Watch The Full Wonderstruck (2017) The Movie

The 5. 0 Most Anticipated American Films of 2. The 2. 01. 7 Sundance Film Festival is just a few days away, and with it begins a new cycle of stressing out about all of the movies that I haven’t been able to see yet. Hollywood operates on a very fixed theatrical schedule — leftovers dumped wholesale at the beginning of the year (I’m looking at you, Bye Bye Man), CGI franchises dominating the summer calendar, and Oscar bait rolling out from October on. Meanwhile, the landscape for smaller- budget but more adventurous films here in the States has developed its own windowing: the majority of American art films will premiere at festivals between now and May.

First, Sundance will set the tone with an onslaught of new work, and then Rotterdam, Berlin, True/False, SXSW, Tribeca, and the Maryland Film Festival will follow with (even) less commercial stuff that slipped through the Sundance programming cracks. From there, many great American films will undoubtedly continue to premiere as the year draws on.

But these films will grow bigger in budget and scope. Starting in May, festivals like Cannes and Toronto will offer a smattering of new work from our most beloved and established American auteurs, the filmmakers who have enough established cred to make personal films at big budgets. This list culls together the American films that I’m most fervently anticipating in 2. I’m also looking forward to catching a number of 2.

I’ve not yet had a chance to see (including James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch, Theo Anthony’s Ratfilm, and Xander Robin’s Are We Not Cats), but for the sake of continuity I’m only including films here that have not yet premiered anywhere. The ones that remain completely open books. There are also undoubtedly many other gems out there that I’ve not yet heard of, waiting to be discovered in some lucky festival programmer’s Vimeo queue. I look forward to chasing as many of these hidden gems down as possible with a truly nerdy fervor. But for now, here are 5. I have heard of, that I cannot wait to see.

Todd Haynes is back with his past muse Julianne Moore in 'Wonderstruck,' but it’s her junior co-stars who hold the spotlight in this enthralling adaptation of Brian.

Descriptions are taken from various published sources and are linked. After Louie (Vincent Gagliostro)What It’s About: “A disillusioned artist and former AIDS activist whose outlook changes after an encounter with a younger man.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Alan Cumming and Zachary Booth star in this debut feature from Vincent Gagliostro, an original member of ACT UP (whose archival cinematography was featured in the documentary How to Survive a Plague). Larry Kramer has praised the screenplay, writing, my first impression was, . La Barracuda (Jason Cortlund & Julia Halperin)What It’s About: “A strange woman comes to Texas to meet her half- sister and stake a claim to the family music legacy- one way or another.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Cortlund & Halperin’s Rotterdam- premiering debut feature, Now, Forager, was a restrained and hypnotic ethnographic portrait of two mushroom farmers. Their Texas- based follow- up sounds as if they’re headed into darker, more overtly dramatic territory.

James Gourley/REX/Shutterstock. Many players at Cannes are unhappy that Netflix is messing around in the movie business, but the streaming giant has installed itself. Amazon Studios + Roadside Attractions have debuted the first teaser trailer for the new film from Todd Haynes, titled Wonderstruck, which. Cannes 2017 review: Wonderstruck is a tender study of three children yearning to find their place. The 2017 Sundance Film Festival is just a few days away, and with it begins a new cycle of stressing out about all of the movies that I haven’t been able to see.

For Akheem (Jeremy Levine and Landon Van Soest)What It’s About: “Beginning one year before the fatal police shooting of a Black teenager in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, For Ahkeem is the coming- of- age story of Daje Shelton, a Black 1. North St. She fights for her future as she is placed in an alternative high school and navigates the marginalized neighborhoods, biased criminal justice policies and economic devastation that have set up many Black youth like her to fail.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Levine and Van Soest have a track record for stirring and cinematic character- based documentaries, and this sounds like it could be their most memorable film yet. Has received funding from many of our country’s top granting organizations. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Project (Kathryn Bigelow) What It’s About: “A crime drama set against the backdrop of Detroit’s devastating riots that took place over five haunting summer days in 1. Download Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (2017) Online. Source)Why It’s Included: It’s taken Bigelow nearly a decade to follow up her controversial Oscar winner Zero Dark Thirty.

This new project sounds sprawling and gritty, boasts a promising ensemble cast, and, with funding coming from Annapurna rather than the studios, could turn out to be an unusually adventurous Oscar contender. Easy Living (Adam Keleman)What It’s About: “Sherry, a self- destructive makeup saleswoman, hopes a new man and business venture will provide her a fresh start.

After her plans are foiled, she takes control of her life in a dramatic turn of events.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Keleman’s short film Long Days was a rich, evocative, cinematic mood piece (with vampires!). His feature sounds like a wonderful, small- scale character drama. Menashe (Josh Weinstein)What It’s About: “A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Weinstein’s narrative feature debut sounds like one of the most unique titles in Sundance’s NEXT section, where many of the year’s best American indies are found each January. Super Dark Times (Kevin Phillips)What It’s About: “A horrible accident causes a tectonic shift between high school best friends Zach and Josh, spiraling them in different directions.

Set in 1. 99. 0’s suburbia, Super Dark Times is a thriller that explores the twilight zone between adolescence and adulthood, lust and love, bravery and fear, good and evil.” (Source)Why It’s Included: This debut is the sole U. S. Their track record for discovering hidden gems is near flawless, as past years have debuted films like The Love Witch, L for Leisure and Tired Moonlight. Song to Song (Terence Malick)What It’s About: “The story follows two entangled couples — a pair of struggling songwriters Faye and BV, a music mogul, and the waitress whom he ensnares — as they chase success through a rock . We’ll find out how this drama set against the Austin music scene fares in March when Song to Song opens SXSW. Patti Cake$ (Geremy Jasper)What It’s About: “Straight out of Jersey comes Patricia Dombrowski, a.

Killa P, a. k. a. Patti Cake$, an aspiring rapper fighting through a world of strip malls and strip clubs on an unlikely quest for glory.” (Source)Why It’s Included: The latest from Court 1. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Contemporary Color) has very good buzz going into its Sundance Competition premiere. It sounds Korine- inspired and wild. Drifting Towards the Crescent (Laura Stewart)What It’s About: “As the Mississippi River flows past the town of Keokuk, Iowa, towards Hannibal, Missouri, the birthplace of Mark Twain, an antebellum history languishes in the air.

Drifting Towards the Crescent captures the place on the Mississippi River where the North begins to drift into the South. As the diesel barges ply the waters, the river no longer needs the towns, but the towns still need the river.” (Source)Why It’s Included: Another Rotterdam Bright Futures selection, this one an experimental documentary that, based on the the teaser trailer, shimmers with ephemeral beauty. My Life is a Soundtrack (Margarita Jimeno)What It’s About: “A renowned artist who undergoes a spiritual awakening after a failed show.” (Source)Why It’s Included: This hybrid narrative/documentary film won the 2. US in Progress award at the Champs- Elys. The Departure (Lana Wilson)What It’s About: “Ittetsu Nemoto is not your typical Buddhist priest. A former punk rocker who used to work at a Tokyo Mc.

Donald’s, he loves Prince, his motorcycle, and dancing all night at clubs. He also has become famous in Japan for his extraordinary success in inspiring suicidal men and women to keep on living. But when a health crisis puts Nemoto at serious risk, can he live by the same advice he gives out?” (Source)Why It’s Included: Director Lana Wilson’s Chicken & Egg- supported followup to her stirring documentary After Tiller sounds like a heart- wrenching and poetic character study.

Cannes diary: Closing thoughts on a so- so festival but a satisfying set of winners. At the 7. 0th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, recently concluded on May 2. L. A. Times film critic Justin Chang took in the scene and all the movies he could watch on very little sleep. In this, his Cannes diary, he gives us an up- close view of one of the world’s most glamorous events, a mecca for film lovers. DAY 1 . And rest assured, this year there will be no indignant screed against their decisions from yours truly. What’s remarkable about this festival is that, even with a much less impressive competition than last year’s, the jury managed to come up with a much more discerning and satisfying set of winners. Not entirely satisfying, of course: My personal choice for the Palme d’Or would probably have been “Loveless,” followed closely by “A Gentle Creature” (what can I say, it’s been a good year for devastating portraits of modern- day Russia), and I regret that the Safdie brothers and Robert Pattinson won nothing for their sensationally entertaining “Good Time.”But in the end, I can't fault a jury for honoring a film as provocative as “The Square,” as moving as “1.

Beats Per Minute” or as stylishly single- minded as “You Were Never Really Here.” A title that more or less captures what it would probably feel like to be in Cannes now — once more a sleepy beachside town, with the red carpets rolled up and the metal detectors stowed away for another year. Until then .. The charge of excitement delivered last year by the likes of “Toni Erdmann,” “Elle,” “Paterson,” “The Handmaiden,” “American Honey,” “Aquarius” and “Personal Shopper” — bold, confident visions all, regardless of what you may think of them individually — has struggled to reproduce itself here. And yet — as always, a blanket sense of disappointment doesn’t tell the whole story. The highs may not have been stratospheric this year, but there have been highs nonetheless. One of them, for me, is the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s “A Gentle Creature” (“Krotkoya”), which is unequivocally one of the toughest, darkest and longest movies playing in competition.

Rebuffed at her local post office, she decides to travel to the prison and deliver the parcel herself — a journey that will lead her through her a Kafka- esque bureaucratic nightmare and into the very heart of Putin’s Russia, a place where violent absurdity and everyday inhumanity reign. Loznitsa, making his third appearance in the Cannes competition (after “My Joy” and “In the Fog”), uses richly textured visuals and sustained long shots to usher us alongside this “gentle creature” down the rabbit- hole. That allusion comes from the story itself, whose surreal climax plays like something out of “Alice in Wonderland,” at least until — well, I’ll leave that horror for you to discover. With its single most challenging offering out of the way, the competition has seemed to speed toward the finish with several brisk, light- footed genre movies that have been, if not a series of unmitigated delights, then at least something of a relief.

That’s not unusual given the track record of Thierry Fr. The 2. 00. 4 selection, one of the first under his reign, included the now- infamous “Oldboy,” whose director, Park Chan- wook, sits on this year’s competition jury. Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie in the film . The action is so brisk and kinetic that you may not notice the social insights that the Safdies have so shrewdly tucked into the margins of their story: Nick and Connie may have had a rough upbringing, but the Safdies are not so sympathetic that they overlook their characters’ undeniable privilege and the even more marginalized people they exploit along the way.

A2. 4 is releasing “Good Time” in U. S. Adapted from a Jonathan Ames novella, the movie stars a heavily bearded Joaquin Phoenix as a severely troubled, hammer- wielding assassin whose latest job will either kill him or give him a reason to keep living. What follows is a kind of 2. Taxi Driver” that morphs, by the end, into a stealth art- house remake of “Logan” — a deranged odyssey across a wide- ranging New York hellscape that combines sleek formal elegance, fatalistic humor, unsparing violence and another gorgeously unnerving score by Jonny Greenwood.

Ramsay’s unwillingness to compromise artistically has often run afoul of a bottom- line- minded industry, which explains why “You Were Never Really Here” is only her fourth film in the 1. Cannes- premiered debut feature, “Ratcatcher.” Her return seals her standing as one of our most fearless and forceful filmmakers, if not one as prolific as she deserves to be. Fitting the Hobbesian criteria of nasty, brutish and short — it’s been ruthlessly whittled down from an anticipated 9. Ramsay’s film brought the competition to an electrifying but polarizing close. Some declared it precisely the tour de force the festival had been waiting for; others stayed behind to loudly boo the film as the lights came up, perhaps repelled by its brutal nihilism or its placement in the competition.

I may be crediting them with too much thoughtfulness: It’s entirely possible that they’re verbally incontinent morons who should be banned from ever attending the Cannes Film Festival again. As thoughts turn toward the jury prizes that will be handed out on Sunday, no film has stood out as a clear frontrunner for the Palme d’Or. If forced to hazard a guess, I would reiterate my suspicion that Robin Campillo’s AIDS- activist drama “1. Beats Per Minute,” one of the competition’s most roundly satisfying emotional experiences, stands the best chance. Meanwhile, Jacques Doillon’s suffocatingly dull and didactic artist biopic “Rodin” must surely rank near the bottom of the list for everyone who saw it. Slow, taxing films are par for the course at a major international film festival, but this inexplicable competition entry is the rare experience to which watching clay dry would be infinitely preferable.

J. Full of bright primary colors, punny chapter breaks, all manner of meta- winks and other strenuous bits of Godardian business, the movie draws an unambiguous parallel between the disintegration of their relationship and the loss of Godard’s filmmaking mojo as he is swallowed whole by his own surly, disagreeable post- ’6. Redoubtable’s” critical take on Godard threatened to divide audiences between his fiercest acolytes and those who are convinced he hasn’t made anything watchable since 1.

Weekend” (for what it’s worth, I fall into neither category). Watch Free The Revenant (2015). Still, I can’t imagine even the most diehard Godardian working up enough passion to loathe this self- satisfied pastiche, which has none of the effervescence or stylistic dazzle of Hazanavicius’ Oscar- winning “The Artist.”Far more deliriously entertaining among the French titles in competition was Fran. Not because it isn’t good, but because it’s exactly the sort of exuberantly disreputable pleasure that could not have been more of a tonic at the end of a long competition.

The movie stars Marine Vacth (also in Ozon’s “Young and Beautiful”) as a woman who falls for her therapist (J. It also features what may be one of the greatest opening shots in the history of cinema, one that drew gasps, laughs and claps from the audience with its speculum’s- eye view of its central character.

I won’t say more, but the non- spoiler- averse among you should check out Kyle Buchanan’s excellent deep dive over at Vulture. What of the other awards? My personal jury of one would give Pattinson the best actor prize for “Good Time,” and given his impassioned social- media fan base, I frankly pity the man who wins if he doesn’t. Still, he does have strong competition from Claes Bang, the talented Danish discovery who stars in “The Square,” and Nahuel P. Ironically in the year that the president of the jury is none other than Pedro Almod.

A tense, methodical courtroom drama ensues, followed by a more personal search for justice.