Originally announced for a summer 2014 release, Andy and Lana Wachowski’s science fiction epic “Jupiter Ascending” opens Feb. 6, following a few reshoots and several months of postproduction effects work. So it won’t be long before moviegoers learn the answer to the most pressing cinematic question of the moment: Can Channing Tatum pull off the pointy-eared get-up for a full two hours?
I have not seen “Jupiter Ascending,” nor most of the other noteworthy titles coming this winter and early spring. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” for example, due a week after “Jupiter Ascending,” has many built-in talking points. For example: Can the film version of the spankin’ big E.L. James best-seller find an effective cinematic equivalent to sentences from the novel like this one: “My hands stay in his hair, pulling gently as I try to quiet my too-loud breathing. He gazes up at me through impossibly long lashes, his eyes a scorching smoky gray.” The prose gets more purple than that, of course, as Anastasia Steele submits to the desires of the sleek control freak Christian Grey. The movie starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan and various bondage implements, arrives just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Here are 10 on the horizon, divided into the have-seens and the have-nots. As always, dates are subject to change.
• Seen: “Selma,” now in wide release. Director Ava DuVernay’s fine, stirring, thoughtful story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights marches is miles ahead of the average historical biopic, maintaining a tight focus, steering clear of triumphalist blather and allowing us to see the maneuvers and counter-maneuvers in a heated political process. David Oyelowo’s performance provides the calm, concentrated center of the storm.