Curtain raisers: movies to see when cinemas reopen
Film is returning to cinemas. Here’s a rundown of the must-see post-lockdown films coming to a multiplex — or an arthouse establishment — near you.
We all have lasting memories of what we see on the silver screen. As Louis B. Mayer says in Mank, David Fincher’s film about the writing of Citizen Kane, “This is a business where the buyer gets nothing for his money but a memory.”
The MGM boss is reminding the screenwriter that no matter how many people see the film the studio still owns it. The writer’s job is to make the memories worth paying for.
I have a reel of such recollections, yet one of the earliest and strongest returns me not to the screen but to the footpath.
It is 1973, I am nine, my brother is five and our father has taken us into “town”, as we called the Sydney CBD, to see The Poseidon Adventure.
I can’t remember which cinema we went to but as it was pre-multiplex days it might have been the Lyceum or the Odeon. What I can remember is that we had to join a long queue outside. We busted the block, though not as irreparably as the bombs the word blockbuster derives from.
That morning seems to exist in another age.
Today cinemas are under tremendous pressure. First the digital revolution encouraged people to watch films on their phones, then Covid closed the box office altogether.
The first is not going to change but the second will soon, with cinemas due to reopen across Australia.
Fortuitously this will coincide with the release of Covid-postponed, big-budget films that back in the day might have busted a block.
Does this mean the blockbuster is back? Here are a dozen upcoming films that might answer that question.
NO TIME TO DIE, November 11
Director: Cary Fukunaga, best known for the African war film Beasts of No Nation.
Stars: Daniel Craig
Budget: $250m-$300m
Plot: In the 25th Bond film, the former 007 (Craig) is lured out of retirement to drive an Aston Martin, meet an attractive woman and save the western world.
Early reviews: Kevin Maher, The Times: “It’s better than good. It’s magnificent.” James Walton, The Spectator, which sounds a bit like Spectre: “A compelling mess.’’
Pros: Craig is closest to the James Bond created by Ian Fleming and as this is his last time in the role he is sure to go out with a bang (no Pussy Galore jokes please).
Cons: What happens next? Who will be the new Bond? Hugh Jackman, yes please. Rebel Wilson, no thank you.
DUNE, December 2
Director: Denis Villeneuve, Oscar nominated for the sci-fi film Arrival
Stars: Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Stellan Skarsgard
Budget: $165m
Plot: Based on Frank Herbert’s 1956 sci-fi novel, this is an intergalactic spice war set far in the future.
Early reviews: Ben Travis, Empire: “An astonishing achievement [that evokes] a near-constant jaw-on-the-floor awe.’’
Pros: When it comes to potential saviours of cinema, this might be the one. Even the stills are amazing to look at. It demands to be seen on a big screen.
Cons: No Sting. I would have liked to have seen a cameo from the singer, who was in David Lynch’s first film version in 1984.
THE POWER OF THE DOG, November 11
Director: Jane Campion, who took New Zealand into world cinemas with The Piano
Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons
Budget: Not known, but in an interview the director said it was “somewhere in the $30 millions”
Plot: A masculinity-gone-wrong western set in 1920s Montana (though shot in NZ). It’s about two brothers, one bad (Cumberbatch), one good (Plemons).
Early reviews: Stephanie Zacharek, Time: “This is a movie as big as the open sky, but one where human emotions are still distinctly visible, as fine and sharp as a blade of grass.”
Pros: Cumberbatch as a toxic male. That I want to see.
Cons: Despite the title, canines do not have leading roles.
MALIGNANT, October 21
Director: James Wan, the Australian creator of the Saw horror series. In his spare time he also directed Aquaman.
Stars: Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Jacqueline McKenzie
Budget: $40m
Plot: A woman has visions of people being murdered – and they are being murdered!
Early reviews: Arul Gnanasivan, The Diamondback: “Cheesy at times but a wildly entertaining ride that delivers horrors and thrills.”
Pros: David Stratton tells me it’s super scary.
Cons: As above for the faint-hearted.
CRY MACHO, November 25
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Dwight Yoakam
Budget: $30m
Plot: Set in the 1970s, a burnt-out old rodeo star (Eastwood) tries to reunite a boy (Minett) and his father (Yoakam).
Early reviews: K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone: “A straight shot of Eastwood on Eastwood.”
Pros: When it comes to animal co-stars, Eastwood has ditched the orang-utan in favour of a rooster.
Cons: This movie has been on the drawing board forever. I would have liked to have seen it with Robert Mitchum, offered the lead role in the late 1980s, but sadly his time has passed.
GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, December 2
Director: Jason Reitman, who made the award-winning Juno
Stars: Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard
Budget: $50m
Plot: Thirty years after Ghostbusters II, there are still ghosts to bust.
Early reviews: Scott Menzel of the Hollywood Critics Association: “The Ghostbusters sequel I’ve been waiting all my life to see.’’
Pros: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Sigourney Weaver make appearances.
Cons: Rick Moranis
does not.
HALLOWEEN KILLS, October 28
Director: David Gordon Green, responsible for the two previous Halloween films and the far scarier alleged comedy Pineapple Express
Star: Jamie Lee Curtis
Budget: Unknown and I don’t want to have to ask the bloke with the carving knife
Plot: Curtis is back for her sixth Halloween movie, overtaking Donald Pleasance as the most recurring actor in the slasher series. The masked maniac Michael Myers is
back too.
Early reviews: Jessica Kiang, The Playlist: “Doubles the body count of the previous instalment while roughly halving its IQ.”
Pros: With the ultra-violent Squid Game top of the Netflix charts, it seems like there might be an audience for more gore.
Cons: A 2022 sequel, Halloween Ends, will purportedly end the franchise, which will disappoint its fans.
KING RICHARD, January 13
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Stars: Will Smith (Richard Williams), Saniyya Sidney (Venus Williams), Demi Singleton (Serena Williams)
Budget: $50m
Plot: A biopic about how Richard Williams turned his daughters into tennis superstars.
Early reviews: Leah Greenblatt, EW: “A nuanced portrait of a flawed and deeply complicated man and the kind of classic-uplift sports movie that used to fill multiplexes once upon a time.”
Pros: Everyone seems to agree Will Smith is amazing.
Cons: I’m hearing that, at 138 minutes, it’s a bit over-padded.
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, January 1
Director: The Wachowskis
Star: Keanu Reeves
Budget: $150m-$200m
Plot: Thomas A. Anderson aka Neo (Reeves) is living a normal life in San Francisco. Then he’s offered the red pills or the blue blues and everything goes all Matrixy.
Early reviews: There’s a long and interesting review of the trailer on the Polygon website, by senior editor Matt Patches: “Either the movie takes places entirely without a new simulated world created by robots inspired by the movies or Neo’s memories of his past life have allowed him to produce The Matrix within his own reality.” He concludes: “Need more Matrix, now.”
Pros: The new Morpheus, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Trial of the Chicago 7), is an actor to watch.
Cons: On the flip side fans are lamenting that Laurence Fishburne is no longer Morpheus. But this is a Matrix movie, so nothing can be ruled out.
WEST SIDE STORY, Boxing Day
Director: Steven Spielberg, best known for … take your pick. He won Oscars for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
Stars: Debutante Rachel Zegler is Maria, Ansel Elgort is Tony
Budget: $100m
Plot: One’s a Jet, the other’s a Shark, but they fall in love.
Early reviews: In a TV interview, composer Stephen Sondheim, who has had his own crack at WSS, said he had seen the film and “Spielberg and [screenwriter Tony] Kushner really, really nailed it”.
Pros: Spielberg has hired Oscar-nominated composer David Newman to adapt Leonard Bernsteins’s original score.
Cons: He has been making films since 1964, but this is his first musical.
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, December 17
Director: Spider-Man alumnus Jon Watts
Star: Tom Holland
Budget: $200m
Plot: As his superhero identity was revealed to the world in the previous film, Peter Parker (Holland) has to work out a new way to crawl the web.
Early reviews: None yet
Pros: The buzz is that we will learn Spider-Man’s deep, dark secrets.
Cons: The superhero multiverse, which hurts the brain, will expand and might include more than one Spider-Man.
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, January 14 on Apple TV+
Director: Joel Coen
Stars: Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth, Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth
Budget: It is said to be a low budget production, which even with inflation puts Coen alongside Orson Welles in 1948 ($700,000).
Plot: At this stage this black and white film, Joel Coen’s first without brother Ethan, is not scheduled for cinema release here, but it’s No.1 on my to-see list. The Thane of Glamis is dead keen to be king. His wife is even keener. Something wicked this way comes.
Early reviews: Peter Bradshaw, five stars in The Guardian: “This is a black-and-white world of violence and pain that scorches the retina.”
Pros: Two Oscar winners in one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.
Cons: Being left wanting more. It’s one of the Bard’s shortest plays and the film is only 105 minutes.
TOP GUN MAVERICK, May 2022
Director: Joseph Kosinski, known for CGI movies such as Oblivion and Tron
Stars: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm
Budget: $150m
Plot: A sequel to Top Gun, which came out in 1986, so everyone is, to put it kindly, more experienced. Still, Top Gun cost $15m and made $350m-plus, so there might be flight in the old wings yet.
Early reviews: None yet.
Pros: Val Kilmer, who can barely speak following treatment for throat cancer, is back. He will be fascinating to watch.
Cons: This sequel has been waiting in the hangar for so long it’s almost as old as Australia’s submarines.
OTHERS:
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (November 4). A prequel to The Sopranos.
HOUSE OF GUCCI (Boxing Day): Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Salma Hayek, Jared Leto and Jeremy Irons go nastily fashionable.
BELFAST (January 20). Set in Belfast in the 1960s, director Kenneth Branagh has called it his most personal film.
THE BATMAN (March 3). Robert Pattinson’s debut as the caped crusader.
JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION (June 9). The dinosaurs continue to ignore extinction.
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