The domestic box office isn’t exactly in the kind of state at the moment that makes me want to rush to my local cinema anytime soon. A new Ghostbusters movie? No thanks. Kung Fu Panda 4? Not for me. Watching Dune 2 on the big screen was obviously a thrilling experience, but I doubt anything will give me enough of a compelling reason to go back to the movies again at least through the end of this month. Once April rolls around, though, the story is completely different.
Rotten Tomatoes maintains an ongoing list of the movies anticipated movies of 2024, sharing a handful of highlights that are hitting cinemas during each month of the year. Below, we’ll spotlight three of April’s most-anticipated, according to the review aggregator site, all of which definitely look solid enough to get me out of the house and into a cushy cinema chair.
Monkey Man (release date April 5)
First up is Monkey Man, with star Dev Patel making his directorial debut here in a movie that’s already been described as a South Asian John Wick.
The movie is set on the mean streets of current-day Mumbai, and it tells the story of a man named Kid (played by Patel) who’s an ex-con and works a string of dead-end jobs as a consequence of India’s notorious caste system. Eventually, Kid decides he’s had enough of the criminals and elites who terrorize and run roughshod over anyone and everyone in the city.
One of the mythical figures he loved as a young boy inspires Kid to become a Wick-ian killer, dressed in all black, who sets out to kill as many bad guys as humanly possible. Suffice it to say: We may or may not get a John Wick 5, but Monkey Man will certainly do in the meantime.
Civil War (release date April 12)
Everyone is going to have an opinion about the dark social commentary at the heart of this next movie, from A24 and director Alex Garland — a Brit who made headlines recently as part of a discussion about his new movie Civil War, during which he argued that there’s such a thing as American exceptionalism.
In reality, Garland said during that SXSW panel discussion in recent days, no country is exceptional. “America has an internal concept in its exceptionalism that means it feels it’s immune to some kinds of problems,” he told attendees. “One of the things history shows us is that nobody is immune. Nobody is exceptional.”
His Civil War presents a frightening portrait of an American ripped apart from within, while the movie tells the story of a group of war journalists who trek through the battle-scarred US in a bid to interview the president (played by Nick Offerman) before rebel forces invade the nation’s capital. A headline on The Drudge Report in recent days suggested the movie might be more uncomfortably real than viewers would care to admit. Garland himself has said the movie is definitely “trying to create a conversation about political divisiveness” — and, specifically, about what the end result looks like when two factions continue ratcheting up the tension with each other.
Ahead of its release, Civil War already has a strong 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics who’ve seen it. Let the discourse begin.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (release date April 19)
Finally, we come to the latest from director Guy Ritchie — who’s certainly riding high right now thanks to his hit new Netflix gangster series The Gentlemen (currently #1 in the world on the streamer).
In his upcoming World War II drama The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, with a cast that includes Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson, Ritchie presents the story of a deception operation, something Britain excelled at during the war. This one, in particular, was kicked off at the behest of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and its details were spelled out in recently declassified files.
From the movie’s official description: “The top-secret combat unit, composed of a motley crew of rogues and mavericks, goes on a daring mission against the Nazis using entirely unconventional and utterly ‘ungentlemanly’ fighting techniques. Ultimately their audacious approach changed the course of the war and laid the foundation for the British SAS and modern Black Ops warfare.”
