September
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For September 2012
Welcome back to the blog that loves trailers. Wow, I’m really sorry if you’re reading this and thinking, “Trailers? Again?” Due to my continuing commitment to a paid job that keeps a roof over my head and funds my film addiction, but gives me increasingly less time to write about my film addiction, four of the last nine posts on here have been lists of trailers. The bad news to anyone averse to trailers is that there’ll be another one along shortly; for the third year in a row I’ll be living at the Cambridge Film Festival for a week and a half, soaking in everything from the Kristen Stewart starring adaptation of Kerouac’s On The Road to a documentary about a man who makes sushi and pretty much everything in between. In 2010 and 2011 I listed the trailers for everything I’m seeing, and this year’s list – longer than ever before – will be up shortly. But there will be posts this month that aren’t all about trailers. Promise.
But life isn’t all about film festivals, sadly, and the real world still has plenty of cinematic treats to enjoy. It’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt month this month, with Looper (below) and Premium Rush, the Die Hard On A Bike that the world never knew it needed; the new Joe Wright film Anna Karenina, which if it’s at least half as good as Atonement or Hanna will be right up my street; The Sweeney, which has a fantastic looking cast but to which I now have an irrational hatred thanks to the awful Orange “turn your mobile off, slag” trailers running before most multiplex films at the moment; and the new Resident Evil film. If you are keeping Paul W.S. Anderson in work by repeatedly watching these films, then please leave now, we have nothing more to discuss.
There’s a whole host more out this month, much of which will be on the festival list, but for now here’s my pick of the general populace’s best choices this month.
Dredd 3D
I’ve never been a huge fan of comic books; not that I dislike them, I’ve just never really gotten into them. (Apart from buying all four issues of the Robocop vs. Terminator cross-over series for some reason. Go figure.) However, I did have a serious affection for Judge Dredd when I was younger, from 2000 A.D. to the single line strips that would appear in tabloid newspapers. The Stallone version from the mid-Nineties is best forgotten about, but it seems as if all concerned here have tried to keep faithful to the spirit of the original. It’s rumoured that a $50 million take in the U.S. is the minimum requirement to get two planned sequels; come on you lovely Yanks, don’t let us down now.
Tabu
It’s black and white, it’s in the Academy ratio, it and everything else that ticks two out of the three boxes will be compared to The Artist for years to come. The temptation to get a camera and film a black and white, Academy ratio, silent slasher horror comedy just to try to put a stop to that trend has never been greater. (If you’re reading this and you’re a talented director, or a madman with more money than sense, then feel free to make such a film; you’ll be doing us all a service in the long run.)
Paranorman
Why is it that so often these days the best films in terms of adhering to good storytelling principles are animated films? Discuss.
House At The End Of The Street
Jennifer Lawrence might just be the most promising young actress of her generation. Outstanding in Winter’s Bone, it’s not hard to see why she was cast in The Hunger Games and she’s delivered supporting performances in other films which have helped elevate them above their station. So is this the start of her inevitable Halle Berry phase and the descent into bad sequels, or can she enliven this slasher-of-the-month-remake to something more enticing? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
Killing Them Softly
Brad Pitt and Andrew Dominik team up again, after their first collaboration, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Thankfully, the title of this one is slightly less spoilerific, although I would still expect some killings if I were you.
Looper
Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels in a time travel movie set in the future? Sold. (To be honest, you had me at Bruce Willis.) There were a huge amount of great things about Rian Johnson’s previous film, The Brothers Bloom, and I can’t help but feel it was a decent ending short of being a great film. Take this scene where Rachel Weisz discusses what she collects; if all of Looper is this quality, it’ll be genius.
The Half Dozen Special: Cambridge Film Festival 2011
It barely seems possible that a whole year has gone by since last year, but I guess that’s how calendars work, so no point trying to fight it. September is here again, so it’s time for the 31st Cambridge Film Festival, and for me the second experience of one of the UK’s foremost festivals of film. Having lived in Cambridgeshire for three years, I’d never even seen a single film at the festival, but last year made up for it in spades, in the end seeing nineteen films over the eleven days of the festival. You can see the full list here on last year’s Half Dozen, but there were some real gems in there. I may not have seen the likes of The Desert Of Forbidden Art, Pelican Blood, Dark Souls or The People vs George Lucas if there weren’t playing at a festival, and I didn’t see a single film that I regretted. In addition, the surprise film, which everyone I spoke to had pegged as everything from The Social Network to Despicable Me, turned out to be Chico & Rita, which was a delight. I can only hope to be similarly surprised again this year.
Ah yes, this year. My cinematic obsession still knows no bounds, it seems, so this year’s trailer run down is somewhat longer. So far I’m booked to see 34 films, as well as talks by Mark Kermode and Neil Brand and the festival’s late night short film festival, Tridentfest. I’m going in having seen one of the 34 already – Drive, which is so good I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it again at the Festival, especially when director Nicolas Winding Refn is due to be there, but even though it’s my second favourite film of the year so far, I live in hope that something will sneak up, surprise me and manage to beat it. And in the process of writing this I’ve already had two recommendations of films that happen to be playing at the Festival that I’m not seeing – yet! Read the rest of this entry »
The Movie Evangelist 