Next year appears to have something for everyone: comedy, drama, action, superheroes, and horror. With projects from directors as varied as Christopher Nolan, Alexander Payne, Tomas Alfredson, Sofia Coppola, and Luc Besson, there’s a lot to look forward to. So let’s dig into some of the must see movies of 2017!
Personal Shopper
The Kristen Stewart’s renaissance continues with Olivier Assayas’ lyrical, unnerving story about a celebrity factotum obsessed trying to communicate with her dead twin brother. Apart from the engrossing stillness of Stewart’s performance, the movie’s most intriguing aspect is the way it plays the supernatural completely straight, as if its a given that the spirits of those who have passed on regularly lurk around the edges of otherwise realist dramas. Like Assayas and Stewart’s Clouds of Sils Maria, its a movie that takes mystery for granted, an approach that allows her to inhabit her character rather than having her drive the plot, and the less she does, the more fascinating a performer she becomes.
Get Out
Described as “Rosemary’s Baby meets The Help” – or, alternatively, a cross between Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Stepford Wives – the big-screen writing/directing debut of Key & Peele’s Jordan Peele is a horror thriller about a black man who discovers that his white girlfriend’s parents are involved in a sinister conspiracy to keep their wealthy suburb racially monochrome. Get Out starts with a premise befitting solid Twilight Zone episode, but at least to judge from its trailer, things start to get truly nuts after that. Mainstream horror has been suffering from a lack of ingenuity, but a great comedy writer turning his skills to the genre could give it just the boost it needs.
The Snowman
It’s been five long years since Tomas Alfredson’s stylishly grungy Cold War thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but this adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s murder mystery sounds like it might be worth the wait. Michael Fassbender stars as a detective on the trail of what may be Norway’s first serial killer, with Rebecca Ferguson as a like-minded detective and a cast that also includes Charlotte Gainsbourg, JK Simmons and Val Kilmer. It’s a bit odd to have Alfredson returning to his native Scandinavia with an English-speaking cast in tow, but it’ll be great to see what he does on familiarly chilly turf with a Hollywood-sized budget.
Downsizing
After chronicling the quotidian disaffections of life in the Midwest, it only stands to reason that Alexander Payne would turn to the story of people who have themselves shrunken to a tiny size to join communities of like-minded, like-sized people. Right? Downsizing has been a passion project of Payne’s for years, but it seemed unlikely that a director known for dry-wit comedies would get the leeway, or the cash, to venture into sci-fi. It’s an outlandish idea from a director who’s not known for them – although he and writing partner Jim Taylor did touch up the script for Jurassic Park III – but finding out what the hell this thing is will be part of the fun.
I Am Not Your Negro
Inspired by an unfinished James Baldwin book about the assassinations of black leaders in the 1960s, Raoul Peck’s documentary brings Baldwin, who died in 1987, into the 21st Century, where his scorching appraisal of the history of race in the US is, unfortunately, as timely as ever. Drawing from decades of Baldwin’s writing and public statements – although rarely touching Baldwin’s work on sexuality – the movie is less a summary than a séance, with Samuel L Jackson’s impassioned narration all but bringing him back to life. Peck intercuts footage of the Ferguson protests to underline how relevant Baldwin remains, but in a world in which the basic humanity of people of colour is under attack, the continued vitality of Baldwin’s ideas is already unassailable.
The Beguiled
Its hard to envision a stranger match-up than Sofia Coppola and the Western genre, but that’s just what makes this remake of a Don Siegel/Clint Eastwood oater so intriguing. Although it’s set during the Civil War, the story of a wounded Union soldier (Colin Farrell) who seeks shelter in a Confederate girls school is a seduction at heart, and the photos from Coppola’s set suggest she’s doubling down on the original’s languorousness. It’s hard to imagine how Coppola’s take on this most masculine of genres might turn out, but that’s what’s exciting about it.
Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s dedication to old-school techniques may strike some as pure Luddism, but an epic battle movie shot on 65mm celluloid and relying on practical effects is enough of a dwindling rarity that every remaining instance is cause for celebration. Although comparisons to Saving Private Ryan will be inevitable, Dunkirk is not about an Allied military victory but the mass evacuation of more than 300,000 soldiers from a French beach, which is an atypical subject for a film of this massive scale. It’s long been said – including of Private Ryan – that it’s impossible to make a combat movie that’s truly anti-war, but telling a story about escape rather than engagement might be a way to finally solve that conundrum.
Baby Driver
We will never get to see Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, but with any luck, the action chops he honed preparing for that movie before Marvel replaced him – for, in effect, trying to make an Edgar Wright movie – will pay off in this story about a mute wheelman (Ansel Elgort) who uses music to guide his getaway driving. It’s the first time Wright, who’s collaborated with Simon Pegg on most of his scripts, has gotten sole screenplay credit, which seems like the perfect way for him to declare his independence from the Marvel machine, and with a cast that also includes Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Kevin Spacey, he’s assembled a superhero group of his own.
Thor: Ragnarok
Expecting an auteur stamp on a Marvel movie is a mug’s game, but call us mugs: the pairing of a Thor/Hulk “buddy movie” and director Taika Waititi could produce inspired results. Waititi, the Kiwi director known for comedies like What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, brings much-needed levity to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most dour and unengaging subfranchise, and might even give Chris Hemsworth a chance to employ the comic chops he showed off in Ghostbusters and Vacation. Of course, it won’t be all laughs: the movie’s subtitle refers to Norse mythology’s end of the world. But if Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo get to play Hope and Crosby along the way, maybe the journey to apocalypse won’t be so bad after all.
Star Wars: Episode VIII
Looper and Brick’s Rian Johnson remains the most intriguing directorial hire in the history of Star Wars, as well as the only person besides George Lucas to both write and direct one of the franchise’s movies. It’s unlikely that the still-untitled Episode VIII will be as idiosyncratic as Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom, but after JJ Abrams’ solid but unspectacular table-setting, this latest trilogy is on good footing to try something a little bit new. Hard details on the movie, naturally, are scarce, but if Abrams’ Spielberg-isms felt too familiar, Johnson could be the one to liven things up. (Credit: Lucasfilm)
