Well, here we go again. Summer movie seasons are always fun, but what's arguably better about the following autumn is its promise of substantial movies rather than the genre dreck studios release in the spring and the spectacles they toss out in summer. For the next few months we might actually get thoughtful, emotionally resonant movies. And if not, well, at least there'll be variety. Whatever. Anyway, here's my alienatingly opinionated breakdown, as I did 2 years ago, of the rest of the films we can expect from 2005.
SEPT. 2
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The Constant Gardener (D+) - "The Interpreter" meets "The English Patient". I like Ralph Fiennes more than I used to, but political intrigue thrillers tend to look this boring from the outset. It might end up getting good reviews, though
The Transporter 2 (B) - the first one was overrated by geeks, but this one looks infinitely more dynamic and crazy. Even if the movie ends up being as forgettably average as its predecessor, at least its trailer will remain an entertaining artifact
A Sound of Thunder (C+) - the fact that it was made about 18 years ago pretty much guarantees its suckage, and Edward Burns doesn't alleviate that any, but I'm a slut when it comes to time travel stories so I'm retaining some hope.
Underclassmen (F) - sounds like a modestly charming '80s movie starring Jon Cryer, at least in theory. Too bad it's taking the obnoxious "urban" route. This makes 2 '80s-ish comedies that Nick Cannon has ruined (after his "Can't Buy Me Love" remake). If he weren't such a worthless twit, I would admire his taste in movies (he is credited with the story to this one, after all)
Margaret Cho: Assassin (F) - :(
SEPTEMBER 9
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The Exorcism of Emily Rose (B) - Not being a fan of "The Exorcist", I wasn't thrilled to hear about this movie earlier in the year, but after seeing the trailer I am quite sold. Looks like it could be genuinely scary instead of just cheaply shocking like all other horror movies (including "The Exorcist")
The Man (FFF) - Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy doing a bumbling "Lethal Weapon" retread. If you ask me, Jackson should be exempt from this kind of buddy cop comedy after spoofing them in "Loaded Weapon 1" 12 years ago. Though both are good actors, they embarrass themselves beyond repair in the trailer alone. I expect a 0.0% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes
Hooligans (B) - haven't seen a trailer for it yet, but word-of-mouth is good and I like the concept and am looking forward to seeing Elijah Wood finally play something other than a meek loser ("Sin City" doesn't altogether count because he didn't have any lines)
An Unfinished Life (D) - Lasse Halstrom is the master manipulator of indie dramas. Because he operates in that world, people hardly ever seem to realize how utterly phony his movies are. Add this to his large resume of dismal Oscar bait. Oh, and Jennifer Lopez? Can't act anymore. For those who disagree with me about Hallstrom, I'm sure we can at least agree that having JLo in it is a bad sign
SEPTEMBER 16
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Just Like Heaven (C+) - romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon as a ghost haunting/falling for Mark Ruffalo. Has potential to be fluffy and charming, but the trailer is replete with bad jokes, and it made me realize for the first time that I no longer like Witherspoon. I used to be a big fan, but after "Legally Blonde 2", "Sweet Home Alabama" and whatever else she's done in the last few years, I've lost faith. I'm actually more interested in seeing this for Ruffalo, who, conversely, I used to dislike until he proved himself many times over in the last few years.
Proof (C-) - another one of those "fishing for awards" dramas that lacks appeal but acts all meaningful and is led by two "classy" actors (Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins) who have slowly transformed into total bores
Lord of War (B+) - I got high hopes for this one. It looks like "Three Kings", is made by the always interesting Andrew Niccol, and features a Nicolas Cage performance that he might not be able to sleepwalk through!
Venom/Backwater (B-) - low-budget teen horror tripe: sounds like my type of good time! That it's directed by the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" guy could mean it will at least have a decent horror aesthetic, plus there are a few familiar faces (Jonathan Jackson, Bijou Phillips), and it's rated R. Yeah, everyone will hate it, I'm sure. But it could be a guilty pleasure
Cry Wolf (C+) - not sure what to make of this yet. Could be pretentiously empty like last year's "Saw", but it does have Lindy Booth and Gary Cole, and I always try to be as open-minded as possible to anything horror-related
Everything is Illuminated (B) - this year's "Garden State", a quirky, semi-artful coming-of-age comedy-drama about a misguided young man discovering a sense of family, and also the directorial debut of an actor (Liev Schreiber). C'mon, all the elements are lined up! To be fair, though, this looks pretty good. Props to Elijah Wood for not bottoming out in adulthood like Macaulay Culkin, and also for being more adventurous with his post-"LotR" roles than the rest of his fellow hobbits. He's been growing on me for a while, and this could provide his breakout
Thumbsucker (C) - looks annoying but has an interesting cast
The Thing About My Folks (C+) - family drama about father (Peter Falk) and son (Paul Reiser). Would be nondescript if not for Reiser, who also wrote the screenplay. I think I am the last remaining person on Earth who thinks he is a funny, intelligent, lovable guy, and I'm ecstatic to see him back in action
HellBent (C-) - okay, I know I just said I try to be open-minded with horror, but this just looks stupid. It's being touted as the first "gay horror" movie, and seems to have nothing else going for it. When a screenplay has to rely on the fact that characters are gay as though it were nothing but a gimmick, you know you're in trouble
G (FFF) - the hip hop version of "The Great Gatsby". Yeah, it's like something you'd expect to hear from a producer in the opening scenes of "The Player". Better as a joke than a real thing. Alas.
SEPTEMBER 23
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Flightplan (C-) - too similar to Jodie Foster's other claustrophobic "protect my daughter" thriller and just not intriguing enough on its own. Also, it seems like there are a lot of airplane thrillers these days (isn't there another one coming soon about snakes let loose on a plane? And one starring Samuel L. Jackson?). My guess as to the riddle of the story: her daughter IS on the plane (obviously) and it's a big conspiracy theory. 'Cuz that's what it always is
Corpse Bride (B+) - I don't care how derivative of "Nightmare Before Christmas" this looks, or how juvenile all of the trailer's jokes are. It looks fucking awesome.
Oliver Twist (C) - sounds boring but the trailer was mildly engaging. The biggest issue, though, is whether the world needs yet another adaptation of this story, Polanski or no Polanski (see also the forthcoming "Pride and Prejudice"). Unless a radical or extreme approach is going to be taken (and the trailer confirms that neither will describe this one), what is the damn point?
Roll Bounce (C+) - if it doesn't get bogged down in sports melodrama, this could be harmless, nostalgic fun. The predominance of bad actors like Bow Wow and Nick Cannon is an omen, however
Daltry Calhoun (C) - Johnny Knoxville comedy. I like the guy, but he has not made one single good film so far.
SEPTEMBER 30
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The Greatest Game Ever Played (D+) - how about the worst title ever conceived? This is inspirational underdog sports drama true story #913,459,000 for Disney and looks no better or worse than any of its forefathers, except that I am so fucking tired of them making this movie over and over again. I find it notable only as a Bill Paxton movie - that is, as a rather unexpected follow-up to "Frailty"
Serenity (D-) - "Buffy" is my all-time favorite TV show, and for about 5 years there I worshipped at the feet of Joss Whedon. Then the show started to suck, "Angel" turned out to suck, and he made another series, a sci-fi western, so crappy looking than even an admirer of Whedon's like myself could bear to watch. So maybe I'm simply ignorant of its charms (it does have a large fanbase), but considering all withered one-liners and basement-quality spectacle of the movie adaptation's trailer, I don't expect to be eating my words. This looks terrible, like a TV movie channel 13 would show on a Saturday afternoon in-between reruns of "Xena" and "Amazon Warriors" or whatever syndicated adventure garbage they show
A History of Violence (C-) - eh, doesn't entice me so far. Hope it's good though
Capote (C) - isn't ambitious enough to be a great movie, but could be a solidly fascinating little tale. Good cast, anyway (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Bob Balaban)
MirrorMask (B) - being a Neil Gaiman movie, I'm excited. Being a movie trying to make sense of a Neil Gaiman story, I'm very worried. Trailers looks really neat but could just as easily steer towards disaster
OCTOBER 7
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In Her Shoes (D) - could this really be from the director of "Wonder Boys" and "L.A. Confidential"? Maybe the trailer is simply a case of poor marketing, but this seems ATROCIOUS.
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (B+) - W+G shorts were consistently strong, and I love their homage to old Universal horror tropes with this their first full-length movie, but the trailer, somehow, is just plain unfunnny. I'm praying it's one of those Pixar situations, where subpar advance previews of the movie never prepare you for the glory of the final product
Waiting... (B) - In all likelihood, this will be a disgusting, loathsome, bottom-feeding shit-bomb of a comedy about the frat house shenanigans of a bunch of restaurant servers. However, as I have spent ample time in this profession, I'm looking forward to this movie expressing all my pent-up rage for it
Two for the Money (C-) - dry, predictable, and unoriginal "Wall Street"-type knockoff has great, if stereotyped, players (shouting Al Pacino, smarmy Matthew McConaughey, villainous Jeremy Piven) but you can see right through it. All I hope to get out if it are delicious performances, but chances are I'll get cheated out of that even
Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave (B) - part 4 hasn't even come out yet, and if that isn't a hall-of-fame bad title I don't know what is. But it's cheesy horror, so I'm there
OCTOBER 14
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Elizabethtown (A) - God willing, the best movie of the year. Captures that quirky/wistful comedy-drama tone that every Cameron Crowe movie triumphs with, and that I sought from last year's "Sideways", "I Heart Huckabees", and "The Life Aquatic" (but receive from only one). At this point I'm pretty sure Cameron Crowe is my favorite director, so my anticipation could not be higher for this. I was pleasantly surprised to find that former black hole Orlando Bloom looks pretty good in the trailer
Domino (FFF) - on the flip side, ostensibly the worst movie of the year. Tony Scott is a parody of himself now, and not even anything in "The Devil's Rejects" was as soul-killingly irritating as Keira Knightley's oft-repeated catchphrase in the trailer. Fuck.
North Country (C-) - neh
The Fog (B+) - hell yeah! This looks like pure Halloween fun
Good Night, and Good Luck (B-) - George Clooney's next job as director, about Edward R. Murrow's battle with Joseph McCarthy. Haven't heard much about this yet, and the story doesn't grab me much, but Clooney will bring an arresting eye to it, I'm sure
Where the Truth Lies (C) - Atom Egoyan, Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Rachel Blanchard. Could go either way on this one.
OCTOBER 21
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Shopgirl (B-) - if it's magical and has a sparkling screenplay, we could have a big winner here, something akin (quality-wise) to Martin's underrated "L.A. Story". But if it's formulaic, too cute for its own good, and even half as bad as anything Steve Martin's done since "Bowfinger", could be a huge missed opportunity.
Doom (F) - based on the idiotic computer game. Starring The Rock. Awesome.
Stay (B-) - I'm curious about this one. Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, and Ryan Gosling in a supernatural mystery. I'll wait to see what the critical consensus is, 'cuz I have a feeling it might end up sucking
Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (C) - see "The Greatest Game Ever Played" for THE EXACT SAME MOVIE, with Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning in place of Shia LaBeouf. If I had to choose one to see, though, I'd take this one. The trailer isn't as bothersome
OCTOBER 28
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The Weather Man (C-) - tries too hard to be weird and different even though it's clearly going to be a sappy drama. Also, for no logical reason, seems like overexposure for both Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine
Saw II (D) - a sequel to a bad movie made within a year of the original and lacking even that one's B-list star power (I understand most of the actors died, but they could have gotten new ones)
Prime (D) - I find it strange that Ben Younger, the director of the gritty, macho "Boiler Room", is responsible for this flaccid chick flick about a psychiatrist and her son's girlfriend becoming friends. Because it happens to look like crap (with the trailer covering every single major scene in the movie, including the climax, helpfully relieving us of the need to go see it ourselves), I also find it depressing. Couldn't they have gotten Nora Ephron's second cousin to do this instead?
The Legend of Zorro (C-) - I don't want this movie to exist. I'm of the unique mind that the 1998 "Mask of Zorro" was a fantastic throwback, a stupendous adventure movie that was actually well-written and acted and contained exciting action and was just all-around better than it should have been. So it saddens me to think that an inferior sequel is coming this way, sans the original writers (Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott), with a smart-mouth kid cliche in tow, and far too late for anyone to care about. I presume this is for the benefit of Banderas' and Catherine Zeta-Jones ailing careers, and that does suck, since they're both sharp actors, but I just don't want this to defile the first one, and it will.
NOVEMBER 4
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Chicken Little (B) - overly glib but I sense it could be really cool so long as it doesn't devolve into endless hip-kid jokes a la every Dreamworks CG film (yes, I know this is Disney). Maybe the allure is the highly attractive visual design
Jarhead (C+) - another "Three Kings" about the odd tragicomic events surrounding a group of guys during Desert Storm. Doesn't look all that special to me, and Sam Mendes proved he was fallible after "Road to Perdition"
The Family Stone (C-) - this one rubs me wrong (due to the cast, I'm sure, which blows but for Rachel McAdams and Luke Wilson) but maybe everyone will love it
The Matador (B) - sounds like a blast from all the Sundance buzz, with Pierce Brosnan shaking up his usual blandness, and the underused Greg Kinnear in tow
A Cock and Bull Story (B) - Michael Winterbottom meta-comedy with Steve Coogan. I'm game.
NOVEMBER 11
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The New World (C) - Terrence Malick might do wonders with the landscapes, but the story is simply beneath a man of his talents. And Colin Farrell seems miscast
Zathura (C) - well, "Jumanji" sucked, and this is such a wholehearted yet unacknowledged ripoff that Chris Van Allsburg should have sued himself when he originally wrote it. The world, however, needs more good fantasy films for children, so I'm cheering director Jon Favreau on to make something watchable out of the generic concept
Derailed (D) - two people cheating on their spouses are threatened by a killer. No thanks.
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (B) - writer Shane Black (he of several of the more enjoyable action comedy bonanzas of the late '80s and early '90s) makes fun of and pays tribute to the whole business with, what else, a buddy action comedy, starring Robert Downey Jr. and an uncommonly wacky Val Kilmer (the finest brand of Kilmer, if you ask me)
Get Rich or Die Tryin' (F) - speaking of "die trying", Jim Sheridan, your attempt to make a credible actor (or human being) of 50 Cent...?
Jesus is Magic (B) - Sarah Silverman is rad.
NOVEMBER 18
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (A) - I am officially a big nerd fan of Harry Potter. Oh, how far I've come. Even though I have doubts about modest director Mike Newell taking over, and the mammoth novel being abbreviated to a running time even less than that of its already shorter predecessors, I'm still awaiting this movie more excitedly than pretty much any other this year. I'm such a wuss.
Walk the Line (B) - Yeah, it's blatantly aping last fall's biopic of a late controversial musician, but, no offense to Ray Charles - I like his music - I'd much rather watch a movie about Johnny Cash. And Joaquin Phoenix looks great in the trailers. I'm psyched for this.
Wolf Creek (B-) - don't know whether it's supposed to be good or not, but I am seduced by the notion of a "Blair Witch Project" with werewolves.
Pride and Prejudice (D) - see "Oliver Twist". And ask yourself why
NOVEMBER 25
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Rent (B) - more proof than I'm more woman than man: I love the trailer for this movie. I like musicals, I like that "525,600 Minutes" song, I like at least half the cast (Jesse Martin, Taye Diggs, Anthony Rapp), and I like Chris Columbus (not so much a feminine quality as a neutrally shameful one)
Syriana (B-) - has an air of importance and intensity, and with a big cast, the stakes are high. Story doesn't appear to be all that ambitious, but I hope I'm wrong about that
Yours, Mine and Ours (F) - "Cheaper by the Dozen" all over again. Oh wait, I didn't hate that movie. Well, I wish I did.
Ice Harvest (C-) - a dark comedy by a proven director (Harold Ramis) and two proven comedians (Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, reuniting after that weird airplane movie I forgot the name of!), but the trailer looks like a cross between Nora Ephron's abysmal "Lucky Numbers" and the abysmal Nicolas Cage/Jon Lovitz/Dana Carvey caper "Trapped in Paradise".
Just Friends (B-) - young adult comedy-drama with okay actors (Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Amy Smart) and set at a high school reunion. Not bad.
Dying for Dolly (D-) - "Romeo and Juliet" set in the mobster world starring Usher. End of story.
I'll stop there for now, and pick up with December when I have s'more time. Forgive me for any especially offensive or ignorant opinions.
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