upcoming movies

November Movies

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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.

Movies: Best bets for late July

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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.

 


Movies: best bets for June

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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.

What we learned from Cannes 2011

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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]

Movies: Best Bets for May

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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:

And more upcoming movies

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I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.  This month we’ll see the singer/songwriter documentary Troubadours (first aired March 2 on PBS), the tragic Cannes hit Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieu)( releasing widely March 4) and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) with the luminous Juliette Binoche (releasing widely March 18).

Here’s the trailer for Carancho, which will release widely on April 8. 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.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Hanna, Potiche, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.

Once again, some promising new movies in the theaters

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We’re nearing the end of that period in January and February where the theaters are filled with 1) Oscar nominees lingering from the Holidays and 2) the very worst Hollywood inventory.   Some intriguing new films are now ready to be released.  I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions.

This weekend brings us Cedar Rapids and Kaboom.  Cedar Rapids is an “aim low” comedy about a lame guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   It’s got John C. Reilly as the Wild and Crazy Insurance Agent and is directed by Miguel Arteta, director of the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.  Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy from director Greg Araki, creator of the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin.

Here’s the trailer for next weekend’s Nora’s Will, a Mexican dramedy in which a man’s mother dies and he uncovers some jarring family secrets.

The Movies I’m Looking Forward To page also features Troubadours, Certified Copy, Of Gods and Men, Carancho, Hanna, Jane Eyre, Restless, The Tree of Life, Tabloid, Cold Weather, Boxing Gym and American Grindhouse.

Cowboys & Aliens gets a Super Bowl commercial

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The Super Bowl audience just got a glimpse of the newest genre mutant – a sci fi blended with a Western.  Universal recently released the trailer for its $100 million summer 2011 blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens.  In this article, the New York Times reports that the trailer’s first showing to a live audience evoked gales of laughter – but it’s not supposed to be a comedy.

According to the trailer, Harrison Ford’s torch-bearing mounted lynch mob is interrupted by laser attack from an alien spaceship.  Daniel Craig, playing a Clint Eastwoodesque Man With No Name, awakes with his memory erased by aliens and a futuristic bracelet.  Saloon gal Olivia Wilde (House, The OC) is pulled into the sky by alien forces.

It turns out that this isn’t the first Western with space aliens, although Oblivion aimed a lot lower. This 1994 schlockfest starred Andrew Divoff (as the alien Redeye), Richard Joseph Paul, Meg Foster, Isaac Hayes and Julie Newmar, with George Takei as the Jim Beam-swilling town doctor.  Amazingly, Oblivion rated a 1996 sequel, Oblivion 2:  Backlash.

Here’s the real trailer for Cowboys & Aliens.

New trailers for a low comedy and a paranoid thriller

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Cedar Rapids is an “aim low” comedy about a lame guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience.   It’s got John C. Reilly as the Wild and Crazy Insurance Agent and is directed by Miguel Arteta, director of the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.  Releases February 11.

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.

Read about more upcoming movies and see more trailers at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Movies I'm Looking Forward To: Early December Edition

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I’ve updated the Movies I’m Looking Forward To page to add trailers and descriptions of some key December releases.

This weekend brings us Black Swan with Natalie Portman and I Love You, Phillip Morris with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor.

December 17 may be the best opening weekend for quality films all year.   I’ve already seen the exquisite drama Rabbit Hole, with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt.  We can also see Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter, Julie Taymor’s version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, The Company Men and the sci fi TRON 2: Legacy.

And later in the month will come Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, Javier Bardem in Biutiful and Kevin Spacey in Casino Jack.  Just in time to qualify for Oscars, Master Director Mike Leigh will release Another Year, and Peter Weir will showcase The Way Back.

The year’s final release will be the offbeat romance Blue Valentine, with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

See my Movies I’m Looking Forward To page for descriptions, image and trailers.

Here’s the trailer for Rabbit Hole.