For all that I hate Oscarbaiting, there are actually multiple prestige pictures opening this month that I’m not just excited about but well and truly salivating for. I suspect this means I am losing my edge and turning into a mainstream filmgoer. Or, since one of those films was directed by Todd Haynes, maybe not. At any rate, I think my provisional top 10 is going to get some jiggling for the first time in a while.
2.11.2007
Once upon a time, there was a good director named Ridley Scott, although the 25 years since his last great film might make you doubt that. But for some odd reason I constantly assume that he’s got another worthwhile project in him, and for some even odder reason I think that American Gangster might be it – the trailer looks very pretty and very awesome, and Denzel Washington gets billed over Russell Crowe, which might mean he has the larger role, and if that’s the case, saints be praised.
Also once upon a time, there was a flat-out brilliant director named Sidney Lumet, who had mostly retired, and now he’s got a new film that I’ve gone to great lengths to learn nothing about, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. It has a brilliant cast, though, and one of the year’s best titles. So my fingers are crossed for e.g. The Pawnbroker and not e.g. Gloria.
There’s also the emo indie comedy Wristcutters: A Love Story, the latest film by which Will Arnett spoils his Arrested Development credentials, and some…thing called Bee Movie. It stars Jerry Seinfeld’s voice and makes kittens cry.
9.11.2007
After wave upon wave of festival buzz, it’s all pretty much over but the counting: is No Country for Old Men the best Coen Brothers film ever, or just in the last decade? And is it the very best film of 2007, or merely in the top 3 or 4? This is undoubtedly the film I’m most excited about for the remainder of the year – indeed, it has been ever since the rapturous buzz out of Cannes all the way back in May.
Its competition: a politically-minded Afghanistan thriller thingy directed by and starring Robert Redford (who looks so leathery in the trailer!), Lions for Lambs. I think I’ve mentioned before that well-intentioned movies about liberal political issues as directed by liberals, while pleasing as raw meat, have a really bad track record for actually being, if I may be so frank, any good at all.
Their combined competition: a film that brings together Paul Giamatti, Kevin Spacey, Miranda Richardson and Kathie Bates, sets all of them as second-bananas to Vince Vaughn, and wraps up by ripping off The Santa Clause and Elf only with even more manic uncomedy evident from the trailer. I refer to Fred Claus, and a sadder movie there will not be all autumn.
Also: HorrorFest! (Probably won’t be going this year, same as last. Multi-hour marathons are killer, y’all).
16.11.2007
A cartoon is coming, || computer-created,
Generated on green-screen , || the graphics laid over.
Beowulf is the book || bound for the movies,
Retold by that rascal || Robert Zemeckis,
His camera is clumsy || compulsively gaudy.
The trailer is terrifying || a tragic misfire
Of video unviewable || and a valley uncanny,
The proud performers || plastic and ugly.
Doggerel yes, but it took ages to write.
MEANWHILE: Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman and Jason Bateman are trapped in a nightmare of brightly colored production design masquerading as a kid’s movie in Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. I mean, God, even the title makes your teeth ache. Then there’s the totally buzzless adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera (I have never read the book, shamed to say, but the other works I know of Gabriel García Márquez haven’t exactly been cinema-ready). And Southland Tales, the deeply troubled sophomore effort of Richard Kelly, arriving a mere 18 months after its disastrous Cannes premiere.
Last and best – I mean, how can it not be? – is Noah Baumbach’s fifth feature, the apparently ultra-nihilistic Margot at the Wedding, with Nicole Kidman. That’s a whole lot of things that sound pretty awesome to me, and for them to be all mixed up like that is likely to make me die of ecstasy. Or nihilism.
21.11.2007
The pre-Thanksgiving rush: two syrupy-ass family films, one about a little boy blah blah power of music and love, August Rush; the other is a post-modern fairytale, and we all know how much I just wuv post-modern fantasy, but at least it’s going to bring back Disney’s Feature Animation department, if for only about 10 minutes. I haven’t recently expressed my affection for John Lasseter. Thank you for bringing back 2D animation, Mr. Lasseter. Oh, right, the title: Enchanted.
One “urban comedy,” i.e. “OF COURSE black people will watch films with black actors, so why should we bother fussing with story or characters,” This Christmas. The worst thing is, the recent successes of Tyler Perry’s films make me wonder if that hugely cynical approach to niche filmmaking isn’t at least a little bit accurate.
One…horror film? Okay. Really? The Mist. Hopefully Frank Darabont’s return to Stephen King adaptations means that he will be merely boring again instead of aggressively bad.
23.11.2007
Here’s a day-after-Thanksgiving double-feature for ya! Hitman, a vaguely quasi-religious action film with Timothy Olyphant in a bald cap, followed by Todd Haynes’s apparently epic-length experimental Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. Well actually Mr. Haynes, I am there, becuase this movie looks brilliant. Did I really just go for that pun? God, I suck.
28.11.2007
The single midweek release looks like everything indie movies should always be, but never are: bleak, anti-funny, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Though I guess Linney and Hoffman should be in all movies in general, not just all indie movies. Anyway, The Savages.
30.11.2007
The way to end the best movie month of the year: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which I’ve seen and is very good although not “great.” Still gets my full endorsement. And then, um, a thriller starring Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba called Awake about a man trapped in an anesthesia coma, but fully conscious? And then a Sundance comedy/horror hybrid about a woman with…teeth…in…her…vagina… Gods. Maybe No Country will still be in theaters and I can check it out a second time.