Wait. We have to wait until July for Tom Cruise and “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One” to save mainstream movie theaters, the way “Top Gun: Maverick” saved theaters in 2022?
If that’s the case, then the theatrical exhibition game may be turning into a late-stage exercise in one man, flying through the air in a plane or on a motorcycle, keeping Earth safe and warm for democracy, AMC Theaters and aging-yet-ageless superstars.
But we should note: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” made close to half a billion in the U.S. apiece in 2022. “Jurassic World Dominion” came close to that, while smaller-budgeted, higher-invention ringers led by “Everything Everywhere All at Once” profited handsomely on efficient budgets. You can’t count out theaters just yet.
In our multiverse many things are true. We still go to the movies, selectively. And there’s still a pandemic. And the studios’ nervous desire to get to the part where we’re all streaming and the multiplexes go away feels destructively short-sighted.
The next three months, popularly known as winter, might just hand us some movies worth the effort of getting up off the sofa. Here are 10 to consider, based on pure guesswork with one exception. I’ve seen “Saint Omer,” a one-of-a-kind courtroom drama from French director Alice Diop. The rest? We’ll see.
Release dates subject to change.
“M3GAN” (Jan. 6): The title of this horror thriller, rated PG-13 but apparently right at the edge of R, refers to “Model 3 Generative Android,” a scarily intuitive and lifelike doll (think Nicole Kidman as redesigned by a malignant online troll). When a toy company robotics expert, played by Allison Williams, becomes the guardian of her newly orphaned niece, she figures why not give her a companion? What could go wrong, other than what the Universal Studios marketing pitch calls “unimaginable consequences”?
“Saint Omer” (Jan. 13): A beautiful narrative feature debut from documentary filmmaker Alice Diop,“Saint Omer” finds a writer (Kayije Kagame) following a murder trial in order to research her latest project. How the court case affects her perspective, and the slow reveal of the accused child murderer’s circumstances, becomes a supple act of empathy for all its characters.
“Plane” (Jan. 13): Gotta give it up, sight unseen, for “Plane” — a movie whose title gets down to business, and doesn’t even try to be anything other than search-friendly. Commercial airline pilot Gerard Butler manages a miraculous lightning-strike crash landing on an island in the Philippines, only to be besieged by brutal revolutionaries who will stop at nothing except … Gerard Butler!
“80 for Brady” (Feb. 3): Four ardent superfans of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady embark on the trip of a lifetime. Destination: the 2017 Super Bowl. Destination for this movie: Fun with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno and Sally Field, a murderer’s row of talent. Based on a true story, with Brady playing the role he knows best: himself.
“Magic Mike’s Last Dance” (Feb. 10): One more layer to peel, courtesy of Channing Tatum and director Steven Soderbergh, whose more-or-less accidental franchise is one of the happiest of all escapist success stories. Flat broke in Florida, Mike jets to London for a gig financed by a comely moneybags (Salma Hayek). I’m going for the plot, obviously.
“Return to Seoul” (Feb. 17): A young French-South Korean woman (Park Ji-Min) returns to the homeland she never knew in writer-director Davy Chou’s drama, which has toured the recent international festival circuit to great acclaim. Sony Pictures Classics, reliable tastemakers for decades now, is distributing.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (Feb. 17): Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly return as the insectfolk with complementary superpowers, charm being one of the biggies, in this exploration of time travel, Marvel/Disney IP, particle physics, Bill Murray (!) and, as Kang the Conqueror, Jonathan Majors, who is having a major winter on screen. To wit …
“Creed III” (March 3): Spawn of the “Rocky” franchise, the third “Creed” movie marks headliner Michael B. Jordan’s feature directorial debut and co-stars Jonathan Majors as Adonis’ onetime childhood friend, now out of prison, full of beef and the desire to pound some humility and pain into the hide of the man in the title. Tessa Thompson and Phylicia Rashad return, two very good places for a sequel to start. We’ll soon learn if they muscle into the action to any noticeable degree.
“65″ (March 17): From the writers-directors of “A Quiet Place,” here’s some “Planet of the Apes”-ian time-traveling science fiction. Adam Driver stars as the astronaut who crash-lands on Earth, 65 million years in the past, i.e., 64 million years before Raquel Welch and “One Million Years B.C.” Co-starring Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman and, we hope, the best digital dinosaurs a large budget can buy.
“John Wick 4″ (March 24): At its best, the Wick franchise combines bullets, ballet and high fashion, treating the supercool assassin’s daily routine as sleekly kinetic violence. Fingers crossed for the latest chapter, pitting our man Keanu Reeves against the High Table bad ‘uns in a story sprinting from New York to Paris, Berlin and Osaka, with consequences that can only be described as unimaginable. Co-starring Donnie Yen, Laurence Fishburne and Bill Skarsgard.
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