90. “Zama”
Director: Lucrecia Martel (“The Holy Girl,” “The Headless Woman”)
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas
Synopsis: The lonely existence of the greedy, paranoid Don Diego de Zama, a Spanish civil servant posted to Paraguay in the 1790s.
What You Need To Know: Across a remarkable run in the ’00s, Lucrecia Martel proved herself to be one of the finest filmmakers working today. But since her widely acclaimed “The Headless Woman” in 2008, we’ve had nothing from the filmmaker. Thankfully, her first movie in eight years will arrive in 2016 in the shape of “Zama,” an adaptation of the book by Argentine writer Antonio di Benedetto. It’s seemingly her biggest movie in scope and scale to date, with Pedro Almodóvar among the producers, and promises to be a period epic that no one except Martel could make. “‘Zama’ brings us closer, with humor, to a man from the past — in the time of an immense unknown America — who uncannily lives the same conflicts that we are wrestling and contending with in our modern world,” she said about the project last year.
Release Date: Cannes seems a dead cert.
89. “Queen Of Katwe”
Director: Mira Nair (“Salaam Bombay!,” “Monsoon Wedding”)
Cast: Charity Rose Pimer, Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo, Ntare Mwine, Maurice Kirya
Synopsis: The true story of Phiona Mutesi, a young Ugandan girl who, despite having dropped out of school, went on to be a chess champion.
What You Need To Know: Supposedly, Disney are placing a new emphasis on diversity in the coming years, and that’s starting to show this year — “Moana;” the cast of the two “Star Wars” movies; the arrival of Black Panther into the Marvel universe; and now this, one of only a few non-franchise titles they’re releasing this year. Made in conjunction with ESPN Films, this could just sound like an average sports biopic, but the same could have been said of the excellent “Searching For Bobby Fischer,” and though Mira Nair has had a couple of duff films in the recent past (“Amelia,” “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”), she has plenty of very fine work on her résumé too. And she couldn’t ask for two better actors to star than Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo, getting much-deserved lead roles.
Release Date: Yet to be announced.
88. “Sing”
Director: Garth Jennings (“The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” “Son Of Rambow”)
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly
Synopsis: A koala bear sets up a singing competition in order to save his failing theater.
What You Need To Know: Garth Jennings was one of the biggest music video names of the late ’90s and early ’00s, and his inventive but flawed feature debut “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” and delightful follow-up “Son Of Rambow” suggested a major future ahead. It’s taken him a further eight years to make his third movie, but it’s likely to be a much bigger endeavor when it finally arrives, given that it comes from Illumination Entertainment, riding high after the success of “Minions.” This reality-show-riffing premise could sound hacky, but Jennings has talent bursting out of him, and he’s got a glittering cast, with John C. Reilly, Seth MacFarlane, Nick Kroll, Jennifer Saunders, Peter Serafinowicz, Leslie Jones, Nick Offerman, Jay Pharoah and Nick Offerman voicing its animal cast members.
Release Date: December 21st
87. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”
Director: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (“Crazy Stupid Love,” “Focus”)
Cast: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton
Synopsis: Journalist Kim Barker is posted to Afghanistan, where she covers the war, and finds love and friendship.
What You Need To Know: Though it’s been overshadowed by the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Sisters” has proven to be a tidy little sleeper hit over the Christmas break, suggesting after a few missteps that Tina Fey may have proven that she’s a movie star. And she has a chance for a quick one-two punch, with the extremely promising “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” hitting in March. Based on Kim Barker’s comic memoir of the same name, produced by and starring Fey and penned by her “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” co-creator Robert Carlock, it looks to be a little more serious (though still predominately comic) than Fey’s previous movies. Tone will be the crucial thing here, but while their last movie “Focus” was a little dull, directors Ficarra and Requa are usually pretty good at that, and their cast are strong: we’re particularly looking forward to seeing how Robbie and Freeman play off Fey.
Release Date: March 4th
86. “The Great Wall”
Director: Zhang Yimou (“Raise The Red Lantern,” “Hero”)
Cast: Matt Damon, Andy Lau, Willem Dafoe, Pedro Pascal, Luhan
Synopsis: Two British soldiers travel to China in the 15th century, and discover that a wall is being constructed to fend off supernatural forces.
What You Need To Know: As you’ll have noticed, there’s increasing import being placed on Chinese elements in big tentpoles, one that might reach a peak with “The Great Wall,” which shot in China, with a Chinese director, but with a toplining U.S. star in the shape of Matt Damon. The movie’s a long-time passion project of Legendary boss Thomas Tull, and nearly shot back in 2012, with Edward Zwick directing and Henry Cavill, Benjamin Walker and Zhang Ziyi starring. In the end, in what can only be termed a major upgrade, it was the great Zhang Yimou who’s ended up helming from a script rewritten by Tony Gilroy, with Damon joined by Willem Dafoe, “Game Of Thrones” actor Pedro Pascal, and a Chinese cast including megastar Andy Lau. It could turn out to be a “47 Ronin”-sized misfire, but it’s already more interesting than most blockbusters and there’s so much good stuff here that we really, really have to hope not.
Release Date: November 23rd
85. “The Body Artist”
Director: Benoît Jacquot (“Farewell, My Queen” “3 Hearts”)
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Julia Roy, Jeanne Balibar
Synopsis: Based on the Don DeLillo novella, the film is a quasi-ghost story about a performance artist who withdraws into isolation following the death of her husband.
What You Need To Know: DeLillo’s name alone has our interest piqued for this title, though just imagine how much higher it would be placed had the adaptation from a couple of years ago come together starring Denis bloody Lavant, Isabelle freaking Huppert and David fucking Cronenberg (who obviously helmed DeLillo’s “Cosmopolis“), with Luca Guadagnino in the director’s chair. Jacquot, by contrast is a little hit-and-miss, though to be fair his recent misses (for us) have been his period movies like “Diary of a Chambermaid” and “Farewell, My Queen,” which bodes relatively well for this contemporary piece. It’s really all down to whether Jacquot can handle the story’s surreality, because, at least in the book’s version it is very, very weird.
Release Date: None listed yet, but Jacquot has bowed at Berlin twice in recent years, so if it’s ready it could still show up there.
84. “Money Monster”
Director: Jodie Foster (“Little Man Tate,” “Home for the Holidays,” “The Beaver”)
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell
Synopsis: A disgruntled everyman who lost all his money due a bad tip given on a populist money management TV show takes the show’s presenter hostage.
What You Need To Know: This cast and this director taking on this kind of topical, “King of Comedy“-inflected story seems like it should hopefully make a splash. After what looks to be a goofy turn in the Coens’ “Hail Caesar!” George Clooney might relish a role that seems no less showy but a bit more serious-minded (done right, it could well have awards potential), while Jack O’Connell has something to prove after the disappointing blandness of “Unbroken.” And Jodie Foster is generally underrated as a director, having had pretty chronic bad luck with the timing of her last film, the Mel Gibson-starring “The Beaver,” and the release date push from April to May would suggest that Sony have some faith in what they’ve got here.
Release Date: May 13th, which is right during the first week of the Cannes Film Festival, so maybe…
83. “The Founder”
Director: John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks”)
Cast: Michael Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Linda Cardinelli, Laura Dern, Nick Offerman
Synopsis: The story of the founder of McDonalds, Ray Kroc.
What You Need To Know: Michael Keaton deserves every big role coming to him from now on, and with this one it looks like he might be going for broke on the Best Actor statue, taking on an Academy-friendly biopic of an American institution, amid a stacked ensemble of ringers, all under the guiding hand of “The Blind Side” helmer Hancock, who directed Sandra Bullock to her Oscar. But there’s also cause to hope it won’t be quite as obvious as that film or Hancock’s last, “Saving Mr. Banks” — “The Founder” is written by Robert D. Siegel, who is ex-EIC of The Onion, who wrote Darren Aronofsky‘s “The Wrestler,” and wrote and directed the underrated “Big Fan.” Siegel himself has suggested that the film is fairly dark, more on “The Social Network” end of the scale, so the real question is if Hancock can do it justice.
Release Date: November 25th (prime Oscar season).
82. “Deepwater Horizon”
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Kate Hudson
Synopsis: A retelling of the 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the subsequent catastrophic BP oil spill, based on a New York Times article.
What You Need To Know: Say what you like about Peter Berg as a director (and mostly people like to say bad things), he can turn in a pacy action sequence or ten when on form. And this material would seem to play to his strengths, a kind of hyper-masculine, “Armageddon“-style spectacle film, at least for the explode-y parts. And it’s written by “All is Lost” director J.C. Chandor (who was previously attached as director — ah, what could have been!) along with Matt Carnahan, who was also behind Berg’s not-terrible “The Kingdom,” so there’s hope. And hey, at least this one is being billed as a disaster movie from the outset, rather than, say, “Battleship” which was a movie that became a disaster. Also, this reminds me: Where the hell has John Malkovich been, and what kind of tax trouble is he in?
Release Date: September 30th
81. “American Pastoral”
Director: Ewan MacGregor
Cast: Ewan MacGregor, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Uzo Aduba, Rupert Evans, Molly Parker, David Strathairn
Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Philip Roth, this is the story of Seymour “The Swede” Lvov, a successful businessman, former high-school sports star and scion of a Jewish upper-middle New Jersey family, whose life gradually disintegrates in the politically turbulent 1960s.
What You Need To Know: This is a pretty towering work of American fiction that’s been in development for more than a decade. In that time, cast and director have changed, most surprisingly with the announcement that lead Ewan MacGregor would be making his feature directorial debut here after the departure of Phillip Noyce. It’s certainly an enticingly epic story, but given that Roth adaptations seldom live up to what’s on the page, and given MacGregor’s untested nature behind the camera, this is a major roll of the dice. But like any big gamble, it could pay off, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed and stick to worrying about whether MacGregor’s going to do one of his not-wholly-convincing American accents in the role.
Release Date: None yet, but filming started in September 2015, so a fall bow seems most likely.
