The year’s finest big-screen releases, from an epic sci-fi sequel to a quiet, contemplative movie about a public toilet cleaner.
Longlegs
It’s the ’90s, and there’s a manhunt for a serial killer. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is assigned to the case, which involves a series of murder-suicides orchestrated by a Satan worshipper known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). As the bodies start to pile up and the long arm of the law gets nearer to catching Longlegs, Lee begins to realise this case might just hit too close to home.
Longlegs is written and directed by Osgood ‘Oz’ Perkins, whose first acting role was as a young Norman Bates in the horror slasher movie Psycho II. Fitting, then, that he returns to the genre that gave him his first taste of showbiz.
Loosely inspired by real cases and Perkins’ family, Longlegs has received critical acclaim for Cage’s terrifying performance. Flickering Myth declared it “the scariest film of the decade”, while Awards Radar called it “the best serial killer horror film since The Silence of the Lambs”. Reportedly made for a budget under US$10 million, the psychological thriller slayed at the box office, earning US$108.9 million worldwide.
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In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
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Dune: Part Two
The space-opera saga of Dune continues in director Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction novel. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, the exiled heir of the deceased Leto Atreides and prophesied messiah of the Fremen, the indigenous people of the desert planet Arrakis.
As war looms and alliances are forged with love interest Chani (Zendaya) and mentor Stilgar (Javier Bardem), Paul must face a new enemy in Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), the bloodthirsty potential successor of House Harkonnen. This second instalment — which also stars Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, and Furiosa star Anya Taylor-Joy in an uncredited cameo — features unforgettable sequences like Paul riding a sandworm for the first time. With Dune 3 set for release in December 2026, there’s even more reason to (re)visit the beautiful and brutal world of Arrakis.
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Explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.
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Perfect Days
Director Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated slice-of-life drama follows Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho, who won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for the role), a humble public toilet cleaner in Tokyo.
Despite his Sisyphean task of keeping the Japanese capital’s loos clean, the middle-aged man finds contentment in living in the moment — reading used paperbacks, taking analogue photos of trees, and listening to ’70s rock on his cassette tapes.
The film was originally planned as a short documentary of The Tokyo Toilet, an urban redevelopment project in Shibuya to transform its public restrooms. Wenders, with co-screenwriter Takuma Takasaki, eventually decided to turn it into a feature-length character piece.
Shot over 17 days in 4:3 aspect ratio and stylistically inspired by legendary Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, Wenders’ meditative film invites the viewer to find the magic in the mundane.
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Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
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Furiosa
George Miller, the co-creator of the Mad Max franchise, is back at the director’s wheel again all “shiny and chrome” for Furiosa, the first entry in the long-running post-apocalyptic action film series in nearly a decade.
Anya Taylor-Joy plays the title character, which was last seen in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road and portrayed by Charlize Theron. Set several years before the events of Fury Road, this prequel tells the origin story of Furiosa, which begins when she is kidnapped as a young girl by the Biker Horde, led by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). After several years in hiding, she attempts to return to her homeland with the help of War Rig driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke).
Miller delivers his trademark high-octane car chases and pyrotechnics set against the unforgiving landscape of the desert wasteland (filmed in the Australian outback), while Taylor-Joy brings both vulnerability and tenacity to her role of the Imperator-in-the-making.
As the world fell, young Furiosa was snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and fell into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus.
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Civil War
The American dream has turned into a nightmare in this film’s terrifying vision of a divided United States. Written and directed by Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, the film follows a team of journalists, including photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), travelling from New York to Washington, DC, to interview the President (Nick Offerman) amid a raging civil war.
Garland’s road-trip thriller surpassed Hereditary in scoring film studio A24’s biggest opening weekend and is the company’s first to top the box office. Shot in Atlanta and London, the movie received rave reviews for its unflinching examination of a nation at war with itself.
Look out for a standout one-scene performance by Breaking Bad actor Jesse Plemons, as an unnamed rebel militiaman who questions the group on “what kind of American” they are.
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A journey across a dystopian future America follows a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
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Hit Man
Based on an unbelievable true story, Richard Linklater’s romantic comedy stars Top Gun: Maverick actor Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered philosophy and psychology professor who moonlights as a fake contract killer on behalf of the police for sting operations.
Things get complicated — and more dangerous than usual — when his latest client, Madison (Andor actress Adria Arjona), wants her abusive husband killed but instead steals the unassuming professor’s heart. The film’s screenplay, written by Linklater and Powell, was inspired by a Texas Monthly article of the same name by Skip Hollandsworth. Oscar-nominated director Linklater’s flick premiered at the Venice Film Festival and received plaudits for Powell’s versatility in portraying Johnson’s multiple personas, as well as his sizzling onscreen chemistry with Arjona.
True crime and psychology fans should check out this equal-parts rib-tickling and gut-wrenching biopic, which explores what happens when a great pretender gets too close to becoming the mask he wears.
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Gary Johnson breaks protocol to help a desperate woman trying to flee an abusive boyfriend. He finds himself becoming one of his false personas and turning into a criminal himself.
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Challengers
Spider-Man star Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist play frenemies — and really, a throuple of sorts — both on and off the tennis court in Luca Guadagnino’s sports drama. Director Guadagnino’s tale of three professional tennis players meeting their match in more ways than one is presented in a nonlinear fashion, as it volleys back and forth between their past and present.
Tashi (Zendaya) is caught between her ex-boyfriend Patrick (O’Connor) and husband Art’s (Faist) affections, while the two men — once an inseparable doubles team — are facing off at a tournament final that will put their intertwined relationships on the line.
Guadagnino, who last collaborated with Zendaya’s Dune co-star Timothée Chalamet in the cannibal romance film Bones and All, serves up trysts, double-crosses, and sensuous scenes, with a sweat-inducing one involving a pair sharing a delectable churros stick. The script, by Justin Kuritzkes, was inspired by tennis legend Andre Agassi’s memoir Open.
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Tennis player turned coach Tashi has taken her husband, Art, and transformed him into a champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a “Challenger” event.
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
It’s been several generations since a worldwide pandemic, known as the Simian Flu, reduced humans to a feral state, leaving genetically enhanced, intelligent apes to take over the planet. Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee, lives a peaceful existence as a member of a falconry clan. But his world is suddenly turned upside down by another tribe of apes, led by their bonkers bonobo king, Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand).
With the help of a mysterious human, dubbed Nova (Freya Allan), and an orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon), Noa embarks on a mission to rescue his family and uncover a powerful secret that could save mankind.
Wes Ball, director of The Maze Runner trilogy and upcoming Legend of Zelda live-action film, helms this first chapter in the planned second trilogy of the rebooted Planet of the Apes film series. Wētā FX, the visual-effects company which worked on The Lord of the Rings and Avatar films, was commended by film critics for vividly bringing this film’s decaying remnants of human civilisation and thriving ape societies to life.
Generations after Caesar’s reign, one ape emerges to define the future.
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