After months of seemingly nothing worthwhile in theaters – a wan summer ending in a desolate August, September picking up a bit before October ruined it all again – November suddenly looks to be the most dauntingly over-packed month of 2017. It never rains, as the fella said, but it pours. Just trying to imagine how I might see all of these is giving me a wee bit of a panicky feeling. But the good kind.
1.11.2017
Things start off simple enough, at least: the Wednesday release of A Bad Moms Christmas, a film whose every last gesture in the ad campaign screams “trying too hard”. I didn’t see the first one – is it meant to be good? Because the vibe I got is that it wasn’t very good.
3.11.2017
When we put together our podcast looking at our most anticipated films of the fall, there was one clear, runaway consensus pick: the only film that showed up on all three of our lists. And here it is: Carrie’s #1, Rob’s #2, and my #4, Thor: Ragnarok. I can’t speak for my colleagues, but I have literally never once been more excited for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in nine years and seventeen films. Credit Taika Waititi in the director’s chair, of course; credit an ultra-hammy/diva Cate Blanchett; credit as well as superlative couple of trailers. I mean, hell, the previous two Thors are probably my least favorite MCU films, and here I am, planning an opening day trip. There’s something magic here, whatever it is.
As awards season ramps up, the limited releases start to get much more prestigious, and here we are with L Day: Rob Reiner’s LBJ, which looks like just the worst kind of Boomer-mythology horseshit, but Woody Harrelson seems to be good casting; Last Flag Flying, the new Richard Linklater film that’s supposed to be mediocre, and that breaks my heart; and Lady Bird, the directorial debut of Greta Gerwig, which is supposed to be superb. But Gerwig doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt from me, and one of the only people I personally to have seen the film has taken specific pains to lower my expectations, so we’ll see how it goes…
10.11.2017
The “wait, did people like that enough for a sequel? How far out of the loop am I?” tour continues with Daddy’s Home 2, a film that catches my attention pretty much for the solitary reason that John Lithgow seems to be holding nothing back. If there was no other reason I’d be rooting for Ragnarok to be a wonderful, beloved success, the hope that its second weekend will outgross this film’s debut and save me from having to see it would be reason enough.
Elsewhere, the weekend bears witness to two more of our most-anticipated films: Carrie’s #3, Murder on the Orient Express, and that’s entirely her right to make that call. Me, I barely like the first adaptation, and that’s with Sidney Lumet directing a cast of classic Hollywood figures. Now we’ve got Kenneth Branagh directing Johnny Depp and Josh Gad. Not going to get my hopes too high for this one.
In limited release, we find my #1 of the season: Martin McDonagh’s third feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a black comedy with socio-political overtones. If there was nothing at all of the film but its trailer, that would already be enough to showcase Frances McDormand’s best performance in some number of years, and I don’t see how I need any more than that.
17.11.2017
So Justice League is finally happening, and I don’t really know that I have any more opinion on the matter than that.
Anyway, I am possibly the only person whose attention this weekend is being magnetically drawn by The Star, but come now: Sony Pictures Animation’s latest doomed bid to make a film that is good, or at least profitable, in the form of a film about the birth of Jesus that has a faith audience in mind, and yet is also going all-in on anachronistic humor, including a bird shaking its ass in the trailer? This is, as they say, my shit.
Last and I’m sure least is Wonder, which looks to be just godawfully maudlin and sweet; I believe this is the last of 2017’s surprisingly durable run of movies with the word “wonder” in the title, and I doubt there’s anything else interesting about it.
22.11.2017
It’s no fun at all for me to be checked-out from the impending release of a new Pixar film, but here we are, and I just cannot find the hook that convinces me that Coco will be doing much of anything. I find that hoping anything more optimistic than “I bet it’s not as racist as it kind of sounds” is beyond me at this moment.
Also, we had a little thing about Polaroid in comments back in August, the last time it was supposed to release, and I’m sure that reviving that conversation will be more interesting than the movie.
In limited release, Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill during Britain’s Darkest Hour, and there was complete uniformity of opinion among the people I know who saw it at Telluride that it’s crap. Boring, shrill crap, or mildly hilarious crap, that seems to be the only real distinction. It’s going to win Oldman the Best Actor Oscar, and I’m already kind of pissed off about that.
24.11.2017
Nothing opens wide this Thanksgiving Friday, but if you live on the coasts, I’m sure you could do worse than to digest some turkey while watching my #3 most anticipated film of the fall: Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s tribute to the beauty of male bodes and the Italian countryside. I wasn’t as much in love with his last film, A Bigger Splash, as I’d have hoped for, but he’s a great enough sensualist that one poor third act isn’t going to turn me off of his career.