Anatomy of a Favourite Film

 

Anatomy of a Favourite Film

 

What, exactly, makes a film qualify as one of my coveted “favourites” and thus get the special Favourite Films Series treatment? Obviously every film fanatic has a list of films they deem superior, but the exact criteria differs from one fanatic to the next. Since I have now done over 40 entries in this ongoing series (with many more still to come), I thought it would be an interesting process to reflect on the specific qualities that put certain films onto my favourites list, and to perhaps shed some light on why certain films are not on my list.

 

Genre & Subject Matter

Most film critics are beholden to watch as many movies as possible and provide a critical analysis of all films. This is one reason why I don’t think of myself as a critic, although you could say I’m particularly critical of certain types of films. I am not the type of movie fan who loves all movies just for the sake of the medium of film, either. I like what I like, and while my movie tastes may still be broader than many, the primary criterion for a favourite film lies mainly in the subject matter, but often it’s the genre that comes first.

A quick glance at the entries in my Favourite Films Series thus far reveals my preference for the science fiction, horror, action, adventure, thriller, and comedy genres, but there are a few exceptions where certain films transcend their genre. I’m not opposed to westerns, but the genre isn’t one of my preeminent favourites, so something like Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), which is considered one of the best movies ever made by some, is one I have seen, do think is great, but it’s not among my personal favourites. That being said, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966) is definitely a western that, to me, is more than just a great western—it’s a great movie, period—and it’s on my list of all-time favourites.

Some specific sub-genres I am uniquely interested in are dinosaur films, animal attack films, and survival films, which is why you won’t find Dinosaur (2000) or The Edge (1997) on as many people’s favourites list as more well known or generally well-respected movies like Jaws (1975) or Jurassic Park (1993). If the subject matter of a film doesn’t grab my interest, it’s unlikely to be something I seek out at all. A couple genres I’ve grown more accepting of as I’ve gotten older are musicals and historical dramas, but my tastes haven’t changed all that much since I first started collecting DVDs over twenty years ago. When I look at new movies coming out, I tend to gravitate toward the aforementioned favourite genres, but when something outside of these comes along, it needs to have a subject that I care about in order for me to care at all, though this isn’t always strictly true, obviously. For a recent example, I very much enjoyed the film Conclave (2024), despite the subject matter not interesting me very much at first. There were still elements that intrigued me, though—the cast (not usually an essential for me, but at times, certainly a factor), the cinematography, and the awards attention it was getting, but in the case of Anora (2024) (which ended up winning Best Picture over Conclave) it was mainly the director and his previous work that had me interested, and the subject matter also sounded more interesting. As it would end up, I enjoyed Conclave far more than Anora.

What I’m trying to emphasize here: while the subject matter is not the be all end all of what makes a film my favourite, it’s definitely one of the most important factors. I can appreciate a film like Conclave on many levels—the production, the performances, the way the story is told—but at the end of the day, it’s just not about something I care enough about for it to take root in my brain as a new favourite. Something like Sing Street (2016), though, which is in the coming-of-age genre (another favourite genre of mine) had characters I could instantly relate to, compelled by all-too-relatable forces, in a story I cared deeply about because of those characters and the actors portraying them, and it only got better every time I watched it again.

 

Directors & Directing Styles

Going back to Anora for a second, the director, Sean Baker, previously made a film called The Florida Project (2017), which I originally chose to watch based on 1) The subject matter, 2) starring Willem Dafoe, and 3) recommendations from film critics whose opinions I value. While I did not enjoy Anora as much as The Florida Project, I enjoy how Sean Baker’s directs, and the way a film is directed is important to me, but I also seek out films based on who the director is more than just occasionally. A film might be about a subject I don’t care about or in a genre that isn’t a favourite, but if I’ve previously loved a director’s work, I’ll be more willing to check out something outside of my interests if they are behind it. Case in point: Quentin Tarantino. Had Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) been just some guy’s movie, I doubt I would have had much interest in it, even with it starring one of the few actors who will sometimes be enough alone to draw me to a project, Leonardo DiCaprio. Actually, that goes for the two films Tarantino made before that, too: the westerns The Hateful Eight (2015) and Django Unchained (2012).

If we take a quick look at CCC Lists #49 & #50, only three of the directors in my (then) Top 20 Favourite Directors don’t have films I consider among my all-time favourites. There are some directors who might not be my favourites because their overall filmography isn’t consistently great, but their directing style still consistently works for me, and they may have at least one film that’s among my favourites, such as Gore Verbinski with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). A director who I feel like I’ve made concessions for with his last three movies even when other elements haven’t been as good is James Cameron, and the Avatar franchise leads me nicely to the next important element of my favourite films.  

 

Screenplay

I’m a writer, so of course the written part of the film matters a lot to me. The reason it isn’t the first topic on here is because a movie does not need to have flawless writing above all else for it to be a favourite. I think some of the best examples of this are The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Godzilla 2000 (1999), and Predator (1987). The screenwriting in The Lost World is a far cry from the original Jurassic Park, but compared to later Jurassic World movies? You can’t tell me the story in The Lost World is worse than that of Jurassic World Dominion (2022), which might be the worst screenplay for any movie containing the word “Jurassic” ever written. To compare the screenplay for Godzilla 2000 with, say, the screenplay for Godzilla Minus One (2023) or even Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), it is objectively worse, but I just love Godzilla 2000 for its combination of a traditional Godzilla story with peak miniature effects and the best-looking Godzilla of them all. Even Predator, a movie I never get tired of, has what I would call a very simple plot. Writing does not have to be a movie’s primary strength to be a favourite, but I can only take so much weakness when it comes to anything outside of my preferred genres. Godzilla isn’t over here winning any Oscars (Minus One notwithstanding), but it has plenty else going on for me to love it.

Even other films I consider my favourites like The Fox and the Hound (1981) or Back to the Future Part II (1989) or Planet Terror (2007) do not always excel at a successful three-act structure, or convincing dialogue, or innovative storytelling techniques, but I can see how screenwriting does impact the way I rank my favourites against one another. Back to the Future (1985) is up there as an all-time favourite primarily for that sound screenplay by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. As fun as Back to the Future Part II and Part III are, neither are as well written, in my opinion. Planet Terror may be an odd favourite of mine, but I wouldn’t rank it anywhere close to Back to the Future.

Sometimes the way the story is told makes all the difference to me. Rear Window (1954) may not be as iconic of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller as Vertigo (1958), but I just prefer the story in Rear Window more. As I got older and watched more and more movies, I learned that the next two topics only really matter when they are in service of a good story, and as movies continue to get more expensive, more visually frenetic/cluttered/busy, and more special-effects-heavy, it gets truer all the time.

 

 

 

 

Special Effects

I do love a special effects spectacle, because it reminds me of what got me interested in movies at such a young age: the wonder of how directors could make someone’s written ideas come to visual life in such a realistic way that you could actually believe what you were seeing was real. The preeminent examples of this have to be the original King Kong (1933) and Jurassic Park (1993). Both of those films made my brain go berserk when I saw them as a kid. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the stop motion spectacle of Skull Island and Kong’s rampage through New York, and I couldn’t get enough of Isla Nublar’s completely convincing cloned dinosaurs, watching it over and over just to get those glimpses of prehistoric creatures. I remain inspired by both films to this day.

Other visual masterpieces that I cannot deny a spot among my favourites are Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), The Dark Knight (2008) and Gremlins (1984), among so many others. Visual effects fascinate me even when they appear dated or unconvincing, because they made (and still make) me curious about how special effects used to be achieved; there is far less wonder in modern movies now that everything is usually made in a computer. Not all of the special effects in Jaws (1975) are completely convincing today, but the screenplay, the direction by Steven Spielberg, the genre and subject matter are all so strong that a couple shots of a fake shark don’t displace it from the top of my list. As much as I love special effects in movies, they certainly aren’t a requirement for one to become a favourite. Films like The Breakfast Club (1985) or The Shawshank Redemption (1994) are on the list without any effects of note.

 

Music & Sound Effects

So, if a movie excels at everything I’ve covered up to this point, it certainly could be a favourite, but one element I find in common with the majority of my favourites is uniquely memorable sound. Not every movie needs to have a super distinct original score to be outstanding, but it certainly doesn’t hurt! All of my favourite Steven Spielberg films just so happen to be scored by his old buddy John Williams, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Similarly, two favourite films of mine directed by Christopher Nolan, Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight (2008), were both scored by Hans Zimmer, and perhaps they would have been favourites even without that collaboration, but the music for both of those films helped define the cinematic language that spoke to me at the right time in the right way to really affect me, stick with me, and keep me coming back for more.

I tried to pick out my favourite films that don’t have music I find memorable, and I only came up with a few, such as Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), Misery (1990), and Quest for Fire (1981). Even some like An American Werewolf in London (1981) or Stand by Me (1986), which don’t have original music I can hear in my head when I think of them, do have soundtracks with memorable needle drops that fit perfectly. Sound effects are less important than music when it comes to favourites, but as I thought about it, I realized many of my favourite films have some of the most iconic and recognizable original sound effects in all of cinema, whether I’m talking about Star Wars (1977) or Jurassic Park (1993) or even Iron Man (2008).

 

Nostalgia & Rewatchability

This last one might annoy some film purists, but I’ve kept it real on my blog since day one, and I have to keep it real right to the end here, so the last criterion for what makes a film my favourite has to be the combination of nostalgia I feel watching it and how likely I would be to watch it again. I acknowledge and respect the cinematic craftsmanship that went into the film Schindler’s List (1993), I do! That being said, I have not been compelled to watch it again since the one time I saw it, because it is a hard watch, and I am not a historian. Not every movie needs to be fun, but a movie needs to have at least some rewatchability to be a favourite of mine. I decided on many of the films in my Favourite Films Series so many years ago I have since rewatched certain ones like Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Gremlins so many times I couldn’t possibly keep count. A film like The Sandlot (1993) is perhaps one of the best examples of something I am deeply nostalgic for, but nostalgia isn’t enough. You won’t see Osmosis Jones (2001) on my favourites list, even though I have rewatched it as an adult and felt nostalgic. It just doesn’t have the right combo to hold up as something timeless for me, but many movies I saw at a young age do.

Should nostalgia determine favourite? I say yes, because that’s my own prerogative. It may be part of the reason there aren’t many newer films on my favourites list, but I have slowly added and re-evaluated my personal favourites list ever since I first drafted it. I can remember the first time I saw every single one of my favourite films, and I don’t have an exact number of required rewatches to determine if a new one becomes part of the list or gets knocked off. So, next time I post a new entry in my Favourite Films Series, you’ll have a better idea of what general criteria got it there in the first place, and some of the films I mentioned in here I have not covered yet, but I eventually will some day! For the record, here are the ones I have covered so far, in publication order (not any other order…that will also come along some day, too…)

An American Werewolf in London (1981): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/03/an-american-werewolf-in-london.html

Godzilla 2000 (1999): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/04/godzilla-2000-1999-favourite-films.html

Iron Man (2008): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/05/iron-man-2008-favourite-films-series.html

Tremors (1990): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/06/tremors-1990-favourite-films-series.html

King Kong (1933): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/07/king-kong-1933-favourite-films-series.html

Dinosaur (2000): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/08/dinosaur-2000-favourite-films-series.html

The Dark Knight (2008): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-dark-knight-2008-favourite-films.html

Misery (1990): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2016/10/misery-1990-favourite-films-series.html

Alien (1979): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/04/alien-1979-favourite-films-series.html

Aliens (1986) : https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/04/aliens-1986-favourite-films-series.html

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) : https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/06/ferris-beullers-day-off-1986-favourite.html

Jaws (1975): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/06/jaws-1975-favourite-films-series.html

Spider-Man 2 (2004): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/07/spider-man-2-2004-favourite-films-series.html

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/08/terminator-2-judgment-day-1991.html

Predator (1987): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2018/10/predator-1987-review-favourite-films.html

The Silence of the Lambs (1991): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-silence-of-lambs-1991-review.html

The Shawshank Redemption (1994): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-shawshank-redemption-1994-favourite.html

The Edge (1997): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-edge-1997-review-favourite-films.html

Sing Street (2016): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/01/sing-street-2016-favourite-films-series.html

Inception (2010): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/02/inception-2010-favourite-films-series.html

Rear Window (1954) : https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/05/rear-window-1954-favourite-films-series.html

Jurassic Park (1993): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/06/jurassic-park-1993-favourite-films.html

The Sandlot (1993): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-sandlot-1993-favourite-films-series.html

Stand by Me (1986): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/09/stand-by-me-1986-favourite-films-series.html

The Thing (1982): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-thing-1982-review-favourite-films.html

The Fly (1986): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-fly-1986-review-favourite-films.html

Planet Terror (2007): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/10/planet-terror-2007-review-favourite.html

Ghostbusters (1984): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/10/ghostbusters-1984-review-favourite.html

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/04/fantastic-mr-fox-2009-favourite-films.html

Gremlins (1984): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/12/gremlins-1984-favourite-films-series.html

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/06/raiders-of-lost-ark-1981-favourite.html

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/08/pirates-of-caribbean-curse-of-black.html

The Naked Gun (1988): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-naked-gun-1988-favourite-films.html

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/05/mad-max-fury-road-2015-favourite-films.html

The Breakfast Club (1985): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-breakfast-club-1985-favourite-films.html

The Terminator (1984): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-terminator-1984-favourite-films.html

Godzilla (1954): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/11/godzilla-1954-favourite-films-series.html

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-lost-world-jurassic-park-1997.html

Back to the Future (1985): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/07/back-to-future-1985-favourite-films.html

Toy Story (1995): https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/11/toy-story-1995-favourite-films-series.html

Whatcha Got, 2026?

 

2026 Movies Preview

 

A year ago, I was feeling pretty glum about the upcoming slate of movies, and while I certainly don’t feel less optimistic about 2026, I can’t say I feel a whole lot more optimistic. The clouds looming over my head at the end of 2024 were all in the shapes of unnecessary sequels and remakes and reboots to come, and while some of them were the duds I expected them to be, others were better than projected, and overall, 2025 wasn’t as bad of a year for new movies as I had anticipated.

I won’t get my hopes way up for this coming year, but I do note fewer silly sequels and a higher number of intriguing original films, plus some sequels and reboots that feel rife with possibility, so let’s break it down into the four quarters and see what’s in store!

 

January to March

 

2025 made it clear that the horror genre has not stopped going strong, and it looks like 2026 is going to continue that trend. The first three months of the year are punctuated with noteworthy horror, and in years past, January horror movies came with automatic red flags, but that seems to be a little less true now. I’ve heard good initial reactions to Primate and Killer Whale, two killer animal films (a subgenre favourite of mine) utilizing familiar creatures with fresh injections of terror. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the not-so-long-awaited sequel to the very long-awaited sequel to 28 Weeks Later that was not-so-secretly shot at the same time as 28 Years Later by Candyman reboot director Nia Dacosta. Unlike 2025’s third entry in the loosely connected franchise thus far, The Bone Temple seems to be an immediate follow-up, and early word of mouth has been even more positive than it was for its predecessor. I’m iffy on it given the way 28 Years Later ended, but if the reviews really do end up being overwhelmingly positive, maybe I’ll check it out before it hits streaming.

Another horror sequel that’s got me a little less interested is Scream 7. I still haven’t watched a Scream movie that wasn’t directed by Wes Craven (meaning not 5 or 6) but I might finally get around to watching them and see this newest one, which is written and directed by original Scream writer Kevin Williamson, with Neve Campbell returning after being absent from the previous entry due to stupid, cheap executives. There’s an unexpected Frankenstein resurgence happening right now—if you thought Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the classic tale was bold, get a load of the trailer for The Bride! It looks like it’s either going to be a revelatory new vision of the gothic source material, or it’s going to be an annoying disaster, but either way I’m intrigued. Finally for horror, there’s Iron Lung, which hails from Youtuber Markiplier and broke the record for most blood used in a film production. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror flick with a sea of blood? Sign me up. But, none of these movies are the one I’m looking forward to the most in the first quarter of 2026. Speaking of hail…Project Hail Mary may have had a spoiler-filled trailer, but I still intend to read the book before the movie comes out, and have high hopes for this epic-yet-comedic sci-fi adventure, which should be extra epic in IMAX.

 

April to June

 

The second quarter has far more variety than the first, but there are also quite a few suspect films that I’m less interested in seeing and more just curious about for their varying qualities and potentials. Apparently, there’s going to be another remake/reboot of The Mummy…I don’t think I’m fully over the 2017 Tom Cruise one yet, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach yet another. There’s also an impending reimagining of Animal Farm from director Andy Serkis that, quite honestly, looks like a joke. It may end up being so fascinatingly bad that I won’t dismiss it entirely until I see the reviews.

I’ve heard early buzz about The Drama, an A24 rom-com-drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, and the first poster for The Sheep Detectives boasts an impressive voice cast for a rather unusual sounding mystery comedy written by the guy who did The Last of Us (odd choice). There’s supposed to finally be a new version of Masters of the Universe, which I’ve been hearing about for what feels like a decade or longer, but I haven’t seen a trailer or an image or anything released yet, so I won’t hold my breath on that one. Speaking of movies I’ve heard nothing about yet but find worth keeping track of due to the premise, the director of Deep Blue Sea, one of my favourite killer animal films, is directing a film called Deep Water, starring Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart, about some people trying to survive a frenzy of sharks, so let’s hope that one looks at least mildly interesting.

Three sequels that are on many people’s radar are Mortal Kombat II, Supergirl, and The Mandalorian and Grogu. I don’t recall much about the first Mortal Kombat, but the trailer for the sequel makes it look like it will be more fun, and the casting of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage is spot on. Supergirl will probably be fun enough, coming hot off the heels of Superman and feeling full of possibility for how it will continue to build the new DCU, but The Mandalorian and Grogu only intrigues me by how poorly it may or may not do at the box office. I haven’t even watched all of the series it is inspired by (following up?) and having this as the first new Star Wars movie since Rise of Skywalker feels like a weirdly desperate move. 

Finally, in the early summer season, legendary director Steven Spielberg is back in familiar territory with Disclosure Day, to hopefully remind us that he is one of the best summer blockbuster directors and one of the most brilliant filmmakers to tackle the subject of aliens. The first trailer underwhelmed me, but he has a great cast to work with, and it’s coming at an interesting time for alien conspiracy theorists, with some claiming a real disclosure day is coming. Thinking back, Spielberg has only made two truly great alien films (I don’t consider War of the Worlds all that special) and he hasn’t made a truly crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster in over two decades, so I’m quietly hoping for the best with this one, but I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t stick the landing.

 

July to September

 

The summer movie season isn’t stacked with tons of blockbusters I’m eagerly anticipating this year, but there are a few releases worth noting, and all of them are pretty different from one another. I’ll start with the superhero stuff, which is pretty light compared to 2025. There’s Clayface from DC Studios, which I don’t expect will be a huge hit, but hey, James Gunn is involved, and he made The Suicide Squad into something better than I ever could have imagined, so maybe it will be the big surprise for the summer, and its ties to the rapidly-growing new DCU will surely be played up once marketing kicks in, but it might be a tough sell to get people excited about a Batman villain never seen in live-action before in a body horror film without any big actors. The other superhero film of note will be a surefire hit, because Spider-Man: Brand New Day is what Marvel fans like myself have been waiting for: the return of the only mainline hero we have left to care about. Tom Holland is back as Peter Parker, Scorpion is back, The Punisher is back, and Daredevil is rumoured to be back, too. I hope it’s another fun Spidey adventure that isn’t just a setup for another Marvel movie coming at the end of the year!  

There are four other standouts from the summer slate. A remake of Resident Evil is in the works, and I wouldn’t care about it at all if it weren’t for the guy behind the camera: Zach Creeger, who directed one of my favourites of 2025 (Weapons) and one of the scariest movies I’ve seen from this decade (Barbarian), so hopefully this one’s actually scary and adapts the game more faithfully. A new Evil Dead film is on the way, from another new director, making it the third one in a row to be set apart from the Bruce Campbell led films, which themselves concluded with the series Ash vs. Evil Dead. Little is known about Evil Dead Burn at the moment, but hopefully it retains all the best elements from Evil Dead Rise and the Evil Dead remake, and maybe, just maybe, if we’re lucky, it also has the much rumoured return of Bruce Campbell… The nearly cancelled and buried Coyote vs. Acme finally gets to see the light of day, and I hope it’s as funny as it’s been purported to be. Finally, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated The Odyssey is right at the top of my personal list of most eagerly awaited films of the whole year. The trailers have been epic, and I think it will live up to the hype.

 

October to December

 

The final three months of 2026 have a very diverse batch of films I’m looking forward to, and a couple of them are sure to be among the biggest movies of the year, but I’ll get to those ones at the end. First up, the director of one of my favourite movies of the past decade is back with something new and interesting. Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has teamed up with Tom Cruise for Digger, a black comedy with a teaser trailer that gives nothing away and tells me everything I need to know. The Social Reckoning is one of 2026’s most unlikely sequels: a biographical follow-up to The Social Network. Writer Aaron Sorkin couldn’t entice director David Fincher to come back, so he’s directing the thing himself, and has an absolutely stellar cast to help him. I’m not excited to see it, per se, but I am intrigued, and it will at least be a good excuse to go back and rewatch The Social Network again.

Taking a break from sequels for a second, there’s a remake/reboot of another video game movie coming, and the teaser trailer makes it look way better than the original from the 90’s. Street Fighter appears to be self aware, well cast, and ready to entertain. Another reboot of sorts that I hope will deliver is Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, from director Greta Gerwig, who previously found huge success with Barbie. This reboot appears to be aiming to kickstart a new cinematic saga by starting with what some consider the first C.S. Lewis Narnia book in terms of chronology, and theoretically going from there, meaning we may soon see a new version of that one we all know with that lion and witch and wardrobe.

Two original movies I currently know very little about but want to know more are Whalefall and Remain. Whalefall is about a scuba diver searching for his father who gets eaten by a whale and has to try to escape the leviathan, which is precisely up the survival thriller alley I’m a fan of, and Remain is the newest film from director M. Night Shyamalan, which would almost  be enough right there to prick up my ears, but guess who is writing the screenplay for his newest cinematic endeavor? One of the most famous romance writers out there: Nicholas Sparks! Apparently, it’s based on an idea they came up with together, which Sparks first turned into a book, and is now turning into a movie with Shyamalan, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I didn’t like Shyamalan’s last film, Trap; it was neither good nor so bad it was entertaining. This one could be either. Hopefully it picks a lane—either lane, I’m down for entertainment when it comes to his films, whichever form it may be in.

These aren’t the movies you’re waiting to read about, though, are they? Alright, let’s address the ticking clock: Doomsday is coming! Will it be doomsday for Marvel, though? I hate to say it, but the leaked teaser trailers for Avengers: Doomsday have done the opposite job of getting me hyped up for the epic return of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Just how many superheroes can you cram into one movie? The Russo Brothers intend to find out, apparently, because everyone, it seems, is back, and I do mean everyone, unfortunately—even characters who had a proper ending in Endgame.

At the moment, Doomsday is set for the same release date as another highly anticipated sequel: Denis Villenueve’s Dune: Part Three. The internet is already trying to make “Dunesday” happen, a la “Barbenheimer”, but I say let this one go. If the release dates don’t change, guess what my plan is? See Dune: Part Three first and then see Doomsday at a later date. There’s no way I’m sitting through two three-hour sequels back-to-back! I’m all in on a third Dune, which will probably be quite different from the second book (remember part one and two were both adapting just book one) but I’m not yet sold on Doomsday, and while I can see the hype train building as it gets closer, right now the current attempts to draw viewers back are making me leery.

Neither of these movies are my most anticipated of the year, though. Two others are even higher: the only ones aside from The Odyssey I can guarantee I will see on opening night, no matter what. Werwulf is auteur director Robert Eggers’ next picture, and he’s three for four for me at the moment. I didn’t love (but still appreciated) The Northman, and absolutely loved The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu. Here’s some CCC math for you: Robert Eggers + Werewolves = Sold. Finally, the next chapter in one of my favourite franchises is supposed to be coming by the end of next year, but it doesn’t currently have a North American release date. Godzilla Minus Zero is the first direct sequel to a Japanese Godzilla film since the early 2000s, and it’s the first time in I don’t know how long that the director of the previous movie is returning for the sequel. Takashi Yamazaki won the Academy Award for Godzilla Minus One, and I don’t think he’s letting that go to his head. Instead, I think he’s going to deliver an equally emotionally resonant, visually stunning, heart pounding experience that will once again remind us why Godzilla is the King of the Monsters.