The promised big hits, sure disappointments, and hidden indie gems we’ll get from Hollywood in 2024

By Ari Mattes, University of Notre Dame Australia

Last year was the worst for Hollywood cinema in my memory. The few excellent films such as May December and The Equalizer 3 couldn’t combat the Barbies, Napoleons and Saltburns. It means 2024, bolstered by a slew of films being released post-strike, cannot but look up.

Currently Mean Girls – a musical reimagining of the stage musical based on the excellent 2004 film – is leading the year’s box office (it looks about as enthralling as an old sock), but Self Reliance, The Beekeeper and sci-fi space thriller I.S.S. are in cinemas now and may be worth a look.

Though 2024 once again proffers a mind-numbing number of sequels, along with the now commonplace attempts to capitalise on old properties by “freshening up” material, thankfully there seem to be fewer superhero films than usual on the cards.

Big budget draws

Denis Villeneuve is no David Lynch, but Dune Part One was an impressively immersive, stately epic, engagingly cinematic spectacle. It was overblown and pretentious, but commanded attention. Dune Part Two is eagerly awaited, even if all the best actors were killed off in part one.

https://youtu.be/U2Qp5pL3ovA?si=kNdDllJru-swJi2a

Guy Ritchie has a knack for making films that just work, regardless of how often they recycle the same schtick (the gangster comedy and the serious existential thriller). Though it boasts perhaps the worst title of the year, we’ll see if, in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Ritchie is once again able to infuse incredibly hackneyed material with his signature restless energy.

Other big budget genre films include the Matthew Vaughan-directed hitman caper Argylle; Imaginary, a new Blumhouse horror film about a coercive teddy bear directed by Jeff Wadlow; and Ballerina, an action movie starring the exceptional Ana de Armas as an assassin.

Civil War, the new film from Alex Garland, has a compelling premise – in a dystopian future, journalists travel across a war-torn United States – but Garland is sure to murder it with his Statue of Liberty-sized heavy hand.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/the-promised-big-hits-sure-disappointments-and-hidden-indie-gems-well-get-from-hollywood-in-2024-219964