It's that time of year again! The movie studios are gearing up to chase both
holiday audiences and awards bodies with the best they have to offer. Here's
a look at what's ahead:


October 29 - Saw 3D

Wait, did I say best? Ok, except for Halloween weekend, which always has a
few unnecessary sequels in gruesome horror franchises. They're so cheap to
make that they make money even when the returns are "disappointing" as was the
case with the previous Saw film. That was supposed to be the last one, by the
way. It wasn't, but Saw 3D is *truly* going to be the last. Really.

November 5 - 127 Hours

Danny Boyle's latest is this chronicle of the true story of a guy who got
pinned under a boulder when he was hiking in the mountains of Utah. I remember
when this made the rounds in the news. It's an amazing story, but I think it
take a director with a very special kind of greatness to make a great movie
out of it. I'm not sure Boyle can do it. But the early word says I'm wrong.
People are talking about Oscars for this.

November 5 - Due Date

One of those crazy comedies in the vein of The Hangover, which is not
surprising since the two movies have a director and a key cast member in
common.

November 5 - For Colored Girls

Tyler Perry shifts gears a little bit. He normally releases around February,
but here he's joining the awards fray. Perry really clicks with his target
audience but leaves others bewildered. Will this movie gain some traction in
the competitive November, or will it slip through the cracks? Purportedly the
film elicits wonderful performances from its many leading women.

November 5 - Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (limited release)

Just gotta say Uwe Boll's name to be amused. "Uwe Boll." Point and laugh.

November 11 - Unstoppable

Another collaboration between Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott.
These have included good ("Deja Vu") and bad ("The Taking of Pelham 123").
Tony Scott, despite having a frenetic visual style that makes all his movies
look the same, is nevertheless very variable in terms of the quality of his
output. He's made a few decent entertainments in the past few years but also
some stinkers. Unfortunately it looks like his greatest work (Crimson Tide,
Enemy of the State) is firmly in the past.

November 11 - Morning Glory

Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams headline this romantic comedy of feuding
news anchors. Broadcast News, this probably isn't. Still, although it's been
a while since director Roger Michell visited comic territory, he did manage to
hit one out of the park with 1999's Notting Hill.

November 19 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

The Harry Potter franchise lost me when David Yates took over and turned the
wonderful stories of this world into mechanical, not to mention gloomy,
exercises. I don't expect this film to reverse that trend for me. Still, it
is great to see the actors at home in these roles. That's one thing this
series continues to get right. The parts are near-flawlessly cast, and the
performers make the most of what they're given to work with. And it's
refreshing, too, to see a big blockbuster movie with an actual story.
All we need is someone at the helm who is better at telling it.

November 24 - Tangled

Disney's 3D-animated take on the story of Rapunzel. I'm optimistic, and
Disney's recent animation has bounced back from the lows of Brother Bear,
Home On the Range, and The Wild. But I miss the days when fairy tales like
this believed in themselves. The Princess and the Frog was a step in the
right direction, but the trailers for Tangled look like a regression into
jokey, self-aware pop culture references.

November 24 - Faster

An action movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton,
Moon Bloodgood, and a couple of "Lost" alumni. Something about ex-cons and
hit men and cops and heists. You know.

November 24 - Love and Other Drugs

If I called this a romantic comedy starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway,
I would be correct, but you'd get the wrong idea. Think not so much Maid In
Manhattan as Up In the Air or 500 Days of Summer. The film is actually
garnering a fair amount of awards attention, but that's usual for director
Ed Zwick. But this is a big change of pace for him. Zwick seems more at home
with action drama epics like Blood Diamond, Courage Under Fire, The Last
Samurai, and Glory. I like most of those, but I'm interested to see what he
can do with something lighter.

November 26 - The King's Speech

The current Oscar frontrunner. That's not necessarily a good place to be this
early, because expectations get raised so high that by the time people start
actually seeing the movie, the best it can do is hold. But never mind. By all
accounts, this film, with Colin Firth as George VI, is a winner. Certainly
the cast -- including Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Geoffrey Rush, Michael
Gambon, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, and others -- will be the most intriguing
ensemble of great British actors since...well, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows: Part 1.

December 3 - Black Swan

Seems like "ballet horror" should have been an established genre before now.
Darren Aronofsky, who specializes in translating dark and mad emotional
journeys into visuals, does so again here, in the hyper-competitive world of
ballet. For me, Aronofsky's work is visually arresting but so, so difficult
to watch.

December 3 - The Warrior's Way

An action-fantasy-western (so the IMDb says) that plays heavily with Asian
martial arts film tropes. Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, and Danny Huston star.

December 8 - Monkey Man

Such a small film, you'll be lucky to find it. But I had to list it here for
reasons obvious to RinkChat regulars. The IMDb plot synopsis: "The story of
a tree trimmer who makes satirical comedy shows in his off time."

December 10 - The Tourist

Johnny Depp plays a broken-hearted American visiting Italy. Angelina Jolie
plays a mysterious woman. Nice girl or femme fatale?

I know too little about this to imagine what it might be like, but I'll say
this much: the previous film from the director (Florian Henckel von
Donnersmarck, which I'm convinced is impossible to say fluidly, although it's
fun to try) was "The Lives of Others," easily one of my favorite films of
its decade.

December 10 - The Fighter

David O. Russell, a promising new talent in the days of Three Kings, returns
with only his second feature since that time. The other was the disappointing
I Heart Huckabees, which had a quirky sense of humor that looked fun but
wasn't.

The Fighter, however, looks to be a more convential narrative, specifically
about the boxer Irish Micky Ward. In front of the camera are Christian Bale,
Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo; if the film fizzles, it won't be
their fault.

December 10 - The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Been waiting for this one for a long time. For a while, after the box office
underperformance of Prince Caspian, it looked like it might not get made.
As it is, it has a smaller budget than the previous two films (and is not
being distributed by Disney, as they were). But that might be a good thing:
with less money to burn on special effects, the story might necessarily become
more intimate. The challenge is that filming on water is notoriously
expensive.

There is a change in the director's chair, too. Sitting in it is not Andrew
Adamson (of Shrek fame) but Michael Apted, the British director of smaller
scale dramas (Nell, Gorillas In the Mist), thrillers (Gorky Park, Extreme
Measures), and documentaries (the landmark Up series). But he's not new to
blockbusters, either, as he has a Bond under his belt: The World Is Not
Enough, possibly the best of the Brosnan Bonds. My guess is that Narnia is
going to grow up just a little in Apted's hands.

December 10 - The Tempest

Julie Taymor returns to Shakespeare. Her earlier effort, Titus, was a disaster,
but she was not helped by having the master's worst source material to work
from. In any case, this time it's not a straight adaptation but a "what if?"
feminist twist on it.

December 17 - Tron: Legacy

As much as I hate to see a classic from a different era dug up, tinkered with,
and -- I grit my teeth -- "updated," I have to admit that this looks intriguing.
The greatness of the first film lies entirely in its visuals -- freeze the
frame almost anywhere during the animated portion, and you'll have something
you can easily imagine hanging on the wall of a museum somewhere -- and this
film seems to be paying them tribute while conjuring up its own.

Additionally, Jeff Bridges returns for this. Although the cast of the first
film was largely invisible, Bridges has only gotten cooler and more distinctive
with age.

December 17 - Yogi Bear

Why why why why WHY do animation houses insist on throwing established 2D
characters into 3D? When does that ever work?

It would work *better*, I suppose, if the character in question were more of a,
well, *character* than an icon. But Yogi Bear is more the latter. Whatever
place he has in pop culture history is rooted to the charmingly crude drawings
in which he appears. A Yogi Bear in three dimensions with detailed fur doesn't
look like the Yogi Bear anybody knows and might love; rather, he looks like
those cheesy, mute cardboard suits workers wear at theme parks. Those are
fine for photo ops, but who wants to pay to watch one for an hour and a half?

December 22 - Little Fockers

I was over this series after #2.

December 24 - Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift's satirical novel is adapted yet again. This time Gulliver
is played by Jack Black, which immediately suggests all of the comic
possibilities of the film, for better or worse.

December 25 - True Grit

One of the films I most look forward to this season. Yes, it's a remake (of
the iconic western that earned John Wayne is Oscar, no less), but watch the
trailer and tell me Jeff Bridges doesn't look great on that horse? The Coen
Brothers did a remake before -- The Ladykillers, not regarded as one of their
best -- but this one looks more on point.

The music in the trailer is gorgeous, which reminds me that perhaps only
Quentin Tarantino rivals the Coens for the brilliance of their music choices.
Credit Carter Burwell for that, the Coens' regular music director. Where most
movie music merely emphasizes the action -- or in some inspired cases plays a
direct counterpoint to it -- the music in Coen Brothers movies does so much
more than that: it captures the essence of some culture or lifestyle and
broadens the film's portrayal of it. Think of the bluegrass in O Brother Where
Art Thou, or the gospel in The Ladykillers, or the bizarre and weird musical
numbers in The Big Lebowski. (The song in the True Grit trailer, I should
point out, was sung by the Peasall sisters, who contributed two of the songs
in O Brother.)

December 31 - Another Year

Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville star in Mike Leigh's latest. I've not seen
as much of Leigh's work as I should have, but Topsy-Turvy and Secrets & Lies
are two extraordinarily great films.

January 1 - Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage

An ultra-low-budget indie adventure from a studio called "Giant Flick Films."
Remember 2008's Djinn? Probably not, but that was Giant Flick Films' other
movie. Somehow they got Patrick Stewart to do the narration for this, so good
for them.

January 7 - Season of the Witch

No, it's not a remake of Halloween III, unfortunately, but Nicolas Cage in
another adventure with 14th century knights and mystical superpowers. I'm not
sure if Cage has actually ever been in a movie with 14th century knights and
mystical superpowers before, but it sure feels like that describes every single
one of his movies for the last five years.

Since this is being released in January, it will not be any good.

January 14 - The Green Hornet

It's always weird when an arthouse director takes on a superhero movie. I'm
less excited about this particular transition than I was, now that I've seen
Ang Lee's Hulk (not bad, but not good either) and Gavin Hood's Wolverine
(decidedly subpar). Michel Gondry is a weird and sometimes brilliant director
(I loved both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind), but
I don't see how this is a good match. Either the four-quadrant-catering that
big budget superhero movies must do will sift out everything that makes Gondry
interesting, or his quirkiness will muddle up the material. Or not. The
January release date does not inspire confidence, but, then again, when has a
studio ever known how to market a Gondry film?