A few blips on our cinematic radar for the remainder of the year:

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is set to release at the start of summer. Cillian Murphy, who stars as the infamous nuclear physicist, says it’s the best script he’s ever read. Watch that space.
De Niro and Scorsese are teaming up for the eleventh time to bring us Killers of the Flower Moon later in the fall, which tells the story of the FBI’s involvement in a string of murders that took place on an Osage reservation in the early twenties. There’s a good chance that this will be Scorsese’s swan song. Expect him to go out on a bang.
And it Looks like the Motion Picture Association is going to have to make a few adjustments to its rating system; John Hillcoat just got the greenlight to give Blood Meridian a shot. We aren’t sure we necessarily trust Hillcoat of all directors with handling Cormac’s horrific, sanguinary opus, but - given the pair’s collaborative history - at least this means Nick Cave will probably score it.

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Clearly, there won’t be any shortage of dark, brooding, mega-budgeted historical dramas this year. But there’s something looming on the more immediate horizon, some news that - at least to me - is equally as exciting as any of this.

In celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary, Park Chan-Wook’s bloodstained masterpiece Oldboy is getting remastered, which also means that those of us who didn’t happen to be passing through South Korea in 2003 will finally get a chance to see it in theaters.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Oldboy traces the fortunes of Daen-Su, who - after being bailed out by a friend one night at a local police station - is kidnapped and placed inside a private prison for reasons unknown. There he sits for fifteen years without human contact, passing the time by shadowboxing in preparation for his escape, otherwise sitting glued to the small, grainy television opposite his bed, watching the world go on without him.

One day, without explanation, Daen-Su wakes up outside his prison, his spirit now broken beyond repair, and devotes his life to seeking revenge on his captor.

I’d be hard-pressed to find any recent films to compare it to, but there is one director who Chan-Wook no doubt borrows more than a few visual cues from: David Fincher. It’s that gritty neo-noir touch, the overall subversive attitude, that Y2K weirdness… Fight Club walked so Oldboy could run. But if we’re really pitting the two against each other, my money’s on Oldboy for the knockout, any day of the week. It’s that good.

And I know I tend to rant a lot about fucked-up twist endings on here (see: Brazil, EO, La Haine) but seriously, this one’s the worst. Apologies in advance. —Jackson Todd