Artwork by Cap Blackard
2015 is gone, people. Let’s look forward to the future: new screenings, new stories. To fresh and exciting movies in 2016! Yippie kay-yay movie lovers!
Wait, there’s another Star Wars coming out in November?
It’s all good. May the force(d commodities from Disney’s mouth-wateringly lucrative five-year plan) be with you! There’s a new Captain America! A new X-Men! A new Star Trek! A new Spielberg! A new Scorsese! A new Harry Potter, hold the Potter! Batman will fight Superman. Bustin’ will feel good yet again. Russell Crowe will finally be a nice guy. After finding Nemo, we’ll find Dory. There will be more purging and conjuring. Jane Austen goes full zombie this year. And all those movies we loved and hyped at past fests will see the light of day with wide releases. The point being, there’s always something new, if not a little familiar, in the next theater, and we’re set. So, pack your popcorn, and fill your flasks.
–Blake Goble
Senior Staff Writer
Mojave
Release Date: January 22nd via A24
William Monahan is probably best known for writing the Academy Award-winning screenplay for The Departed, and it’s true that his hand is shakier holding a camera than a pen. Monahan’s directorial debut resulted in the forgettable crime noir London Bridge, but he’s getting another shot at capturing the lean intensity of his best work with the crime thriller Mojave. He’ll be helped by a pair of budding superstars in Garrett Hedlund and Oscar Isaac, who last shared a screen in 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis. Hedlund plays Thomas, a troubled artist who retreats to the desert and encounters a homicidal drifter named Jack. As the film’s sinister antagonist, Isaac has the potential to push Mojave to the heights of Monahan’s best work. –Collin Brennan
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31
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016; Release Date: January 23rd via Alchemy
Rob Zombie’s 31 now has an official release date. We’re hoping the prolonged wait is a result of the horror auteur making sure his next project is done his way and his way only as opposed to the usual pitfalls of Development Hell. Just know that it’s about carnival workers trying to escape a gang of murderous clowns and that Zombie has likened it to his strongest movie, The Devil’s Rejects. Whether or not the film lives up to that ambitious comparison remains to be seen, but it will no doubt be visually arresting. Even the Halloween remakes were fun to look at… –Dan Caffrey
Certain Women
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
If their past work together – the devastating Wendy and Lucy (2008) and haunting Meek’s Cutoff (2011) – are any indication, the latest collaboration between Michelle Williams and writer/director Kelly Reichardt should be one of the year’s best domestic dramas. The story, which which follows three women (Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Laura Dern) as they navigate their flawed lives in small town America, is perfectly suited to Reichardt’s unique ability to wring profundity out of the tragedies of daily life, and Williams is even more intriguing to watch than usual under her careful guidance. Certain Women could go a long way to cementing their status as one of the great director/actor pairings of our time. –Sarah Kurchak
The Intervention
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
Longtime cult TV and movie favorite and Brother Justin resurrector Clea Duvall makes her writing and directorial debut with this film about a seemingly benign couple’s retreat that goes awry when one of the pairs involved discovers it’s actually an intervention on their marriage. The score is by Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara fame. The cast — which includes Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, and Ben Schwartz — is almost as cool as its director. But what’s most exciting of all for But I’m a Cheerleader fans is that the movie reunites Duvall with two of her co-stars from that camp cult classic: Melanie Lynskey and Natasha Lyonne. –Sarah Kurchak
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Joshy
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
After a failed engagement, Joshy tries to reconnect with the few friends he has left. It’s not the freshest premise, but the film’s pedigree gives us reason to believe that writer and director Jeff Baena’s sophomore feature will be far more than the sum of its logline. The cast — which includes, among many others, Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, Nick Kroll, Jenny Slate, Aubrey Plaza, and Lauren Graham — is one of the funniest you’ll find on this side of the pond. Although Baena tried to make zombies interesting again with his debut feature, Life After Beth, he should have no problem breathing new life into emotionally stunted bros and their relationships. –Sarah Kurchak
Manchester by the Sea
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
Matt Damon was originally slated to star in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, but he was replaced by longtime friend Casey Affleck just a few months before filming began on location in Massachusetts. Damon’s a proven commodity, but we’re more interested in seeing Affleck take on another meaty dramatic role after knocking his last major role — 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — out of the park. The actor is on a bit of a hot streak, with two other films (The Finest Hours and Triple 9) due out this year. Here, he’ll play Lee Chandler, who returns to his hometown after he’s unexpectedly made the legal guardian of his dead brother’s son. With Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler also lending their talents, this indie flick won’t lack for bona fide star power. –Collin Brennan
Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
You see Spike Lee’s documentary for Bad’s 25th anniversary in 2012? The movie was fantastic! In-depth! Electric! Totally, like, off the wall! Imagine what he could spin from Off the Wall proper! Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall will be premiering at Sundance, and the doc promises to cover exactly what’s right there in the title. Jackson folks: let out an MJ-style “ooooooh!” right about now. The album’s a knockout (duh), and with Spike directing, the project promises to deliver potent ruminations on Michael’s music. Still not sure about the filming on the wall? To recall the raw power of Off the Wall, remember, Michael Jackson and his classically catchy disco grooves could make even four of the nastiest goons on television look loveable for a minute. –Blake Goble
Other People
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
Writer and director Chris Kelly has some impressive comedic credits to his name. Saturday Night Live, Broad City, The Onion … clearly he’s got the chops to write about what it’s like to be a comedy writer in what will be his (seemingly?) autobiographical feature debut. Starring Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon, Other People follows a struggling writer as he returns to Sacramento to care for his dying mother. Kelly has been a solid comedic force in his time as a writer, and to see that voice carry a feature film is bound to be a treat. Not to mention, the cast lists some of the most exciting voices in comedy today, from Zach Woods and Retta to John Early. –Rebecca Bulnes
Wiener-Dog
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
He never gets credited as such, but Todd Solondz is truly one of America’s most experimental directors. With underrated masterpieces like Happiness and Palindromes, he not only writes bluntly about taboo subjects like pedophilia, evangelicalism, and abortion, but actually makes pains to humanize (gasp!) those at the center of the controversies he guts. Furthermore, he’s been building, then subverting, his own shared universe since he hit the scene with 1995’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, often returning to characters from previous films while only occasionally casting the same actor. He’s essentially creating his own archetypes, a technique that allows him to explore the multiple realities of a single character without being bound to appearance or his own canon. He continues this trend with Weiner-Dog, a film that checks in with Dollhouse’s protagonist Dawn “Wiener-Dog” Wiener as a thirtysomething, even though Palindromes revealed she committed suicide after becoming morbidly obese. Considering the effervescent Greta Gerwig is playing Dawn, it’s safe to say Solondz is exploring an alternate history for the character. Sad as it is, returning to the milieu of his most famous movie is probably the best option for the filmmaker since, in his own words, every one of his movies since then has made “half what the previous one made.” Such is the fate of the truly countercultural. –Randall Colburn
Yoga Hosers
Premieres at Sundance Film Festival 2016
Reading the plot to Kevin Smith’s Yoga Hosers is like listening to your dad try to talk like a millennial. The second in the director’s True North trilogy of Canada-set horror movies and, as such, the follow-up to his so-so Tusk, Yoga Hosers is about two teenagers in Winnipeg who “love yoga and live on their smartphones” and must do battle with an “ancient evil” using, you guessed it, yoga. I’ll bet one of them describes everything as “lit.” It stars Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp, the daughters of Smith and Johnny Depp, respectively, as well as Depp himself, who’s reprising his Mortdecai-adjacent Guy LaPointe, the clown who very nearly buried Tusk. Expect another tonally muddy affair that pairs flashy gore with “eh” jokes. –Randall Colburn
Hail, Caesar!
Release Date: February 5th via Universal Pictures
Hail, Caesar!? More like, “Hail the Coens!” Everyone’s favorite directing siblings are back with another screwball comedy in the vein of The Hudsucker Proxy, The Ladykillers, and Intolerable Cruelty. Yikes. Okay. Well … look at this cast! There are a number of actors from the Coen filmography returning here, including George Clooney (O, Brother), Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) and Scarlett Johansson (The Man Who Wasn’t There) to name but a few. They’re headlining a wacky tale of old-school Tinseltown that comes complete with a kidnapping plot. Kidnapping? Like Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski? Color me back on board. –Justin Gerber
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Release Date: February 5th via Lionsgate
The biggest surprise of Seth Grahame-Smith’s hybrid novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn’t that it delivers what the title promises — Jane Austen’s remarkable text, plus the undead — but that it managed to be so utterly original while remaining faithful to the story it exists inside. It would seem that writer-director Burr Steers’ film adaptation aims to tread the same corpse-strewn path: funny, not campy; serious, not indulgent; and filled with familiar characters suddenly skilled in the arts of death. Add in a cast that includes former Cinderella Lily James, a sizeable percentage of the Lannister clan, and Matt Smith as the absurd Mr. Collins, and you’ve got a recipe for a pitch-perfect comic-horror-period-romance zombie film. –Allison Shoemaker
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Deadpool
Release Date: February 12th via 20th Century Fox
The first in a deluge of Marvel Comics related films that will be released in 2016 and probably until the end of time is Deadpool, based on the foul-mouthed antihero of the same. Ryan Reynolds, who briefly showed up as Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was invited to reprise the role in this standalone origin story, despite the fact that he is perhaps best known for attempting to launch DC Comics’ Green Lantern franchise on his beefy shoulders and failing spectacularly. Still, Hollywood keeps trying to make Ryan Reynolds happen, giving him a second chance to helm a superhero franchise and to play a popular character in a way that Reynolds has described in interviews as more true to the comics and R-rated “nasty” (cue fan rejoicing), so let’s hope that all of this preening and retooling of the theoretically ideal box office star has not been in vain. –Leah Pickett
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Remember
Release Date: February 12th via A24
The narrative might be more linear than the ones he used to toy with in his art house provocateur days, but Atom Egoyan’s latest thriller does reunite the veteran Canadian filmmaker with some of his favorite themes: memory, loss, retribution, and reconciliation with the past. After the death of his wife, Zev (Christopher Plummer), an Auschwitz survivor with dementia, sneaks out of his care home with longtime friend and fellow survivor (Martin Landau) to hunt down Rudy Kurlander, the German who ordered the deaths of both their families during the Second World War. The only problem, aside from Zev’s deteriorating lucidity, is that there are four potential Rudy Kurlanders living across North America. –Sarah Kurchak
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Zoolander 2
Release Date: February 12th via Paramount Pictures
Zoolander No. 2 has already been met with a bit of controversy before its release, thanks to general concern over Benedict Cumberbatch’s gender-fluid villain, All. But we can only hope that the long-anticipated sequel to Ben Stiller’s absurdist comic gem is less mean-spirited and more daffy in the way of its predecessor. While we’re worried that the inevitable parade of cameos could send the film the overstuffed way of Anchorman 2, hopefully No. 2 will be a step forward and another quotable delight from Stiller and co-writers Justin Theroux and Nicholas Stoller. America needs its man of 2016. Why not a mer-MAN? –Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
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Triple 9
Release Date: February 26th via Open Road Films
Who doesn’t love a good heist movie, or a good dirty cop movie, or a good movie where Kate Winslet plays a Russian-Israeli mobster that director John Hillcoat called “a really glamorous, nasty piece of work”? Triple 9 — that’s 999, the code for “officer down” — seems poised to be all those movies at once. A cops-and-robbers story where some of the robbers are also the cops, the movie’s biggest draw has got to be its cast of top-tier talent, with Winslet merely as one of the pack. She’s joined by Aaron Paul, Michael K. Williams, Norman Reedus, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, future invisible plane-owner Gal Gadot, and a partridge in a pear tree. A recklessly twisting plot is just the cherry on top. –Allison Shoemaker
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The Witch
Release Date: February 26th via A24
Horror is a chronically under-appreciated genre, especially when it comes to the doling out of golden statuettes; It Follows and The Babadook, to name two recent examples, scored near-universal acclaim at the top of their release years only to fade into convenient obscurity by their respective awards seasons. However, the buzz off of The Witch, a 1630 New England-set nightmare that premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, has scorched a path to a wide release date that, more than a year later, has promisingly maintained every ounce of its sizzle. Glowing early reviews and Sundance’s “Best Director” prize for newcomer Robert Eggers have certainly helped to fuel the anticipatory fire; but it’s the gut-curdling trailer, arguably one of the best trailers to come out of 2015, that continues to stoke the flames. –Leah Pickett
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Knight of Cups
Release Date: March 4th via Broad Green Pictures
When it comes to languorous filmmaker Terrence Malick, you can count on one thing: everything is going to look beautiful. His eye is unbeatable — it’s his stories that have caused division among audiences over the past, well, 40 years. For this year’s Knight of Cups, his eye is focused on Christian Bale’s Rick, a writer lost in a meaningless existence but trying to figure things out. (Story of my life!) With a great supporting cast in tow (Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Thomas Lennon … wait …The State’s Thomas Lennon?), let’s hope Malick can recall the glory Days of Heaven and avoid the straight-to-VOD doom of To the Wonder. –Justin Gerber
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Release Date: March 4th via Paramount Pictures
“There’s a real culture of demanding apologies, and I’m opting out of that,” Tina Fey confessed while supporting December’s well-regarded Sisters. That’s one hell of a New Year’s resolution, especially in light of our thankless, exhausting, and all too predictable PC culture of “precious snowflakes,” to crib from Bret Easton Ellis. She’ll certainly be tested with her next venture, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a comedy war film adapted from Kim Barker’s 2014 memoir, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Fey plays a war correspondent who competes with a rival reporter (Margot Robbie) and stumbles into a wild relationship with another (Martin Freeman) amidst Operation Enduring Freedom. Expect plenty of think-pieces from any number of your faithful SJWs, who will undoubtedly be offended by the war-torn backdrop. Whatever. –Michael Roffman
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Zootopia
Release Date: March 4th via Walt Disney Pictures
Another movie about anthropomorphic animals? Are you kidding me?, you might be thinking. And yes, despite Disney Animation Studio’s largely stellar pedigree (Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen), this very Dreamworks-y move can seem a bit confounding at first. However, the fact that they’re leaning into the “society full of anthropomorphized animals” concept as the crux of their movie gives me a little hope – as does that surprisingly hilarious sloth trailer we all got before The Force Awakens. It may not show up on 2016’s Best Animated Feature list, but I’ve got hope it will be fun. –Clint Worthington
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