52 Reasons Why 2018 Will Be Amazing For Film

After looking back at the Best Films Of 2017, it’s time to look forward. Sure, 2018 may be bringing us the nadir of human civilisation that is Fifty Shades Freed, but there’s plenty to look forward to, too. Here, then, are 52 of the most likely flicks set to arrive on screens both big and, sometimes, small…

1. Annihilation

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac

Premise: A biologist volunteers for an expedition into the dangerous, mysterious realm in which her husband died.

Anticipation: Garland's first feature, Ex Machina, was quite the debut, and Annihilation is another film hoping to put a smart spin on genre.

2. Ant-Man & The Wasp

Director: Peyton Reed

Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Pfeiffer

Premise: Ant-man teams up with a micro-size female counterpoint, on a rescue mission into the sub-microscopic quantum realm.

Anticipation: Even though Edgar Wright didn’t end up making it, the first one was pretty fun, right?

3. Avengers: Infinity War

Director: Anthony & Joe Russo

Cast: Most of Hollywood

Premise: Every single superhero from the MCU must band together for a grand branding-exercise. Oh, and, y’know, to save the galaxy from another apocalyptically-powerful CGI villain.

Anticipation: Meh.

4. The Beach Bum

Director: Harmony Korine

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, Isla Fisher, Bria Vinaite, Snoop Dogg

Premise: “A rebellious stoner named Moondog lives life by his own rules.”

Anticipation: Korine —finally!— follows up Spring Breakers with a stoner-comedy that he dreams of showing in weed-scented Smell-O-Vision.

5. Black Panther

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Andy Serkis

Premise: After the fallout of Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther returns to his African homeland, where he must prevent a civil war, and a global disaster.

Anticipation: There’s plentiful buzz for Marvel's first standalone film for a black superhero, with Coogler coming in hot off his unexpectedly-good Rocky legacyquel Creed.

6. Boy Erased

Director: Joel Edgerton

Cast: Lucas Hedges, Joel Edgerton, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan

Premise: A gay teen, raised by a Baptist preacher in the Deep South, is sent to a ‘conversion therapy’ program.

Anticipation: The bogan builder from The Secret Life Of Us sure has come a long way, now certified as one of the world’s biggest stars. Following his impressive psychological-thriller debut The Gift, Edgerton delivers a likely Oscar-season contender, with choice roles both behind and in front of the camera.

7. Damsel

Director: David & Nathan Zellner

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Forster, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner

Premise: A pioneer travels across the American frontier on a miniature horse named Butterscotch, hoping to be reunited with his lost love.

Anticipation: The Zellner bros follow up Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter with what’s being billed as a ‘slapstick Western’. With R-Patz in the saddle, it’s likely to be a ride worth taking.

8. Deadpool 2

Director: David Leitch

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Zazie Beetz, Morena Baccarin, Brianna Hildebrand, T.J. Miller

Premise: “After surviving a near fatal knee-boarding accident, a disfigured guidance counsellor (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfil his dream of becoming Poughkeepsie's most celebrated French Bulldog breeder while also learning to cope with an open relationship. Searching to regain his passion for life, as well as a new stuffed unicorn, Wade must battle ninjas, tight-assed metal men, and babysit a group of stereotypical side characters as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and creative outlets for his very open-minded sex life. He manages to find a new lust for being a do-gooder, a sparkly Hello Kitty backpack, all while earning the coveted coffee mug title of World’s Best 4th-Wall-Breaking Superhero."

Anticipation: Ready for the lulz.

9. Dogman

Director: Matteo Garrone

Cast: Edoardo Pesce, Gianluca Gobbi, Nunzia Schiano

Premise: A revenge drama set on Rome’s crime-blighted outskirts in the 1980s, based on a high-profile real-life homicide.

Anticipation: Garrone, maker of the original Gomorrah, returns to the Italian criminal underworld, with a bizarre true-crime tale centred around a pet-store, a dog walker, an animalistic desires.

10. E-Book

Director: Olivier Assayas

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Olivia Ross, Christa Théret, Guillaume Canet, Vincent Macaigne, Pascal Greggory

Premise: A pair of publishers refuse to adapt to changes in the publishing industry and the world itself, causing problems in both business and their relationships.

Anticipation: After the astonishing back to back of Clouds Of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, Assayas reunites with Binoche for a “full-blown comedy”.

11. Everybody Knows

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Bárbara Lennie, Ricardo Darín, Javier Camara, Eduard Fernández

Premise: Nobody knows.

Anticipation: Iranian master Farhadi makes his first-ever Spanish language film, with roles written for leads Cruz and Bardem, and a loaded cast backing them up. Details have been kept under wraps, which only adds to the anticipation, really.

12. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald

Director: David Yates

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Zoë Kravitz, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller

Premise: Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald has plans for wizards to rule over muggles, but out to stop him is the young idealist Albus Dumbledore.

Anticipation: The second spin round J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts realm debuts Jude Law as young Dumbledore. And, given the last film was pretty good, no reason why this shan’t be.

13. A Fantastic Woman, Disobedience, and Gloria

Director: Sebastián Lelio

Cast: Daniela Vega and Francisco Reyes; Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz; Julianne Moore and Michael Cera and John Turturro

Premise: A trans nightclub singer is sent reeling from the death of her boyfriend. Two women fall into a scandalous affair in an Orthodox Jewish community. A free-spirited woman in her 50s throws herself into the dating world.

Anticipation: Lelio is on quite a run. Coming first is a local cinematic release for his wondrous A Fantastic Woman, a brilliantly-made, beautifully-coloured tragicomedy. Then comes Disobedience, his Rachel-on-Rachel-boasting adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel. And, finally, he’s finishing off his American remake of his own Chilean film, Gloria, with Julianne Moore in its amazing lead role.

14. The Favorite

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn

Premise: In 18th century England, during the court of Queen Anne, two women become rivals for the Queen’s covert affections.

Anticipation: Coming off the back of The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, the Greek weird-wave don is as close to a sure-thing as any director. A period-piece based on a real episode of English history, however, is an unexpected next-move.

15. First Man

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jon Bernthal, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll

Premise: The life and times of Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon.

Anticipation: Whilst it became famous for its last-minute, snatched-from-the-jaws-of-victory Oscar loss, La La Land was incredible. After three straight jazz-themed films, Chazelle switches things up entirely; let’s hope he can bring a fresh approach to what scans as total Oscarbait biopic.

16. A Futile And Stupid Gesture

Director: David Wain

Cast: Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, Thomas Lennon, Natasha Lyonne, Emmy Rossum

Premise: The rise and fall of the National Lampoon, from college humour magazine to upstart Hollywood power-brokers.

Anticipation: The Wet Hot American Summer don continues to roll with Netflix for this very-meta ’70s-comedy opus, in which a host of likely types play comic icons —Joel McHale as Chevy Chase, Paul Scheer as Paul Shaffer, Jon Daly as Bill Murray— in what feel like casting in-jokes.

17. High Life

Director: Claire Denis

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche, Lars Eidinger, André Benjamin

Premise: A crew of criminals are sent on a deep-space mission into a black hole, in search of alternative energy sources.

Anticipation: Denis has spent most of this century dreaming up her sci-fi opus, and, at $8mil, it’s a sizeable-budget feature for the French legend. This is officially her first English-language feature, and past Denis exercises in genre (like the incredible Trouble Every Day) have been plenty memorable.

18. Hold The Dark

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Bloor, Jeffrey Wright, James Badge Dale

Premise: In a remote Alaskan settlement, the deaths of local children are believed to be the work of wolves.

Anticipation: Last time out, Saulnier gave us the all-time grindhouse classic Green Room, a tale of Nazis vs Punks that was especially memorable for its terrifying use of attack-dogs as agents of horror. Now, he's working with fucking wolves.

19. The House That Jack Built

Director: Lars von Trier

Cast: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Ed Speelers, Riley Keough

Premise: A decade in the life of an all-American serial killer.

Anticipation: It's been five years since von Trier's last cinematic provocation, Nymphomaniac. The Danish Dogme don arrives —in the wake of having been outed for abusive behaviour on the Dancer In The Dark set by Björk— bearing a “psychological horror” film, hoping to premiere it at Cannes. Y’know, the place he was previously banned from.

20. If Beale Street Could Talk

Director: Barry Jenkins

Cast: Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Teyonah Parris, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Dave Franco, Ed Skrein, Finn Wittrock, Emily Rios, Diego Luna

Premise: In Harlem in the ’70s, a pregnant girl and her family attempt to free her boyfriend, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

Anticipation: Jenkins’ Moonlight follow-up is an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name. Anticipate away.

21. Incredibles 2

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: (voices of) Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L’ Jackson, John Ratzenberger, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener

Premise: The super-heroic Parr family, struggling to balance crime-fighting and home-life, band together to thwart a new super-villain.

Anticipation: A 14-years-on sequel to a past Pixar hit hardly seems like an inspired idea, but, come on, you cried in Toy Story 2...

22. The Irishman

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Bobby Cannavale, Ray Romano, Anna Paquin, Harvey Keitel

Premise: A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement in the mysterious disappearance of union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Anticipation: Scorsese gets the band back together for a $100 mafia epic based on a sensational real life crime, with the ’70s setting a boon for wardrobe, song placement, Scorsese montages, etc. It looks like an Oscar contender and potential box office success... except it’s being made by Netflix, which means it may not actually play in cinemas.

23. Isle Of Dogs

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: (voices of) Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Frances McDormand, Greta Gerwig, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton

Premise: In a dystopian-future-Japan where dogs have been quarantined on an island due to an outbreak of ‘canine flu’, a pack of hounds attempt an escape.

Anticipation: Nine years after his incredible adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson —one of cinema’s most distinctive filmmakers— returns to the realm of stop-motion animation.

24. JT LeRoy

Director: Justin Kelly

Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Diane Kruger, Jim Sturgess, Courtney Love, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

Premise: A girl spends six years masquerading as a celebrity phantom, playing famous —but non-existent— author JT LeRoy in public.

Anticipation: After duelling documentaries on the greatest literary hoax of the century, the JT LeRoy story gets the narrative treatment, with the ascendant, Baron Davis-kissing Dern handed the plum role of LeRoy ‘mastermind’ Laura Albert.

25. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Director: J.A. Bayona

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Justice Smith, B.D. Wong, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Jeff Goldblum

Premise: When a volcanic eruption threatens the dinosaurs left on the abandoned Jurassic World island, a group attempts to rescue them from imminent demise.

Anticipation: Early word on the film is that it will feature CGI dinosaurs.

26. Lady Bird

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet

Premise: A Californian teenager from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ suffers the trials and tribulations of her final year in high-school.

Anticipation: Gerwig’s crowdpleasing coming-of-age flick finally arrives on local screens, blessed with the unlikely status of Oscar frontrunner.

27. Lean On Pete

Director: Andrew Haigh

Cast: Charlie Plummer, Travis Fimmel, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Steve Zahn, Thomas Mann

Premise: A homeless teenager sets out on an interstate roadtrip on the back of a rescued horse.

Anticipation: Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years, the way-underrated TV show Following) is, like, the best, and reviews of this film from Venice and Toronto were full of accolades.

28. The Little Stranger

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, Charlotte Rampling

Premise: In 1947, a country doctor visits the dilapidated mansion of a fading upper-class family, and is drawn into their lives, and legacies, in horrifying ways.

Anticipation: Abrahamson follows up his beloved Oscar-movie Room with an adaptation of Sarah Winters’ novel, which explores shifting English society and class critique via a Gothic supernatural thriller.

29. Loro

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Toni Servillo, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ricky Memphis, Elena Sofia Ricci

Premise: The life-and-times of Italy’s proto-Trump: the corrupt, repulsive, egomanical politician, tycoon, and buffoon Silvio Berlusconi.

Anticipation: Coming off The Young Pope, Sorrentino reunites with Servillo —they’ve made The Consquences Of Love, Il Divo, and The Great Beauty together— to cinematically take on, and take down, modern Italy’s most infamous figure.

30. Maya

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

Cast: Roman Kolinka, Aarshi Banerjee, Suzan Anbeh, Alex Descas, and maybe Juliette Binoche

Premise: After being held captive in Syria, a French war-photographer struggles to adjust back to life in Paris, So, he journeys to India, to visit his mother.

Anticipation: Humble French auteur Hansen-Løve ups the ambition for her sixth film, shooting in Jordan, France, and India. After this, she’ll make her English-language debut, Bergman Island, which stars Greta Gerwig, John Turturro, and Mia Wasikowska.

31. Mid-’90s

Director: Jonah Hill

Cast: Lucas Hedges, Katherine Waterston, Sunny Suljic, Alexa Demie

Premise: A teenager in Los Angeles in the, um, mid-’90s, deals with an overbearing mother, and his high-school’s entrenched issues of race and class.

Anticipation: Hill makes his directorial debut, from a screenplay he penned. The confessed inspiration of Kids and This Is England suggests he’s going for something darker than Superbad-style hijinks, however.

32. Mute

Director: Duncan Jones

Cast: Aleksander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Sam Rockwell

Premise: In a futurist dystopia, a mute bartender’s search for his missing girlfriend puts him in conflict with local gangsters.

Anticipation: Jones lost most of his cred —and half a decade of labour— helming the disastrous Warcraft: The Beginning. But, here, he gets the freedom of the Netflix chequebook and, gladly, uses it to return to the realm of sci-fi.

33. The Nightingale

Director: Jennifer Kent

Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Ewen Leslie, Damon Herriman, Baykali Ganambarr, Magnolia Maymuru

Premise: In 1829, following the murder of her husband and child, an Irish convict employs an Aboriginal tracker for a revenge mission into the wooded wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land.

Anticipation: For her Babadook follow-up, Kent journeys into the darkness of colonial history, out to depict the Australian Gothic at its most gruesome.

34. Ocean’s 8

Director: Gary Ross

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Akwkafina, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter

Premise: Eight women band together to pull off a heist at the Met Gala.

Anticipation: The ladies-only riff on the Ocean’s tongue-in-cheek heist movie, Ocean’s 8 comes boasting many cameos. Hopefully, MRA trolls will be outraged.

35. The Old Man & The Gun

Director: David Lowery

Cast: Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Elisabeth Moss, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover

Premise: A career bank-robber and prison-escape artist, now living in a retirement home, plans one last job.

Anticipation: Lowery’s A Ghost Story was one of 2017’s standouts, and his 2016 Disney family-movie Pete’s Dragon was secretly beautiful. He keeps ticking with a based-on-a-true-tale film boasting iconic leads and crowdpleasin’ potential.

36. Peterloo

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Rory Kinnear, Patrick Kennedy, Maxine Peake, Pearce Quigley, Kieran O’Brien, Adam Long, Leo Bill

Premise: In Manchester, 1819, British troops attack the crowd at a peaceful pro-democracy rally, leading to an infamous massacre.

Anticipation: Social-realist legend Leigh follows Mr. Turner with an exploration of one of England’s darkest historical events.

37. The Phantom Thread

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, Vicky Krieps, Brian Gleeson

Premise: A fashion-designer’s regimented routines and domestic obsessions are eroded by the presence of his latest lover/muse.

Anticipation: For his eighth film, PTA reunites with supposedly-retiring Day-Lewis and composer Jonny Greenwood for an elliptical drama set, in one fashion House, in the London fashion world of the 1950s. The result is sumptuous, glamorous, and, of course, meticulous, but its portrait of an egomaniacal Male-Genius artist —played by Day-Lewis— may play as too reserved, distant, and genuinely odd to crack the Oscar conversation.

38. Roma

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Marina de Tavira, Daniela Demesa, Marco Graf, Yalitza Aparicio

Premise: A year in the life of a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s.

Anticipation: Cuarón comes down from Gravity with a return to Mexico, shooting a family drama filled with autobiography.

39. Sicario 2: Soldado

Director: Stefano Sollima

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Jeffrey Donovan, Matthew Modine, Catherine Keener

Premise: An undercover operative and a CIA agent investigate drug cartels smuggling terrorists across the US border.

Anticipation: The lack of Denis Villeneuve immediately lowers anticipation, but the involvement of original screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, director Sollima’s history making the Gomorrah TV show, and a score by Hildur Guðnadóttir all offer hope this will be in keeping with the original’s spirit.

40. The Sisters Brothers

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed

Premise: In 1850s Oregon and California, a pair of bounty hunters —brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters— are on the trail of a gold prospector.

Anticipation: Patrick deWitt’s source-text novel turns the Western into an absurdist black comedy cum fantastical picaresque, and its to-screen translation seems like an inspired choice for Audiard to make his English-language debut. Audiard’s specialty —see The Beat My Heart Skipped, Read My Lips, A Prophet, Dheepan, etc— is mixing social-realism with genre, which offers up plentiful potential, here.

41. Solo: A Star Wars Story

Director: Ummm...

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Premise: The early adventures, in a galaxy far, far away, of a young smuggler and his wookie companion.

Anticipation: The Star Wars franchise is a license to print money, and the cinematic returns have, since its 2015 revival, been pretty decent. But Solo raises plentiful suspicions given it started out with Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (the Lego Movie and Jump Street team) as directors, only for them to be fired mid-production, replaced with, um, Ron Howard, who set about staging extensive reshoots.

42. Sorry To Bother You

Director: Boots Riley

Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Steven Yeun, Patton Oswalt, David Cross

Premise: In an alternate-reality America, an African-American telemarketer imitates the voice of a famous white actor to succeed at his job. But, as he climbs the corporate ladder, he discovers the dark truths about his company.

Anticipation: Riley has been lobbing anti-corporate bombs for years as frontman of political-rap outfit The Coup. Sorry To Bother You marks his first feature film, and comes armed with a killer trio of leads, and a timely examination of race, spin, and corporate oligarchy.

43. Suspiria

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Mia Goth, Sylvie Testud

Premise: A young ballerina enrols in a prestigious Academy, only to discover dark, supernatural secrets lurk beneath.

Anticipation: Guadagnino follows his masterpiece Call Me By Your Name with a remake of Dario Argento’s classic 1977 gialli. If that prospect, and the killer cast, weren’t enough to convince you, Guadagnino is again collaborating with amazing DOP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, as well as working with a score by Thom Yorke.

44. Sweet Country

Director: Warwick Thornton

Cast: Hamilton Morris, Bryan Brown, Sam Neill, Ewen Leslie

Premise: In a frontier Northern Territory settlement in the 1920s, an aboriginal shoots a white man, then goes on the run, chased after by a posse.

Anticipation: After doing the late-year film festival rounds, and scooping up numerous awards as it has, Thornton’s racially-charged Western arrives on local cinema screens just in time for Invasion Day. It marks his first narrative feature since 2009’s Samson & Delilah.

45. Under The Silver Lake

Director: David Robert Mitchell

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace, Zosia Mamet

Premise: A man becomes obsessed with the murder of a billionaire mogul, and its connection to LA’s indie-music underground.

Anticipation: Mitchell is two-for-two thus far, with the poignant teen-movie melancholy of The Myth Of The American Sleepover and the instant-classic horror of It Follows. So, anticipate accordingly.

46. Unsane

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Claire Foy, Juno Temple, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah

Premise: A girl committed to a mental asylum confronts the manifestation of her greatest fear; which may or may not be all in her mind.

Anticipation: The once “retired” Soderbergh keeps on ticking, delivering a multiplex-pitched psychological-horror that he shot on an iPhone.

47. Untitled Chris Morris Project

Director: Chris Morris

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Danielle Brooks, James Adomian, Kayvan Novak, Denis O’Hare, Jim Gaffigan, Marchánt Davis

Premise: The film was shot in secret, the premise remains so. As does the title.

Anticipation: Seven years after Four Lions, the English comic genius (Brass Eye, Nathan Barley, etc) returns with his second feature film. Shot on location in the Caribbean, it looks like a private-military-contractor satire, and expectations should be duly exorbitant.

48. Venom

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Woody Harrelson, Jenny Slate

Premise: A journalist turns super-villain in Spider-man’s New York after bonding with an alien lifeforce.

Anticipation: Whilst a ‘Marvel universe’ of Sony movies about adjacent Spider-man villains sounds horrifying, the first instalment doesn’t seem like a write-off. Headlining a killer cast, Hardy apparently went deep/wild in his role, as a villainous figure who, here, isn’t stuck playing second-fiddle to a hero.

49. Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, Kristen Wiig, Billy Crudup, James Urbaniak, Laurence Fishburne

Premise: A teenage girl’s account of her mother —agoraphobic, antisocial, acidic— who goes missing.

Anticipation: Linklater’s adaptation of Maria Semple’s novel gives Blanchett the kind of sterling lead role she can make her own.

50. Widows

Director: Steve McQueen

Cast: Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson, Daniel Kaluuya

Premise: When a group of criminals are killed mid-armed robbery, their surviving widows band together to finish the job.

Anticipation: A remake of a British ’80s mini-series penned by Lynda La Plante seems a strange next step for McQueen, but, five years after 12 Years A Slave —and ten years after his film-of-the-century contender Hunger— anticipation for the latest work from the video-artist-turned-Oscar-winner will be high.

51. A Wrinkle In Time

Director: Ava DuVernay

Cast: Storm Reid, Deric McCabe, Levi Miller Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon, Michael Peña

Premise: A headstrong young girl, her younger brother, and a friend enlist a trio of astral travellers to help them rescue her father from a distant galaxy.

Anticipation: Madeleine L’Engle's ’62 sci-fi classic has been resisting adaptation for decades, but, here, finally, it comes, in a Disney-bankrolled blockbuster helmed by Selma’s ascendant DuVernay.

52. You Were Never Really Here

Director: Lynne Ramsay

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Manette, John Doman

Premise: A tortured hitman undertakes a vigilante mission to bust open a child prostitution ring.

Anticipation: Ramsay’s first film since We Need To Talk About Kevin is an ultra-violent tale of retribution and redemption that’s earnt copious Taxi Driver comparisons.