There were many industries crushed by the pandemic in 2020, but few as brutally, or as quickly, as the film industry. Within days of the first infections in the US and UK, production staff were furloughed en masse, major releases were shelved and several cinema chains went bust. Even the stars of the big screen didn\u2019t escape: many ended up singing tunelessly into their phones for Gal Gadot\u2019s celebrity cover of “Imagine”.<\/p>\n
Just as the movie world began to get back on its feet in the late summer \u2013 amid repeated Covid-19 tests for all cast and crew, as well as marshals to reduce the chance of the virus spreading on sets \u2013 the second wave crashed, shutting down international productions once again. It was enough to make even Tom Cruise scream out in fury when he noticed several crew not wearing their masks on the set of the new Mission Impossible film.<\/p>\n
Which makes 2021 a strange year for new movies. On the one hand, what hasn’t been filmed can’t be released, which means some of the blockbusters that were lined up to land this year are now on ice. On the other, all those films that should have hit cinemas in 2020 \u2013 your James Bonds, your Marvel movies, your Oscar-bait dramedies \u2013 have been shunted into 2021, in the hope that cinemas might open up again. Although even that’s not a sure thing, which means we’re likely to see more shifting release dates, and more of the best movies of the year landing straight onto streaming services.<\/p>\n
Still, we’re already off to a great start. Here are our favourite movies of the year so far, as well as all the ones we’re very, very excited about. Here\u2019s hoping you got a new projector for Christmas.<\/p>\n
One Night in Miami
\nIt\u2019s a night that\u2019s taken on a near-mythic quality over the years. On 25 February 1964, a young Cassius Clay shocked the world by beating World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, and celebrated his victory by retiring to a motel room with three other Black superstars: soul singer Sam Cooke, American football player Jim Brown and Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X. Nobody knows what truly went down within those four walls, only that conversation flowed deep into the morning, but debut director Regina King has had a good guess with One Night in Miami. Based on Kemp Powers\u2019s powerful play of the same name, the quartet talk and argue about their individual roles in the fight for civil rights and Black empowerment. Tightly scripted and beautifully staged, King\u2019s film delves into the nuances that existed within these four Black icons, all on the verge of great change.<\/p>\n
The White Tiger
\nBased on Aravind Adiga\u2019s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger is a story of stark inequality in India, and how easily one person got stuck between gears of an oppressive system. Balram lives in the impoverished village of Laxmangarh, which is essentially owned and leased out by a wealthy coal baron named The Stork. As a young boy, Balram was denied the chance to take up a scholarship in Delhi because of the debts that his family owed to The Stork, but that doesn\u2019t stop him from aspiring to become a servant for his merciless landlord\u2019s family; specifically his son, Ashok, who has just returned to Delhi with his American-Indian wife, Pinky (Priyanka Chopra). He manages to get the job, and is happy with his lot for a while, until a tragic event alters his fate forever. Director Ramin Bahrani\u2019s classy direction never takes away from the grim reality of the tale.<\/p>\n
Pieces of a Woman
\nA heartbreaking story of devastating loss; at its centre, a 24-minute single-shot scene of a home-birth gone wrong. British actress Vanessa Kirby is brilliant as Martha, the grieving mother who must attempt to pick up the pieces of her life and confront her fractured relationship. We spoke to cinematographer Benjamin Loeb about the scene in early January, and he talked about striking the balance between hope and dread. “My wife\u2019s birth was 17 hours and it felt like two or three days but also like five minutes,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted this scene to feel like the audience was drawn along and forced to feel everything and watch everything. It feels like you\u2019re not able to take a breath and you forget about time and lean into the feelings you have.\u201d Directed by Hungarian auteur Korn\u00e9l Mundrucz\u00f3, written by Kata W\u00e9ber and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, don\u2019t be surprised if this appears on awards shortlists.<\/p>\n
MLK\/FBI
\n\u201cThis represents one of the darkest periods in the bureau\u2019s history\u201d.
\nSo says one of the interviewees in this documentary about how the FBI, and the White House, viewed civil rights activist Martin Luther King as a threat, and worked insidiously to take him down: investigating, bugging and harassing him until his assassination in 1968. Thanks to government documents that have now been declassified, director Sam Pollard has pulled together a distressing examination about the abuse of power, revealing how the FBI would seemingly stop at nothing to extinguish a man who\u2019s only mantra was for equality for all in America.<\/p>\n
And everything else to look forward to in 2021<\/em><\/p>\n Sound of Metal Beginning News Of The World Nomadland The World To Come Promising Young Woman The Mauritanian Cherry Coming 2 America Supernova Morbius The King\u2019s Man No Time to Die Mortal Kombat A Quiet Place: Part II Last Night in Soho F9 The French Dispatch Ghostbusters: Afterlife Old Candyman The Many Saints of Newark Dune Black Widow Eternals The Matrix 4 Antlers
\nRiz Ahmed’s already generating Oscar buzz for his turn as a speed metal drummer who starts to lose his hearing, and his grip on reality. In deafness, though, he finds a new purpose. And maybe a little gold statue.
\nRelease date: 29 January, on Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n
\nWinner of Best Film and Best Director at the San Sebastian Film Festival, this debut feature from Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili centres on a young Jehova’s Witness who undergoes a crisis of faith when her religious community comes under attack from a group of extremists. An examination of faith, love and loss, it moves with the pace and pressure of a glacier.
\nRelease date: 29 January, on Mubi<\/p>\n
\nNo, not a retelling of life in Murdoch\u2019s most salacious tabloid, but instead an epic western by Paul Greengrass, featuring Tom Hanks as a civil war veteran who\u2019s charged with returning a kidnapped girl, Joanna, to her family. Hanks goes full Woody \u201cthere\u2019s a snake in ma boot\u201d Toy Story as the grizzly but kindhearted Texan, but the real star is the scenery, which will have you longing to escape your front room.
\nRelease date: January, on Netflix<\/p>\n
\nPart movie, part documentary, this Golden Lion-winning film by Chloe Zhao sees Frances McDormand travel cross-country to escape her Nevada home’s economic collapse. She’s guided by (real-life) nomads Linda May, Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells, and the cast and crew mostly lived in vans for the entire shoot.
\nRelease date: 19 February<\/p>\n
\nA love story set in the harsh 1850s American East Coast frontier, two women from neighbouring couples battle their way through hardship and isolation and find an unexpected bond that starts to grow between them. Starring The Crown\u2019s Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston as Tallie and Abigail, the film has already picked up major plaudits, winning the Queer Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival<\/strong> in September.
\nRelease date: 12 February<\/p>\n
\nRape culture and revenge go under the microscope in this dark \u2013 like, bottom-of-a-mineshaft-dark \u2013 comedy starring Carey Mulligan, who puts in a career-best performance a women hell-bent on getting justice for an old university friend. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell (yes, The Crown\u2019s Camilla Parker-Bowles), it’s a timely take on consent, justice and responsibility, plus belly laughs.
\nRelease date: 12 February<\/p>\n
\nAlmost two decades on from the invasion of Iraq, there are still more than 40 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, where they’re held without trial but with little prospect of release. The ramifications of this imprisonment are revealed in this harrowing film, which is based on the true story of the Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who was held at the camp for 14 years without charge after being arrested \u2013 and rendered by the CIA \u2013 in the wake of the 9\/11 attacks. The Serpent\u2019s Tahar Rahim takes the lead role \u2013 cementing him as one of the most gifted actors of the moment \u2013 with Jodie Foster as the lawyer who defends him. On the other side is Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays military prosecutor Stu Coach with an accent so thick you could spread it on toast.
\nRelease date: 26 February<\/p>\n
\nBased on the multi-award-winning autobiographical novel by medic-turned-drug-addict-turned-bank robber, Nico Walker. It stars Tom Holland as an army medic who slips into opioid addiction on his return from Iraq, then takes to robbing banks to fund his habit. It’s produced and directed by the Russo Brothers, in their first feature in the big chair outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2006.
\nRelease date: 26 February in cinemas, on Apple TV+ from 12 March<\/p>\n
\nThis sequel to 1988’s Coming to America has been a long time coming, and sees Eddie Murphy return to the role of Prince (now King) Akeem as he makes another trip to Queen’s, New York.
\nRelease date: 5 March, on Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n
\nA Best Film nominee at 2020’s London Film Festival, Supernova follows partners Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth in a final trip to visit loved ones after Firth’s diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Sounds heavy, but writer-director Harry Macqueen treats their relationship, and enduring love in the face of tragedy, with a lightness of touch that’s as hopeful as it is heartbreaking. Expect Oscar nominations.
\nRelease date: 5 March<\/p>\n
\nInfected with a virus from bats, you say? It\u2019s no wonder this Marvel film \u2013 starring Jared Leto as the eponymous lead \u2013 was put on hold in 2020. Unlike Covid-19, this bat-born disease gives the scientist Michael Morbius incredible superpowers, but also turns him into a vampire (because presumably a superhero with no sense of taste or smell was a bit less cinematic). Chernobyl\u2019s Jared Harris adds some much-needed weight to the story, which also stars Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson and even a cameo from fellow chiropteran hero, Michael Keaton.
\nRelease date: 19 March<\/p>\n
\nBoth the prequel and the third film in the Kingsman series, based on the comics about a bunch of well-dressed spies who operate out of a Savile Row tailor. Matthew Vaughn\u2019s new movie explores the organisation’s origins, taking us back a century or so and pitting them against a rogue’s gallery of turn-of-the-century baddies, including Ra-Ra-Rasputin. Ralph Fiennes picks up the role of the Duke of Oxford once again, alongside Gemma Arterton, Tom Hollander, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Matthew Goode, while Rhys Ifans is almost unrecognisable as Russia\u2019s greatest love machine.
\nRelease date: March<\/p>\n
\nPerhaps you hadn’t heard, but there’s a new James Bond film due. The much (much!) delayed 25th outing for 007, No Time to Die, stars Daniel Craig in his final outing as MI6’s bluntest instrument, this time facing off against Rami Malek as the terrorist leader Safin, who\u2019s out for revenge (is he actually Blofeld? Maybe!). Throw in return visits from Ben Whishaw (Q) and L\u00e9a Seydoux (Dr Madeleine Swann), plus Billie Eilish providing the official theme song, and this looks well worth the wait.
\nRelease date: 8 October<\/p>\n
\nThe high-kicking, fight-to-the-death film franchise from the Nineties is getting a reboot, despite the last outing for the computer game movie, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, being universally panned in 1997. But, onwards and upwards and all that? The film \u2013 based on a script that’s been kicking around for almost two decades, but don’t let that worry you \u2013 is a tonal shift from the first one, with an R rating and Saw creator James Wan in the director’s chair. It’s not going to be Citizen Kane, but it does look like dumb, bloody fun. Altogether now: finish him!
\nRelease date: 16 April<\/p>\n
\nEmily Blunt and family tiptoe around again in this sequel to John Krasinski’s 2018 horror smash. The conceit remains the same \u2013 make a noise, get bumped off \u2013 but now her brood are heading out into a place where all new threats lurk.
\nRelease date: 23 April<\/p>\n
\nEdgar Wright’s new one stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a woman who travels through time and winds up in Sixties London, which is remarkably less swinging \u2013 and rather more horrifying \u2013 than she expected.
\nRelease date: 23 April<\/p>\n
\nWill the Fast & Furious franchise ever end? For Vin Diesel’s sake, we hope not. Hollywood isn’t as welcoming to musclebound bruisers as it was back in the Nineties, and these actors \u2013 your Vin Diesels, your Dwayne Johnsons, your Jason Stathams \u2013 can’t survive on fish out of water comedies alone. F9 introduces John Cena and Cardi B to the already mammoth cast, with Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron returning as well.
\nRelease date: 28 May<\/p>\n
\nWes Anderson’s “love letter to journalists” tells the heartwarming tale of a muckraker who goes through celebrity’s bins. Oh, wait, nope; The French Dispatch is about the Parisian bureau of a US newspaper (the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun) where Anderson alums like Bill Murray and Owen Wilson, alongside new faces including Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and L\u00e9a Seydoux, pursue a trio of stories. Expect whimsy.
\nRelease date: May<\/p>\n
\nOr, as it should be called: ‘Ghostbusters: The Kids Are Alright’. A single mum moves to a small town in Oklahoma with her two children, who discover that their grandad (RIP) used to be a Ghostbuster. Which is kind of handy, actually, as there\u2019s some supernatural goings-on spooking the townsfolk. Before you can say “Slimer!”, the kids have jumped into those familiar greige boiler suits and are wieldinging the proton packs. Fans of the original will be happy to see familiar faces Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Sigourney Weaver popping up once again, while Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) and Paul Rudd are also up for busting some spirits, too.
\nRelease date: June<\/p>\n
\nA delightfully silly premise from director M. Night Shyamalan, pulled from the pages of Pierre Oscar L\u00e9vy and Frederik Peeters’s graphic novel, Sandcastle. A family camp out on a secluded beach only to discover that a mysterious force is making them age at an incredible rate, reducing their lives to a day.
\nRelease date: July<\/p>\n
\nJordan Peele must have uttered the Candyman’s name too many times in front of the mirror, because the iconic slasher villain is back in 2021. This sequel to the cult 1992 horror movie is produced by Peele and directed by Nia DaCosta (who’s helming 2022’s Captain Marvel sequel) centres on a hipster artist (played by Watchmen and Matrix 4 star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who moves into an old sweet factory decides to create an installation, in which viewers are encouraged to say the \u201cc\u201d word into a mirror. Bad move, bozo: it awakens the demon from his slumber once again.
\nRelease date: 27 August<\/p>\n
\nThirteen years after the end of The Sopranos, and despite James Galdofini\u2019s death in 2013, will this prequel to one of the greatest TV shows of all time work? It certainly looks like it might. Based around the race riots in Newark in 1967, The Many Saints of Newark focuses on Dickie Moltisanti, the father of the older Tony\u2019s protege, Christopher, and in some genius casting, also features Galdolfini\u2019s real-life son, Michael Galdolfini as a young Tony Soprano. Bada-bing, we\u2019re in.
\nRelease date: 22 October<\/p>\n
\nIs Dune the film with the longest pre-production span in history? Quite possibly. Since the sci-fi novel was released in 1965, Alejandro Jodorowsky was tipped to helm a 10-hour series in the mid Seventies, but it never happened. David Lynch had a go in the Eighties that almost ended his career. In the Aughts, it was attached to a slew of names, including Peter Berg and Pierre Morel, before Blade Runner 2049’s Denis Villeneuve came on board in 2016. Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet stars as Duke Leto Atreides, who’s sent to the desert planet Arrakis to guard ‘the spice’ \u2013 the most valuable drug in the universe. Looking very serious amid the incredible backdrops are Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa and Zendaya, and if you\u2019re wondering why the score sounds so awesome \u2013 even on the trailer \u2013 it’s because Hans Zimmer is at the helm.
\nRelease date: 1 October<\/p>\n
\nIt felt like 2020 was the first time since the first fish crawled up onto land that there wasn’t at least one Marvel movie in cinemas. In 2021, normal service resumes. Black Widow is the long-awaited origin story for Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, and it looks suitably epic. The film sees Romanoff reunite with her other \u2018sisters\u2019 from a highly unusual Russian training programme; Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). Also along for the ride is their father figure, the Red Guardian, played by Mr Lily Allen, David Harbour, as they duel the Taskmaster, who can mimic the abilities and skills of their duelling partners.
\nRelease date: 28 October<\/p>\n
\nWhen Chloe Zhao isn’t making docu-realist masterpieces with Frances McDormand (see Nomadland, above) she’s helming Marvel’s next blockbuster, which stars Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden and Gemma Chan, and reportedly features the studio’s first transgender superhero.
\nRelease date: 5 November<\/p>\n
\nNow, no one needs a fourth Matrix movie, especially after the sour taste left by part three. But the signs are good. Lana Wachowski is in charge, Neo and Trinity (Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss) are in, and the idea that we’re all slaves to semi-sentient machines is no longer sci-fi (go on, put your phone down, we dare you).
\nRelease date: 22 December<\/p>\n
\nFans of Stranger Things will be into this supernatural horror film featuring Jesse Plemons. A young boy has captured and is feeding some sort of beast that soon is at large in their town, with a devastating impact on everyone who lives there. Produced by Hellboy\u2019s Guillermo del Toro, the trailer alone gives us the willies, so perhaps it\u2019s a good thing the film\u2019s release has been delayed once again, giving us time to bolster ourselves for the main event.
\nRelease date: TBC<\/p>\n