1 Fight Club
Release date: January 28
A characteristically dark and apocalyptic fable from David Fincher (Seven, Alien 3), with Edward Norton as a discontented yuppie who joins forces with a malevolent prankster (Brad Pitt) to wage guerrilla war against capitalist society – to deeply disturbing effect. WEBSITE
2 Buena Vista Social Club
Release date: January 28
Wim Wenders’s wonderful documentary follows Ry Cooder’s trip to Cuba in 1996, when the star gathered together the country’s finest musicians and recorded an album with them. WEBSITE
3 Angela’s Ashes
Release date: February 18
Alan Parker adapts Frank McCourt’s tender story of his poverty-stricken family struggling to survive in 1930s Dublin. Beautifully filmed, and starring the heavyweight partnership of Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson. WEBSITE
4 The Beach
Release date: February 18
Leonardo DiCaprio has his first major post-Titanic outing in a film of Alex Garland’s best-selling adventure yarn about backpackers in Thailand. From Danny Boyle and the team that brought us Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. WEBSITE
5 Three Kings
Release date: February 18
A satirical thriller, this is the first big-budget Hollywood production by independent writer-director David O Russell, starring George Clooney as a Special Forces major leading an eccentric commando band on a private enterprise mission during the Gulf War. WEBSITE
6 American Beauty
Release date: February 25
A hot tip for the Oscars, British stage director Sam Mendes’s movie debut stars Kevin Spacey as a middle-class professional whose life is spinning out of control. WEBSITE
7 The Insider
Release date: February 25
Michael Mann turns from fictional crime in the streets to real-life malfeasance in the boardroom as chemist Russell Crowe blows the whistle on the tobacco industry in conjunction with TV producer Al Pacino. WEBSITE
8 The End of the Affair
Release date: March 3
Neil Jordan adapts his co-religionist Graham Greene’s semi-autobiographical 1951 masterpiece set during the Blitz. Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore star as an adulterous couple in a triangular affair, the apex of which is God. WEBSITE
9 The Talented Mr Ripley
Release date: March 17
Anthony Minghella’s first picture since The English Patient, this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic thriller stars Matt Damon as the charming American psychopath Tom Ripley, a role previously played by Alain Delon in Plein Soleil, René Clement’s 1959 version of the same book. WEBSITE
10 Boys Don’t Cry
Release date: March 17
Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny have both received Los Angeles critics’ awards for their roles in the story of Brandon Teena, a transsexual drifter who was murdered in a small Nebraskan town after the inhabitants discovered his/her identity. WEBSITE
11 Toy Story 2
Release date: March 24
John Lasseter and company (who gave us Toy Story and A Bug’s Life) are back at their computers producing another lively adventure featuring Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Rex and other stars who don’t demand retakes or a cut of gross profits. WEBSITE
12 The Straight Story
Release date: March 24
Directed by David Lynch, this true story of a 73-year-old man from Iowa who drove his lawn tractor to Wisconsin to make peace with his estranged brother becomes a spiritual pilgrimage that makes us think about family life, community and preparing ourselves to face death. Harry Dean Stanton and Sissy Spacek star. WEBSITE
13 Man on the Moon
Release date: March 24
Jim Carrey winks broadly at the Academy in Milos Forman’s biopic of Dadaist genius and sometime stand-up Andy Kaufman. WEBSITE
14 Magnolia
Release date: April 14
Long-awaited follow-up to Boogie Nights from wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson, taking an epic, Altmanesque overview of various San Fernando flotsam and jetsam (Tom Cruise included). WEBSITE
15 All About My Mother
Release date: April 14
Winner of the Best Director award at Cannes last year, Pedro Almodóvar’s film, in which a mother returns to the place of her birth on a journey of exploration following the death of her son, is his finest to date. WEBSITE
Release dates are tentative and may change