20. “Yeh Din Ka Kissa”/“The Meyerowitz Stories”
Director: Noah Baumbach (“Frances Ha”)
Cast: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Grace Van Patten
Synopsis: An estranged New York family reunite in advance of their patriarch’s career retrospective at an art gallery.
What You Need To Know: After the slightly disappointing receptions to “Margot At The Wedding” and “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach has rebounded in a big way, with “Frances Ha” (a movie that was secret until it was announced in the TIFF line up), “While We’re Young” and “Mistress America” all proving satisfying to greater or lesser disagrees. The prolific filmmaker’s back soon with a film that’s variously been known as “Yeh Din Ka Kissa” or “The Meyerowitz Stories,” that promises another look at bourgeois New Yorkers, but with arguably his biggest name cast to date: Ben Stiller reunites with the director, but also Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman and in a rare and intriguing “Punch-Drunk Love”/“Funny People”-style move into more artful fare, Adam Sandler. It should look great as well: Andrea Arnold’s DP Robbie Ryan is the man shooting it.
Release Date: Shot in March, so this could be ready as soon as Sundance (though TIFF could be more likely).
19. “Coco”
Director: Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”)
Cast: Benjamin Bratt
Synopsis: A young boy, Miguel, discovers a centuries-old century related to the day of the dead.
What You Need To Know: For the second time ever, we’re getting two Pixar movies in a year in 2017. The first time around, it was something of a mixed bag: the extraordinary triumph of “Inside Out” on one hand, the critical and commercial disappointment of “The Good Dinosaur” on another. Expect something similar this time around, with the summer bringing a third movie in the unloved “Cars” franchise (unless you’re an 8-year-old boy, in which case you go love the shit out of it), but then an original movie from “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich in the fall. It’s said to revolve around the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead, but in a way that’s likely to be very different from the Guillermo Del Toro-produced “Book Of Life” a few years ago. Beyond that, not much is known right now, but original Pixar, and from the very talented Unkrich, is something to be welcomed.
Release Date: November 22nd
18. “Annihilation”
Director: Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”)
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Oscar Isaac
Synopsis: A biologist heads into an environmental disaster zone with three other scientists in search of her husband, who went missing on a similar expedition.
What You Need To Know: After a successful screenwriting career that saw him reinvent the zombie film and the space movie with “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine,” Alex Garland made one of the most confident and interesting directorial debuts of recent years with “Ex Machina.” For his follow-up, he’s sticking with ambitious sci-fi, albeit with a bigger scope and budget, with this adaptation of a book by Jeff VanderMeer. He’s assembled a superb cast, led by Natalie Portman, and has some atmospheric and fascinating source material to play with, something more reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” than most sci-fi movies.
Release Date: Paramount haven’t dated it yet, but it could end up with a date similar to “Arrival” in the fall.
17. “The Shape Of Water”
Director: Guillermo Del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”)
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer
Synopsis: A fantastical love story set in America during the Cold War.
What You Need To Know: It was fantastic, but unfortunately Guillermo Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” failed to be the film that melded his more personal and commercial instincts, at least as far as the box office receipts stand. But a return to smaller-scale fare, for the first time since his Oscar-winner “Pan’s Labyrinth,” could be a real boon given the consistently high quality of his work in that mould. Especially with a cast like this, with a host of great character actors (also including Michael Stuhlbarg) and a well-deserved lead showcase for the great Sally Hawkins. Plot details remain under wraps at the moment, but it’s rumored to be a love story between a women and a merman-like aquatic creature, with Del Toro’s regular monster-man Doug Jones in the role, and it’s hard to imagine material more in the great director’s wheelhouse than that.
Release Date: None yet, but filming just wrapped, so expect it in the fall (and possibly earlier — could a return to Cannes be in the cards?).
16. “Mother”
Director: Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”)
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Domhnall Gleeson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris
Synopsis: A young couple receive some uninvited guests in their home.
What You Need To Know: After his last couple of films, it seems a little bit like Darren Aronofsky can do no wrong. Though he’s had commercial failures — “The Fountain,” most notably — Aronofsky made a weird giallo-ish ballet movie and turned it into an Oscar winning worldwide hit, and then made a deeply weird Biblical epic/character study, and made that a blockbuster smash too. It’s too early to say whether his latest can do the same — mainly because no one really knows anything about it, beyond that it’s a psychological thriller shot on glorious 16mm. But given the form he’s been on, and the superb level of talent involved, we can only imagine this’ll be another winner.
Release Date: Unclear, but most likely in the fall.
15. “You Were Never Really Here”
Director: Lynne Ramsay (“We Need To Talk About Kevin”)
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Alessandro Nivola, Ekaterina Samsonov, John Doman
Synopsis: A former FBI agent who’s dedicated his life to rescuing women from sex trafficking becomes embroiled in a case involving a powerful New York politician.
What You Need To Know: After she exited “Jane Got A Gun” on the eve of production, sparking a slew of rumors, recriminations and lawsuits (the lousy resulting Ramsay-less film rather vindicating the treatment of her), we’d worried that Lynne Ramsay might struggle to get another movie going, given the double standards that women usually face in this business. But fortunately, Ramsay is back, and with one of the hottest prospects on this list. This sees her going into dark noir territory, with an adaptation of a novel by “Bored To Death” author Jonathan Ames, and with Joaquin Phoenix in the lead, something that never fails to feel like an event. And if that’s not exciting to you, we don’t know how to help you.
Release Date: Expect it at Cannes, with A24 likely to put it out in the fall after that.
14. “Logan Lucky”
Director: Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s Eleven”)
Cast: Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston
Synopsis: Two brothers plan a heist against the backdrop of a NASCAR race.
What You Need To Know: Steven Soderbergh actually full-on retiring always felt like a long shot, and indeed, he never really left filmmaking, directing ten movies worth of material across two seasons of “The Knick.” But his return to the big screen for the first time in four years still feels like an event, particularly with a project as enticing as this one. His recent muse Channing Tatum was the one that tempted him back, with a project with echoes of “Ocean’s Eleven” but that likely has a more hard-boiled crime tone, and with a pleasingly eclectic cast — alongside the names above, we also get Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Sebastian Stan, Macon Blair, Katherine Heigl (!), Seth MacFarlane (!!) and Gerry from “Parks & Rec” (!!!). Details are thin otherwise, but, man, this is Soderbergh, so we’ll be there opening day.
Release Date: August 18th
13. “The Snowman”
Director: Tomas Alfredson (“Let The Right One In”)
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons, Val Kilmer
Synopsis: A hard-drinking Norwegian detective investigates what could be the country’s first serial killer.
What You Need To Know: His “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is one of the best movies of the last decade, but we haven’t heard from Tomas Alfredson since, after a few projects failed to get going. But he’s finally back this year, and that can only be a good thing, especially with a hard-boiled crime tale starring Michael Fassbender. It might have missed the Nordic noir trend by a few years, but given that this is something that Martin Scorsese came close to directing, we have to assume that there’s something really meaty to the source novel by Jo Nesbo (who penned the book that Morten Tyldum’s “Headhunters” was based on). And the Alfredson and Fassbender pairing is bound to be an unmissable one.
Release Date: October 13th
12. “The Killing Of A Sacred Deer”
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster”)
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassidy, Bill Camp, Alicia Silverstone
Synopsis: A surgeon takes a young boy under his wing, only for the boy to turn out to be more sinister than he imagined.
What You Need To Know: Not every foreign-language filmmaker can transfer successfully to English-language work, but Yorgos Lanthimos did it with flair with “The Lobster,” one of the most wonderfully bizarre and uncompromised sleeper hits of recent years. And the great news is, he’s already back, reteaming with Colin Farrell (who did career-best work in their last collaboration) for a film that looks to be an extremely dark follow-up — according to its star, he felt “nauseous” after reading it, which we take as a strong recommendation from the man who made “Dogtooth.” Nicole Kidman (who excels with more daring choices like this), “Tomorrowland” breakout Raffey Cassidy, rising star Barry Keoghan and, uh, Alicia Silverstone also star, and we’re truly psyched.
Release Date: We’d bet good money on a Cannes debut.
11. “The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara”
Director: Steven Spielberg (“Schindler’s List”)
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Mark Rylance
Synopsis: In the 1850s, the Catholic Church take a young Jewish boy whose nurse baptized him when he was sick, forcing his family to fight for years for his return.
What You Need To Know: After a three-year gap between “Lincoln” and “Bridge Of Spies,” Steven Spielberg seems to be gearing up for a prolific few years: “The BFG” opened in the summer, and he’s nearly wrapped on “Ready Player One” for 2018, and will shoot “Indiana Jones 5” that year. But in between (though actually set for release before the others), he’s going back to more serious territory, with a drama based on a real-life incident, as adapted by his “Munich” and “Lincoln” writer Tony Kushner. At a time when Trump’s America is seeing a horrifying rise in antisemitism, it could be the most relevant film he’s ever made, and he’s already got two great cast members on board, in shape of current muse Mark Rylance, and the outstanding Oscar Isaac.
Release Date: Nothing firm yet, but bound to be in the heart of awards season.
