Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
Promising films coming out in the last part of November include:
The Descendants with George Clooney, director Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways.
Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog’s documentary exploring American capital punishment.
My Week with Marilyn: Reputedly dazzling performance by Michele Williams as Marilyn Monroe.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Here’s the trailer to My Week with Marilyn.
It’s time for the really promising movies of November and December. On November 11, we’ll see J. Edgar,Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J. Edgar Hoover starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. Armie Hammer, so good as the Winklevoss twins in A Social Network, plays Hoover’s (ahem) close friend Clyde Tolson.
The new version of John LeCarre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens on November 18. Gary Oldman leads an impressive cast.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
But first, if you’re looking for a pure romance, there’s Like Crazy. This long distance love story seems to be unadulterated by the irony and gross-out humor so prevalent. Just good looking people and a weepy soundtrack. Got good filmfest buzz at both Sundance and Toronto. Opens October 28 in a limited release and more widely in November. Here’s the trailer.
In this 1979 miniseries version of the classic John le Carre spy novel, there is a Soviet mole in the highest echelon of British intelligence. It could be anyone except George Smiley, whom the other top spies have pushed out to pasture. Smiley, in one of Alec Guinness’ greatest performances, begins a deliberate hunt to unmask the double agent. Guinness is joined by a superb cast that includes Ian Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Ian Bannen and Sian Phillips. It’s 290 minutes of pressure-packed whodunit.
The Labor Day weekend is a great opportunity to watch the old master spy drilling down through the characters of his former peers to expose the mole – one of the best mysteries ever on film.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has been remade into a much shorter theatrical version that will open in the US on November 18. This new film version will also feature a top tier cast – Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones and Stephen Rea. The trailer is at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
Other recent DVD picks have been Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman and The Music Never Stopped.
You can see trailers and descriptions of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
Beginning on July 22, in Sarah’s Key, Kristen Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France. Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.
Also on July 22, 1970s cult director Monte Hellman presents Road to Nowhere, just after he turned 79 on July 12. His signature is the hard-edged road movie.
On July 29, we’ll have another showcase for Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) in The Guard, an Irish dark comedy about a lowbrow cop happening upon an international drug conspiracy.
On August 5, we’ll see The Names of Love, in which Sarah Forestier has gotten great buzz for her performance as a flighty lefty Frenchwoman who seeks to educate and convert conservatives by sleeping with them.
Here’s the trailer for Sarah’s Key.
Another take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo releases on December 21. It’s a gripping story and, boy, am I looking forward to the version by David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network). Here’s the teaser, featuring a remix of Led Zep’s Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. Unfortunately, the teaser contains about 150 cuts in 100 seconds, very few of which show the stars, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. But Sweden still looks gray and forbidding!
On June 10, we’ll get a chance to see The Tree of Life. Every ten years Terrence Malick directs a film that critics call a masterpiece: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World. At Cannes, audiences found The Tree of Life at once visually stunning, confusing, brilliant, trippy, profound and self-important. Brad Pitt plays a 1950s Waco dad who is both caring and brutishly domineering. Sean Penn plays his grown up Baby Boomer son reflecting on his childhood (without much dialogue). From the music in the trailer, you can tell that this movie takes itself very seriously.
Also releasing June 10 is Beginners. Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (and they meet cute). Directed by Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).
On the same weekend, we’ll also have The Trip, a reportedly very funny movie in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England. Along the way, they snidely battle each other with their impressions of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Al Pacino and the like.
The next weekend, June 17, we have Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times. This contender for the year’s best documentary is a peek inside modern journalism at a troubling time.
You can see the trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
Here’s the trailer for Beginners.
It’s not news that the French love Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) or that Terrence Malick can make a beautiful, profound and confusing film (The Tree of Life). And we’ll get to see Midnight in Paris for ourselves this weekend and The Tree of Life in a couple of weeks. But I’m especially looking forward to four more films screened at the festival: The Artist, Drive, The Kid with a Bike and Polisse.
The film that captured the most fans at Cannes is The Artist, a mostly silent film about a silent film star at the advent of talking pictures. By all accounts, it’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film. The French actor Jean Dujardin won Cannes’ best actor award; John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller also appear. The Artist will be released in the US by The Weinstein Company.
Drive is an action movie starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day, criminal getaway driver by night. It’s getting attention for the emotionally vacant character played by Gosling and the stylishness of the car chases and violence. Drive will be released in the US in September by FilmDistrict.
The Kid with a Bike is the latest from the Belgian Bardennes brothers, two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta). a 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de fact foster mom. The Kid with the Bike will be released in the US by Sundance Selects.
Polisse is a reputedly riveting French police procedural about the child protective services unit. It stars an ensemble cast led by Karin Viard (Paris, Potiche, Time Out). Polisse will be released in the US by IFC Films.
Here’s the trailer for The Artist.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgAvXlG68Y8]I need to add some upcoming films to Friday’s post on Best Bets for May.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams opens this week. Werner Herzog explores the 33,000-year-old cave paintings in Chauvert, France. Herzog knows what he is doing (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Grizzly Man), and he says that this needed to be shot in 3D, so I believe him.
Also opening this weekend is Queen to Play. Sandrine Bonnaire plays a hotel maid who is taught chess by chess expert Kevin Kline and learns that she is gifted, which shakes up her family’s life. Jennifer Beals shows up in the film and, hey, Kevin Kline acts in French!
Midnight in Paris: In Woody Allen’s latest, Owen Wilson accompanies wife Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious Michael Sheen, leaving him to explore midnight Paris and discover his muse (Marion Cotillard, perhaps?). Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates and French first lady Carla Bruni all pop in. Releases widely May 27.
You can see trailers and descriptions of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Here’s the trailer for Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
You can see trailers and descriptions of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, Incendies, releases widely May 6. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets.
Meek’s Cutoff is especially promising because it is directed by the excellent Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy). The route of the Oregon Trail was not yet well established in 1845, so a covered wagon train hires a mountain man who claims that he has found a shortcut through the Cascades. However, it becomes clear that the mountain man (Bruce Greenwood) is unreliable, and there is a new option of following an Indian of unknown motives. The men (Will Patton, Paul Dano) must figure out what to do while their wives (Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson) eavesdrop and guess their fate. Releasing widely on May 6.
And now for a lowbrow guilty pleasure on May 27: The Hangover Part II. The buddies return – this time losing a little brother on a wild night in Bangkok.
Here’s the trailer for Incendies:
You can see trailers and descriptions of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
I’ve seen Potiche, which opens April 1. It’s a delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery, the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine DeNeuve (as if she needs one). DeNeuve plays a 1977 potiche, French for “trophy housewife”, married to a guy who is a male chauvinist pig and the meanest industrialist in France. He becomes incapacitated, and she must run the factory. It’s smart and quick like the classic screwball comedy that American filmmakers don’t make anymore.
Jane Eyre also releases April 1. I’m not on the edge of my seat waiting for a Bronte bodice ripper, but many of my readers are. Stars the excellent Mia Wasilova from Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right.
Carancho: Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this sexy and violent noir thriller. Stars Ricardo Darin of The Secrets of Their Eyes and Nine Queens. Won Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Will release widely on April 8.
Hanna is a paranoid thriller starring Saoirse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father (Eric Bana), and then released upon the CIA. She is matched up against special ops wiz Cate Blanchett. Hanna is directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist). Releases April 8.
Poetry: This is the story of a Korean grandmother who goes to a poetry workshop and begins to understand the real characters of the people she lives amongst. Highly praised at Cannes. Releases widely April 8.
Restless: Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk, Paranoid Park, Last Days, Elephant) directs (from IMDb) “the story of a terminally ill teenage girl who falls for a boy who likes to attend funerals and their encounters with the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot from WWII.” The girl is played by the very promising Mia Wasilova, who had a tremendous 2010 with The Kids Are All Right and Alice in Wonderland. Releases April 8.
In a Better World/Haevnen releases April 15. This won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. It was directed by the great Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (Brothers/Brodre, After the Wedding, Things We Lost in the Fire). A Danish do-gooder returns from Africa to face family problems with his estranged wife and their vulnerable, bullied son.
The Princess of Montpensier: This film, admired at Cannes, is an adaptation of a well-known short story about a young woman who is forced by her father to marry – but not the man she loves. It is set in late 16th century France amid the French religious wars. Look for it on April 22.
Here’s the trailer for In a Better World.