1. 1917 (DECEMBER 25)



Plot Summary: Two young British soldiers are given an impossible mission during WWI: deliver a message, deep in enemy territory, in time to stop their men from walking into a deadly trap.

The Breakdown: There wasn't a ton of buzz around Sam Mendes' WWI epic 1917 until recently, when it came to light the Oscar-winning director and his legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the movie to look like a single, uninterrupted take (a la Birdman), in an effort to really capture the intensity of its race-against-time storyline. Couple that with the excellent cast (Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, and so forth), and 1917 sounds all the more like something that needs to be experienced on the big screen. Whether audiences are in the mood for a heart-pounding war movie over the holidays, that's another matter.