Movies to Look Out for in 2012

Hi folks, I've compiled a list of movies that will (hopefully) entertain us throughout 2012.  I don't know a huge amount about quite a lot of them, but I've gone for films I think have potential, based on the concept, cast, director or a great trailer (which I've embedded when available.)
Time will tell if any of these turn out to be good as the year unfolds, but hopefully I'll hit the mark with some of them.  Anyway, in no particular order, here we go...


Wrong

Quentin Dupieux (AKA Mr Oizo) follows up his head exploding pscho tyre horror movie "Rubber" with this tale of a man searching for his dog. 

Great trailer too, I have no idea what this is about, in a good way.

It also has William Fichtner in it, who's always great.
(more info now available on /Film)


ParaNorman
Another brilliant trailer (love the use of Donovan's "Season of the Witch") from the team that brought us the eye popping "Coraline".  My most anticipated animated film this year.



Only God Forgives
The "Drive" team of Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn reunite for a thai-boxing gangster flick.
Yeah.
And the brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas is rumoured to be playing a matriarchal crime boss. Exciting.

No footage yet, but it might look a bit like this.

Detachment
"American History X" director Tony Kaye returns with a great cast for this school set drama.


Looper
I have very high hopes for this one.  Director Rian Johnson reunites Joseph Gordon Levitt (star of Johnson's "Brick") for a futuristic mob movie.  Gordon Levitt plays a young contract killer who executes targets sent back in time by mobsters in the future.  While this ensures there's no evidence left by the murders, it poses Gordon Levitt a unique problem when charged with killing his future self, played by Bruce Willis.

Will Willis convince us he was once Gordon Levitt?

MS One: Maximum Security
Looks like Guy Pierce playing John McClane in space based remake of "Escape from New York".  Anything about that sentence that doesn't sound great?



The Burial (or untitled, depending on who you believe)
Who knows what will happen (if anything) in Terrence Malick's follow up to the devisive "Tree of Life"(for the record, it was one of my favourite films of last year).  Whatever happens, it'll look stunning.

More Malick dinosaurs?

Knights of Badassdom
This could be awful... but the trailer won me over.  A very geek friendly cast (alumni from"Game of Thrones", "Community", "Firefly"etc) seem perfectly at home in this role-playing-gone-wrong-com. Like the end of "Role Models" but with real magic.



Stoker
Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) directs Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode and Mia Wasikowska in his first Hollywood movie. An interesting proposition in itself, but it's also a return to the vampire genre in which he made the atypical horror "Thirst", one of the most inventive additions to the undead canon in recent years.

Alas, Kidman's unlikely to be playing the vampire...

Moonrise Kingdom
Perhaps it's more of the same from Wes Anderson, but that's what I want from a Wes Anderson film.  From the brief clip of Jason Schwartzman in the trailer, there could be a few surprises in store and I can't wait to see the character he's playing (Looks like a cross between a priest and Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now").  Ed Norton and Bruce Willis are also exciting additions to the Anderson stable.  Thankfully, Bill Murray is back too.



Gravity
Alfonso Cuaron (director of "Children of Men" and responsible for that long take.) returns to reality based science-fiction.  This looks to be a tense sci-fi with a heavy burden on the shoulders of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney playing a survivors left adrift in space by a devastating satellite accident.  Very little about the plot is known, so my description above might be off the mark, but Guillermo del Toro has seen sections of it and called it "mind-blowing".  Bullock also claims all the actors performed without make-up so it'll be interesting to see what difference this makes to the look of the film.

This image is unlikely to represent the "mind-blowing" Gravity

Marcy Martha May Marlene
Not really a film I'm anticipating, as I've already seen it, but it hasn't had it's official UK release yet, so it should be on this list.  A great exploration of the effects of spending time in a cult and how the experience lingers.   Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes are the stand out performers in this excellent film.



Red Lights
Sigourney Weaver's psychologist investigates Robert DeNiro's psychic.  I don't know a whole lot more than that, but if the promising cast (featuring "Martha Marcy May Marlene" revelation Elizabeth Olsen and the ethereally eyed Cilian Murphy) are given a decent story, this should be worth a watch.
(More info now available at /Film)

Ripley takes on psychic DeNiro.

Neighbourhood Watch 
A comedy about suburban dads forming a neighbourhood watch group. Not too exciting? What if those dads are played by Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and the I.T Crowd's resident mega geek Moss (Richard Ayoade)? And what if that neighbourhood watch group discover a plot to destroy the world? Sounds good to me.

Will Ayoade ditch his trade-mark accent for an American one?

Young Adult
This is another one that won me over with it's trailer. Directed by Jason Reitman from a Diablo "Juno" Cody script, Theron looks very entertaining as a woman returning to her home town to steal back her (now married) High School sweetheart. I've also heard Patton Oswalt puts in a scene stealing performance, which is great news for fans of his 5 second films.



Seven Psychopaths
Another film I know very little about. What I do know is that it's directed by Martin McDonagh who made the brilliant "In Bruges" and features a sensational cast of some of the most interesting acotrs out there. Colin Farrell stars, but the cast also includes Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Tom Waits, Christopher Walken, Abie Cornish and "Precious" stand out Gabourey Sidibe.
Pretty cool name too.

Blimey

Safety Not Guaranteed
A film I've only recently become aware of, it's a time travel comedy starring Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza.  Plaza plays a reporter who is assigned to find and interview a man who has posted a newspaper ad that appeals for someone to go time travelling with him.  Is the man really a time traveller, or just delusional?

It's had some great early reviews that bill it as a comedy with real heart, which in most years is unfortunately often a rarity.

Robot and Frank

This sounds fantastic. A comedy set in the near future, Frank Langella plays an ex-jewell thief who is cared for by a robot.  You can watch a clip here.

And the obvious ones...

The Avengers
What comic book fan wouldn't have this on their must-see list? In Joss Whedon the film has a director used to balancing ensemble casts and my hopes are high.



Prometheus
Ridley can't get it wrong can he? Sir Scott ventures back into "Alien" territory for this quasi-prequel.
The trailer is mouth-watering.



The Dark Knight Rises
As with "Prometheus" this could either be a triumph or the biggest let down of the year. The trailer grabbed me though and I've heard great things about the prologue that ran before "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol." Fingers crossed bat-fans.



Django Unchained
I love western's and I love (most) Tarantino, so I hope this lives up to it's billing.  Tarantino's "Southern" is set to address racism in the era of the cowboy, with Jamie Foxx as the titular character.  The supporting cast look great, including roles for Christophe Waltz, Kurt Russell and Sasha Baron Cohen, while Leonardo DiCaprio plays the main villain.

I wasn't sure if this was out this year or next, but I'm also looking forward to Danny Boyle's "Trance"

Oh and some film called "The Hobbit"