Winner of 6 Academy Awards including Best Director for writer/director Damien Chazelle, and winner of a record breaking 7 Golden Globes Awards, La La Land is more than the most acclaimed movie of the year - It's a cinematic treasure for the ages that you'll fall in love with again and again. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling star as Mia and Sebastian, an actress and jazz musician pursuing their Hollywood dreams - and finding each other - in a vibrant celebration of hope, dreams, and love.
A dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of a series of historic events, Bridge of Spies is "absolutely brilliant and totally riveting" (Bill Zwecker, Chicago Dun-Times). James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on a nearly impossible mission to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot. High stakes and suspense power a story that captures the essence of a man who risked everything, vividly bringing his personal journey to life.
From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars stand-alone films Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empires ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission.
As with the great John Ford (Young Mr. Lincoln) before him, it would be out of character for Steven Spielberg to construct a conventional, cradle-to-grave portrait of a historical figure. In drawing from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the director instead depicts a career-defining moment in the career of Abraham Lincoln (an uncharacteristically restrained Daniel Day-Lewis). With the Civil War raging, and the death toll rising, the president focuses his energies on passage of the 13th Amendment.
Director Paul Greengrass has made a career out of not holding back, with a series of films (including United 93 and The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum) that forcibly propel the audience out of bystander mode and into a visceral duck-and-cover reaction. (If he were a history teacher, his students would constantly be picking old gum out of their hair.) Captain Phillips, Greengrass's collaboration with a rarely better Tom Hanks, shows the filmmaker further refining his style, telling a true-life story of heroism with an immediacy that puts most movies based on fact out to staid pasture.
I was born under unusual circumstances.' And so begins The Curious Case of Benjamin Button adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man like any of us who is unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918 into the 21st century following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Taraji P.
There are only so many filmmakers fearless or foolhardy enough to tackle a challenging novel, like Yann Martel's Life of Pi, but adaptation specialist Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) was well positioned to take it on. As a structuring device, he uses an interview between a journalist (Rafe Spall) and Pi Patel (The Namesake's Irrfan Khan), a Montreal immigrant with an unusual back story.
Daniel Craig is back as James Bond 007 in SKYFALL, the 23rd installment of the longest-running film franchise in history. In SKYFALL, Bond's loyalty to M (Judi Dench) is tested as her past returns to haunt her. 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost. When Bond's latest assignment goes gravely wrong and agents around the world are exposed, MI6 is attacked forcing M to relocate the agency. These events cause her authority and position to be challenged by Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the new Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
The future begins in J.J. Abrams' smash hit Star Trek. When Romulan Nero comes from the future to take revenge on the Federation, rivals Kirk and Spock must work together to stop him from destroying everything they know. On a thrilling journey filled with incredible action, the U.S.S. Enterprise will voyage through unimaginable danger in one of the biggest and best reviewed movies of the year.
