“Rules Don’t Apply”
Director: Warren Beatty (“Reds”)
Cast: Warren Beatty, Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin
Synopsis: A young would-be-businessman and an aspiring movie starlet come to L.A. in 1958 and end up working for Howard Hughes: they fall in love, but Hughes’ contracts forbid employees from having romantic relationships.
What You Need To Know: We weren’t really sure what to expect from Warren Beatty’s long-in-the-works Howard Hughes movie, the legendary star’s first appearance on screen in fifteen years, and his first movie as director since “Bulworth” in 1998. But we definitely weren’t expecting a farce-tinged romantic comedy, which is what the recent trailer seems to be selling, intriguingly. Whether it sells any tickets at all remains to be seen — it’s not massively in step with the kind of movies people are making, pleasingly so. But Beatty gets our money sight unseen as a Hollywood legend (and a terrific filmmaker), and he’s assembled a great cast, led by “Hail Caesar” breakout and future Han Solo Alden Ehrenreich, and also including Matthew Broderick, Haley Bennett, Candice Bergen, Steve Coogan, Dabney Coleman, Ed Harris, Martin Sheen, Paul Sorvino and many more. An undeniable event, even if turns out more “Town & Country” than “Shampoo.”
Release Date: November 23rd
“Lion”
Director: Garth Davis (“Top Of The Lake”)
Cast: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Synopsis: The true story of Saroo Brierley, who lost his family at age 5, only to find them again in his 20s with the help of Google Earth.
What You Need To Know: With the Weinstein Company seemingly having a difficult time of it of late — the expensive “Hateful Eight” underperforming, and multiple movies delayed or dumped — a lot’s riding on “Lion,” which is Harvey’s big awards hope this year. Based on a properly remarkable true story, hailing from the producers of “The King’s Speech,” and marking the feature debut of Australian director Garth Davis, who did a superb job alongside Jane Campion on “Top Of The Lake,” we’ve heard some good buzz on this stretching back to Cannes 2015. And now it’s ready for unveiling, with a world premiere at TIFF coming next month, ahead of the same prime release slot that “The King’s Speech” and “The Imitation Game” got. After a disappointing couple of years Oscar-wise, Harvey needs a win, and this film might well be the one to give him one.
Release Date: November 23rd
“Silence”
Director: Martin Scorsese (“Goodfellas”)
Cast: Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Shinya Tsukamoto
Synopsis: Two 17th-century Jesuit priests face violent persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity
What You Need To Know: We kind of love Martin Scorsese the most when he’s out of his comfort zone a little bit — with a “Kundun” or a “Age Of Innocence,” and while his last film “Wolf Of Wall Street,” was glorious on home ground, follow-up “Silence” definitely isn’t, at least on the surface, given that it’s about Portuguese missionaries in 17th century Japan. But at the same time, it tackles some of the director’s favorite themes — faith, violence, integrity — and as a long-time passion project of Scorsese that’s been in the works for 25 years, we’re thrilled that it’s finally arriving. The cast is different than once planned — Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal were originally attached — but Neeson, Garfield, Driver and Asano hardly count as a downgrade. The only question right now is if the film’s still set to bow this year: Paramount have long been targeting a November release, but at time of going to press it doesn’t have a firm date, and hasn’t been announced for a fall festival either.
Release Date: November TBD
“La La Land”
Director: Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”)
Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, J.K. Simmons, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt
Synopsis: In modern-day L.A, an aspiring actress falls in love with a jazz pianist.
What You Need To Know: After one of the most striking directorial breakthroughs in years, Damien Chazelle had pretty much his choice of projects to do. His follow-up, which will open Venice in a few weeks and looks to be a serious Oscar challenger, is a return to the vibe of his low-budget debut “Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench,” in that it’s an honest-to-god original musical, something that you don’t see much of these days. With songs by “Whiplash” composer Justin Hurwitz, and the deeply appealing couple of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone headlining, this looks like a sort of cross between “The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg” and “Punch-Drunk Love,” so it has the potential to be pretty much the best, most swooningly romantic thing ever. So long as Chazelle can live up to the immense promise of his last film, this should be something very, very special indeed.
Release Date: December 2nd
“Things To Come”
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve (“Eden”)
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Edith Scob
Synopsis: A philosophy teacher experiences later-life upheaval following a divorce.
What You Need To Know: Nestling in the top few movies of the year for almost everyone who’s seen it, Mia Hansen-Løve’s follow-up to the great “Eden” is a stunning, joyously humanist character portrait elevated to instant classic status by the astonishing turn by Isabelle Huppert, who basically pwns 2016. A warm and nuanced study of a woman facing career and personal setbacks and tragedies, yet doing so with resilient, forthright independence and humor, it’s the kind of film that overcomes the specificity of its setting (amid upper-middle French intelligentsia) with the universality of its insights. Hansen-Løve’s “Eden” is a huge favorite around here, but it’s possible she’s made something even more valuable with “Things to Come” and certainly proves herself one of the keenest and most perceptive observers of life experienced in its various stages, now at work in the world. We cannot recommend this Berlin Best Director-winning film highly enough.
Release Date: December 2nd
“Miss Sloane”
Director: John Madden (“Shakespeare In Love”)
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alison Pill
Synopsis: A political lobbyist risks her career to help a gun control bill pass.
What You Need To Know: With mass shootings reaching almost epidemic levels of late, the issue of gun control is more relevant than ever, but it’s one that the movies have mostly avoided (underrated John Grisham adaptation “Runaway Jury” is one of the last times we remember it really being talked about, and even then that was in the context of a thriller). So the release of “Miss Sloane,” barely a month after the election, promises to be a hot-button thing. The big awards-season hope this year for Jessica Chastain (who hasn’t been nominated since 2012, bafflingly), with a killer cast lined up including Jake Lacy, John Lithgow and Sam Waterston along with the names above, this could risk being something of a preaching-to-the-converted polemic. But while director John Madden can be a bit milquetoast, his last collaboration with Chastain, on the unexpectedly gripping “The Debt,” was very good, so we hope the combo works well together again.
Release Date: December 9th.
“The Salesman”
Director: Asghar Farhadi (“A Separation”)
Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi, Farid Sajadhosseini, Omid Abolpour
Synopsis: A couple, who are starring in an amateur production of “Death Of A Salesman,” must deal with the shocking aftermath of a violent attack.
What You Need To Know: There are few filmmakers who excite us right now as much as Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, an Oscar-winner for “A Separation,” and even if the director isn’t on his AAA game with his latest, “The Salesman,” as Jess’s review from Cannes suggested might be the case (it “falls short of his best work,” she said), it’ll still likely be more nourishing and satisfying than 90% of the other movies you’ll see this year. Once again tracing “the ramifications of the incredibly ordinary — an unanswered door, a well-meaning white lie, a forgotten phone — as they unspool with tick-tock clockwork logic toward extroardinary climaxes that feel both inevitable and unexpected,” the new film, that draws on Arthur Miller but goes in very different directions, “is as compelling as anything Farhadi has ever made,” though perhaps a little more minor in key. But he’s still a peerless filmmaker, and with Best Actor and Best Screenplay prizes from Cannes, this could introduce him to his widest audience yet.
Release Date: December 9th
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
Director: Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla”)
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Riz Ahmed, Forest Whitaker
Synopsis: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a ragtag group of rebels is brought together to steal the plans for a new galactic space weapon of the Empire that could spell devastation for billions.
What You Need To Know: After the triumphant, multiple billion dollar relaunch of the “Star Wars” universe with “The Force Awakens,” the series should have kept marching on with the first spin-off movie: it had a great cast, a cool premise (set immediately before the 1977 original, showing a very different side of Star Wars than we’ve seen before), and an enormously talented filmmaker in “Monsters” and “Godzilla” helmer Gareth Edwards. But the buzz in recent months has decidedly not been what Disney wanted: reports that the film wasn’t working, had never really been working in script form, and that extensive reshoots were taking place, with a new helmer, Tony Gilroy coming in to direct much of them. It’ll be a long time before we know all the truth behind what went on: but in the meantime, we hope that any bumps are being ironed out, and that Edwards’ vision for the movie isn’t being watered down, because it looked kind of great to us to begin with…
Release Date: December 16th
“Fences”
Director: Denzel Washington (“Antwone Fisher”)
Cast: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Mykelti Williamson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Horsnby
Synopsis: A former baseball player, now struggling to get by in 1950s Pittsburgh, grapples with the events of his life.
What You Need To Know: With only two movies that he’s directed across his career, it clearly takes a lot for Denzel Washington to pick a directorial project. But “Fences” is clearly a big deal. Perhaps the best known of the so-called Pittsburgh Cycle, a ten-play series by the great August Wilson (Washington has an HBO deal that will bring the rest to the screen), “Fences” was a sensation when it premiered on Broadway in the 1980s starring James Earl Jones, and did it again when Washington starred with Viola Davis in a revival, with both actors winning Tonys. Washington directs and co-adapted with Tony Kushner here, and got Davis to reprise her role, with much of the rest of the cast of the stage production returning too. Washington’s previous directorial work didn’t quite light the world on fire, but the material’s stellar here, and even if he can’t open it up cinematically, the pairing of himself and Davis on screen will be a can’t-miss one.
Release Date: December 16th
“Neruda”
Director: Pablo Larrain (“No”)
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco, Antonia Zegers, Pablo Derqui
Synopsis: When the Chilean Communist Party is banned by the government, poet Pablo Neruda goes on the run.
What You Need To Know: The arguments that 2016 is one of the worst years in movie history are persuasive, but we’d counter with one simple fact: we’re getting three movies by Pablo Larrain, one of the most exciting directors we have. The Chilean helmer saw his bleak drama “The Club” arrive earlier in the year, and we’re expecting his English-language debut “Jackie” to get some kind of Oscar qualifying run after it premieres at Venice, though it doesn’t yet have a distributor. And in between came “Neruda,” a highly unconventional biopic (an “ideological anti-biopic,” as Jess’s Cannes review put it) of the famous poet Pablo Neruda. Reuniting Larrain with Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays the cop pursuing Neruda, the film “takes flight into the stratosphere of the unexpected,” with the director using “the stunning digital photography in immensely innovative ways,” with the movie ultimately proving to be “a dexterous, mischievious, almost incomprehensibly intelligent film.”
Release Date: December 16th