Holiday Movie Preview 2023!
Sam, on host 71.234.239.236
Tuesday, October 24, 2023, at 15:24:06
It's that season again. Time for a look at some of the movies that will round out the year.
October 20 - Killers of the Flower Moon
Backtracking a little bit to cover this title, Martin Scorsese's latest epic of violence in American history. It pertains to the discovery of oil under Osage Nation land and a series of murders that ensues. With both of Scorsese's two most prominent regulars (De Niro and DiCaprio) in the cast, it's sure to be at minimum a powerhouse acting showcase.
October 27 - Five Nights at Freddy's
This next Blumhouse horror movie wouldn't normally be the sort of thing I'd cover here, but I'm intrigued that Jim Henson's creature shop is providing animatronics for the film rather than the more typical fallback of using CG. I have nothing against CG other than its overuse. Employing traditional methods ironically gives us something new and keeps those arts alive. Nice choice, whether or not it pans out for this film.
November - Self Reliance
Jake Johnson wrote, directed, and starred in this comedy thriller about a man who plays a deadly reality game show where he can be hunted by assassins whenever he's not in the company of others. It got good reviews out of the film festival circuit, with people calling it both suspenseful and funny. Anna Kendrick and Christopher Lloyd, both favorites of mine, co-star.
November 3 - Priscilla
Last year, Baz Luhrmann made Elvis; now Sofia Coppola provides the story from Priscilla Presley's perspective with this adaptation of her memoir. Coppola's creative arc hasn't gone where we thought it would back in the Lost In Translation / Marie Antoinette days. She's had some disappointments (though few if any outright bad films) and also taken up directing shorts, commercials, and musical performances, but this material feels like a natural continuation to her early feature film career, and I'm interested to see what she does with it.
November 10 - The Holdovers
It's been a while since we got a trademark Alexander Payne dramedy. This is the writer-director who gave us Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, and Nebraska. This one stars Paul Giamatti as a cranky history teacher, which is such great casting that I think I would genuinely be surprised to learn he's NOT a cranky history teacher in between acting gigs. The early word is outstanding and suggests his last movie, the disappointing Downsizing, will prove an anomaly.
November 10 - The Killer
David Fincher dabbles in a wide variety of genres, but he seldom stays away from neo-noir for long. After the solid if not quite enduring biopic Mank, he's now realizing a 20-year passion project of his, an adaptation of the French graphic novel of the same name, with Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. The premise would have been fresher 20 years ago -- an assassin finds himself battling his employers on an international manhunt -- but with Fincher in the director's chair I have no fear that this will come off as yet another unmemorable John Wick clone. The early word is positive, that the movie brings something new to the genre and that a certain cold sense of humor adds a texture that so many lesser genre exercises clumsily force or lack entirely.
November 10 - The Marvels
Brie Larson's Carol Danvers is back, this time with Ms. Marvel at her side. While I may well eventually work my way up to this one, my momentum on the MCU petered out last year after a string of disappointments and the introduction of dependencies on the various MCU television shows. Kevin Feige's announcement that a reboot is coming to pare it all back down is welcome, but that it's not coming until 2027 is not.
November 17 - The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
This film adapts Suzanne Collins' 2020 prequel novel, set 64 years before the original trilogy. It chronicles the story of Coriolanus Snow, the primary villain, as a young man. While I enjoyed both the books and the movies in this franchise, I'm skeptical that a prequel is called for. It feels like returning to the well once too often. Still, I'll happily return to this world and see what this installment has to offer.
November 22 - Napoleon
Ridley Scott managed what Stanley Kubrick spent decades trying to do and never managed -- get a Napoleon film onto the big screen. The film covers Napoleon's rise to power and ostensibly delves both into intimate character relationships, particularly his relationship with his wife Josephine, and grand epic battle sequences. There is no question that Scott is a great director, and he's proven he's capable of making this kind of material great. What he isn't is reliable; he may have made Alien, Black Hawk Down, and The Martian, but he also made Someone To Watch Over Me, Robin Hood, and The Counselor. But his successes outweigh his failures, and this is comfortable territory for him, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Joaquin Phoenix playing the title role is a promising sign.
November 22 - Wish
For decades, Disney Animation was a quality guarantee. Sadly, that is no more the case, so it's tough to tell if Wish is the next Encanto or the next Strange World. Usually the difference is whether or not the studio is doing what it has done best since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in the late 30s and not so well when it's imitating some other studio's trademark (e.g., DreamWorks). By that rule of thumb, we should be in for a good time. What's more Disney than wishing upon a star?
December 1 - Godzilla Minus One
I love the enumeration of Japanese movie prequels. In 2000 we had Ring 0, but now we've got Godzilla -1, a prequel to (or arguably remake of) the 1954 original. It's the 33rd or 37th Godzilla film, depending on how you count them, putting it above James Bond on the list of resilient film characters. But will this be any good? Beats me, but I'm not sure if anybody interested in this movie is asking that question.
December 8 - The Boy and the Heron
The legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has made a dozen films as writer-director and a few more that he wrote but did not direct. Half of those were thought to be his last, but this time he Really Really Means It. He started working on it in 2016 before getting a green light and has been picking away at it at his own pace (which worked out to approximately one minute of animation per month) ever since. By the time it was completed, it had become the most expensive film ever produced in Japan. Now it drops in theaters without an ounce of promotion other than a poster and quietly became a critical and commercial hit in Japan. It is based on a 1937 children's book and has autobiographical features in its story. The English dub, only announced a week ago or so, features such names as Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Dave Bautista, and Willem Dafoe.
December 15 - Wonka
Timothee Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka is surely an origin story nobody asked for or needs. Despite the impressive cast (including Olivia Colman and Rowan Atkinson), I would be unreservedly down on this except that the director is Paul King, whose two Paddington movies are two of the best family fantasies of the last decade. So, all right, we know this guy can do justice and then some to classic children's literature. Still, I can't help but wonder what we could have gotten from these creative talents instead, had they been loosed on original material.
December 20 - The Color Purple
No, it's not quite an adaptation of the Alice Walker novel, nor a remake of the Spielberg film; rather it brings the 2005 broadway musical version to the screen. The cast is mostly new, with only Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks reprising a role from one of the stage productions. Successful Broadway musicals don't always translate as well to the screen as you'd think (consider Nine and Cats) even when the material has already worked on film (consider The Producers), but I am cautiously optimistic.
December 22 - Rebel Moon (Part One - A Child of Fire)
It sounds like a Star Wars spin-off or a video game adaptation, but it is neither. Instead we have a rare original science fiction epic, albeit one that is already hoped to seed a new universe of stories. Part 2 was shot back-to-back and has a release date in April, and apparently there is already a planned third film if these two do well. RPGs, novelizations, and comics are already in the works. The whole thing is masterminded by Zack Snyder, about whom I have conflicted feelings. He's certainly capable of delivering the required spectacle, but for me he's not yet been able to deliver a clean story. Still, even most of his failures are compelling in some way. Almost everything he's done to date has been tied to carefully controlled preexisting IP, so it will be interesting to see what he can do when given more latitude. The one time he's been in that situation before was with Sucker Punch. Many consider that to be his worst film; for me it was probably his best. Madness, I know, but I think that statement says less about my opinion of Sucker Punch as everything else he's done.
December 25 - Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
If the MCU is desperately in need of a reboot, the DC Universe needs it even more. I have no idea if this specific movie will be good or not, just that DC's track record is abysmal. So far, the best episodes have been comparatively unconnected offshoots of the core throughline (if you can even argue that there is one).
|