30. “The Circle”
Director: James Ponsoldt (“Smashed,” “The Spectacular Now,” “The End of the Tour”)
Cast: Emma Watson, John Boyega, Tom Hanks, Patton Oswalt, Karen Gillen
Synopsis: A young woman lands a job at a mysterious Google-style tech giant
What You Need To Know: Written by Ponsoldt from the novel of the same name by Dave Eggers, “The Circle” sees the director follow up his absolutely stellar but relatively low-key two-hander “The End of the Tour” with a film that’s destined, through cast alone, to have a much higher profile. As the first thing we’ll see John Boyega in after he’s done charming the pants off the world doing the rounds for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the next project for Emma Watson (replacing Alicia Vikander) before she makes cash registers ring in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” and the first major post-“Boyhood” role for Ellar Coltrane, the younger generation’s starriness threatens to overshadow even the presence of Tom Hanks. But really, we have such faith in Ponsoldt after just three features that we’d be on board even if the cast had half the wattage: He’s a particularly literate and intelligent director, and the novel’s heady themes will need one such to fly on the big screen.
Release Date: None set yet.
29. “Certain Women”
Director: Kelly Reichardt (“Wendy & Lucy,” “Meek’s Cutoff”)
Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, Jared Harris
Synopsis: The story of the intersecting lives of three women in present-day Montana.
What You Need To Know: We dug Kelly Reichardt’s last movie, the Patricia Highsmith-ish paranoid art thriller “Night Moves,” but it felt like many critics and audience members didn’t quite know what to make of the left turn from one of the indie world’s most talented filmmakers. She’s back on more familiar territory for her latest, “Certain Women,” which sees her adapt a series of short stories by author Maile Meloy, with Laura Dern playing an attorney involved in a hostage situation, Michelle Williams as a married woman trying to build a house, and Kristen Stewart as a lawyer teaching an adult-education class. Few are better than Reichardt at telling the stories of women in the American West, and she’s assembled one of her best casts to date here. The presence of Todd Haynes, hot off “Carol,” as an exec producer can only help matters further.
Release Date: Screens at Sundance in just a few weeks.
28. “Passengers”
Director: Morten Tyldum (“Headhunters,” “The Imitation Game”)
Cast: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne
Synopsis: On a long-distance space flight to a far-off planet, a sleep capsule malfunctions, waking its occupant. Faced with 60 years alone as the alternative, he decides to wake up one of his fellow passengers.
What You Need To Know: We were not the greatest fans of Tyldum’s Oscar-baity “The Imitation Game,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t get excited for anything that unites the words “Tyldum” and “probable awards magnet.” This sci-fi romance sounds right up our street in fact, with its interesting high-concept, but mainly it gives us the chance to watch two of the biggest new stars in the world in a love story. Writer Jon Spaihts may have blotted his copybook a little with “Prometheus,” but he’s also behind the script for the (hopefully) weird “Doctor Strange” and will be penning the new “Mummy” film as well as possibly “Van Helsing,” so someone’s got a lot of faith in him. Though make no mistake, it’s Lawrence and Pratt who have us lining up for this, as well as ace DP Rodrigo Prieto (who has just finished shooting Scorsese’s “Silence” too), and a premise that promises something a bit more thoughtful than most sci-fi, and at the very least an original film.
Release Date: December 21st
27. “The Handmaid”
Director: Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy,” “Stoker”)
Cast: Ha Jung-woo, Kim Min-hee, Jo Jin-woong
Synopsis: An original take on the Sarah Waters novel “Fingersmith,” in which the story of lesbianism, servitude and pickpocketing is transposed from Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s.
What You Need To Know: Um, hello, did you read that synopsis? This sounds just brilliant, with one of our favorite working directors taking on a terrific page-turner book and completely reinventing it for a new culture and time period. His actors, too are all potentially familiar faces, depending how au fait you are with contemporary Korean cinema (and if you’re lagging behind, boy have you a treat in store); Jo was in 2014’s brilliantly zany thriller “A Hard Day,” as well as last year’s well-received “Assassination,” which also starred Ha; while the top-billed female in the cast, Kim, showed up in Hong Sang-soo‘s lauded 2015 title “Right Then, Wrong Now.” There are apostates on the Playlist staff who were not fans of “Stoker,” Park’s English-language debut, but this sees him back at home and working with heady themes of loyalty, betrayal, deceit and desire against a fascinatingly arcane backdrop (for a Western audience anyway), so even they are excited for this one.
Release Date: Nothing announced but Cannes or STFU.
26. “The Bad Batch”
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”)
Cast: Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Diego Luna
Synopsis: In a dystopian Texas wasteland, love blossoms within a community of cannibals.
What You Need To Know: “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” was one of the most original and enjoyable debuts in recent memory, exuding not just directorial confidence and flair but outright cool, the likes of which we rarely find outside the films of Jim Jarmusch. Real-life superhero Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures was clearly as won over as those of us without a few million to invest: She stepped in to finance Amirpour’s follow-up, which sounds like a similar to her debut in its dark genre twist on a love story, but this time features an intriguingly eclectic cast of well-known faces. We’re especially delighted to see Carrey essay something a little more challenging than the comedy sequels and cameos that have been his fare of late, while Reeves is hot again after “John Wick” and seems to be entering a fruitful DGAF phase of his career.
Release Date: None yet, but ‘Girl’ made enough noise on the festival circuit last time that we’d expect a bow at one of the bigger ones.
25. “Doctor Strange”
Director: Scott Derrickson (“The Day The Earth Stood Still,” “Sinister”)
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen
Synopsis: After his hands are injured in a car accident, an arrogant surgeon travels to the ends of the earth in search of healing, discovering the Ancient One and a world of sorcery and alternate dimensions.
What You Need To Know: In order to stop the Marvel movies feeling like a series of $200 million TV episodes, the company needs to keep things fresh. And “Doctor Strange” could be their best prospect at doing so since “Guardians Of The Galaxy.” For one, the film promises to pay homage to the psychedelic mysticism of the comic-book source material, which should make for a visually interesting experience (the trippy late-in-the-game sequence in “Ant-Man” was one of the highlights there). For another, it has a better cast than most prestige pictures this year: not just Cumberbatch in the lead role, but also Ejiofor, Swinton, Mikkelsen, McAdams, the great Michael Stuhlbarg, and “Transparent” breakout Amy Landecker. The only question mark? Helmer Scott Derrickson, whose last foray into blockbuster territory with “The Day The Earth Stood Still” was brutally bad.
Release Date: November 4th
24. “Assassin’s Creed”
Director: Justin Kurzel (“The Snowtown Murders,” “Macbeth”)
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Ariane Labed, Brendan Gleeson, Michael K. Williams
Synopsis: A prison is experimented on using a machine that enables him to retrieve his memory of his ancestor, an ancestor in Spain in the 15th century, who was embroiled in a war between Assassins and Templars.
What You Need To Know: It feels weird having a movie based on a video game this high on our list, but there’s a pretty good chance that “Assassin’s Creed” turns out to be the first great one, or if our faint hopes for “Warcraft” are misplaced, at least the first good one. Based on Ubisoft’s stealth-action mega-franchise, this eschews the crusades or Revolutionary America settings of the games for a brand new period, Inquisition-era Spain. That’s not why we’re excited: This marks a reunion of the cast, director and writer (Michael Lesslie, rather than Shakespeare) of last year’s terrific “Macbeth,” and this doesn’t appear to be a paycheck gig either: Fassbender’s a producer on the film, and has been developing it for four years. Maybe it turns out to be a misfire, but this is certainly shaping up as one of the most interesting blockbusters of the year.
Release Date: Currently December 21st, but we wouldn’t be remotely surprised to see it move into Fox’s “Gambit” slot in October if it’s done in time.
23. “American Honey”
Director: Andrea Arnold (“Red Road,” “Fish Tank”)
Cast: Arielle Holmes, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough, Will Patton, McCaul Lombardi
Synopsis: A teenage girl joins a traveling magazine sales crew and crosses the midwest with them.
What You Need To Know: It’s five years since we had a movie from Andrea Arnold: Though “Fish Tank” had appeared to place her among the top tier of international auteurs, mixed reaction to her (amazing) “Wuthering Heights” seemed to put her back a step. But hot on the heels of her helming a terrific episode of “Transparent,” Arnold’s back, with her first American-set movie. Based around the controversial so-called Mag Crews, which sees young kids exploited by their employers, it’s a road movie mostly revolving around unknown faces, but with a few familiar ones too: “Heaven Knows What” breakout Arielle Holmes, “Fury Road” co-star Riley Keough, and Shia LaBeouf. We’re there for anything that Arnold directs (especially when regular DoP Robbie Ryan is along for the ride too), but we’re particularly fascinated to see her take on the States.
Release Date: Wrapped last summer, so a return to Cannes, where “Red Road” and “Fish Tank” screened, seems like a good bet.
22. “Midnight Special”
Director: Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud“)
Cast: Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgerton, Adam Driver, Sam Shepard
Synopsis: A father and son attempt to evade government officials when they learn the boy has supernatural powers.
What You Need To Know: The first to arrive of Jeff Nichols’ two movies this year, “Midnight Special” is his first real studio movie, and very intriguing it is too. Likened to a John Carpenter film and a “chase movie,” with some very Spielbergian echoes from the trailer, Nichols —who has up to now been making a series of down-to-the-bone dramas in the indie world — was one of the last people we’d think would take on a big budget original sci-fi movie. This has been in the works for ages at this point — the film was shot back in 2014, and a further push into 2015 suggests that Warner Bros don’t quite know what they have on their hands. But then, Warner Bros don’t quite know what they’re doing on multiple levels right now, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Release Date: March 18th, with a Berlin premiere before that.
21.“Everybody Wants Some”
Director: Richard Linklater (The ‘Before‘ Trilogy, “Boyhood“)
Cast: Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell, Ryan Guzman, Zoey Deutch, Will Brittain, Glen Powell
Synopsis: A college freshman falls in with a group of baseball players.
What You Need To Know: The most obvious side effect of Linklater’s newfound heat due to the all-conquering “Boyhood,” Annapurna Pictures have finally stepped up for this long-gestating “spiritual sequel” to his much beloved “Dazed and Confused.” Starring a largely unknown cast, it seems like he will try to recapture the loose-limbed, youthful energy of its precursor. And if that first trailer is anything to go by, he’s succeeded, with the same kind of vibrant, joyful, authentic feel from his 70-set teen classic brought to a college campus in the 1980s. Linklater can, to be fair, be hit and miss, and had a patchy run in the mid-’00s, but between “Bernie,” “Before Midnight” and “Boyhood,” he’s on one of the best runs of his career, and we’re hopeful that’ll continue here.
Release Date: Premieres at SXSW in March, then hits theaters on April 15th.
