From Anne Hathaway in a gothic drama about a pop superstar to Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in an “excruciatingly awkward” indie black comedy, these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.
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1. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Video game adaptations are often notorious flops, but 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of the highest grossing films ever made. Unsurprisingly, the sequel is here, featuring the original star-studded voice cast: Chris Pratt and Charlie Day are Mario and Luigi, two plumbers who are zapped into another dimension; Anya Taylor-Joy is Princess Peach, ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom; and Jack Black is a fire-breathing turtle monster, Bowser. The new cast-members include Brie Larson as Rosalina, a princess from outer space – and, appropriately, Larson is a diehard fan of the games. “I threw my first boyfriend out of my house because I was trying to beat the final level in Super Mario Galaxy,” Larson said on her official YouTube channel. “He said I was taking it too seriously, so I threw him out.”
4. Outcome
Timothée Chalamet may be regretting his comments about ballet and opera, but it could have been worse. In Outcome, a dark comedy co-written and directed by Jonah Hill, the world’s biggest film star (Keanu Reeves) is recorded saying something terrible. His lawyer (Hill) and crisis-management team scramble to save his reputation, while the star himself has to think about all the people he has upset. Cameron Diaz, Matt Bomer, and David Spade co-star, and there’s a cameo from Martin Scorsese, playing himself. But Hill insists that you don’t have to be a Hollywood celebrity to relate to its protagonist. “The movie uses fame as a metaphor for what we all go through living on social media,” he said at an Apple TV press event, as reported by TechRadar. “Social media has made us obsessed with what people we don’t know think of us, instead of caring about what the people who care about us think of us.”
Released on 10 April on Apple TV+
5. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
No, this Mummy film has nothing to do with the swashbuckling Brendan Fraser / Rachel Weisz franchise, which is about to be brought back from the dead. Nor does it have anything to do with 2017’s disastrous The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, which is probably for the best. As the title suggests, this particular tale of the Egyptian undead is written and directed by Lee Cronin, the maker of Evil Dead Rise, who once again puts a small family in a deeply creepy situation. Produced by horror maestros James Wan and Jason Blum, it features Jack Reynor and Laia Costa as a couple whose young daughter vanishes in Cairo. Eight years later, she is found in the desert… but she isn’t the girl she used to be. The film is “one part Poltergeist and one part Seven”, Cronin told IGN. “It’s not even a reinvention of mummy lore. It’s looking into darker places and doing something different with what we think we might already know.”
Released on 17 April in the US and the UK
Michael is one of the year’s most controversial films. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), it’s a biopic of Michael Jackson (played by his own nephew, Jaafar Jackson), charting his life from child stardom in the Jackson 5 to world-conquering fame as the self-styled King of Pop. The project has been beset by delays and reshoots, and questions about the sex abuse allegations made against Jackson (which are rejected by his estate). But its producer, Graham King, also produced Bohemian Rhapsody, so maybe Michael will end up like his Queen biopic – a troubled production that became an Oscar-winning hit. “[Jackson was] an enigma, full of eccentricity, electrifying talent, arguably the most famous entertainer to ever cross the planet,” King said at Las Vegas’s CinemaCon in 2024. “And yet behind the unrelenting scrutiny and the accusations and the grinding media spotlight, he was simply a man. A man who lived a very complicated life. The movie will get into all of it.”
BBC