Some Movies Out This Weekend: October 3, 2014

Some Movies Out This Weekend: October 3, 2014

This weekend seems to mark the true beginning of Fall Film Season, with some prestige-y stuff from Oscar-nominated filmmakers. There's also one big one that brings to mind my mistakes of pop culture past and the first Halloween-related movie this month. This isn't everything that's coming out, but the two wide releases are at least included, plus a couple other counter-programming options.

Opening this week, October 3, 2014.

Annabelle

Director: John R. Leonetti

Writer: Gary Dauberman

Starring: Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Tony Amendola

October is also horror movie month, and the big scary release this weekend is about a creepy doll that is possessed and tries to kill a young family. It sounds like Child's Play on paper, but the atmosphere of the trailer suggests something darker and more traditionally horrifying than just a bunch of jump scares. It certainly has those, too, but the ideas of dark spirits and the darkness hiding inside people and objects is frightening indeed. Director John R. Leonetti comes from the cinematography world, with credits including highly regarded recent horrors The Conjuring and the Insidious series. That's a good sign for anyone looking for a horror movie that understands the visual aspects of the medium.

Left Behind

Director: Vic Armstrong

Writers: Paul Lalonde, John Patus

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Lea Thompson, Chad Michael Murray

The apocalyptic book series-slash-thrift store staple – seriously, if you go to 100 thrift stores, approximately 94 of them will have at least three dogeared copies of each volume – comes to theaters in a reboot of the Kirk Cameron-starring 2000 direct-to-DVD adaptation. This time, though, it stars people you might recognize a little more, like Nicolas Cage, the mom from Back to the Future, and the guy from One Tree Hill who looks like my friend Peter.

I've actually read a few of these books, my interest spurred by a Time article I read about the series in my eighth grade homeroom. I figured, “Hey, a dramatization of the wacky stuff late in the Bible sounds like a good story to me.” I was wrong.

Very little about the books stick in my brain. One is the antichrist's all-time great name, Nicolae Carpathia, whose background served as the basis for a satirical article I wrote for my college literary magazine about then-candidate Barack Obama's 2008 run, an article I regretted when I realized people around the country actually believed he was a foreign-born harbinger of the end times. Oops. The other thing is one of the primary reasons that protagonist Rayford Steele – man, they all have amazing names – didn't get chosen to join the Rapture because he had thought about committing adultery. He didn't go through with it but was tempted. That's some insane person logic that completely misses the point of free will, choice, and doing the right thing.

But whatever, go see it if you want. Based on the trailer, it looks like it drops the second two-thirds of the book – including everything about the antichrist – in favor of the action-packed stuff about people disappearing from the planet. Toss some Bible flavoring in and it could be a halfway interesting angle.

Gone Girl

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Gillian Flynn

Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry

David Fincher is perhaps the strongest pure technician working in Hollywood today. His impeccably precise films have stretched the limits of their stars' patience – dozens of takes will do that to a person – but resulted in some uncompromising statements about obsession and the evils people (mostly men) do. Now, directing novelist Gillian Flynn's bestseller Gone Girl (Flynn adapted her book for the screenplay), he seems headed down the same path.

I'm a longtime Fincher fan, dating back to my time as, like every other middle class white guy of my generation, a gigantic fan of Fight Club while in high school. I've moved on from that fandom a bit, but movies like The Social Network and his masterpiece, Zodiac, have really done it for me. What concerns me a little about Gone Girl is that it seems to be walking the same path of “look at how horrible humanity can be” that Zodiac and his previous film, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(disclaimer: that's one of two Fincher movies I haven't seen, but I've read a fair amount of criticism on both the book and movie to at least grasp the plot and themes) did. I don't want him to spin his wheels.

That said, this is a movie that's getting a lot of good notices. Todd VanDerWerff at Vox calls it “one of the bestmovies ever made about marriage” and the A.V. Club's IgnatiyVishnevetsky says it's surprisingly funny, so there must be something else going on. This is the one film this weekend I'll be reviewing for sure, so check back.

Men, Women & Children

Director: Jason Reitman

Writers: Jason Reitman, Erin Cressida Wilson

Starring: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Judy Greer

Jason Reitman makes handsome, alternatively funny and sad movies about damaged, quirky people. Men, Women & Children seems to go the same direction of his sadder stuff, like Up in the Air, than his funnier work on, say, Thank You for Smoking and Juno.

Here are the things I can tell you about it. It involves the internet. Adam Sandler looks sad, so there's hope of a return to Punch Drunk Love-level goodness from him. People hurt each other and talk behind each other's backs.

Whether that's good, I don't know. I like Reitman, so I'll get to it soon.  

This Weekend at the Movies: September 19, 2014

This Weekend at the Movies: September 19, 2014

The early part of the Fall Movie Season continues to look like a mixed bag in a good way, with movies of various genres opening this weekend. This isn't the comprehensive list, but within the four films previewed here, you're likely to find something that piques your interest.

Opening this weekend, September 19, 2014.

The Guest

Director: Adam Wingard

Writer: Simon Barrett

Starring: Dan Stevens, Sheila Kelley, Maika Monroe

After last year's house invasion horror You're Next, writing-directing team Wingard and Barrett look to be taking the next step to mainstream thrillerdom. In their previous collaboration, they showed an ability to create an uncannily functional movie. Everything that happens is a result of character choices and motivations, and this functionality is something that is sadly missing from most movies these days.

Joining Wingard and Barrett is Dan Stevens, formerly of Downton Abbey, as a southern veteran from one of our country's recent wars visiting the family of his fallen friend. There appears to be more going on, some lies are told, and severe violence looks to rule the day.

20,000 Days on Earth

Directors: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard

Writers: Nick Cave, Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard

Starring: Nick Cave

“That wasn't the truth.” This is how the trailer for “documentary” 20,000 Days on Earth ends. It's not surprising that Austrailian singer-songwriter Nick Cave would say them. He's a famously slippery showman.

In this film, it appears Cave and collaborators Forsyth and Pollard want to do more than the typical question and answer documentary. There's an effort to include a vaguer sense of the truth, the kind you may be familiar with if you've ever seen a Werner Herzog documentary. Cave wants his audience to share an experience rather than simply hear his thoughts on aging, music, filmmaking, you name it. Those things will be elements, but he wants to put on a show, and he seems perfectly at home with the performative – some might say false – aspects of that impulse.

This is Where I Leave You

Director: Shawn Levy

Writer: Jonathan Tropper

Starring: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne

“A bunch of people known for their comedic chops join together to do something slightly more serious.” That would be my tagline and also why I wouldn't make it as a tagline writer in Hollywood. But it's true!

Bateman and Fey are two of the titans of the single-camera wave from the mid-2000s that revolutionized television comedy, making it more cinematic and arguably sharper and funnier. Driver (Girls, Frances Ha) is a major up-and-comer, rumored to be the villain of the new Star Wars trilogy – he's in it for sure, but his role has yet to be divulged. Byrne has been good in everything she's done for a decade or more. Fonda is a legend – anyone who has never seen Klute should remedy that now.

And they play a family dealing with the death of the patriarch. They stay in their childhood home for a week following the funeral and come to terms with it and their own problems. It could easily go off the rails into schmaltz, but the trailer gives some hope that the witty detachment of the leads will keep things grounded.

The Maze Runner

Director: Wes Ball

Writers: Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, T.S. Nowlin

Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Aml Ameen, Ki Hong Lee, Blake Cooper

Dystopian fiction tends to catch on with teens, and Hollywood has taken note. The success of The Hunger Games and Divergent series, both in print and onscreen, paved the way for more gray-tinted futurescapes in which young people die a lot for causes that aren't their own. The Maze Runner is the latest in this trend.

Holy moly that's bleak. But it also looks thrilling, with a better budget than the first Hunger Games, and some young actors looking to break out. It looks a bit Lord of the Flies, too, which connected with yours truly as a cranky 15-year-old.

This Weekend at the Movies: A Preview

This Weekend at the Movies: A Preview

We live in one of the greatest decades for American cinema since moving images were first captured. Since about 2007, every year has had at least a handful of masterpieces from every genre and budget, and that pace seems to be picking up. Unfortunately, due to financial matters (re: being broke), I did not go see as many movies as I would have liked this summer. I saw three of the big blockbusters, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Godzilla, and Guardians of the Galaxy, in theaters. These films, combined with things like this Scott Tobias piece at TheDissolve, make me think this was a superb year for the movies of the “bang-zoom” variety. I will have to catch up as things like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Edge of Tomorrowhit Blu-Ray and streaming services and wish retroactively that I had been richer during the months of April through August, 2014.

However, those same budgetary concerns may soon not apply as I work on getting critics' passes to the fall films typically associated with Oscar season. I will attend the Chicago Independent Film Festival next month for this here publication, but that is only part of the cinematic coverage I hope to bring you. So, with the influx of auteur-ish films on the horizon from now through December, I will be bringing Halfstack readers a quick rundown of what to expect in theaters each weekend. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but more about the movies that personally excite me and those filmmakers and performers I think deserve more eyeballs. Again, depending on cash flow or (hopefully) free screenings, I look to have reviews of the films throughout the following week.

So here are a few movies opening this weekend, September 12, that caught my eye. A note here because September is usually a transitionary month, with some interesting art films getting released, but also a slew of things the studios didn't feel enough confidence in to release during the more lucrative summer season. It leads to some odd thrillers placed alongside costume dramas. It's a great time for counter programming.

The Drop

Director: Michael R. Roskam

Writer: Dennis Lehane (adapted from his short story “Animal Rescue”)

Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts

Author Dennis Lehane has seen a large number of his novels adapted by Hollywood in the last decade plus – Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. The Drop puts Lehane's low level toughs in Brooklyn instead of Boston. Hardy and Gandolfini run a “drop bar” for all the less-than-legal money flowing through the neighborhood. Bad things happen, they get robbed, and soon desperate choices must be made.

Having a “hard-boiled”(the ins and outs of those low on the criminal totem pole) plot is generally an easy way to get me to see a movie, but a hard-boiled movie with all-world talent like Hardy (Bronson remains one of the greatest films of the last decade), Gandolfini in what is likely his final screen role after his unfortunate passing earlier this year, and Rapace, who is capable of creating otherworldly empathy (she was the highlight of Brian De Palma's otherwise dreadful Passion), then it could be a new favorite.

No Good Deed

Director: Sam Miller

Writer: Aimee Lagos

Starring: Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson, Leslie Bibb

Idris Elba is an indispensable actor. From his early days as criminal striver Stringer Bell on HBO's The Wire to his supporting role as a god in the Thor films to “cancel[ing] the apocalypse” in last year's Pacific Rim, he's done a lot of big stuff. Missing from his resumé, though, is a trashy thriller where he gets to be a genuine malcontent baddie.

And make no mistake, No Good Deed is trash. From the trailer alone, I can tell there's a strong sense of dum-dum moralizing and some scenery chewing for Elba. But even if it's just a paycheck gig, the presence of Henson (whose kind role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was one of the few highlights of that overly saccharine film) and Bibb (charming as the straight woman in A Good Old Fashioned Orgy and the first two Iron Man movies) may class up the joint a little. Either way, this could be a good one to half pay attention to on a lazy Saturday afternoon one day.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

Director: Ned Benson, making his feature debut

Writer: Ned Benson

Starring: James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, Bill Hader

Originally conceived as two films about the arc of a relationship, one from the female perspective (Chastain) and one from the male (McAvoy), recent edits have made them one, hence the Them subtitle. Rumor has it according to last week's Filmspotting podcast that all three versions will be released in some form in the future, but for now, filmgoers are getting the combination cut.

The trailer gives a couple hints as to how that will work, with different takes and angles to show the slipperiness of human understanding and interaction. It looks ambitious as all get out, and the two leads are possibly the best in the game right now. Chastain especially has been on an all-universe roll the last few years, with The Tree of Life and Zero Dark Thirty being particular standouts. Now they pair in what looks to be an even-handed approach to relationships, with the highs and lows receiving a lot of screen time.