Screenshot: Before Sunrise/Warner Bros.
Big-budget movie spectacles tend to open in the summer, when there’s less chance bad weather will ruin critical opening weekend grosses. Movies with awards on their minds tend to come out in the fall, so that they’ll be fresh in the minds of critics and viewers as voting deadline approach. So where does that leave January?
Though studios never openly admit it, the first months of the year are widely recognized as a dumping ground: where problem projects go to die, and the province of lower-budget action and horror movies, comedies, and teen-oriented movies that don’t need to break big to make (a little) bank. And there is no dumpier month than January.
However! If you are of both triangulated summer blockbusters and obvious awards bait, January can actually be a fun time to go go the movies—everything feels a bit less calculated, and a little more unpredictable. And every once in a while, you see something that’s actually pretty good. Here are 20 January releases that are actually worth your time. Some of them were even box office hits.
