January movies

January has always been a wash for movies. It’s one of two ‘dumping grounds’ for studios, the other being September. If a studio didn’t know what to do with a film, they’d release it in January and hope they got something back. Recently though, studios have begun to realize that the month of January belongs to the action genre. Films like Taken 3, Ride Along, Contraband and The Book of Eli have all been January top earners in years past. Fortunately for action fans that trend continues with January 2017. But fear not non-action fans! January is also the time when all of those big Oscar hopefuls get wider releases so check your theaters, there’s some good stuff out there amongst the bad.

Out of all of the movies coming out in January, Jamie Foxx’s Sleepless will be one of the bigger hits. It’s a remake of a French thriller called Sleepless Night that’s touted as a Die Hard esque action thriller, but it’s not that at all. It’s a very tense film about a corrupt cop who steals from the wrong drug dealer and that drug dealer in return kidnaps the cop’s son and holds him for ransom at his popular nightclub. Save for the kid there really is no good guy and it makes for an interesting dynamic. There’s a lot of sneaking around and fist fights and the lead is wounded from nearly the beginning so he’s not really at the top of his game. This remake looks to keep most of those tropes with the addition of Michelle Monaghan as a cop who might be on to Foxx and what looks to be more of an action packed ending. I’m fine with these updates and I’m sure audiences will enjoy this.

I could’ve sworn that Underworld: Blood Wars was coming out last October but it turns out it’s coming out this January. If the creators of this film series knew what they were doing they could be making serviceable action-horror movies, but they don’t seem to get it so it looks as if we’re getting a 5^th helping of the same vampires v. werewolves story. If you want a GOOD film where vampires and werewolves don’t get along, go watch What We Do in the Shadows.

If you happen to see an advertisement for Monster Trucks and you are in bewilderment at what you’ve seen don’t worry, you’re not alone. The PRODUCERS, the people who put up the money, thought the same thing and tried to back out AFTER the movie was nearly completed. Such actions are usually taken before the cameras start rolling, not after. The release date was also pushed back about a year and a half and while that might not always be a bad thing (Cabin in the Woods), it usually means the film was a few steps away from being a Red Box release. In this case though, the film cost a whopping $125,000,000.00 so they had to at least TRY to get some money back from it. The film focuses on a kid who wants out of his town and sees his only shot at this is to become famous in the world of monster truck rallies because…well, I have no idea. So he builds himself a monster truck and then, through what I’m sure will be a series of bonkers events, unearths a blob/shark/octopus creature that also likes monster trucks. Yup. So that creature winds up taking over his vehicle and they go really fast and, more than likely, take on some sort of corporate villain. If you see this 125 million times in theaters then the movie is sure to be a hit financially.

With the huge popularity of the Fast and Furious series it’s a wonder Vin Diesel wanted to go back to his xXx series, especially since he was unceremoniously killed off-screen in the Ice Cube starring sequel. In xXx: Return of Xander Cage, we find that our extreme sports loving super-agent was merely left for dead, not fully dead. The first one had him go up against a team of anarchists who want to see the world burn and this looks to be more of the same, except they’re seriously upping the cast with people from all over the world. The core cast includes actors like Ruby Rose (Australia, will be in a few action sequels this year), Donnie Yen (China, stole a few scenes in Rogue One), Deepika Padukone (Denmark, one of India’s biggest stars), Tony Jaa (Thailand, popped up in the last FF film, should be more famous the dude is awesome) and Rory McCann (Scotland, The Hound from Game of Thrones which, apparently, not everyone watches). The FF series proved that big films can have a multi-ethnic cast and be successful. Even if this film is a mess (a mess that I intend to see the moment it hits theaters) I think it’s worth mentioning that they’re putting all of these actors on a bigger stage.

The Sixth Sense was a huge hit when it first came out and Unbreakable, I feel, is a great follow up that is truly worth a revisit. People seem to be spilt on Signs but I like it. That’s usually where a positive conversation about M. Night Shyamalan ends. After that came The Village, The Lady in the Water and The Happening, none of which were beloved by audiences or critics. Then he took some for-hire jobs like The Last Airbender and After Earth and that certainly didn’t win him any fans. So then he took a step back for a couple years, took some producing jobs, quietly made The Visit, which was a modest hit, and he’s quietly made another film called Split. James McAvoy plays a man with 24 different personalities who has kidnapped a group of girls who then try and reason with some of his personalities before the evil ones take over. It looks like an interesting, small-scale thriller which I feel Shyamalan excels at.

In the beginning (2002-03) there was Resident Evil and Underworld. One featured zombies, the other vampires and werewolves. Both had a female lead and wore its influences on its sleeves. Resident Evil was based on a video game series that was loaded with references to its source material but went in its own direction. Underworld was an aesthetically bleak Matrix rip-off that never found its footing. I feel I may be laying it on pretty thick that I enjoy the RE series a whole lot more and am looking forward to Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Now if for one second you’re thinking, “well I guess this is the last one,” I can tell you that the words ‘The Final Chapter’ is the furthest thing from a guarantee that a series is over. Saw, Friday the 13^th and even Lake Placid (yeah it’s a Sci-Fi channel film series now) have used that subtitle and each of those series has continued. 

So that’s January. Do you think you’ll search out the possible Oscar winners or are you looking to shut your brain off as a way to ring in the New Year?

December movies

It’s home stretch for Oscar wannabes so even though it’s the holiday season there’s no shortage of heavy handed dramas coming out.  To balance that out there are a couple fun movies but most importantly there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out and I can’t hide my excitement for it. 

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone singing and dancing? Sounds like the plot for La La Land is a winner for lots of viewers. The two of them are a fun pair and a fun musical around this season makes for a good time at the movies. I like Gosling when he’s beating people up so I forget there was a long period of time when he was a heartthrob and this is the 3^rd collaboration with him and Stone. I predict this will get some sort of music related nomination. 

To win over a big client and save his company a man throws a massive Office Christmas Party. Now this sounds like the plot to a Nation Lampoon movie but it attracted the likes of Kate McKinnon, Jason Bateman, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston and lots and lots of other funny people. These party movies are usually a good time as long as everyone on screen is game for it.

In the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope the Rebel Alliance has in their possession the stolen plans to the Death Star. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story tells the tale of how those plans were stolen and who went on the mission. It looks to be more of an action film than your usual Star Wars fare and that’s partially because in the time that this film takes place people have forgotten about Jedi’s and The Force. This might be a departure from the typical Star Wars story but fear not because we still have droids and spaceships and lasers and all sorts of cool stuff going on. These movies are usually good for a special effects nomination.

Every time Will Smith does a heavy handed drama I say to myself, “it’s okay, this is just one more step to Bad Boys 3,” so once again I’m reassuring myself of that with the release of Collateral Beauty. Angry at the world and distancing himself from those that care about him Smith begins writing letters to Love, Time and Death. To his surprise Love, Time and Death pay him a visit in human form and try to make him understand the way of the world a bit better. As of today Bad Boys 3 is now titled Bad Boys for Life and is scheduled for a January 2018 release. I am counting the days. Perhaps this will get a best actor or a best supporting actor nomination.

I’m not sure how loyal Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is to its source material but I enjoyed it and the opening music number “So Long & Thanks for All the Fish” is very entertaining. So when I see that the director of that film, who wrote that song, has made an animated movie called Sing about animals putting on a musical competition I can’t help but be interested. Plus Matthew McConaughey plays a koala who sings “Call me Maybe” and I feel that alone will be worth the price of admission. This is a good bet for best animated film and maybe a music nomination.

When a malfunction occurs on a spaceship sailing through deep space two of the Passengers awake 90 years before they’re supposed to. Fortunately those passengers are two of the more likeable people around: Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. The two of them hang out with the robot bartender and enjoy each other’s company before realizing that they might have been woken up early for a reason and have to figure out how to save the whole crew.  This looks like it might be a romantic charmer combined with a sci-fi story. Even after Castaway and Moon I’m still hesitant about these stranded movies so it might be a while before I see this. Since people love these actors maybe we’ll get an actress and actor nomination, people also love space movies so maybe a best picture could be thrown in there. 

I was excited for A Monster Calls, which is about a giant tree monster, until I learned the plot. It’s about a boy who begins talking with a monster, voiced my Liam Neeson, while his mother is sick and dying. That’s some heavy material there, can’t the kid just befriend a giant tree monster and have fun adventures? Maybe that’s the stuff January films are made of. There’s probably hope for a special effects nomination here. 

Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen the commercials for the video game Assassin’s Creed but in it you play a hooded assassin who sneaks around and dispatches enemies with a cool retractable knife. That’s pretty much what I thought it was all about, apparently there’s a lot more to it than that and the film delves into it. Michael Fassbender plays a man who is captured by an organization who need to unlock the memories of his ancestors with this fancy machine they got. To properly unlock said memories he has to play out the memories and become a 15^th century assassin during the Spanish Inquisition. It’s a pretty odd concept but it looks like it might make for a pretty cool movie.  

I like James Franco and Bryan Cranston but Why Him? just looks silly. Cranston is an uptight father who doesn’t approve of his daughter’s new boyfriend, a super rich relatively young eccentric goon. The more Franco tries to impress Cranston the more he pushes him away and I imagine the trailer doesn’t show all of the hijinks so hopefully there’s more fun to be had in this film than we’ve seen so far. 

Kylo Ren and Spiderman go in search or Qui-Gon Jin is NOT the plot to Silence. The actors that have portrayed those characters may appear in Martin Scorsese’s latest but in this one they’re all priests in the 17^th century. Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver travel to Japan, at a time when Christianity was forbidden, in search of their mentor Liam Neeson.  The journey ahead of them will be a hard one as they are trespassing and I’m sure with Scorsese behind the camera this will rack up some Oscars nominations.

Ben Affleck is not the same Ben Affleck that Ben Affleck used to be. He went from rising star, to big star, to joke, to forgotten about, to respected writer/director to respected writer/director/actor. His most recent writer/director/actor gig is Live by Night, a prohibition era gangster film. There’s no shortage of period piece gangster films and the recent ones, specifically the Johnny Depp starring ones, haven’t been great but this one looks good. His crime flick The Town was good so I have high hopes for this one. Affleck’s directing always gets some attention at the Oscars.

There’s always going to be at least 1 historical drama coming out around Oscar season and this year it’s Hidden Figures. So most of us know about NASA and the space missions but I for one have only recently heard about the female African-American mathematicians who were behind the scenes helping out with ground control. You don’t see any of that in Apollo 13, it’s just Ed Harris and Ron Howards weird brother. This film looks to right that wrong and give some credit to a piece of forgotten history. This might get some Oscar attention as two of the leads, Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson, have a win and a nomination under their belt, respectively.

Gold is about Matthew McConaughey and a crew venturing into the Indonesian jungle to find gold. I knew that much about the plot but from the trailer it seems that this is 2 films in one. One film is about the adventure to find the gold, then the film takes a turn and becomes more of a drama/thriller about what happens when you have that much gold. It looks at times fun and at times serious but McConaughey rocks a wild hairdo and seems to be enjoying himself and everyone likes that right? 

Anyways, Happy Holidays folks! Enjoy the movies!

November movies

A couple cartoons, a big Marvel film, the return to the world of Harry Potter (kind of) and plenty of films vying for an Oscar. It’s November people, enjoy the Turkey. 

People with shaved heads teach a man impossible skills while he learns about an alternate reality. If I were to ignore everything that makes The Matrix important I suppose that’s how I could explain it. The same goes for Doctor Strange. When a terrible car accident threatens to ruin Dr. Stephen Strange’s career he seeks help, what he finds is a bald Tilda Swinton who teaches him how to travel between dimensions and use magic. If this happened when I went to the doctor, I’d go to the doctor more often. His adventures catch the attention of the evil Mads Mikkelsen. Well, in this he’s evil. He’s a talented actor so he can be charming, terrifying, charmingly terrifying and terrifyingly charming. That takes skill. In this I’m pretty sure he’s just terrifying, he’s got this weird eye thing going on (which is actually a running theme in many of his movies). This film takes place in the ever expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe so while I’m not sure that we’ll see any member of the Avengers there might be a reference made, after all Steven Strange was mentioned in a throwaway line in Captain America: The Winter Soldier so they’ve been building up to this.

Those spiky haired, smiling Trolls get a movie of their own from the creators of Shrek. It’s got Justin Timberlake and plenty of other names attached to it. Expect some singing and dancing and a cute kid friendly story about Trolls fending off the creatures that are trying to eat them. Yup, that’s the story. I love these kids films that are cute and fluffy but have fallen victim to what I call the Toy Story 3 effect where we all know everything is going to be all right but the story needs more heft so let’s put toys in mortal danger! 

You might know that there’s a movie called Hacksaw Ridge coming out. You might know that it’s about a soldier who refused to use hold a weapon while serving as a medical officer during battle. What you might not know is that it’s directed by Mel Gibson. That’s because the studios recognize that Mel Gibson is a talented director but some people are far from ready to forgive him (I could go on a political rant about who many people are willing to forgive but I’ll hold off) so they are completely leaving his name out of promotional material. They are saying that it’s from the director of Braveheart and Passion of the Christ so they’re not completely burying him and maybe because it’s being released in November the studio feels that this war film is a possible Oscar contender. 

Jeff Nichols first film was in 2007 and that’s recent enough for me to consider him one of my favorite new directors. He got a good amount of recognition after Mud was an integral part in the McConaissance but instead of taking that fame and making a big budget film he seems to be sticking with the smaller films. His next movie was a sci-fi story called Midnight Special about a young boy who cult members and government agents are searching for, I liked it a lot. His newest one is called Loving. It’s the true story about Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who were jailed in 1958 Virginia when they were arrested for getting married. Their arrest led to a Supreme Court decision 9 years later that overturned the Virginia law stating that interracial marriages were illegal. That’s less than 50 years ago. I expect this to get several Oscar nominations like lead actor, lead actress and director. 

Ang Lee is one of the more prominent directors working today, having won two Oscars for directing, and yet somehow I haven’t seen any of his movies. His more dramatic movies like Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility wouldn’t be found on any of my ‘recommended for you’ lists but I don’t get how I haven’t seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk or Taking Woodstock, which until right now I didn’t know he directed. His most recent film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, does peak my interest though. Billy is a young soldier being honored during a football game for his role in an Iraq battle. The film focuses on him preparing for the event while he recalls the events on the day that made him a hero and we find out what really happened that day. It’s got quite the eclectic cast with Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Vin Diesel and Steve Martin. Apparently it will be shown in 120 frames per second, which is a film term I am generally unfamiliar with but it is a new, clearer way to show films. Why Lee decided to do this is beyond me but come awards season we’ll see how everyone feels about it because early reviews are middling. 

Get happy muggles because we’re going back to the magical world of Harry Potter! Minus Potter and all other characters we’ve come to love. So the downside is we won’t see anyone we’re familiar with, the upside is they can’t pull a Phantom Menace and anger people for decades to come. This is based on the book within the Potter books Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and takes place 70 years before Harry reads said book in his first year at Hogwarts. Well I’m sure Hermione read it, Harry skimmed it and Ron forgot about it. All of these references are lost on anyone unfamiliar with the series. The film focuses on the books writer Newt Scamander and his adventures in New York. Scamander will be portrayed by Eddie Redmayne who’s on a hot streak with Oscar nominations so while this might not get him another nominations I’m sure it will be fun. 

When Moana, the only daughter in a family of navigators, steps up to save her family she gets the help from the demi-god Maui. This is the latest animated Disney film that should be a big hit because there’s a lot of great people at the helm. On the writing team is the writer of Zootopia, a couple writers of Aladdin and my wife and I’s favorite filmmaker Taika Waititi. Then you got Dwayne Johnson as the voice of the demi-god and Alan Tudyk as a rooster. To top it all of the Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda is doing the music. That’s a lot of talent going on there. 

Thirteen years ago Billy Bob Thornton surprised us all with his turn as Santa Claus because it was a drunk, foul mouthed, criminal, mall Santa looking to rob convenient stores and the film was called Bad Santa. Now all these years later not much has changed as he is back in Bad Santa 2 and is looking to knockoff a Chicago charity. A few other folks from the first have returned with the addition of Christina Hendricks and Kathy Bates who can do drama and comedy much like Thornton so he’s in good company. Expect plenty of offensive hilariousness.

Brad Pitt might want some of the attention taken off of him in the aftermath of his split from Angelina but that’s not going to happen with a new romantic war thriller coming out. Allied is about Pitt and Marion Cotillard as spies from America and France, respectively. They meet while on a mission in North Africa and attempt to continue a relationship in London but they’re spies and there’s a war going on so it’s going to be complicated. This is directed by Robert Zemeckis, who’s been making more adult oriented films recently after making a string of motion capture films, and written by Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders and other thrilling dramas like Locke and Eastern Promises.

Twenty years ago aliens secretly invaded earth and only one radio operator could save the day! This is what I think the plot to Charlie Sheens 1996 The Arrival was about, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. I remember liking the ending. Unfortunately the title and the fact that it’s about aliens are the only real connection to Arrival. The new film from Denis Villeneuve, director of dark crime-dramas like Prisoners and Sicario, stars Amy Adams as a linguist who is tasked by the government to attempt to communicate with aliens when their ships land all over earth. This probably will not be a friendly E.T. or a terrifying Alien but a heady drama about survival of the human race that also has aliens in it. Look for this one to get a few Oscar nominations.

Warren Beatty was acting pretty consistently from the late ‘50s to the late 70’s then between the 80’s and 90’s he only appeared in 7 movies and his portrayal of Howard Hughes in Rules Don’t Apply will mark his return to film after a 15 year absence from the big screen. When a devout Baptist aspiring actress, past Snow White Lily Collins, and a devout Methodist engaged limo driver, future Han Solo Alden Ehrenreich, are working under the eccentric Howard Hughes in the late 50’s things are going to get interesting and I imagine this is the kind of project Beatty had been waiting for to bring him out of retirement. He’s reportedly been trying to get a Hughes biopic off the ground since the 70’s so I imagine there’s a lot of heart in this film as he wrote and directed it. It’s an interesting story and it has a loaded cast so this will get some Oscar consideration I’m sure.