October

It's been a while since I've written an article. I've had a lot going on but I want to get back to it. I like writing these things and it's October! The best month of the year. It's Kristen's birthday month and it's Halloween month! I don't know how many of these I'll see in theaters but I know I'll be watching lots of movies this month - mostly horror movies of course.

Any iteration of Joker is going to be a big deal. He's been portrayed by the likes of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Mark Hamill and now Joaquin Phoenix will wear the makeup. Except for the Jokers who who got there start on TV, like Romero and Hamill, no actor has had the opportunity to reprise the role so each is different. Nicholson was a gangster who was dropped in  deadly toxins, Ledger kept the backstory vague (could be a could be a wounded soldier, could be a victim of child abuse - it's never truly revealed), Leto was a wannabe musician who had too much free time and now we have a new play on the character. Phoenix is Arthur Fleck (A. Fleck which is like Affleck, like Ben Affleck the most recent Batman. That has to be on purpose right?) a quiet man in 1980's Gotham who wants to make it as a comedian and get the girl - when that doesn't work out he turns to crime and things get ugly. Man of Steel through Aquaman were all connected but this is completely separate of that series and may be a one off - a rarity in the comic book movies nowadays. The director, Todd Phillips, has a history of making films about immature men who want a change in their lives going to great lengths to get that they want - The Hangover series, Old School and Road Trip. Granted they are all comedies but he has a focus so hopefully this jump to dark crime will work out. He sure has one committed actor working with him, Phoenix famously really dives into his roles and early reviews are that this is another solid performance from him.

For as long as I've been reading about movies I've heard about this upcoming film Gemini Man and after about 20 years it finally comes to the big screen. The script for this goes back so far that at one point Sean Connery was suggested as the lead and he hasn't starred in a film since 2003. The reason it took so long to develop is partially because it is about a hitman who comes across his younger self who is trying to kill him and it was intended to have the actor portray the younger and older version - using digital technology that was not readily available in the late 90's early 00's. The other reason it took so long is because that plot already exists with Looper where Joseph Gordon Levitt, wearing good ol' fashion makeup and prosthetic's, plays a young hitman hunting his older self played by Bruce Willis. Now it's 7 years since Looper was made (and that movie rules), Will Smith is making a comeback in big budget sci-fi movies that made him a blockbuster success and the facial de-aging technology looks pretty good now (those Disney/Marvel movies just love putting it to use). The story has Smith as we are familiar with him now, still dashing as ever but slightly older looking, going up against himself from his Fresh Prince days but with lots of guns. It seems older Smith has been working for a corrupt government agency that wants to retire him and to do so they will use a younger clone of him that has been raised to be the perfect killer and older Smith would rather help him than kill him but first he has to dodge a lot of bullets. I really hope there's more to it than that, this has been quite the long gestating film and a lot of people have been involved with it over 2 decades. Director Ang Lee has made some great looking movies but a good story needs to go along with it.

I want to be excited for another movie about The Addams Family but this new animated feature just isn't doing it for me. You can't replace Raul Julia and Angelica Huston - that much is obvious - but I feel Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron would have done a great job in a live action movie. This animated feature has look of a Netflix release and there's nothing particularly theatrical about it. The trailer elicits far too few jokes and the animation is very odd looking. I hope this is more fun. I crave horror themed October theatrical releases and this is the only family friendly one coming out this month. Apparently this one has the family moving to Westfield, NJ which is where a real life spooky incident occurred. Remember when a person calling them self The Watcher was sending threateningly creepy letters to new home owners a few years ago? That true life horror story may have influenced this friendly family film. SO that's fun.

Jay and Silent Bob haven't been around for a while. They've popped up here and there but they haven't been characters in a Kevin Smith movie since Clerks 2. Now we have Jay and Silent Bob Reboot which finds the chatty stoner and quiet stoner venturing back to Hollywood to stop the remake of the Bluntman and Chronic movie - which is based on their comic book superhero alter egos. The last time the two headlined a movie was back in 2001 with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which focused on them stopping the original Bluntman and Chronic from getting made. There will probably be a celebrity cameo every second in this movie. Some playing themselves, some playing a character and maybe a few playing both. Kevin Smith has made some weird movies recently (there's the one about the religious fanatics, one about a guy who turn into a walrus and one with Nazi sausages) so hopefully this return to form will do well for him.

I imagine many people wondered 'WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!' when Taika Waititi, hot off of Thor: Ragnarok fame, announced that his next project would be a coming of age period piece comedy...and he would play Hitler. Jojo Rabbit tells the story of a young boy growing up in Germany during World War II who is made fun of by the other boys in his training camp when he fails to kill a rabbit. He also finds that there is a young Jewish girl hiding in his family's home and when he needs to talk to someone about all of this he turns to the only person he can: his imaginary friend Adolf. In the wrong hands a film like this could become an offensive mess but I have loved, just loved, everything Waititi has been a part of and I'm pretty sure this will be a funny, dramatic and thought provoking tale.

Some of these Disney updates are like '(insert movie title here) but darker!' but Sleeping Beauty was already pretty dark! So why not make it about the bad guy? And that, I imagine, was the driving force behind Maleficent. I never saw it though but Angelina Jolie is great so it's no surprise a sequel is coming out. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil finds Aurora planning a marriage and her mother in law to be is happy to call her daughter and Maleficent just ain't having it. Things go about as well as you can imagine. These movies look to have a significant more action than I remember from the cartoons, so  that's cool, and it looks as if we dig a bit deeper into Meleficent's back story and meet her family of angry looking winged magical people so that wedding might be more complicated than Aurora was planning. The October release might be a sign that Disney owns too many properties! It's the only reason I came come up with for why they would release a relatively big movie outside of Summer and before Christmas. With all of their properties I think they are going to start stepping on their own feet more and more.

A Zombieland sequel would have been welcome like the day after the first one came out. I saw that movie three times in theaters. It opens with a zombie killing montage set to Metallica and has Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigal Breslin shooting at zombies for 2 hours with one amazing performance from Bill Murray. Well now it's 10 years later and all four leads are back in Zombieland: Double Tap. The sequel finds them still still road tripping through America, killing all the zombies they come across. Being that this looks to be a bigger budgeted sequel I know we have a few new actors joining the crew and we are probably in store for a few more celebrity cameos - who will probably not survive the entirety of the film.

July

We’re in the middle of summer and there are some big movies coming out! The last Marvel movie for a while, the latest Tarantino movie and the newest Disney reboot.

After the events of Civil War, his own movie, Infinity War and Endgame, it's about time that the friendly neighborhood webslinger take a vacation in Spider-Man: Far from Home. Unfortunately for him, bad guys don't take a vacation and his class trip is interrupted putting his classmates, and the entirety of London, in danger. Spoiler alert - Iron Man has passed and when trouble arises in London, it's now Nick Fury's job to turn to the next goodhearted, well-trained individual to save the day - and that person is Spider-Man. He also meets Mr. Fishbowl (actually he goes by Mysterio, but he wears what looks like a fishbowl on his head) played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who may be a good guyfrom another dimension or a trickster who is causing all of the trouble and pretending to be a good guy. This is also the final film in the stretch of movies referred to as the Infinity Saga that started with Iron Man and many assumed ended with Endgame but nope, they made room for one more. So we might have a bit of a break between this one and the next Marvel movie.

Last year Hereditary came out and it managed to become a minor hit by drawing in the indie crowd and the horror crowd. I saw it months after its release and found it really good and very unsettling. The director is back this year with another film that also looks good and unsettling. Dani and Christian are a couple whose relationship is deteriorating, but a tragedy keeps them from separating and Christian invites Dani to a vacation he had been planning with friends. It's a vacation to a seemingly idyllic European village for a celebration that occurs every 90's years called Midsommar. The trailers keep things vague but it looks as if things go from tranquil to horrifying over the course of a few days as the guests realize there is something very sinister going on. Since Hereditary had its fair share of twisted, in film traditions I imagine this one will feature a couple of its own.

On the day LA detective Vic, Dave Bautista, receives Lasik surgery he takes it upon himself to track down a dangerous criminal and since he can't drive for a few hours after the surgery, he calls for an Uber and Stu, Kumail Nanjiani, shows up. So Stu +Uber = Stuber. Stu just wants a 5-star rating but instead finds himself in an increasingly dangerous situation involving martial artists, car chases and the overwhelming possibility of a low Uber rating. Bautista and Kumail have both proven to be funny and entertaining actors and the pairing should make for a great action comedy. To help things in the action department, Iko Uwais is the bad guy. In non-American productions he's an amazing fighter, but  he was wasted in last years Mile 22 so hopefully this new movie lets him do what he does best. 

When a category 5 hurricane hits, a young woman goes to find her dad who is trapped in their home. Now, that is terrifying enough. Now, to make matters worse, there's an alligator in the house!  Crawl  has a relatively simple premise, but in the hands of director Alexandre Aja will most likely be a thrilling, fast paced and violent time at the movies that horror fans will enjoy. His movies tend to be a bit on the extreme side, as seen in High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, but his last creature feature Piranha was over the top goofy violence. So this one might fall somewhere in the middle.

 A young boy who will one day rule the land his father rules goes on the run after his father is assassinated by his uncle, the boy believes he is the one responsible and goes on the run where he befriends a warthog and a meerkat. This is the time old tale of The Lion King, which is the latest Disney update. Unlike other recent remakes, you can't really call this a 'live action' remake since there were no human characters and everything is animated. It's just an updated version of the story we are familiar with but with alarmingly realistic animation, aside from the whole talking animals thing, and a whole new, and wildly popular, voice cast - except for James Earl Jones, because you just can't replace James Earl Jones.

Quentin Tarantino has always had a passion for referencing movies in his movies, so it was only a matter of time before he full-on made a movie about movies. The man is lucky that it seems everything he makes is his 'passion project,' but Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood really seems like a passion project. Leonardo DiCaprio is a movie star who's not the star he used to be, Brad Pitt is his friend and stunt man and they have a new neighbor: Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie. Some new folks are also in the area, one of which is Charlie Manson. Tarantino's ode to late 60's Hollywood is also his retelling of the Manson Murders because of course, it is. Due to the subject matter I am wary but the cast is huge and Tarantino rarely disappoints.

June

June 2019 is the month of the living dolls! It seems like a cruel joke to release the new Child's Play and the new Toy Story on the same day. But it's a cruel joke I appreciate and then a week later comes the new Annabelle movie.

I was about 13 when the first X-Men movie came out and I was so excited to see it. To see these characters on the big screen was such a treat. As the series continued it has hit may highs and lows, but the last one was so bland that I feel less excited about X:Men: Dark Phoenix and that's a total bummer. The time line of this series has been pretty confusing and the Wolverine spinoff series has only made things more confusing. Dark Phoenix is the 4th prequel film and takes place in the 90s, placing it less than a decade before the original X-Men film, so in less than 10 years James McAvoy will look like Patrick Stewart. This entry finds Jean Grey gaining incredible powers that seem to have an impact on who she is as a hero. She can do good things and help the world, but the immense power inside her can turn her evil and that is a problem for all of human and mutant life. Expect heroes and villains fighting together and plenty of superhero action.

I really enjoy The Secret Life of Pets. It's a cartoon family friendly adventure by a writer who got his start working with Kevin Smith and the movie features music from System of a Down, Beastie Boys and Andrew W.K. It's cute and very funny so hopefully The Secret Life of Pets 2 can recreate that vibe. Patton Oswalt voices Max, the dog from the first, and all of his friends have returned with a few new friends including a farm dog voiced by Harrison Ford, which is probably a dream come true for outspoken nerd Oswalt. The action takes place inside and outside of the city but it looks to be just about as fun and funny as the first movie.

Mindy Kaling has been writing comedy for years. She wrote for The Office and for her own The Mindy Project, but Late Night is her first feature film and she's also starring and producing. When a popular late night talk show host, played by Emma Thompson, wants to change things up she brings a fresh face into the writers room to save her show and bring a bit of diversity to the show. Kaling's character isn't a seasoned writer like the rest of the crew but she's funny and is determined to help Thompson. The two leads are good in anything so pairing them together to headline a comedy should prove to be a fun watch.

When her parents witness something otherworldly, she watches from afar as they have their memories erased. Armed with the knowledge that she is not alone in the universe she grows up and joins the same agency that wiped her parents’ memory in Men in Black: International. Tessa Thompson tracks down the highly secretive MIB and secures a meeting with Emma Thompson (who is having a big month) that sends her on a journey to work with MIB London where Liam Neeson and Chris Hemsworth operate. It's not Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, but that cast sure sounds fun. There will be aliens, explosions and creative ways of how these protectors of the universe hide in plain sight. 

I'm always on the lookout for a cool sequel title, but sometimes instead of doing anything like adding a subtitle or tacking a number on the end to indicate it's a sequel, the creators do absolutely nothing. They did it a few years ago with The Thing prequel, they did it last year with Halloween and they're doing it again with this month’s Shaft. What separates Shaft from the rest, besides being cool, is that this is the 2nd time it's happened. There are 3 movies, all called Shaft and they all take place in the same universe. Richard Roundtree was Shaft, a private detective, in 1971, Samuel L Jackson played Roundtree's nephew Shaft, a cop, in 2000 and now in 2019 it's Jessie T. Usher as Jackson's son Shaft, a cyber security expert. When his best friend is killed, the youngest Shaft enlists the help of his harder hitting family members to track down those responsible. The first two have an aura of cool but this most recent one, while still cool looking, looks pretty funny as well which is a bit of a change of pace for this series.

Jim Jarmusch might never do a massive studio movie and I don't think anyone, especially him, is bothered by that, but that doesn't mean he can’t make a few genre movies. He's done a western, a hitman thriller, a vampire movie and now he's making a zombie movie with The Dead Don't Die. When he wants to, he can attract quite the impressive cast and this small town zombie comedy has Bill Murray and Adam Driver as police officers trying to protect their town from the undead as they interact with the town’s residents, who seem to be all played by famous people like Tilda Swinton, RZA, Danny Glover and Carol Kane. 

I forget where the last Toy Story left off, I just remember crying with all the other adults in the theater.  But it seems that Woody, Buzz and pals are no longer Andy's toys. They now belong to Bonnie and it turns out that if a child makes a toy, it comes to life, which is horrifying but it plays into the Frankenstein toys in the first movie. In Toy Story 4, Bonnie comes home with Forky, a spork she added arms, legs and eyes to in art class. This new toy is scared by his newfound intelligence but when he gets lost the team, knowing how traumatic losing a toy can be, go on an adventure to find him and rescue him. Along the way they meet some old and new friends, one of which is a stuntman motorcycle driver toy voiced by Keanu Reeves, meaning he'll be in the most violent movie of the year and the most delightful movie of the year.

If a series is popular enough, there will eventually be a remake of it. That's how things go in this movie business. Up until 2017 the Child's Play series was actually still going since the original from the 80's. There have been gaps in time, but each film is a sequel to the first film. There have been no remakes and there is even talk of a TV show. But I guess straight to streaming wasn't good enough for the killer doll known as Chucky, so now we have our remake. In the original, a serial killer used magic to have his soul transferred into that of a doll - he then kept living and dying for nearly 30 years. In this one a new robot doll named Buddi is on the market and it, like all technology, can be seamlessly connected to every device in the home. A young child receives a Buddi named Chucky from his mom (Aubrey Plaza) and pretty soon murders begin to occur. Whereas the first Child's Play has just had a 3 and a half foot doll committing atrocities, this new version grants the killer the ability to use all technology at his disposal to create maximum havoc. Expect not to look at your home appliances the same way again.

Director James Wan got his start directing Saw, which lead to a career that would see him involved in many different movie series. He helped create The Conjuring series and spinoffs, has directed a Fast and Furious movie and Aquaman, which is a part of the DC Universe. Annabelle Comes Home is the 3rd Annabelle movie, an evil doll that was first seen in The Conjuring and since evil dolls have seen a resurgence lately it got its own series. This one finds the evil doll back in the possession of The Conjuring heroes Ed and Lorraine Warren (based on the real life demonologists or scam artists, depending on what you believe) who have a room of evil...and a young daughter. When one of the daughter’s friends curiosity gets the better of her, she accidentally awakens the doll, who then wakes up all of the other evil entities and then it's off to jump scare city. I've only seen a few of the movies from this series but I'm always rooting for a long running horror series that has yet to get rebooted.

We have Rocketman coming to theaters and Bohemian Rhapsody was a hit, so it was only a matter of time before a Beatle's movie was made, but this isn't a docu-drama. If you're a person who lives on this earth with access to the internet or TV or radio there's a good chance you are aware of a little band called The Beatles. Yesterday knows how popular they are and so does Jack Malik. He is a musician waiting for his big break, then one night there is a global blackout and he awakens to a world where he is the only person who seems to have ever heard of The Beatles. Armed with a massive library of #1 hit songs he takes full advantage of this power and becomes mega famous rock star all the while knowing that none of the songs he plays are actually his. This looks like a very fun, funny, heartfelt movie that will probably have audiences singing.