IT is a new year and it seems to be back to business as usual for the film industry although the effects of last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike are still being felt with major releases such as Mission: Impossible 8 being put back. Due to come out in June, it will will now be released in 2025. 

That said, there are a lot of fascinating and thought-provoking films due to be shown in cinemas this year that will be worth checking out. Here are some of them: 
 
Poor Things

Thrilling film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos returns with what must be his wildest and most bonkers film to date, a period sci-fi movie. Teaming up with Emma Stone for the fourth time, she plays Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant scientist a la Frankenstein Dr Goodwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).

With a child’s mind trapped in an adult’s body, Bella has a hunger to discover the world and what it has to offer. A tour de force performance by Stone as you have never seen her before, alongside co-star Mark Ruffalo who acts against type as the slick and debauched lawyer she runs off with. 
 
The Holdovers

Acclaimed director Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti reunite for the first time since 2004’s Sideways for this wonderfully bittersweet Christmas comedy drama.

Set in the 1970s it follows a grumpy history teacher (Giamatti) who is left behind at a prep school to babysit those students who cannot go home for the festive season.

Slowly he forms an unlikely bond with a troubled pupil (newcomer Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is grieving the loss of her son. Why this film, already hailed as a festive classic, wasn’t released at Christmas is a mystery. 
 
All of Us Strangers

Have tissues to hand for Andrew Haigh’s beautiful and moving adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s Strangers which explores profound grief and the power of love.

It stars Andrew Scott (Catherine Called Birdy, Fleabag) as a screenwriter in London who enters into a fledgling relationship with a mysterious neighbour played by Paul Mescal (Foe, Normal People).

At the same time he finds himself being drawn back to his childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) appear to be living just as they were before they died three decades earlier. Unsettling, and yet powerfully emotional, it has not left a dry eye in the house. 
 
American Fiction 

Cord Jefferson’s impressive directorial debut feature is a comic satire about our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes.

It follows a frustrated novelist (a phenomenal Jeffrey Wright) who is fed up that the literary world is only interested in “black” works which rely on tired tropes.

As a joke he writes his own outlandish “black” book under a pseudonym which then becomes a runaway success and lands him in the centre of the hypocrisy he abhors. 

Monster 

When her son begins to act strangely a mother starts demanding answers from his teacher in this coming-of-age tale from the co-writer-director of Broker, Hirokazu Koreeda.

The film examines issues such as school bullying, homophobia and intolerance, but as the story unfolds through the eyes of a mum, a teacher and a child the truth slowly emerges after numerous twists and turns. The question it poses is: “who is the monster?”

The Zone of Interest 

Loosely based on Martin Amis’s 2014 novel of the same name, writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s new drama focuses on the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, and his wife Hedwig as they attempt to build a dream life for their five children in a house next to the camp.

The film dispassionately explores the ordinary and banal existence of people complicit in these horrific crimes, which makes it all the more chilling and disturbing.  

Bob Marley: One Love

From the director of King Richard, Reinaldo Marcus Green, comes a detailed biopic about the life and work of legendary reggae musician Bob Marley.

British actors Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch play Marley and his wife Rita in a film which outlines how he overcame adversity, including an attempt on his life, and the inspiration behind his revolutionary journey. 
 

The Taste of Things 

Writer-director Anh Hung Tran serves up a tasty culinary romantic drama starring Juliette Binoche as an ailing cook.

Set in 1889, Binoche plays Eugenie who has been working for the fine gourmet Dodin (Benoit Magimel) for over the last 20 years when romance starts to stir.

Based on a 1924 novel by Swiss author Marcel Rouff, the film demonstrates a menage a trois between Eugenie, Dodin and their mutual love for whipping up food dishes. Best to eat before you see it. 
 
Dune: Part Two 

A casualty of last year’s writers and actors’ strike, Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited concluding part to his visually stunning epic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel is finally being released in cinemas this spring.

The film, scheduled to come out last November, follows Paul Atreides’s (Timothee Chalamet) mythic journey as he joins forces with Chani (Zendaya) and the Fremen people while seeking revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.

The already star studded cast will now also include Florence Pugh, Justin Butler and Lea Seydoux in this second half. I expect another breathtaking visual extravaganza.