Upcoming Movies Worth Considering

Summer is nearly over and along with students and teachers moaning about having to go back to school, it is also upsetting for me because most of the really great summer blockbusters have come and gone.
Up, Star Trek and Harry Potter were all really great movies. Terminator Salvation, while getting a lukewarm reception from fans and critics alike, at least took the series in a different direction than robot is sent back in time, tries to kill human, human/robot is sent back to protect human, Judgment Day sucks for all mankind. The really awful movies that still made a boatload of cash were X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. From everything that trailers and advertisements are showing, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is likely going to join that last group of garbage.
But we’re not here for an outlook of the depressing future of films. We want something to look forward to as we roll into the final months of the year. Here is a preview of some of the more exciting prospects Hollywood has to offer.
August 14 – District 9: The producer and director of this movie were brilliant to go with a documentary style of filmmaking, especially when the trailer is presented as a hard-hitting feature that focuses on a South African government harboring a group of outsiders on the country’s dime. Interviews with locals talk about how they don’t like them and they don’t want them around. Things get really interesting though when it is revealed that the outsiders aren’t illegal aliens in the sense of Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande, but rather illegal aliens crossing the Milky Way to land on Earth. With each new commercial that is aired I get more eager to see this movie. It doesn’t hurt the chances of this movie being great in that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is one of the producers.
August 21 – Inglorious Basterds: I will say that I don’t trust Quentin Tarantino any more. Sure, he wrote and directed Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. They are both great movies from the 90s, but that’s just it. They were made in the 1990s. He hasn’t been associated with anything relevant or interesting for 15 years. And if you say Kill Bill was any good then you’re an idiot. It was mindless violence that wouldn’t stand up to a B-rated samurai flick from 1950s Japan. With all that said, I will say Tarantino’s latest movie, a World War II picture starring Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and Diane Kruger, looks to not only be entertaining but also in the vein of great war/action flicks from the 60s like The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone. For me, Tarantino is on a short leash and this is either going to make or break his entire career. If it’s a hit then I’ll concede that he’s still got it, but if it fails then it will further prove he was a flash-in-the-pan guy who rose too high, too fast.
September 9 – 9: Despite the cheesy promotion they are going with by releasing this movie on 9/9/09, everything about this movie looks good to me. You might have seen a preview with little burlap bag characters using sporks and other utensils to fight giant mechanical creatures (no, I’m not talking about Transformers). The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where mankind has disappeared, likely being killed off by the industrial monsters it created. The movie is likely a prequel to a short film by the same name and done by the same director, Shane Acker. Voice talent includes Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and Crispin Glover.
September 25 – The Invention of Lying: What if everyone in the world always told the truth. Besides a lot of hurt feelings from some of the honest things said, I imagine it would be a pretty boring place. So to spice things up, have one guy create the first-ever lie and see what ensues. And to make things even more interesting, have that one guy be the person who created The Office (the original one from the UK) and the little-known HBO show Extras. I guarantee you this will be some laugh-out-loud comedy throughout that will be like the opposite of Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar: the jokes will actually be funny, stupid faces will be kept to a minimum and the morality won’t be completely shoved down our throats for the final 30 minutes of the picture.
October 2 – Shutter Island: Never heard of this movie before? Well, all you need to know is Martin Scorsese is directing and Leonardo DiCaprio is starring in this crime drama. DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo play U.S. Marshals who chase after a psychotic killer that escapes from a mental institution. Scorsese finally won his first directing Oscar after 2006’s The Departed, starring DiCaprio, and the two also had success in 2004 with The Aviator. All things considered, this should be a hit for the duo.
October 16 – Where the Wild Things Are: When thinking of children’s books made into live-action movies, your memories most likely go to flops like Jim Carrey’s Cat in the Hat or the Jason Lee starring Alvin and the Chipmunks. So hearing that a movie would be made out of Where the Wild Things Are didn’t have me giving much more than a disinterested shrug, however, when I saw the preview a couple of weeks ago I was stunned to actually find myself emotionally invested in the trailer. Director Spike Jonze, while worshiped by many, has never been that appealing to me, but I will certainly give him a chance if this turns out to be anything close to what the trailer shows it could be.
October 16 – The Road: I dig post-apocalyptic flicks like The Road Warrior and 28 Days Later, so this Viggo Mortenson starring vehicle is intriguing to me. The story follows a father and son as they travel alone through a ravaged America. It is cold and dark and the duo is searching for a warmer climate to the south, but they don’t know what awaits them. All they carry is a pistol, the clothes on their backs and a shopping cart of scavenged food. The film also stars Guy Pearce and Charlize Theron, who both have shown flashes of talent over the years.
November 6 – A Christmas Carol: The only thing that interests me about A Christmas Carol is seeing how far the technology used in 2004’s Polar Express has come. When Robert Zemeckis first started using the computer motion-capture equipment, what was seen of Tom Hanks was much creepier than that old stop-motion Christmas movie with Rudolph from 1964. It got a bit better in 2007’s Beowulf, but still was too odd looking to give the viewer a sense of security while watching. The entire time I am thinking about the animation and not the story. Hopefully things have progressed to where the story can be told without the technology being a hindrance, but I guess if you’re going to pick a movie that the viewer might not pay attention to plot then it’s a good thing the filmmakers decided on a story that has been filmed about a thousand times.
November 13 – 2012: Roland Emmerich has pretty much covered every possible disaster from the world freezing over and a giant lizard monster attacking New York to aliens invading our skies. So to spice things up he is combining every possible ecological catastrophe available into one movie. Nothing new to see here, but it will still make $200 million.
November 13 – The Fantastic Mr. Fox: It’s sort of odd that some of the best and most original movies are animated. Pixar is showing us that great movies can be made with animation. With the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, Angelica Huston, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman under the direction of Wes Anderson, who helmed The Royal Tenenbaums, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, this should be quite enjoyable.
November 20 – The Twilight Saga: New Moon: I haven’t read these books. I don’t comprehend the fad. From all the things I’ve heard about this series it is utter garbage, but the women who follow it don’t care. Personally, I need my vampires to be a little more villainous and less sparkly.
December 11 – The Princess and the Frog: I am hoping for the old-style magic of Disney to come back in this 2D film set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the Jazz Age. Disney hasn’t made a classic, let alone good, animated movie since 1994’s The Lion King. Disney’s latest attempt at another animated classic is the story of the frog prince with a twist that when the princess kisses the frog to change him back into a prince she instead transforms into a frog as well. The film includes a voodoo villain and the first-ever black princess in Disney’s collection.
December 18 – Avatar: I know nothing about this movie except that it is James Cameron returning to sci-fi and he waited to make this until the technology caught up to his imagination. I don’t want to know anything else. I saw some artwork from the movie, and while it didn’t knock my socks off, I am combining that information with the little bit of news that occasionally is reported about how amazing it is going to be. I believe in James Cameron and am confident he can deliver another huge success on the level that is Aliens, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
December 25 – Sherlock Holmes: Hollywood constantly tries to shape movies into shallow, generic things that will offend the least number of people in their homes of appealing to the widest audience possible. It just makes sense from a business point of view. So why shouldn’t they dumb things down when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. Instead of the brainy sleuth who battles the criminal element with his wit and cunning, Robert Downy Jr. and Guy Ritchie have decided to turn the most famous detective into a lover, a fighter and an adventurer who leaps out of windows and gets handcuffed to beds naked. Instead of building to a climactic “the butler did it” moment at the end of the movie, Ritchie will use the star power of Downey Jr., the beauty of Rachel McAdams and the charm of Jude Law to beat us into submission with a Lock, Stock, and Snatch style of movie throughout. It will be great, it just won’t be the Holmes I know from the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle.