It was last November when Wesley asked me to put together a list of ten films I was looking forward to in 2016. I couldn’t do it for various reasons. For one, I had just taken over the editorship of my community newspaper which required a lot of detailed concentration in putting together the combined December-January paper and working on a revised telephone directory for 2016. For another, I still hadn’t fully gotten my head around the films of 2015. I was amazed at the great work that Wesley, Tripp and Thomas did on their lists which were published on January 1st. It couldn’t have been easy.

Now almost three months later I am actually excited about the current movie year and am able to cite ten films that I am really looking forward to, so without further ado here they are in the order in which I am looking forward to them:

1. Silence
2. Loving
3. Manchester by the Sea
4. The Birth of a Nation
5. The BFG
6. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
7. Sully
8. The Founder
9. The Girl on the Train
10. The Light Between Oceans

Silence is Martin Scorsese’s passion project, a film he’s been wanting to make for a long time. Set in 17th Century Japan, the film has parallels to contemporary events in the Middle East as the Tokugawa shogunate persecutes Christians in their own country for coming under the influence of western culture. Numerous A-list actors turned down the lead roles of priests eventually filled by Andrew Garfield and Liam Neeson. It would be nice to see Garfield, who was denied a deserved Oscar nomination for The Social Network finally receive one after the added embarrassment of having the Spider-Man franchise yanked out from under him. It would also be nice to see Neeson, in paycheck roles for too long, return to the list of Oscar nominees with his key supporting performance.

Loving is a film from one of my favorite under-rated writer-directors, Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) about the real-life interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who were persecuted in Virginia in 1958 for getting married. Sentenced to a year in prison, the sentence was suspended for 25 years as long as they left the state which they did. Their conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in a landmark unanimous decision in 1967 which put an end to miscegenation laws in the U.S. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga play the Lovings and Nichols favorite Michael Shannon has a key supporting role. A year after the “Oscars So White” brouhaha it would be nice to see Ethiopian born Negga nominated for and win the Best Actress Oscar for what should be a memorable performance.

Manchester by the Sea opened to rapturous reviews at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January. Picked up by Amazon, the wholesaler and video streaming service provider that has vowed to give the film an appropriate theatrical release unlike Netflix’s mishandling of last year’s Beasts of No Nation in which that film was given a cursory theatrical run in two theatres in Manhattan and two more in L.A. but was otherwise only available via Netflix’s same release day streaming. The film from Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me) has received raves for Casey Affleck’s lead performance and the supporting turns of Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges and Gretchen Mol.

The Birth of a Nation is another film that caused a sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Actor turned director Nate Parker’s debut film in that capacity is about freed slave Nat Turner’s 1831 liberation movement to free Virginia slaves in rebellion against their owners. It resulted in mass retaliation in the antebellum South. Parker stars as Turner, with Armie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union and Joshua Henry co-starred. The film’s rapturous reviews resulted in a bidding war won by Fox which will open it in October. Turner has already been named Breakthrough Director of the Year by CinemaCon. The title is a rebuke to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film of the same name.

The BFG was one of two films that appeared on all three of the January 1st lists from Wesley, Tripp and Thomas. Taken from Roald Dahl’s classic 1982 children’s book dedicated to his and Patricia Neal’s daughter who died of complications from measles in 1962, the adapted screenplay was written by the late Melissa Mathison who wrote the screenplay for the film’s director Steven Spielberg’s best-loved children’s film, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Mark Rylance who won an Oscar for Spielberg’s 2015 film, Bridge of Spies, is the voice of the BFG (big friendly ghost) who befriends Sophie, the young heroine (Ruby Barnhill).
Penelope Wilton co-stars as the Queen of England.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was the other of the two films that appeared on all three of the January 1st lists. It’s two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee’s first film since winning his second Oscar for 2012’s Life of Pi. Based on Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel of the same name, the film is about a group of decorated soldiers who appear as guests of the Dallas Cowboys at their Thanksgiving Show before their return to further duty. With a cast headed by Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Chris Tucker and newcomer Ben Platt in the title role, this could be Lee’s first film to win Best Picture after his own wins for Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain.

Sully is another true-life story from Clint Eastwood (J. Edgar, American Sniper starring everybody’s favorite portrayer of real-life middle-aged heroes, Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies), as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberer, the pilot who glided his disabled plane over the chilly Hudson River in January, 2009, saving the lives of all 155 passengers and crew. The film chronicles the headline-generating event as well as Sully’s personal struggles at the time. This could get Hanks his sixth career Oscar nomination, his first in sixteen years. The supporting cast includes Aaron Echkhart, Anna Gunn and Laura Linney as Sully’s wife.

The Founder provides Michael Keaton with another shot at a Best Actor Oscar as the milkshake salesman who partnered with the McDonald brothers in turning their hamburger business into a national franchise beginning in the mid-1950s, buying them out in 1961. Told in the style of The Social Network by screenwriter Robert D. Siegel (The Wrestler, Trumbo) and director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), this is the Weinstein Company’s major Oscar contender this year. The film co-stars Linda Cardellini, Patrick Wilson, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch and B.J. Novak and Laura Dern as Kroc’s first wife, Ethel.

The Girl on the Train is a highly anticipated mystery thriller from director Tate Taylor (The Help). Paula Hawkins’ 2015 novel has been a huge bestseller for more than a year now. Dreamworks is opening the film in October, prime release time for Oscar contenders, so there’s a good chance that the film will finally earn Emily Blunt (Into the Woods, Sicario) the Oscar nomination prognosticators having been predicting for her ever since The Devil Wears Prada. Moved from the London setting of the novel to New York, the film co-stars Justin Theroux, Rebecca Ferguson, Luke Evans and Haley Bennett.

The Light Between Oceans is another film from one of my favorite under-rated writer-directors, Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines), starring two-time Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender and Oscar winners Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weitz from M.L. Stedman’s 2012 debut novel. The novel, which has been compared to the works of Thomas Hardy, is about a World War I Australian veteran, now a lighthouse keeper, and his wife who find a baby in a ship’s wreckage and raise her as their own only to discover that the girl’s mother survived the crash and is searching for her. It might be too old-fashioned for Oscar voters, but Weitz’s role sounds like catnip for a supporting nod.