With a bit of luck April will be the last month without cinemas in the UK
and Ireland, but until then there's plenty coming to VOD and streaming
platforms to tide you over until your return to your local arthouse or
multiplex.
April gives us not one but two movies from Chloé Zhao - along with
her Oscar favourite Nomadland we get the belated UK/ROI
release of her debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me. Speaking of belated releases, Palm Springs and
Run finally make their way over here, along a couple of tasty
horror treats and the acclaimed Sound of Metal.
Here are the 10 movies we're most excited to see in April.
Godzilla vs Kong (April 1st, VOD)
The first three installments of Warner Bros' Godzilla/Kong franchise
produced mixed results, with Gareth Edwards' enjoyable Godzilla
followed up by the mediocre
Kong: Skull Island
and the awful
Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Now with cinema's two biggest titans clashing, let's hope we get a movie
as big as its tasty titular bout promises.
Run (April 2nd, Netflix)
From the director of the hit 2018 thriller
Searching, Aneesh Chaganty, comes Run, in which Sarah Paulson plays a domineering mother who keeps her
wheelchair bound daughter (Kiera Allen) isolated from the outside
world. Where the action of Searching played out entirely on
a laptop screen, Run sees Chaganty employ more traditional
filmmaking in this psychological thriller.
The Night (April 2nd, VOD)
Iranian filmmaker Kourosh Ahari's directorial debut
The Night has the distinction of being the first US-produced
film to receive distribution in Iran for over four decades. The film stars
Shabab Hossein and Niousha Jafarian as a young Iranian
couple living in the US who spend a night in a creepy old hotel where they
and their infant daughter are menaced by a malevolent presence that forces
them to confront their past.
Rose: A Love Story (April 5th, VOD)
Editor Jennifer Sheridan's directorial debut
Rose: A Love Story is the latest movie to infuse horror
elements (in this case vampirism) into British social realist cinema.
Sophie Rundle and Matt Stokoe play Rose and Sam, a young
couple living an isolated existence in the woods. When an uninvited guest
arrives, Rose's previously quashed bloodlust begins to rise to the
surface.
Palm Springs (April 9th, Amazon Prime Video)
Premiering a year ago in the US on Stateside only streaming service Hulu,
director Max Barbakow's highly acclaimed sci-fi-comedy
Palm Springs finally arrives on this side of the pond. The
latest movie to employ a Groundhog Day style time loop
premise, the film stars Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti as a
pair of guests forced to repeatedly relive their friends' wedding day,
falling for one another in the process.
A Common Crime (April 9th, VOD)
Writer/director Francisco Márquez's Argentinian thriller
A Common Crime stars Elisa Carricajo in an acclaimed
turn as a woman who becomes racked with guilt when a young man she refused
to help is murdered by the police.
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (April 9th, MUBI)
Along with the arrival of Chloé Zhao's Oscar favourite
Nomadland, April gives us the UK/ROI premiere of her 2015 debut. Filmed on a Lokata
reservation in South Dakota, Songs My Brothers Taught Me is centred on the relationship between
a teenage boy and his younger sister and established Zhao's reputation as a
chronicler of rural American working class life.
Sound of Metal (April 12th, Amazon Prime Video)
Director Darius Marder's Sound of Metal, which he co-wrote with his brother Abraham, stars Riz Ahmed in an
Oscar nominated performance as a heroin addicted Heavy Metal drummer slowly
losing his sense of hearing. With the help of his bandmate and girlfriend
(Olivia Cooke), he begins to adapt to a new way of life. Marder
implements sign language and innovative sound design to tell this
story.
Nomadland (April 30th, Disney+)
Following her acclaimed depictions of rural American working class life
Songs My Brothers Taught Me and
The Rider, filmmaker Chloé Zhao is hitting the road with
Frances McDormand for Nomadland. Inspired by journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book
'Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century',
Nomadland sees McDormand play an aging woman forced to live
a nomadic life in her van following the economic collapse of her Nevada
company town. As with Zhao's previous films, Nomadland features amateur
performers playing versions of themselves.
Without Remorse (April 30th, Amazon Prime Video)
With films like
Subbura
and
Sicario 2: Soldado, director Stefano Sollima has proven himself the equal of his
father, speghetti western supremo Sergio, when it comes to helming gritty
action. This Tom Clancy adaptation, scripted by
Taylor Sheridan, stars Michael B. Jordan as a Navy SEAL
seeking revenge for his wife's murder.