Lots to be excited about this December! A new Tarantino
film, a new Ron Howard film, a new DiCaprio film, a new Will Smith film, a new
Amy Poehler/ Tina Fey film and, most importantly, a new Star Wars film!
If I told you that there was a Christmas movie coming out
this month starring Adam Scott, Toni Colette and David Koechner you probably
would not be surprised. There are so many Christmas themed movies out there
(the best of which is Die Hard, there is no debate, the conversation about Best
Christmas Film ends there) that most actors pop up in at least one (two for
Bruce Willis because Die Hard 2 is also a Christmas film but it’s not the 2nd
best, that goes to Jingle All the Way, of course). This Christmas film is
unlike others because while it does feature comedic actors and a bickering
family it also is about a Christmas demon called Krampus that punishes the family since they have lost the Christmas
spirit. I have very high hopes for this
one since it’s from the director of Trick
r’ Treat, which is a great Halloween anthology that all should see on
Halloween (I won’t get into what the best Halloween film is, that’s an October
discussion. Also that Jingle All the Way comment was a joke, it’s Home Alone).
I just looked up how many variations of Macbeth there are on IMDB and there’s 162! Granted some are
appearances in TV shows and many are short films, but a few of them are big
movies and this latest version looks to be another big version. It stars
Michael Fassbender as the murderous wannabe king (how’s that for over
simplification?) and, in an interesting DC/Marvel mashup, Marion Cotillard as
Lady Macbeth. I should probably have more to say about a Shakespeare movie but
I don’t.
Now, that DC/Marvel clash might be a bit of space filling
trivia that I felt worth noting, but it doesn’t hold a candle to In the Heart of the Sea because with
that we have a mashup of Happy Days/James
Bond/Marvel/DC/ and Harry Potter!
It’s the real life Moby Dick story directed by Ron Howard and starring Ben
Wishaw, Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson. I really hope people
are getting these references. When a giant whale seemingly targets a ship it
puts a group of sailors through all the perils one would expect from a big
budget seafaring adventure film. This isn’t the story of Moby Dick but it’s the
story that inspired Moby Dick. I don’t know if that makes it more or less
interesting but that director and that cast are great.
I could go on with my mashup jokes but I feel they’ve run
their course, so feel free to make up some of your own with the cast of The Big Short. It features Christian
Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt. That is a lot of star power for
yet another film about the banking crisis. This may be a story many of us are
familiar with or tired of but it is from Adam McKay, the writer/director of Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and The
Other Guys. Since The Other Guys
is absolutely one of my favorite comedies of all time, I will pretty much give
anything this guy is attached to a chance, plus he made that hilarious The Landlord video where his 2 year old daughter
plays an angry landlord who screams at Will Ferrell for rent money. None of
this has anything to do with the plot of The
Big Short, I just really don’t feel like dwelling on the banking crisis.
Joss Whedon has his Buffy
and Firefly and now has Avengers, similarly J.J. Abrams has his Alias and Lost and now has Star Wars.
They’ve also each done A LOT more for television and film. It’s pretty wild.
Look em’ up, they’ve each been in the business longer than I ever realized.
After taking over for the Star Trek
reboot I honestly did not believe Abrams would get the job to direct Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
because that is a pretty darn big responsibility. If he fails and this turns
out to be another Phantom Menace then
J.J. Abrams will forever be known as JarJar Abrams (joke stolen), but I have
high hopes and have already purchased my tickets. Truth be told I know very
little about the plot except that there’s new characters, old characters and an
adorable little soccer ball droid. That’s all I need to know.
Amy Poehler and Tina Fey both got big on SNL and then got
even bigger in their respective television shows. I’ve only seen reruns of 30 Rock and it’s pretty funny but I love
Parks and Rec. The two have already
made a film together and it was the cute romance comedy Baby Mama where Poehler is a scheming surrogate mother to Fey’s
workaholic New Yorker - much like 30 Rock.
It’s pretty funny, but I have high hopes for Sisters where they play, you guessed it, sisters. When the pair
finds out that their parents are selling their childhood home they decide to have
a nice send-off and throw a massive party. John Cena’s in this one as well and
after his role in Trainwreck, I have
a new appreciation for him in a comedic role.
Tarantino made a name for himself with his talky crime pics
like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown and then he made a few films that paid homage to old
genre pictures. Kill Bill was his
martial arts film, Inglorious Basterds
was his war film and Django Unchained
was his western. Turns out he enjoyed making a western so much that he decided
to make another one. The Hateful Eight
features Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russel, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and at least
4 others playing western tropes snowed in at a cabin. Some are lawmen, some are
bounty hunters, some are criminals and, it being a Tarantino film, all probably
are prepared to kill the other. Putting a group of people in one room was the
best thing about his first feature, Reservoir
Dogs, so here’s hoping he can recapture that dialogue, tension and
excitement. He already has Mr. Orange and Mr. Blonde here.
David O. Russel has been
nominated for 5 Academy Awards. He also
nearly got choked out by George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. I bring this up to say that before his nominations
came pouring in, this guy was tough to work with. But it seems since he met
Jennifer Lawrence, things have changed for the better because the actor and
director are making their third feature together. First was Silver Linings Playbook, then American Hustle and now we have Joy, which is about the woman who
created the Miracle Mop. That doesn’t appear to be the plot of the film but
that is in fact who the film is about. It seems to focus more on her family
story, which is always nice for a Christmas time movie.
Usually if a film has made it to four films in a franchise I
will have seen at least one or part of one and the Alvin and the Chipmunks series is no exception. I saw the end of
the second one and it has David Cross singing Single Ladies. I can’t recommend
the film but maybe look that clip up on line. This fourth film is entitled Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
and the plot is that Alvin, Simon and Theodore go on a road trip to stop Dave
from proposing to his girlfriend. WOW. They used to sing and get yelled at, now
they’re ruining marriages. What happened to this country? I know a new Chipmunks movie shouldn’t be the
catalyst for me to have such thoughts…but I can’t help it.
I mentioned The Other
Guys earlier and I mention it again because A) more people should see it
and B) Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg starred in it and have reteamed to make
another movie that, unfortunately, isn’t a sequel to The Other Guys because not enough people (myself included) saw it
in theaters and my voice doesn’t carry into Hollywood. So this new film is
called Daddy’s Home and has Ferrell
as the polite, loving stepdad vs. Wahlberg’s bad boy, I’m still cool dad. It’s
PG and released around Christmas time so for the parents that don’t want to see
chipmunks for the 4th time, they’ll go see this instead and this
will get a sequel and The Other Guys still
won’t get a sequel and I’ll cry.
Remember when Will Smith made fun movies? The last one I saw
was Hitch and while I did see Hancock and I Am Legend, those were some pretty heavy handed films for their
subject matter (superpowers, zombies). Perhaps Men in Black 3 was fun but even that was 3 years ago. Continuing
with his heavy handed topics Smith stars in Concussion,
a film that the NFL does not want you to see (and reportedly may have tampered
with the finished product, I emphasize reportedly). He stars as a
neuropathologist (whew, we are a long way away from the kid who used to shoot some
b-ball outside of the school) who discovers a possible connection between playing
football and brain trauma. I thought that was an obvious thing- you get hit
hard, you get hurt. That’s how the human body works. Apparently it takes a
whistle blower to report such things and now we are even further from Will
Smith appearing in Bad Boys 3.
I’ve touched on remakes before and how I wish they weren’t
as prevalent as they are now-a-days, but to be honest I always wind up seeing
them- maybe not in theaters but eventually I will watch them. Point Break is a remake I will probably
try to go see in theaters. I got a lotta love for the first one. It’s fun, cool
and Keanu Reeves and Garey Busey make for a ridiculous pair of early 90’s cops.
This one replaces the California based bank robbing surfers with extreme sports
anarchists whose robberies focus more on messing with the economy on a world
wide scale rather than just coastal California. They still have surfing, but
they also toss in a bunch of other stunts and apparently most of it is as
practical as possible so the crazy stunts are actually being done and not green
screened. Busey does not return but he does get replaced by Ray Winstone and
that guy is awesome.
By now I’m sure you
know about Birdman. It was that huge
movie that came out last year that everyone was talking about. It was a pretty
cool movie- long takes, lots of cool actors, pretty funny - but the director
wanted another challenge so he made The
Revenant. The challenge here was to shoot a film in Canada while using only
natural light, which means that any scene shot during the day had to be shot
while it was light out and no special effects or lighting equipment could be
used. There were more challenges but I should get to the actual plot. Leonardo
DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are part of a group of men venturing through uncharted
America in the 1820’s when DiCaprio gets attacked by a bear and left for dead
by Hardy. He then tries to survive the wilderness and anyone who tries to kill
him and make it to safety, wherever that is. This is probably going to win some
Academy Awards and is not your typical Christmas movie, but people will be
talking about this one.
Hope everyone has a nice holiday, let me know what you plan
on seeing this month!
