Synopsis: A continuation of the saga created by George Lucas set thirty years after The Return of the Jedi.
Release Date: December 18, 2015
Thoughts: If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you’ll know that I love a good, old-fashioned teaser trailer. Lately, a “teaser trailer” has been more along the lines of a 2:30 (or longer) appetizer to share rather than the kind of amuse-bouche executed so skillfully during the late 80s/early 90s.
Blessedly, our first look at the hotly anticipated next chapter in the Star Wars franchise harkens back to those fondly remembered days of yore when brief glimpses whet the whistle of movie audiences everywhere.
Directed by J.J. Abrams (who successfully rebooted another Star franchise with Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness) and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan (continuing his long history with the franchise after scripting The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) it’s an understatement to say that whatever countdown fans have had for a new outer space adventure has officially started now that this satisfying peak has been released. My only concern as of now is that with Abrams on board it will look similar to the Star Trek films and rely too much on the director’s flare for the, well, solar flare camera work he’s become infamous for.
Grumble grumble quibble quibble…right? When all is said this, along with Jurassic World, are two of my most anticipated films of 2015.
Synopsis: Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond.
Release Date: June 12, 2015
Thoughts: I love the holiday season that is swiftly approaching, the great food of Thanksgiving, the joy of Christmas, the promise of a New Year, and the anticipation of an awards season that looks to be packed with the most worthy of contenders.
After watching the first trailer for 2015’s Jurassic World, though, I kinda want them all to be over so we’ll be that much closer to seeing what’s up with the dinos 22 years after their debut in Steven Spielberg’s landmark original. I was skeptical at first that this fourth film would be in line with the sillier third entry but our first look has a Spielberg vibe of adventure and wonderment flowing through its veins. With Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) heading the cast and a nice tease of familiar dinos and one nasty new one, this park can’t be open soon enough.
Synopsis: Chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition.
Release Date: December 25, 2014
Thoughts: Last year, Lee Daniels’ The Butler tried and failed to chronicle the Civil Rights movement as seen through the eyes of a fictionalized historical figure. Self-serving dialogue and a cast roster more interesting than effective sunk what could have been a film of importance. Slipping in at the end of the year just in time to qualify for the busy awards season is the drama Selma and it looks like a more focused work, brimming with the passion of a call to action Lee Daniels’ The Butler was so sorely lacking. I’ve watched the trailer a few times now and found my interest quite energized by the spark director Ava DuVernay has ignited and that stars David Oyelowo (Interstellar, Jack Reacher) and Carmen Ejogo (Sparkle, The Purge: Anarchy) look goose-bumpy good as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Corretta Scott King. Quickly moving to the top of my anticipated list, I’m ready to take the trip to Selma.
Synopsis: A witch conspires to teach important lessons to various characters of popular children’s stories including Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel.
Release Date: December 25, 2014
Thoughts: Though some have turned their noses up at Stephen Sondheim’s musical being given the big screen treatment by Walt Disney Studios, this final trailer for Into the Woods looks positively charming. Considering the budget was “only” 40 million dollars, I’m happy to see that a lot of that money was seemingly spent on actual sets and not some CGI created world for the impressive roster of actors to play out Sondheim and James Lapine’s sly take on the fairy tales we all grew up with. Meryl Streep (Hope Springs) sounds like a perfect Witch and while I’m not too keen on the notion of Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) as Cinderella or Johnny Depp (The Lone Ranger) as a zoot-suit wearing Wolf, I’ve got a feeling director Rob Marshall will wrangle this into one enchanting evening.
Synopsis: The special bond that develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax, and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.
Stars: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., Genesis Rodriguez, Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk, Daniel Henney
Review: When Disney agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for the cool sum of 4.64 million dollars they not only started to churn out live-action superhero movies by the truckload (just do an internet search for the multi-year slate of films recently announced) but they began to develop future animated collaborations with Marvel based on their comic book properties. The first production of this union is Big Hero 6 and if this high energy, vibrantly colored adventure is any indication of what’s to come, both Disney and Marvel execs can start looking at purchasing those beach houses in the Hamptons and 40 foot yachts they’ve been holding off on.
In the city of San Fransokyo, young Hiro (Ryan Potter) is headed down the wrong path, wasting his tech-savy gifts on secret behind closed doors robot battles that may pad his pockets but gets him into hot water with thugs and his watchful brother. A chance visit to his brother’s elite school harnessing the best ideas from the brightest minds gets Hiro interested in following his brother’s footsteps. When tragedy strikes, Hiro must work with a rag-tag group of awkwardly diverse geniuses and one puffy vinyl nurse-like robot to save the world.
With characters first introduced in 1998, Big Hero 6 is an interesting concoction of East meets West styles and the classic origin story that all films of this type need at their genesis. It plays very much like Guardians of the Galaxy, Disney’s surprise hit from August that slipped in at the last minute to be the most enjoyably film of a rather blah summer. Even with echoes of Guardians of the Galaxy dancing in your head, Big Hero 6 emerges as its own entity with a fair share of honestly funny moments and the kind of every color of the rainbow animation that practically leaps off the screen.
It’s a rollicking good time and a better film that I thought it would (or could) be. I laughed a lot and even felt some pangs of sadness, another example of the harmony that exists between the comic-book world of Marvel and the wise minds/hearts of the animators at Disney.
A winning film for parents with kids that too young for Iron Man and too old for Frozen, Big Hero 6 is clearly the start of a beautiful animated partnership.
Synopsis: A group of explorers make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, Mackenzie Foy, Topher Grace, David Gyasi
Director: Christopher Nolan
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 169 minutes
Trailer Review: Here
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review: Most of the reviews for Interstellar are going to focus on the fact that it’s a let-down to what we’ve come to expect from director Christopher Nolan. Destined to be held to the impossibly high bar he set for himself with his trilogy of Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, andThe Dark Knight Rises), you could say that he really only has himself to blame for critics and audiences alike coming to expect a certain need to be filled with each Nolan epic.
While I agree that Interstellar may not be the 2001: A Space Odyssey of the new millennium as many thought it would be, I still marveled at the sheer magnitude of innovation surrounding the film. I applaud its commitment to science, cinema, and humanity – it’s why I left the screening with a spark of ebullient respect that literally kept me up tossing and turning in bed as my dreams were filled with wormholes, theories of relative time, and all those failed physics tests of my youth. Yet, as I continued to think on Nolan’s film as a whole, I found enough fault in the melodramatic moments Nolan and his brother Jonathan have unfortunately wedged in that overall my jovial enthusiasm for the movie faded…and faded fast.
In a distant future, our crops are dying and our prospects look grim. Single father and retired pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club) lives on his farm trying to do best for his children. Guided to a secret government facility by a series of events I won’t divulge here, it isn’t long before Cooper is blasting off into space with a two pronged mission to find a new world to inhabit and save the human race.
That’s a heavily oversimplified rundown of the first hour of Nolan’s three hour trek into universes beyond our reach and it’s this earthbound time at the front of the picture and the final hours that kept restraining the journey from really rocketing into the oribit I wanted it to. There’s a manipulative feeling to what the brothers Nolan have constructed, with attempt after attempt to tug at the heartstrings of viewers. What they failed to include, however, is a set-up that allows us to be attached emotionally to anyone enough to be moved by their fight for survival.
The film is best when it’s floating in space because that’s when the artistry begins to take form and all cylinders start to fire. Projected on an IMAX screen and making full use of an immersive sound design (my teeth are still rattling), Interstellar could come across feeling like an entertaining school lecture with its long monologues describing time travel and explanations of the effects of relativity. Thankfully, Nolan finds a balance in keeping audiences up to speed without boring them (or dumbing it all down) with textbook-ish dialogue that only a multi-PhD professor would grasp.
An impressive, Oscar recognized cast (2 nominees and 4 winners…5 if you count a surprising cameo) make the most of Nolan’s multi-layered script. McConaughey’s a bit of an odd duck as our hero lead. Adept at wearing his emotions on his sleeve, I found myself craving for a shot of the actor that didn’t show him with his eyes welled up with tears. Cool headed when trouble arises, he still cuts the appropriate swath of an All-American dad just trying to get home to his kids. Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables) has never been a favorite of mine but the break she took after her Oscar win has given the actress time to reacquaint herself with a grounded acting style and she largely succeeds in her role as a brainy, all-business counterpart to McConaughey’s cowboy cavalier.
Rounding out the cast is Michael Caine (Now You See Me) as Hathaway’s father and McConaughey’s mentor and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) playing a scientist with a link to McConaughey, alongside Wes Bentley (Lovelace) and David Gyasi (Cloud Atlas) as fellow explorers onboard the shuttle. Caine has a long history with Nolan but here the role he’s been given is so clearly designed as a plot device that it’s hard to form an honest opinion of the performance. Chastain fares better, considering she’s saddled with a hefty amount of the problematic moments in the final third of the film.
Less complex than Nolan’s trippy Inception and lacking the emotional attachment of 2013’s better (and shorter) Gravity, Interstellar is a film I can imagine getting less interesting with repeat viewings. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll see the movie again in 70MM on the largest screen I can find because the movie looks absolutely incredible…but I’m not sure all the additional viewings in the world can excuse some major cracks in Nolan’s ambitious rocket-ship.
Synopsis: Ian Shaw seeks revenge against Dominic Toretto and his crew for the death of his brother.
Release Date: April 3, 2015
Thoughts: Hi, my name is Joe and I’m a fan of the Fast and the Furious franchise. This wasn’t as hard to admit as one might think and it’s an admission made easier by the fact that what started as a B-movie rip off of Point Break (trading surfboards for cars) has evolved into an engaging action series that improves with each passing installment. Sure, 2 Fast 2 Furious stumbled and I may be the only one that enjoyed The Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift but the last three films (especially 2013’s breathless Fast & Furious 6) have upped the ante without turning the whole affair into a self-aware camp fest. Though the dark cloud of star Paul Walker’s tragic passing will likely hang heavy over the film, I’m hoping that the extra production time allowed director James Wan (The Conjuring) and writer Chris Morgan (47 Ronin) to orchestrate a fitting torch passing that allows the series to continue.
Synopsis: A look at the relationship between the famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife
Release Date: November 7, 2014
Thoughts: A film about the life of Stephen Hawking and his wife could, in the wrong hands, be the stuff of gauzy melodrama, the kind of film you’d see during the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations on a rainy fall night (note: I do love the Hallmark Hall of Fame). Viewing the trailer for The Theory of Everything it appears that director James Marsh and screenwriter Anthony McCarten have taken Jane Hawking’s book and brought it to the screen with gentle care for its emotional core. Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables) is generating serious Oscar buzz for his performance as the brilliant astrophysicist diagnosed with an ALS-like motor neuron disease. Felicity Jones (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) is his wife Jane who accompanies him on his journey to a new understanding of life and how far love can take you. Though it must be noted Hawking and Jane divorced in 1995 (the same year he remarried…) I can see audiences being swept away by the overarching themes of love being the greatest victory.
Synopsis: English mathematician and logician, Alan Turing, helps crack the Enigma code during World War II.
Release Date: November 21, 2014
Thoughts: If you’ve had your ear to the awards circuit ground you’d be hearing lots of rumblings about The Imitation Game, a twisty true life thriller that winds through the shadows of code breaking during World War II. I’m a bit worried that star Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek: Into Darkness, August: Osage County) is reaching a level of overexposure that could backfire against him in the years to come but for now I’ll give him a pass as he has a way of choosing roles that play to his strengths. Joined by Keira Knightley (having a good year in Begin Again and Laggies) and Matthew Goode (Stoker), it’s apparently a film with the kind of good buzz that needs no code breaker to decipher.
Synopsis: A hard-luck limo driver struggling to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie takes on a job with a crazed passenger whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals.
Release Date: TBA 2014
Thoughts: I’d like to have some sympathy for Patrick Wilson but after starring in a string of modest budget box office hits like The Conjuring, Insidious, and Insidious: Chapter 2 I don’t think the actor is necessarily hurting for work or to pay his bills. Still, whenever I see any actor given the chance to lead a film that’s then pretty much dumped by its studio like Stretch was (it’s OnDemand now) I have to admit my cold Grinch-y heart breaks a little. Directed by Joe Carnahan (The Grey) and co-starring Ed Helms (We’re the Millers) and Jessica Alba (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) I’ve no doubt all involved will solider on to other projects that will be given a better chance at survival.
