Full disclosure: I’m getting married on the first weekend in
November so I’m not going to look very highly on all of the downer films coming
out this month. Since many of these are Oscar contenders there is no shortage
of tough films ahead.
Christoph Waltz joins the ranks of Christopher Lee, Sean
Bean, Johnathan Pryce and many others by playing a Bond villain in Spectre. Anyone familiar with that name
might have watched some of the older Bond films in which Spectre was sometimes
featured as the organization behind all of the madness that Bond had to sort
out. In this one it is hinted that Bond has some sort of connection to Spectre
and that the events from the previous 3 Daniel Craig films are all more tightly
connected than I once believed. Bond films normally do away with continuity or
at the very least there are mere references to past events and they don’t
always play a huge role in later films. This new batch of films seems to take a
more episodic approach. They’re a lot darker in tone but the action is still
pretty wild and a lot of fun. Plus Craig knows that he’s playing James Bond and
there are certain things that are to be expected when it comes to playing that
character, like being suave and making martinis look good.
It still confuses me as to why Peanuts is the name of the
Charlie Brown comic. I’m sure a simple Google search will answer the question
why but I’ll leave it a mystery. Since everything gets a reboot we now have The Peanuts Movie. Peanuts is usually
light fare but even in the description they use the term ‘arch-nemesis.’ But
anyone familiar with Peanuts knows that Snoopy the dog does have an
arch-nemesis in the Red Baron. I can’t imagine that makes up a whole movie but
I could happily watch him fly around in his imaginary plane and do battle in
the skies while the Charlie Brown and company do whatever it is that they do. I
always liked Linus.
Have you ever seen The
Wire? It’s like the best show ever. So each season deals with a different
aspect of cops, criminals and life in Baltimore. In the last season, which
focuses heavily on reporting the news, there is a character who is
investigating a possible serial killer and gets in way too deep. Well, the
actor playing the reporter also fancies himself a writer-director and made Spotlight, which also deals with a big
story that will certainly shake things up. It is about Boston Globe reporters uncovering
child assault cover-ups in the Catholic Church. Heavy material right here and
with people like Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton on board this
is sure to get some attention come awards season.
Along with my recommendation to watch The Wire I also suggest you watch Breaking Bad. You’re probably familiar with it. It’s the dad from Malcom in the Middle who goes from dying science teacher to meth
lord. It’s a brilliant transformation. After that show ended I imagine Bryan
Cranston was able to pick and choose his next projects and in Trumbo, he plays Dalton Trumbo, a
popular Hollywood screenwriter who didn’t keep his political agenda all that
secretive and got blacklisted in the 40’s for being a communist. I feel like
the term ‘blacklist’ doesn’t have the same impact today but back then it meant
your career was over. But this guy
didn’t stop fighting as he felt his sentencing was unjust and, this is the
really cool part, he wrote a couple of Academy Award winning screen plays that
other people HAD to take credit for as he was not allowed to work on movies.
Helen Mirren, Alan Tudyk and Louis C.K. also appear so that’s awesome.
From the director of several Downton Abbey (a show I cannot recommend as I have not seen it)
episodes and the original Fever Pitch (did
you know that Fallon-Barrymore movie was a remake of a British soccer film?)
comes a film that probably has the hardest hitting title and plot of any film
I’ve read about in a while. What Our
Father’s Did: A Nazi Legacy is about three men traveling across Europe, one
is a human rights lawyer whose family suffered at the hands of the Nazi party
and the other two men are sons of Nazis.
Not every film made into a true story needs to be a sad one.
Remember when the Chilean miners got trapped underground for 69 days? Well,
spoiler alert, they all survived and their story is being told in The 33. Antonio Banderas leads the film
as one of the miners who, while working in a mine with a history of collapses
and accidental deaths, tries to survive along with his co-workers after the
mine collapses potentially leaving them for dead. Turns out these 33 men were
pretty strong, mentally and physically, and the film focuses on that and the
politics leading to their rescue.
I remember being bummed out when they turned the final Harry
Potter book into two movies, until I saw them and they were both pretty great
movies. So I was expecting them to turn The
Hunger Games: Mockingjay into two movies and the first one was pretty good
and, hopefully, set up a solid finale to the series. Katniss is back with her
bow and her beaus Peta and Gale (I know the relationship is more complicated
than that, I just thought it was clever) as they prepare to take down President
Snow. How awesome is it that Sutherland, who was the old guy in Animal House
back in 1979, is still going strong? This is also officially Philip Seymour
Hoffman’s final on screen role so here’s hoping for a proper sendoff.
Christmas movies are a dime a dozen. I know that phrase is
cliché but so are Christmas movies so my point is proven, somehow. The Night Before, however, is from
Johnathan Levine, a director I really like. He’s made The Wackness, 50/50 and Warm Bodies. The themes and cast of each
film are so wildly different that it’s hard to believe they’re all from the
same director so the fact that he’s made a Christmas movie doesn’t bother me
too much. This one stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anthony Mackie as
friends out for their annual Christmas Eve party. This might be their last outing
since they are all growing up so they want to make it count. Again, it sounds
generic but I can’t help but appreciate the director and love that cast.
The writers of The
Good Dinosaur must have decided that people really wouldn’t buy into a film
featuring a boy and his dinosaur without some creative tweaking, so it takes
place in a world where the asteroid never took out the dinosaurs. I’m not sure
when that decision came into play because apparently this film was loaded with
issues and was supposed to come out last year but got pushed back due to
creative differences and rewrites and recasting. Pixar rarely delivers subpar
films so hopefully all this effort pays off.
After hitting financial snags with The Expendables and Rambo
franchises Sly Stallone had to go back to his classic character: Demolition
Man. God I wish. No, it’s Rocky. Creed features Rocky Balboa training the
son of the long deceased Apollo Creed who was his frenemy from the first few Rocky films. Creeds son is now a young
boxer named Adonis Johnson, played by Michal B. Jordan who is fresh off that Fantastic Four movie no one saw. Jordan
has already proven himself to be a great actor in other roles, he was in The Wire after all so for him to pay the
son of Carl Weathers is just awesome.
It’s been a while since we had a real Frankenstein film - and I’m not counting I, Frankenstein - so a month too late for Halloween season we have Victor Frankenstein. Starring James
McAvoy as Victor and Danielle Radcliffe as Igor, who is the lead in this film, we
see things from Igor’s perspective as Victor creates his monster. This being a Frankenstein story I assumed it would be
dark but from the trailers it actually looks like a pretty fun film.
Did I miss any? Is anyone looking forward to anything in particular?
