Volume 9: Look, Everybody! Famous People!
New Year’s Eve
Dir: Garry Marshall – Planned release date: December 9
Do you like celebrities? Do you enjoy watching them from your theater seat, basking in their superiority as human beings? If so, then you likely enjoyed Valentine’s Day, the 2010 film from Garry Marshall that graciously allowed every notable actor or actress in Hollywood to come together and get a nice, fat paycheck. Now, fearing they will all have to settle for just one toilet made of gold, everyone in Hollywood has decided that there must, must be another ensemble romantic comedy about finding love on a nationally-celebrated holiday. Of course, Valentine’s Day was an obvious choice the first time around—romance is that day’s whole raison d’être, after all—but what could the next choice possibly be? Why, New Year’s Eve, of course! People kiss then, don’t they? Why this will surely be a film that the American public will eat up thus putting millions of dollars in their collective pockets will inspire the world!
And what a cast of beautiful people this film has! We have Katherine Heigl, Jessica Biel, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Ice Cube, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Seth Meyers, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank, Ludacris, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear and much, much more! (Also Ashton Kutcher, but that goes without saying. Making a movie like this without him is, I think, against the law.) Interestingly, New Year’s Eve also stars Jon Bon Jovi, who is playing against type as “Jensen, a successful rock star.” If this does not get him an Oscar nomination, I don’t know what he has to do. But even that doesn’t compare to the most intriguing actor in the cast: Til Schweiger. For those who don’t know, you may remember him from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, in which he played Nazi killer extraordinaire Hugo Stiglitz. This can only mean one thing: New Year’s Eve ends with the entire cast getting shot to pieces in a movie theater. Actually, I may make time to check this out.
Anyway, the film comes out on December 9. Do your duty, America, and give these celebrities the money they so deeply deserve.
Tower Heist
Dir: Brett Ratner – Planned release date: November 4
There are two ways to look at Tower Heist, the newest film from art house sensation Brett Ratner. (That “art house” part was sarcasm, for the record.) On one level, the trailer doesn’t look too bad, even if it seems like any other heist film per se. On another level, it’s just the latest example of the studios neutering what was once a relatively original premise. Tower Heist—originally Trump Heist—was envisioned as a “black Ocean’s Eleven” which would star Eddie Murphy in the lead with Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock as supporting players. Yet the executives of Hollywood, having seen The Wire and knowing that black people are scary in groups, eventually decided to replace Eddie Murphy with Ben Stiller and the rest of the roles with the street-smart likes of Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Tea Leoni, Michael Peña and Gabourey Sidibe. If you were keeping track, only two of those people aren’t white.
But fear not, Eddie Murphy has still been brought on board. However, instead of getting the straight-arrow boss role that now belongs to Stiller, he is the wacky professional thief who has to be bailed out of jail. That said, it’s good to see him actually exerting some comedic effort for once, especially since his last three live-action films have been Imagine That, Meet Dave and Norbit. I don’t think he’ll be going too far down the “dangerous” road—I can’t see a world where Ratner doesn’t go for the PG-13—but I’ll take this over the sleep-walking Murphy we’ve seen of late. Tower Heist certainly seems like it will be slick, loud and mostly generic, but with the inclusion of Alan Alda’s scheming millionaire it also aspires to be a piece of recession-era escapism. I have no real expectations for this movie yet, but I find it most fascinating for the changes it had to go through just to get made.
Margin Call
Dir: J.C. Chandor – Planned release date: October 21
Speaking of white people, here is the trailer for Margin Call; a film which dramatizes the hours leading up to the financial crisis of 2008. Based on the trailer, the film’s plot unfolds as follows: one person (Stanley Tucci) notices a problem. He tells Zachary Quinto to look at the problem on a flash drive. Quinto sees this problem, is shocked, and he immediately tells everyone he knows about the existence of said problem. From there, his co-workers go tell other people about the problem until the entire nation is made aware. Of course, in this time the bank is able to make a few moves so that they don’t completely collapse and all. So, if you like watching people tell other people about a financial situation you probably don’t understand, then Margin Call is the film for you!
I kid, of course. Much of the early response to this film has been positive, and there’s no arguing with a cast of this caliber. Plus, it’s rated R for “language,” meaning we’ll likely get our fair share of Kevin Spacey f-bombs. That alone makes any film worth the price of admission. Still, it’s about time we got a decent film about the crash of 2008 that doesn’t focus on how Gordon Gekko isn’t a very good daddy. Margin Call has got quite a challenge in front of it if it wants to entertain the masses, and it seems to be attacking this by turning up the urgency at every moment. Either Margin Call will be able to separate itself from the pack and become the Wall Street film we’ve been waiting for, or it will just be another in a long line of attempts that ultimately put audiences to sleep.
The Ides of March
Dir: George Clooney – Planned release date: October 14
It seems you can’t swing a dead cat at the movie theater these days without hitting a Ryan Gosling vehicle, and George Clooney’s The Ides of March only continues his rise to ubiquity. This film—which seems to take the bold stance that American politics may not be the most clean-cut game—follows Stephen Meyers (Gosling), a young hotshot who is about to skyrocket Democratic candidate Mike Morris (Clooney) to presidential victory. Things apparently start to get complicated when Paul Giamatti gets involved, and tensions slowly rise until Gosling decides to get his betrayal on. As the title seems to hint, Gosling will be the Brutus to Clooney’s Julius Caesar. And folks are going to get stabbed in the back.
Yes, you can smell the Oscar bait a mile away. But this seems to be the kind of political thriller that’s right up my alley, and Clooney the director (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads) has delivered mostly solid results in the past. Intriguingly, the release date—originally planned for a December/January Oscar eligibility-type deal—was recently moved forward to October. To me, this indicates that Sony has quite a bit of faith in the finished product. We’ll have to see, but The Ides of March has quite a bit going for it.
The Sitter
Dir: David Gordon Green – Planned release date: December 9
Ah, David Gordon Green. There was a point where you were one of the more promising indie filmmakers in the world. Then you made (the terrific) Pineapple Express, and since then it’s been nothing but raunchy R-rated comedies of the Apatovian variety. While that’s something of a disappointment—particularly considering the artistic nadir that was Your Highness—it’s about time we come to accept the new David Gordon Green. He ain’t changing anytime soon. As far as the R-rated slacker comedy goes, The Sitter definitely looks like another one; this time putting the pre-weight loss Jonah Hill in the midst of all the chaos.
What this film does have is Sam Rockwell as a violent drug dealer, which can only be awesome. Unfortunately, I’m far less interested in the film that seems to have been made around him. The Sitter just feels like a story we’ve seen a million times in the past five years alone, and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything new with the genre that Green’s Pineapple Express helped make popular. The lone twist here seems to be the addition of children for Hill to scream at, and that’s not enough to convince me that The Sitter is going to change the world. Yes, it will likely have its fair share of laughs, but the Jonah Hill film I’m really looking forward to this year is Moneyball. Right now, this just seems too minor for me to wholly get behind.
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