For a minute there, it seemed like Alex Garland might end up one of those promising cinematic talents lured to the wilds of TV by looser run times and lessened oversight. But the accomplished filmmaker behind the sci-fi standouts Ex Machina and Annihilation will follow up his polarizing small-screen series Devs with another feature project, and the good news doesn’t stop there.
An exclusive from Deadline announced today that Garland is readying his next film, the A24 production simply titled Men, with a pair of high-profile castings. Rory Kinnear, a friendly face from the Daniel Craig-era 007 pictures, will star alongside everyone’s favorite breakout talent, Jessie Buckley.
Buckley has strung together three major gigs over the past couple years – a name-making musical turn in Wild Rose, followed by the release of Fargo‘s fourth season and Charlie Kaufman‘s I’m Thinking of Ending Things this past fall – and will soon appear in Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s directorial effort The Lost Daughter. And she now appears ready to carry a film on her own, judging by the brief synopsis.
The Deadline item describes Men as following “a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside after the death of her ex-husband,” a logline so bare-bones that it must be concealing some dimension integral to the undisclosed genre. Could this seeming drama setup be hiding traces of sci-fi, or perhaps horror?
If nothing else, a goodly number of viewers can be counted on to pay up for the opportunity to watch Buckley sadly wander the rolling hills of rural England. Surely there will be more to the film than that, but what more could a reasonable moviegoer want?
Published 6 Jan 2021
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