15 films to look out for in 2011

That's it! Adios 2010, ola 2011! But what should be looking forward to in the cinemas this year? Well, an international collective of Time Out film critics have put on their horn-rimmed glasses and deerstalkers and gone in search this year's great cinematic prospects.

Due Date
Japan release: January 22
Essentially a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the follow-up to director Todd Phillips's The Hangover has garnered mixed reviews. However, Robert Downey Jr playing a drug-free prig has its chucklesome rewards, and we're glad to see that co-star Zach Galifianakis has more to his palette than simple beard-for-hire.
Click here to read the Time Out review of Due Date 

The Green Hornet
Japan release: January 22
Seth Rogan (so slim you'd barely recognise him), Jay Chou and Christoph Waltz team up with director Michel Gondry to bring The Green Hornet (back) to the big screen. Fanboys will note that the original movie series pre-dated the TV series, itself known for bringing Bruce Lee to a wider audience. Quite what Rogan and his pot-toking slacker style will add to the proceedings has yet to be seen.

Red
Japan release: January 29
Red comes with a full compliment of big name, albeit elderly, stars, with John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Mary-Louise Parker standing out in particular. It may not be the best piece of celluloid these big-hitters have ever put their names to, but between all the pro forma espionage theatrics, there's plenty of fun to be had.
Click here to read the Time Out review of Red 

King's Speech
Japan release: February 26
Colin Firth's turn as stammering King George VI is a career peak, and if it doesn't win him a sackful of honours, we'll happily eat his bowler hat. While the movie's subject may not seem like the most obvious film fodder, the interplay between Firth and co-star Geoffrey Rush makes it all the more the more delightful that someone chose to give it the green light.
Click here to read the Time Out review of The King's Speech 

The Tourist
Japan release: March 5
Calm down, won't you. We know it's been panned dreadfully (by our own film critics, no less), but there's got to be something worth salvaging from a Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie steam-fest...surely...hasn't there?
Click here to read the Time Out review of The Tourist 

The Runaways
Japan release: March 12
The story of the seventies teen-glam phenomenon of the same name. Put simply, two underage characters meet in a bar over drinks, and, soon enough, they’re crammed into a glam-rock motor home, working on chord ch-ch-changes and sliding inexorably toward drugs, soft-core lesbian sex and Japanese fame. It’s more giggly goofy than coke-in-the-bathroom naughty, and only vinyl collectors will insist that a serious legacy has been sullied; the plot is as contrived as the group itself.
Click here to read the Time Out review of The Runaways 

Black Swan
Japan release: May 13
Darren Aronofsky, celebrated for 2008's acclaimed The Wrestler, returns with this warts'n'all tale of a ballet dancer's descent into her own personal abyss. We'd be surprised if Natalie Portman's performance doesn't win her an Oscar nomination, at the very least.
Click here to read the Time Out review of Black Swan 

Thor
Japan release: July 1
You'll have noticed that our list is uncomfortably free of Japanese product - more the Japanese film industry's fault than ours (no notable press releases have landed on our desks recently) - but we're intrigued by this obvious summer blockbuster. No, that's not because we can't wait for our next Clash of the Titans fix (really, we can); more to do with the fat that Tadanobu Asano is down to play the mysterious 'Hogun', and - as far as we're concerned - the man can do very little wrong. No doubt 'Hogun' will be a bit part - how could it not be, what with Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hiddleston elsewhere on the bill? But we're pleased Asano is getting the notice he deserves. It's about time someone with a bit of versatility took over as the world's Japanese-actor-for-hire; Ken Watanabe has been out of his depth for a dangerously long time.

Wuthering Heights
Japan release: TBC
It's going to be a good year for the Bronte sisters: alongside Cary Fukunaga's supernaturally charged Jane Eyre, 2011 will also see the release of Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold's bold new take on this A-level classic. For those who skipped the sixth form, the story takes place high on the wiley, windy moors (cheers, Kate Bush), where ill-tempered foundling Heathcliff, played here by newcomer James Howson, has a charged and fractious romantic relationship with prissy lady-of-the-house Catherine Earnshaw, played by the equally unknown Kaya Scodelario. Anyone familiar with Arnold's previous work will anticipate that this won't be a traditional BBC-style take on the material: expect naturalistic performances, plenty of heavy weather and one hell of an emotional kick.

The Skin that I Live In
Japan release: TBC
No, it's not a typo. The title of the new movie by Spain's Pedro Almodovar does appear to have a rhythmically superfluous ‘that' wedged into the middle of it. Still, you doubt that Almodovar will be making such simple cosmetic errors with the film itself, which sees him working with leading man Antonio Banderas for the first time since 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. The actor is set to star as a brutal plastic surgeon who works from an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau where his girlfriend, Eva (Elena Anaya), becomes his human pin cushion. On paper, it sounds a little like George Franju's seminal 1960 body horror Eyes Without a Face, but Almodovar has assured in interviews that while the film could be considered part of what he coins the ‘terror genre', it's more disturbing than scary. The film has been pencilled in for a March release date in Spain, and should go on (as is now customary for the director) to Cannes in May.

The Tree of Life
Japan release: TBC
If there’s one film that towers above all others in 2011’s cinematic landscape, it’s Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. The six years since the Greatest Living Film Director™’s last film, The New World, have been filled with rumours and hearsay, culminating in a last-minute cancellation at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. But now there’s a trailer, a full cast list – which includes Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and lots of people we’ve never heard of – and a purported European release date of May. A tale of youth and lost innocence, ageing and regret, modernity and miracles set in 1950 Midwestern America, the film sees Malick return to the period and locale of his first and arguably greatest work, 1973’s Badlands. The trailer may be a tad heavy on the dreamy voiceovers (something we’ve come to expect from Malick), but the photography is astonishing, the performances look rock solid and, hell, he hasn’t let us down yet. Roll on May.

W.E
Japan release: TBC
OK, so Madonna’s first foray into filmmaking – the universally panned urban ensemble comedy Filth and Wisdom – was something of a calamity, so we stand before this follow-up effort with a mixture of trepidation and downright dread. W.E has been described as a two-tier romantic drama which sets the courtship between Edward VII and Wallis Simpson against that of a contemporary couple. It certainly sounds ambitious, and the film has been given something of a pre-release leg-up what with The King’s Speech giving a handy introduction to the characters and milieu. But one wonders if Madge will be able to get the best out of her lead, Andrea Riseborough, who is currently turning heads in the remake of Brighton Rock? Principle photography started on July 5 last year, but there have been no whispers as to when the film might receive its (inevitably star-spangled) premiere.

The Rum Diary
Japan release: TBC
Another long-gestating pet project, this time for writer-director Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) and star Johnny Depp, whose friendship with the late troublemaker Hunter S Thompson led to this adaptation of one of Thompson’s best-loved works. Depp plays Paul Kemp, a thinly disguised surrogate for the author, whose remote rum-soaked existence writing for a Caribbean news outlet is constantly disturbed by the maniac Americans he works with. First mooted for Depp in 2000 (a fiasco which led Thompson to describe the filmmaking process as a ‘waterhead fuckaround’, whatever that means), the film came into focus a few years back when Robinson, who’d been on extended hiatus himself since Jennifer 8 in 1992, jumped on board to write the screenplay. And its hard to imagine a better suited moviemaking trio: if Kemp has half the wit of Withnail, the rage of Raoul Duke or the poise of Jack Sparrow, we’re onto a winner.

Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn   Japan release: TBC
You wait three years for a new Steven Spielberg movie, then two come along at once… Slightly adapting his usual twofer trick (one serious, one silly, a la Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park), Spielberg returns with one fun kids movie, Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn, and one slightly-less-fun-but-probably-more-Oscar-worthy kids movie, War Horse. As has been widely reported, Tintin marks the first collaboration between Spielberg and his antipodean counterpart Peter Jackson, in a CG-animated version of Hergé’s pre-war teen adventure series. Sure, the animated style may be a tad queasy to behold, but with this much talent involved (we should also mention writers Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish and voice stars Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and Simon Pegg), we feel our plucky, be-quiffed hero is in pretty good hands.

War Horse
Japan release: TBC
War Horse, by contrast, is a more sombre affair. Adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s bestselling novel, it tells the tale of a boy who heads to the Flanders trenches in 1915 to rescue his beloved nag. With an extraordinary cast of British character actors including David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan and Tom Hiddleston, this looks like a shoo-in for Spielberg, fusing the awe-struck child’s eye majesty of his finest ’80s work with the darker, more adult stateliness of his recent Oscar-friendly heavy-hitters. In fact, the Spielberg film it most obviously resembles is Empire of the Sun: if it’s half as good as that lost classic, we’ll be happy.