The 30 Films You Must See This Winter (Part One)

Seven Pounds

Reuniting the creative team behind The Pursuit Of Happyness (score!) including director Gabriele Muccino, Seven Pounds sees Smith as a sadsack taxman planning to off himself. Hoping to make amends for a life poorly lived, he sets about helping seven strangers before facing the big D, but reshuffles his schedule when he falls for Rosario Dawson.

Valkyrie

Well, not really. “He isn’t a Nazi,” Cruise told Total Film last month. “He was a man who said, ‘Someone’s got to kill this guy…’” Valkyrie tells the tense tale of the doomed 1944 plot to off the Fuhrer with a briefcase full of bombs. Cruise is plot leader Claus Von Stauffenberg, ably supported by a titanic cast (Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy, Carice Van Houten…).

Ghost Town

Ricky Gervais heads to the USA for his first film lead, risking discrediting from churlish hacks desperate to dirty up the golden boy. In Ghost Town – the one before next year’s co-directorial debut This Side Of The Truth – Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, a nasty dentist who dies for seven minutes and comes back haunted by ghosts.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Total Film and High School Musical didn’t see eye-to-eye until Vanessa Anne Hudgens stripped starkers and had pics of herself spread webwide. Clever girl. Now the trilogy-closer of this sickly gooey singalong bit of kid-fluff has found its way into our Winter Preview and adolescent – not pre-pubescent – boys the world over are itching to see Hudgens on the big screen. As opposed to grainy webcam piffly porn shots.

Pride And Glory

Max Payne

But despite the source inspiration being dark and adult, rumours persist the film’s a PG. Will that neuter it or offer a refreshing new take? That is: the new Bourne or just another Hitman?

Easy Virtue

The second cinema-shot at Coward’s play (Hitchcock did a silent version in 1928) stars Biel as the Yank divorcee whose hasty marriage to Prince Caspian stud Ben Barnes sets up a Meet The Parents-style clash with his blueblood mater and pater (Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth).

Tyson

James Toback’s naked, frank confessional of ol’ ear-biter hit this year’s Cannes critics like an uppercut. Toback unerringly tracks the first four decades of ‘Iron’ Mike’s life.

It’s some story: bullied childhood, criminal career, pugilistic passions, choked pain, tortured emotions, lost father figures, sexual hunger, bad choices, worse friends, and the youngest ever undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. It’s selective, sure, but Toback’s honesty cuts through Tyson’s bestial image to reveal a fractured, vulnerable man still struggling to understand his own flaws.

Hunger

Visual artist Steve McQueen’s exceptional personal-political drama debuted at Cannes this year to a packed cinema full of viewers watching through their hands. McQueen’s harrowing, unrelenting take on Sands’ story makes The Machinist look like Fat Camp.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

From The Philosopher’s Stone to The Chamber Of Secrets to the ones about Prisoners Of Azkaban and Goblets Of Fire and Orders Of Phoenixes, we’ve patiently sat through seven years of Harry Potter gubbins.

Part Three