Release date: September 21, 2012 (limited)
You can consider this my second most anticipated movie for the rest of the year. Why? Well, I honestly could not give you an accurate answer. It just looks like a movie I'm going to completely enjoy. Here is one of those rare films that is, yes, adapted from a novel, but is also written and directed by the novel's author! I'm afraid that you can't get more accurate than that. That's not to say that authors make good screenplay writers because there's always studio pressure to think of (poor, poor Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), but Stephen Chbosky has been involved enough in other things like Rent and Jericho to make me think that this is not new territory for him. We'll see though because I'm going to an advanced screening for this on Wednesday.
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Release date: September 14, 2012 (limited), September 21, 2012 (wide)
Paul Thomas Anderson. That's all you really need to know. He's the genius writer and director behind some of the best films ever made like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood. The Master is a 1950s-set drama centered on the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as "the Master" (Philip Seymour Hoffman) whose faith-based organization begins to catch on in America, and a young drifter who becomes his right-hand man (Joaquin Phoenix). It is heavily influenced by the Scientology belief, which provides some controversy, but from what I've been hearing, this is more of just a super sad love story. Early reviews have been good, but some hold off on announcing an opinion to give more time for the story to settle in. And that's what makes PTA films so great. They stick with you for days, weeks, and even months. If The Master doesn't get a Best Picture nomination, its performances by Hoffman and Phoenix certainly will. The film had a limited release just this past weekend where it claimed the title of highest per-theatre average ever for a live-action movie.
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Release date: September 21, 2012
No, it probably won't be as good as last year's Moneyball. It's nice to see Clint Eastwood in a starring role for a film that he is not also directing, but he might as well have since director Robert Lorenz has worked with him as assistant director since The Bridges of Madison County. Baseball movies will always have a special place in my heart, though.
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Release date: September 28, 2012
Looper already has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes out of 25 reviews, but that's not why this is my most anticipated film for the rest of the year. Looper is a film that I have been tracking religiously since I first heard about its concept. It is written and directed by Rian Johnson, the filmmaker behind my favorite movie of 2006, Brick, as well as The Brothers Bloom, which was actually pretty fun. He also directed the revered bottle-episode of Breaking Bad titled "Fly," and my favorite episode from this past season called "Fifty-One." Johnson is making time travel the main theme of Looper, so it already has an element that I am a sucker for. Looper is about a killer, who works for the mob of the future, recognizing one of his targets as his future self. This movie reunites Johnson with actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt who will be playing the younger version of Joe. His older version will be played by Bruce Willis.
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Release date: October 12, 2012
Argo is a movie about making a movie. But wait, there's a huge catch. During the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, the governments of the United States and Canada partnered to try and rescue six U.S. foreign service members who had evaded the hostage-taking. The governments were able to convince Iran that the hostages were members of a film crew who were scouting the area for a movie titled Argo. Within this true declassified story is a dramatic and tense tale that will be brought to the screen through the directing eyes of Ben Affleck.
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Release date: October 12, 2012 (limited)
Smashed won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing at Sundance. If that isn't enough to prove that I am looking forward to this film, I can say that I'm a big fan of the film's two major stars. Scott Pilgrim's Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul play a married couple who have to deal with their obsessive drinking. I've heard that their performances are incredible. Sony Pictures Classics picked up the film and will be putting it out next month.
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Release date: October 19, 2012
The Sessions won the Audience Award and a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting at Sundance this year. Seeing as how I've enjoyed previous Sundance winners, I'd like to see this, but the subject matter might be a little too risqué for me. Still, Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the film's distribution rights and will release the film in October and it is sure to please some folks.
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Release date: October 26, 2012
Cloud Atlas is definitely going to be a lot to take in. Adapted from the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas is the Wachowski siblings' fourth movie to have over a $100 million budget. Being so, that makes it the most expensive independent film of all-time since most of the contributions were raised from independent sources. What does that mean? Likely that the Wachowskis were able to tell the story the way they wanted to. I've heard mixed things about this film; everything from "utterly, wonderfully epic" to "unique and totally unparalleled disaster." But the good things I've heard outweigh the bad for me, and so I anticipate this one being enjoyable.
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Release date: November 2, 2012
Don't count Disney out for the year. They still have another shot at wowing us with Wreck-It Ralph. Boasting the highest number of original characters ever created for an animated film (188 characters), the video game-inspired Wreck-It Ralph will be perfect for kids and adults alike. Although this is not Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios has had a good track record these past two years with Tangled and Winnie the Pooh. It's likely that Wreck-It Ralph will be another success.
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Release date: November 9, 2012 (limited), November 16, 2012 (wide)
We had Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires earlier this year, but now we'll have a much more serious look at his life. Steven Spielberg is at the helm for this movie, which is sure to be a capturing look at our 16th President. Two-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis plays the man we're so familiar with and is sure to have another brilliant performance.
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Release date: November 16, 2012 (limited)
I've never read Leo Tolstoy's 1870s masterpiece, but I'm obviously familiar with it. In 2007, Time magazine declared it the "greatest novel ever written." The year's film is a British adaptation directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. I'm mostly looking forward to this because of Wright's directing skills. Atonement and Hanna are some of my favorite films, and he favors the long shot, which I am a big fan of.
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Release date: November 21, 2012
Ang Lee hasn't really had a hit since 2005's Brokeback Mountain, but Life of Pi might be his next best shot. Based on the fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi will have a lot of prove to us in terms of storytelling and visual beauty. The movie has been in production since the early 2000s, struggling to find a director. I'm confident in Lee's abilities here.
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Release date: November 21, 2012
Anyone who ever doubted Bradley Cooper's talent can just go see this film and they will likely change their opinion on the guy. In Silver Linings Playbook, he plays a socially awkward and mentally deranged man hoping to reconcile with his ex-wife. This dramedy was written and directed by David O. Russell, who was nominated for Best Director in 2011 for The Fighter. SLP had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September where it received almost universal acclaim, earning buzz for numerous Academy Awards.
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Release date: December 7, 2012
Lincoln is not the only President getting a movie this season. Franklin D. Roosevelt will be represented by Bill Murray in Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson. This isn't a story about his whole life though. It focuses on the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, all centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited upstate New York. It probably won't win any Oscars, but Murray should be great.
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Release date: December 14, 2012
Will it be everything that we hoped for and wanted it to be? Probably not. But if you go in with that low expectation, you might find something to like here. Peter Jackson will be expanding on the J.R.R. Tolkien precursor to the Lord of the Rings trilogy to include scenes that were perhaps only briefly mentioned in the book. Like, why does Gandalf leave Bilbo and the dwarves? Well, for those of you who know, we'll get to see what he had to do. And that might just be worth it alone.
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Release date: December 19, 2012 (limited)
Remember 2009's The White Ribbon, which was praised at nearly every film festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? Amour is director Michael Haneke's next film and it has already been well-received. Earlier this year, it won the Palm d'Or at Cannes making Haneke only one of five directors to win twice. Unlike The White Ribbon, this contemporary modern tale of aging and death has a rather tiny-scaled tableaux with most of its scenes shot exclusively enclosed in the senior couple's Paris apartment. This is not a movie for the Transformers and Battleship fans. Pretty much art-house all the way.
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Release date: December 19, 2012
My only worry about this film is how much of a fast track it went on after Osama bin Laden's death. Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were working on a script centered around the 2001 seige in Tora Bora, where bin Laden was once believed to be hiding. The two were about to begin filming when news broke that bin Laden had been killed. They immediately scrapped that idea and started making this film. It has only been a year and a half since then. This is in contrast to their previous Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker, which went from writing to theatres in twice the time.
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Release date: December 21, 2012 (limited)
Remember the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that hit Thailand hard? Spanish production companies decided to make a movie about it featuring English-language actors. From the writer and director of The Orphanage comes a more realistic story about a family caught in the mayhem of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time. I say "realistic" because you'll also remember the Clint Eastwood movie about the tsunami that we had a couple years ago called Hereafter. I remember seeing YouTube videos of the tsunami and just being shocked. It looked like a movie.
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Release date: December 25, 2012
I've liked just about every Quentin Tarantino movie, so I can't deny that I'm looking forward to this. The story is about a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Can't say that I'm confident that this one will put Tarantino back in the nominee pool, but it will likely be a good time.
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Release date: December 25, 2012
Do not count this additional adaptation of the 1862 French novel out. For one, this is the first film adaptation of the 1980s musical. Second, it's being directed by the Academy Award winning director of The King's Speech, Tom Hooper. And third, Jean Valjean is being played by Hugh Jackman who, if you don't remember his Oscars hosting gig, can sing and dance (Anne Hathaway did both, too).
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So, what are you looking forward to?
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