With both the American summer blockbuster season and the crushing disappointment of Shark Night 3D behind us, it’s time to take a look ahead and speculate as to what the best stuff yet to be released this year is.
Two of the most-buzzed about movies already out overseas – Warrior and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – are having their New Zealand releases delayed until next year to capitilise on any potential Oscar-attention, but there’s still a few flicks coming out this year worth getting excited about.
Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’ Tabloid debuted at this year’s film festival, but luckily for those who missed it (like, uh, me) it’s getting a general release on October 13th.
At the complete opposite end of the documentary spectrum to Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, Morris is known for taking an extremely stylised approach to his subjects. His films often have a dream-like sense of reality to them, and by embracing such a subjective point of view, he comes at the notion of “truth” from a much more honest place than so-called “objective” documentaries.
His 1988 film The Thin Blue Line managed to get an innocent man out of jail and was incredibly influential in how it portrayed crime scene reconstructions. His 1997 film Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is one of my all-time favourite movies and remains a criminally under-seen gem.
Tabloid examines the story of Joyce McKinney, an American beauty queen whose crazy exploits were splashed across the British tabloids in the 1970s. By all accounts, it’s a typically penetrating and entertaining film from Morris. Can’t wait.
Woody Allen’s longtime pariah status appeared to thaw a tiny bit with the success of his latest film, Midnight In Paris (out October 20th), which has proved his biggest box office hit ever. Despite being the most prolific and artistically successful American filmmaker EVER, Allen is still seen as a creepy boogeyman by a large section of the film-going public. Even many of his ardent fans dismiss much of his recent work. But I always find something to relish in his movies, even stinkers like Scoop.
Allen still attracts stellar casts for his movies, which these days are more often than not set and shot outside his beloved New York. Midnight In Paris stars Owen Wilson as an American screenwriter in the titular city with his fiancee who finds himself transported back to Paris in the 1920s, an era he romanticizes all out of proportion. Rachel McAdams; Marion Cottillard and Adrien Brody also appear.
Despite The Inbetweeners TV show having a pretty minimal presence in New Zealand, local audiences will still find much to enjoy in The Inbetweeners Movie, which is out here on October 27th.
The show focused on four English teenage pals (l-r: nerdy Will; earnest Simon; eager Jay and stupid Neil) and their pubescent exploits in the middle section of the social spectrum. The film has the lads finishing high school and all going on a holiday to a seaside resort in Greece.
I caught this at the movies in London recently, and it’s worth seeing simply for presenting an English alternative to the swathe of American teenage gross-out films. Plus it’s pretty funny in it’s own right, and the experiences of the kids here feel much closer to home than the American equivalents. A rare TV show-to-movie translation that works (the Brits used to do this endlessly in the ’70s, it’s proved a crowd-pleasing smash in England, and a sequel is all but inevitable.
Unquestionably the most-buzzed about movie of the moment is the Drive, starring Ryan Gosling, which comes out here on November 3rd.
After bouncing around Hollywood for a couple of years (at one stage Hugh Jackman was going to star with The Descent‘s Neil Marshall directing), this project (based on a 2005 novel by James Sallis) fell into Gosling’s lap, and he brought onboard Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising). They collaborated on the approach to the material and the film took on a distinctly art-house, European vibe (acknowledged in some meta dialogue from Albert Brooks’ character). Refn went on to win the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and positive word-of-mouth has been coming in from all directions since.
I have attended two screenings of Drive now, and hot damn does it live up to the hype. As an LA mechanic and movie stunt driver who moonlights as a heist getaway driver, Gosling projects superlative amounts of silent cool. He’s Steve McQueen and Paul Newman together in a silvery white jacket with a scorpion on the back. The film itself is a ’80s fever dream of synth pop and flouro lettering with a timeless view of Los Angeles heavily informed by the films of Michael Mann (Thief, Heat) and William Freidkin (To Live and Die In LA), not to mention Walter Hill’s must-see 1978 neo-classic The Driver, in which Ryan O’Neal plays a similarly quiet, unnamed and badass getaway driver being pursued by a never-better Bruce Dern as a hard-nose cop.
Beyond the revelatory performance from Albert Brooks, who steps into his role with casual gusto, there’s an amazing supporting cast in the form of the great Ron Pearlman, Bryan Cranston and Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks. I will be seeing this a third time when it comes out.
While I struggle to get very excited about Steven Soderbergh as a filmmaker these days (although The Informant! was pretty funny I guess), I must admit to being pretty intrigued by the very effective trailer for his upcoming pandemic thriller Contagion (out November 10th), which appears to be taking a Traffic-style macro approach to a global pan/epidemic.
Initial reports of the film made it sound pretty schlocky and reminiscent of Outbreak, but based on the trailer, Soderbergh looks to be going for something more realistic here. This feels just familiar enough to be truly scary. Plus, Bryan Cranston again, so there’s that.
The film I am most looking forward to before the end of the year is Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol (out December 15th) , and I wrote about my enthusiasm for that film in this earlier blog.
At a recent media screening, a representative of the distributor gave a small speech before the movie in which she announced the imminent media screening for The Iron Lady (which comes out on December 26th). An audible murmur of approval emanated from all through the audience, which speaks to the widespread anticipation for the film starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher.
It feels in many ways like a spiritual successor to 2006’s The Queen with its hint of British “quality” combined with crowd-pleasing theatrics, the kind of film you could take your Nan to see, but which you might also want to see. Ms. Streep is all but guaranteed podium action come Oscar time.
I’ve decided recently that I am going to ditch my cynicism about The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (also released on Boxing Day) and embrace an optimistic view of the film. The look presented in the trailers has left me somewhat wanting, but we’ve learnt that the tweaking on this sorts of all-digital films goes on right up until the very last minute, so I must reserve full judgement until I’ve seen the film. I’m comfortable placing faith in Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who both came to Tintin as fans first. I am confident they will present a reverential and entertaining film, and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt on the technology for now. Fingers crossed.
What films still to come out this year are you excited for? Sound off below, yeah!
