9. Zootopia

Release date: March 4th
Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate
Director: Byron Howard, Rich Moore
Why it’s great: They say we’re in the second Disney renaissance. Debatable (c’mon, isFrozen really up there with Beauty and the Beast?), though Zootopia is the strongest piece of evidence. What looks like another anthropomorphized animal adventure, adorable and Happy Meal-ready, is a vivid reimagining of Philip Marlowe-style noir, made sharper with a message on race and class in America. Seriously. Judy Hopps (Goodwin) is a bunny cop at a time when bunnies aren’t supposed to be cops. Nick Wilde (Bateman) is her confidante, a fox facing prejudice against his “predator” biology. Together they solve a mystery that parallels the authority-vs.-community current of #BlackLivesMatter. With all of that on its mind, the movie still gets away with tender friendships, pop-music interludes, and sloth jokes. Impressionable kids and adults who swear they’re progressive will both take something away from Zootopia.
Where to see it right now: In theaters

8. Creative Control

Release date: March 11th
Cast: Benjamin Dickinson, Nora Zehetner, Alexia Rasmussen, Reggie Watts
Director: Benjamin Dickinson
Why it’s great: This casually dazzling sci-fi movie imagines our immediate future, on the eve of a virtual revolution where augmented-reality visors will replace the smartphone. Dickinson casts himself as David, an ad executive tasked with branding the new, life-altering hardware. The VR upgrade quickly wraps its tentacles around everyday life.Creative Control is a familiar, cautionary tale, but with a twist: in the search for fulfillment, luxuries — technology, exercise, sex, New York, drugs, art — are slippery slopes to escape. With photogenic scenery, a wry sense of humor, and subtle computer-graphic enhancement, Creative Control questions our current direction. It’s a movie with enough dramatic pizzazz that not even Reggie Watts’s psychedelic performance art can steal the show (but it comes close).
Where to see it right now: In theaters

7. In the Shadow of Women

Released: January 15th
Cast: Clotilde Courau, Stanislas Merhar, Lena Paugam
Director: Philippe Garrel
Why it’s worth your time: This romantic drama is so prototypically French that it may cause film studies students to bleed Brie. A swift 83 minutes, In the Shadow of Womenfollows a modelesque married couple that discovers — whoop — both husband and wife are entangled in affairs. Shot in diffused black and white, and narrated by an authorial observer, the movie teeters on the edge of self-parody. Two heated performances, sexy and vicious, anchor it in the artful. Just let your college friends who won’t shut up about “New Wave cinema” see it on their own.
Where to see it right now: Out of theaters, but coming soon to VOD

6. The Witch

Released: February 19th
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Director: Robert Eggers
Why it’s worth your time: The Witch delivers everything we don’t see in horror today. The backdrop, a farm in 17th-century New England, is pure misty, macabre mood. The circumstance, a Puritanical family making it on the fringe of society because they’re tooreligious, bubbles with terror. And the question, whether devil-worshipping is hocus pocus or true black magic, keeps each character on their toes, and begging God for answers. The Witch tests its audience with its (nearly impenetrable) old English dialogue and the (anxiety-inducing) trials of early American life, but the payoff will keep your mind racing, and your face hiding under the covers, for days.
Where to see it right now: In theaters

5. The Treasure

Released: January 8th
Cast: Toma Cuzin, Adrian Purcarescu, Corneliu Cozmei
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Why it’s worth your time: With deadpan delivery that would make Steven Wright jittery, this Romanian comedy tells the story of Costi, a down-on-his-luck office drone, who joins his neighbor and a professional metal detector to hunt for a fortune buried beneath a family estate. While an understanding of Southeastern European history might enhance the viewing experience (you’ll have to check with a Romanian), The Treasure can be taken at face value, a financial fable that revels in the quarreling of desperate men. And there’s a happy ending, but not the one you expect.
Where to see it right now: Rent on iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and VOD

4. 10 Cloverfield Lane

Release date: March 11th
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Why it’s great: Ignore the fact that J.J. Abrams’ latest Cloverfield movie isn’t a straight sequel to the 2008 original, and you’ll stumble into one of the eeriest thrillers in ages. 10 Cloverfield Lane, the story of three fated companions averting (theoretical) apocalypse in a subterranean bunker, runs like clockwork. Every 10 minutes Trachtenberg offers a new reveal, a new exacerbation of paranoia. Unnerving performances — Winstead’s troubled captive, Goodman’s off-kilter parental figure, and Gallagher Jr. as a squeaky third wheel — and a delight in madness prevent 10 Cloverfield Lane from settling on just one answer. It’s a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too horror movie, where the sights and sounds crescendo to the very last beat.
Where to see it right now: In theaters

3. Krisha

Release date: March 18
Cast: Krisha Fairchild, Bill Wise, Robyn Fairchild
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Why it’s great: At Thanksgiving dinner, everything’s on the table: turkey, stuffing, dirty secrets, gravy, slow-boiled arguments, green bean casserole, pent up rage, and dinner rolls (if you’re lucky). Krisha stages these typical festivities with the fury of battling gods. Shults, a first-time director, shot the indie in his mothers home, casting his own non-actor family in the central roles. You’d never guess it. Farichild allows her eponymous character, an estranged aunt suffering from addiction, to seep under her skin. Shults’ camera glides through the suburban Colonial, honing in on agonizing misbehavior, like he’s Spielberg shooting World War II. A malicious soundtrack keeps the anxiety at a steady boil, even when Krisha escapes her sisters, brothers-in-law, and nephews for a smoke. Krisha is straight up harrowing, and a vital look at how the closest people in our lives slip away in “normal” circumstances.
Where to see it right now: In theaters

2. Hail, Caesar!

Released: February 5th
Cast: George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Josh Brolin
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Why it’s worth your time: Possibly the Coen brothers’ zaniest work — and these are the guys who brought us Raising Arizona, Burn After Reading, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? — Hail, Caesar! throws back to the golden age of Hollywood for a droll, screwball mystery. A Communist kidnapping plot plays in the background as the Coens swing between a down-on-his-luck singing cowboy, a pair of gossip reporters, a starlet keeping her pregnancy hush-hush, a frustrated auteur, and a studio fixer who can’t help but wonder if Hollywood’s all it’s cracked up to be. Musical numbers elevate it to greatness. Tap-dancing Channing Tatum rules the world.
Where to see it right now: In theaters

1. Mountains May Depart

Released: February 12th
Cast: Zhao Tao, Zhang Yi, Liang Jingdong
Director: Jia Zhangke
Why it’s worth your time:  Underneath every trend, every money-making operation, every geopolitical shift, there are people. Mountains May Depart follows a few — a happy-go-lucky Chinese woman, her working-class suitor, a millionaire who woos her into marriage, and their son, who wonders how he wound up in Australia without a word of Mandarin in his vocabulary — as they drift from 1999 to 2014 to 2025. Jia Zhangke’s triptych is epic, packed with laughter, sadness, explosions, and dance sequences. Each pivotal moment thrills and thrills again, reflected a second time through the movie’s rearview mirror. The drama’s all compounded by Zhao Tao, whose gentle smile has the oomph to crush cars. Wherever you hail from, Mountains May Depart will speak to your world, your time, your life — that’s a promise.
Where to see it right now: Out of theaters, but coming soon to VOD

Matt Patches, Source