MISS SLOANE (DEC. 9)

Jessica Chastain stars as a powerful D.C. lobbyist in this thriller from British director John Madden.

JACKIE (DEC. 9)

Natalie Portman plays Jackie Kennedy in a biopic/drama that takes place in the days after the assassination of her husband. Famed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín directs.

LION (DEC. 9)

Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) stars in the strange-but-true story of an Indian boy who was lost, adopted by Australians (Nicole Kidman co-stars) and eventually finds his home using Google Maps.

ROGUE ONE (DEC. 16)

No one is tipping this for a bestpicture nomination, but no one has seen it yet either, so who knows? In any case, the newest Star Wars story is one of the most anticipated films of the season.

COLLATERAL BEAUTY (DEC. 16)

Will Smith stars as a devastated man who meets Love (Keira Knightley), Time (Jacob Latimore) and Death (Helen Mirren). David Frankel (Marley & Me, The Devil Wears Prada) directs.

NERUDA (DEC. 16)

The story of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda stars Luis Gnecco as the poet and Gael Garcia Bernal as the detective tasked with tracking him down. Pablo Larraín (see Jackie, above) directs.

PASSENGERS (DEC. 21)

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence play two interstellar travellers in suspended animation who wake up 90 years too early. This film itself has been in development for almost 10 years, and was once set to star Keanu Reeves.

A SING (DEC. 21)

The studio behind Despicable Me and the Minions movie has its best-animated Oscar hopes pinned to the animal-filled story of a theatre impresario (Matthew McConaughey) who puts on a singing competition.

MONSTER CALLS (DEC. 23)

Based on the children’s fantasy novel by Patrick Ness, the film tells of a boy (Lewis MacDougall) whose mother (Felicity Jones) is dying, and a giant tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who helps him cope.

JULIETA (DEC. 23)

Pedro Almodóvar’s newest movie is about a mother-daughter relationship, and draws from the short stories of Canadian writer Alice Munro.

FENCES (DEC. 25)

Denzel Washington stars (alongside Viola Davis) and directs this adaptation of the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning 1983 play.

HIDDEN FIGURES (DEC. 25)

Writer/director Theodore Melfi adapts Margot Lee Shetterly’s book about Katherine Johnson, a black physicist who worked for NASA in the 1960s, calculating launch windows and trajectories. Taraji P. Henson stars.

LA LA LAND (DEC. 25)

This old-fashioned musical from Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as an aspiring actress and a jazz pianist who fall in love in modern-day Los Angeles.

20TH CENTURY WOMEN (JAN. 6)

Annette Bening, Elle Fanning and Greta Gerwig are the women in question in this coming-of-age tale loosely based on the experiences of writer/director Mike Mills.

SILENCE (JAN. 6)

A passion project for almost 30 years for director Martin Scorsese, Silence tells the story of two Jesuit priests (Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield) facing persecution in 17th-century Japan.

LIVE BY NIGHT (JAN. 13)

Ben Affleck adapts a novel by Dennis Lehane, returns to the director’s chair and also stars in this story of a gangster, set near the end of the Prohibition era.

PATRIOT’S DAY (JAN. 13)

Directed by Peter Berg (Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon), and starring Mark Wahlberg, this thriller recounts the hunt for the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.

PATERSON (JAN. 13)

Adam Driver plays Paterson, a bus driver and amateur poet from Paterson, N.J., in a quietly reflective film from writer/director/poet Jim Jarmusch.

THE COMEDIAN (JAN. 13)

Robert De Niro plays an aging insult comic, sentenced to community service after a nightclub dustup, who makes a new friend (Leslie Mann).

THE FOUNDER (JAN. 20)

Michael Keaton stars as Ray Kroc, the cranky, unlikeable entrepreneur who gave McDonald’s everything but its name, after taking the company into franchising.

THE SALESMAN (JAN. 20)

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) tells the story of two actors whose relationship begins to fracture during a run of Death of a Salesman.

TONI ERDMANN (JAN. 27)

This German-language comedy stars Sandra Hüller as a straitlaced businesswoman whose father keeps undermining her work with his practical jokes.

GOLD (JAN. 27)

Matthew McConaughey stars as Kenny Walls, drawn to the jungles of Indonesia by the promise of billions of dollars in gold. Not a bad metaphor for Hollywood.