Don't let these 25 movies slip you by in 2019

James Gray’s follow-up to “The Lost City of Z” is, according to the filmmaker, a “Heart of Darkness” riff on space travel. The plot concerns an Army Corps engineer (Brad Pitt) traveling throughout the solar system to find his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who went missing while attempting to find extraterrestrial life on Neptune. This sounds like the dark flip side to “Interstellar,” and with a challenging, rigorously intellectual director like Gray at the helm, we can’t wait.

Brian De Palma’s revenge thriller about a Danish cop (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) seeking revenge for the murder of his partner by a terrorist was expected to be released last year, but troubles with the financiers (“I never experienced such a horrible movie set,” says the director) has left the project’s release suspended in distributor limbo. De Palma stresses that this was a for-hire gig (i.e. he didn’t write the script), but so was “The Untouchables,” and that turned out just fine.

Steven Soderbergh remains one of American cinema’s most talented and wildly prolific filmmakers, and, should all go as planned, he’ll grace our television screens with two Netflix-distributed movies in 2019. The first is “High-Flying Bird,” which stars André Holland as a sports agent dangling an ethically iffy deal for a rookie pro basketball player during an NBA lockout. Later in the year we’ll get “The Laundromat,” a star-studded Panama Papers drama featuring (among many others) Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Melissa Rauch and Antonio Banderas.

Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo have gotten the “Nightcrawler” band back together, and this time they’re delving into the greedy/sleazy world of art dealers. Set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, “Velvet Buzzsaw” centers on a group of paintings that possess a supernatural power to destroy the lives of those who place commerce over art.

Suzan-Lori Parks (pictured), the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “Topdog/Underdog,” has adapted Richard Wright’s classic novel for celebrated conceptual artist (and first-time filmmaker) Rashid Johnson, and they’ve assembled a hell of a cast (Ashton Sanders, Margaret Qualley, Sanaa Lathan, Nick Robinson and Bill Camp) to bring this incendiary tale to the big screen. This is one of the most anticipated selections at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and could be a major awards contender down the road.

David Robert Mitchell’s dreamily paranoid L.A. neo-noir split critics at several major film festivals last year, which may be why distributor A24 pumped the brakes on its planned 2018 release and none-too-subtly targeted the weekend of April 20, 2019, when a like-minded audience might be in the mood for its surreally immersive charms. Andrew Garfield stars as layabout Angeleno who becomes obsessed with a beautiful young woman (Riley Keough) who abruptly disappears from his apartment complex.

Bill Condon directs Ian McKellen as an elderly conman who unexpectedly finds himself caring for his would-be quarry (Helen Mirren) after they encounter each other online. It’s a simple premise that could very easily develop into an elegantly bewildering house-of-mirrors mystery. Or it could just be a straightforward tale about two lonely older people finding each other in their twilight. Either way, the trio of McKellen, Mirren and Condon makes this a must-see.

Maria Semple’s bestselling comedic novel about a 15-year-old girl who attempts to track down her misanthropic mother via left-behind correspondences gets an A-list adaptation from director Richard Linklater and Academy Award-nominated screenwriters Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter. Cate Blanchett stars as the missing matriarch, while Emma Nelson plays the inquisitive daughter. Billy Crudup, Kristen Wiig and Judy Greer are also along for the ride.

Joe Berlinger’s “Paradise Lost” documentaries on the arrest, conviction and eventual exoneration of the West Memphis Three are true-crime classics, so we’re both excited and more than a little terrified to see how he’ll handle the horrifying real-life monster Ted Bundy in his first non-doc feature since 2000’s “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.” Zac Efron stars as the charismatic serial killer, while Lily Collins plays his girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who struggles to accept the truth about his heinous crimes.

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (aka the Daniels) are following up their beautifully absurd “Swiss Army Man” with an “interdimensional action film” starring the “Crazy Rich Asians” duo of Michelle Yeoh and Awkafina. Little else is known about the plot for this one, and honestly, given the talent involved, little else is necessary to ensure this will be one of our most anticipated releases of 2019.

Writer-director Rian Johnson takes a break from that galaxy far, far away to spin a (we’re guessing) deceit-and-murder-filled whodunit inspired by the works of Agatha Christie. Little is known about the plot, but the cast list is public, and it’s a doozy: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lakeith Stanfield, Ana de Armas, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer and that lovable scamp Noah Segan. 

It’s been an agonizingly long eight years since Joe Cornish made his brilliant feature-directing debut with the inner-city kids vs. aliens romp “Attack the Block,” but he’s back at last with this 100 percent original, modern-day-set fantasy adventure about a bullied young boy (Louis “son of Andy” Serkis) who unsheathes King Arthur’s Excalibur and forms a new roundtable to do battle with the evil enchantress Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson). Add in Patrick Stewart as Merlin, and this sounds like an escapist hoot.

Josh Trank was hailed as one of Hollywood’s most exciting young directors when his dark, found-footage superhero thriller “Chronicle” became a surprise hit in 2012. Then came the sophomore wipeout of “Fantastic Four” in 2015, which coincided with his departure from a “Star Wars” standalone film. Four years later, Trank’s picked himself up off the canvas with this biopic about Al Capone’s final, dementia-addled years in federal prison. Tom Hardy stars as the notorious gangster, and he’s joined by a top-tier cast that includes Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon and Kyle MacLachlan.

Eighty-year-old Paul Verhoeven is showing no signs of slowing down or, judging from the source material for his latest film, toning it down. Based on non-fiction book titled “Immodest Acts – The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy,” the one-time blockbuster maestro behind “Robocop” and “Basic Instinct” appears to be back in the more modest groove of “Elle.” We’ll take new Verhoeven any way we can get him, especially when he’s collaborating with a legend like Charlotte Rampling.

A family of thieves courts trouble when they invite an outsider to take part in their most ambitious heist yet. Plot-wise, this sounds shockingly conventional for a Miranda July movie, but we’re betting the “Me and You and Everyone We Know” director will place her idiosyncratic stamp on the material. Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger and Evan Rachel Wood play the father/mother/daughter team of criminals, while Gina Rodriguez co-stars as the nettlesome new addition to the crew.

The comedy mastermind behind “The Day Today” and “Brass Eye” will at last follow up his brilliant feature debut, “Four Lions,” with this satire set in the world of the FBI. Details are sketchy (it apparently involves some kind of internecine dispute within the organization), but we do know the film features Anna Kendrick, Jim Gaffigan, Denis O'Hare and Danielle Brooks. 

Based on a “tweetstorm” by Aziah “Zola” Wells, director Janicza Bravo (pictured) recounts a wild and violent misadventure involving strippers, prostitution, kidnapping and murder. Tayour Paige stars in the title role, Riley Keough plays her sex-worker friend Jessica and Colman Domingo turns up as a violent pimp known only as X. If “Zola” is a hit, it could be open season on the optioning of “tweetstorms.”

Sean Durkin’s long-awaited follow-up to “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a psychological thriller about a British entrepreneur (Jude Law) who moves his American wife (Carrie Coon) and kids to a large, yet isolating manor house in his native England. This sounds like wheelhouse material for Durkin, who turned a glass lake house into an unsettlingly exposed mousetrap in his previous film.

“Dear White People” writer-director Justin Simien tries his hand at horror with this satiric film about an ambitious young black woman who, desperate to be a VJ in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, makes a Faustian bargain for a perfect weave that may have supernatural powers. “It’s my way of taking my frustration of what I feel like black women are going through,” says Simien . It sounds fascinating, especially when you factor in the killer cast (Vanessa Williams, Laverne Cox, Michelle Hurd and MC Lyte).

This divorce comedy starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson was expected in late 2018, but the “Frances Ha” director’s latest (his second feature for Netflix following “The Meyerowitz Stories”) will make its debut at some point in 2019. Baumbach’s covered the topic of familial discord before, quite bruisingly, in “The Squid and the Whale,” but this time the focus will be on the adults. The impressive supporting cast includes Alan Alda, Laura Dern, Merritt Wever and renowned non-smoker Ray Liotta.

The “Meek’s Cutoff” filmmaker returns to the 19^th century Oregon Territory with a story of fur trappers whose exploits take them all the way to China and back to America again. Kelly Reichardt is one of the most talented filmmakers working today, and we’re excited to see what she does with what sounds like her most geographically ambitious work yet.

No two words get the eyes rolling in 2019 like “zombie comedy,” but we’ll make an exception for Jim Jarmusch, who’s guaranteed to go his own, low-key way with this overly well-trod subgenre. What’s the gist? No plot details have been revealed as of yet, but it stars Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Caleb Landry Jones, Sturgill Simpson, Selena Gomez and Danny Glover, and we’re all gonna watch the hell out of it.

Taika Waititi is a long way from “Thor: Ragnarok” with this adaptation of Christine Leunens' darkly comedic novel about a young man (Roman Griffin Davis) coping with the anxiety of World War II via an imaginary, “ethnically inaccurate” incarnation of Adolf Hitler. OK then. Waititi has cast himself as Der Fuhrer, and he’s joined by a nifty supporting cast that includes Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant.

Josh and Benny Safdie exploded out of the indie scene in 2017 with their wildly entertaining crime drama “Good Time,” and now they’re stepping up to the star-studded big time with a tale of illicit activity starring Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, Judd Hirsch, Eric Bogosian and soon-to-be NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett. Martin Scorsese is on board as executive producer. This has “sleeper hit” written all over it.

The world-class director of “Snowpiercer,” “The Host” and “Okja,” Bong Joon-ho, heads back to his native South Korea for a small-scale family drama that reunites him with frequent on-screen collaborator Song Kang-ho. It’ll be interesting to see Bong rein it in for the first time since “Mother,” though this sounds even more intimate and restrained than that one. No matter. We’re down with whatever gets Bong’s creative juices percolating.