It's officially that most exciting time of the movie year: all of the most exciting stuff isn't actually opening unless you are among the anointed within an easy trip of downtown New York or Los Angeles. And may I say that for all I would grouse and kvell about this (not always on this blog) when I lived in Chicago, my experience of last fall in Madison really brought how just how bad it could get. But notwithstanding all of that, there's a lot of great-looking stuff: for much of it, we'll just have to be patient.
4.11.2016
Dr. Stephen Strange is one of my favorite Marvel heroes, and I've been waiting on Doctor Strange since the very start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I'd walk barefoot on broken glass for Tilda Swinton. So why am I feeling so indifferent? Two reasons, I think: one is Benedict Cumberbatch, whom I'm back to finding annoying and over-exposed, and whose casting feels like the single most "pander to the internet" gesture Marvel Studios has ever yet indulged in. The other is director Scott Derrickson, whose good films consist of two-thirds of Sinister, and whose bad films include the dreadful The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the almost indescribably mismanaged remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Marvel industrial system has so far suggested that it's very good at keeping talented filmmakers pinned down to a somewhat deliberately middlebrow level of quality; let us hope and pray that the same system will tend to boost actively bad filmmakers up to the same level.
Even discounting those things, the trailers promising "Magical Inception" would fail to impress me, but at least it looks to be pretty as a result.
Also looking pretty, prettier than I have the stomach to admit almost: DreamWorks Animation's Trolls, whose concept (Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick sing pop songs, learn to be themselves & work together) screams "the worst of DWA back in the low period of the mid-'00s", but whose every last frame of released footage looks beyond splendid: the textures and colors all suggest children's handicrafts in felt and flocking, like a whole movie inhabited by moving cloth toys. I hate how much I enjoy looking at the thing. I hate even more that this is the animated release from the month that I'm most excited to see. We'll get to the other one in a bit.
And now, to unbury the lede: the wide release this month I'm most excited for, by a whole lot, is Hacksaw Ridge. I'm sure it's unseemly to admit that I've really missed having director Mel Gibson around for the last ten years, because no matter how nasty he is as a person, he is a great conductor of violent combat scenes, and if this is as much Braveheart Goes to World War II as it looks, I will be a thoroughly happy camper.
How about those limited releases I was so excited for, then? This week, it's Loving, the true story of a mixed-race couple in the 1950s, directed by the reliably interesting Jeff Nichols.
11.11.2016
The big release will surely be Arrival, which I have seen. The social-science-fiction tale of communicating with aliens is smart enough, but I liked it rather than loved it. Rest assured, if you're waiting for this one with great anticipation, it will likely live up to your hopes.
Winter and Christmas are still a month or more off, but we get previews of them both: Naomi Watts in the snowstorm thriller Shut In, which will surely be kind of terrible, but I have a weak spot for name actors who stumble into gussied-up B-pictures; and Almost Christmas, 2016's foremost exemplar of the "murderer's row of black actors stuck in a domestic dramedy" genre.
The most limited of the limited releases is undoubtedly Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: Ang Lee's experiment in 120 frames-per-second 3-D cinematography will be playing at a grand total of two theaters in the world, one in New York, one in LA. The rest of us will see it, eventually, in one of several gutted versions: 120 fps 2-D, regular 3-D, regular 2-D, I think 48 fps. A pity - the movie is apparently not much good, and the tech demo aspect was very much what I was excited for. As for good movies, or at least hopefully good movies, the ones that most pique my interest are Paul Verhoeven's rape revenge picture Elle, with the magnificent Isabelle Huppert, and the '60s pulp homage The Love Witch. For it is, they tell me, a perfect homage.
18.11.2016
Want to watch the shadowy, hollowed-out version of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk? Now's your chance.
Meanwhile, there's a nice spread of totally disparate genres: the sardonic teen comedy The Edge of Seventeen, which I have heard on good authority is a very excellent version of a standard formula; the franchise spin-off mega-budget tentpole Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which hopes to keep the Harry Potter magic alive while jettisoning all the things that were likable about the Harry Potter films; and a Miles Teller boxing picture, Bleed for This. This is ingenious casting, because it allows all of us to live out the universal fantasy of seeing Miles Teller get punched in the fucking face.
Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea starts its limited-release call, and I'll go ahead and confess right now that this has been one of my most-anticipated films of the year without a single pause since January, so whenever it pokes its nose into the Midwest will be a very great day for me, indeed.
23.11.2016
The always-exciting game of "What shall the family see on Thanksgiving Weekend?" offers a nice range of possibilities: the tony-looking Robert Zemeckis WWII spy thriller Allied, better known as the movie that broke up Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, which will do for the thirtysomethings and middle-aged; Bad Santa 2 is for the dirty-minded souls who were, like, ten years old when Bad Santa came out way the hell back in 2003, because 13 years is exactly how long you should wait for your buzzy comedy sequel; and Rules Don't Apply, a Howard Hughes-adjacent period film that finds Warren Beatty acting for the first time in 15 years and directing for the first time in 18, is for... somebody. 90-year-olds like movies too, I suppose.
My own family, since I am a member of it, will of course be attending the 56th feature made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Moana, and I simply cannot get excited for it. Something looks unspeakably wrong with the character animation in the trailer: the mushy exaggeration typical of directors Ron Clements & John Musker's work (the Genie in Aladdin; the whole cast of Hercules) refuses to transfer properly to a 3-D environment, if the trailers are indication, and I invariably end up with my eyes watering a little when I have to stare at the goofy demigod Maui for more than frame or two. Also, the first released song, "You're Welcome", is frankly garbage. I have started to come to the conclusion that I simply don't like the house style at Disney now that they're working exclusively in 3-D CGI (Tangled remains their only film in the medium that I thoroughly love), and "I just don't like Disney" is the kind of thought that leaves me feeling like my entire personality has been thrown out. It's a most unpleasant feeling. More on this in a few weeks.
25.11.2016
Honestly, nothing of particular interest appears to be on offer among the several films getting thrown into an Oscar-qualifying run this weekend, though Mifune: The Last Samurai seems like a good bet as far as clip docs about dead movie stars go. Also, despite (because of) looking aggravatingly pedestrian in every possible way, the cross-racial adoption drama Lion, with Dev Patel trying to prove that he's a great actor alongside Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara offering support, is likely to be an Oscar player of some scale. So, that's a thing.
03 November 2016
18 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 second just about everything you wrote regarding modern Disney. The Moana trailers have left me cold ( (1)there's too many stabs at snarky contemporary humor and modern idioms, because of course idiot note-giving executives still think is a good idea and (2) aren't they fucking tired of this "unlikely duo go on a quest" story by now?); this despite it having the hottest Broadway songwriter in a generation composing for them and an aquatic/south pacific mythology that is right up my alley.
ReplyDeleteI haven't yet seen Zootopia, that's how far Disney has fallen for me.
And their character designs/house style...sigh. Whatever they're doing to translate their character designs from hand-drawn to CGI, something is gone missing. I distinctly remember seeing the pencil sketches and character model sheets for Olaf and thinking, "that's not bad" and yet in the film, out comes this horrid creature that has lost every bit of the Jiminy Cricket quality that he had on paper. I had such hopes that things would get better with the Meander technology - that with a return to the strength of the line many of the warmth of the characters would come back - but now that they have unceremoniously fired everyone that was associated with Paperman, I feel like all my hopes for that have been dashed.
Wouldn't Vincent Price as Dr. Strange have been awesome? This is why men dream of time machines.
ReplyDeleteI never saw the tv movie from the 70s, but the mother from Arrested Development was in it. Perhaps the combo of one of your favorite comics and one of your favorite shows might entice you to do a review?
Call me a snob, but I just can't get past the voice cast for "Trolls". Whatever genuine merits the film might have, every time I see a bus ad roll by with that particular list of names I come over slightly queasy. At least John Cleese is an exception.
ReplyDeleteSo having already seen a few of these, I can tell you this much:
ReplyDelete1 Doctor Strange at least meets some baseline level of competence, thanks no doubt to the dozens of executives hired to keep Derrickson toeing the line. Whether that makes this 7/10 or 6/10 depends on a few things...
- Will the wonderful visual effects showing the fracturing of realities and fractals in general make up for the spotty CGI used for human beings overall?
- Will the wonderful Tilda Swinton (playing the best-played and written character in the franchise now, matching Hiddleston's Loki) make up for Cumberbatch's lack of trying? (Yes he puts up a credible American accent, but he already did that in 12 Years a Slave and he only goes where Downey Jr. has gone before.)
- In fact, will the least disposable musical score for a Marvel movie help overlook that the story and scriptwriting follows the Marvel Origin Story formula down to a tee, making this in fact Iron Man in Inception's clothing?
2. Oh yes, Trolls looks very lovely and some of its best visual moments are not seen in its many trailers (Saw it in 3D.) In fact, "This all looks nice" was my go-to mental mantra whenever things go wrong in this. Such as:
- Decent song choices on paper, but terrible execution (Junior Senior and Gorillaz deserved better than this.)
- Glitter farts
- Dreamworks Dance Parties (except it's not just the ending credits, it's The Whole Movie!)
- Distracting celebrity voice casting (but it's better than Home's!)
- A story about being happy aimed at kids with sinister undertones (I'll tell you more about this when you inevitably review it, but in a world where Inside Out exists, this is a significant step back.)
We are not at all on the same page on Maui's physical design (it helps that I think he looks a whole lot like one of my best friends, the two of us very gay for The Rock, but him especially) or Disney's move to CGI (I really admire their dedication to tangibility and texture without losing most of the stylization inherent in the traditional form or the ability to adapt to the setting's needs - though I think Tangled was their best with dat lighting and I also don't think they made many risks with the video game setting of Wreck-It Ralph or the Tezuka influence of Big Hero 6), but one thing I'm VERY glad we agree on because it means I'm not alone...
ReplyDelete... "You're Welcome" is a fucking lazy piece of shit songwriting jumping straight onto the most generic off-Broadway style of melody, using instrumental pieces that feel like they got them straight off a computer. And that isn't even counting the terribly obvious autotune on the Rock's voice. That's the sort of bad songwriting that gets me right off the heights and hype of Hamilton to remind myself "Oh, yeah, Lin-Manuel Miranda had a stroke of genius in a career of OK." (Ironically, I'm gonna be starring in a local production of In the Heights, but hey, you take the work you can get). If he gets to his EGOT from that (and given "Writing's on the Wall"'s win earlier this year, I wouldn't put it past Oscar to suck that bad), it will disappoint me as unearned.
And yet "You're Welcome" still didn't piss me off as much as the reference to Tweeting in the first released clip of Moana.
Haven't yet seen the trailer for Moana, but the mention of "tweeting" (WITH BIRDS, RIGHT, DO YOU GET IT XD) just sent my expectations into Death Valley levels. Please don't take them to Mariana Trench levels, Disney.
ReplyDeleteGod Strange looks awful. I've been off Marvel for quite a while now, but like Guardians, I was willing to give Doctor Strange a chance just on strength of fandom. They could not have killed it deader than putting Boringass Cumberbatch in the lead (I remember a time when there were charaterizations of smart people other than "constipated and British") and purging any and all aspects of spiritual psychedelia for tepid urban surrealism. If there is one thing a Strange movie should be the exact opposite of, it is the permeating grey of the trailers.
ReplyDeleteAnd rant over. I had to get it out since I won't actually be seeing the film.
@Yourself On a visual level, Strange actually looks pretty amazing. They spent a pretty penny on CGI. However, the story is actually rather simplistic and Strange just kind of easily is able to get the greatest thing ever.
ReplyDelete@John - Don't get me wrong, I readily believe it's technically capable. But does it look like this?
ReplyDeletehttps://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/dr-strange-3.jpg
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Because, to me at least, that's the entire point of Doctor Strange.
I actually really like Miles Teller. And I really want Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to be good.
ReplyDeleteBut come ON, Tim, how can you express more enthusiasm for frickin Trolls over Moana?? I agree Trolls looks like it has pretty colors, but surely we can agree that the little Troll toys are some of the ugliest toys ever invented, and the redesign in the movie only succeeds in making them cuter in an annoying and distinctly OFF way? I can't stand looking at them. OTOH, I love looking at Moana, and find the character design, colors, and water animation absolutely gorgeous, making this easily the mist interested I've been in a Disney movie since, well, Frozen, which I was dreafully disappointed in, and which really was kind of ugly half the time, despite how much you talked it up in your review. Don't know if it's plot will live up to all that, but they appear to be homaging Miyazaki again, and that's always a good start.
Why's Strange going to be in what's surely going to be another over-stuffed Avengers movie? He should have his own team movie- The Defenders with Hulk, Valkyrie, and Silver Surfer (if they can't get the rights to SS, then forget it). I know Marvel Studios already has a space team, so they have to change things up. Avengers is big on action. Guardians is big on comedy. Defenders should be big on psychedelia. How awesome would that be?
ReplyDeleteThen at the end of the movie Hulk can get stranded on an alien planet, so his next movie can be Planet Hulk because I really liked Planet Hulk.
@Yourself I would say that it's the Marvel cinematic version of that in some parts.
ReplyDeleteIsn't the next Thor movie supposed to be borrowing somewhat heavily from Planet Hulk?
ReplyDelete(Of course, my dream Hulk movie is him turning grey, getting somewhat smarter, much more cunning, somewhat shrunk and weakened, and movie to Vegas to be an enforcer for the mob.)
To those of you worried about Disney under John Lasseter...well, you may want to burn me at the stake for saying this, but with Atlantis and Treasure Planet, they at least wanted to try something that Disney animation hadn't really done before; sci-fi and Indiana Jones-style pulp adventure. The results obviously deserve their ridicule (tall ships in space--NOT cool) and Disney certainly shouldn't have turned away from their musical/folktale/anthropomorphism fortes if they'd been successful, but do you think Disney is really in a better creative state splitting its time between poorly-paced princess stories tailor-made for the Disney Princess merch line and Dreamworks-esque comedies packed with anachronism humor and dance parties? Wasn't Chicken Little supposed to be a what-not-to-do, not a how-to? (Is Lasseter secretly trying to make Pixar look better by comparison?)
ReplyDeleteTim lambasted Eisner for trying to court teenage boys (yes, please laugh), but I think we all know the ladies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones as much as the gentlemen. I'm sure there's an alternate universe out there where Atlantis and Treasure Planet were actually good, well-written and produced movies that became big hits and possibly have rides at the parks and Disney animation proved that it could play in Lucas and Spielberg's backyard without having to buy Lucasfilm.
Still, fuck Eisner so hard for killing 2D Disney (and by extension all American 2D theatrical animation) after thinking Treasure Planet's failure was because the masses preferred CG.
Re. Trolls: When I saw the "shitting cupcakes" scene in the trailer, my first thought was, "Hoo boy, Tim's gonna looooove this." Is a Blockbuster History for A Troll in Central Park in the cards?
Welp, to Andrew: I, too, suggested "A Troll in Central Park" in Tim's "Norm of the North" Review.
ReplyDelete"Trolls" was solid through and through. I understand the hate for its cliche premise, but not the hate from people who have actually seen the film. Its only crime is not being The Lego Movie or Inside Out. But it doesn't try to be, and it works for its own ambitions. As far as the "worst of DWA" is concerned, "Trolls" is what all the bad Dreamworks should have at least been: a passable story told with sincerity and refreshingly original design. See, "better than Home" does not mean anything, but if Dreamworks makes a better movie than "Trolls" (which they can, and have), critics would say, "DWA is really upping its game!"
And you echoed my concerns about Moana! The more trailers I see, the more I think: the visual effects will receive awards, but the characters would have looked better in 2D! My other concern was: "They got Lin Manuel Miranda? Isn't he in the middle of performing the hottest ticket in Broadway at the moment? Will he have the level of passion or energy that Ashman brought to Mermaid or the Lopez's brought to Frozen (being lyricists whose Broadway hits had already had their run going into a Disney feature)? Reading that Miranda sent Disney lyrics via Skype sessions in his Hamilton costumes confirms my concerns about how such an arrangement can work (and it took Miranda 6 years to write Hamilton). But to stay on topic, I will see Moana with no expectations - doing so certainly worked for Trolls!
What!? The Green Scar has to share his best story with Goldilocks? What does Planet Hulk have to do with Ragnarok? Shouldn't Thor be fighting a giant serpent on Midgard? Grumble.... It actually sounds pretty fun, with Jeff Goldblum as Grandmaster, emphasizing syllables where syllables ought not to be emphasized.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Joe Fixit. A Marvel noir movie might be fun. That commie Black Widow no doubt has been spying on the US for years. And that boozehound Tony Stark's probably running speakeasies. If he's not careful, he'll be trading in iron for lead. Lead's the only metal heavy enough to sink a body six feet into the ground, you know.
PAD's Hulk is my favorite Hulk, and Joe Fixit is just so compelling different for the character. Hulk finds a comfortable place in life, and Banner fucks it up for him.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pity it's not summer and there's no Blockbuster history, because then Tim could have reviewed the most likely reason why "Arrival" isn't titled "The arrival", which is "The arrival"(1996), a movie I love (spoiler: maybe unsurprisingly, also featuring aliens).
ReplyDelete