The cinema that comes: Indiana Jones says goodbye to all of you

On April 19 of last year, a spectacular earthquake hit the film industry. The shock was of such a caliber that its echoes will mark the sector in 2023 and 2024. That day Netflix announced that for the first time in its history, not only did it not gain subscribers, but it had also lost 200,000. and that in the second half of 2022, a total of two million customers would abandon its service (in the end, only one million left). That day, the platform sank on the stock market. And despite a good end to the year, its shares are still at half the price they were at the end of 2021. But, above all, that day the dreams of hundreds of directors vanished that they had bet that this platform, and in general the rest of the services of streaming, they would produce their films. The cuts came, the cancellation of projects and, abruptly, the much-vaunted paradigm shift dissolved. There will no longer be a radical mutation, but rather a difficult fit between event films for movie theaters and titles that are popular on the Internet. In the middle, and more in Spain, auteur cinema will suffer, abandoned to its fate by all.

As much as in 2023 let’s attend Harrison Ford’s farewell to the Indiana Jones character (and it doesn’t seem easy for him to return to the big screen with another face), Víctor Erice’s return to commercial cinema with Close the eyes Already in a Cannes brimming with big names, uncertainty about the future of platforms, some of which will eat others or merge with each other, has sickened the industry. And although the world box office grew 12% last year (still far from the pre-pandemic figures, which could finally be equaled this season), in Spain the 40% lower collections than in 2019 indicate that there will be fewer movie purchases author (because his public has not returned to the theaters) and less risky financial bets for artistic works. The exceptional Spanish harvest of 2022 will not have an easy extension this year, although there will always be interesting films. Here are a good handful.

blockbusters

DC and Marvel continue to pull world cinema, but while the latter maintains its rate of releases (and so will Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels either Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume III)In the first, James Gunn, the new creative manager of the studio, has yet to put order, which in 2023 will finally release, after years of delay, Flash (with Maribel Verdú as mother of the superhero), in addition to Aquaman 2 Y Blue Beetle, with its first Latino lead.

In animation, Pixar will try to raise its head with Elementary and one of the great surprises of recent years will have a continuation: in June it will be released Spider-man: crossing the multiverse. Other films destined to attract a large audience will be Dunes: part 2 (with Javier Bardem as Stilgar), The little Mermaid (in the flesh, and also with Bardem, here King Triton), Mission Impossible 7: Death Judgment Part 1 (the sun never sets on Empire Cruise). And, of course, at the end of June, Harrison Ford, at the age of 80, bids farewell to the most famous archaeologist with indiana jones and the dial of fate by James Mangold. There are more doubts about the tour of the musical Wonka, with Timothée Chalamet giving life to Willy Wonka as a young man, when he meets the Oompa-Loompas, and with songs from The Divine Comedy.

Spain

After the exceptional 2022, a stream of champagne that cheered the entire industry after the stopper that was holding it back, the covid, blew up, a more measured 2023 arrives. Although there will be interesting bets. At Sundance, which starts in two weeks, it will premiere mamacruz, by Patricia Ortega, a comedy with Kiti Mánver as a grandmother who had not enjoyed an orgasm for decades. A handful of directors will premiere their second feature, after a first quality job: Lucia Alemany (Mari(two)), martha diaz (Good manners), Celia Rico (Little loves), Alauda Ruiz de Azua (It’s you) Y Charlotte Pereda (The hermitage). Newcomers called to make noise are Eva Hache with Anyone has a bad day; Pablo Maqueda (his first fiction feature in commercial theaters) with The unknown woman, and above all Mario Casas, who directs My loneliness has wings with his own script and with his brother Óscar as the protagonist.

Among the veterans will premiere Álex Montoya (Home, adaptation of the comic by Paco Roca), Víctor García León (the comedy what a vacation), Patxi Amezcua (the Infiest thriller), Daniel Calparsoro (the action film All the names of God), F. Javier Gutierrez (The wait), Paco Plaza (who will extend his success in terror with sister death), Belen Macias (Summer in red), and two creators with films that smell like festivals: Elena Trapé and her They are enchanted, and Arantxa Echevarría, with another social immersion: Chinese.

In Spain, three titles created to lead the box office are mummies, animation directed by Juan Jesús García Galocha; championexby Javier Fesser (which premieres the sequel to champions while in Hollywood they launch the remake), Y Summer Vacation, by Santiago Segura, sure value in theaters.

Finally, the heavyweights of auteur cinema. After many years without making films, Jaime Chávarri premieres The golden apple. Manuel Martín Cuenca is already with the post-production of Andrea’s love like Fernando Trueba, who has directed in Greece Haunted Heart, with Matt Dillon and Aida Folch. Benito Zambrano delves into The jump the daily drama of emigration that is experienced on Mount Gurugú. And Carlos Saura launches, before receiving the Goya de Honor, the documentary on painting the walls speak.

Besides, a capital trio. in cannes Pedro Almodóvar will screen his medium-length film Strange Way of Life, a western queer; Juan Antonio Bayona is the bet of Netflix for autumn festivals with The Snow Society and his reconstruction of the plane crash in the Andes, of which half a century has now passed. Y Víctor Erice may also be in Cannes with Close the eyes, a nostalgic drama about the friendship between a veteran director and his lead actor, in a return longed for by world cinephilia for three decades.

The tremendous Cannes that is coming

The whole moviegoing world is crazy. The Cannes festival, which will start on May 16, has an exacerbated list of possible participants. Still pending premiere in Spain the last Palme d’Or, The triangle of sadness by Ruben Östlund, which will hit theaters in February, the rumor mill about the cinema on La Croisette is already in full swing. Among those indicated, ken loach (The Old Oak), Kiril Serebrennikov (Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie), Sofia Coppola (priscilla)Nuri Bilge Ceylan (On Dry Grass), Rose Glass (Love Lies Bleeding), Luca Guadagnino (Challengers), alexander payne (The Holdovers), Matteo Garrone (Io Capitano), todd haynes (May December), Lone Scherfig (The storyteller), Roman Polanski (The Palace), Nanni Moretti (Il sol dell’avvenire)Steve McQueen (Blitz), Pawel Pawlikowski (The Island), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Monster), Aki Kaurismaki (Dead Leaves) and the posthumous film by Jean-Luc Godard could be screened there Scenario. These are the irrefutable names, because the list expands much more.

There are other films with power for which the festivals will stick, and their release dates indicate them for the Oscars in 2024. As Teacher, which directs and stars Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein; Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster’s new horror work; How Do You Live? that now it will mean the withdrawal, after several feints, by Hayao Miyazaki; Asteroid City (shot in Spain) Y The wonderful story of Henry Sugar, both by Wes Anderson; infinity pool, by Brandon Cronenberg; Eureka, by Lisandro Alonso; Poor Things, of Yorgos Lanthimos; civil war, by Alex Garland; Count, by Pablo Larraín, about a vampire Pinochet, played by Alfredo Castro, who has lived for 250 years; The Killer, by David Fincher; The Conversion, Marco Bellocchio (tireless at 83, with his highly ideological cinema); The Way of the Wind, by Terrence Malick, who narrates the last days of Jesus Christ; Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan, about the scientist who developed the first atomic bombs; Killers Of The Flower Moon, by Martin Scorsese, who is still looking for his place to launch, either Daaaaaali!, a satire on the painter, the work of Quentin Dupieux. And we’ll see if it ends in this 2023 Ridley Scott his Napoleon, biography of the French emperor played by Joaquin Phoenix.

Among the films that are talked about and expected a lot, are the soccer comedy Next Goal Winsby Taika Waititi; Barbie, by Greta Gerwig, a twist on the world of the mythical doll, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling; vicious bear, by Elizabeth Banks, inspired by the true story of a black bear who snorted 40 kilos of cocaine in an American national park that had been dropped by parachute by a drug dealer on the run, and Renfield, in which Nicholas Hoult plays a poor man who yearns for a better life, but can’t get away from his boss: he is Count Dracula’s servant, played by Nicolas Cage.

The Oscars this season

Before March 12, the day the 95th Oscar Awards gala will be held, many of the favorites for the Hollywood awards will premiere in Spain. What Decision to Leave, the thriller by Park Chan-wook; Banshees of Inisherin, drama about two friends — Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson fighting for statuettes — from Martin McDonagh; The whale, by Darren Aronofsky, with a Brendan Fraser as a morbidly obese English teacher; Tar, by Todd Field, in which Cate Blanchett plays a prestigious conductor at the peak of her career; the french Saint Omer, by Alice Diop; They speak, by Sarah Polley, which delves into sexual abuse in a Mennonite community (and which has the best female cast of the season), and till, which also shows a true event, the lynching and murder of the child Emmett Louis Till in 1955, a crime that shocked the United States. In addition, two directors who travel to their teenage memories: Steven Spielberg does it in The Fabelmans, and Sam Mendes remembers those years in The empire of light.

All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.

subscribe

babelia

The literary novelties analyzed by our best critics in our weekly bulletin

RECEIVE IT