After a pretty weak summer movie
season, the fall is upon us. It can be
the dump month and it can be the prequel to Oscar season. Speaking of prequels I only see one coming in
the fall by way of director Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Pine (Star Trek)
as a young Jack Ryan, the fifth in the series but pre-Alec Baldwin, Harrison
Ford, and Ben Affleck. Hey, if he could
fill James T. Kirk’s shoes, he can fill Han Solo’s. There are of course sequels abound, with
Hobbit’s with plans to Desolate Smaug, “Insidious” spirits, “Riddick” with his
spooky eyes, Jenifer Lawrence “Catching Fire”, and fan favorites Ron Burgundy
and Machete, and heaven help us, Madea. Now normally I would site all these
sequels as a bad thing if two of them were not on my list of five to look
forward to. Now on to the list. With the help of some visuals.
1) Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
(Sept. 27)
If you’ve
never seen the first Meatballs movie, you are sorely missing out on one of the
best animated films of the past ten years.
The humor was so specific, subtle, and genius at times, yet still found
a way to give you that heavy-handed message through the use of the Flint
Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (FLDSMDFR). If the trailer is any indication, it looks to
be a lot of that same humor, with or without some life lesson I look forward to
fun with the food-animals.
2) Gravity (Oct. 4)
Alfonso
Cuaròn has only made a few films, but since 2001 he has been firing on all
cylinders with “Y tu mamá también”, the best Harry
Potter movie, and the still fantastic “Children of Men”. Now the dude is going into space with Clooney
and Bullock as his only cast? I’m so ready for this.
3) Thor: The Dark World (Nov. 8)
Not my
favorite of the Phase One Marvel films, but it has grown on me after multiple
viewings. Most of the best moments occur
on Asgard, and it appears that the majority of the film will be set there. Maybe the fate of Earth will be hanging in
the balance, but leave that to Joss Whedon and “The Avengers 2: Age of
Ultron”. I wanna see some super-god
action of ‘Game of Thrones’ like proportions.
4) Her (Nov. 20)
Spike Jones
doesn’t have many films under his belt between all his shorts, documentaries,
and “Jackass” stuff. But his films are
always something to behold. His vision
can carry a movie even something like his recent “Where the Wild Things Are”
while not a great film, visually, it’s on another level. Plus it’s one of my favorite James Gandolfini
performances, and it was just his voice.
And now that Joaquin Phoenix is done pretending to be crazy and back to
doing some great work, I look forward to their collaboration. And come on, what guy wouldn’t want their
house to talk and take care of them in the voice of Scarlett Johansson?
5) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Dec.
25)
As a career
daydreamer I am anticipating this movie like you read about. The plot feels like the romantic-dramedy
formula, but there is something in the mix that puts it a little off kilter,
and I like what I see so far. Ben
Stiller was on his way down the Adam Sandler path, where you see him there and
it’s like, “Hey, there he is, doing that same thing.” It’s funny. But you don’t laugh. It shouldn’t be that way. Here Stiller looks to be taking some chances,
and I do enjoy his directing choices more than his acting ones, so we’ll see if
this is as great a film as the trailer makes it out to be.
As with the
fall season we also get those under the radar flicks that hit big, maybe Joseph
Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut “Don Jon” (Sept. 27). Or “12
Years a Slave” (Oct. 18) with the neglected for far too long Chiwetel Ejiofor. It also could be Alexander Payne’s latest
“Nebraska” (Nov. 22). And of course the category
of almost a sure thing we got David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” (Dec. 13). There’s the Scorsese and DiCaprio combo of
“The Wolf of Wall Street” (Nov. 15).
Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day” (Dec. 25).
And we’ll go out on my favorite brothers, the Coen’s with “Inside Llewyn
Davis” (Dec. 6).
I don’t look
forward to much this fall, but I hope for more surprises than the summer had to
offer.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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