{"id":487327,"date":"2026-01-02T15:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T15:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/487327\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T15:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T15:06:10","slug":"a-new-year-means-new-films-to-look-forward-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/487327\/","title":{"rendered":"A new year means new films to look forward to"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fried chicken and a $45 bottle of sparkling wine<\/a>?<\/p>\n

What were you doing on New Year\u2019s Eve?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope newsletter and the guy wondering how many New Year\u2019s resolutions you\u2019ve broken so far this year.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look back \u2014 and a look forward \u2014 because that\u2019s what we\u2019re contractually obligated to do this time of year.<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Envelope <\/p>\n

Get exclusive awards season news, in-depth interviews and columnist Glenn Whipp\u2019s must-read analysis straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n

By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a> and our Privacy Policy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Three films I\u2019m looking forward to in 2026<\/p>\n

Every year, some editor at The Times buzzes my inbox with a request to gather my hopes and dreams into a purely speculative list of movies I\u2019m looking forward to seeing in the coming 12 months. That email serves as a marker that the Earth has orbited the sun once again and it\u2019s time to buy a new planner \u2014 because I\u2019ll be damned if I\u2019m going to let Google Calendar know what I\u2019m doing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. <\/p>\n

I was asked to contribute two movies to the list last year, and I chose \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMaterialists.\u201d<\/a> So … one masterpiece that should go on to win the Oscar for best picture and the movie that seems to be the most hated film of 2025. Seriously, people will approach me at parties and say, unprompted, \u201cYou know what movie I despised? \u2018Materialists.\u2019\u201d And then, after unloading on how much they loathed the characters in Celine Song\u2019s romantic drama, they\u2019ll shift gears and go on a diatribe about late-stage capitalism. <\/p>\n

(My New Year\u2019s resolution: find better parties.)<\/p>\n

You could say, then, that I got one right and one wrong, though I was partly looking forward to \u201cMaterialists\u201d because Song had regaled me with tales of her Manhattan matchmaking days over a couple glasses of wine one night and I wanted to see how she\u2019d weave these stories into a movie. And it turned out that was the best part of the film. So there. No more emails about \u201cMaterialists,\u201d please.<\/p>\n

At least Song\u2019s film saw the light of day. Looking back on our 2025 list<\/a>, there are still movies that haven\u2019t made it to theaters. The \u201cUntitled Trey Parker\/Matt Stone Film,\u201d once scheduled for July 4, now has a title, \u201cWhitney Springs,\u201d but no new release date. Neither does Terrence Malick\u2019s biblical drama, \u201cThe Way of the Wind,\u201d which Malick has reportedly been editing for a good six years now. That movie didn\u2019t make our 2026 list, but, fingers crossed, it might resurface sometime in the next decade when we throw together another of these. <\/p>\n

So what movies am I looking forward to seeing when it stops raining (talk about biblical drama) and we start turning the calendar\u2019s pages? I raised my hand for three, and I\u2019m confident this trio will satisfy, mostly because of their directors\u2019 track record. To see everyone else\u2019s picks \u2014 including a few I would have chosen myself \u2014 read the full list here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cDisclosure Day\u201d: <\/b>I liked it better when this was simply known as \u201cUntitled Steven Spielberg UFO movie.\u201d What more do you need to know beyond that description and a prime summer release date? That\u2019s enough to sell a few hundred million dollars in tickets and make me giddy with anticipation. We don\u2019t know much at the moment, other than that Spielberg is working again with \u201cJurassic Park\u201d and \u201cWar of the Worlds\u201d screenwriter David Koepp. There\u2019s an eye-catching billboard with an image that looks alien and kind of birdlike \u2026 unless you study it while standing on your head and then it looks \u2026 human? Who knows? ALL WILL BE DISCLOSED, the tagline promises, hence the title. So we\u2019ll just have to wait. But from all appearances, we\u2019re not in \u201cE.T.\u201d territory with this one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Adventures of Cliff Booth\u201d: <\/b>Do we need a stand-alone Cliff Booth movie? Quentin Tarantino thinks so, though not enough to direct the sequel he wrote to his hit 2019 film \u201cOnce Upon a Time in \u2026 Hollywood.\u201d That\u2019s OK, as Brad Pitt, who won an Oscar for playing Booth, the ass-kicking stuntman, enlisted David Fincher to sub in. It\u2019ll be their fourth collaboration, following \u201cSe7en,\u201d \u201cFight Club\u201d and \u201cThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button,\u201d a track record that offers some optimism that a film elevating Booth from Rick Dalton\u2019s loyal sidekick to a leading character is an idea worth pursuing. (Leonardo DiCaprio apparently turned down an offer to reprise Dalton in a cameo.) If nothing else, the movie\u2019s 1977 setting, eight years after the events in \u201cOnce Upon a Time,\u201d will give us the chance to revel in another glorious L.A. time capsule.<\/p>\n

\u201cWerwulf\u201d: <\/b>Robert Eggers calls his upcoming medieval werewolf movie the \u201cdarkest thing I have ever written, by far.\u201d Let that sink in for a moment. Eggers\u2019 filmography includes the suffocating madness found in \u201cThe Witch\u201d and \u201cThe Lighthouse\u201d and the chilling terror of a malevolent, shape-shifting, lustful vampire in \u201cNosferatu.\u201d These are not light movies. So what are we in store for here? Apparently a member of Eggers\u2019 sound team said he needed a hug after reading the \u201cWerwulf\u201d script. I couldn\u2019t verify this, but I want this to be true. There will be blood \u2014 and fog. One other thing we know is the setting, 13th century England, which means that the film\u2019s dialogue will be in Middle English. How fareth thoue with that? I\u2019m sure the cast, which includes Eggers regulars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson, had fun, verraily.<\/p>\n

There you have it: Spielberg, Fincher, Eggers. A sci-fi thriller, a sequel I still can\u2019t believe exists and a monster movie. All three of these might miss the mark. And, honestly, any list missing the guaranteed pleasures of \u201cPractical Magic 2\u201d is immediately suspect.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the folly of blindly looking ahead. You never know. <\/p>\n

Happy New Year! And, as always, thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fried chicken and a $45 bottle of sparkling wine? What were you doing on New Year\u2019s Eve? I\u2019m…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":487328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[220047,1037,1582,276,65141,4446,1020,2961,26822,224,2444,5337,199685,2089,3196,50,2450,220048,14164,8066],"class_list":{"0":"post-487327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-97th-oscars","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-daily-life","13":"tag-death","14":"tag-film","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-last-week","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-times","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-lynch","21":"tag-man","22":"tag-movie","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-thursday","25":"tag-times-writer","26":"tag-way","27":"tag-work"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115826130054854332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}