Movie Enthusiast Issue 17: Movies to See This Fall/Winter
My apologies for the delayed newsletter this month. This issue was tragically deleted before I could send it last week and I’ve only now gotten over my mourning enough to rewrite it.
As August comes to a close, the weather starts to turn (or so I’m told) and movie theaters start showing good movies again. With so many to choose from this fall, how will you know what’s actually worth venturing out for and what’s going to be a dud? Well, that’s why you keep me around.
[Two advance notes: 1) Obviously I haven’t seen any of these movies yet, so I can’t make any guarantees of quality. 2) No, I didn’t forget them, but you know as well as I do when Dr. Strange, Fantastic Beasts, and Rogue One are opening.]
Opening in September
The Light Between Oceans – A day in the life of Australian lighthouse keepers who adopt a baby in a rowboat who washed up on their shore, only to later meet the mother and face the difficult decision of what to do with the child. With Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz; directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines)
Sully – No fall movie season is complete without a dramatization of something that happened so recently that nobody’s forgotten what it felt like to live through it in the first place, right? I digress. Clint Eastwood directs Tom Hanks as the pilot who safely crash landed a plane full of passengers in the Hudson.
Cameraperson – Kristen Johnson, the cinematographer for such documentaries as Citizenfour, The Invisible War, and This Film is Not Yet Rated, gets a movie about herself…by herself! The winner of the best documentary feature award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Cameraperson has already made a name for itself for brilliantly merging two genres—advocacy documentary and personal diary—that seem at first glance diametrically opposed.
Queen of Katwe – I mean I had to include an uplifting, family-friendly drama about a Ugandan girl from the slums who grows up to become an international chess champion, even if it ends up being nothing special at the end of the day. With Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo; directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding).
American Honey – Hillbilly Elegy: The Movie? Maybe. British director Andrea Arnold went on a scouting road trip across the American South and Midwest and made a movie starring and about the kids she met along the way. For some reason or other Shia LaBeouf got roped into it too; I hear his character is introduced in what sounds like a soon-to-be-LEGENDARY sequence of singing karaoke to Rihanna with a lint roller in a K-Mart.
Demon – Horror isn’t my thing, but if it’s yours, might I recommend this first-and-last film by an Israeli director who died during the movie’s international premiere, about a bridegroom suddenly possessed in the middle of his wedding?
Opening in October
The Girl on the Train – If Gone Girl in 2014 wasn’t enough for you, Emily Blunt stars as…yes…The Girl on the Train in the adaption of the runaway bestseller. Weirdly, I don’t expect this to be a…trainwreck (ugh)…because I rather enjoyed the book and its psychological insight.
The Birth of a Nation – Hooooooooo boy. So maybe you’ve been following the controversy around Nate Parker, in which case this is going to be a tough sell. But this year’s Sundance Audience Award- and Grand Jury Prize Award-winner at least promises to be a timely and passionate work of filmmaking about the Nat Turner slave revolt.
The Accountant – Not for a minute do I think a movie with Ben Affleck as an aggressive, autistic number-cruncher is going to be any good, but the trailer at least does an effective job at selling what it’s selling.
Certain Women – This proved to be a tough sell when I was trying to write it up in the previous version of this newsletter. I do feel obliged to include it though, for all those of you interested in knowing about the existence of a movie about three ordinary women leading ordinary lives in Montana; from Kelly Reichardt, the director of Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy.
The Handmaiden – Park Chan-wook returns to his native country after a trip to America for 2013’s Stoker. This time he’s pulling out all the stops (not that he’s ever been one to know the meaning of the word stop) with an adaptation of a sapphic and savage Sarah Waters novel transposed to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s.
Moonlight – Indie distributor A24’s first house-financed movie is going to be a doozy: a tripartite biography of a black man coming of age and coming out in Miami at the height of its drug epidemic.
The Love Witch – The immediately iconic tagline for this movie is “She loved men to death” so obviously we have to all go see it. If that didn’t get you excited, The Love Witch is a loving feminist parody paying tribute to the pulpy horror stories and Technicolor romances of yesteryear.
Opening in November
Loving – Jeff Nichols is having quite a productive year. After the small-scale sci-fi Midnight Special, the only way to go next is to moving historical drama, this one about interracial couple Mildred and Richard Loving and their fight against Virginia’s miscegenation laws.
Arrival – Amy Adams stars in Denis Villeneuve’s alien invasion blockbuster, scored by Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sicario, The Theory of Everything) and shot by Selma cinematographer Bradford Young. With a pedigree like that, I don’t need to know anything about the story (which is based on a novel) to know that this is going to be one of the most intense and technically accomplished movies of the year.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Whither Ang Lee? Never one to direct two of the same type of movie in a row, the Life of Pi director is next tackling a story about a young Iraq War soldier whose homecoming provokes introspection on his life in wartime vs. how his countrymen perceive the war from home.
Elle – This one’s for all you Paul Verhoeven fans out there. Regrettably I can’t explain the plot to you because TinyLetter flagged this newsletter for abuse when I tried sending it pre-deletion last week (true story!). Instead, just know that the Dutch master (no, not that kind of Dutch master, though I guess he’s close) had to take his latest weird brainchild of a movie to France because he couldn’t get anyone in Hollywood to touch the idea with a 10-foot pole.
Manchester by the Sea – Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me, Margaret) ships up to Massachusetts for his latest movie, a family tragedy where Casey Affleck must take in his teenage nephew after his brother’s untimely death.
Lion – What’s Harvey Weinstein up to this year? Financing a movie about an adopted Indian boy who returns to Calcutta 25 years after he was separated from his parents to track down his family. With Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara.
Moana – After Zootopia, Disney hopes to take another swipe at Pixar’s throne with its first Pacific Islander princess. I’m probably selling the plot short, in which case so has the Disney-industrial marketing complex. Featuring new music by Lin-Manuel Miranda!
Allied – Poor Robert Zemeckis hasn’t had a critical or commercial hit in a while. Will his WWII romance about an intelligence officer (Brad Pitt) who falls for a French resistance fighter (Marion Cotillard) reverse the curse? Who knows, but at least it’s got great hats.
Opening in December
La La Land – Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s sophomore film is a throwback to classical Hollywood movie musicals. This one’s starring Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress who fall in love against a glamorously-lit L.A. This is a day-one watch for me. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be joining me on opening day too.
The Salesman – Asghar Farhadi returns to Iran following 2013’s The Past for yet another gripping psychological drama, this time about a married couple staging an adaptation of Death of a Salesman.
Fences – Also known as the movie that won Viola Davis her Oscar. (You think I’m joking? That’s cute.) Denzel Washington directs and co-stars in the movie version of the August Wilson play that he and Davis previously won Tonys for.
Passengers – I fail to see how a sci-fi romcom starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt won’t utterly break the internet, so consider yourselves warned.
Toni Erdmann – I don’t know about you but when this election year is done I’m sure gonna need a 3-hour-long German comedy about a single dad who dons a goofy alter ego to cheer up an adult daughter caught in the throes of the joyless corporate world. If the word out of Cannes is to believed, this movie is basically the second coming of cinema.
Opening TBD
Silence – Any day now Paramount is going to decide whether to release Scorsese’s LONG, LONG, LONG, I’M NOT IMPATIENT OR ANYTHING NOSIREE-awaited pet project this year or hold it until next. Most recent word on the film is that it’s currently 3 hours and 15 minutes long.
20th Century Women – Annette Bening! Elle Fanning! Greta Gerwig with red hair! I honestly don’t know much about this movie, but Those In The Know have indicated that it’s going to be a big Oscar player, so might as well roll with it.
Paterson – Jim Jarmusch makes poetry with Adam Driver as a bus driver named Paterson in Paterson, NJ. How meta!
The Bad Batch – For his Reservoir Dogs follow-up, Quentin Tarantino directed Pulp Fiction. For her A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night follow-up, Ana Lily Amirpour directed a dystopian cannibal romance. The comparison is intentional, if aspirational.