30. “Wendy”
Director: Benh Zeitin (“Beasts Of The Southern Wild”)
Cast: Unknown
Synopsis: A young girl is kidnapped and taken to an ecosystem where pollen stops the aging process.
What You Need To Know: Six years on, it sort of feels in a weird way like “Beasts Of The Southern Wild” never happened. It was such a strange, singular movie that yet somehow went on to be a multiple Oscar nominee, but its director Benh Zeitlin didn’t go off and make some blockbuster or TV series like many of his peers, and instead has been quiet for the last half decade (the inevitable backlash probably didn’t help it maintain its place in the cultural sphere too). But production finally got underway on his secretive follow-up “Wendy” early last year. It sounds like another mix of ecological concerns, grit and magic realism, with a story that seems to be a riff on “Peter Pan,” but little’s known beyond that right now. Will it prove to be Zeitlin’s “Southland Tales,” or his “La La Land?” We’ll be finding out sometime very soon.
Release Date: Maybe Sundance, though we think Zeitlin might wait for Cannes, where ‘Beasts’ won the Camera D’Or.
29. “The Old Man & The Gun”
Director: David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”)
Cast: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Tom Waits, Elisabeth Moss
Synopsis: The true story of Forrest Tucker, a man who was a career criminal from the age of 15 well into his 80s, and who successfully escaped from prison 18 times.
What You Need To Know: Watching Robert Redford’s final act of his career has been a fascinating thing: one of the greatest stars in the history of the medium (and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, of course) spent much of the 1990s and 2000s focused on directing, his only real acting appearances in questionable movies like “The Last Castle” and “An Unfinished Life.” But since the last film he helmed, 2012’s “The Company You Keep,” Redford’s taken on roles at a rate, and with a restlessness, that twentysomethings would envy, ranging from Sundance grads like J.C. Chandor and Charlie McDowell, to dipping his toe in the Netflix and Marvel waters. He’s mooted “The Old Man And The Gun” as his final film, and it’s the only director in the last few years he’s worked with twice: “Pete’s Dragon” helmer David Lowery. The story is a fascinating one, and the Lowery/Redford pairing is perfect for it — but how will the presence of Casey Affleck go down in this post-Weinstein era?
Release Date: Sundance seems inevitable.
28. “First Man”
Director: Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”)
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke
Synopsis: The true story of how Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon.
What You Need To Know: After his debut feature, about a jazz drummer of all things, became an Oscar-nominated sensation, and his ambitious, could-have-been-a-folly sophomore musical “La La Land”became an Oscar-nominated sensation and also a massive box office hit, there was only one place for Damien Chazelle to go: the stars. He’s at the helm of this biopic, a one-time Clint Eastwood project, with a script by “Guardians Of The Galaxy” writer Nicole Perlman and “Spotlight” scribe Josh Singer, which reunites him with his La-La-Star Gosling. In some ways, we wonder if there’s enough color in Armstrong’s life for a full biopic (he didn’t even punch a guy like Buzz Aldrin did), but this seems like it’ll be as much a “Right Stuff”-style look at the Apollo program as a portrait of the man himself. Either way, it’ll be fascinating to see what Chazelle can do with a less musically-driven project.
Release Date: October 12th, 2018. Expect it at Venice or Telluride first.
27. “The House That Jack Built”
Director: Lars Von Trier (“Antichrist”)
Cast: Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Bruno Ganz, Riley Keough, Sofie Gråbøl
Synopsis: The story of a man’s development as a serial killer.
What You Need To Know: Having dealt, over the course of five hours or so, with human sexuality in his two-part “Nymphomaniac” epic, provocateur Lars Von Trier returns to delve into the question of what makes people kill for his latest picture. Don’t expect anything “Mindhunter”-ish though (even if this was originally envisioned as a TV series too), given Von Trier’s usual preoccupations. A fine cast has been assembled, led by a welcome potential comeback role for Matt Dillon, who we haven’t seen enough in recent years. Von Trier has hinted that it could be his last film too — though given some of the accusations pointed at him by Bjork recently, maybe that’s for the best…
Release Date: Von Trier is said to be targeting Cannes, though whether or not he’s still persona non grata there remains to be seen.
26. “Burning”
Director: Lee Chang-Dong (“Secret Sunshine,” “Poetry”)
Cast: Steven Yeun (“The Walking Dead”), Jeon Jong-seo, Yoo Ah-in.
Synopsis: A writer meets the boyrfriend of a woman he knows, and the boyfriend confesses to being an arsonist.
What You Need To Know: Any new film from Korean directorLee Chang-dong would place highly on our must-see list, ever since his last film, 2010’s “Poetry,” turned out to be, well, perfect. And what little we know is doubly enticing because it teams the Korean auteur, who won the Screenplay award in Cannes for “Poetry,” Best Actress for “Secret Sunshine” in 2007 and the Venice Golden Lion for “Oasis” in 2002, with Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. “Barn Burning” is an adaptation of Murakami’s enigmatic and intriguing short story “Barn Burning” (which you can read in English translation in the November 1992 issue of The New Yorker) but how Lee will handle presumptive transposition to Korea from Japan, and whether he’ll update it to contemporary times is still unknown.
Release Date: It’s still listed as “filming,” so the choice between Cannes or Venice may come down to when it’s finished, but either festival would welcome Lee back.
25. “A Wrinkle In Time”
Director: Ava DuVernay (“Middle of Nowhere,” “Selma”)
Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine, Michael Pena, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis.
Synopsis: Three strange beings send Meg, her brother and her friend into space to find her father, after he disappears.
What You Need To Know: People, we have got to stop treating every new film directed by a woman as make-or-break for the entire gender. If Ava DuVernay’s expensive epic, adapted by “Frozen” co-director Jennifer Lee from the book by Madeleine L’Engle, doesn’t singlehandedly impeach Trump, cure cancer and bring about Middle East peace, well, the trolls have their knives out already. But long before it become the standard-bearer for intersectional feminism in blockbuster filmmaking, the book was a children’s fantasy classic and the trailer certainly suggests that it’s in the rip-roaring family-adventure mode of the old-school live-action Disney movie, albeit one with a more diverse cast than usual, and that’s exciting enough for us, even if it doesn’t end up solving world hunger.
Release Date: March 9th, 2018
24. “Hold The Dark”
Director: Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room”)
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough, Alexander Skarsgard, Macon Blair
Synopsis: An wolf expert is called to a remote Alaskan town after the animals begin killing children, but more is going on than meets the eye, including a vengeful veteran father whose son was one of the victims.
What You Need To Know: If the news that Mahershala Ali was going to star in the upcoming third season of “True Detective” wasn’t enough to win you back,the news that Jeremy Saulnier, who’s made some of the best-executed and most distinctive thrillers in recent years with “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room,” would be the principle helmer for the new run, should have done the trick. But first comes Saulnier’s new feature, backed by Netflix, and it sounds like his most promising yet. Adapted from William Giraldi’s novel by Saulnier’s regular collaborator (and writer/director of the Sundance-winning “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”) Macon Blair, it sounds dark even by Saulnier’s standards, but with this cast and premise, we’re all the way in. And given how prescient “Green Room” proved about the return of Nazis, we should probably all keep an eye out for fucking wolf attacks now.
Release Date: “Green Room” was a Directors Fortnight premiere, though it’s unclear if Cannes’ new rules about Netflix movies would preclude a return there.
23. “Incredibles 2”
Director: Brad Bird (“Ratatouille”)
Cast: Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener
Synopsis: Everyone’s favorite superhero family return.
What You Need To Know: With “Coco” and “Inside Out” both putting Pixar sequels like “Finding Dory” and “Cars 3” in the shade, artistically speaking at least, it’s something of a bummer that their sole movie in 2018 will be another follow-up. But then we remember that it’s a sequel to a movie that makes an argument for being one of their best, with original helmer Brad Bird returning, and god damn it we’re still reeling from the John Lasseter news just give us this. Anyway, the superhero landscape is decidedly more stuffed than when the original movie was released fourteen years ago, but we’re sure that Bird’s sequel (which will apparently pick up right after credits rolled on the original) will have more creativity and thrills than most of the year’s comic-book line-up put together. Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener have been announced as new characters, though plot details are still under wraps for now.
Release Date: June 15th, 2018
22. “The Other Side Of The Wind”
Director: Orson Welles (umm, “Citizen Kane”)
Cast: John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper, Claude Chabrol, Paul Mazursky
Synopsis: A revered but past-it filmmaker struggling to complete his recent film, celebrates his 70th birthday party in the company of a cross-section of 1970s Hollywood.
What You Need To Know: A movie so meta it might give us the bends: the long-unfinished last film from a long-dead master, is about a filmmaker (played by filmmaker John Huston) narrating from beyond the grave the story of his last, folly-ish movie, which remains unfinished at the time of his death. Its curiosity value alone, as Welles’ final work is unquestionable, and the doggedness with which castmember Bogdanovich, among others, has pursued its completion per Welles’ notes for decades is admirable. But whether the film, now financed by Netflix and in post with an all-star team of editors, sound men etc, will be a true example of Welles’ inimitable voice or a patchwork quilt of suppositions about what he would have done, will be debated no matter how good or bad it ends up being, something that the director of impish authorship satire “F for Fake” would probably be delighted by.
Release Date: Nothing firm yet, but Netflix definitely wants a 2018 release.
21. “The Death & Life Of John F. Donovan”
Director: Xavier Dolan (“Mommy”)
Cast: Kit Harington, Jessica Chastain, Natalie Portman, Ben Schnetzer, Jacob Tremblay
Synopsis: Ten years on from the death of a TV star he idolized, a young actor reflects on his correspondence with the dead man.
What You Need To Know: His last film, “It’s Only The End Of The World,” might have felt like nails on a chalkboard to us (and he might have taken issue with our reaction to it…), but we still love Xavier Dolan, and we’ve been gasping to see his next, his first English-language film, since it was announced back in 2014. Something of an inside-Hollywood tale, but also not, it has an absolutely stacked cast — along with Harington as the title character, Chastain as a journalist hopefully based on our own Jessica Kiang, and Tremblay and Schnezter as young and older versions of the same character, it also includes Bella Thorne, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Thandie Newton, Chris Zylka, MIchael Gambon, Sarah Gadon and Adele, and a sprawling shoot that spanned nearly a year, on-and-off, is finally done.
Release Date: Dolan’s suggested that he won’t be taking it to Cannes because of the American setting, so TIFF might be the most obvious premiere point. Either way, Annapurna have picked it up, so it thankfully won’t suffer from the distribution woes that some of Dolan’s films have faced in the U.S.
