Five films to look forward to before the end of June 2017

La La Land film poster

Here's five films to look forward to in the first six months of 2017. Release dates are subject to change and there's plenty of films due out in between these forthcoming releases.


La La Land (12A, infrequent strong language, January 13)

Summary: LA LA LAND is a musical comedy about the relationship between a jazz musician and an aspiring playwright.

There's an early Oscar buzz around a film which seems to buck the trend of sequels and comic book movies that seems to be a staple of Hollywood these days.

Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, who had success with Whiplash (2014), La La Land is an unashamed musical that seems to hark back to the golden age of Hollywood.

It has a simple sounding premise but if you still want another taste of Strictly Come Dancing before settling in for the long wait till the next series this might be one to try.

Starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, both actors had to sing and dance, and in Gosling's case, learn to play the piano.

Beauty and the Beast (Cert: TBC, March 17)

With Emma Watson (Harry Potter, Noah), and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as the eponymous couple, and Luke Evans (The Hobbit) as the villainous Gaston this is a highly anticipated live-action remake of the Disney classic.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Cert: TBC, April 28)

An unexpected blockbuster hit in 2014, the Guardians of the Galaxy was based on lesser known characters from the Marvel comics stable who had great chemistry together on screen.

Marvel wasn't afraid to take chances with a colourful galaxy of supporting characters and a rocking soundtrack using lesser known hits from the 1970s.

There's not been a bad film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and this is certain to be a crowd pleaser which will move us closer to the next highly awaited Avengers movie.

The sequel starts just two months on from the first film and continues the adventures of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (Vin Diesel), and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) - and the trailer features "Fox on the Run" by The Sweet.

Alien: Covenant (Cert: TBC, May 19)

A sequel to 2012's Prometheus, an extremely bloody trailer (it's on Youtube if you want to go looking for it) marked what appears to be a return to more familiar elements of earlier Alien movies.

Fans may prefer the first two films in the long-running series but while the most recent entry in the franchise, Prometheus, may have suffered from too much mystery and not enough action this film appears to rectify some of the missteps and this series more than most needs to terrify as well as thrill audiences.

Wonder Woman (Cert: TBC, June 2)

American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, Star Trek) crashes on the island of Themyscira and tells the Amazons about a world war that is happening. Amazon princess Diana (Gal Gadot, Batman v Superman) leaves her home to try to stop the war and becomes Wonder Woman.

More than most other superhero films, this is the latest attempt to show that a female-led comic book movie can succeed, although the film that Gadot's character made her debut in - Batman v Superman - wasn't a critical success.

The comic book character was created during World War II and presumably, to avoid comparisons with the first Captain America film, this film appears to be set during the earlier World War I - a century before the present day making Wonder Woman a very long-lived character indeed.