80. “The Many Saints Of Newark”
Director: Alan Taylor (“Thor: The Dark World”)
Cast: Alessandro Nivola
Synopsis: The early days of the Soprano and Moltisanti families, set against the Newark race riots of the 1960s.
What You Need To Know: Without wanting to do a disservice to the shows that paved the way for it like “Oz” and “Hill Street Blues,” it’s probably fair to say that “The Sopranos” changed everything. There’s a vast industry of prestige cable drama that simply wouldn’t exist without David Chase’s mobster show, and its HBO stablemate “Sex & The City,” and it’s still seen as one of the greatest the form has ever seen. Ever since the divisively ambiguous finale, rumors have flown about a potential movie spin-off, but James Gandolfini’s passing five years ago seemed to make that unlikely. But Chase is instead going the prequel route, with this story that will follow 9-year-old Tony, younger versions of Livia, Junior et al, in what sounds like the topical backdrop of the Newark race riots. Chase isn’t directing (something of a shame, given how underrated his “Not Fade Away” was), but while Alan Taylor, who is at the helm, came a cropper with “Thor” and “Terminator” blockbusters, he was one of the show’s regular helmers, so he should be right at home. And we’re delighted to see the first cast member to sign on is Alessandro Nivola, the kind of actor who deserves a big showcase like this.
Release Date: Reportedly films in March, so look for it in awards season at the earliest.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/1065245725062135813
79. “My Zoe”
Director: Julie Delpy (“2 Days In New York”)
Cast: Julie Delpy, Richard Armitage, Gemma Arterton, Daniel Bruhl, Lindsay Duncan
Synopsis: When a scientist with a difficult relationship with her ex-husband receives tragic news, she turns to another couple for help.
What You Need To Know: If there’s a fourth “Before…” film, we’re still a few years away from the every-nine-years schedule that’s been maintained so far, but the good news is that Julie Delpy is back behind the director’s chair this year. The Oscar-nominated actress is often underrated as a filmmaker, but her latest “My Zoe” sounds like it could find a larger audience than her previous work, thanks to a starry cast including Daniel Bruhl and the increasingly impressive Gemma Arterton. This one had a false start or two (Delpy iconically blamed a “sexist American lawyer” for the hold-up), but finally got over the line and we look forward to the results.
Release Date: Shot last May so possibly Cannes, but it’s partly set in Berlin so that could be more likely.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/804425404924559360
78. “The Cradle”
Director: Hope Dickson Leach (“The Levelling”)
Cast: Jack O’Connell, Lily Collins
Synopsis: As a young couple prepare for the birth of their first child, the father attempts to find the cradle that his wife had as a baby.
What You Need To Know: Although not enough people saw it in the U.S. at least, Hope Dickson Leach’s “The Levelling” is one of our favorite debut films of the last few years, one that looked to launch the filmmaker onto much bigger things. And those bigger things have arrived with “The Cradle,” which sees Dickson Leach teamed up with Patrick Somerville, the showrunner of “Maniac,” to adapt Somerville’s 2009 novel of the same name. The trigger of a title like this is to expect a horror film of a sort, but we believe this is closer to straight drama, like “The Levelling.” But expect the same control of tone as that film, but with Jack O’Connell and Lily Collins starring, hopefully, more attention to come its way.
Release Date: Was initially set to shoot last summer but it seems to have been pushed back — hopefully we’ll still see it before the year’s out.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/785173471248527360
77. “Portrait de la jeune fille en feu”
Director: Celine Sciamma (“Girlhood”)
Cast: Adèle Haenel, Valeria Golino, Noémie Merlant, Luàna Bajrami
Synopsis: At the end of the 18th century, a female artist arrives on an isolated island off the coast of Brittany to paint a wedding portrait.
What You Need To Know: One of our favorite arthouse talents to emerge in the last decade or so is Celine Sciamma, but it’s a shame she’s not a little more prolific. She’s only made three films to date across 12 years, though luckily those films are as exquisite as “Water Lilies,” “Tomboy” and best of all, 2014’s “Girlhood.” Five years on from the latter, Sciamma’s back with this period drama (the title translates as “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire”) toplining “BPM” star Adèle Haenel, and while not much is known about it beyond that, we only really need to know that Sciamma’s involved to get us in the door.
Release Date: Shot in the fall, so Cannes might be too early — Venice is probably the safer bet.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/1010592882909155329
76. “Limited Partners”
Director: Miguel Arteta (“Beatriz At Dinner”)
Cast: Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Ari Graynor, Billy Porter
Synopsis: Two best friends and business partners go to war when an offer is made on their start-up.
What You Need To Know: Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne starring in a comedy together, do you need anything else? Fine: we’ll elaborate. Haddish has had a meteoric rise since breaking out in “Girls Trip” two years back, with four movies and two TV series coming this year, while Byrne has been a consistently brilliant presence in comedies that often don’t deserve her (most recently “Instant Family”), so a film that has them as co-leads couldn’t be much more appealing. Add an intriguing, “Social Network”-y premise, and the presence of director Miguel Arteta, who’s a solidly reliable helmer without ever quite having a “Bridesmaids”-sized hit, and this is one of the brighter comedy prospects of the year.
Release Date: June 28th
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/1016390759430250496
75. “Chaos Walking”
Director: Doug Liman (“Edge Of Tomorrow”)
Cast: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Mads Mikkelsen, David Oyelowo, Cynthia Erivo
Synopsis: On a distant planet in the future, a young man is brought up to believe that a phenomenon called the Noise has killed all the women, and that the remaining men are able to hear each other’s thoughts. But when he encounters a young woman, everything changes.
What You Need To Know: The YA movie boom of a few years ago has mostly passed — most of the major franchises have wrapped up (some prematurely — poor, poor “Divergent”), and films like “The Darkest Minds” have failed to launch new ones. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make money — the last “Maze Runner” still took nearly $300 million earlier this year. And while “Chaos Walking” is late to the party, it’s one of the more intriguing ones — it’s based on an acclaimed trilogy by “A Monster Calls” author Patrick Ness, had a script originally penned by Charlie Kaufman (though a half-dozen writers appear to have come through since then…), a bonkers, near-unfilmable premise, and the rarely uninteresting Doug Liman at the helm. Though that’s led to the usual production speed bumps, with some significant reshoots apparently still to come.
Release Date: In theory, this is still meant to come on March 1st, but the reshoots have been waiting for Holland and Ridley to be done with “Spider-Man” and “Star Wars” duties, so you can be assured it’ll be pushed back, but hopefully, still within this calendar year.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/981636406672990209
74. “Gemini Man”
Director: Ang Lee (“Life Of Pi”)
Cast: Will Smith, Will Smith, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong
Synopsis: An aging assassin must take on a younger clone of himself.
What You Need To Know: “Gemini Man” is one of those scripts that’s been knocking around for literally a couple of decades at this point (Tony Scott and Curtis Hanson, who’ve both since passed away, were attached at different times), and one had wondered if Rian Johnson’s “Looper” might have put paid to it, thanks to a vaguely similar premise. But the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie finally filmed last year, thanks in part to the way that technology has caught up to the idea, with digital technology (of the kind that Marvel have used in almost all their recent films) used to pit “Bad Boys”-era Will Smith against, uh, “Collateral Beauty”-era Will Smith. But the most interesting thing about this might be double Oscar-winner Ang Lee in the director’s chair: looking to bounce back from his “Billy Lynn” disaster with a rare excursion into blockbuster territory. It’s the kind of pick that could elevate this into something much more interesting.
Release Date: October 4th
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/857229490920890370
73. “Downhill”
Director: Jim Rash & Nat Faxon (“The Way Way Back”)
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell
Synopsis: A marriage is thrown into disarray after an act of cowardice during an avalanche in the Austrian Alps.
What You Need To Know: If you just read that logline and thought ‘hmm, that sounds suspiciously similar to Ruben Ostlund’s tremendous 2014 black comedy “Force Majeure,” then you would be absolutely correct: despite the title change, “Downhill” is a remake of Ostlund’s movie. And we feel a bit torn about it. On the one hand, Ostlund’s film was very recent, and plenty accessible, and not necessarily crying out for a U.S-friendly version. On the other, the pairing of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell is an irresistible one, especially if it lets them go a little darker than they sometimes get to. Back on the first hand, Jim Rash & Nat Faxon (Oscar winners for co-writing “The Descendants”) don’t immediately appear to have the kind of sharp-edged bite that this premise needs. But on the other again, “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, who penned the script, absolutely does. File under ‘curious, cautious, but hopeful.’
Release Date: Shoots early in 2019, so look for it at the fall festivals most likely.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/1058451697989672961
72. “Domino”
Director: Brian De Palma (“Body Double”)
Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Carice Van Houten, Guy Pearce
Synopsis: A Copenhagen cop seeks vengeance on the killer of his partner, a CIA operative who was tracking an ISIS cell.
What You Need To Know: It’s been seven years since Brian De Palma directed a movie (the little-seen “Passion”), and, while your mileage may vary, a lot longer since we really loved anything he did. But we’re always rooting for the great filmmaker to blow us away once again, and with some heat after Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s great love letter/documentary “De Palma,” the director returns with this Scandi-thriller starring Jaime Lannister himself. It seems like an intriguing sort of story that plays into his’s strengths while doing something a little different (it was “a new opportunity to explore a visual narrative,” De Palma said in an interview last year). Here’s the rub, though: it sounds like the director had an awful time with it, saying, “I never experienced such a horrible movie set… This was my first experience in Denmark and most likely my last.” Hopefully, the on-screen results are better than that sounds?…
Release Date: It’s apparently done, but it sounds like there’s uncertainty as to how and when it’ll arrive. Maybe Berlin?
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/926841782553497600
71. “Benedetta”
Director: Paul Verhoeven (“Elle”)
Cast: Virginie Efira, Lambert Wilson, Daphne Patakia, Charlotte Rampling
Synopsis: A 17th-century nun who claims to have religious visions joins an Italian convent and falls in love with another woman.
What You Need To Know: Over a near-50-year career as one of cinema’s foremost masters of eroticism and perversion, it’s sort of remarkable that Paul Verhoeven has only just now gotten around to making a movie that could be described as a ‘lesbian nun drama.’ Coming off his roaring comeback movie “Elle,” this sees him reunited with key collaborators from that film including actress Virginie Efra, who plays the lead role, and writer David Birke, and while it sounds like it’ll court all kinds of controversy (the teaser posters aren’t exactly steering away from that…), it’s apparently a movie that’ll look as much at the sacred as the profane.
Release Date: A return to Cannes after the triumph of “Elle” there feels likely.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/857233829664243713
