Adam McKay‘s Dick Cheney biopic with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell. Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, a space drama about NASA’s Duke of Dullness, Neil Armstrong. Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria. Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Glenn Close‘s Best Actress campaign for The Wife. Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here. Alex Garland‘s delayed Annihilation.
Not to mention Clint Eastwood‘s The 15:17 to Paris. Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On The Basis of Sex. Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene. Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, he Won’t Get Far on Foot. Robert Zemeckis‘s The Women of Marwen. Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet. Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs. Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favorite. And John Curran‘s Chappaquiddick.
All of them 2018 releases, and numbering 19. Not bad for a starting roster.
What follows is a copy of an 11.20.16 piece about likely award-season contenders of 2017, but with the links changed to 2018 forecasts:
It’s time to spitball what the Best Picture hotties will be twelve months hence, or just after the 2018 Thanksgiving holiday.
Every January I begin to compile a list of likely or at least promising-sounding goodies. I thought I’d start a little earlier so that by New Year’s Day I’ll have a half-decent 2018 roster to build from. It’s always hard to cut through the smoke and try to figure out what might poke through. Right now I can’t see much out there. If you check the usual sites and sources (Wikipedia, Box-Office Mojo release schedule) it’s all the same old nauseating crap — the usual mind-melting, idiot-brand, animal-friendly superhero franchise CG Asian-market slop.
Theatrical films are slowly dying, certainly if you go by the product being cranked out by the five families these days, but never say die. Netflix, Amazon, Megan Ellison, A24, Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures Classics…anyone and anything that turns the key. Ambitious theatrical fare…what is that these days? Most believe the form can only go downhill, but the discipline of having to put it all together and cram it into 95 or 110 or 125 or 140 minutes (as opposed to the relative ease of sprawling Westworld-like longforms)…there’s something so vivid and extra-feeling when movies somehow manage to do that thing and deliver like it matters. I wouldn’t want to live in a realm in which people aren’t trying like hell to keep doing this, each and every year. I’m looking to spitball a rundown of (a) the possible standouts at Sundance 2018, (b) at the Berlinale in February, (c) possible outliers from the winter, spring and even summer seasons that might go against the grain by being actually good, (d) potential Cannes headliners, (e) the Toronto, Venice, Telluride poppers, and (f) the Thanksgiving-Xmas films.
No fucking franchises, no Marvels, no horror unless we’re talking Witch or Babadook-level, no monsters, no zombies, no end-of-the-world dystopia, no action-for-action’s-sake, no comic-book adaptations, no anime. And I don’t want to hear (much less think) about family-geared animation unless it’s some extra-level Pixar thing.
I’ve asked a few friends who usually hear about stuff, and now I’m asking the HE community. Any hints or clues of any kind would be appreciated. A couple of months hence I should have a list of 25 or 30 films that will at least start things off.
