Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/768342
maltatoday, SATURDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2016 39 This Week anticipated films of 2017 at its core. Doubtless, however, the 'event' sequel of the year will come at the tail-end, with the as-yet untitled Star Wars: Episode VIII being scheduled for an international December 15 release, with the Rian Johnson-directed movie picking up right where JJ Abrams' tri- umphal The Force Awakens (2015) left off. But on the more alternative front, acclaimed director Danny Boyle will be returning to Edinburgh's druggie purgatory with the se- quel to Trainspotting – snappily titled T2 – which is bound to stoke nostalgia of a reso- lutely different kind. HOLLYWOOD PRESTIGE To put it simply: these are the American films that win Oscars. Or at least, that vie aggressively for them. Ahead of the game here is Martin Scorcese's long-gestating pas- sion project Silence, which was just released elsewhere but will likely reach us in early 2017 and which stars Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield as 17th century Jesuit priests who travel to Japan to spread Christianity and retrieve one of their own. Next up is surely the Untitled Daniel Day Lewis/Paul Thomas Anderson project, in which the actor-director team join forces for the first time after the formidable neo-Goth- ic parable There Will Be Blood (2011???). The narratively loose poet of modern cine- ma Terrence Malick will also be following up this year's The Knight of Cups with Weight- less, set during an Austin, Texas music festi- val and featuring – as has become par for the course for Malick – a stellar cast including Ryan Gosling, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Port- man, Michael Fassbender, Christian Bale, Rooney Mara and Benicio del Toro. BEYOND AMERICA Alas, there's no Lars Von Trier to wave the flag of colourful controversy this year, but his flinty German counterpart Michael Haneke – who visited Malta in late 2012 to receive rewards for his (subsequently Oscar-decorated) Amour as Valletta hosted the European Film Awards – is once again at the forefront of the non-European films to watch out for this year. Even the title au- gurs yet another slap of Haneke's unflinch- ing moral and emotional brutality, as Happy End – starring Amour's Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant – will focus on a family drama "set in Calais with the Euro- pean refugee crisis as the backdrop". Meanwhile, it's East-meets-West as Ko- rean superstar director Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy) adapts the sumptuous Sarah Wal- ters novel Fingersmith into Handmaiden – already being hailed as an erotic master- piece – while French-Canadian enfant ter- rible Xavier Dolan defiantly returns with yet another English-language attempt after his previous film – It's Only The End Of The World – received a frosty response at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Veering on the wrong side of the erotic spectrum, Dolan's The Death and Life of John F. Donovan will star Game Of Thrones' Kit Harrington as an actor accused of paedophilia. And proving that international co-produc- tion is really the only way to go if you want to do something remotely different in to- day's cinematic landscape, German auteur Wim Wenders mixes up a global cast in an as-yet largely mysterious drama about an Englishman (James McAvoy) imprisoned by religious extremists in a windowless room off the coast of Africa, while the action cuts back to a diver (Alicia Vikander) with whom he's had a relationship in France the previ- ous year. BEYOND AMERICA SEQUELS & REBOOTS Alien Covenant Trainspotting 2 The Handmaiden The Handmaiden Kong Skull Island The Fate of the Furious Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales Baywatch Blade Runner 2049