Lost River

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than it’s safe to say that Ryan Gosling thinks the world of Nicolas Winding Refn and Derek Cianfrance.

Prisoners

When Keller Dover’s daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfRckdHq–c

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Director: Denis Villeneuve

Writer[s]: Aaron Guzikowski

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano

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Prisoners is a cool combination of cast and crew all with recent interesting performances and creations. Jackman coming off arguably his biggest back to back movies ever, Les Miserables and The Wolverine, and now he returns to a real movie role, nothing iconic; Gyllenhaal returning to the screen as a detective after his most extensively studied role as an LA police officer in End of Watch; cinematographer Roger Deakins‘ first film after Skyfall, which changed my movie watching world in terms of camera work, framing, and general cinematography. All in all, I have been waiting to see this movie for a while, and expectations and critics’ reviews are high.

Gravity

A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in space.

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Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Writer[s]: Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón

Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

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Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men might be the best visually directed movie I have ever seen. This conventionally shot film has held that title [according to me] for seven years of cinema, including the reinvention and revolution of 3D production. Not included in those seven years since Children of Men is another film written and directed by Cuarón. In that time, I have been patiently waiting for the return of the master. And then, in 2010, it was released that he was working on a movie based in space. Alfonso Cuarón and outer-space. That’s all I needed to hear.

Only God Forgives

Julian, a drug-smuggler thriving in Bangkok’s criminal underworld, sees his life get even more complicated when his mother compels him to find and kill whoever is responsible for his brother’s recent death.

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Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer[s]: Nicolas Winding Refn

Starring: Ryan Golsing, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm

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Drive might have been my favorite movie of 2011. The visual style and colors, the visual story telling and lack of dialogue, the surprising and shocking violence; it all really worked for me, and many others. Globally, audiences were split between love and hate for the film. Now the time has finally come for the follow up to the indie hit, and it features the same lead actor and same stylistic production, but this is undoubtedly not Drive 2.0. This film is it’s own, weird, disturbing, beautiful self.

Stoker

After India’s father dies, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her unstable mother. She comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives and becomes increasingly infatuated with him.

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Director: Chan-wook Park

Writer[s]: Wentworth Miller, Erin Cressida Wilson (contributing writer)

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode

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Stoker caught my attention with two different facts: this is director Chan-wook Park’s first English film. If you don’t know him, he is a pretty prolific and successful writer/director in Korea, and created what I think is one of the top 10 most influential films of this decade, Oldboy. I’d have to warn that it is an intense film with some mind-altering events, but it is also cinematic gold. The other fact: this film was written by Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller, and it’s his first screenplay. To attract a director like Park, the screenplay has to be pretty awesome.