December movies

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 2^nd 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 4^th 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!