I’m starting to see the signs. Recently, in the span of about 10 minutes, I bought tickets to three different movies screening at the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago. My wife has said to me on multiple occasions now, “You’ll be seeing that by yourself.” I’ve re-activated my AMC Stubs A-List subscription.
What does it all mean?
Movies are back.
Technically, movies never left, but I think we can all agree that the last year has not been anything but an ordinary year at the movies. Studios have delayed releasing their biggest films, box office totals have plummeted to all-time lows, and movie theaters have closed, some temporarily and others permanently. But now, with more 40% of the U.S. population fully vaccinated and 50% with at least one dose, the light is visible at the end of the tunnel. A Quiet Place, Part II has kicked off the summer movie season as studios and theaters are gearing up for a return to the movies.
To participate, all you have to do is follow two simple steps:
- Get vaccinated
- Go to the movies
And to help get you excited about the year of movies ahead, I’ve assembled a list of my Top 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2021. To be clear, there are a lot more movies being released this year than what I have listed here, but hopefully this will get your beak wet.
10. Nightmare Alley
Remember when Guillermo del Toro and The Shape of Water won Best Director and Best Picture, respectively? Just making sure you hadn’t forgotten. Four years later, the Oscar winner is finally ready to deliver his follow-up with Nightmare Alley. Based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley is a psychological thriller that details what happens when an ambitious carnival worker (Bradley Cooper) with a talent for sleight of hand falls under the thrall of a psychologist (Cate Blanchett) who may be even more manipulative than he is. The cast is loaded — Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, and Rooney Mara to go along with Cooper and Blanchett — and del Toro co-wrote this “new interpretation” of Gresham’s novel with Kim Morgan. (Dec. 3)
9. The Night House
If you’re not familiar with director David Bruckner, don’t feel bad. You can easily rectify that by checking out 2017’s The Ritual on Netflix. It’s a mournful tale of four college friends who reunite for a hiking trip in Sweden, only to realize they are being stalked by a nightmarish creature. Now Bruckner is back with The Night House, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival more than a year ago and delivers “a constant level of pulse-pounding terror” according to Bloody Disgusting’s Meagan Navarro. Rebecca Hall is a grief-stricken widow forced to live alone in the lakefront home that her late husband built for them before he took his own life. Left to cope in any empty home with nothing more than a cryptic suicide note to understand his motives, she is plagued by disturbing events that lead her to question whether she ever really knew her husband — and whether or not there is life after death. (Aug. 20)
Watch the trailer here.
8. Antlers
You have to understand, there is a special place in my heart for Keri Russell after six seasons of The Americans. She’ll always be Elizabeth Jennings to me. And if the world was truly good and just, Jesse Plemons would have received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Game Night. So when you put Russell and Plemons together in a horror movie, I’m sold. It doesn’t hurt that Scott Cooper, director of Crazy Heart and Black Mass, is behind the camera. Based on a short story called “The Quiet Boy,” Antlers takes place in a small Oregon town where a school teacher grows concerned about the well-being of one of her students. When she and her brother, the local sheriff, investigate his home life, they discover he has been sheltering a monster that proceeds to rampage through town. (Oct. 29)
Watch the trailer here.
7. Don’t Look Up
Written and directed by Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up is a black comedy that brings together Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as a pair of low-level astronomers who embark on a global media tour to warn the world that an approaching comet will destroy the planet. McKay has come a long way from explaining how ponzi schemes work during the end credits of his buddy cop parody The Other Guys, taking aim at the financial institutions responsible for the 2008 housing market crash in The Big Short before turning his brand of self-aware comedy toward Dick Cheney in the polarizing political satire Vice. Now he seems to have set his sights on climate change denial, with a pair of Oscar winners — and three-time winner Meryl Streep, playing the President of the United States — to deliver the message. Don’t Look Up does not have a release date yet, but look for it in November or December. (TBA)
6. Malignant
James Wan has launched three horror film franchises in the last 20 years: Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring. When the news broke that the Aquaman director would be returning to his horror roots before embarking on a sequel to the DC Comics blockbuster, I would have bought a ticket for it right then and there. Three months out from its release date, plot details for Malignant have been kept under wraps. All we know is that it was written by Akela Cooper from an original story developed by Wan and it is rumored to be a throwback to the Italian Giallo horror films of the 70s. Whatever it is, I’m in. (Sep. 10)
5. Soggy Bottom
I must confess that I know next to nothing about Soggy Bottom. In fact, Soggy Bottom is only a working title, so I can’t even say for sure what Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film will be called when it starts rolling into theaters in November. What I do know is that PTA is one of today’s greatest working filmmakers and the early word around Soggy Bottom suggests a 70s-set ensemble in the vein of Boogie Nights (which I maintain is still the crowning achievement of PTA’s career). Filmed in and around the San Fernando Valley, the film reportedly follows a cast of characters that includes a high school aged child actor (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), a Hollywood director and producer (Bradley Cooper), and a politician running for office (Benny Safdie). (Nov. 26)
4. Dune
Admittedly, I have not read the Frank Herbert novel on which Dune is based, nor have I seen David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation, which has become something of a cult classic after being labeled a critical and box office failure at the time of its release. My interest in Dune is based entirely on the fact that director Denis Villeneuve is at the helm. He has yet to disappoint, and Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 were two of the best sci-fi films of the 2010s. Dune is a passion project for Villeneuve, calling it a “longstanding dream” to bring the sci-fi epic to the screen. He has certainly assembled an all-star cast to give life to his dream adaptation, including Timothee Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Zendaya, and Dave Bautista. (Oct. 1)
Watch the trailer here.
3. Candyman
The legend of Candyman has never been more relevant. Truthfully, it’s always been relevant. If you haven’t seen the haunting animated teaser that director Nia DaCosta shared last year, she included a caption elucidating the themes of her forthcoming film: “Candyman, at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs. The people they were, the symbols we turn them into, the monsters we are told they must have been.” Though it bears the same title as the original 1992 film, DaCosta’s Candyman is more of a sequel than a remake, taking place two decades after the events of the first film. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II steps into the lead role as a Chicago artist who becomes fixated on the story of Candyman and incorporates it into his work, unleashing forces beyond his control. (Aug. 27)
Watch the trailer here.
2. The Green Knight
If I had known then that director David Lowery was going to adapt it into a fantasy epic, I would have been much more interested when I was assigned to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in college. The Arthurian poem dates back to the 14th century and describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, accepts a challenge from the “Green Knight” that proves to be more harrowing than he initially believed. The latest trailer is chock full of gorgeous visuals and features a talking fox, a fog-covered field of roaming giants, and Dev Patel traversing across beautiful landscapes. (Jul. 30)
1. Last Night In Soho
If you know me well, it should come as no surprise that Edgar Wright’s latest film tops this list. The Cornetto Trilogy — Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End — is the holy trinity as far as I’m concerned, and experiencing the Dolby Cinema re-release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World this spring was akin to a religious experience. Wright has described Last Night Soho as psychological horror in the vein of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, both of which are also London-set, but the trailer makes clear the influence of Giallo horror maestro Dario Argento. The film centers around Eloise, an aspiring fashion designer studying in London who finds herself able to make night time visits to the Swinging Sixties, where she experiences the city through the eyes of a young singer. But she soon learns that her frequent excursions to the past have frightening consequences. (Oct. 22)
The best of the rest: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (Jun. 4), Werewolves Within (Jun. 25), Zola (Jun. 30), No Sudden Move (Jul. 1), Old (Jul. 23), The Suicide Squad (Aug. 6), The French Dispatch (Oct. 22), The Eternals (Nov. 5), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Nov. 11), and Spider-Man: No Way Home (Dec. 17)