As August winds to a close, I thought I should, in my presumptuous way, glance over the releases for the upcoming month.
2.9.2005
Quite the load of crap this weekend; Underclassman, with one of the least appealing trailers ever (and am I supposed to know who Nick Cannon is?); The Transporter 2, a sequel to a film I didn’t see, but both have Luc Besson scripts, so that’s enough to keep me away; A Sound of Thunder, which is based on a good short story, but whose director has one of the worst resumes around. And apparently the effects are awful. But Ben Kingsley has enticed me to crap before, and he shall do it again.
Also, 2046, by Wong Kar–Wai, opens in Chicago. I’ve seen it, and I’ll be seeing it again.
9.9.2005
The Exorcism of Emily Rose looks like it might not suck, but it looks even more like a low-rent knockoff of that other movie. An Unfinished Life would ordinarily get a big Miramax push, but with that company in its death throes, maybe not. But the director, Lasse Halström, is one of the worst hacks out there. The Man has a simply awful trailer, but between Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy, something good has to come out of it, right? Right?
16.9.2005
The best weekend of the month, so of course I’ll be out of town for a week. Just means a lot of catch up after I get back. Everything is Illuminated, Proof, Lord of War and Thumbsucker are all high on my must-see list, although the last looks like a Huckabees clone. Just Like Heaven seems like a tedious high-concept romcom (and wastes Mark Ruffalo to boot!); The Thing About My Folks, with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk, could be randomly weird enough to be an interesting curiosity, but Reiser wrote the script, and that fills me with fear; Cry Wolf is coming out at a really unusual time for a teen horror film, and it looks like a high-tech gloss on a plot that happened about 400 times in the 80’s.
23.9.2005
Corpse Bride (two Burton/Depp films in three months…maybe this “God” thing holds some water) is absolutely the film I’m most excited about all month. And the Evanston Century 12 has been running the trailer a lot, which has been feeding that excitement right good. But the big box-office film will probably be Flightplan, which I might see for the always-great Jodie Foster; but we just had a plane thriller, and even Jodie can’t make a pile of shit watchable (sorry, Fincher-people). There’s also the new Polanski, Oliver Twist (with, again, Ben Kinglsey), which I’ll see, of course, but we really didn’t need another adaptation of that particular book (it’s not Dickens’ worst…okay, maybe it is. When is someone going to make a damn Pickwick Papers movie?). Roll Bounce looks like an utterly vanilla little chunk of teen counterprogramming. And Dear Wendy, the week’s other Oscar bait, has a Lars von Trier script. ‘nuff said.
30.9.2005
Disney is putting a lot of ad money behind The Greatest Game Ever Played, but a period golf movie is a period golf movie, and it’s a crowded weekend. With things like Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, in the world’s best casting choice ever. I don’t give a damn if the film is good, I’m going for the performance. Also up: Serenity, AKA the Firefly movie; I like Firefly, so I’m going. Plus, it’s only the second space movie of the year. A History of Violence, Cronenberg’s Cannes also-ran, has a really nice-looking cast, and is, y’know, the new Cronenberg, so I have to see it; The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio has Julianne Moore doing that 50’s housewife thing yet again, but with a threadbare plot this time; Into the Blue has Jessica Alba’s ass in a bikini, and while it’s a nice ass, and a tight bikini, I need just a little bit more to get me into a theater. Last up is MirrorMask, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by graphic artist Dave McKean, and although it has no buzz whatsoever, it should be an incredibly gorgeous thing, although Gaiman’s ability to write a screenplay has not so far proven as strong as his ability to write comics.