Thursday, January 26, 2017

40+ INDEPENFDENT FILMS FOR 2017


40+ INDEPENDENT FILMS FOR 2017

So, what is there to look forward to in the way of small budget - independent films for 2017? Here are a list of 40 plus possible films currently not on anyone’s noticeable radar that could be anything from good to great this year. The ones highlighted in blue have my personal keen interest.
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The Great Wall (February 17)
The Great Wall is a 2016 epic historical fiction action-adventure monster film directed by Zhang Yimou and written by Tony Gilroy, Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz.  Matt Damon starring.

Get Out (February 24)
Finally, Jordan Peele has made a black horror movie that’s true to black fears: Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (February 24)
The filmmaking debut of actor Macon Blair, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore has a captivating premise: A woman is burglarized, then decides to take the investigation into her own hands. Even better, the woman is played by Melanie Lynskey, an actor capable of plumbing any sort of pathos you ask her to. Throw in Elijah Wood as her neighbor and co-investigator and you’ve got a potential highlight of this year’s Sundance slate, and a few weeks later, your Netflix queue.

Logan (March 3)
Fortunes have been mixed for the solo outings of the furriest fellow on the X-Men’s roster. Hugh Jackman has played Canadian super-curmudgeon Wolverine since 2000, mostly in ensemble pictures, but he got the spotlight in 2009’s execrable X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013’s mostly good The Wolverine. Jackman’s strapping on the claws one last time in director James Mangold’s Logan, set in a dystopian future where mutants are dying out and our hero finds himself pulled in for one last job. Early buzz from the geek community is wildly positive, largely because of Logan’s surprisingly somber, Johnny Cash–scored first trailer.

T2: Trainspotting (March 3)
A sequel that reunites director Danny Boyle with the original cast twenty years later? Sure, that too. First there was an opportunity......then there was a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him: Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie. Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance

Song to Song (March 17)
Formerly known as Weightless, Song to Song marks the fourth feature since 2011 for Terrence Malick, who made just five movies in the three decades between 1973 and 2005. The film follows a pair of romances in the Austin music scene, with a cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, and Michael Fassbender. In this modern love story set against the Austin, Texas music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye (Mara) and BV (Gosling), and music mogul Cook (Fassbender) and the waitress whom he ensnares (Portman) — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.

Wilson (March 24)
Harrelson plays the title role in this adaptation of Daniel Clowes’s 2010 graphic novella of the same name. It follows the travails of a chatty asshole named Wilson as he goes on a rocky and obsessive journey to revisit his past, reuniting with his former wife (Laura Dern) as they undertake an ill-fated quest to retrieve their daughter.

Ghost in the Shell (March 31)
The Major (Scarlett Johansson), a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, leads an elite task force known as Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic's advancements in cyber technology.

The Lost City of Z (April 14)
James Gray is one of our most unsung directors, and also among our unluckiest: His last film, The Immigrant, marked his second (reported) time falling victim to Harvey Weinstein’s whims, and the excellent Two Lovers had the unfortunate fate of being overshadowed by Joaquin Phoenix’s brief “retirement” from acting. But Gray threw his lot in with Amazon this time, and the security and freedom of a deep-pocketed streaming service means that Lost City of Z, adapted from the David Grann book of the same name and starring Charlie Hunnam as British explorer Percy Fawcett, should come untrammeled and unadulterated.

Rock That Body (June 16)
This comedy about a bachelorette party gone wildly wrong has a great cast — Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Zoe Kravitz, and Ilana Glazer — and it's the rare studio comedy starring women that has a female director, too: Broad City standout Lucia Aniello, who co-scripted. Five friends from college, Jess, Pippa, Alice, Frankie and Blair, reunite when they rent a beach house in Miami for a wild bachelorette weekend that goes completely off the rails when a male stripper turns up dead. 

The Beguiled (June 23)
While The Beguiled is technically a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, you can rest assured that it’ll look completely new through the eyes of Sofia Coppola. In addition to the intriguing story — a Union soldier shacks up at an all-girls school during the Civil War, and romance and betrayal predictably follow — Coppola’s movie also has an all-star cast, including Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Colin Farrell.

Dunkirk (July 21)
Wars are not won by evacuations, but the summer box office might be. For his latest film, Christopher Nolan turns his attention to the Battle of Dunkirk, which saw thousands of British troops rescued from certain death in the early days of World War II. By the looks of the film’s trailer, the director’s swapped his usual mind-bending conceits for rah-rah patriotism: With its cavalcade of stars (Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, and Harry Styles) and stiff-upper-lip attitude, Dunkirk seems like one of the few films on this list that could have conceivably come out in 1957.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (July 21)
In the 28th century, special operatives Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) maintain order throughout the universe for the government of the human territories. Under orders from their commander (Clive Owen), the duo embark on a mission to Alpha, an intergalactic city where diverse species share their technology and resources for the betterment of all. The ever-expanding metropolis is also home to sinister forces that jeopardize the future of mankind.

The Dark Tower (July 28)
After a decade of failed attempts to adapt Stephen King’s genre-defying eight-book cycle known as The Dark Tower, Hollywood has finally gotten a film version off the ground. In a perfect bit of casting, with Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black, King’s most famous villain, a charming, utterly malevolent sorcerer who will do battle with a noble cowboy-knight from another plane of reality, played by Idris Elba; if the books are any indication, their tussle will be cosmically baroque.

Baby Driver (August 11)
Talented getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. After meeting the woman (Lily James) of his dreams, he sees a chance to ditch his criminal lifestyle and make a clean break. Coerced into working for a mob boss (Kevin Spacey), Baby must face the music as a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom.

It (September 8)
Is this Stranger Things season 1.5? Because actor Finn Wolfhard (little Mike Wheeler in the Netflix series) leading a group of children who are all being pursued by a malevolent force that takes the shape of a heinous clown sounds … like a very strange kind of thing. Which is to say, this is the perfect time — and the perfect kid — to bring it back.

Blade Runner 2049 (October 6)
On films like Prisoners, Sicario, and Arrival, Denis Villeneuve has proven himself a master of stylish mid-budget genre pictures. Now he's moving up to the big leagues, directing Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford in the mysterious, long-gestating sequel to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

Logan Lucky (October 13)
Steven Soderbergh made headlines a few years ago by announcing he was done with theatrical features, but the break was apparently temporary: This fall, he's returning to cinemas with Logan Lucky, a NASCAR heist comedy starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and a bleach-blonde Daniel Craig. It looks just silly enough to shake the cobwebs out.

God Particle (October 27)
This is the latest mystery project from the J.J. Abrams empire, and it’s being billed as the third installment in the Cloverfield series. 10 Cloverfield Lane made a great bottle movie out of the original’s alien-invasion conceit, and God Particle is moving the premise to space with a group of astronauts — including Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang, Daniel Brühl, Chris O’Dowd, and David Oyelowo — who make a “shocking discovery.”

Red Sparrow (November 10)
This sexy spy tale about a Russian woman getting involved with a CIA operative will be the fourth collaboration between Hollywood’s two Lawrence’s: Francis, the director, and Jennifer, the actress. For the first time since 2011, J. Law is free of any X-Men and Hunger Games entanglements, and this movie will hopefully be a better start for her post-franchise era than Passengers was.

Murder on the Orient Express (November 22)
Kenneth Branagh has directed himself as Henry V, Benedick, and Hamlet, but all of that was just leading up to this: In the role of a lifetime, the dashing Shakespearean thespian will transform himself into Agatha Christie’s diminutive Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. And just like in the classic 1974 version of Orient Express, Branagh’s assembled an all-star cast, including Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Michael Peña, Daisy Ridley, and Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr., with Johnny Depp as the unlucky victim. Whodunnit? 

Annihilation (TBD)
Annihilation is a screen adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed sci-fi–horror novel, and the less you know about the plot before diving in, the better. Suffice it to say that you’ll get to see Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac in a movie about an ill-fated expedition into a place called Area X. One of the virtues of the novel is how much terror it inspires with a near-total dearth of bombast, which suggests that the film could become a taut sci-fi–horror mash-up in the vein of Alien and The Thing..

Call Me by Your Name (TBD)
A Bigger Splash director Luca Guadagnino is the perfect set up for this adaptation of the acclaimed, racy book by André Aciman: He'll bring sun and sex to the story of a love affair between Armie Hammer and the much younger Timothée Chalamet in 1980s Italy.

The Death of Stalin (TBD)
This new one follows the scramble in the Kremlin to fill the power vacuum left by, as you might’ve guessed, the death of Stalin, and with a cast that includes Steve Buscemi and Jeffrey Tambor, it should be a very funny scramble indeed.  

The Discovery (TBD)
The Discovery has the kind of premise you wish you’d thought of, taking place in a world where the existence of an afterlife has been scientifically proven. Within that endlessly interesting concept, Charlie McDowell’s second feature — following his sci-fi relationship movie The One I Love — follows a romance between Jason Segel and Rooney Mara, and throws in Robert Redford for good measure. Netflix wants 2017 to be the year it becomes a movie powerhouse, and The Discovery could play a part in that.

The Glass Castle (TBD)
Aside from being a terrific film, Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 was an oddly prescient introduction to bright young actors like Brie Larson, Rami Malek, Keith Stanfield, and John Gallagher Jr. His follow-up, The Glass Castle, adapted from Jeannette Walls’s memoir, reunites him with Larson and adds Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson to the mix. A young girl is raised in a dysfunctional family constantly on the run from the FBI while living in poverty.

Golden Exits (TBD)
In this indie ensemble from Listen Up Philip’s Alex Ross Perry, two New York families are thrown into upheaval by the arrival of a young foreign girl. The film stars Emily Browning, Ad-Rock, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwartzman, and Chloë Sevigny, which hints that this will probably be the most Brooklyn movie of the year.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (TBD)
This story is about two ordinary teenage boys who go to a party and gradually have their eyes opened to the wonder and terror of the cosmos. The cast — Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Wilson, and the stage-honed Alex Sharp — is solid, though the big question here is how the hell you expand a short story whose charm lies largely in its tightness into a sprawling feature. Luckily, Mitchell is not one to shrink from a challenge.

Ingrid Goes West (TBD)
Aubrey Plaza stars as Ingrid, a lonely follower who decides to move to Los Angeles and live her life in Taylor’s (Elizabeth Olsen) perfectly filtered shadow. What begins as a lesson in social media self-esteem escalates into a dark tale of stalking. There’s a solid chance this will be the Sundanciest movie at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

It Comes at Night (TBD)
A father will stop at nothing to protect his wife and son from a malevolent, mysterious ghost.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (TBD)
While The Lobster introduced most people to the twisted charms of Yorgos Lanthimos, he’s been an indie-film standout since Dogtooth, the Greek director’s bravura 2009 Cannes award winner. But with his new post-Lobster profile, The Killing of a Sacred Deer comes with the highest expectations of Lanthimos’s career to date. Fortunately, it also reteams the director with Lobster star Colin Farrell, playing a surgeon whose life comes apart.

Lady Bird (TBD)
Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut stars Saoirse Ronan as a Northern California teen in her final year of high school, struggling to appreciate her hometown while being desperate to leave it. Gerwig has described it as a love letter to Sacramento, which the universe could certainly use more of.

The Lovers (TBD)
A comedy about a breakup turned makeup seems simple enough, but in the capable hands of Doll & Em director Azazel Jacobs and A24, this modern marriage story — which stars Tracy Letts and Debra Winger as spouses who find themselves becoming smitten as they’re trying to split up — seems like something worth paying attention to.

Molly’s Game (TBD)
Jessica Chastain is the real deal in this Hollywood poker drama Molly’s Game as a former Olympian skier who ends up running the most exclusive high-stakes poker game in the world for eight years. 

Okja (TBD)
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer marked his English-language debut, and it was a fruitful one, with the film turning into a crossover hit after a difficult release process. For his next project, Okja, the South Korean filmmaker co-wrote a script with journalist Jon Ronson about a girl trying to prevent a corporation from kidnapping her best friend, a large animal named Okja. The intriguing premise comes with a great cast, including Snowpiercer standout Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Stephen Yeun, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and a number of Korean actors

Slice (TBD)
Chance the Rapper turns Chance the Actor in this mystery-comedy about a killing spree that targets delivery boys. Written by the rapper’s frequent music-video director Austin Vesely, the film stars Chance as a werewolf with a motorbike. Vesely has said he was inspired by both Magnolia and George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.

Terminal (TBD)
The sexy noir thriller details the story of two hit-men as they embark on a borderline suicide mission.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (TBD)
Martin McDonagh is one of the few who can compete with the Coen Brothers in the dark-comedy department, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri sounds like it could be his best, most Coen-y effort yet: Frances McDormand plays a mother who takes the investigation of her daughter’s murder into her own hands, and Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell are the two cops who complicate matters.

Under the Silver Lake (TBD)
David Robert Mitchell's follow-up to It Follows casts Andrew Garfield as a man plunged into mystery and murder on the east side of Los Angeles. They shot a bunch of this movie on the street outside a Vulture editor’s house last month — it looks super creepy!

Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Movie (TBD)
Paul Thomas Anderson. Daniel Day-Lewis. Pretty frocks. That's all we need to know to buy a ticket to this mystery drama about mid-century fashion, and though we tried to do some detective work to discover who the film might be about, ultimately, all we know is that Anderson will deliver something singular.

Vox Lux (TBD)
An artful story of a child misbehaving in World War I France, with a grandeur and menace straight out of Stanley Kubrick.

Wildlife (TBD)
While Paul Dano may not have proven himself yet as a director, he still managed to cast Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan as the married couple at the center of this film. That should help. Set in 1960, a boy watches his parents’ marriage fall apart after they move to Montana, and his mother falls in love with another man.

Wind River (TBD)
Taylor Sheridan’s rise as a screenwriter feels like it happened overnight: Last year, he had Sicario, directed by the great Denis Villeneuve, and this year he wrote Hell or High Water, helmed by up-and-comer David Mackenzie. But for his next trick, Sheridan’s going to direct his own work. Wind River stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as a hunter and an FBI agent looking for the perpetrators of a murder on a Native American reservation. Sheridan’s scripts have been dynamite in the hands of other people; if he proves the same aptitude for them himself, he could become one of our most exciting new filmmakers.

Split - Review


Split (2017)

Director M. Night Shyamalan early in his career struck cinematic lightening in 1999 with his highly imaginative and provocative mind twisting film ‘Sixth Sense”. Since then he has been on a slow downward slide with films that ranged from being just OK to outright awful on the entertainment spectrum.
In his latest 2017 effort Director Night once again delves into his thematic area of comfort involving a story rooted in the realm of psychological suspense and thrilling intrigue in “Split”, a calculating and intricate intelligent tale that takes us the viewer into the personal space of an individual having chronic mental health issues in the way of an identity disorder.

Early in the film we meet the main character named Kevin (James McAvoy) who seemingly is managing his mental health very well for someone who has been previously clinically diagnosed as having 23 separate personalities. He is helped with his disorder with frequent emails and visits (as Kevin) to his very trusted psychiatrist named Dr. Fletcher.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her during his frequent visits to her office, Kevin’s more dominant personality has surfaced to take control of him which has resulted in the high profile abduction of three teenage girls from a mall, who are being held captive in an underground cell.  

We see kevin is at war with his dominant Dennis personality that is slowly reaching new levels of internal conflict with himself to the point his and the 3 girls wellbeing are intertwined in his  being able to contained this violent side before the fragile psychological walls between them shatter apart.     
REVIEW: All is forgiven for the past 15 years as Director Night delivers a very intelligent, smartly crafted, chilling and emotionally griping effort that will make you squirm in your seat from the artistic buildup of real tension.  Most of this comes from Director Night’s solid direction and solid writing as well as from Actor James McAvoy who singularly offers up a dominating and outstanding performance as we watch him drip by clever and convincingly drip transform his voice, face, manner and emotions into 2 hours of real anxiety. His spontaneous conjuring up of various personalities, sometime even in midsentence, will leave you in almost every frame asking…………. “What is he going to do next?”

Now there is a subplot that I am not so sure was developed as well as it could be nor how it played any real significance in the film’s conclusion. To be honest, I personally did not think this aspect of the story (as shocking as it was) was all that necessary to the film’s main characters involved. Still it was not that big of a distraction and not a deal breaker.
In the end “Split” will have you guessing all the way to its finale. And while the ending fell slightly off just a tad, overall the film is solid throughout.

So, you want your nerves split in two this weekend? Go see “Split”.
3.50 Stars

 

 

      

Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Founder (2017) - Review

The Founder (2017)

“The Founder” directed by John Lee Hancock ("The Blind Side," "Saving Mr. Banks"), features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling milkshake machine salesman from Illinois on a hunch and whim drove across country 1,200 miles to complete a sales order and in turn met brothers Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was so immediately impressed by the brothers' speedy concept system of making their hamburgers and basic food menu that he saw the potential to franchise their restaurant and system nationwide.

The film subsequently details in a very interesting and very meticulous way just how Kroc was able to slowly and calculatingly maneuver himself into a position of power to eventually pull the home grown local company away from the two brothers and create his worldwide billion-dollar empire that we all know.

My Review: Michael Keaton is both fascinating and empowering as Kroc. A man who at times had a warm and endearing personality as well other times was the embodiment of a hyper driven Type-A personality bad guy who at all cost got whatever he wanted, from whom ever he wanted it from, whenever he wanted. His American Dream mantra may have been stated by Keaton in the beginning of the film as “persistence”, but it should also include being despicable and greedy.  Willing to do without any hesitation to dispose and or crush anyone who got in his way from his ambitions.

Running 2 hours, “The Founder” moves with a light whimsical simplicity to its execution, it nevertheless works in this carefully managed movement flawlessly so. It takes great care into covering the most meticulous morsel of background information of explaining exactly how those McDonald’s Golden Arches came to be. So much so it explains Kroc’s vision that today it is as much a part of the American landscape to our culture as does the vast highway systems that allows us to travel great distance never worrying about ever getting something to eat along the way……………….Everyone knows while on the road – any road, there is a McDonalds always somewhere nearby.

While its’ way too early to contemplate, I still truly hope people will remember Keaton’s work here as Kroc as he truly deserves some Best Actor consideration for 2018. But overall the film’s basic story is just about how Ray Kroc goes from being essentially an obscure working out of his car trunk salesman to the sole owner of a global corporate retail fast food empire. The finish result I believe, should you choose to see, it is a very intelligent piece of film viewing as it provides genuine “food for thought” (pardon the pun) of just how all of the “Mc” food and “Mc” language came to be a part of our national lexicon.

4.00 Stars



Saturday, January 21, 2017

Lester's Top Films For 2016

 Lester’s Top Films 2016
1.“Manchester by the Sea”    
2. “Hell or High Water”
3. “La La Land”   
4. “Moonlight”     
5. “Fences”
6. “Elle” (In Subtitles – French)  
7. "10 Cloverfield Lane”
8. “The Edge of Seventeen”
9. “Zootopia” (Animation)            
10. “Arrival”          
11. Patriots Day - Drama – True Story – Mark Wahlberg
12. Florence Foster Jenkins - Drama – Comedy -True Story – Meryl Streep – Hugh Grant
13. Sully - Drama – True Story – Tom Hanks – Laura Linney
14 Star Wars: Rogue One - Action – Space Drama – Felicity Jones – Diego Luna
15. Bleed for This -  Drama – True Story – Miles Teller – Aaron Eckhart
16. Zero Days - Drama – Documentary – The Malware Virus Stuxnet – Global Cyber Espionage
17. The Birth of a Nation - Drama – True Story - Nate Parker
18. Hidden Figures - Drama –Taraji P. Henson - Octavia Spencer – Kevin Costner
19. Silence - Drama – Andrew Garfield - Liam Neeson - Adam Driver
20. Miss Sloane - Drama – Jessica Chastain – Mark Strong – Gugu Mbatha- Raw
21. Our Little Sister - Drama – (Subtitles – Japanese) - Haruka Ayase – Kaho
22. Midnight Special - Drama – Science Fiction – Michael Shannon – Joel Edgerton
23. Eye in the Sky - Drama – Thriller – Helen Mirren
24. Queen of Katwe - Drama – True Story - Lupita Nyong'o - David Oyelowo
25. Captain America: Civil War - Action - Drama – Thriller – Chris Evans – Robert Downey Jr.
26. Don’t Breathe - Action - Drama – Thriller – Stephan Lang
27. Weiner - Drama – Documentary of Congressman Anthony Weiner’s bid for NYC Mayor.
28. Meru  - Drama – Documentary – Climbing one of the world’s most dangerous mountains.
29. Indignation - Drama - Logan Lerman - Sarah Gadon
30. The Accountant - Drama – Thriller – Ben Affleck – Anna Kendrick
31. Denial - Drama – True Story – Rachel Weisz – Tom Wilkinson
32. War Dogs - Drama – True Story – Jonah Hill – Miles Teller – Bradley Cooper
33. The Infiltrator - Drama – Thriller – True Story – Brian Cranston - Diane Kruger
34. Jason Bourne  - Drama – Action Thriller – Matt Damon - Alicia Vikander
35. Star Trek Beyond - Drama – Action Thriller – Chris Pine - Zachary Quinto
36. Touched By Fire - Drama – Katie Holmes
37. Deadpool -  Action – Drama – Comedy – Ryan Reynolds
38. The Meddle - Drama – Romantic – Light Comedy – Susan Sarandon
39. Hacksaw Ridge - Drama – True Story – Andrew Garfield – Vince Vaughn
40. Nocturnal Animals - Drama – Amy Adams – Jake Gyllenhaal – Michael Shannon
41. 45 Years -  Drama – British Setting – Charlotte Rampling
42. Last Days in the Desert - Drama – Ewan McGregor - Ciarán Hinds -
43. The Invitation -  Drama – Psychological Thriller - Logan Marshall-Green
44. Barbershop: The Next Cut - Comedy Drama – Ice Cube - Common – Cedric the Entertainer
45. Finding Dory  -  Animation Comedy Drama - Ellen Lee DeGeneres
46. The Lobster - Drama - Science Fiction & Fantasy - Rachel Weisz – Colin Farrell
47. Lion - Drama – True Story – Dev Patel – Nicole Kidman
48. Kicks - Drama - Jahking Guillory - Christopher Jordan Wallace - Christopher Meyer
49. Equity - Drama - Anna Gunn - James Purefoy - Sarah Megan Thomas - Alysia Reiner
50. Maggie’s Plan - Drama / Comedy – Greta Gerwig – Ethan Hawke – Julianne Moore 
51. The Witch - Drama - Anya Taylor-Joy
52. Love and Friendship - Drama - Kate Beckinsale - Chloë Sevigny
53. Everybody Wants Some - Light Comedy - Blake Jenner
54. Sing Street - Drama – Musical (From Ireland) - Ferdia Walsh-Peelo
55. Green Room - Drama – Thriller (WARNING – GRAPHIC VIOLENCE) – Patrick Stewart
56. Certain Women - Feminist Drama - Laura Dern - Michelle Williams - Lily Gladstone
57. A Bigger Splash - Drama - Tilda Swinton - Matthias Schoenaerts - Ralph Fiennes
58. Jackie - Drama – True Story – Natalie Portman
59. Allied - Drama – Brad Pitt – Marion Cotillard
60. American Honey -  Drama - Riley Keough - Shia LaBeouf - Sasha Lane
61. Bad Moms - Comedy – Mila Kunis - Kristen Bell - Kathryn Hahn - Christina Applegate
62. Deepwater Horizon - Drama –Thriller – True Story – Mark Wahlberg – Kurt Russell
63. Sausage Party- (WARNING - Adult Animation Comedy – Rated R) – Seth Rogan
64. Lights Out - Horror Thriller - Teresa Palmer - Maria Bello - Gabriel Bateman -
65. Son of Saul - Foreign – Subtitles – Unknowns
66. Our Kind of Traitor - Spy Thriller – Ewan McGregor
67. Elvis vs Nixon -  Comedy - True Story – Michael Shannon – Kevin Spacey
68. The Handmaiden - Drama – Japanese – Korean (Subtitles) - Min-hee Kim -
69. Money Monster - Drama – George Clooney – Julia Roberts
70. Born to Be Blue - Drama – True Story – Ethan Hawk






71. Miles Ahead  - Drama – True Story (Miles Davis Story) – Don Cheadle - Ewan McGregor
72. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot - Drama – Comedy – True Story – Tina Fey
73. Loving  - Drama – True Story - Joel Edgerton – Ruth Negga
74. The Magnificent Seven - Drama – Western – Denzel Washington – Ethan Hawke
75. Captain Fantastic  - Drama - Viggo Mortensen - Frank Langella - Kathryn Hahn
76. Passengers - Drama – Sci-Fi – Jennifer Lawrence – Chris Pratt
77. The Light Between the Oceans - Drama - Drama – Michael Fassbender – Alicia Vikander -
78. The Nice Guys  - Drama – Russell Crowe – Ryan Gosling
79. A Hologram for the King - Drama – Tom Hanks
80. Morris From America  - Light Drama – English – German Subtitles – Craig Robinson -
81. Hello, My Name is Doris - Comedy Drama – Sally Fields
82. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Fantasy - Eddie Redmayne
83. The Lady in the Van  - British Drama – True Story – Maggie Smith
84. The Jungle Book - Action Adventure – Ben Kingsley – Bill Murray – Gary Shandling
85. Free State of Jones - Historical Drama – True Story- Matthew McConaughey
86. 20th Century Women - Drama – Light Comedy – Annette Bening – Greta Gerwig 
87. Jane Got a Gun  - Western Drama – Natalie Portman
88. Triple 9  - Thriller - Drama – Woody Harrelson – Casey Affleck – Kate Winslet
89. Outlaws and Angels - Western – Drama - Chad Michael Murray - Francesca Eastwood
90. The Shallows - Action Thriller – Blake Lively – Carcharodon Carcharias
91. Blood Father - Action Thriller – Mel Gibson
92. A Tale of Love and Darkness - Foreign Film Drama (Subtitles – Israel) – Natalie Portman
93. The Secret Life of Pets - Animation – Louis C.K. – Kevin Hart
94. Suicide Squad  - Action Adventure – Will Smith – Margo Robbie – Jared Leto
95. Dr. Strange  - Action Adventure - Benedict Cumberbatch - Tilda Swinton
96. Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Adventure – Light Comedy - (New Zealand) – Sam Neil
97. Ghostbusters 2016 - Comedy – Melissa McCarthy – Kristen Wiig – Leslie Jones
98. Independence Day: Resurgence  - Action Thriller – Jeff Goldblum - Liam Hemsworth
99. The Girl on the Train - Drama – Thriller – Emily Blunt - Justin Theroux
100. Hail Caesar  - Satire – Drama – Comedy – George Clooney – Jonah Hill
101. Jack Reacher - Action Thriller – Tom Cruise – Cobie Smulders
102. Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice - Action -  Drama – Ben Affleck – Henry Cavill
103. Billy Lynn’s Long Half-time Walk  - Drama - Joe Alwyn – Vin Diesel
104. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates - Comedy - Zac Efron – Anna Kendrick
105. Keanu  - Comedy - Keegan-Michael Key - Jordan Peele - Tiffany Haddish