January is traditionally a quiet time at cinemas, as the holiday period blockbusters dry up and the award season drawcards typically have yet to be unveiled. So apart for Bollywood thriller Game Changer and Ster Kinekor Throwback release Groundhog Day, there are just two new movies hitting the big screen. You can learn about them below.
As a side note, you can expect the theatrical release to be short locally, and limited to only a handful of mainstream and indie cinema complexes, but bookings have opened for Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, which releases on 17 January.
Speaking of awards season, out this week is acclaimed biographical drama A Complete Unknown, which is in the running for several accolades and has been named one of the top ten films of 2024.
Timothée Chalamet plays revolutionary folk music legend Bob Dylan, who, in the early 1960s, arrives in New York with his guitar and talent. The film portrays Dylan from his breakout up to his game-changing performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Directed by Ford v Ferrari’s James Mangold, A Complete Unknown also stars Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Elle Fanning as a figure based on Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. For the record, Chalamet does all his own singing and instrument playing in the film.
Along with Liam Neeson, Gerard Butler has cornered the market in second-string action movies… which evidently are quite profitable because they keep making them. In Den of Thieves: Pantera, a sequel to the 2018 heist hit, Butler is back as Sheriff Big Nick O’Brien, who continues his pursuit of criminal Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.). This time, the latter has made his way to Europe, and is embroiled in the dangerous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a robbery of the world’s largest diamond exchange.