I'm getting back to my periodical entry, with a monthly selection of what's announced for the next half of the year. The "award movies" season is starting, so in theory we should have enough choice, although among what's below I don't think there are many qualified for this.
December has plenty to offer, but despite the stellar reviews I'll keep my doubts for the recently released "Hamnet". I can believe that Jessie Buckley does an Oscar worthy role, but I don't have any trust in Chloé Zhao's direction after the "Nomadsland" experience, out of which there's not much to remember, so I'll skip the trailer for this one. Another production that already got some decent reviews is "Nuremberg", and the patient-psychiatrist relationship between Hermann Göring and Douglas Kelley is indeed a movie subject. Again, however, the script seems a bit too Hollywood-ish, with enough overacting that transpires into the trailer, and which doesn't really seem to capture the case complexity (Kelley was a movie subject after Nuremberg as well). I think this still keeps some documentary value, and overall as a movie = including production and the technical side, it seems to deliver something ok-ish.
If I should choose only one movie for December out of what has a released trailer, that would be "Dust Bunny". The direction + script by Bryan Fuller, as his first big screen movie, doesn't promise much (even worse, he's responsible for a part of "Star Trek: Discovery", the only undigestible series from the entire franchise). Still, the trailer gives a hint of "Leon" mixed with a surreal fantasy a la "Sucker Punch" (underrated), so maybe it has some chance to move out of the classic Hollywood action. It depends how much movie time it spends on CGI with flying bullets and stuff.
I decided to mark "The Housemaid" too for the December list. Paul Feig has made plenty of mediocre movies but also a gem among them, "A Simple Favor" (the first; the second, more recent, I didn't have time to see, is down below in terms of ratings, and I don't see much sense for it anyway). We'll see if the chemistry between Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried here will come out as good as it was between Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. In "A Simple Favor" the script helped a lot, with a solid touch of dark humor; here it seems we'll just have the dark part, without the humor, but we still have some basis in a bestseller novel, so, we'll see.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to see a festival screening for "These Final Hours", a indie production of an Australian director, Zak Hilditch, with the story set on the end of the world, awaited as a cataclismic phenomenon, somewhere on the coast of down under. It wasn't a masterpiece, but what was left from there was some warm feeling (no pun intended, given the cataclism) felt like that on the apocalyptic background setting. In January we have an expected release for "We Bury the Dead", yet another zombie horror, directed and written by the same Hilditch, not so indie this time, however. I'll keep my opinion that this subgenre is not like any other horror, as long as it keeps the early line settled by George Romero, with his "of the Dead". The touch there is set mostly on the psychological side of inter-human relationship in a dystopic environment, and much less on the horror. There are many examples of this, like "The Crazies", "World War Z", "I Am Legend" and "The Walking Dead" as a series, despite all its soapy bits. The same category would also cover another more high-profile production announced for January, the 4-th iteration from Danny Boyle's "28 ..." series - "... Years Later: The Bone Temple". Only that it's not directed by Danny Boyle this time, and it seems to me that there's already quite a lot overexploitation of the setting there compensated with blood and gore to cover it up. So, if I'd have to choose between the two, I'd go for the Australian backed one, as long as it won't get too corrupted by Hollywood during production. s
To bring something a bit different to the list, for the beginning of 2026, we also have a French crime mystery frantuzesc, "Vie privée", released with an early screening at this year's Cannes, starring a Jodie Foster in a French-speaking part of a psychiatrist set somewhere between Maigret and Poirot. We'll see to which one is closer when the official release comes out in January.
"All You Need Is Kill" is the original Japanese manga of the story in "Edge of Tomorrow", one of the best SciFis produced by Hollywood during the last decade. Well, I might be slightly subjective, given when I watched it and the impact it left with the whole idea of a repeated cycle of the temporal perception. Nevertheless, the movie is widely regarded as underrated. Getting back to the Japanses version, unfortunately this was left only on paper until recently, when it finally got some screen time in an anime announced for January. The teaser says almost nothing + I'm not very thrilled by the graphich style. However, given the subject, it's something to keep en eye on, and for who's willing to find out more details, the second clip below, from about seven years ago, provides an extended comparison between the US version and the Japanese manga.
"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" lands in cinemas in February, being a joint effort of Gore Verbinski (directing) and Matthew Robinson (script). The first is more known for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, but he also directed other better movies, although underrated, the last being "A Cure for Wellness", a thriller from 2016. A plus of Verbinski is his versatility on switching genres - for instance we also have "The Lone Ranger" - a western with some nice accents of dark comedy, "Rango" - an Oscar awarded animation, "The Ring" - a reference in the horror genre. Matthew Robinson got known to me for his supposed involvement with the sequel to "Edge of Tomorrow", mentioned before, another previous reference I know being just "Love and Monsters" which was ok, although a bit Hollywood-ish. Here the trailer builds up a similar impression, so I'll keep lower expectations on this, but who knows? Maybe we'll have a suprise.
On my February list, I also marked "How to Make a Killing", a dark comedy written + directed by John Patton Ford, his second movie after "Emily the Criminal" from 2022. The previous one was lifted a lot by Aubrey Plaza, the reason I've watched it after all, so I might be subjective, but anyway her part there was quite different from other roles. This movie leaves an impression of having a more solid/complex script, so I'll give it a chance.
I'm not watching slasher horrors for quite some time, but I couldn't let February go without "Scream 7", especially considering that Neve Campbell returns one more time as Sydney Prescott, backed by Kevin Williamson which wrote the scripts of the series by its 4-th iteration if I'm not wrong. This time he took as well the directing prosition, so we'll see what results from this. However, after the passing of Wes Craven, Williamson is probably one the most qualified persons for the job. Despite the commercial feeling it manifests, I doubt there's any other slasher horror series to maintain a decent average level for so many years, to exert so much influence on the genre, and to keep a perfect balance between the horror, the dark comedy and the teenage drama, which brings me back every time to a nostalgic feeling on the times when I've watched the first "Scream". And again, Sydney is back ;)
The trailer for "Project Hail Mary" already says more than enough, but there aren't many SciFis out there, and neither trailers out for this spring. So I'll stop to this option for March. After all Drew Goddard (script) also has "The Martian", "Bad Times at the El Royale" and "The Cabin in the Woods" in his CV. So, it can't be very bad.
There's not much to choose for April either, and I don't trust sequels, but again, let's keep some hope for "Ready or Not 2", given that the movie kept the team from its first iteration. With all the red paint that was spilled, that was surprisingly good. The subject is quite straightforward and probably won't provide much surprise, so if this manages to get to at least 2/3 from the level of the first that should be acceptable I guess.
Instead of releases announced for May, where we would have some "Star Wars" spinoff or a sequel to "Mortal Kombat" (to be fair that seems to provide at least some self-irony), I preferred adding to more titles, already released in their home country I assume, but still not distributed throughout Europe. So, with an undefined release date for next spring, we have as well "No Other Choice", the last Korean production by Park Chan-Wook ("Oldboy" + the rest of the Vengeance trilogy, "Thirst" and others), featuring again Lee Byung-hun as main lead, with some extra wrinkles maybe, but still like in possession of an anti-aging formula, and also "Fabula", a Dutch production, which looks like a sort of Guy Ritchie movie in a more continental version.
That's about it. I've chosen a slightly more extended variant that in the previous rounds, from more than one year ago, to compensate a bit the long break. Hopefully it's useful for somebody + and I also hope that I didn't mess it up to often - with previews you never know.
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