The 12 best films to see in cinemas in January: from ‘The Brutalist’ To ‘Wolf Man’

Robert Eggers follows in the footsteps of FW Murnau and Werner Herzog in prising open the tomb of Count Orlok and releasing the plague-carrying vampire on an unsuspecting world. Bill Skarsgård is the bitey aristocrat and Lily-Rose Depp is the object of his sinister desires. Blood will be sucked, bats will flutter, and Nicholas Hoult will make a series of bad decisions as 19th century estate agent Thomas Hutter. If it’s anything like Eggers’ early work, The Lighthouse and The Witch, it’ll be bathed in a creepy miasma of dread.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 1

Were we too busy mourning the erotic thriller to weep for the weepie? That others ’80s staple that seemed to have gone the way of the dodo is back this month – and rejoice, big softies and tissue marketing people alike, because John Crowley’s London romance is here to break hearts nationwide. Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield are the couple who fall in love and fall apart in ways that will reduce many of us to a puddle of tears. 

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 1

A prison drama with a difference, Colson Whitehead’s Civil Rights-era coming-of-age novel gets a powerful adaptation from filmmaker-photographer RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening). Shot first-person from the perspective of a young Black man called Elwood Curtis (played young and older by Ethan Cole Sharp and Daveed Diggs), unjustly sent to a Florida reform school, it’s a Shawshank-meets-Selma story of personal growth in the most brutal of soil. Newcomer Brandon Wilson makes a charismatic foil as Turner, his friend and confidante.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 3

Two estranged cousins reunite for a trip to Poland and a tour of their late, beloved Jewish grandmother’s homeland in Jesse Eisenberg’s poignant, pointed, beautifully acted comedy-drama. Eisenberg is the buttoned-up David, while Succession’s Kieran Culkin plays the messy but mesmerising Benji, a kind of human foghorn of half-processed thoughts and unexpected truths. With a winning supporting cast that boasts Jennifer Grey and Will Sharpe, A Real Pain confronts and examines the human experience through a whole new lens. 

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 3

Like a Scandi noir with a time machine, this true-life serial killer tale puts us in the worn out shoes of struggling Copenhagen seamstress Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne). Her pregnancy leads her into the orbit of Dagmar Overbye (Trine Dyrholm), a motherly figure with some seriously dark impulses. Set in the socially fractured years following World War I, Swedish filmmaker Magnus von Horn frames her journey into the darkness as an Expressionist fairy tale where grannie is also the wolf.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 10

Angelina Jolie plays opera legend Maria Callas in the last days of her life as she struggles with her dwindling fame and croaky voice. The superstar actress, too rarely on our screens these days, is clearly channelling some of her own complex relationship with fame into the latest of director Pablo Larrain’s iconic women trilogy (our term) that already takes in Jackie (Kennedy) and (Lady Diana) Spencer. Look out for Pierfrancesco Favino and Pierfrancesco Favino to triangulate an internal drama as Callas’s long-suffering servants.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 10

Got milk? Nicole Kidman does, as a CEO who gets into sipping from cat bowls under the eye of Harris Dickinson’s cocky intern. Dutch director Halina Reijn takes all the raw material of some ’90s erotic thriller that would have starred Demi Moore and Michael Douglas in some tight knitwear and recrafts it into a modern, candid and sharply funny portrait of a woman daring to unlock something within herself – whatever the cost. It’s the sex positive flick your new year needs.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 10 

Remember the Dark Universe? Universal’s planned universe of its classic monster movies gave us Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe in an anemic reboot of The Mummy in 2017 and then crawled back into its sarcophagus to die. Instead, they gave the crypt key to Jason Blum and the horror maven has smartly slotted these iconic monsters into his Blumhouse blueprint, hiring Leigh Whannell for a whip smart update on The Invisible Man and now giving the Aussie filmmaker Universal’s furry fiend to unleash. Christopher Abbott is the werewolf and Julia Garner his panicked wife.

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 17

The story of how Bob Dylan plugged in a guitar might not seem like the highest-stakes narrative of the year, but with a magnetic Timothée Chalamet as the unruly-haired troubadour and Ed Norton on form as his gentle-spirited mentor Pete Seeger, creative tensions and human foibles amp up the drama. Walk the Line director James Mangold takes us back to America’s tumultuous ’60s music scene – and even gives us another take on Johnny Cash, this time played by Boyd Holbrook. Monica Barbaro, as Joan Baez, and Elle Fanning round out the cast. 

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 17

This movie about the Swiss archer who famously shot an apple from the head of his own son is not thine father’s period drama. Instead, British director Nick Hamm is injecting the 14th century with plenty of contemporary action-thriller edge as The Northman’s Claes Bang takes up the crossbow as the hitherto peace-loving marksman and does battle with the Austrian Empire. Jonathan Pryce, Ben Kingsley and Connor Swindells co-star. Expect some of the slowest reloads in action-movie history.  

In UK and Irish cinemas Jan 10