Continuing from last time, this part of the list will be for smaller releases, indie, and foreign films. Release dates are hard to pin down and many of the titles below may end up releasing in 2026 or later. "Love Me," "Life of Chuck," and "Death of a Unicorn," were on last year's list.
The Wedding Banquet - Ang Lee's cross-cultural 1993 film might seem like an odd choice for a remake, but the LGBT experience has changed a lot over the past three decades. One of the screenwriters on the original film, James Schamus, is returning to collaborate with Andrew Ahn on a new version of the story where both of the participants in the sham wedding are LGBT, with a partner they have to hide from the unwary relations. The cast includes Kelly Marie Tran, Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, and Joan Chen.
Bugonia - Yorgos Lanthimos is also remaking a film this year, Jang Joon-Hwan's 2003 Korean science-fiction comedy "Save the Green Planet!" Lanthimos's version will be English language, star Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons, and is probably going to be a lot darker. I'm currently debating whether to track down and watch "Save the Green Planet!" first, or wait to see "Bugonia" in order to preserve some of the surprises. All I know is that it's about conspiracy theories about alien invaders.
Marty Supreme - I'm not the biggest Safdie brothers fan, but they consistently get some fantastic performances out of the actors they collaborate with. Josh and Benny are both making their own films this year. Josh and Darius Khondji, who shot "Uncut Gems," are making "Marty Supreme," about a New York table tennis hustler, largely inspired by Martin Reisman. Timothée Chalamet will play Marty, with Fran Drescher as his mother. Good luck also to Benny's "The Smashing Machine" with Dwayne Johnson.
After the Hunt - At this point any Luca Guadagnino movie is something to look forward to. "After the Hunt" will star Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, and Michael Stuhlbarg, among others, with music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. This is some kind of thriller, with Roberts playing a college professor with a secret past, but the cast and crew already have me sold. Unfortunately distribution is being handled by Amazon/MGM, so I have no idea when we're actually going to see a release.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die - I had to double check this, but it's been a jaw-dropping nine years since we last had a new film from Gore Verbinkski. He's easing back into things with a smaller science fiction indie, where a time traveller does battle against a rogue AI, with help from the patrons of a Los Angeles diner. The cast includes Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple. Verbinski has been one of our most dependable genre directors and it's good to have him back.
Highest 2 Lowest - Should this have been on the list of higher profile films? Well, with Apple pulling back on theatrical releases, the audience for this is going to be limited, unfortunately. Spike Lee's latest joint is an adaptation of Kurosawa's "High and Low" starring Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright. "High and Low" isn't one of my favorite Kurosawa films, featuring an interesting moral quandary, but very straightforward execution. Will Spike Lee do something new with it? We'll see in a few weeks.
Die, My Love - After a long delay due to the strikes, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson will star in a dark comedy horror film directed by Lynne Ramsay, about a rural woman with post-partum depression who starts lashing out. Ramsay is another of those directors who has gone too long between projects, her last being "You Were Never Really Here" in 2017. I'm glad to see her teaming up with Lawrence this time out. LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek, and Nick Nolte are also in the cast.
No Other Choice - Park Chan-Wook's long in-the-works film based on "The Ax" by Donald Westlake is due to arrive in the near future. It will follow a desperate man played by Lee Byung-hun, who decides to eliminate all of his potential replacements after being fired from his job. There's sure to be a good amount of social commentary, and hopefully some fun action too. Park has reportedly been getting some input from Costa Gravas, who adapted the same book as "Le Couperet" back in 2005.
The Phoenician Scheme - I'm not going to bother listing out who's in the cast of the latest Wes Anderson film, except to point out that Benicio Del Toro has the starring role. Really, at this point you're in for Anderson's tale of thrilling espionage and fraught family relationships in a fantastically stylized universe, or you're not. He's back at Germany's Studio Baselberg for this production, where he shot "The Grand Budapest Hotel" ten years ago, and I expect the visuals for this film to be similarly spectacular.
The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol - Animated films take so long to make, and traditionally animated independent films, like the ones made by Sylvain Chomet, tend to take even longer. It's been fifteen years since Chomet's last feature film "The Illusionist," and while there's a decent chance that we'll see his latest, a fantasy biopic of the French writer Marcel Pagnol, by the end of the year, it's just as likely that it'll be a long time yet before the project makes it to theaters.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment