against Austin Butler as Harkonnen baddie Feyd Rautha, and Zendaya hopefully gets more screen time.. However, I'm even more curious about the latest Paul King movie, a Willy Wonka musical that will serve as a prequel to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Paul King is the director behind the recent "Paddington" movies, and turned down a couple of other projects for this one, so I've got my fingers crossed.
The Killer - Finally, it's been far too long since the last David Fincher film, and the last Michael Fassbender film for that matter (the Taika Waititi soccer pic has been delayed to September). Netflix has been bullish about this one, releasing a teaser with behind-the-scenes footage in 2022. This is more familiar territory for Fincher, and I have every reason to expect that "The Killer" will be a less moribund picture than "Mank" turned out to be. Details are scarce, but we know that Tilda Swinton is part of the cast and the source material is a French graphic novel.
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