It would be fair to say 2022 was not a vintage year in cinema, reflected in UK box office receipts which remain around a third below the pre-pandemic year of 2019. That’s not to say there weren’t some enjoyable releases (such as The Banshees of Inisherin, Triangle of Sadness and The Northman) – but the biggest hits of the year consisted of superhero franchises and movie sequels (Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Jurassic World Dominion, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, etc).
It’s a situation which looks to continue in 2023, with Marvel and less-successful rival DC churning out at least eight movie releases over the year, together with yet another Fast and Furious sequel (Fast X), the third of Kenneth Branagh’s tepid Poirot pictures (A Haunting in Venice), The Expendables 4, The Equalizer 3, Creed III, Scream VI and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, to name but a few.
But there are a few bright spots on the horizon. Here is my pick of ten of the more noteworthy motion pictures scheduled for release in 2023:
Renfield (April)
In Chris McKay’s (The Lego Batman Movie) horror comedy, Nicolas Cage (Dracula) return to the undead world he first explored way back in Vampire’s Kiss (1988). Set in modern day New Orleans, the storyline sees the Count’s lackey Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) find love with a feisty traffic cop (Awkwafina), prompting a career re-think. Don’t expect an elegiac portrait of vampiric regret from Cage, going on his acting résumé to date; images released of him in character bear a distinct resemblance to Data (Brent Spiner) from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Renfield was played most famously by gravel-voiced singer Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 flick. In 2015, Daniel Radcliffe played Igor, the spavined sidekick to James McAvoy’s Victor Frankenstein.
Killers of the Flower Moon (May)
After the bum-numbing The Irishman, let’s hope director Martin Scorsese has listened to his better editing angels for this true-life period crime drama set in 1920s Oklahoma. When members of the Osage tribe are murdered, young FBI director J. Edgar Hoover orders an investigation. Chinatown meets There Will Be Blood, with Robert De Niro as a homicidal oil baron William Hale, joined by fellow Scorsese regular Leonardo DiCaprio as his similarly inclined nephew and Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog) as lawman Tom White. No word on who plays Hoover; DiCaprio of course essayed the cross-dressing G-Man in Clint Eastwood’s lacklustre J. Edgar (2011).
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June)
Harrison Ford’s final outing as Indy has much heavy lifting to do to make up for 2008’s appalling Crystal Skull, a picture that seemed almost a calculated effort to ruin the series. Ford is digitally de-aged for the movie’s prologue – accomplished with some skill, judging from the trailer, but I do wonder how it will mesh with the octogenarian’s distinctive elderly bow-legged stance. As for the title, not exactly inspiring, is it? On the plus side, the Nazis are back as the baddies – now involved in the US space race of 1969, something unlikely to please German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s surviving family. Also returning is John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, Jones’s affable sidekick from Lost Ark and Grail. No sign of Shia LaBeouf’s tiresome Mutt Williams (Crystal Skull), another point in DoD’s favour. Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) features as Helena, Jones’s goddaughter, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing, knowing her tendency to dominate the proceedings. Antonio Banderas is Renaldo, Indy’s chum; hopefully, he’ll do a better job than Ray Winstone’s wretched turn as back-stabbing Brit Mac McHale in the 2008 dud.
Asteroid City (July)
Expect lashings of trademark whimsy from Wes Anderson as he assembles a supersized cast of regulars and new recruits for a 1950s tale set in an Arizona town’s Junior Stargazer convention. I’ll be purchasing a ticket for Asteroid City as I’m a sucker for Anderson’s pictures, despite their occasional longueurs – case in point, last year’s The French Dispatch. The company includes Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Rupert Friend, Jeff Goldblum, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Tony Revolori, Matt Dillon, Rita Wilson, Bryan Cranston and Willem Dafoe.
Barbie (July)
In what could be a triumph of stunt casting and marketing over substance, Barbie casts the very busy Margot Robbie (Babylon, Amsterdam) as the titular character, with Ryan Gosling as beau Ken. Memories of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne and Freddie Prinze Jr as Fred in the early 2000s Scooby-Doo live action movies spring uncomfortably to mind. Directed by former mumblecore queen Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Barbie looks to throw the viewer a few curves, although I suspect the likely arch/camp tone may swiftly become irksome. Still, I’m not exactly the target audience.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (July)
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV will be 61 when the long-delayed sequel to 2018’s M:I – Fallout is released. With a budget of $240 million, the picture looks to be the most spectacular entry in the series, as the trailer attests. Dead Reckoning sees the return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, the slimy IMF director last seen in Cruise’s first M:I movie way back in 1996. A sequel is threatened for 2024.
Oppenheimer (July)
Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2020’s all-but-inaudible Tenet is a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, a controversial figure who evidenced regrets about his work and was suspected of communist sympathies. Expect frequent artistically composed slo-mo shots of nuclear/sub-nuclear explosions to pad out the likely lengthy runtime. Nolan regular Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) is the scientist, supported by a stellar cast that includes Emily Blunt (as his wife Kitty), Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Matthew Modine, Florence Pugh, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Josh Hartnett and Kenneth Branagh. After the disappointing box office for Tenet, Nolan must be hoping the $100 million picture doesn’t bomb (sic).
Last Voyage of the Demeter (August)
Further vampiric chills as Norwegian director André Øvredal (Trollhunter) explores the doomed journey of the ship which carried Count Dracula to Whitby in Bram Stoker’s novel. As we know how this particular part of the book ends (also covered in BBC1’s recent Dracula mini-series), I trust Øvredal can be relied on for a few surprising twists. Javier Botet (Slender Man) is the Count; the actor suffers from Marfan syndrome, a rare condition which led to his preternaturally long fingers/arms/legs and commanding height of 6ft 7in. Other cast members include Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) as the Demeter’s captain, with David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad) as First Mate and Corey Hawkins (The Tragedy of Macbeth) playing a doctor who joins the crew.
Dune: Part 2 (November)
As I enjoyed Denis Villeneuve’s first instalment (2021) in his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi saga, I’m looking forward to the sequel. Some criticised the slow pacing and lack of character development in the first picture, but it worked for me, with the caveat that I would have appreciated a soupçon of the psychedelic imagery that Alejandro Jodorowsky’s abandoned version of the book would have brought to the screen. As a Dune nerd, I also have a quibble with the casting of Christopher Walken as baddie Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV; in the novel his consumption of the life-extending spice melange gives the 72-year-old the appearance of someone more than half his age.
Wonka (December)
Does the world really need a Willy Wonka origin story – a Wonka Begins, if you will? Warner Bros, the Dahl estate and star Timothée Chalamet obviously think so. Thanks, but I’ll stick with Gene Wilder as the definite portrayal of the eccentric chocolatier (1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), passing over Johnny Depp’s unsavoury (sic) Willard Wilbur Wonka in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). But with Simon Farnaby (Ghosts) scripting with director Paul King (Paddington) and original songs by Neil (Divine Comedy) Hannon, Wonka may be worth checking out. The cast features the rarely seen Olivia Colman and Sally Hawkins, who really should be encouraged to appear on our screens more often.
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