Our
looking-forward to post for 2015 turned out, as it is every year, to be
really really bad. Ultimately there's just a bunch of crap that comes out all the time in an unending cycle of meaningless cultural consumption and regurgitation. So here's to 2016!! I'm sure this time around I'll be wrong and I'll actually enjoy some of these really great movies! Here we go, in the esteemable order by which I thought of them - the Top Movies We Want to See in 2016
Deadpool - February 12, 2016
Deadpool leads off what could possibly be the greatest February ever at the cinema. There are so many promises here. Ryan Reynolds, despite being a seemingly huge star, has never actually had a
really promising box office hit under his belt.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) is his highest-grossing film, although that can hardly be attributed to him. The great irony has always been that Ryan Reynolds is obviously the perfect casting for Wade Wilson but the horrible bunging of the character within the rushed and clunky script is the primary reason that movie is
hated by every fan everywhere. Couple that with
Green Lantern (2011) and
Blade: Trinity (2004) and Reynolds has hit the terrible comic book movie trifecta.
Deadpool has promised to rectify all of that and stay true to a character whose mix of meta and dark humour is tricky to pin down. I'm game.
Trailer
Hail, Caesar! - February 5, 2016
Hail, Caesar! leads off what could possibly be the greatest February ever at the cinema. That's right. The words "Most Coen Bros-esque Coen Bros movie ever" gets thrown around a lot, but
Hail, Caesar! could take the title. After an assault year after year of both maudlin and cheeky hits, the Coens have actually been surprisingly quiet. They followed up their highest-grossing film ever,
True Grit (2010) with the far more intimate
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and then nothing since. Three years is an eternity in Coen time, and
Hail, Caesar! promises a return to goofy Coens, not seen since the madcap
Burn After Reading (2008). And how is Channing Tatum suddenly working with every great modern working director?
Trailer
X-Men: Apocalypse - May 27, 2016
The X-Men franchise has benefited from being one of the forerunners of the superhero genre, which, now eight films in, can give us a ton of different flavors, from
period pieces to
crossover flicks, to this, which seems to get the jump on Marvel's Thanos by a few years. It's also focused on relishing in camp instead of avoiding it like other current properties, which is boosted by really strong production design that doesn't look nearly as ridiculous as it could - which you'll recall the first
X-Men (2000) made fun of. We've come so far. I'm totally on board with X-Men, particularly after
Days of Future Past (2014), which tended to get me in all kinds of ways.
Apocalypse looks like the culmination of all of Bryan Singer's efforts in this franchise, seemingly still seeking redemption after the horrible films he wasn't involved in making. No Hugh Jackman no problem.
Trailer
Suicide Squad - August 5, 2016
Listen, I'm sorry. I shit on superhero movies all the time and lament the death of the original action film, but it's really hard as the genre keeps evolving, and 2016 could end up being a pivotal year.
Suicide Squad is by far the more interesting effort by DC/Warner Bros this year, with a stellar trailer that hasn't been
ruined by subsequent terrible ones. The cast is a dream, the premise promises some real stakes along with the inherent fact that this doesn't promise a sequel as much as a building block to the shared DC universe. It's anything but cookie-cutter, a stranger, darker team-up movie that suggests less commercial marketability and toys with expectations. As long as the focus stays on Margot Robbie like I suspect it might, the fun is all here.
Trailer
Dr. Strange - November 4, 2016
 |
It's actually required that all Marvel
heroes sport goatees. |
Sorry, sorry. But 2016 really is a year filled with these really weird and interesting superhero movies! I feel like there's a thing, which this website also partakes, where everyone shits on Marvel movies for being the exact same thing each time, following a similar design aesthetic, plot structure, and having really weak non-Loki villains (they're almost always mirror images of the heroes - an often intriguing prospect that promotes dualism, but not after Iron Monger, Abomination, Whiplash, Winter Soldier, Yellowjacket, and even Red Skull, who was made by a corruption of the same Super Serum as Captain America in the MCU). That doesn't bare that well for Baron Mordo, who is totally a green-cape wearing version of Dr. Strange. What I'd like to get at, though, is just how good
Winter Soldier (2014) and
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) were, and how even
Ant-Man really tried to be a different sort of genre. These are a political thriller, space opera, and heist movie as much as superhero films. When Marvel can zero in on something specific, rather than broad (like
Age of Ultron [2015]), they tend to have a lot of success. The prospect of
Dr. Strange's genre defies convention. What genre is
From Beyond (1986)? The cast is a complete dream, rivaling
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) with Oscar-winners. Okay, looking that up now,
TDKR had five Oscar winners. I did not realise that.
Dr. Strange boasts only Tilda Swinton. Still, Cumbebatch and Ejiofor are both very recent nominees. It'll be good. Probably.
The Nice Guys - May 20, 2016
The release date in the middle of blockbuster season is sort of interesting, but this also promises to be one of the coolest films of the year. There is a weird trend of old 2000s action heroes suddenly popping up as these off the grid heroes for hire dudes (see also:
The Equalizer (2014) and
Jack Reacher (2012)], but
The Nice Guys hints at a wayyy funner attitude along with Ryan Gosling bumbling around. This is also somehow only the third film directed by Shane Black, who of course wrote every good 80s and 90s buddy cop movie ever, and coming off of
Iron Man 3 (2013) is a substantial step forward. Damn, even when talking about cool action comedies we're still stuck on superheroes. But I'm a total Shane Black bro, particularly
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), so we're good here.
Trailer
Zootopia - March 4, 2016
I could have cared less about
Zootopia up until a few weeks ago. The concept never seemed great and the production stills were unimpressive. Then
this trailer dropped, which is actually only a single scene, which is one of my favourite kinds of promotional material. It hopefully captures the attitude and tone of the film, which would be exceptional. It's a truly fun for all ages kind of flick, seemingly broader than
Frozen (2013) or
Wreck-It-Ralph (2012), which is actually a really weird thing to type. Looking at more and more of this film, including the full-length trailer, which really showcases a more unique application of animals-doing-people things in zoographically accurate proportion, which looks really entertaining. The voice acting is spot-on and suddenly Disney is looking more prolific than Pixar.
Trailer
Passengers - December 21, 2016
There's not much to know about this one, other than it's Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in a sci-fi
directed by the guy who did The Imitation Game (2014) and written by the
non-Lindelof guy who wrote Prometheus (2012). The basic premise is that they're all on a fun 90-year cryosleep journey to another planet, but Pratt wakes up early. Rather than get old alone he wakes up J-Law. I'm sure everything goes well from there. Without a lot of stills or a trailer we're obviously just hooked on the talnt involved right now and the premise is a cute way to throw two of the biggest rising stars in the world together right now.
The Bad Batch - TBA, 2016
There's also not a lot to go on with this one, including even a release date, but I'm all in with this one, possibly more than any other film. I named Ana Lily Amirpour's
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
the best movie I saw last year, and I'm eagerly awaiting her next genre blend in this, her sophomore effort. She described her own first film as the first Iranian vampire spaghetti western, and has likewise reportedly named this "
Road Warrior meets
Pretty in Pink with a dope soundtrack." It's supposedly an auspicious Texan post-apocalyptic cannibal love story starring Jason Mamoa, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, and Diego Luna. Has there been a better cast ever in a movie? Maybe
Dr. Strange.
More Shit:
Here's a big long list of other junk I'll probably see:
Ghostbusters - I wrote about
this a year ago!
Rogue One - The more I think about it, the more interested I am in a Star Wars film that isn't beholden to making a few billion dollars, allowed room to breathe without the pressure of the mythology on its back
Sausage Party - At this point I'm into everything these guys do
The Girl on the Train - the pressure's on to be better than the book, like all movies are
Neighbors 2 - Comedy sequels almost always suck, can this one suck less?
Zoolander No. 2 - Ditto. But that
trailer totally sold me
Silence - Scorsese bends back 180 from
The Wolf of Wall Street while Liam Neeson returns to acting
Lost City of Z - yeah, sounds cool. Gotta love jungle adventures.
Story of Your Life - Banking on Dennis Villeneuve's inability to make a shitty picture
High-Rise - weird mind-bending shit starring Tom Hiddleston who is totally ready to break-out even though I would have expected him to ride his Loki-ness to projects like this and
I Saw the Light like three years ago.
Eddie the Eagle - I haven't seen a
trailer for a funner sports movie....ever?
Neon Demon - Nicholas Winding Refn seems to depart his intense realism for something a bit more mystical - I'm down.
Yoga Hosers - I actually really liked Tusk (2014) and all it's supreme weirdness. I don't understand how Kevin Smith keeps casually making these movies and running with seemingly any inspiration that strikes him, but his and Johnny Depp's daughters were totally the best part, so this ought to be fun.
What do you want to see next this year? This crap or some other junk? Let us know below!
