From Barbie to Creed 3: The 2023 films Guardian writers are most excited about | Movie

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The Flower Moon Killers: Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon. Image: Apple TV +

My most anticipated movie of 2022 has now, through a shift in timeline, become my most anticipated movie of 2023. Sending Martin Scorsese and his first-class craftsmen to the Great Plains with $200 million to recreate the bloody boomtowns of the early 1920s . baffling on its own. But in David Gran’s book about murdered Osages bereaved by deposits of oil beneath their tribal lands, Scorsese has the perfect narrative backbone for a uniquely American tale of greed, violence, and white supremacy. Add to that his film debuts with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, his leading men at different ages in his career, and backing players including Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser and Lily Gladstone, and there’s no better reason to burn Apple’s cash. (Giving Scorsese all the cash he wants to make movies should be a federal requirement for streaming platforms.) Scott Tobias

Club Zero Photo courtesy of Club Zero. Photo: Club Zero Ltd

Little Joe, as of 2019 Jessica Hausner’s last film and the Austrian director’s first English-language film, was a kind of diabolically clever subversion in which the horror landscape gradually turns inside out to reveal something less menacing and more psychologically suggestive. By the sound of it, she may do a similar job of converting with her latest project, which was confirmed to be filming in the UK in August. Mia Wasikowska plays a newly appointed teacher at an elite private school, where she comes to demonstrate a cult leader’s influence over five of her students, is opposed by Amir al-Masri as a fellow teacher, and Sidsee Babbitt Knudsen as the principal. Hausner thrives on building isolated little worlds within institutions, whether in a luxury hotel or a hyper-sterile laboratory, and now seems poised to turn the classroom into a pressure cooker of teenage hormones and Svengali brainwashing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a rival slot in Cannes. Charles Bramesco

Magic Mike’s Last Dance

No trailer made more hype, and no one I watched more times (and with more people) last year, than a preview of Magic Mike’s Last Dance show. The third installment in what wasn’t meant to be a franchise that promises a definitive blast of Channing Tatum’s lovable male stripper with a skit across the pond, presumably funded by Salma Hayek’s new character. Everything we know about this movie so far has been good news – minimal plot, maximum dancing, sexy guys busting the choreography of a London bus, and a reconnection (in both the trailer and the movie) to the upstart magic that made the original movie so likable. Also, Tatum’s lap dance for Hayek, which the latter described as “very physically challenging,” and director Steven Soderbergh revealed that the film will end with a 30-plus-minute dance sequence. Go big or go home, and I’m going to see this in theaters. Adrian Horton

infinity pool

In 2022, Mia Goth has established herself as an actress I wanted to keep an eye on, after amazing lead performances in the Ti West-related horror films X and Pearl. She brought a distinct edge and personality to those roles, combining notes of vulnerability with swagger in a way that really worked for me. So I was very excited to see her starring opposite Alexander Skarsgård in the third film from David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon. The younger Cronenberg is directing the critically acclaimed Possessor, Infinity Pool, a film that appears to be about a man on death row who, because of his wealth, is allowed to clone himself and have that person executed instead. The movie promises an intense mix of sci-fi and horror, with plenty of UFOs, surprising twists and questions about who we are, what defines our humanity and how technology is changing all of that. Veronica Esposito

You hurt my feelings, still of you hurt my feelings. Photo: Gyeongju Park

There’s plenty of reason to be excited about the spiky comedy-drama You Hurt My Feelings – a welcome reunion of the Enough Said dream team of Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a promising match for A24 distribution and a premiere at Sundance, the smug fact it’s partly filmed in The street I’m on right now—but the most compelling is also the most basic: the sign-up line. It goes like this: Louis-Dreyfus plays a novelist who one day hears her husband confess that he hasn’t liked her writing in years, throwing their marriage into disarray. It’s a gloriously uncomfortable setup, reminiscent of the terrifying reveal “How do we get past this?” The attraction of force majeure elicits the kind of uncomfortable entanglement that Holofcener arguably does better than anyone else. Forget whatever high-octane, high-stakes mayhem Marvel, DC and, gulp, Mattel, have in store for this year, the sexiest fireworks of 2023 will likely take place between two people in a Brooklyn apartment. Benjamin Lee

Barbie

You usually dread the news of a very talented writer-director adapting a familiar, pre-existing work. I couldn’t be more excited about Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, considering how much I admired the mindless momentum and comedic beats of Lady Bird, as well as her co-authored screenplays for Frances Ha and Mistress of America. But Gerwig’s Women proved me wrong, enough that I feel comfortable anticipating her latest achievement in adaptation: Barbie, a comedy based on Mattel’s iconic line of fashion dolls. Margot Robbie plays Ryan Gosling’s Barbie opposite Ken — but in the endless tradition of modeling, fashion, and endless careers, it was clear that perhaps some of the other members of the large and impressive cast (including Issa Rae, America Ferrera, and Kate McKinnon) will also play Barbie variations. Not surprisingly much is known about the film’s plot, but it’s the first screenplay co-written by Gerwig and her life partner Noah Baumbach since Sparkling Mistress America; Barbie could be half as funny as this movie and still likely compete for best major studio project for the summer movie season. Jesse Hasinger

Region of Interest Jonathan Glazer. Photo: Ettore Ferrari/EPA

First announced in 2018, Jonathan Glazer’s fourth feature has seemed like a mirage over the years, slowly progressing at a rate perfectly in line with his reputation as a not-so-prolific genius. Still, there’s reason to hope that this year will finally be it, as a Cannes premiere is likely on the cards: Produced by A24, Glazer’s shooting of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel about the Holocaust in Poland finished last year and is in post. production. German stars Sandra Höller and Christian Friedel are the leads, while visual designer Glazer has cast Paul Pawlkowski’s favorite cinematographer Lukasz Zall (Cold War, Ida) – as if it wasn’t safe enough to assume everything would look clean. As for the story, Amis’s concentration camp-set novel concerns a young Nazi officer’s pursuit of the camp commandant’s disillusioned wife, and unfolds from three separate points of view – though not based on Glazer’s after-plot, if his radical and liberal adaptation of Michel Fabre’s Under the Skin. Anything was going through it. Jay Lodge

Killer Michael Fassbender. Photo: Gisela Schober/Getty Images

Absent from screen since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Michael Fassbender stars in The Killer as a cold, patient, meticulous killer who begins to unravel and lose his grip on reality while waiting for his next target. This material is very fitting for director David Fincher, and not just because he was playing the waiting game to get this movie done. Fincher, a meticulous filmmaker known for exercising maximum control over every detail and meticulous composition, has been attempting to adapt Alexis Nolent’s graphic novel since it was originally announced in 2007, when he released his masterpiece on the real-life Zodiac killer. Who knows what development delays occurred in the 16 years between Passion Project’s move from Paramount to Netflix. Finally, The Killer is on its way thanks to the same production deal that gave us Mank. We’ll see how Fassbender’s killer fits in with the characters Fincher gravitates toward: from the storytellers of The Social Network and Mank to the murderous masterminds of Seven and Gone Girl who, like Fincher, try to keep a tight grip on their narratives. Radian Simonpelai

Creed III

I’m a sucker for the Rocky movie, and Creed III had me cringing from the moment Jonathan Majors flashed his naked torso in the trailer. (His muscles have muscles!) You’d think that after eight bites of apple, the Rockys would be about to run out of juice by now. But the 9th Edition bumps into a core theme of many sports legends but rarely explored in sports movies–the man who was actually better than the famous star and may have been the one in the spotlight but for a relentless series of fatal decisions. This is the reclamation project Majors is playing with Michael B. Jordan on top of Perch Mountain. And with the latter inheriting the directorial reins from Stephen Capley Jr., it’ll be interesting if this premise can go the distance. Given the franchise’s critical track and box office record, it certainly looks like Creed III will be a slam dunk. Andrew Lawrence

Nicolas Cage. Photo: Chris Chew/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

It was the paparazzi’s photos of Nicolas Cage strolling around the New Orleans set dressed as modern Dracula that did it for me. He wears an elegant red velvet suit, his face covered in grave white powder, his lips the icy tint of someone who has fallen asleep with red wine dripping down his face. And there are his hands, all painted with dagger-like nails and colorful rings fit for a cartoon king. Cage stars in stunning costumes in the comedy horror film Renfield, which tells the classic Bram Stoker story from the point of view of Dracula’s henchman, played by Nicholas Hoult. Directed by Chris McKay (The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie), co-producing the never-boring Awkwafina as Renfield’s traffic cop. With such components, the film can be glossy, banana, or both. Lauren Michelling

65

I was really surprised when the trailer for 65 hit the internet; I couldn’t pay attention because I knew so little about it. Well, it instantly climbed to the top of the must-see list: It promises to be a mix of Stargate, Jurassic Park, and Aliens, with a dash of Planet of the Apes thrown in for good measure. The trailer doesn’t play around with trying to hide the big reveal: our space-weapon-wielding hero Adam Driver—apparently a kind of Ripley who may or may not have traveled back in time—has crash-landed on planet Earth at the exact same moment. Dinosaurs will become extinct. (Presumably the same asteroid that hit his ship did it for the dinosaurs, in what the internet tells me is the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.) It won’t come soon enough. Andrew Pulver

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