When it comes to the movies, we can’t be entirely certain about the future, but at least we’ve caught up with the present.
For all of 2020 and for much of 2021, the same titles were showing up on every seasonal preview (“Black Widow” must have moved three or four times) as their release dates were pushed back, again and again, in hopes of outracing the pandemic.
Now there’s no more backlog. Of the titles originally announced for 2020, only “Top Gun: Maverick” remains. The Tom Cruise movie is now slated to kick off the summer blockbuster season on May 27, 2022.
Though the movies will be new in 2022, the trends they reflect are likely to be consistent with the past few years. Expect superhero movies, sci-fi movies and an emergent strain of movies made by and starring women.
Here are 10 notable upcoming titles, plus one for good luck. Most I’m looking forward to; others are just too big to ignore.
‘The 355’ (January)
An evil organization is trying to start World War III, and the only people that can stop them are a consortium of female secret agents, representing the U.S. (Jessica Chastain), Colombia (Penélope Cruz), Britain (Lupita Nyong’o), China (Bingbin Fan) and Germany (Diane Kruger).
With a movie like this, if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s bad — how bad could it really be?
‘Moonfall’ (February)
Director Roland Emmerich keeps thinking about the end of the world so you don’t have to. In his movies, the world has been threatened and seriously damaged by alien invasion (“Independence Day”), climate change (“The Day After Tomorrow”), earthquakes (“2012”) and a very big lizard (“Godzilla”). But in “Moonfall” he is set to top himself.
Halle Berry plays a former astronaut who realizes that the moon is off course and is about to crash into the Earth. Just to be clear, that wouldn’t be good.
‘Fear’ (February)
People go away for a fun weekend, but high jinks turn to horror when a terrible contagion suddenly goes airborne. This looks like a routine horror movie, but its exaggerated similarity to the pandemic crisis makes this something worth a look. It could be horror’s first response to what we’ve been living through the past two years.
The Batman (March)
If you go to any museum featuring medieval and Renaissance paintings, you see the same biblical scenes depicted over and over. And you may wonder why. Likewise, these days you might wonder what is at work with the endless Batman, Spider-Man and Avengers movies. Are people getting spiritual satisfaction from witnessing the same kinds of scenes, year after year?
It’s hard to imagine the joy of constantly returning to the same prepubescent fantasies, but Robert Pattinson will be Batman this time, and let’s hope he’s weird and tormented enough to make things interesting.
Zoe Kravitz co-stars.
‘Turning Red’ (March)
Oscar-winning Domee Shi (“Bao”) c0-wrote and directed this Pixar animated film about a teenage girl coping with all the usual strains of that time of life, plus a problem unique to her: Whenever she gets really excited, she turns into a giant red panda.
It marks Shi’s feature debut and will feature the voices of Rosalie Chiang and Sandra Oh. It’s the first Pixar film solely directed by a woman.
‘Ambulance’ (April)
Directed by Michael Bay, this remake of a Danish film is about two brothers who rob a bank (to pay for a loved one’s operation). Things go bad, and they find themselves driving an ambulance and trying to escape a citywide dragnet.
Starring the Bay Area’s own Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza Gonzalez.
‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ (April)
Nicolas Cage plays himself — a movie star in need of cash who agrees to accept a million dollars to appear at a Spanish fan’s birthday party. The fan turns out to be a drug kingpin and things soon turn dangerous. Though it’s hard to tell with these meta movies, this one looks fun.
Also stars Neil Patrick Harris, Pedro Pascal and Tiffany Haddish.
Untitled Elvis Presley Movie (June)
Elvis Presley died in August 1977. Since then, there hasn’t been a serious feature film about him. This could just be happenstance, or it could be the result of two factors: (1) It’s hard to find someone to play the King; (2) it’s hard to dramatize a guy who was kind of boring. After all, how many scenes can you have of Elvis making fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches? But now Baz Luhrmann is taking on Elvis, and … that’s all we know. More details to come.
‘Nope’ (July)
This is the upcoming Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) film, now in postproduction. Daniel Kaluuya is in it. So is Donna Mills. There has been some online speculation that the movie might be based on the “Twilight Zone” episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” but all we really know is that “Nope” is in the horror genre.
‘Mission: Impossible 7’ (September)
Audio footage from the set of this film went viral in late 2020, when Tom Cruise launched into a profanity-laced tirade against crew members who were not observing COVID safety protocols. And you know what? Good for him.
This film is a sequel to the previous “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” which was the best action movie of 2018. It should be good. And with “Top Gun: Maverick” opening in May 2022, it looks to be a Cruise-heavy year.
But that’s fine. Cruise doesn’t make serious movies, but he makes seriously good ones.
‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ (December)
Kasi Lemmons directs Naomi Ackie in a biopic about the late pop star Whitney Houston. As the 2018 documentary “Whitney” made clear, there’s a remarkable story there, ranging from the glorious to the absolutely squalid. If this film is willing to dramatize the whole story — as in, if it’s willing to take the ride up to the penthouse and then all the way down to the basement — it will be something worth seeing.
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