40. “Fahrenheit 451”
Director: Ramin Bahrani (“99 Homes”)
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, Sofia Boutella, Laura Harrier, Martin Donovan
Synopsis: In an oppressive, dystopian future, a fireman (whose job it is to destroy all literature) begins to question his actions after falling in love.
What You Need To Know: A few years ago, we wouldn’t have dreamed of putting an HBO movie on this list (sorry, “Hemingway & Gellhorn!”) But it’s a measure of the way that the landscape has changed, partly down to the way HBO have changed it, partly the way Netflix have, that there now doesn’t feel like much distinction between small and big screens, and the network’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic feels like one of the cinema events of the year.Previously filmed by Francois Truffaut, and considered at various points by Frank Darabont and Mel Gibson, this take is the most high-profile project so far by Roger Ebert fave Ramin Bahrani, who’s been creeping towards the mainstream with “At Any Price” and “99 Homes,” and has the must-watch combo of Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon headlining.
Release Date: HBO tend to drop their movies in the summer, but Bahrani has a long relationship with Venice, so maybe they’ll wait til after that.
39. “Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade”
Director: Kim Jee-Woon (“I Saw The Devil”)
Cast: Jung Woo-sung, Han Hyo-joo, Gang Dong-won, Han Ye-ri, Heo Jun-ho
Synopsis: In an alternate history Korea, a member of a special police unit has his life changed after witnessing a suicide bombing.
What You Need To Know: If Park Chan-Wook and Bong Joon-Ho are the Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg of the Korean New Wave, then Kim Jee-Woon is the Brian De Palma — the arch-stylist whose work might not be the deepest, but who can delivered thrills with craft like few others. After a flirtation with Hollywood with the underrated “The Last Stand,” Kim returned home for the tremendous “Age Of Shadows,” and he’s following up with this remake of the anime by “Ghost In The Shell” creator Mamoru Oshii, which transposes the dystopian retro-future to a reunited 1950s Korea. “It’ll be very noir, like most of my films, sort of like ‘The Dark Knight’ featuring elements of a spy movie,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “There will also be sci-fi twists featuring special power suits, again like Batman.” PUT IT IN OUR EYES RIGHT NOW.
Release Date: Production kicked off last August, so a Venice bow like “Age Of Shadows” feels like a good bet.
38. Untitled Noah Baumbach Project
Director: Noah Baumbach (“The Meyerowitz Stories”)
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Merrit Wever, Azhy Robinson
Synopsis: Unknown, but rumored to revolve around the divorce of a young couple.
What You Need To Know: He’s never really been big at the box office, but it seems like Netflix’s algorithm suggests that subscribers are big on Noah Baumbach movies: barely a month after his first film for the streaming service, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected)” hit, the greenlight came for the director’s next team-up with them. As is often the case, things are secretive with the project (though unlike his last few, we actually know that it exists before it’s in production), but there’s a strong cast featuring both returning Baumbach faves Driver and Wever, and a pair of actresses who sound perfect for his style in Johansson and Dern.
Release Date: Production won’t get underway until the new year, so there’s a possibility that it won’t hit until 2019 (Baumbach can take his time in post), but fingers crossed this pops up somewhere along the TIFF/Telluride/NYFF circuit.
37. “Galveston”
Director: Melanie Laurent (“Breathe”)
Cast: Ben Foster, Elle Fanning, Adepero Oduye, Beau Bridges
Synopsis: Narrowly escaping a frame-up, a dying hitman returns to his home town of Galveston to plot his revenge.
What You Need To Know: Not enough people saw Melanie Laurent’s terrific coming-of-age story “Breathe” in 2014. Outside France, even fewer saw “Tomorrow,” her bright, intelligent, can-do documentary about saving the world from economic and environmental disaster, while her French-language “Plonger” (2017) is still awaiting US distribution. But however au fait you are with Laurent as director, it’s unlikely you’d have predicted that the French actress’ next directorial outing would be a hardboiled hitman genre film, set in the US, and written by Nic Pizzolatto, the genius behind “True Detective” season 1 and also the writer of “True Detective” season 2. He’s adapting his own celebrated 2010 novel of the same name, one that brought Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson comparisons, and it will be fascinating to see such a sensitive director take on such gritty material.
Release Date: “Breathe” played in Cannes Critics’ Week; this could see her promoted into the Official Selection
36. “Birds Of Passage”
Director: Ciro Guerra (“Embrace of the Serpent”), Cristina Gallego
Cast: TBC
Synopsis: In the Colombian Guajira desert in the 1970s a Wayuu indigenous family becomes embroiled in the exploding drug trade, attaining wealth and power, but with a violent downside.
What You Need To Know: Details are still scanty on Ciro Guerra’s co-directed follow-up to his awe-inspiring Amazonian head trip “Embrace of the Serpent.” In fact, as far as casting goes, we actually know more about his next slated project, “Waiting for the Barbarians” which will star Robert Pattinson and Mark Rylance. But the little we know of ‘Birds’ does sound pretty incredible: producers say it is a mixture of film noir, Western and Greek tragedy, with extras numbering in the thousands and it marks the (co-)directorial debut of ‘Embrace’ editor and producer Cristina Gallego. Not to mention it reunites Guerra with DP David Gallego whose work on ‘Embrace’ and this year’s “I Am Not a Witch” is so stunning.
Release Date: None yet, but with ‘Embrace’ such a Directors’ Fortnight breakout in 2015, it would be a surprise not to see this in the Cannes lineup.
35. “Under The Silver Lake”
Director: David Robert Mitchell (“It Follows”)
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Jimmi Simpson, Topher Grace, Zosia Mamet
Synopsis: A noir set in modern day Los Angeles
What You Need To Know: David Robert Mitchell already seemed like a major talent after his feature debut “The Myth Of The American Sleepover,” but no one was expecting that he’d be able to translate the woozy charms of that into genre fare, and yet “It Follows,” which took the retro coming-of-age vibes of ‘Myth’ and added one of the most original horror conceits in years, proved a triumph. As such, expectations are much higher for Mitchell’s next picture, which sees him switch gears again to attempt a fresh take on the neo-noir. Not much is known beyond that, but A24 have snapped the rights up, which bodes well, and he’s assembled a superb cast, and also Topher Grace.
Release Date: “It Follows” was a Critic’s Week favorite at Cannes: this could well seem him head to Directors’ Fortnight or UCR.
34. “Avengers: Infinity War”
Directors: The Russo Brothers (“Captain America: Civil War”)
Cast: (*deep breath*) Dave Bautista, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Jon Favreau, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Holland, Scarlett Johansson, Pom Klementieff, Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Pratt, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Cobie Smulders, Sebastian Stan, Benedict Wong, Letitia Wright and probably a few dozen more.
Synopsis: Intergalactic nutbag Thanos attempts to track down the Infinity Stones, which would give him the chance to reshape reality in his image. The only people who can stop him? Every Marvel hero we’ve ever met.
What You Need To Know: So here we are: the culmination (almost exactly ten years to the day after the release of the first “Iron Man”) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, maybe not: the still-untitled second part of this storyline will really wrap things up. But this sees the combination of even more heroes than “Civil War,” with “Doctor Strange” and the Guardians Of The Galaxy getting involved, and probably a few surprises too (surely we’ll get a first glimpse of Brie Larson’s “Captain Marvel?” Anyway, it could be a hot, bloated mess, as most of the mega-team-ups in the comics tend to be, but Marvel have a base line of quality that few studios can match, and the team here — writers Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo — were behind two of the better entries with “Civil War” and “The Winter Soldier,” so if anyone can pull it off, it’s them.
Release Date: May 4th, 2018
33. “Backseat/Dick Cheney”
Director: Adam McKay (“The Big Short”)
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry
Synopsis: The story of Dick Cheney, as he goes from CEO of Halliburton to Vice President under George W. Bush, where he was a key supporter of the war in Iraq.
What You Need To Know: 2016 saw Adam McKay pull off one of the most successful career about-turns we can remember a filmmaker attempting. The former SNL head-writer was known exclusively for his (atypically good) broad comedies with Will Ferrell like “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers,” but stepped into more serious territory with “The Big Short,” which tackled the financial crisis with an A-list cast and a light touch, and went on to be a major Oscar player, seeing McKay take the statue for Best Adapted Screenplay away. And he could return to awards territory with this (still officially untitled but rumored to be called “Backseat”) look at Dick Cheney, here played by an eerily bald-capped Christian Bale. Will it be the incisive political drama we need? Will it all feel like old-hat in the Trump era? Will we all be dead by then anyway because Trump will have gotten his ego wounded by a basketball player and nuked everything? We look forward to finding out later in the year.
Release Date: Distributors Annapurna haven’t dated it yet, but expect it towards the end of the year.
32. “Radegund”
Director: Terrence Malick (“Badlands”)
Cast: August Diehl, Matthias Schoenaerts, Valerie Pachner, Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist
Synopsis: The story of Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who refused to fight for the Nazis, and was executed by them.
What You Need To Know: While we welcome Terrence Malick’s new and uncharacteristic prolificness (he’s released more movies since “Tree Of Life” in 2011 than he did in the four decades of his career before then), all but the most hardcore Malickites have had their patience tested by the variations on a theme that have made up his recent work (and the diminishing box office returns have suggested that there are fewer of them). So it’s good news that his new film, “Radegund,” feels so different. There’s a similarly starry cast, albeit entirely of German language-speaking actors (including the final role of the late Michael Nyqvist), but Malick returned to working from a more ordered script, and while we’re sure it’ll share some themes with his other recent pictures, it’s very unlikely to involve Christian Bale or Ryan Gosling wandering around parties looking miserable, so that’s something.
Release Date: Who knows with Malick, and 2018 might be early on his usual schedule — shooting only took place in 2016. That said, “To The Wonder” took just over two years from shooting to premiere, so it’s not impossible.
31. “Peterloo”
Director: Mike Leigh (“Mr. Turner”)
Cast: Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, David Bamber, Nico Marallegro, Kieran O’Brien
Synopsis: The story of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, where British soldiers acting on governmentorders attacked a group of pro-democracy protestors, leading to the death of 15 people and the wounding of 700.
What You Need To Know: Mike Leigh’s last film, “Mr. Turner,” was such an elegaic self-portrait of a masterpiece that we worried that it was something of a swansong from the great filmmaker. Fortunately, at 74, Leigh shows no signs of retiring, and his latest film might be his biggest and most ambitious picture to date. Telling the story of the legendary massacre in Manchester that temporarily set back, but eventually paved the way for democratic reforms in Britain, it looks to be a sort of docudrama in some ways, and the most overtly political thing that Leigh’s made since “Naked,” but we’re sure it’ll also have the warmth and humanity of all of his work too.
Release Date: Leigh’s a regular at Cannes, so we imagine this’ll be ready for that.