It has been a year, hasn't it? My word. Setting aside all the other things one could think to talk about as 2016 winds up, let's stick with movies: it has been an excellent year for very, very good films, and not a terribly interesting year for absolute masterpieces (I don't think I've ever gotten this deep into the calendar with so few new 10s - only one for an actual 2016 U.S. release, in fact). I don't imagine the last five weekends are going to seriously change that, but we can hold out hope. If nothing else, the summer popcorn movie I've been most excited about all year is in the offing, regardless of the annoying fact that summer is quiet emphatically over.
2.12.2016
Gotta love that early December shitty horror release slot: "Aaron Eckhart pays Lin Shaye's Inisidious character" is the closest I've been able to come to figuring out Incarnate, the weekend's only new wide release.
If you want horror to ring in the holiday season, a much better bet will be the limited theatrical platform/VOD release of The Eyes of My Mother, which I'm just over the moon for. More to come on Friday.
As far as limited releases go, a couple of international heavy-hitters get a pair: Pablo Larraín's biopic Jackie, and Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come, with Isabelle Huppert; and sometimes, really, the only thing you need is Huppert being Hupperty.
9.12.2016
Once again, we have but a solitary wide release, and I cannot imagine who would give any portion of a shit about it: Office Christmas Party, with a lot of reasonably talented comic performers doing the whole R-rated comedy thing for the directors who made The Switch.
In much, much, much happier news, the platform release of the Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling musical La La Land starts on this day. I can vouch that it is as good as you hope it is, especially if you love Jacques Demy. And if you do not, I cannot help you.
16.12.2016
Alright, here it is: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Notwithstanding its pile-up of a title, I am sort of blissfully free of my characteristic cynicism about this one. Ever since the first rumors kicked around that "caper movie about finding the Death Star plans" was one of Lucasfilm's mooted Star Wars spin-offs, it's been the film in the series, mainline or otherwise, that I've been most excited for. Nor have any of the trailers done anything to dent my enthusiasm, though they haven't, in honesty, been quite up to the insta-iconic trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I may have spent 32 minutes on Sunday night yelling "fuck you" at Fandango until it stopped crashing and sold me a ticket.
And for some reason, you can watch Will Smith talk to the anthropomorphic personifications of Love, Time, and Death in Collateral Beauty.
In limited release, Pablo Larraín's second biopic of the month: Neruda. I have tried and failed at two different film festivals to see this one, so I'm glad to finally make that up.
21.12.2016
Illumination is quickly becoming my bête noire, and their animals-singing-pop-songs epic Sing looks almost as appealing as having a car door slam in my face. I will not speak of it any more until I absolutely have to.
A mere five days after that other sci-fi movie, here comes Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in Passengers, a thriller about accidentally waking up from cryo-sleep on a cross-galactic voyage. And in my affection for genre fare that sounds like it was first conceived of in the 1950s, I might even be excited for it, if only Morten "Imitation Game" Tyldum. Also, the newest attempt to make something not-awful out of a video game movie is Assassin's Creed, which has gone so far as to wrangle Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard to add a veneer of artistic respectability. It does not appear that it will be sufficient.
In limited release, the year's unlikeliest double-feature: from the ultra-American masculinist Peter Berg comes a Boston Marathon bombing procedural with the heavy-handed title Patriot Day, while the glossy camp/melodrama master Pedro Almodóvar has a story about motherhood called Julieta. I would like you all to guess which I am more excited for.
23.12.2016
How utterly baffling that the run-up to Christmas includes a magical realist children's fable, A Monster Calls, and it's not getting anything bigger than a platform release (the wide release happens in January?). Instead, the solitary Friday wide release - for the third of four weekends! - is Why Him?, which has the distinct appearance of being a less-funny Meet the Parents with Bryan Cranston as the dad and James Franco as the son.
Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese's long, long-brewing Silence finally sees the light of day, and the idea of that director working with Liam Neeson gets me excited enough to be on pins and needles even if the rest of the project seems a little stuffy. The Palme d'Or winner I, Daniel Blake may also be coming out for its qualifying run, or it may be getting nudged into 2017. My sources do not agree.
25.12.2016
Christmas Day! And, clearly conceding the family audiences to Rogue One and Sing, there's not a solitary holiday weekend-type movie on the docket. The biggest release is Fences, which is insanely the first of August Wilson's plays to be adapted as a theatrical film, and with pretty much exactly the dream cast of dream casts, in the form of Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. Washington also directs, which is the enormous question mark here: he's made two films before this, and they're neither of them movies that exactly set the world on fire. On the other hand, he's never worked with such thoroughly field-tested material before.
The huge cluster of limited releases, some of which will be expanding in January, some which are doomed to a life in art house purgatory, mostly centers on Oscar bait, though not all of the same kind. We have the Crowd-Pleasing Dramedy About Social Issues Oscar film in Hidden Figures, about an African-American woman working as a NASA mathematician in the 1960s; this same umbrella perhaps also covers 20th Century Women, the latest attempt to win Annette Bening her damned Oscar already. For the Grim, Manly Crime Drama Oscar film, we must turn to Live by Night, a Dennis Lehane adaptation directed by Ben Affleck in his brief window between Batmans. And then for the Film Too Goddamned God for Oscar film, we have one of the year's many wonderful Palme d'Or losers, Maren Ade's gargantuan comedy Toni Erdmann - I've seen it, and it's one of the absolute best films of the year.
30.12.2016
And another Palme also-ran that everybody liked more than I, Daniel Blake rounds things off: Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. And once I hear "Jarmusch", I stop needing reasons, so I actually can't tell you anything else about it. I think it's about a bus driver. It is, at any rate, fun to have the last movie of the year be one I'm so eager to see.
29 November 2016
13 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
I'm fairly certain that Incarnate involves Eckhart going into possessed people's dreams to fight the demons. Which is... a premise, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI give no sh!ts about Rogue One. I was looking forward to this one when it was announced, because I thought Edwards showed a lot of potential with Godzilla and I wanted to see what he'd do with a better cast and script. But dear God, does Felicity Jones look awful in the trailers. If you pay attention, you'll notice that she almost never speaks in the trailers; that's a really worrying sign, especially since her delivery of the handful of lines we do hear is... well, I'll be nice and say "rough." Plus, it seems like it went through a Suicide Squad-esque amount of reshooting and tweaking, enough that Alexandre Desplat had to drop out and be replaced with Michael Giacchino.
I may have spent 32 minutes on Sunday night yelling "fuck you" at Fandango until it stopped crashing and sold me a ticket.
ReplyDeleteThat brings me back - my very first project as a newly-minted mobile dev was the old, old Android Fandango app. I muttered "fuck you" under my breath at the end of conference calls then, too (although I suspect for different reasons ;) ).
Also, the newest attempt to make something not-awful out of a video game movie is Assassin's Creed
My favourite - well, "favourite" - part is that they're keeping the frame narrative. That was semi-passible in the video game, exit problems notwithstanding, but there's really no reason for it to exist in a movie. Desmond Miles is the Boringest Man Alive! Just drop him and have some historical action movie fun!
I'm fairly certain that Incarnate involves Eckhart going into possessed people's dreams to fight the demons. Which is... a premise, I suppose.
Now all we need is Dr Tuskin's Synchronizer and we've got ourself a movie!
I'm gonna pour out a 40 for "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk", which came and went this month without a trace. One of those films where I saw a masterpiece and everyone else seems to have seen a totally different thing.
ReplyDeleteContra the first comment, Edwards being attached to Rogue One is precisely my reason for being skeptical about the film. I had high hopes for Godzilla that were dashed upon the rocks of mediocre writing and acting, and while you can easily chalk that up to studio meddling, if you're so inclined, it gets harder to square that circle when his previous film, Monsters, which was pretty much his project top to bottom, had pretty similar problems.
ReplyDeletethe idea of that director working with Liam Neeson gets me excited enough to be on pins and needles
ReplyDeleteTim, the last time that happened, we had Gangs of New York.
IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, TIM?!
DO YOU WANT GANGS OF NEW YORK?!
Which is a God damn masterpiece that Tim is completely wrong about dammit.
DeleteI really enjoyed the gameplay of Assassin's Creed, but I don't recall liking any characters or plot points. Without much to work with, I don't have much faith in writers hired to work on a video game movie.
ReplyDeleteI wish they'd drop the modern-day stuff, but if they're looking to make a franchise, this lets them jump ahead to the Renaissance or pirates or what have you while keeping Fassbender throughout.
Doom's my favorite video game, but the movie sucked. The first half of Rec 2 came closest to what I want in a Doom movie.
What about The Founder with Michael Keaton? I thought it would have an Oscar qualifying run this December. Its the one I most excited about!
ReplyDeleteJulieta, which is already out here, is wonderful. Honestly wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. Recommend. Curiously, some Spanish friends were really not into it. Like different friends who don't know each other but come from Spain. They were all like Almodovar isn't what he used to be, but I thought this was like watching a Master at play.
ReplyDelete@David Greenwood - I lol'd at the poured 40 comment. I actually know one person who saw it when he recently travelled to LA and thought it was an absolute masterpiece, so you're not alone! Even if it's a small club. He's also the only person I know who's seen the film, period. I'm actually curious but it hasn't come out here.
Ms Pintu and I got tickets to Rogue One but mostly out of obligation. I don't think I've even seen the latest trailer, but who knows maybe we'll go in as cold as possible and get blown away.
I'm kinda boycotting Rogue One because they went and got me excited by putting Rogue in the title, like omigod it's going to be a Rogue Squadron movie about flying aces and drop all the boring space voodoo crap. When the trailer debuted without a single X-Wing I knew Disney had fucked us all once again.
ReplyDeleteEven knowing that they were dumping the EU material, this is the equivalent of a Star Trek sequel called "The Flight of Khan", telling the story of a space composer struggling desperately to complete a symphonic interpretation of the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
@Pintu I think "Billy Lynn" was destroyed by the bad PR that came from its premiere. Most of the early reviews were so full of bile about how distracting the 120 fps 3D was that they barely got around to talking about the film's actual content. The main complaint I heard was the awkward clash of tones between sentimentality and satire, which is true but probably intentional. But the film's initial critical trashing probably lead to it not getting much notice. It's a shame, but by now I'm used to Ang Lee's best films getting ignored.
ReplyDelete@David - The big problem with Billy Lynn was that Sony found out very few theaters could actually show the movie in even 60fps, and without a large enough number of 24fps packages and no 48fps packages made at all, they had to cancel tons of screenings at the last minute. Essentially, Lee's ambition and Sony's incompetence doomed the movie's chances at reaching a wide audience. I just hope they at least attempt to put the 60fps version out on Blu-Ray or streaming, just to show what could have been. I doubt it, though.
ReplyDeleteWhether it is a Hollywood actor or actress, a famed athlete, or a song diva, there is one thing they all share alike: the comfort of what people call a "celebrity home". And if there is one thing you notice that all celebrity homes have in common, is that it is built for entertaining.
ReplyDeleteNona Gaye