15. RATATOUILLE (Brad Bird)
I won’t go over Pixar’s past, because you know it. I won’t delve too deeply into how Brad Bird is doing this as a personal favor, which is totally cool in my opinion (can you comprehend how much time and pain-staking effort it takes to make an animated movie at the quality level that Pixar works at?). And shouldn’t we all know by now, with the dozen or so movies this year about them, that talking animals are funny?
No clever caption available.
14. OCEAN'S THIRTEEN (Steven Soderberg)
The gang’s all back. For all the hate it gets online and among the masses, I really couldn’t help but like OCEAN'S TWELVE. No, it’s not as good as ELEVEN, but I think it would have been kind of silly to expect that. Al Pacino has pulled up a chair at the table for this one and I couldn’t be happier. They’re supposedly shooting this one at a WB backlot instead of on-location (both the first two were), but I don’t think that will be as big of a handicap as everyone else thinks. The real truth is casinos are kind of nasty places, but besides, George, Matt, Brad, and others all know how to have some fun and put it on to the screen.
13. AVATAR (James Cameron)
The self-entitled "King of the World" certainly knows how to weave a good story with gargantuan budgets that I've enjoyed (TERMINATOR 2, TITANIC, THE ABYSS, etc.), so the only reason this isn't higher on the list is because of the sypnosis. If I'm correct, its an epic that takes place in the very far-off future (I want to say 10,000 A.D.?), involving a teenage girl named Avatar who rescues the universe or something. Maybe it will be the greatest sci-fi western epic since STAR WARS, or maybe the ten years away from the movie business, the rumor that the movie will be entirely animated in the same way as THE POLAR EXPRESS, and the $315 million budget will get to Cameron's head, and we'll get another BATTLFIELD EARTH. One thing's for sure though, the final product is going to be everywhere.
12. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (Gore Verbinski)
Okay, DEAD MAN'S CHEST was the worst movie of the summer, but the first was still pretty great. I hope the creative team doesn’t go overboard again for this one and completely ruin the franchise, as well as Depp’s first performance (which is the reason everyone loves the movies anyway), turning it into the 2000’s version of Schumacher’s BATMAN movies. Who knows though, maybe it will able to buckle some of my swashes (Christ, that’s an awful saying).
11. GUERILLA (Steven Soderberg)
The changing of the title from “CHE” to the here-to-stay “GUERILLA” seems to me to be an indicator that Soderberg and Benicio Del Toro (who won an Oscar for TRAFFIC, their last collaboration) that they aren’t going to pussy around with Che Guevara’s life. This was not a perfect man, a revolutionary who while did bring plenty of positive change to the world, he was responsibile for the murder of thousands.
RESPECT
10. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (Paul Greengrass)
The first BOURNE was good, the second was great. Greengrass knows how to shoot tension (yeah, if you haven’t seen UNITED 93, its time to), and that’s what the spy world is really about. Don’t expect anything close to the book, since the first couple pretty much disregarded them. What you should expect is another great performance from Matt Damon, who has really turned this role into something personal, and it has in turn shot his career through the roof. Joan Allen and Julia Stiles are both back, and Patty Considine, David Strathairn, and Gael Garcia Bernal are all on board, which is awesome. Too bad Brian Cox had to eat it in SUPREMACY, I really love the guy.
09. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (Francis Ford Coppola)
The guy made THE GODFATHER, APOCALYPSE NOW, and THE CONVERSATION. Then again, he made Jack. I don’t know what to expect. I’ll just hope this WWI-era period piece will be a return to form.
08. 300 (Zack Snyder)
The once thought to be unprovable theory that the ancient civilians of Sparta only knew how to scream “Sparta”, in different keys and volumes, has now been proved in Zack Snyder’s new documentary 300. This certainly looks like its going to be a great year for scream-filled, testosterone-driven man-movies.
”Do you, ah, like gladiator movies?”
07. THE KINGDOM (Peter Berg)
Peter Berg’s 2004 FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS was a crushingly emotional masterpiece. His work on it showed me that he has the eye of a possible great filmmaker, and if this is as good as its cast (Jamie Foxx-who I have a total gay for, Chris Cooper, an ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT-free Jason Bateman, and Jennifer Garner), then his celebrity status should be cemented. The premise is a bit shallow, with a team of U.S. government agents being sent in to explor the bombing of an American facility in Iraq, but hey, did FNL’s story sound so deep on paper?
06. SOUTHLAND TALES (Richard Kelly)
Get this: it’s a post-nuclear-apocalyptic future, and the United States is now under marshal law and those Commy Russians are hell-bent on killing off the rest of us. Who do we call? An action movie star (The Rock-fitting), a pornstar (Sarah Michelle Gellar-very fitting), and twin DEA agents (Seann William Scott-I think ‘entertaining’ is a better word than ‘fitting’). Sounds like Dr. Seuss on crack, and it’s got DONNIE DARKO creator Richard Kelly at the wheel. Awesome.
05. HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (David Yates)
Although they get talked about way too much, I can’t deny that the HARRY POTTER movies have gotten better and better with each installment. While the first three movies all had something missing, I think ‘perfect’ was the best word I could use to describe the time I had in THE GOBLET OF FIRE. It was great fantasy moviemaking, and I wish they had stuck with Mike Newell as the director. They picked out another nobody for Numero Cinco (David Yates, anyone?), but the rest of the gang is here, and everyone is getting better in their roles (Oh Dan, Emma, and Rupert, how we have all grown up), so I have faith it will be better than its predecessors.
Not from HARRY POTTER
04. GRINDHOUSE (Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez)
The Man-Fest of the Year! QT and Bobby Rod are the coolest kids on the block when it comes to presenting the ugly underbelly of crime in a gleefully violent and giddily entertaining way (I don’t have to delve into their filmographies, do I?), and here they both have complete artistic freedom. Imagine if SNAKES ON A PLANE had actually fully given in to being a camp classic, and this is what I envision the double-feature (three hours) sleazefest awesomeness of PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF is going to be! Can You Fucking Comprehend This??!!! Danny Trejo! Kurt Russel! Naked chicks! Chicks with fucking grenade launching machine guns for legs! Motorcycle-mounted mini-guns (the mini-gun has always been a desperately underused piece of cinematic art in my opinion!) Red-band trailers for even more exploitation films that don’t actually exist, but you know you want them to! Can you even speak of this without exclamation points?
Sup.
03. THE ASSASINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (Andrew Dominik)
Apparently, this won’t be good. It’s gotten pushed back to spring 2007 (gasp!) and there have been artistic indifferences between the director and Brad Pitt (oh God nooo!!). Well the same thing happened to TITANIC (original July 4th release, with a reasonable $125 million budget), and this year’s V FOR VENDETTA, both of which were terrific films. Whatever, says I. There’s going to be a Peckinpah/Deadwood/Proposition-type of gritty visuals and grittier characters supposedly, which is great. Pitt can definitely pull off the greatest antihero of the old west, and Casey Ford was a good pick for the most infamous man to ever put a bullet in his mentor’s back. Ted Levine and Sam Rockwell are also involved, which can’t hurt. Plus, the trailer is just eery-good, it still gives me chills.
02. TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick)
Not much is known about this project, which is supposedly Malick’s most ambitious vision yet (which would be something reeeaaallllyyyy ambitious). The project was introduced by Malick around the time that DAYS OF HEAVEN came out (‘78), which was only his second movie. He then took off twenty years from the business only to pop back up by making the one of the supreme film accomplishments of the ‘90s (THE THIN RED LINE, which was better than SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, as well as every other movie of 1998). It took him seven more years to make THE NEW WORLD, so the real question I’m asking is whether or not he would make two movies within two calendar years of each other. The rumors floating around the web are that Colin Farrel and Mel Gibson are to star in the movie, and that it is currently filming in India. That’s about all I’ve got; two stars, no plot sypnosis, and the fact that Malick is involved. But does there really have to be anything more than that name to get me to see this?
Genius.
01. SPIDER-MAN 3 (Sam Raimi)
Ah Peter, how I await thee so. The progression of Peter Parker, Spidey, MJ, Harry, and various villains (there are a rumored four in SM3) has certainly gotten my attention from the trailer. SPIDER-MAN was an ok movie, a nice little popcorn-muncher without much depth and decent CGI (seeing Spidey spin through The City was great, but it lacked in other areas, and The Green Goblin was a monstrosity), but it didn’t have anything on SPIDER-MAN 2. Underseen (well, there were $30 million less worth of tickets sold, and its hard to say that anything that grosses north of $370 mil is underseen), in terms of cultural significance and buzz among the cineplexes, the ‘04 sequel was a marvel of a movie.
Where SPIDER-MAN was good, SPIDER-MAN 2 was great. Where it had faults, the sequel didn’t. Pete’s moral anguishes over MJ and the whole ‘great responsibility’ thing were done as well as any comic book movie before it (the drama was only eclipsed by SUPERMAN RETURNS, and BATMAN BEGINS, although overall it is a better movie than BEGINS). I can see number 3 being the best of the bunch. I hope Fox is giving Raimi full artistic control (although I’d be naîve to think they would, with hundreds of millions riding on it), because he’ll spin a great story. With all the new characters being introduced (Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, Thomas Hayden Chuch as The Sandman, and Bryce Dallas Howard as the new girl on Peter’s block), as well as Harry possibly starting where his father lefted off as the Green Goblin and Pete and MJ being full-fledged lovebirds, the drama is certainly there. I haven’t read the comics (for shame, I know), but the symbiote takeover of Peter/Spidey looks to heighten the drama, and Raimi knows how to counter-balance the drama (which can get silly damn easily) by injecting some bona-fide great jokes in the story (the lack of which hurt BATMAN BEGINS’ entertainment value). Sounds like something to me.
"I'll eat your face, bitch!"
I won’t go over Pixar’s past, because you know it. I won’t delve too deeply into how Brad Bird is doing this as a personal favor, which is totally cool in my opinion (can you comprehend how much time and pain-staking effort it takes to make an animated movie at the quality level that Pixar works at?). And shouldn’t we all know by now, with the dozen or so movies this year about them, that talking animals are funny?
No clever caption available. 14. OCEAN'S THIRTEEN (Steven Soderberg)
The gang’s all back. For all the hate it gets online and among the masses, I really couldn’t help but like OCEAN'S TWELVE. No, it’s not as good as ELEVEN, but I think it would have been kind of silly to expect that. Al Pacino has pulled up a chair at the table for this one and I couldn’t be happier. They’re supposedly shooting this one at a WB backlot instead of on-location (both the first two were), but I don’t think that will be as big of a handicap as everyone else thinks. The real truth is casinos are kind of nasty places, but besides, George, Matt, Brad, and others all know how to have some fun and put it on to the screen.
13. AVATAR (James Cameron)
The self-entitled "King of the World" certainly knows how to weave a good story with gargantuan budgets that I've enjoyed (TERMINATOR 2, TITANIC, THE ABYSS, etc.), so the only reason this isn't higher on the list is because of the sypnosis. If I'm correct, its an epic that takes place in the very far-off future (I want to say 10,000 A.D.?), involving a teenage girl named Avatar who rescues the universe or something. Maybe it will be the greatest sci-fi western epic since STAR WARS, or maybe the ten years away from the movie business, the rumor that the movie will be entirely animated in the same way as THE POLAR EXPRESS, and the $315 million budget will get to Cameron's head, and we'll get another BATTLFIELD EARTH. One thing's for sure though, the final product is going to be everywhere.
12. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (Gore Verbinski)
Okay, DEAD MAN'S CHEST was the worst movie of the summer, but the first was still pretty great. I hope the creative team doesn’t go overboard again for this one and completely ruin the franchise, as well as Depp’s first performance (which is the reason everyone loves the movies anyway), turning it into the 2000’s version of Schumacher’s BATMAN movies. Who knows though, maybe it will able to buckle some of my swashes (Christ, that’s an awful saying).
11. GUERILLA (Steven Soderberg)
The changing of the title from “CHE” to the here-to-stay “GUERILLA” seems to me to be an indicator that Soderberg and Benicio Del Toro (who won an Oscar for TRAFFIC, their last collaboration) that they aren’t going to pussy around with Che Guevara’s life. This was not a perfect man, a revolutionary who while did bring plenty of positive change to the world, he was responsibile for the murder of thousands.
RESPECT10. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (Paul Greengrass)
The first BOURNE was good, the second was great. Greengrass knows how to shoot tension (yeah, if you haven’t seen UNITED 93, its time to), and that’s what the spy world is really about. Don’t expect anything close to the book, since the first couple pretty much disregarded them. What you should expect is another great performance from Matt Damon, who has really turned this role into something personal, and it has in turn shot his career through the roof. Joan Allen and Julia Stiles are both back, and Patty Considine, David Strathairn, and Gael Garcia Bernal are all on board, which is awesome. Too bad Brian Cox had to eat it in SUPREMACY, I really love the guy.
09. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (Francis Ford Coppola)
The guy made THE GODFATHER, APOCALYPSE NOW, and THE CONVERSATION. Then again, he made Jack. I don’t know what to expect. I’ll just hope this WWI-era period piece will be a return to form.
08. 300 (Zack Snyder)
The once thought to be unprovable theory that the ancient civilians of Sparta only knew how to scream “Sparta”, in different keys and volumes, has now been proved in Zack Snyder’s new documentary 300. This certainly looks like its going to be a great year for scream-filled, testosterone-driven man-movies.
”Do you, ah, like gladiator movies?”07. THE KINGDOM (Peter Berg)
Peter Berg’s 2004 FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS was a crushingly emotional masterpiece. His work on it showed me that he has the eye of a possible great filmmaker, and if this is as good as its cast (Jamie Foxx-who I have a total gay for, Chris Cooper, an ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT-free Jason Bateman, and Jennifer Garner), then his celebrity status should be cemented. The premise is a bit shallow, with a team of U.S. government agents being sent in to explor the bombing of an American facility in Iraq, but hey, did FNL’s story sound so deep on paper?
06. SOUTHLAND TALES (Richard Kelly)
Get this: it’s a post-nuclear-apocalyptic future, and the United States is now under marshal law and those Commy Russians are hell-bent on killing off the rest of us. Who do we call? An action movie star (The Rock-fitting), a pornstar (Sarah Michelle Gellar-very fitting), and twin DEA agents (Seann William Scott-I think ‘entertaining’ is a better word than ‘fitting’). Sounds like Dr. Seuss on crack, and it’s got DONNIE DARKO creator Richard Kelly at the wheel. Awesome.
05. HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (David Yates)
Although they get talked about way too much, I can’t deny that the HARRY POTTER movies have gotten better and better with each installment. While the first three movies all had something missing, I think ‘perfect’ was the best word I could use to describe the time I had in THE GOBLET OF FIRE. It was great fantasy moviemaking, and I wish they had stuck with Mike Newell as the director. They picked out another nobody for Numero Cinco (David Yates, anyone?), but the rest of the gang is here, and everyone is getting better in their roles (Oh Dan, Emma, and Rupert, how we have all grown up), so I have faith it will be better than its predecessors.
Not from HARRY POTTER04. GRINDHOUSE (Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez)
The Man-Fest of the Year! QT and Bobby Rod are the coolest kids on the block when it comes to presenting the ugly underbelly of crime in a gleefully violent and giddily entertaining way (I don’t have to delve into their filmographies, do I?), and here they both have complete artistic freedom. Imagine if SNAKES ON A PLANE had actually fully given in to being a camp classic, and this is what I envision the double-feature (three hours) sleazefest awesomeness of PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF is going to be! Can You Fucking Comprehend This??!!! Danny Trejo! Kurt Russel! Naked chicks! Chicks with fucking grenade launching machine guns for legs! Motorcycle-mounted mini-guns (the mini-gun has always been a desperately underused piece of cinematic art in my opinion!) Red-band trailers for even more exploitation films that don’t actually exist, but you know you want them to! Can you even speak of this without exclamation points?
Sup.03. THE ASSASINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (Andrew Dominik)
Apparently, this won’t be good. It’s gotten pushed back to spring 2007 (gasp!) and there have been artistic indifferences between the director and Brad Pitt (oh God nooo!!). Well the same thing happened to TITANIC (original July 4th release, with a reasonable $125 million budget), and this year’s V FOR VENDETTA, both of which were terrific films. Whatever, says I. There’s going to be a Peckinpah/Deadwood/Proposition-type of gritty visuals and grittier characters supposedly, which is great. Pitt can definitely pull off the greatest antihero of the old west, and Casey Ford was a good pick for the most infamous man to ever put a bullet in his mentor’s back. Ted Levine and Sam Rockwell are also involved, which can’t hurt. Plus, the trailer is just eery-good, it still gives me chills.
02. TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick)
Not much is known about this project, which is supposedly Malick’s most ambitious vision yet (which would be something reeeaaallllyyyy ambitious). The project was introduced by Malick around the time that DAYS OF HEAVEN came out (‘78), which was only his second movie. He then took off twenty years from the business only to pop back up by making the one of the supreme film accomplishments of the ‘90s (THE THIN RED LINE, which was better than SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, as well as every other movie of 1998). It took him seven more years to make THE NEW WORLD, so the real question I’m asking is whether or not he would make two movies within two calendar years of each other. The rumors floating around the web are that Colin Farrel and Mel Gibson are to star in the movie, and that it is currently filming in India. That’s about all I’ve got; two stars, no plot sypnosis, and the fact that Malick is involved. But does there really have to be anything more than that name to get me to see this?
Genius.01. SPIDER-MAN 3 (Sam Raimi)
Ah Peter, how I await thee so. The progression of Peter Parker, Spidey, MJ, Harry, and various villains (there are a rumored four in SM3) has certainly gotten my attention from the trailer. SPIDER-MAN was an ok movie, a nice little popcorn-muncher without much depth and decent CGI (seeing Spidey spin through The City was great, but it lacked in other areas, and The Green Goblin was a monstrosity), but it didn’t have anything on SPIDER-MAN 2. Underseen (well, there were $30 million less worth of tickets sold, and its hard to say that anything that grosses north of $370 mil is underseen), in terms of cultural significance and buzz among the cineplexes, the ‘04 sequel was a marvel of a movie.
Where SPIDER-MAN was good, SPIDER-MAN 2 was great. Where it had faults, the sequel didn’t. Pete’s moral anguishes over MJ and the whole ‘great responsibility’ thing were done as well as any comic book movie before it (the drama was only eclipsed by SUPERMAN RETURNS, and BATMAN BEGINS, although overall it is a better movie than BEGINS). I can see number 3 being the best of the bunch. I hope Fox is giving Raimi full artistic control (although I’d be naîve to think they would, with hundreds of millions riding on it), because he’ll spin a great story. With all the new characters being introduced (Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, Thomas Hayden Chuch as The Sandman, and Bryce Dallas Howard as the new girl on Peter’s block), as well as Harry possibly starting where his father lefted off as the Green Goblin and Pete and MJ being full-fledged lovebirds, the drama is certainly there. I haven’t read the comics (for shame, I know), but the symbiote takeover of Peter/Spidey looks to heighten the drama, and Raimi knows how to counter-balance the drama (which can get silly damn easily) by injecting some bona-fide great jokes in the story (the lack of which hurt BATMAN BEGINS’ entertainment value). Sounds like something to me.
"I'll eat your face, bitch!"And there you have it.
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