From posh Brits and violent vikings, to Fantastic Beasts and a Downton Abbey jaunt! You’d be a fool to miss the cinematic treats that April has to offer, and David Michael Brown has everything you need to know about everything you need to see.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
The threequel in the Harry Potter prequels started by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them once again follows the adventures of British Ministry of Magic employee and self-proclaimed magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). Set in the 1930s, expect magical mayhem galore as the wizarding world joins in the good fight during World War II.
All eyes will be on Mads Mikkelsen, replacing Johnny Depp as the evil Gellert Grindelwald who is waging war on the Muggles, and Jude Law as a wand-toting Albus Dumbledore. Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, and Katherine Waterston all return, as do the fantastic beasts of the title and Harry Potter veteran director David Yates who has signed up for Fantastic Beasts 4 and 5.
Could this be the film when we finally get to see Hogwarts’ future headmaster kick-magical-ass? Here’s hoping, but what we do know is the most powerful wizard in the wizarding world can apparently keep a secret.
Memoria
The first English language film from the Palme d’or winning director of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a mind-bending out-of-body experience that will test audiences with its glacial pacing, but will astound with Thai maestro Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s gleefully esoteric lethargic outlook. Dripping with atmosphere, the film follows a Scottish orchidologist, played by Wes Anderson regular and David Bowie lookalike Tilda Swinton, who after hearing a loud “bang” at daybreak is unable to sleep.
She begins to sense a mysterious sensory syndrome while travelling in the Amazon jungle. Visiting her sister in Bogotá, she befriends fish scaler Hernan (Elkin Diaz) and Agnes (Jeanne Balibar), an archaeologist studying human remains. Shocking the tranquil environs with deafening bursts of harsh abrasive sound, Memoria assaults the senses and confounds audience expectations.
Ambulance
A remake of the tense 2005 Danish thriller of the same about two adoptive siblings turned bank robbers, who steal an ambulance occupied by a paramedic and a police officer in critical condition. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Candyman, The Matrix Resurrections) plays Will Sharp, a war veteran in desperate need of cash. He asks for help from his adopted brother Danny (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a charismatic criminal with his eyes on the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history.
Baby Driver star Eiza González plays the medic fighting for her life in the commandeered vehicle of the title. With director Michael Bay behind the camera, we can expect to see Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen II screaming as they unload clips in slow-motion, in a machismo fuelled display of heroic bombastic bloodshed.
The Lost City
Channelling that other “author goes to the jungle and finds romance-actioner” Romancing the Stone, Sandra Bullock plays Loretta Sage, a dissatisfied middle-aged scribe who writes romance-adventure novels centred around a fictional hero named Dash. The character is portrayed on the book covers by model Alan Caprison played with lunkheaded glee by Channing Tatum.
When the pair go on a book tour to promote her latest tome “The Lost City of D”, Loretta is kidnapped by Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), an eccentric billionaire who believes that the lost city described in Loretta’s new book is actually real. Unfortunately, her budding rescuer Alan has no survival skills and nothing resembling combat training. Hilarity, and maybe dance fighting will ensue. Expect Brad Pitt to steal the show playing with his Hollywood idol persona as a ridiculously good-looking adventurer.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
If you thought the twisted body mutations of Swiss Army Man pushed the boundaries of deliriously crazed cinema, then brace yourselves for the new film from the directing collective known as Daniels. Starring martial arts superstar Michelle Yeoh, the Tomorrow Never Dies Bond girl stars as an exhausted Chinese-American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes. So far so normal. But then she discovers there are hundreds of versions of herself in various multiverses with different skills, all of which she can harness to save the world!
Expect Yeoh to show off her kung-fu fighting skills, well-honed in Hong Kong classics like The Heroic Trio and Ang Lee’s astonishing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while the directors’ predilection for crazy body-morphing hijinks is brought to the fore. Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan from The Goonies and The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel’s Stephanie Hsu also join in the fun, all to the tune of New York electronica outfit Son Lux, David Byrne, Randy Newman and a flute-playing André 3000.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Wild at heart and weird on top, Nicolas Cage has spent much of his brilliant career defying expectations. One minute he’s an Oscar winner for his devastating turn as an alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas, the next he’s being attacked by bees in the woeful The Wicker Man. Recently there has been some self-referential awareness of the “Cult of Cage”, re-focusing his wayward career path with the meditative Pig and the ultra-violent Mandy. Now, in the ultimate meta motion picture, he is playing his biggest role to date…Nicolas Cage.
This heightened version of himself is down on his luck and takes a gig attending a rich super fan’s birthday party. With The Mandalorian himself Pedro Pascal as the initially benevolent billionaire, Tiffany Haddish as a C.I.A. operative trying to bring the rich playboy down, and Neil Patrick Harris as Cage’s agent; this promises to be a whole lotta fun as Cage is forced to live up to his own legend and re-creates his most iconic characters to save the day. We’ll put money on him putting the bunny back in the box!
The Northman
Following the claustrophobic horrors of The Witch and The Lighthouse, visionary director Robert Eggers is back with an epic Viking actioner set in 10th-century Iceland and a stunning ensemble cast. Alexander Skarsgård plays prince Amleth, who sets out to avenge the death of his father who was murdered by his uncle. This ferocious family affair stars Nicole Kidman is Queen Gudrún, Amleth’s mother, Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandill, and recent Dracula Claes Bang as the murderous Fjölnir, Amleth’s uncle and Aurvandill’s brother.
The Queen’s Gambit and Last Night in Soho sensation Anya Taylor-Joy, who got her big break in Egger’s witchy debut, stars as Olga of the Birch Forest, Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, and Icelandic songstress Björk, making only her second acting feature appearance since winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark in 2000, plays the eerie whispering Seeress. This looks intriguing to say the least.
Downton Abbey: A New Era
The Crawley family is back for another sumptuous visit to Downton Abbey. Stiff upper lips remain sealed about the intricacies of the plot, but we do know that the indomitable Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham (the ever-wonderful Maggie Smith), reveals her mysterious past in being bequeathed a stunning villa in the South of France. Like many movie spin-offs, it looks like Cora and Robert Crawley the 7th Earl of Grantham, played with poise and class by Elizabeth McGovern and Hugh Bonneville, will be heading on a Euro jolly.
Meanwhile, a film crew including Hugh Dancy and Dominic West want to make a film at the Stately Home, “a moving picture! At Downton!” Written by series creator Julian Fellows and now set in the roaring 20s, expect jazz hands aplenty, glorious locales, resplendent costumes and a feel-good factor as the upper-class Crawleys deal with an era that changed the world forever.
