Twenty Films To Look Forward To In 2016

Looking forward to movies is an unpredictable game. We can survey marketing buzz, a creative team’s pedigrees, or the general zeitgeist, but there’ll always be surprises (Star Wars: The Force Awakens was great!) and letdowns (Pitch Perfect 2 was so, so disappointing). And despite their increasing regularity, the relentlessly-hyped Marvel and DC films tend to leave me cold… except for Ant-Man. That was surprisingly good.

In the end, it’s best just to go with your gut from what’s on offer. Right now, there are some pretty intriguing films which don’t yet have Australian release dates. Martin Scorsese’s Silence (starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson) examines Christian persecution in 17th-century Japan. Nicolas Winding Refn doubles down on ultraviolence in “cannibal supermodels” horror The Neon Demon, while Damien Chazelle follows Whiplash with La La Land (starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), and Derek Cianfrance has adapted ML Stedman’s Tasmanian novel The Light Between Oceans (starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander).

Here are 20 more 2016 releases I’m looking forward to that you can be a little more sure about:

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The Revenant

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson

Released: January 7

Already notorious for depicting a bear attack so grisly and visceral that some idiots thought it was rape, Iñárritu’s follow-up to Birdman is set in the world of North America’s semi-mythic fur trappers, and based on a famous story that’s more yarn than history. Here, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is left for dead by his colleague John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) then embarks on an epic winter journey to seek revenge. Outside of the obvious excitement than comes with a new Oscar-buzzed Leo film, I found every atmospheric moment of The Revenant utterly riveting; Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography, using only ambient light, hovers gorgeously in a twilight between life and death.

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Carol

Director: Todd Haynes

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson

Released: January 14

Why we had to wait until mid-January to see such an explicitly Christmassy treat is beyond me, but Carol is definitely worth it. Based on Patricia Clarkson’s novel The Price of Salt, this swooningly romantic melodrama recounts a forbidden affair between a sophisticated yet vulnerable older woman (Blanchett) and an aimless young shopgirl (Mara) who discovers a new ferocity. Each performance is perfectly judged, and every sensitively composed frame is full of glamour and longing.

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The 5th Wave

Director: J Blakeson

Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Nick Robinson, Alex Walker

Released: January 14

I’m looking forward to this new YA franchise so much more than the forthcoming Independence Day: Resurgence. This is largely because I’m really into “the erotics of peril”: a trope seen in war stories such as Tomorrow When The War Began and How I Live Now, as well as alien-invasion stories including The Host. Basically it’s a vibe where teenage girls in crisis situations feel most alive when thirsting for dudes. Here, Chloë Grace Moretz is trying to protect her brother (Zackary Arthur) — but the mysterious bro (Alex Walker) who’s helping her could be a deadly alien in human form.

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The Hateful Eight

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Released: January 14

An Agatha Christie closed-room mystery meets John Carpenter’s The Thing, adapted as a sardonic Quentin Tarantino western, The Hateful Eight follows eight mean, shady people who find themselves snowed in together at a Wyoming stagecoach lodge. Everybody is lying about who they are, and nobody can be trusted. Shot in hyperreal 70mm, with a cast of Tarantino regulars, it promises to evoke the brutality of today’s politics through post-Civil War chaos.

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Anomalisa

Directors: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

Released: February 4

Existential absurdist Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich) has made a stop-motion animated film! Customer service guru Michael Stone (David Thewlis) travels to a hotel to give a conference keynote address, and meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh): a shy, provincial stranger. While men’s mid-life crises are usually not very interesting, Anomalisa is beguiling in the detail of its craft, and slyly funny in blending the surreal with the quotidian. Despite being filmed with puppets, it has the most realistic sex scene I think I’ve ever seen on film.

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Brooklyn

Director: John Crowley

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson

Released: February 11

Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s novel with a screenplay by Nick Hornby and a charming ensemble cast anchored by Saoirse Ronan’s fresh-faced charisma, this romantic drama is a treat for the eyes and a balm for the soul. Irish immigrant Eilis (Ronan) painstakingly builds a new life in America with cute Italian Tony (Emory Cohen), but on a visit back to her Irish village she meets Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), and is torn between two ideas of home. Ideal Valentine’s Day viewing.

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Midnight Special

Director: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver

Released: TBC

Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi chase thriller was on my list last year, but hopefully it’ll finally get a local release date after screening at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. It follows a father and son fleeing government officials after learning the kid has supernatural powers. The story promises the mingled paranoia and wonder of films including Starman (which Nichols has cited as an influence), Escape to Witch Mountain and ET, but with less Spielbergian schmaltz. Nichols regular Michael Shannon returns, alongside Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver and Sam Shepard.

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Hail, Caesar!

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum

Released: March 3

The Coen brothers’ nostalgic backstage comedy is a valentine to Golden Age Hollywood. The pampered star (George Clooney) of a 1950s sword-and-sandal prestige picture has been kidnapped, and studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) must get him back, without alerting gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Tilda Swinton). To help, he enlists the film’s fastidious director (Ralph Fiennes), a song-and-dance actor (Channing Tatum), a pretty-boy pinup (Alden Ehrenreich), a ballsy Esther Williams-esque actress (Scarlett Johansson), and others.

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The Witch

Director: Robert Eggers

Starring: Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Anya Taylor-Joy

Released: March 17

Drenched with dread, this psychological horror film was one of my favourites at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and it’s finally getting a limited local release in March. Writer/director Eggers based his plot and dialogue extensively on 17th-century New England witch trial testimony, but his simple conceit is to depict it as realist drama, not historical fantasy. What if everything those witnesses reported was true? One devout, isolated family is about to find out.

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The Daughter

Director: Simon Stone

Starring: Miranda Otto, Geoffrey Rush, Anna Torv, Ewen Leslie

Released: March 17

Belvoir St Theatre wunderkind Simon Stone re-adapts his much-acclaimed adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck for the screen. The Daughter travelled the festival circuit last year and now gets a general release. Christian (Paul Schneider) returns to his logging hometown, and in trying to set right an old wrong, exhumes long-buried family secrets. It’s atmospheric, emotionally wrenching, and more cinematic than its stage origins would suggest.

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Director: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Starring: Tina Fey, Billy Bob Thornton, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman

Released: March 17

Co-directors Ficarra and Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Focus) offer slick, satirical twists on genre tackling the war journalism movie. 30 Rock co-creator Robert Carlock scripts, turning Kim Barker’s memoir of her time as a foreign correspondent into, well, 30 Rock in Afghanistan, complete with Liz Lemon. Tonally, it’s in the same territory as The Men Who Stare at Goats — and it promises a lot of laughs.

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Everybody Wants Some

Director: Richard Linklater

Starring: Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Zoey Deutch

Released: April 14

Richard Linklater returns to the terrain of 1993’s Dazed and Confused in this loose retro comedy, set among a 1980s college baseball team. Everybody Wants Some seems to mine those ribald ’80s teen movies, but with a naturalistic, less aggressively satirical spirit than something like Wet Hot American Summer. Can Linklater recapture his old slacker vibe? It’ll certainly be fun to see him try.

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The Nice Guys

Director: Shane Black

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger

Released: May 26

If you love the sardonic underworld of Elmore Leonard adaptations (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight), sit back and let legendary action guy Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) entertain you with this shaggy tale of two private eyes uncovering a conspiracy in 1970s Los Angeles. I’m looking forward to seeing Gosling and Crowe in buddy-comedy mode.

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The BFG

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Ruby Barnhill, Mark Rylance, Penelope Wilton, Jemaine Clement, Bill Hader

Released: June 30

Gen X and Gen Y kids are waiting with bated breath to see if Spielberg — the master of childhood angst — will ruin their memories of Roald Dahl’s beloved novel. I’m optimistic he won’t, especially as it’s written by the late Melissa Mathison (The Black Stallion, ET). The lugubrious Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall, Bridge of Spies) is perfectly cast in the title role, and I can’t wait to see Bill Hader and Jemaine Clement as the wicked giants Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater.

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Ghostbusters

Director: Paul Feig

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones

Released: July 14

This gender-flipped spectral comedy is one reboot I can get behind. An academic (Wiig) is disgraced when it emerges she co-wrote a book arguing ghosts are real. But when she turns out to be right, she reunites with her former co-author (McCarthy), a nuclear engineer (McKinnon) and a subway worker (Jones) to save New York. I cannot wait to call these ladies, especially as Chris Hemsworth is on the other end of the line as Kevin, their receptionist.

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The Secret Life of Pets

Directors: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney

Starring: Louis CK, Eric Stonestreet, Lake Bell, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate

Released: September 8

As I work from home, unfortunately I know exactly what my cat does all day. But I like the sound of this cute animated film set in a New York apartment building — mainly for its voice cast packed with comedians. Max (Louis CK) is miffed when his owner adopts a new dog, Duke (Eric Stonestreet), but their problems are bigger: vengeful bunny Snowball (Kevin Hart) is building an army of abandoned pets to attack happy “furever homes”.

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Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Director: David Yates

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell

Released: October 17

JK Rowling makes her screenwriting debut with this rollicking fantasy film set in her wizarding world — albeit 70-odd years before Harry Potter went to Hogwarts. Eddie Redmayne is Newt Scamander, an eccentric British Ministry of Magic employee whose magical creatures escape from his briefcase in 1926 New York, disastrously raising tensions between America’s magical community and the extremist, witch-hunting New Salem Philanthropic Society.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Director: Gareth Edwards

Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelsohn

Released: December 15

Okay, I’m letting myself get excited about the Star Wars universe now. This spin-off adventure, set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, is a wartime spy thriller with an intriguingly diverse cast of rebels on a mission to steal the first Death Star plans. Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla) is aiming for gritty realism within the Star Wars universe, working with Aussie cinematographer Greig Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty), and a production design and visual effects team whose pedigree ranges from Harry Potter to Edge of Tomorrow.

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Love and Friendship

Director: Whit Stillman

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Stephen Fry

Released: TBC

Stillman’s last film, the witty Damsels in Distress, was basically a Jane Austen comedy. Now he’s reuniting his Last Days of Disco co-stars, Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny, to work from the source material: Austen’s novella Lady Susan. Lady Susan Vernon (Beckinsale) is a beautiful, unscrupulous widow whose romantic machinations cause havoc among her respectable in-laws. Sevigny plays her equally wicked BFF Alicia Johnson, and Stephen Fry is Alicia’s fuddy-duddy husband. Aussie actor Xavier Samuel (The Loved Ones) is Reginald, the young stud Lady Susan hopes to land as her next husband.

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Moana

Directors: John Musker and Ron Clements

Starring: Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson

Released: December 26

Musker and Clements, who directed ‘Silver Age’ Disney films including The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, have made the leap to CGI animation in this epic adventure tale based on Polynesian mythology. Auli’i Cravalho was plucked from obscurity to star as the newest Disney princess Moana Waialiki, who joins the demi-god Maui (Dwayne Johnson) on a sea voyage in search of a fabled island. Other exciting talent attached include screenwriter Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows) and songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton).

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She blogs on style, history and culture at Footpath Zeitgeist and tweets at @incrediblemelk.