Book of Henry
Naomi Watts raises two boys – one (Room’s Jacob Tremblay) pretty average, the other, Henry (her St Vincent co-star Jaeden Lieberher), a child genius. Henry has a crush on the daughter of the police commissioner and writes down a plan to save her from harm, which Watts decides to enact. Sounds cutesy, even creepy, but we have a good feeling about this one.
Clash
A brilliant docudrama from Mohamed Diab, which premiered at Cannes last year and unfolds inside an Egyptian police van in 2013 as post-revolution tensions boil over. It’s taken a while to get a UK release – but it’s worth it.
The Dinner
Carnage meets Caché in this claustrophobic drama about two couples who discuss what to do when their sons are shown, unidentified, to have committed a crime on the news. Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall are the diners; Chloe Sevigny is also in the mix. Director Oren Moverman made underpraised homelessness drama Time Out of Mind with Gere a couple of years ago; perhaps this film – which premieres at Berlin in February – can gain more traction.
Gifted
Meet child genius number two on our list: the cute blonde niece of lovely Chris Evans, scuzzing up a little with beard here and taking over parental duties following the death of his sister. He wants her to stay in Jenny Slate’s lovely regular school; Lindsey Duncan (the child’s grandmother) has more ambitious designs for her. Octavia Spencer dishes out some hard truths to all.
The Mountain Between Us
Kate Winslet and Idris Elba take the leads as a newly engaged writer and – handily – surgeon who survive a brutal plane crash in a snowy wilderness. Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, twice Oscar nominated, takes the reins.
The Party
More carnage, this time Sally Potter style, as Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Mortimer and Cillian Murphy endure an awful knees-up. Not a lot is known of quite why, but Potter has called it “a comedy wrapped around a tragedy,” which “starts as a celebration and ends with blood on the floor”. Like The Dinner, it premieres in Berlin.
The Shack
More words of wisdom from Octavia Spencer, this time as God in the much-ballyhooed adaptation of self-published religious sensation The Shack. Sam Worthington is the man grieving his daughter, who finds a letter which may or may not tell him where her remains are buried, as well as explaining the meaning of suffering.
Thank You for Your Service
This is an Amy Schumer movie, but it’s not a lost comedy searching for a genre. It’s a drama about how post-traumatic stress disorder affects three soldiers returning from Iraq and trying to readjust to civilian life. Schumer stars alongside Miles Teller and Haley Bennett.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Five years since Seven Psychopaths, In Bruges director Martin McDonagh returns with the Fargo-esque story of a woman (Frances McDormand) who wages war against her local police force following the death of her daughter. Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell head up the dubious cops; Abbie Cornish is the wife of the former, while Peter Dinklage also has a part to play.
