100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2020 - Page 7 of 11

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40. “Black Widow”
Director: Cate Shortland (“Somersault,” “Berlin Syndrome”)
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, David Harbour, Florence Pugh, O-T Fagbenle, Rachel Weisz
Synopsis: A prequel that film that follows Natasha Romanoff after the events of “Captain America: Civil War.”
What You Need To Know: After three phases, billions of dollars, and a feud with Martin Scorsese, where does the Marvel Cinematic Universe go next? It seems the franchise is moving forward by going back with their first Phase 4 film, “Black Widow.” Fans will finally get the standalone movie they’ve been asking for since the character was introduced in “Iron Man 2,” with a story that rewinds all the back to the beginning of Phase Three. “Black Widow” lands at an interesting time for the pop culture behemoth, as Marvel will continue to grow its wings with endless storytelling opportunities on Disney+. How the film will reference or tease upcoming MCU shows and films remains to be seen. And while arthouse fave Cate Shortland is an inspired pick to direct, 23 films into the MCU, we’re fairly certain she won’t be straying too far from Marvel’s winning formula.
Release Date: May 1, via Marvel Studios and Disney. – KJ

39. “Ammonite”
Director: Francis Lee (“God’s Own Country”)
Cast: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw
Synopsis: Set in 1840s England, the film explores the unlikely romance between infamous paleontologist Mary Anning and a young London woman.
What You Need To Know: Francis Lee announced himself as a vital new voice in British cinema with the beautiful film “God’s Own Country,” a quiet, moving film about the romance between two young male farmhands. He’s now back with a period drama about a very real figure in Victorian England, and it stars none other than Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet. The film promises to bring Mary Anning out from obscurity, who helped shape the way we think about prehistoric life on Earth, and Winslet and Ronan together on screen? Better prepare your tissues, this will most likely be a tear-jerker.
Release Date: TBD, but we’ll assume the fall film festival circuit. – RA

38. “West Side Story”
Director: Steven Spielberg (“Jurassic Park”, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”, “Schindler’s List”)
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Corey Stoll, Rita Moreno
Synopsis: Across two gangs in 1950s New York City, the white Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks, Tony and Maria fall in love.
What You Need To Know: As the wise Avril Lavigne once said: He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious? When you’re making another version of the famed 1957 Broadway musical, itself a loose reworking of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, which then, in turn, spawned the Oscar-winning 1961 film – you’ve got to pull out all the stops. Spielberg. Tony Kushner. Disney. And, well, Ansel Elgort. No stone was left unturned to find the perfect Maria though, as newcomer Rachel Zegler fills those almightily important shoes opposite Mr. Baby Driver himself. Whether Spielberg’s take will offer any shot-for-shot similarities with Robert Wise’s film, or will stick to the book and find its own cinematic flourishes, remains to be seen. Spielberg isn’t exactly one, in the 21st century at least, for experimental spins on traditional material. But – if anyone had to do this, it had to be someone as trustworthy as him. Let’s hope the film’s tagline really could be more than just marketing.
Release Date: December 18, 2020, via 20th Century Fox – EK

37. “The Devil All The Time”
Director: Antonio Campos (“Simon Killer”)
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke
Synopsis: In the 1960s after World War II in Southern Ohio, bizarre, compelling, and mentally disturbed people suffer from the war’s psychological damages.
What You Need To Know: If there’s one thing that you can say about the films of Antonio Campos, it’s that they’re frequently uncomfortable viewing experiences. Campos is a brilliant storyteller, but the tormented mindscapes he opts to explore in films like “Afterschool” and “Christine” are not the kind of places that many viewers will want to spend much time. With his adaptation of Donald Ray Pollack’s savage Southern potboiler “The Devil All The Time,” Campos may have found what could very well be his most uncompromising project yet. It’s the story of a procession of degenerates – demented preachers, serial killers, etc. – whose ghastly fates converge in fictional Ohio outpost called Knockemstiff. With a cast that includes the likes of Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and Tom Holland, this is a can’t-lose proposition for both Campos and home distributor Netflix.
Release Date: Seems like the kind of thing Netflix would release in the fall, after a festival debut. – NL

36. “Shulan River”
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien (“Millennium Mambo,” “Flight of the Red Balloon”)
Cast: Shu Qi
Synopsis: A waterway enthusiast encounters a river goddess while studying the city’s waterway system.
What You Need To Know: Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien graced us with exactly one film this last decade, 2007’s “The Assassin,” his first feature in seven years which won him the Best Director prize in Cannes and he’s been mostly quiet ever since. But in 2015, after Cannes, the filmmaker revealed he was working a loose adaptation of the novel by “Shulan River” by Hsieh Hai-meng about a riverboat goddess. Set in modern-day, the lonely river deities’ (Shu Qi) waterways have now been covered by modern roadways. “I thought, if there were a river goddess, she would be very lonely, feeling sad about this situation,” he told Film Comment in 2015. Either way, plot shouldn’t matter too much. Hou’s films are primarily about a shimmering mood, and sensation. All we can guess is any fantastical or supernatural qualities will likely be gorgeous, but atypical from what you might expect.
Release Date: Honestly, it’s a crapshoot if this one is coming this year—or in five to ten years, but we lament the absence of Hou so much he’s on this list. –RP

35. “News of the World”
Director: Paul Greengrass (“Captain Phillips,” “The Bourne Supremacy”)
Cast: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel
Synopsis: A Civil War-era tale that charts the unlikely friendship between a Texas widower and war veteran and a 10-year old girl who he must reunite with her remaining family. Based on the best-selling novel by Paulette Jiles.
What You Need To Know: Paul Greengrass is as regarded for the jittery, visceral handheld visual language he’s patented as he is for his tendency to tackle ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter that packs a sociopolitical wallop. His latest, “News of the World,” sounds like it could see the director shifting into an intriguing new style. For starters, it’s a Western, a genre Greengrass has never tried his hand at before. It will also be a chance for him to work once again with the great Tom Hanks, not exactly known for his embodiment of disreputable characters. Greengrass will be working from a script by Luke Davies (“Lion,” “Catch-22”) and we’re excited to see him reunite with Hanks after the director coaxed the erstwhile Forrest Gump into giving one of his best latter-day performances in the harrowing “Captain Phillips.”
Release Date: TBD. – NL

34. “Let Them All Talk”
Director: Steven Soderbergh (“High-Flying Bird,” “The Laundromat”)
Cast: Meryl Streep, Lucas Hedges, Gemma Chan, Candice Bergen
Synopsis: An author goes on a trip with her friends and nephew in an effort to find fun and come to terms with her past.
What You Need To Know: We know it’s been asked before, but we’re just going to ask again: does Steven Soderbergh ever slow down? I mean, just this year, Soderbergh gave us two movies: the blisteringly intelligent insider-sports drama “High-Flying Bird” and the glib Panama Papers takedown “The Laundromat” (a 1950’s-set home invasion thriller called “Kill Switch” is also currently in the works). Is this what Soderbergh is talking about when he talks about retirement? Not that we’re complaining, mind you. A world where Steven Soderbergh is making good-to-great movies every one to two years is a world worth living in, which brings us to “Let Them All Talk,” Soderbergh’s new secret film that is being distributed on nascent streaming service HBO Max. We’re excited about the prospect of Soderbergh working in a potentially more wistful register, and we’re curious to see him take his restless talents to a new platform.
Release Date: TBD. – NL

33. “Green Knight”
Director: David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”)
Cast: Dev Patel, Barry Keoghan, Alicia Vikander, Ralph Ineson, Sean Harris
Synopsis: A fantasy re-telling of the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
What You Need To Know: One of the great things about David Lowery is he seems all but committed to never making the same movie twice. There’s not much connective tissue binding his four films to date – a Malickian tone poem (“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”), a children’s fantasy (“Pete’s Dragon”), a “Ghost Story,” and a leisurely crime caper (“The Old Man and the Gun”) – aside from the sheer joy that the director brings to the act of making films. “Green Knight” is another stylistic switch-up for Lowery, seeing the auteur venturing into the realm of medieval fantasy. Lowery is a filmmaker who is interested in surprise and delight, so we wouldn’t be surprised ourselves “Green Knight” turns out to be somehow unconventional in the way his previous movies have been. A24, who also did a fine job handling the release of “A Ghost Story,” will handle domestic distribution.
Release Date: No clue yet, but presumably an appearance first on the festival circuit. – NL

32. “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn”
Director: Cathy Yan
Cast: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor.
Synopsis: After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord.
What You Need To Know: “Suicide Squad” was a film that most of us would rather forget about, although Jared Leto’s alleged bellyaching about Joaquin Phoenix’s well-received turn in Todd Phillips’ billion-dollar “Joker” movie has ensured that we won’t be able to do that anytime soon. While “Birds of Prey,” looks to be coated in the same Dayglo trash-punk aesthetic that made “Suicide Squad” a trying sit for many viewers, it also looks like a more inclusive and self-aware movie that could resurrect this waning brand from looming irrelevance. Hiring a woman to helm this property was inarguably the right decision, and that woman is Cathy Yan, making her big studio debut here after helming a string of well-received short films and her feature debut “Dead Pigs.” With the great Margot Robbie leading the ensemble, “Birds of Prey” could very well be an irreverent guilty pleasure to tide us over in the early months of 2020.
Release Date: February 7, via Warner Brothers- NL

31. “On A Half Clear Morning”
Director: Bruno Dumont (“P’tit Quinquin,” “Slack Bay”)
Cast: Lea Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benoît Magimel
Synopsis: Juggling a busy career and personal life, a famous TV star and celebrity journalist’s life is overturned by a freak car accident.
What You Need To Know: French enfante terrible Bruno Dumont is starting to soften… a little. The films are still austere and exacting, but far less brutalist, and the absurdist comedy introduced in recent years has been a welcome change of pace. Dumont generally works with non-actors, but as he’s chilled out a bit, bigger French stars have joined his films. Seydoux is the second major star Dumont’s work with following (Juliette Binoche’s turn in ‘Camille Claudel’ and “Slack Bay”) A drama, we won’t know how severe this film is comparatively, but additional details suggest—including a producer that says the movie “highlights the excesses and hypocrisy of our highly-connected societies”— a story about someone trying to find their identity and escaping their trappings of celebrity, even when they return to their former life on camera.
Release Date: TBD. But the film shot this fall, so presumably will be on the fall film festival circuit in 2020. –RP