15 Films That You'll Actually Want to Talk About Come Awards Season

Image via Complex Original

Director: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg

Stars: N/A

Release Date: May 20, 2016 (Available to stream on Amazon and iTunes)

At its worst, this documentary will give men bloated expectations about the power of their dick pics. After all, at this point Anthony Weiner is more famous for his, shall we say, online presence than for his legitimate political career. At its best, though, Weiner is a highly detailed, honest look at a once promising politician essentially digging his own grave. Starting in 2011, when Weiner stepped down from Congress after accidentally tweeting a picture of his crotch, the film tracks Weiner’s initially successful run for mayor of New York City in 2013. It's what came next that makes the movie so compelling—cameras are right in the middle of the flames as the campaign crashes and burns in the wake of Weiner's second, and worse, scandal. It’s a raw, revealing view of a deeply complicated man (and a deeply confounding marriage, between Weiner and longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin), which is not something normal politicians subject themselves to. But Anthony Weiner isn’t a normal politician—he’s Carlos Danger. —Julia Pimentel

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker 

Release Date: November 11, 2016

Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) makes movies that traffic in the nihilistic and luxuriate in the bleak. There are rarely happy endings or closure in his stories, and his protagonists typically suffer biblical amounts of pain at the hand of their neighbor because, well, life is cruel and unrelenting and cosmic justice is mythical. This makes his latest feature, the sci-fi epic Arrival, all the more startling. As an alien movie that focuses on humanity, it’s poetic, it’s optimistic and it’s hopeful. 

Arrival looks at the human response to 12 alien spacecrafts that touchdown around the globe. A professor of linguistics (Amy Adams) is enlisted by the military to decipher the extraterrestrial language to find out why the visitors are here, while fearful government leaders with itchy trigger fingers prepare for the worst. Communication, understanding, and empathy suddenly become the only things standing between mankind and extinction. And with Bradford Young’s lush, painterly cinematography, truly original-looking aliens, intelligence to spare, and a profound existential message, Arrival is not only a top-tier sci-fi experience, it also adequately provides the post-election self-reflection that this country could use right now. —Erik Abriss

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny

Release Date: November 11, 2016

Paul Verhoeven has made a name for himself in Hollywood by bringing out the big guns with RoboCop and Total Recall, but the Dutch filmmaker has gone back to Europe (France, specifically) for his latest thriller, which ditches not only his brand of machismo but also the campy eroticism of his beloved cult classics like Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Elle is certainly a shocker, though; it is, without beating around the bush, a rape movie. But at the same time, Elle is not your typical rape movie, starting with the fact that its complicated heroine refuses to become a victim, her actions disregarding all norms or predictability. It’s a bold move for a man to make a film of such subject in 2016, so if you’re not already hearing arguments about whether Elle is problematic or not, you should certainly be in the know about one of the best performances of the year—by the one and only Isabelle Huppert. —Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

Director: Kenneth Lonergan

Stars: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler

Release Date: November 18, 2016

The buzz on this movie is so loud that you’ve probably already started hearing about it, even though the Oscars aren’t for another three months. Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (writer for Analyze This, Gangs of New York), Manchester by the Sea follows Lee Chandler, a sad, lonely man with an even sadder backstory whose life gets even harder and more complicated when his brother dies and makes Lee the guardian to his teenage child. Oof—sounds pretty Oscar Bait-y, right? The thing is, the movie isn’t really that shameless and showy in its content. It’s a quiet, careful movie that examines loss, the meaning of family, and the coping mechanisms of the emotionally stifled men unfortunate enough to be born in New England. It also features two great performances, one from Casey Affleck—this might be the best performance of his life—and the other from newcomer Lucas Hedges, who plays the teenager. I don’t necessarily think Manchester by the Sea deserves all of the praise it’s getting, but it is a movie worth seeing.—Andrew Gruttadaro

Director: Garth Davis

Stars: Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara

Release Date: November 25, 2016

Lion is the kind of beautiful weepy that’s been a mainstay of Oscar conversations for decades, and it’s no doubt one that will garner favorable comparison to 2008’s Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire. But what Lion has in common with the Danny Boyle-helmed Bollywood riff—a star in Dev Patel, earnest commentary on class and culture differences—is far outweighed by the things that make it unique, with powerhouses Patel and Nicole Kidman navigating the tricky intricacies of human connection and the ever murky waters of personal origins at the center of the film. Featuring a star-making performance from Sunny Panwar, who appears as Patel’s younger self, and a performance from Kidman so virtuosic that she easily shines through a highly distracting curly wig (seriously, we all need to talk about this wig). Lion is a quiet little film right now—but it’ll roar through awards season, and probably make you cry in the process. —Aubrey Page

Director: Pablo Larraín

Stars: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig

Release Date: December 2, 2016

I'm going to go ahead and speak my truth here—I don't care for Natalie Portman. I never have, and never thought I would, but Pablo Larraín's Jackie might steer me onto the Portman path. Being described as an "unconventional biopic" by many, Jackie follows Jackie Kennedy (Portman) in the aftermath of the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, as she deals with unbearable grief in front of an entire country and her children. Critics have been saying that Portman gives the performance of her career as Jackie, full of prideful rage, sadness and composure. But what is setting the film apart from a typical biopic is Larraín's unconventional direction, coupled with its horror film-like score. Maybe I'll end up a Portman fan after all. —Kerensa Cadenas

Director: Raoul Peck

Stars: N/A 

Release Date: December 9, 2016 (Limited Run)

In a year where we’ve already seen two amazing documentaries centered on race (OJ: Made in America and 13th), acclaimed director Raoul Peck unleashes I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary on America’s history with race told through the works (and words) of famed author James Baldwin. While based initially on Baldwin’s final manuscript, which dealt with the life (and deaths) of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers, Peck widens the scope to really highlight how important the work Baldwin was doing decades ago is now, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and our President-Elect Donald Trump. It even includes Samuel L. Jackson, who is less of a narrator and more of the embodiment of Baldwin’s voice. —khal

Director: Damien Chazelle

Stars: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend

Release Date: December 16, 2016

I don’t know how we got here, but now it seems whenever you suggest to a young moviegoer that they should watch a modern musical it elicits the same reaction as getting a whiff of sulfur in the nostrils. Maybe it was the exploitive Glee who neutered the genre of its social significance. Perhaps it was the suffocating self-importance of Les Miserables. Whatever the case, director Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is here to restore that Golden Age Hollywood feeling where musicals not only mattered, but were also cool af. 

Chazelle (Whiplash) injects the fun and fantastical into this devastating love story about two struggling L.A. artists (Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling) whose newfound love requires them to be selfless right as their own creative desires demand them to be selfish. They find out that love and art aren’t always symbiotic. They sing and dance throughout a candy-colored modern day Los Angeles, reaffirming love’s power one moment then shattering our hearts the next. 

La La Land’s soaring original music and breathtaking dance numbers will stay with you long after you leave the theater, as will the emotional punch to the gut. And this is Emma Stone’s purest, most profound performance to date, as she is incapable of a false note. This year’s Best Actress Oscar belongs to her. —Erik Abriss

Director: Pablo Larraín

Stars: Gael García Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Mercedes Morán

Release Date: December 16, 2016

If you haven’t heard of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet famous for his sensual love poetry, you need to get cultured, son. And besides being a poet, Neruda was also an important historical figure as a huge influential communist senator in pre-Pinochet Chile. Neruda is not your typical Lifetime biopic about the tortured life of an artist—instead, it relishes in the same love of life that Neruda himself explored in his writing. It follows the fictional Oscar Peluchonneau (Bernal), a wiry, obsessive police officer tasked with finding Neruda when he is impeached and goes underground after Communism is banned in Chile (that did actually happen). Larraín’s camera has a gauzy, surreal levity that stylistically mirrors the plot’s playful artifice; it is a story about a story, asking at every turn what it means to control a narrative. The film revels in its contradictions: Neruda is both a hypocritical fat guy and a compassionate artist; Peluchonneau is one-track-minded but also as entranced by the idea of the poet as the common workers who are inspired by Neruda’s revolutionary words. —Julia Pimentel

Director: Pedro Almodovar 

Stars: Emma Suarez, Adriana Ugarte

Release Date: December 21, 2016

Pedro Almodovar is one of our greatest natural resources. He's a brilliant director, and when it comes to telling interesting, complex stories about women, he's one of the greats. With a couple recent missteps under his belt, it looks as if he's back to form with Julieta, based on several of Alice Munro's short stories and Spain's Academy Award entry. It tells the story of Julieta, a woman who upon a chance encounter with the childhood friend of her estranged daughter Antía, decides that she must find her immediately. She begins writing down everything that led to their separation to be able to fully tell Antía what exactly has happened between them and in her own life. Knowing Almodovar's prior work, it'll be full of humor and heart and absolute scene chewing from its lead actresses. Don't we all need a splash of melodrama in our lives? —Kerensa Cadenas

Director: Denzel Washington

Stars: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis

Release Date: December 25, 2016

After numerous failed attempts at adapting the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, it took Denzel Washington to star and direct it, who then brought on Viola Davis and a number of character actors to round out the cast. Taking place in Pittsburgh during the 1950s, the story surrounds Troy (Washington), a former Negro League baseball player, and his thoughts on the struggle to support his family. Rose (Davis) has stood with her man for years, helping raise their son through said struggles. While most of the film takes place in the backyard of Troy and Rose’s backyard, it’s said to not be cramped. Many are also already praising Denzel and Viola’s powerful performances, because duh. —khal

Director: Martin Scorsese

Stars: Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver

Release Date: December 25, 2016

A movie about priests that will have its world premiere at the Vatican of all places, is a movie that wants to make a statement. Scorsese’s latest film, based on Shūsaku Endō’s eponymous novel and set in the 17th century, follows two Jesuit missionaries (Garfield and Driver) on their journey to Japan to find their mentor (Neeson). Christianity is outlawed in Japan at that time, so their very presence is prohibited and they are therefore met with violent, torturous resistance that tests their faith at every turn. On a grander scale, Silence is an exploration of the limits of faith while in conversation with virtues like duty and humanity and how one informs the other. In a sense, these are questions that Scorsese has asked throughout his career, but he seems poised to finally answer them in Silence. —Julia Pimentel

Director: Mike Mills

Stars: Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann

Release Date: December 25, 2016

Six years ago, Mike Mills directed Beginners, a delightful drama/rom-com hybrid about a Los Angeles man who finds out that his elderly father is gay while simultaneously navigating a new relationship of his own. Mills has a taste for tone, making Beginners a perfectly fizzy mix of the sweet and bittersweet. Which makes the release of 20th Century Women, Mills' first film since Beginners, even more exciting. Set in 1970s California, 20th Century Women is about a single mother (Bening) raising her teen son (Zumann) to learn about love and freedom and shifting notions of masculinity. With Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning in supporting roles, it looks like a warm, touching, realistic portrait of coming of age and shifting gender roles during that time period (rumors abound that it's based on Mills' own growing up experience). —Kerensa Cadenas

Director: Maren Ade

Stars: Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek

Release Date: December 25, 2016

Dad jokes are very much in vogue and a solid one will get you a lot of retweets, but Toni Erdmann is a dad joke taken to a nightmarish extreme. Ines (Huller) is a successful pantsuit-and-impossibly-high-heels businesswoman stationed in Bucharest, Romania when her semi-retired father, Winfried Conradi (Simonischek), shows up for an unexpected visit. The title of the movie is the name of her father's comedic alter-ego, marked by hair that looks even faker than Trump's and a set of fake teeth, who shows up at Ines's dinner parties, work meetings, and really any awkward moment, much to her exasperation. The relatively simple premise is executed with classic European flair, and if the nearly three-hour running time isn't enough of an indicator, believe me when I say this is not a Hollywood movie in the slightest. As Ines and her father quarrel and yell the kinds of insults only parents and offspring can invent, they also realize they're not that different. Through expert comedic timing and truly insightful writing, Toni Erdmann aims to unearth that elusive deep kernel of human understanding that underpins family relationships and business aspirations. If it doesn't get you closer to that understanding, it'll at least set a precedent for making naked brunch a thing. —Julia Pimentel

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Stars: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Mina Sadati

Release Date: January 27, 2017

Iranian director Asghar Fahardi already took home an Oscar a few years ago for his highly lauded marital drama A Separation, and he finds himself in Oscar talks once again this year with The Salesman (another marital drama), which has been buzzing ever since it won two prizes at Cannes this summer: Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini. In The Salesman, a husband and wife, who star as leads in Tehran’s theater production of Death of a Salesman, find meta troubles at home when they are forced to move out of their collapsing abode and find themselves at a new apartment where the mysterious and violent past of a prior tenant shakes up their lives in unexpected ways. Something tells me this won’t be the last time Fahardi’s name will be thrown in Oscar conversations. —Kristen Yoonsoo Kim