Vagrant Rant M o v i e s . G a m e s . M u s i c . "L i f e".

*Not strictly true this time

Here we are again hovering around the two-thirds mark of the current year, and as the Olympics wrap up in Paris we rather fittingly have three French films helping to fill out the next quickfire cinematic batch. Beyond that, however, it’s kind of difficult to throw a thematic blanket around this eclectic set of movies, so I won’t try. We’ve got highly-anticipated sequels, mighty-strange original premises, and unconventional thrillers, with the odd poor execution thrown into the mix.

Oh yeah, we also have one extra movie this time, making this technically a batch of eleven. The extra flick is there to make up for two things: two of these films form one complete story and were released at the same time here in Australia despite a staggered release overseas; and that J.Lo visual album extravaganza really should not have counted as a whole entry back in April. So we’re squaring things up a bit.

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Challengers

“Best tennis scenes ever, but that’s not what you’ll remember.”

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

“What you’d get if Fury Road cared more about lore.”

We did know this would be the case to be fair, but hoooo boy it was a tough opening to the year for movies. It’s been a good while since I’ve started a fresh year with so few options on the near horizon outside of the previous year’s American film schedule off-cuts. For a while there it looked like Dune Part II was the only actual 2024 film worth anticipating, and I might have hit the ten-movie mark around June or something.

Luckily, a couple of odd streaming releases caught my attention when friends recommended them, and then around late April the various layered impacts of last year’s Hollywood strikes began to ease off, and suddenly a flurry of intriguing stuff began to hit our big screens. So we just make the customary April slot for the year’s first ten way-too-brief cinematic summaries, and it’s been a surprising amount of fun getting there. Here we go:

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Next Goal Wins

“Not Taika’s best, but underdog sport stories are easy wins.”

Ferrari

“Disappoints Angry Adam Driver fans, thrills Angry Penelope Cruz fans.”

Here we are already – much slower than last year but still far too quickly. It’s been an eventful middle third of the year for film: a pair of megaton Hollywood strikes with wide-reaching (and justified) implications, no less than three big-name blockbusters releasing as “Part Ones” like it’s the early 2010s all over again, the official end of the ill-fated DCEU, and of course the irresistible juggernaut that was Barbenheimer. The news cycle has been juicy, and the movies haven’t been half-bad either. Most of them, anyway.

Here are ten quick takes:

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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3

“I lost count of the number of times I cried.”

Fast X

“It’s getting harder to enjoy these unironically, but Momoa carries.”

And so we arrive at the first movie milestone within a year that couldn’t possibly live up to the cinematic majesty of 2022… could it?

Nah, it couldn’t. But maybe?

Though 2023 perhaps opened with a bit of a stutter after the dust settled from the customary late-Australian Oscar buzz period, by mid-April we are in the thick of a release schedule that has already delivered surprises and quality in equal measure. I know I’ve missed one or two word-of-mouth gems so far and you can be sure I will catch up on them by year’s end, but here’s my first batch of ten (you could argue it’s technically nine) new-release films for 2023:

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Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

“Thinner plot than Ritchie’s best, but riotously fun character banter.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

“Destined to be called “not that bad” in five years.”