> October 4 - Runner Runner

YES! My most eagerly anticipated film of the year. Timberlake. Affleck. Gambling. Mob stuff. Looks totally awful and awesome. I can't wait to watch this like 5 times on HBO next May.

> October 11 - Captain Phillips

I have been seen this trailer (both versions) in front of every movie for about six months now. The flick looks fine but it's about to enter Shutter Island territory. "You know this ship. They do not." Thanks, I get it.

> October 11 - Machete Kills

The real trailer for this is way less interesting than the fake trailer for the original Machete (not the real trailer for Machete).

> October 18 - Carrie
>
> Also not for me is this retread of Carrie. The remake is trading on good will
> over the 1976 Brian De Palma version, but the original wasn't actually a great
> movie in the first place. The movie might get a little mileage in updating the
> story to include cyberbullying,

Hahahaha, what? And you think that's a good thing? Yikes.

> rather than merely the traditional kind, but
> the distinction is all window dressing on the heart of the story, which I
> believe to be fundamentally flawed in the final act.

The final act totally rules, it's the best part of Carrie, so whatever, man.

Weirder: the trailer for this remake is *nothing* but scenes/shots from the original. Huh? Is this a shot-for-shot remake? It's disconcerting how similar it looks.

> October 18 - Escape Plan

I will only watch this twice on cable.

> October 18 - 12 Years a Slave
>
> Steve McQueen (not the Bullitt actor, the British director) takes on American
> slavery as the topic of his third film. All evidence suggests this is going to
> be tough to watch, as befitting the subject matter. What I don't know is
> whether it'll be rewarding to slog through it. I mean, we already know slavery
> is bad, right?

I feel this might be liiiiittle bit like dismissing Schindler's List sight unseen. We already know the Holocaust is bad, right?

> October 25 - The Counselor

> The trailer is terrific.

Yeah it is. I love the fact that it doesn't give away many plot details. Just looks really cool. Pretty excited for this one.

> November 1 - Ender's Game
>
> No surprise there's lots of anticipation here and probably some trepidation,
> too. It's a well-loved book, and nobody wants to see it messed up.

This is one of those "You can't really turn it into a movie" kind of books, and from what I've seen of the trailers... uh... yeah. I think there's a reason this was in development for 20 years. Don't have high hopes.

> November 1 - About Time

Wait, is this a sequel to In Time? I hope so.

> November 1 - Las Vegas

The film is actually called "Last Vegas." Which means we get two movies with puns as titles on the same day!

> November 8 - Thor: The Dark World

> So I'm not exactly anticipating the sequel with any kind of enthusiasm. That
> said, there's no reason not to keep an open mind. I'm intrigued about the
> director, a guy who is new to feature films but has a long career in pretigious
> television work behind him, including episodes of Game of Thrones, Mad Men,
> Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, Lost, Homicide, and The Sopranos.

I think the trailers for this one look really good, in a way the trailers for the first didn't. These Marvel movies seem kind of hard to predict, but I think this could be really good.

> November 15 - The Wolf of Wall Street
> But you don't come out of
> Goodfellas wanting to be Henry Hill, or The Aviator wanting to be Howard
> Hughes.

I kind of want to be Henry Hill. Moreso: Ace Rothstein. But I get what you're saying.

Still: new Scorsese! About crime! YES! Excited. Too bad it doesn't have gambling.

> November 29 - Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom
>
> I love Idris Elba, but is he right for the title role here? I don't see it,
> but then again I don't feel like we've seen everything Elba can do yet. He's
> a fine actor, as is Naomie Harris, who plays Winnie Mandela.

I thought he looked/sounded right in the trailer. I'm more concerned that this is a biopic with Oscar-bait written all over it. We'll see.

> November 29 - Grace of Monaco

Is this the annual movie about Hollywood history that disappoints you? Don't you write about one of these every year?

> December 6 - Dallas Buyers Club
>
> One glance at the trailer and it seems self-evident that Matthew McConaughey
> will secure an Oscar nomination, perhaps even a win, for his role in this film.
> Real guy: check. Disease with a grim prognosis: check. One man fighting the
> system: check. Roughed up physical appearance: check. Oh, and if the
> trailers are any indication, his performance is pretty good too.

He's also in Wolf of Wall Street and was in Mud earlier this year, and in like five movies last year. Did he give up smoking weed or something? That could explain his output from 2000-2010.

> December 6 - Inside Llewyn Davis
>
> A new Coen Brothers film is always something to look forward to.

Do we have proof it's actually coming out this time? I've been expecting this to come out for like 18 months now. Let's hope.

> December 13 - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
>
> The Hobbit trilogy is shaping up to be noticeably inferior to the Lord of the
> Rings one, but I'm still a sucker for this stuff. Bring on the dragon!

Thrill as characters deliver important/portentous lines of dialogue and then look off in the distance! Wonder why 48 frames per second looks so awful, despite being theoretically better! Sleep for about 30 minutes or so in the middle, because this is sure to be an hour too long!

> Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But it's basically insane to presume I'm
> wrong.

Well... I think the fact that it took a while is a good thing in a way; this isn't just Ghostbusters 2 or Caddyshack 2 where they churned out a by-the-numbers sequel to a big hit.

I think probably Clerks 2 or BB2000 (ugh) are closer in terms of danger. But writer/director Adam McKay's been basically churning out Will Ferrell movies that are more or less the same as Anchorman consistently, Apatow produces every comedy in Hollywood, etc. Yeah, OK, it may not be Anchorman, but whatever, The Other Guys is still pretty funny (good one to watch on cable).

> December 20 - Saving Mr. Banks
>
> Greatly looking forward to this, which chronicles the meeting of Walt Disney
> (played by Tom Hanks, an inspired decision) and Mary Poppins author P. L.
> Travers (played by Emma Thompson, another inspired decision).

Oh, right, *this* is the Hollywood history movie that will disappoint you.

> December 20 - Her
>
> Around the turn of the millenium, director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie
> Kaufman teamed up to make a pair of inspired weird movies, Being John Malkovich
> and Adaptation. Afterwards, Kaufman went on to make Eternal Sunshine of the
> Spotless Mind (my favorite film from either of them)

To be fair, that was directed by Michel Gondry, which I'm sure you know. But that movie definitely feels like a collaboration in the same way that Adaptation/Malkovich do, so credit where credit's due.

But yeah, I'm pretty excited for this too. I don't really like Where the Wild Things Are either, but it was an interesting movie anyway and Jonze is a really solid director.

Also: I would marry my phone if it sounded like Scarlet Johansson.

> December 27 - Lone Survivor
>
> Where Zero Dark Thirty chronicled the course of a successful mission against
> the Taliban, this one harkens back to a failed mission, Operation Red Wings.
> It's hard to imagine this one going over as well with Oscar voters, and star
> Mark Wahlberg is hit or miss. Peter Berg is a good director, Battleship
> notwithstanding, but he's never done an awards contender before.

I was going to say he had so but then I remembered I confuse him with Peter Weir all the damn time.

> January 3 - The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes
>
> And so we transition from December into January, and immediately the ambition
> of the films on the release schedule nosedive. This makes the, I dunno, tenth
> or so Amityville film, which is a lot of screen time for such a vague premise.
> Anyway, this is the "found footage" pass through the formula. There have been
> a couple of good found footage movies, but by and large this is already a tired
> subgenre.

Hahahaha, wow, shouldn't this have come out like 3 years ago?

> January 3 - Paranormal Activity 5
>
> Hey, speaking of found footage horror movies, here's another one. What is it
> about horror movies that they always seem to grind through countless sequels
> like this? They're cheap to make, sure, but any of these long running horror
> series gets even a single good sequel, it's doing better than average.

You know, they're taking 15 months off between entries this time instead of the usual 12, so they're clearly making sure this one will be great!

Also technically I think this one is a spinoff from the main PA movies and isn't called PA5. It'll help flesh out that universe so much.