May 2024 film preview: Light month brings a few heavy hitters

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu, and Winston DukeDirector: David LeitchRyan Gosling is no stranger to movies about stunt performers. His breakout revenge thriller, , followed a stunt driver through the neon-lit streets of Los Angeles. But the hermetically sealed stylization of Nicolas Winding Refn kept Gosling’s trademark smile and unflappable goofiness from shining through. With , he’s back in mode, where the world around him can’t seem to conform to his casual stupidity. Joined by Emily Blunt, who plays the titular fall guy’s director and ex-girlfriend, Gosling tracks down the missing star of her film (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Hilarity ensues. Directed by David Leitch and based on the ’80s TV series, The Fall Guy promises to get the summer movie season off to a rollicking start.

Cast: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, William H. Macy, and Kevin DurandDirector: Wes BallIs it too early to return to the ? 20th Century Studios sure hopes so. Seven years after the earned a decisive victory for our evolutionary cousins, we move 300 years into the future. Gone is Andy Serkis’ Caesar—and all the previous trilogy’s star power—and in its place is the , a primate paradise descending into the same petty disputes that plague humanity. Kevin Durand, who managed to steal from the titular ballerina vampire, stars as Proximus Caesar, the war-hungry king of the monkeys who finds humanity’s gun stash and wants to enslave his fellow ape. Apes together strong no longer? Thanks for nothing, Darwin.

Cast: Avantika, Humberly González, Olwen Fouéré, Jacob Batalon, Harriet Slater, Larsen Thompson, Adain Bradley, and Wolfgang NovogratzDirector: Spenser Cohen and Anna HalbergNot in the mood to return to the Planet Of The Apes? The fine folks at Screen Gems have your counter-programming covered. The plot of Tarot is relatively easy to game out for anyone who’s seen Ouija, not that that’s a bad thing. A group of friends, led by star Avantika, perform a tarot reading without consulting the instruction manual, unleashing a supernatural force on them. Expect ironic ends for this batch of horoscope-reading new-age zoomers as each meets their fate.

Cast: Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, Jack O’Connell, and Lesley ManvilleDirector: Sam Taylor-JohnsonFrom the director of and an adaptation of the faux memoir comes the least anticipated musical biopic of the decade. Movies based on the Wikipedia pages of rock stars have slowly become one of Hollywood’s safest bets. Sure, crowds may have softened on , but they can’t say no to their favorite tunes played in state-of-the-art Dolby-certified theaters. But this one has a more challenging hill to climb. Based on the tragic life and death of Amy Winehouse, Back To Black looks like the pinnacle of cliche biopics with a tragic ending fans are still processing.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Cailey Fleming, Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Jon Stewart, Sam Rockwell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Richard Jenkins, Bobby Moynihan, and Awkwafina Director: John KrasinskiParamount Pictures is coming dangerously close to intellectual property theft with this one. Combining some great ideas that Pixar spent the better part of 20 years developing—though, with way more instances of Ryan Reynolds half-heartedly quipping, “Well, that just happened”—writer-director-star John Krasinski opens up his twisted mind to bring us IF, a family comedy about imaginary friends. In a world where a little girl develops the sixth sense of being able to see humanity’s abandoned imaginary friends (or [sigh] “IFs”), Reynolds helps her reunite IFs with their human companion. Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that John Krasinski sold Some Good News. He did not, and we have removed the statement. We regret the error.

Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez Gabriel Basso, Rachel Shenton, Ella Bruccoleri, Richard Brake, and Ema HorvathDirector: Renny HarlinSlim pickings weekend continues with , the first in a supposed trilogy of Strangers prequels. The Strangers’ expansion into a full-fledged franchise comes six years after the last and only sequel, . The premise, however, looks unchanged: An unsuspecting couple has their life ruined by a visit from the titular trespassing strangers. The 2008 original joined Michael Haneke’s Funny Games movies as the modern standard bearer of home invasion horror. We’ll see if three more chapters can add to that legacy.

Cast: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, Hasan Minhaj, John Caroll Lynch, The Lucas Brothers, and Sandra BernhardDirector: Pamela Adlon Babes feels like an Apatow throwback . But marketing aside, Babes looks like the slightly heightened slice-of-life comedy that’s been missing from the multiplex. Dawn (Buteau) helps Eden (Glazer) through her first pregnancy, which she is woefully underprepared for. Adlon hopes to bring some of the comedy that made her series such a delight with her first feature. We’re just happy to see a comedy in theaters that doesn’t require an action setpiece.

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris HemsworthDirector: George MillerNow we are talking. George Miller’s highly anticipated return to the wasteland, Furiosa, is a guzzolene-fueled prequel to his beloved . Anya Taylor-Joy steps into Charlize Theron’s combat boots as Furiosa, the vengeful survivor of the ravages of Warlord Dementus’ (Hemsworth) biker horde. Miller doesn’t want to disappoint the legions waiting for his follow-up to 2016’s and reportedly spent to prove it.

Cast: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, and—get this—Snoop Dogg Director: Mark DindalNot to be confused with , The Garfield Movie does a clever spin on its predecessor’s title by moving some words around. Regardless, no, we don’t hold out much hope for this reboot. Unless this movie is about Garfield going back in time and killing Mondays, we don’t want to hear about it. (For the record, it’s about Garfield finding his long-lost father, an outdoor cat). We don’t know who this is for, but we are certain Chris Pratt’s team is pleased with themselves for in which their client doesn’t have to leave the house. But hey, considering affection for director Mark Dindal’s has only grown in the last 25 years, Pratt’s track record for billion-dollar hits, and the fan-bait casting of Nicholas Hoult as Jon Arbuckle, we can safely assume that Garfield won’t be running out of lasagna anytime soon.

Cast: Dog and RobotDirector: Pablo Berger Nominated for Best Animated Feature at this past year’s Academy Awards, is a silent tragicomedy about a dog and his robot listening to Earth, Wind & Fire in New York City. Unfortunately, on what was supposed to be a nice beach day, the robot’s battery died, and the dog could not move its steel frame. Will our canine hero heal their automaton companion? Find out at your local theater on May 30.

Cast: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, and Cameron LoveDirector: Chris NashChris Nash’s mysterious slasher, , ensnared the audiences in a beartrap of gleeful terror when the trailer dropped last month. Shot with a video-game-inspired attachment to the killer’s back, the trailer shows our undead and masked killer stalking the woods for its young prey. We have no idea what it wants, where it’s going, or who it is. That’s all we get for the plot, but it’s enough with a teaser this effectively creepy. What we do know is we would like to see In A Violent Nature.

Cast: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Garret Dillahunt, W. Earl Brown, Solly McLeod, John Getz, and Danny Huston Director: Viggo MortensenWith his second time in the director’s chair, actor Viggo Mortensen brings a string of Deadwood and Justified character actors back out west (seriously, how was Danny Huston not cast on either?) for . In this neo-Western story, Mortensen stars a Danish cowboy who falls in love with a woman (played by Krieps) in San Fransisco, and the two head out to Nevada to start a life together. However, shortly after settling, the Civil War breaks out, and Mortensen decides to do the right thing and enlist, leaving his new wife at home to fend for herself.