For a month where the best that Hollywood has to offer is supposed to be spewing forth over the cinematic landscape, this is a simply appalling month. Not since…July?…have I looked forward to so few releases.
1.12.2006
If there’s a movie that I’m “excited” to see this weekend (there’s not), it would have to be Turistas, if only because it will allow me to bookend my year with mediocre splatter films about Ugly Americans. And this one is gender-nonspecific! Although I’m agnostic as to whether that gives me more or less hope.
Lessee, what else…de facto Passion prequel The Nativity Story? Um, no, not even with Catherine Hardwick directing (and that’s just a transparent buzz-grabber, anyway). 10 Items or Less? Nah, when you see enough quirky indie films you learn how to tell the wise & good ones apart from the ones too busy masturbating to their own quirkiness, and a good place to to start looking is the title. National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj? Christ on a cracker, I think not.
8.12.2006
Mel Gibson is a bad person. Maybe even an evil one. And I’m not hardly an apologist for anti-Semites.
But a fact is still a fact, and the fact is that he’s a phenomenal director. I would ask you to consider Braveheart, candidly. Yes, it’s a wingnut’s dream, and yes, it has a problematic depiction of women and a hateful view of homosexuality. Gently set that to one side, and look at the battle scenes. Tell me honestly that they’re not a thousandfold times better than any of the sequences Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson shamelessly copied from them.
And that’s why I’m going to see Apocalypto.
Elsewhere: Nancy Meyers spreads her heteronormative filth with The Holiday, which actually does look kind of sweet (and stars Kate Winslet), and this is why she is such a dangerous filmmaker; Edward Zwick continues wasting huge sums of studio money on idiotic colonial-friendly epics with Blood Diamond; and Unaccompanied Minors has an extremely cumbersome title and that makes me cease entirely to care about its content.
15.12.2006
It may be a heartwarming, Oscar-friendly story about rising above adversity and being black, and it may win Will Smith a nomination, but I cannot be the only person whose primary interest in The Pursuit of Happyness is as to whether or not they explain that hideous, deliberate misspelling. I shudder every time I see the poster.
A couple for the kiddies, or the idiotic, or ideally both: a live-action remake of Babe adaptation of Charlotte’s Web wastes the proverbial “voice cast of thousands” (Julia Roberts! Steve Buscemi! Oprah! Robert Redford!) on the latest attempt by that foul little imp Dakota Fanning to take over the world; and pitiful little Eragon, which in this crowded season will make about three bucks and vanish, its only triumph to once again tie Jeremy Irons’ once-proud name to a crappy fantasy movie about dragons.
20.12.2006
I know I’ve called a lot of films “the most unnecessary film of 2006,” but I think we finally have the objective winner of that title: Rocky Balboa, the long-unawaited sixth film in the never-good boxing franchise. I need to see this in the same way I needed to see Lady in the Water or Beyond the Sea, just to wrap my mind around the sheer egotism and self-indulgence of Sylvester Stallone directing Sylvester Stallone in the triumphant return of Sylvester Stallone’s career-making role. And just wait for next year’s Rambo IV…
Yeah, and some twerpy-looking kids’ movie starring Ben Stiller from one the director of the Pink Panther remake.
22.12.2006
There is no December film I’m looking forward to more than Clint Eastwood’s second WWII film in three months, Letters from Iwo Jima, so of course it’s not going to be released in Chicago this year (although as much as its release date is getting pushed around, who can say for sure?). But y’all on the coasts get it today. I loved Flags of Our Fathers, and I have always expected this to be the superior film, and I’m so very sorry if I come off like a fanboy. As I said once upon a time, the mere fact of two Hollywood films doing the “companion” route is exciting all by its lonesome.
The second “Good” film of the year: director Robert De Niro takes on the birth of the CIA in The Good Shepherd. Director. Robert. De. Niro. Great cast, but ask me why I’m worried. Being a good director doesn’t rub off on you, no matter how many Scorsese films you’ve been in, and Bobby’s best acting days are well behind him.
Also: We Are Marshall, yada yada yada inspiring sports film, directed by McG of all damn people. Peter O’Toole’s last best hope for a competitive Oscar, Venus (fair is fair, I think this will actually be a good film; at least it has a good director). And, Zhang Yimou retreats from the low-tech career renaissance of Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles with another pretty-looking wuxia bloat-a-thon, Curse of the Golden Flower.
25.12.2006
Ho, ho, ho. I’m going to have to see one of these damn things on Christmas Day (family tradition and all that), and I’m probably angling to make it the third and final “Good” film of the year: Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, an homage to the films and filmmaking styles of 1940s Hollywood, AKA “The Best Period in American Cinema Ever.” Soderbergh’s films are guaranteed to be interesting, but that is not necessarily a mark of quality. Fingers crossed that it can be as tasty as the trailer.
Alfonso Cuarón is a genius, and that is why I will not prejudge Children of Men based on its loopy premise or loopier trailer (sample line: “Nobody’s been happy since women stopped having babies.” I paraphrase). I do love how the ads trumpet “the director of Y tu mamá también and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” right next to each other. Moving along: Dreamgirls, a musical adapted from the Broadway masterpiece that I had never heard of before this film’s ad campaign, as directed by the overrated middlebrow auteur Bill Condon, and presumptive Best Picture frontrunner. And a remake of Black Christmas, which I’m honestly kinda excited about. Don’t look at me that way!
27.12.2006
I can’t imagine the rationale behind opening a film the Wednesday after a Monday holiday, but here you go: Perfume by Tom Tykwer, who I generally like, adapting a novel that none other than Stanley Kubrick called “unfilmable,” and when someone like Kubrick calls a book “unfilmable,” it might be a good idea to trust him, non? Elsewhere, Judi Dench non-earns her 98th Oscar nomination with the apparently lesbianic soap opera Notes on a Scandal, whose trailer makes it look like a mashup of every idea every other film has ever had.
29.12.2006
Running a tight second behind Letters, the film I’m looking forward to the most has to be Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Check out the trailer. Goddamn. I said, goddamn that looks nice.
Sienna Miller tries to play an Andy Warhol muse in Factory Girl, and that’s kind of an inspired idea in the meta-narrative sense, but the girl can’t act, and I’ve never heard of the director. And rounding out the weekend and the year, a floppy-looking period remake starring Naomi Watts: The Painted Veil.