{"text":[[{"start":9.81,"text":"

‘The Brutalist’: a masterpiece of epic proportions

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":14.25,"text":"Depending on your bookie, you may only get very short odds on The Brutalist winning Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars. "},{"start":20.654,"text":"After a critical frenzy at film festivals, a robust awards campaign is now persuading Academy voters to free up the 215 minutes needed for director Brady Corbet’s maximalist portrait of genius at work. "},{"start":31.947,"text":"A further 15-minute interval is non-optional. "}],[{"start":35.16,"text":"But then everything about The Brutalist is bound up with scale, a biopic of fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), whom we meet in 1945 leaving the trauma of Europe for the gleaming postwar US. "},{"start":47.652,"text":"Seismic clashes await: America and assimilation; art and commerce; the knowledge that life only has room for so many near-four-hour movies even when hailed as a masterpiece. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":58.199999999999996,"text":"

‘Babygirl’: is the erotic thriller back?

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":61.989999999999995,"text":"Can the erotic thriller really make it back this time? "},{"start":65.06899999999999,"text":"A guilty pleasure of the 1990s multiplex, the genre returned to screens last year with Fatal Attraction remade as a streaming series. "},{"start":72.54899999999999,"text":"The show was quickly cancelled — but the future looks brighter for Babygirl, precision engineered to inspire a billion commentaries on sex and the corporate landscape. "}],[{"start":81.31,"text":"Nicole Kidman stars as a poised Manhattan CEO embroiled with a younger male intern (Harris Dickinson). "},{"start":87.677,"text":"As directed by Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, the rest reportedly brims with kinks and power plays, the retro vibe enhanced by strategic use of George Michael. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":97.1,"text":"

‘Mickey 17’: the many deaths of Robert Pattinson

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":101.69999999999999,"text":"The Oscars of February 2020 were a late moment of business as usual before the Covid pandemic. "},{"start":107.329,"text":"But the film named Best Picture was an atypical winner: Parasite, the first movie not in English to claim the prize, a symphonic black comedy of class and imposture from South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho. "}],[{"start":118.82,"text":"Screwball sci-fi Mickey 17 is Bong’s first film since that night of triumph (and one which has been made in English). "},{"start":125.449,"text":"Robert Pattinson plays the title character — an artificial human helping to colonise a grim new planet, replaced with a clone each time he dies. "},{"start":133.117,"text":"But the movie offers a double dose of Pattinson — the star also plays Mickey 18, brought into being only to find his hapless predecessor still alive. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":142.14,"text":"

‘Hard Truths’: Mike Leigh returns to form

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":145.61999999999998,"text":"There was a time any preview of the year would invariably feature a new Mike Leigh film. "},{"start":150.41199999999998,"text":"The director was a figurehead of British cinema; he was also unfailingly prolific. "},{"start":154.82899999999998,"text":"And yet after a muted response to his 2018 historical recreation Peterloo, whether Leigh would make another film at all became a subject of debate. "}],[{"start":163.42,"text":"But life is cyclical as well as sweet, and excitement surrounds Hard Truths. "},{"start":167.987,"text":"The film finds the director reunited with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who starred to great acclaim in his Secrets and Lies (1996). "},{"start":175.492,"text":"Now she plays a middle-aged Londoner beset by anxiety. "},{"start":178.897,"text":"The backdrop of the suburban capital is vintage Leigh, but reports suggest the film is the freshest thing he has made in years. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":186.29,"text":"

F1: time to make a Pitt stop

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":189.72,"text":"The year’s first real blockbuster arrives in May with Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. "},{"start":194.987,"text":"Given the title, Tom Cruise may never again do his own crazy stunts as super-agent Ethan Hunt. "},{"start":200.304,"text":"But if this is goodbye, the farewell party could be cut short at the box office by Joseph Kosinski, the blue-chip filmmaker who directed Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick. "}],[{"start":210.41,"text":"Now Kosinski has made F1, a motor-racing epic with Brad Pitt in front of the camera and massed bigwigs behind it. "},{"start":217.039,"text":"A first collaboration between Apple and Warner Bros, its producers include Hollywood veteran Jerry Bruckheimer and British champion Lewis Hamilton. "},{"start":224.707,"text":"The pitch promises unprecedented access to real-life circuits through a partnership with the sport’s governing body, the FIA. "},{"start":231.137,"text":"Forget ideas of an exposé, then — think chicanes at Imax scale. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":236.85999999999999,"text":"

‘Michael’: Jackson biopic prompts questions

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":240.63,"text":"Don’t take it as a recommendation, but people will certainly be talking about Michael in 2025. "},{"start":246.184,"text":"Musical biopics are about to be everywhere: Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, Jeremy Allen White playing Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. "},{"start":255.389,"text":"But particular scrutiny will fall on director Antoine Fuqua’s portrait of Michael Jackson. "},{"start":260.157,"text":"If you’re already taking a deep breath, join the club. "}],[{"start":264.19,"text":"Of course, the question will be which Jackson Michael presents us with: the beloved pop savant brought low by rumours, or a man less unjustly accused. "},{"start":272.719,"text":"One clue may come with the cast list: the singer’s own nephew Jaafar Jackson will star. "},{"start":277.699,"text":"Another is at the top of the credits, with veteran producer Graham King having also made fan-friendly Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":286.37,"text":"

‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Bride!’: the next Barbenheimer?

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":290.17,"text":"Ever since Barbenheimer, the film business has longed to matchmake again. "},{"start":294.649,"text":"Witness the attempt to sell November’s Gladiator II and Wicked as Glicked. "},{"start":298.47900000000004,"text":"But in 2025, the biggest chance for a splashy gender clash will come with twin riffs on the same giant of gothic horror. "}],[{"start":306.13,"text":"First, Frankenstein will be reimagined by Guillermo del Toro with Oscar Isaac as the doctor and Jacob Elordi as the creature, after years in development hell. "},{"start":314.972,"text":"Indeed, at one point del Toro planned to fold a retelling of Bride of Frankenstein into his film too. "}],[{"start":321.21,"text":"And yet that deathless chiller has now been remade as The Bride! "},{"start":324.864,"text":"with director Maggie Gyllenhaal giving life to her own glamorous cast: Jessie Buckley will play the reluctant sweetheart to Christian Bale’s monster. "},{"start":332.332,"text":"The stew is further seasoned by industry friction. "},{"start":335.11199999999997,"text":"Del Toro’s movie is made for Netflix, which also backed Gyllenhaal’s film until a dispute over budgets. "},{"start":340.804,"text":"Let the undead have at it. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":343.35999999999996,"text":"

‘Jupiter’: homeland and the human condition

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":346.93999999999994,"text":"Andrey Zvyagintsev is in exile. "},{"start":349.56899999999996,"text":"The brilliant Russian director now lives in Paris, having almost lost his life entirely. "},{"start":354.43699999999995,"text":"From the early 2000s onwards, visionary films such as The Return and Leviathan built into a stunning mosaic of post-Soviet Russia. "},{"start":361.9289999999999,"text":"Then, in 2021, Zvyagintsev suffered a reported adverse reaction to the Sputnik V Covid vaccine. "},{"start":368.78399999999993,"text":"He was hospitalised for a year, first in Moscow then Germany, where he was placed in an induced coma. "}],[{"start":375.49999999999994,"text":"But now the director is recovered and working again, with Jupiter announced as his first film since 2017’s Loveless. "},{"start":382.25399999999996,"text":"While Zvyagintsev has left Russia, the country remains foremost in his thoughts. "},{"start":386.77199999999993,"text":"The new film is the story of an oligarch whom the director describes as tied up with his homeland and the still greater puzzle of the human condition. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":394.7199999999999,"text":"

‘Die, My Love’: film legend Lynne Ramsay is back

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":399.44999999999993,"text":"By the time the posters for comic horror Die, My Love go up, they will feature the faces of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson — with Lawrence starring as a new mother in the grip of post-partum psychosis. "}],[{"start":410.48999999999995,"text":"But there will be those — me included — for whom the biggest draw of the movie is actually Lynne Ramsay, the mercurial but hugely gifted Scottish director making just her fifth film in a 25-year career. "},{"start":421.25699999999995,"text":"Ramsay may not have made many features since her indelible first, Ratcatcher — she has also never shot a dull image. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":428.03,"text":"

‘The Battle of Baktan Cross’: is Paul Thomas Anderson finally making a blockbuster?

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":433.16999999999996,"text":"At the time of writing, The Battle of Baktan Cross is still a working title. "},{"start":437.47399999999993,"text":"The movie also goes by the name Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Event Film. "},{"start":441.76699999999994,"text":"That event could have a double meaning. "},{"start":443.77199999999993,"text":"For diehard fans of the American critical darling behind There Will Be Blood, any film he makes is exactly that. "},{"start":449.71399999999994,"text":"But his new project also seems surprisingly close to the “event movie” as defined by industry jargon — a blockbuster of the kind he has never come close to making before. "}],[{"start":459.29999999999995,"text":"Slated for release in August, it finds Anderson nudging into box office high season, with Imax screens reportedly booked en masse. "},{"start":467.0919999999999,"text":"Further advance word is sparse, but the bare bones hint less at action spectacle than Martin Scorsese, with what appears an 1980s-set crime thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":477.65999999999997,"text":"

‘No Other Choice’: economic precarity turned murderous

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":482.32,"text":"Park Chan-wook was once synonymous with violence: the South Korean maestro with mayhem behind cult favourite Oldboy (2003). "},{"start":490.262,"text":"Since then, Park has kept making flawless films while dialling down the blood: The Handmaiden, a lushly subversive period piece; Decision to Leave, a beautifully sad crime drama. "}],[{"start":501.71,"text":"Now, however, the axe is back. "},{"start":504.75199999999995,"text":"In Oldboy, the weapon was literal. "},{"start":507.11899999999997,"text":"In No Other Choice, it is the source material: the director adapting Donald E Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, a tale of economic precarity turned murderous. "},{"start":516.499,"text":"Our hero is a family man laid off after 25 years in one job who then seeks a competitive advantage in the labour market — by killing off rivals for interviews. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

---

"}],[{"start":525.4499999999999,"text":"

‘Marty Supreme’: tale of New York table tennis star

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":529.89,"text":"Timothée Chalamet will follow his turn as Bob Dylan with Marty Supreme, in which, at last, ping pong becomes the subject of a major American movie. "},{"start":538.619,"text":"Thus far it is being discussed as not quite a biopic, but inspired at least by Marty Reisman, outsize legend of New York table tennis in the 1950s, when the story is set. "}],[{"start":549.21,"text":"It also marks the return of director Josh Safdie, half of filmmaking unit the Safdie brothers. "},{"start":554.802,"text":"Together, the pair made Uncut Gems, the madcap 2019 one-off from which some of us have still only just caught our breath. "},{"start":561.682,"text":"Since then, his brother Benny Safdie has moved into acting, appearing in Licorice Pizza, Oppenheimer and more. "},{"start":568.412,"text":"But now Benny too is directing a sports-tinted solo debut with martial-arts story The Smashing Machine. "},{"start":574.0790000000001,"text":"Few siblings rivalries have promised so much. "}],[{"start":577.7900000000001,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen "}],[{"start":585.6,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftmailbox.cn/album/186624-1735439429.mp3"}