From La La Land to Arrival, which films are favourite to join the Best Picture club at the 2017 Oscars?
FROM Titanic to 12 Years A Slave, there is no doubt that the list of films that have won the Oscar for Best Picture is the most prestigious.
With a yearly battle for one of the most coveted awards in film, 2017 is no different.
Ahead of the ceremony itself on February 26th, nominations are officially opening tomorrow.
We know it is easy to get a little caught up in the fuss of predictions and woulda, shoulda, coulda’s when it comes to what films are in the pipeline to be nominated, so we’ve done the dirty work for you and narrowed down the top ten films you ought to concern yourselves with.
There is no doubt that the last year has seen some great cinema, but here are our pick of the frontrunners for Best Picture…
Manchester by the Sea
Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan
Starring: Kyle Chandler, Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams
The lowdown: Lee Chandler (Affleck) heads to Manchester-by-the-Sea, following his brother’s passing away, to inform his nephew, Joe (Chandler) of his father’s death. Soon, Lee learns that his brother has entrusted him as Joe’s legal guardian. The unexpected chain of events leaves Lee open to deeper turmoil as he is forced to face his past.
Hell or High Water
Directed by: David Mackenzie
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster
The lowdown: Toby Howard (Pine) and his brother Tanner (Foster) carry out two bank robberies in Texas. Their late mother’s debt soon leads the brothers down a rocky road of deceit, turbulent family relationships and a life of crime whilst two rangers attempt to suss out exactly what the two brothers are up to.
La La Land
Directed by: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone
The lowdown: This musical follows aspiring actress Mia (Stone) and Sebastian (Gosling) a jazz musician as they struggle to achieve their dreams in cut-throat Los Angeles. As our favourite Hollywood duo team up for this romantic musical against an impressive backdrop, what more could we ask for?
Moonlight
Directed by: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Trevante Rhodes and André Holland
The lowdown: Moonlight is a coming of age tale focusing on Chiron (Rhodes) as he grows up in a very troubled Miami.The film splits into three important chapters in his life as he attempts to deal with a home and love life that he can’t seem to make sense of.
Lion
Directed by: Garth Davis
Starring: Dev Patel and Rooney Mara
The lowdown: When Saroo (Patel) gets lost on a train, aged five, he is carried across his home country of India without family. After getting adopted by an Australian couple, 25 years later, he attempts to find his family and return home with the help of Google Earth.
The Jungle Book
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o and Scarlett Johansson
The lowdown: This year saw a live action remake of Disney’s classic animated adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The classic tale follows the journey of boy-cub Mowgli (Sethi) on an adventure through the jungle with the characters he meets along the way.
Arrival
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker
The lowdown: When 12 mysterious spaceships land at various destinations on Earth, expert in language, Louise Banks (Adams) is assigned to try and decipher the language of the extra terrestrial species.
Loving
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon and Nick Kroll
The lowdown: This true story focuses on Mildred (Negga) and Richard Loving (Edgerton), an interracial couple in Virginia who fight for the right to live under the same roof as a family. In 1967, their civil rights case Loving v. Virginia went to the Supreme Court and became a key case in The Civil Rights Movement.
Silence
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson
The lowdown: Scorsese is set to wow audiences once more with his latest masterpiece. When two Jesuit priests venture to Japan to search for their missing mentor, they face a hostile community where Catholicism is outlawed and their very being there is enough to cause more than a just a stir.
Hidden Figures
Directed by: Theodore Melfi
Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe
The lowdown: Another true story, this upcoming blockbuster names Pharrell Williams as one of its executive producers. In the 1960s, as the USA fights against the USSR in a mission to space, three African-American women, working at NASA, fight for the mathematics that they know to be true but struggle to get heard.