Entertainment reporter(wp/bbc):
1.Captain Marvel
Aliens! Action! Mystery Parentage! Brie Larson stars as Marvel’s latest superhero, Carol Danvers, who discovers her powers as Captain Marvel. Set in the 1990s, the story has Danvers searching for her true identity while trying to save the Earth during a war between alien races. If she can’t juggle it all, who can? Danvers grew up among the Krees, noble warriors whose line includes Annette Bening. Jude Law marches through the trailer, in a role he has been forbidden to talk about, and Samuel L Jackson appears as Avengers stalwart Nick Fury. Avengers: Endgame may get more pre-release attention next year, but Captain Marvel might be the fresher film in the franchise. (Credit: Marvel Studios)
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2.Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino’s films always make noise. This one has a double dose of movie stardom plus extra-chilling hints of violence. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the fading star of a television Western and Brad Pitt is his stunt double, in a story set in 1969, soon before the Manson murders. Margot Robbie plays soon-to-be- Manson victim, Sharon Tate. Al Pacino appears as the DiCaprio character’s agent. All those stars don’t come cheap: the film reportedly cost $95 million (£76 million). With its allusion to the epic Once Upon a Time in the West, by one of Tarantino’s directing heroes, Sergio Leone, this film clearly has big ambitions. (Credit: Andrew Cooper/CTMG Inc)
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3.Us
Jordan Peele’s brilliant Get Out – which combined sly, comic horror with social commentary about race – became a surprise smash hit, and established him as one of today’s most exciting writer-directors. His follow-up is being promoted as “A New Nightmare”, but everyone has been so secretive about the plot, you’d think they were in a Marvel movie. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke (M’Baku in Black Panther) star, along with Elisabeth Moss, who has said that Us continues in Peele’s style of “thought-provoking popcorn movies.” (Credit: Universal Pictures)
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4.The Lion King
Disney gives one of its most beloved animated films a high-tech remake, using lifelike computer generated images. James Earl Jones, once again the voice of Mustafa, was apparently the only irreplaceable actor from the 1994 film. Here Donald Glover is the voice of the adult Simba, with Beyoncé as his love, Nala, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is the villainous Scar. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner add comic relief as Pumbaa and Timon. With some help from Beyoncé, Elton John has reworked songs from the original, including the can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head Circle of Life. (Credit: Walt Disney Pictures)
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5.Downton Abbey
Talk about a built-in audience. The Crawley family and their servants all return, except for the characters who have been killed off. Sorry, no ghost Matthew. But Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter and the others are here, including Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, complete with deliciously withering aphorisms. The story picks up circa 1927, after the series ended on a happy note, with no one in prison and romance all around. Writer Julian Fellowes must have cooked up some disasters. The film’s new characters include Imelda Staunton as Lord Grantham’s cousin. (Credit: Focus Features)
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6.Ad Astra
Brad Pitt launches into space in this sci-fi adventure from director James Gray, whose spectacular Lost City of Z was one of 2016’s best films. Pitt’s character is searching for his father (Tommy Lee Jones) who disappeared two decades before on a mission to Neptune. Surely the resemblance to the Dad-lost-in-the-cosmos plot of A Wrinkle in Time is coincidental. Gray has compared Ad Astra to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so we can expect someone in the family to go off the rails, which in Gray’s hands could be another amazing trek into an unknown land. (Credit: Twentieth Century Fox)
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7.Rocketman
For someone who is not on screen, Elton John is having a big year at the movies. (See: The Lion King.) In this authorised musical biopic, labeled “a true fantasy”, Taron Egerton sings and acts as Elton in the years leading to his 1977 breakthrough. There will be glittery jackets, giant eyeglasses, and flashbacks to his days in rehab. The director, Dexter Fletcher, took over shooting the Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, after Bryan Singer walked away. Rocketman could tap into the same taste for get-up-and-dance movies with a dark undertone. (Credit: Paramount Pictures)
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8.The Woman in the Window
AJ Finn’s bestselling novel was widely praised as Hitchockian, a thriller ready-made for the screen. Here it is, burnished with Oscar nominees and winners. Amy Adams is an agoraphobic psychologist who spies on her neighbors – played by Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman – then has to convince the world that she hasn’t imagined the crime that happened across the street. Or did she? The great Brian Tyree Henry (Widows) adds to his string of supporting roles as a detective. Director Joe Wright is known for prestige period pieces like Darkest Hour and Atonement, but he also made the underrated 2011 thriller Hanna, with Saoirse Ronan as a teenaged assassin, so he knows how to ratchet up suspense. (Credit: Fox 2000 Pictures)
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9.Star Wars: Episode IX
They Will. Not. Stop. Coming. Yet another Star Wars installment, this one the third in the “sequel trilogy” of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The old franchise can’t promise originality, but the trilogy has thrived on the dynamism of its younger cast. Daisy Ridley is the heroine, Rey, Adam Driver is Kylo Ren – possibly the best dark character since his granddad, Darth Vader – and John Boyega is the wholesome Finn. Leftover footage from previous films will bring back Carrie Fisher as Leia, now a General in the Resistance. JJ Abrams, of The Force Awakens, directs. (Credit: Lucasfilm)
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10.Last Christmas
Sometimes two words are all it takes to make a film appealing: Emma Thompson. She wrote (with the playwright Bryony Kimmings) and appears in this romance, which was inspired by George Michael’s song Last Christmas, and includes more of his music. Emilia Clarke (far from her role as the Mother of Dragons in Game of Thrones) plays Kate, who works in a Christmas shop where she is dressed as an elf. In walks a dreamboat played by Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians). Director Paul Feig, whose films include the raucous Bridesmaids and more recently the comic thriller A Simple Favor, describes the film, irresistibly, as “a love letter to London”. (Credit: Universal Pictures)
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