100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2020 - Page 5 of 11

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60. “Untitled Terrence Malick Project” aka “The Last Planet”
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Mark Rylance, Matthias Schoenaerts, Geza Rohrig, Joseph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Douglas Booth, Tawfeek Barhom, Martin McCann, Ori Pfeffer, Shadi Mar’i, Makram Khoury, Numan Acar, Emilio De Marchi, Bjorn Thors, Alfonso Postiglione, Lorenzo Gioielli
Synopsis: The story of Jesus Christ told through parables.
What You Need To Know: Given the thread of spirituality that runs through nearly all of his pictures, it’s a bit surprising it has taken this long for Terrence Malick to tackle the subject head-on. As per usual, exact details on the film are being kept under wraps, but what’s known at the moment as “The Last Planet” will focus on the life of Jesus Christ, as told through parables. Most intriguingly, Mark Rylance has suggested that he’ll be playing more than one version of Satan in the film. Joining him in key roles are Geza Rorig (“Son Of Saul”) as Jesus, and Mathias Schoenaerts as the Apostle Peter, who denied being a follower of Christ three times during the Last Supper. The other looming question is whether or not Malick again works with a set script as he did on “A Hidden Life,” or return to his more exploratory methods that have marked much of his recent work? In either case, Malick grappling with the life of Christ has the potential to be an enthralling experience.
Release Date: TBD, but honestly if it’s released in 2020, it will be because someone was listening to our prayers. Malick moves at his own pace during the editing and post-production phase, and his most recent “A Hidden Life” took two years from when it wrapped filming to hit the big screen. – KJ

59. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Director: George C. Wolfe (“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”)
Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo
Synopsis: As band members gather to record Ma Rainey’s new album, tensions erupt between the jaded older and idealistic younger members of the band.
What You Need To Know: Produced by Denzel Washington, who directed the August Wilson adaptation “Fences” in 2016, the film is part of an overall deal with Netflix that sees Washington attempt to film the rest of Wilson’s celebrated Pittsburgh Cycle, with this film tackling the 1920s. With Davis returning, after winning an Oscar for “Fences” and celebrated theatre director Wolfe stepping behind the camera, “Ma Rainey” hopes to be a continuation of critical and commercial success of that previous Wilson adaptation. With Netflix backing films of all nine remaining plays, we may be looking at an August Wilson cinematic universe in the near future.
Release Date: Netflix will release “Man Rainey’s Black Bottom,” no release date has been announced yet. – CG

58. “Wendy”
Director: Benh Zeitlin (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”)
Cast: Tommie Lynn Milazzo, Shay Walker
Synopsis: Lost on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued, Wendy must fight to save her family, her freedom, and the joyous spirit of youth from the deadly peril of growing up.
What You Need To Know: Benh Zeitlin announced himself as a major, impossible-to-ignore talent with 2012’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a magical film that turned what could have been a slice of opportunistic indie poverty porn into an enchanting slice of magical realism. The first trailer for the long-awaited “Wendy” is a thing of raw, elemental beauty: summoning the same kind of mythical, gimlet-eyed wonder that was on display in Zeitlin’s astonishing breakout film. “Wendy” has been described as a raggedy, fantastical re-imagining of the Peter Pan mythology involving precocious children, an island setting, and a struggle against the tides of growing up. The film has the backing of the illustrious Fox Searchlight and could offer more discerning audiences a respite from all the junkier stuff that tends to come out toward the beginning of the year.
Release Date: February 28, via Fox Searchlight, but possibly a Sundance premiere first in January? – NL

57. “The Many Saints of Newark”
Director: Alan Taylor (veteran T.V. director of “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones” fame)
Cast: Michael Gandolfini, John Magaro, Alessandro Nivola, Jon Bernthal, and Vera Farmiga
Synopsis: A look at the formative years of New Jersey gangster, Tony Soprano.
What You Need To Know: There aren’t many of us out there who would argue that “The Sopranos” needed a continuation. After all, the panic-attack inducing anticlimax of that show’s (in)famous final episodes is one of the great swan songs in modern TV history. That being said, we’re confident that David Chase wouldn’t have returned to this mythology if he wasn’t confident that he absolutely had something of value to say. Which brings us to “The Many Saints of Newark,” a feature-length prequel that will explore how and why Tony Soprano became the feared New Jersey capo we all know and love. Seeing James Gandolfini’s son Michael playing the role that made his father famous will no doubt be something to see, and knowing that Alessandro Nivola has been confirmed as Dickie Moltisanti (father of Michael Imperioli’s doomed Christopher Moltisanti) further whets our collective appetites.
Release Date: September 25, via Warner Bros.. – NL

56. “Top Gun: Maverick”
Director: Joseph Kosinski (“Tron: Legacy”)
Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, Ed Harris
Synopsis: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell mentors a new generation of U.S. Navy fighter pilots.
What You Need To Know: If there’s one thing Tom Cruise has proven with his increasingly lucrative and enjoyable “Mission: Impossible” franchise, it’s that the guy knows how to keep pumping juice into an old, time-tested formula. Granted, it’s been thirty-plus years since Tony Scott’s original “Top Gun” roared into cinemas at the peak of Cruise’s stardom, and we’re all wary of sequels to films where enough time has elapsed between the new entry and the original that its core fanbase has stopped giving a shit (“Terminator: Dark Fate,” anyone?). That said, it’s hard not to get amped up watching the first trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick.” It’s also generous of the erstwhile Maverick to cede the spotlight to some of his younger, lesser-known co-stars (Lewis Pullman, Jake Pickling, Jack Schumacher) for this go-round. We’re not expecting great art from “Top Gun: Maverick,” but we are expecting a satisfying, old-school Hollywood thrill ride, and hoping that the film delivers on that front.
Release Date: June 26, via Paramount Pictures. – NL

55. “Trial of the Chicago 7”
Director: Aaron Sorkin (“Molly’s Game”)
Cast: Sascha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Rylance, Michael Keaton
Synopsis: The story of 7 people on trial stemming from various charges surrounding the uprising at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
What You Need To Know: “Molly’s Game,” the directorial debut of “The West Wing” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, is a bit of a mess: an undeniably intelligent but somewhat schematic film that gave its actors plenty of snarky-yet-eloquent dialogue to chew on while shortchanging the narrative in some other crucial regards. That said, “Molly’s Game” left us convinced that Sorkin may one day direct a great movie. And lo and behold, his upcoming political drama “Trial of the Chicago 7” could very well be that movie. Sorkin has never shied away from tackling real-life social injustices (both past and present), and this is rich material for him to sink his teeth into. “Trial of the Chicago 7” could shape up to be one of 2020’s powerhouse adult dramas, perhaps even securing Sorkin his second Academy Award after “The Social Network.”
Release Date: September 25, via Paramount Pictures. – NL

54. “Fonzo”
Director: Josh Trank (“Chronicle”)
Cast: Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon, Kathrine Narducci, Kyle MacLachlan
Synopsis: The 47-year-old Al Capone, after 10 years in prison, starts suffering from dementia, and comes to be haunted by his violent past.
What You Need To Know: Josh Trank is certainly an unpredictable filmmaker: it’s not every director who writes Letterbox reviews for a movie that almost ended their career. “Fonzo” is a change of gears for Trank, and could prove to the bounce back he desperately needs. The prospect of Tom Hardy tackling the role of Al Capone is certainly an alluring one, and the photos we’ve seen of Hardy from the set thus far are… certainly something. “Fonzo” has faced some delays as of late, with Trank claiming that the film would be out in late 2019, and initial principal photography postponed by Hardy’s commitment to Ruben Fleischer’s “Venom.” All that said, the idea of Trank and Hardy taking on one of the most notorious crooks of all time from this unique vantage point (and seriously, what a cast) has us undeniably excited.
Release Date: Unknown, but late summer or early fall seems likely. – NL

53. “Antlers”
Director: Scott Cooper (“Out of the Furnace,” “Black Mass”)
Cast: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemmons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane
Synopsis: A small-town Oregon teacher and her brother, the local sheriff, become entwined with a young student harboring a dangerous secret with frightening consequences.
What You Need To Know: Scott Cooper has tried his hand at a number of genres over the last couple of years: rust-belt thrillers (“Out of the Furnace”), gangster epics (“Black Mass”), and Westerns (“Hostiles”) among them. While some of us would argue that Cooper’s never made a truly great movie, he’s a capable filmmaker who is perhaps more varied in his skill set than his critics have given him credit for. Cooper will be getting creepy with his next effort, a supernatural horror flick called “Antlers.” It will be nice to see Cooper reuniting with familiar faces from his old movies (Jesse Plemmons, Rory Cochrane) while bringing some new performers into the fold (“The Americans’” Keri Russell, who we’d watch in anything). Add a producing credit from Guillermo del Toro and you’ve got the ingredients for what very well could be Cooper’s most effective film to date.
Release Date: April 17, via Fox Searchlight. – NL

52. “Bios”
Director: Miguel Sapochnik (“Game of Thrones”)
Cast: Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones, Laura Harrier, Skeet Ulrich
Synopsis: On a post-apocalyptic earth, an ailing inventor, the last man on Earth, builds an android to keep him and his dog company and goes on a journey across the country
What You Need To Know: If “Bios” sounds a little Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis-ish that’s for good reason. Zemeckis is a producer and Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment is the production company behind it. “Bios” is best defined by two elements: the humanism within the conceit of a sci-fi-story—the robot is said to “learns about life, love, friendship and what it means to be human”—and Sapochnik as director. He’s directed some epic episodes of “Game Of Thrones” (“The Long Night” and “The Bells” in the controversial final season), and also won an Emmy and a DGA award for his work on the show. All eyes will be on his post-‘GOT’ career.
Release Date: October 2, 2020, via Universal Pictures. – RP

51. “The Nest”
Director: Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”)
Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon
Synopsis: Life for an entrepreneur and his American family begin to take a twisted turn after moving into an English country manor.
What You Need To Know: It has taken Sean Durkin far too long to return to the big screen after his debut film “Martha Marcy May Marlene” became one of the eeriest psychological thrillers of the 2010s (he’s certainly worked at a less consistent clip than some of his other peers at Borderline Films, a group that includes Antonio Campos and Nicolas Pesce, who also have films on this list). “The Nest” is Durkin’s long-awaited follow-up, and it sounds like a weirder, more ambitious film than its predecessor that nevertheless manages to retain the creepy-crawly gruesomeness that makes “Martha Marcy May Marlene” such a singular viewing experience. Durkin is an adroit chronicler of self-destruction and psychological disorientation, and if this film offers more of the same dark magic he concocted for his breakout film, we’ll be buying a ticket come opening weekend.
Release Date: The film wrapped in late 2018, so we’re guessing it’s probably ready for Sundance or another early festival, at this point. – NL

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