Innholdsfortegnelse for Ultimate Awards Guide 40C December 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

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SEPT. 7 TIFF STUDIO Amazon Studios RELEASE DATE Oct. 12 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $8.5M CAST Steve Carell, Timothee Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Kaitlyn Dever, Timothy Hutton TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Award for breakthrough directing; Golden Globe nom for supporting actor for Chalamet Beautiful Boy is a one-note, prosaic, on-the-nose look at drug addiction that’s set up as a showcase for two fine actors. Based on complementary memoirs by a father and son played respectively by Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet, Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen’s first American film is predictably straightforward and loaded with moments that trigger music cues for a vast array of tunes meant to relate to, or create, the mood of the moment when he hasn’t been able to. It’s a very Northern…

MAY 14 Cannes STUDIO Focus Features RELEASE DATE Aug. 10 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $88.2M CAST John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Cannes Jury Grand Prix win; Spirit Awards nom for Adam Driver; AFI Top 10 Movie of the Year; four Globe noms; three SAG noms, including cast An incredible true-life story told in a boisterously exaggerated way, BlacKkKlansman is certainly Spike Lee’s most flat-out entertaining film in quite a long time as well as his most commercial. Telling the tall tale of a rookie Colorado Springs cop (John David Washington) who, in cahoots with a Jewish member of the force (Adam Driver), successfully infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, the director takes the shenanigans to almost cartoonish levels of…

SEPT. 1 Telluride “Lee was a fascinating woman. So smart, so funny, so challenging, and I don’t think we often see enough female characters that are wonderfully flawed portrayed.”MELISSA MCCARTHY ON LEE ISRAEL STUDIO Fox Searchlight RELEASE DATE Oct. 19 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $7M CAST Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Ben Falcone TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Spirit Awards screenplay nom and supporting actor nom for Grant; Globe noms for Grant and McCarthy; 2 SAG noms Melissa McCarthy is the latest star to veer from her customary image in the rewarding dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me? Her startling, haunting performance as literary letter forger Lee Israel, paired with an equally fine turn by British actor Richard E. Grant as Israel’s gay confidant and accomplice, anchors this bizarre,…

AUG. 8 STUDIO Warner Bros. RELEASE DATE Aug. 15 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $238M CAST Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review ensemble win; Hollywood Film Awards for breakthrough ensemble; 2 Globe noms; Critics’ Choice ensemble nom; SAG nom for cast This high-gloss rom-com is a thoroughly captivating exploration of the rarefied question of whether true love can conquer head-spinning wealth. Director Jon M. Chu, novelist Kevin Kwan, co-screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim and the appealing cast make the story culturally specific yet eminently relatable. It’s a rocky romance dripping in the kind of stonking extravagance most of us can only fantasize about, like a $40 million wedding, for instance. And yet it’s viewed from the anchoring…

JAN. 21 Sundance STUDIO A24 RELEASE DATE July 13 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $13.5M CAST Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan, Daniel Zolghadri TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Four Spirit Awards noms; National Board of Review directorial debut win; AFI Top 10; Globe nom for actress for Fisher One of the most widely liked films of Sundance this year, Eighth Grade is comedian turned writer-director Bo Burnham’s portrait of a shy kid desperately — if maladroitly — trying to make friends. Films about middle school aren’t as vicious and cruel as they used to be, perhaps because on the whole, and at the risk of making a massive overgeneralization, middle-school students aren’t as vicious as they used to be. Outside of the shirt-removal request from that one sleazy high-school…

SEPT. 1 Telluride STUDIO Sony RELEASE DATE Nov. 6 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $1.8M CAST Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Sara Paxton TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Award for actor of the year for Jackman Director Jason Reitman’s look at Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign, which was roaring along until it was scuttled by reports of the candidate’s sexual misconduct, is both provocative and somewhat disappointing. Featuring a commanding performance by Hugh Jackman as Hart, The Front Runner is more of an ensemble movie than a Jackman starring vehicle, and it does a fine job of giving texture to the daily challenges of strategy and crisis management. The cast is huge, and yet thanks to sharp writing and swift editing, most of the individual characters have…

SEPT. 10 TIFF STUDIO Annapurna RELEASE DATE Dec. 25 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Teyonah Parris, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Brian Tyree Henry TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Spirit Awards nom for supporting actress for King, best feature and best director; 3 Gotham Awards noms; AFI Top 10; 3 Globe noms, including best picture, drama As he demonstrated to unforgettable effect in Moonlight, writer-director Barry Jenkins is a ravishing visual stylist but also a storyteller of transfixing emotional intensity, capable of layering fathomless depths into his characters, just as often with a silent gaze as with words. Those same gifts are applied to this lustrous adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel. The love between 19-year-old Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne), who narrates the story as she does…

NOV. 15 AFI Fest STUDIO Focus Features RELEASE DATE Dec. 7 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $200K CAST Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Awards for makeup and hairstyling; Critics’ Choice nomination for costume design Beau Willimon hopscotches from a fictional house of cards to a historical game of thrones in Mary Queen of Scots, a spirited feminist take on the oft-dramatized tug-of-war between two 16th century British queens, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I. For nearly 500 years, writers have conveniently ignored the fact that the two cousins never actually met in order to deliver the longed-for dramatic goods, and Willimon is no exception, as he and first-time director Josie Rourke stir the juicy royal rivalry while also playing up their female solidarity in the face of…

JAN. 19 Sundance STUDIO Netflix RELEASE DATE Oct. 5 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, Molly Shannon, Denis O’Hare TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Spirit Awards noms for screenplay and supporting actress for Carter; Gotham Awards nom for screenplay and actress for Hahn In Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life, Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti live through both the despair and the unkillable hope of attempting to have a child, eventually risking more than their marriage on an unconventional path that just might bear fruit. How one feels about their values will color one’s opinion of this sometimes trying but always sensitive picture — the long overdue third feature by Jenkins. Hahn and Giamatti play Rachel and Richard, two 40-something New York writers whose successes have not…

SEPT. 2 Venice STUDIO Annapurna RELEASE DATE Sept. 21 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $3.1M CAST Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rutger Hauer TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Venice Film Festival Golden Lion win for best director; Deauville Film Festival honorary prize The jovially titled The Sisters Brothers would have felt very much at home among the gorgeous, idiosyncratic revisionist Westerns of the early 1970s. This first English-language outing by the ever-adventurous French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) is a connoisseur’s delight, as it’s boisterously acted and detailed down to its last bit of shirt stitching. It features a sterling cast, led by John C. Reilly in the sort of starring role he’s been waiting for his whole career. Audiard, working from the well-regarded 2011…

DEC. 13 STUDIO Annapurna RELEASE DATE Dec. 25 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Six Globe noms including best picture, musical or comedy; nine Critics’ Choice noms; 2 SAG noms There’s smart, there’s wicked smart and then there’s Adam McKay smart — the latter of which is on full display in this scorchingly audacious and dark tragicomedy about the man who became the most powerful and dangerous vice president in the history of the nation. Christian Bale brilliantly morphs into the potato-ish frame of Dick Cheney in a work that represents a nervy high-wire act of a very tall order. With merciless humor, the film relates the odyssey of a thoroughly unpromising young man who slowly but surely…

Crime + Punishment (HULU) DIRECTOR Stephen Maing TOP AWARDS Critics’ Choice nom; IDA win Maing’s unnerving documentary about the New York City Police Department’s harmful, money-grubbing methods spans the years 2014 through late 2017, though the corruption it tackles head-on has long been a staple of an organization that purports to exercise Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect. The film focused on the rise of the NYPD12, a group of men and women in blue (of which Sandy Gonzales is one) who have refused to follow the departmental status quo and are willing to go public (via a class-action lawsuit) to fight against it. — KEITH UHLICH The Dawn Wall (THE ORCHARD) DIRECTORS Josh Lowell, Peter Mortimer TOP AWARDS Critics’ Choice Doc Awards best cinematography nom; SXSW audience award win Specialty-doc makers…

Belgium GIRL DIRECTOR Lukas Dhont TOP AWARDS Cannes FIPRESCI prize, Camera d’Or prize, Queer Palm prize A 15-year-old transgender girl from Belgium starts training to become a ballerina in Girl, which looks terrific, is not afraid to tackle several difficult subjects and features a star-making performance from Victor Polster. Lara (Polster) moves to a new city, where she can study at one of Belgium’s most famous dance academies while she’s also preparing for her transition, since she was born in the body of a boy. Except for an extremely humiliating scene in which Lara is basically reduced to her genitals by some of her female peers, the drama of Girl doesn’t come from any external sources. Instead, Lara’s battles are largely interior ones. — BOYD VAN HOEIJ Colombia BIRDS OF…

Kieran Culkin was fast asleep in his L.A. hotel room when his phone’s incessant ringing woke him at 5:30 a.m. “I saw I had like seven or eight texts and I thought, ‘Damn it, someone died.’” To his relief, it was actually good news: Culkin had been nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as the cocky media mogul’s son Roman Roy in HBO’s satirical summer hit Succession. What does it mean to you to get recognized for this role? I never really think in terms of awards and shit. That stuff isn’t on my mind. But the way that this came to be is the script was sent to me to read for the character of Greg. I didn’t feel like I clicked with that character, but I…

JAN. 20 Sundance STUDIO The Orchard RELEASE DATE June 1 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $2.9M CAST Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Udo Kier, Ann Dowd TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Spirit Awards nom for best editing; British Independent Film Awards win for best editing and nom for best British independent film, best director One of the most esoteric and far-fetched crimes in 21st century annals is recounted in dazzling fashion in American Animals. Borrowing from the best, but at the same time forging a bold style all his own, British filmmaker Bart Layton, known for his highly successful U.S.-set 2012 documentary The Imposter, again turns to the history of bizarre American crimes to relate a story that would be hard to invent. Best buds Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and…

SEPT. 8 TIFF STUDIO Lionsgate RELEASE DATE Dec. 7 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $81K CAST Lucas Hedges, Julia Roberts, Kathryn Newton, Courtney B. Vance Fifteen years after his directing debut, Pieces of April, reminded TIFF attendees (and Sundancers before them) that family-reunion pictures can move us without leaving us feeling guilty, Peter Hedges shows they can scare us as well with Ben Is Back, an addiction drama starring Julia Roberts and the helmer’s son Lucas Hedges. Another in a string of impressive turns by the young actor and one of the best things Roberts has ever done, the film is aware of the weight of its subject but loath to behave like an “important” film — focusing instead on the specificity of one sick young man and the family that…

OCT. 23 STUDIO 20th Century Fox RELEASE DATE Nov. 2 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $596.6M CAST Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, Allen Leech, Mike Myers TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Palm Springs breakthrough performance for Malek; 2 Globe noms; 2 SAG noms, including cast Extra incisors — that’s how a young Freddie Mercury, played with magnetism by Rami Malek, explains his four-octave vocal range to prospective bandmates. The moment arrives early in Bohemian Rhapsody, a film that doesn’t share Mercury’s surfeit of incisors; it has none. Which is not to say this conventional, PG-13 portrait of an unconventional band offers nothing to chew on. Or that it doesn’t acknowledge the tale’s darker facets. It does, ever so lightly, all the while fervently…

MAY 10 Cannes STUDIO Amazon Studios RELEASE DATE Dec. 21 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Camerimage Silver Frog win; Cannes win for best director; National Board of Review win for best foreign-language film Pawel Pawlikowski’s film is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can’t stand to stay apart but also sometimes can’t stand each other either. Achingly romantic but also wryly realistic about the destructive power of eros, the drama spans a decade and a bit from the late 1940s to the early ’60s. It tracks the tempestuous relationship between pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and singer-dancer Zula (Joanna Kulig), two Poles who shuttle back and forth across the Iron Curtain, from Warsaw…

SEPT. 2 Telluride “I haven’t played a character like this. I think there’s an enormous amount of pain in her. There’s incredible anger and rage at the cards she’s been dealt in life and then the choices she’s made with what she’s been given.”NICOLE KIDMAN STUDIO Annapurna RELEASE DATE Dec. 25 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Nicole Kidman, Tatiana Maslany, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Bradley Whitford TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Globe nom for best actress for Kidman The specter and greatness of Michael Mann’s Heat hangs heavily over Karyn Kusama’s grandiose L.A. crime drama, a portentous and pretentious work that seeks to bore down in an almost cosmic way on the corrosive and corrupting nature of the battle between good and evil. The film presents a very game Nicole…

AUG. 29 Venice STUDIO Universal RELEASE DATE Oct. 12 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $100.4M CAST Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Awards for director, composer and editor; Globe nom for supporting actress for Foy and original score There can be no doubt concerning the ultimate outcome of Damien Chazelle’s drama about NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission, which made history by putting astronauts on the moon after a series of trial-and-error attempts. It’s implicit in the title, First Man. So it’s a credit to the filmmakers and to lead actor Ryan Gosling’s thoughtfully internalized performance as Neil Armstrong that this sober, contemplative picture has emotional involvement, visceral tension and, yes, even suspense, in addition to stunning technical craft. This is a…

SEPT. 11 TIFF STUDIO Universal RELEASE DATE Nov. 16 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $20M CAST Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini TOP AWARDS AND NOMS TIFF People’s Choice Award; National Board of Review best film and best actor for Mortensen; AFI Top 10; five Globe noms; 2 SAG noms Green Book is almost a contradiction in terms: a feel-good buddy comedy-drama featuring an elegant black musician and his white driver on tour in the preintegration South of 1962. Arriving in the wake of any number of edgy cinematic takes on racial issues, this Universal release represents a very middle-of-the-road liberal approach to a story that pretty much could have been told anytime since the 1960s. Distinctive and amusing turns by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali make Peter Farrelly’s first solo…

JUNE 11 STUDIO Disney RELEASE DATE June 15 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $1.2B CAST Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huckleberry Milner, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review win for best animated feature; Globe nom for animated feature; 11 Annie noms Boosted by central characters that remain vastly engaging and a deep supply of wit, Incredibles 2 certainly proves worth the wait, even if it hits the target but not the bull’s-eye in quite the way the first one did. Still front and center are the key elements that made Bird’s original creation so captivating: The tested but resilient bonds within the Middle American family with secret superhero lives, the fabulous late-’50s/early ’60s space age-obsessed design scheme, a keenly expressed…

AUG. 31 Telluride STUDIO Fox Searchlight RELEASE DATE Sept. 28 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $11M CAST Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover TOP AWARDS AND NOMS London Film Festival nom for best film; National Board of Review Top 10 Independent Films; Globe nom for Redford If Robert Redford sticks to his pledge that he is now retired from acting, he is going out on a very good note with The Old Man & the Gun. This warm and gritty tale of compulsive real-life bank robber Forrest Tucker, who escaped from prison 16 times over the course of a long career that only ended when he was in his late 70s, is first and foremost a story about a man who loved his work. David Lowery’s adaptation of David…

AUG. 30 Venice STUDIO Netflix RELEASE DATE Dec. 14 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Nancy Garcia Garcia TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Venice Golden Lion; AFI Special Award; LAFCA and NYFCC best film; Globe noms for director, screenplay and foreign-language film Blessed with an exceptionally acute sensitivity to the things of life, Roma is a memory film of unusual beauty that pushes to the foreground what is commonly left in the background. Alfonso Cuaron’s long-aborning, autobiographically inspired drama impressionistically re-creates the titular Mexico City neighborhood circa 1970, but concentrates less on kids than on the sometimes confounding behavior of the adults around them. An immersive bath in some of the most luxuriantly beautiful black-and-white images you’ve ever seen, this is the work of a great…

OCT. 21 London STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics RELEASE DATE Dec. 28 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly TOP AWARDS AND NOMS British Independent Film Awards nom for Coogan; Globe nom for actor in a musical/comedy for Reilly “Genial” is the word for Stan & Ollie. Even though they remained household names for years after their heyday thanks to TV reruns of their many comedy hits, Laurel and Hardy are little known to millennials. But the lovely performances by Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly shine in this warm account of the team’s final live performance tours through the British Isles in the early 1950s. A popular screen team since 1926, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy specialized in slow-burn comedy routines that typically saw the derby-hatted…

SEPT. 9 TIFF STUDIO Fox RELEASE DATE Nov. 16 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $65M CAST Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Three Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards noms; Critics’ Choice ensemble nom What could have remained just a solid crime thriller about bereft women who take matters into their own hands has been electrified by racial, political and gender issues in Widows. Handling a genre piece for the first time, director Steve McQueen ups the ante of nearly every scene, doubling and tripling the import by various means, creating in the process a provocative portrait of life on the troubled South Side of Chicago. Adapted by McQueen…

DR. SEUSS’ THE GRINCH (UNIVERSAL) RELEASE DATE Nov. 9 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $325.4M DIRECTORS Yarrow Cheney, Scott Mosier CAST Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Pharrell Williams TOP AWARDS AND NOMS 3 Annie noms This vibrant, amusing CG animated feature gives the big, mean, green guy a kinder, gentler, more empathetic makeover. But what the production may have lost in a “nasty-wasty skunk” of an antagonist, it gains in an inspired voice cast (led by Cumberbatch) and a dazzlingly merry and bright visual palette. — MICHAEL RECHTSHAFFEN EARLY MAN (LIONSGATE) RELEASE DATE Feb. 16 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $54.6M DIRECTOR Nick Park CAST Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams TOP AWARDS AND NOMS 7 Annie noms About as warming, homey and distinctly British as a mug of hot tea, the latest…

In making On the Basis of Sex, a timely biopic about U.S. Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, director Mimi Leder turned to Academy Award-winning film composer Mychael Danna, who gave the story of the rule breaker an appropriately unconventional score. The music for Focus Features’ Dec. 25 release — which stars Felicity Jones as Ginsburg and Armie Hammer as her husband, attorney Martin Ginsburg — falls into two distinct and “opposing” worlds. The first is “the world of Ruth and Marty and their progressive ideas and how they were as a team,” explains Danna, an Oscar winner for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. “The other world is that conservative world of government, of male-dominated systems and institutions.” The film traces Ginsburg’s life from her law school…

SEPT. 3 Venice STUDIO CBS Films RELEASE DATE Nov. 16 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $1.1M CAST Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Mads Mikkelsen TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Venice Film Festival Green Drop Award win and Volpi Cup for best actor for Willem Dafoe; Golden Globe nom for lead actor for Dafoe Director Julian Schnabel draws on his own experience as a painter for At Eternity’s Gate, an unbridled portrait of the final years in the life of Vincent van Gogh, played by Willem Dafoe. Schnabel draws on letters, documented fact and pure invention to put forward his highly personal take on the intense dialogue van Gogh conducted between the world he painted and his canvas. The film opens in Paris during the late 1880s, with van Gogh an outsider…

FEB. 8 STUDIO Disney RELEASE DATE Feb. 16 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $1.3B CAST Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Award for production design; AFI Top 10 Movie of the Year; three Globe noms; two SAG noms, including cast You’re still in the Marvel universe here, but this entry sweeps you off to a part of it you’ve never seen: a hidden lost world in Africa defined by royal traditions and technological wonders that open up refreshing new dramatic, visual and casting possibilities. Although Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed) sets his framing action in Oakland, California, the film’s heart lies in Africa. In one of the tale’s beguiling inventions, the beclouded…

SEPT. 1 Telluride STUDIO Focus Features RELEASE DATE Nov. 2 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $7M CAST Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Joe Alwyn, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, Flea TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Camerimage best directorial debut nom for Edgerton; Globe noms for lead actor, drama, for Hedges and original song Joel Edgerton’s second film as director stars Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and a uniformly splendid supporting cast in a heart-rending drama based on the 2016 memoir of Garrard Conley, whose parents sent him to gay conversion therapy when he was a teen in the early 2000s. Told in the currently fashionable nonlinear style, the movie intercuts the experiences of Jared (Hedges) at the “Love in Action” conversion center with the experiences in high…

AUG. 30 Venice STUDIO Fox Searchlight RELEASE DATE Nov. 23 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $3.5M CAST Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Gotham Awards special jury award win; Venice grand jury prize win; Camerimage audience award; AFI Top 10; five Globe noms; three SAG noms Yorgos Lanthimos’ fabulously entertaining tragicomedy is a juicy power tangle connecting three women in the royal court of early 18th century England, played by a divine trio — Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz — that bounce off one another with obvious relish. The last frock opera to break the mold to this degree was Sofia Coppola’s underrated Marie Antoinette. The Favourite’s seductive use of natural lighting from the earliest scenes, as the sun streams in…

AUG. 30 Venice STUDIO A24 RELEASE DATE May 18 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $3.4M CAST Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Four Spirit Awards noms; Gotham Awards for screenplay and best actor Hawke; Venice Green Drop Award; National Board of Review screenplay win; AFI Top 10 In this grimly serious tale of a solitary holy man in modern New England whose loneliness, past tragedies and military background draw him toward violence, it’s easy to detect one of writer-director Paul Schrader’s biggest influences, Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest. It’s Schrader’s most effective work as a director since Auto Focus 15 years ago, but it’s a direly bleak affair. Adopting an austerely boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Schrader focuses intently on the regimented routine of pastor…

SEPT. 7 TIFF STUDIO 20th Century Fox RELEASE DATE Oct. 5 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $31.9M CAST Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, KJ Apa, Algee Smith, Lamar Johnson, Issa Rae, Sabrina Carpenter, Common, Anthony Mackie TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Award breakthrough actress for Stenberg A vivid dive into the human cost of police shootings that never feels like a movie of the week, George Tillman Jr.’s adaptation of Angie Thomas’ novel The Hate U Give makes an unlikely girl the sole witness to an unarmed boy’s death and watches her struggle to decide whether to speak up. Not the only current film to address this dilemma, it is one solidly engineered to engage viewers across racial/economic/political spectrums. Amandla Stenberg plays Starr Carter, who spends her life code-switching:…

DEC. 12 STUDIO Disney RELEASE DATE Dec. 19 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI Top 10; four Globe noms including best picture, musical/comedy Belated Hollywood sequels have sunk more often than soared in recent years, but Disney shrugs off those odds with Mary Poppins Returns, an enchanting movie musical that picks up the threads of the studio’s cherished original more than half a century after its 1964 release. Sticking close to the enduring classic’s template while injecting plenty of freshness to give the follow-up its own distinct repro vitality, this lovingly crafted production delivers both nostalgia and novelty. Ideally cast from top to toe, and graced by tuneful songs from Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman that genuflect…

NOV. 8 AFI Fest STUDIO Focus Features RELEASE DATE Dec. 25 BOX OFFICE TO DATE N/A CAST Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Kathy Bates, Sam Waterston, Jack Reynor TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Humanitas Prize nomination In the immediate wake of a hugely successful documentary portrait as well as a hefty just-published biography, the canonization of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues with On the Basis of Sex, an idolatrous but disappointingly prosaic first pass at a dramatic presentation of her pathfinding life. Although Ginsburg herself could hardly feel anything but delighted by the film’s rapturous attitude toward her (it was written by her nephew), this passionate opera fan would no doubt be most flattered if someone were to create a grand opera about her. The film, naturally, is…

MARCH 9 SXSW STUDIO Paramount RELEASE DATE April 6 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $340.7M CAST Emily Blunt, John Krasinski TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Hollywood Film Award for sound; AFI Top 10; National Board of Review Top 10 Films; Globe nom for original score A terrifying thriller with a warm heart, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is a monster-movie allegory for parenting in a world gone very, very wrong. A couple with kids in real life, Krasinski and Emily Blunt play parents in a world where even the slightest noise can lead to sudden, violent death: Training their children to be self-sufficient without making a sound is as unique a challenge. The movie opens with the unnamed family, who sign to each other. The daughter is deaf, and presumably, knowing sign…

AUG. 31 Venice STUDIO Warner Bros. RELEASE DATE Oct. 5 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $370.6M CAST Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Camerimage nom; three National Board of Review wins; AFI Top 10; five Globe noms; 4 SAG noms, including cast There’s a lot to love in Bradley Cooper’s entertaining remake of A Star Is Born, including his convincing portrayal of a hard-drinking country rocker in some electrifying concert scenes, and the captivating debut in a big-screen leading role of Lady Gaga as the singer-songwriter whose career he launches, only to watch it quickly eclipse his own. The first-time director’s grasp of pacing could be improved and the overlong movie can’t quite sustain the energy and charm of its sensational start.…

SEPT. 16 TIFF STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics RELEASE DATE Aug. 17 BOX OFFICE TO DATE $8M CAST Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Max Irons, Elizabeth McGovern TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Spirit Awards nom for female lead for Close; Gotham Awards nom for best actress for Close; Globe nom for actress in a drama for Close Like a bomb ticking away toward detonation, Glenn Close commands the center of The Wife: still, formidable and impossible to look away from. Playing the devoted wife of a celebrated novelist (Jonathan Pryce), and the keeper of his deepest, darkest secret, the actress gives one of the richest, most riveting and complicated performances of her career. Close is so extraordinary — at once charming and inscrutable, alternately warm and withering, tender but full of…

COMEDY Kidding Showtime With its keen self-awareness, exceptional writing and consistently great acting, Kidding — starring a perfectly cast Jim Carrey in his first series-regular role since In Living Color two decades ago — is Showtime’s best series in a long time. The ease with which the show, essentially a modern take on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, works belies the difficulty of its feat. So much could have gone wrong here, but creator, writer and executive producer Dave Holstein and director and executive producer Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) have crafted a winning combination of searing humor and pathos, blending hopefulness and blunt reality in a truly original way. — TIM GOODMAN The Kominsky Method Netflix The Kominsky Method, created by Chuck Lorre, stars acting titans Alan Arkin…