Turning our eyes toward the remainder of the year, there's still numerous movies to look forward to, ranging from high-profile awards season fare to a few highly-anticipated blockbusters that are likely to make this one of the most memorable holiday movie seasons on record. While certain surprises are sure to present themselves along the way, these are the movies that have the most to offer from where we're standing right now:
BLACK MASS (CRIME DRAMA)
Directed by Scott Cooper
Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Corey Stoll, Sienna Miller, David Harbour, Rory Cochrane
Rated R for brutal violence, language throughout, some sexual references and brief drug use.
Johnny Depp attempts to get back into legitimate acting as the infamous gangster Whitey Bulger who became an FBI informant in 1975 and managed to rise in the Boston Irish mob for years without Federal interference in exchange for informing on his rivals until the New England media brought attention to the corruption in law enforcement tied to Bulger. BLACK MASS has a stacked cast with Benedict Cumberbatch as Whitey's Massachusetts State Senator brother, and Joel Edgerton as his FBI contact, as well as Dakota Johnson (FIFTY SHADES OF GREY), Kevin Bacon, and Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad). Scott Cooper, director of CRAZY HEART and OUT OF THE FURNACE, is the most questionable major aspect here, but the previews suggest a hard-edged period crime drama led by a Depp performance to hopefully bring him back from the live-action cartoons he's been driving into the ground lately.
EVEREST (ADVENTURE-THRILLER)
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur
Starring: Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhall, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Thomas Wright, Naoko Mori
Rated PG-13 for intense peril and disturbing images.
This survival adventure-thriller from the director of 2 GUNS and CONTRABAND is based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster in which mountain climbers attempting to reach the summit of the highest mountain on Earth were caught in a severe blizzard and resulted in several deaths. Filled out with a promising cast led by Jason Clarke (DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) and Jake Gyllenhall, Universal recently moved its nationwide release to September 25 from September 18, in order to give it a week exclusively in IMAX and other large format theaters in order to build a word-of-mouth campaign, which suggests a degree of faith in the movie from the studio. Maybe it will be the GRAVITY of mountain climbing movies, or maybe it will just be a real taut fall thriller.
THE MARTIAN (SCI-FI/ADVENTURE)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomi Scott, Aksel Hennie
Rated PG-13 for some strong language, injury images, and brief nudity.
THE MARTIAN is not a really solid bet, but it has the potential to pay off well. Adapted from Andy Weir's 2011 novel of the same name, it's essentially "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", which was actually a movie in 1964. Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars and presumed dead, so he has to figure out how to survive in an uninhabitable environment, and after he manages to send a signal to Earth of his survival, the scientists on Earth scramble to come up with a rescue mission. The big thing that THE MARTIAN has going for it is a script by Drew Goddard, who's done some exciting stuff with CLOVERFIELD and CABIN IN THE WOODS. The big wild card is Ridley Scott, who is wildly hit and miss, more miss than hit lately, with the dreadfully disappointing EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS last year. With Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain in the mix, it may smack a bit much of INTERSTELLAR, but they're both solid actors and the projected tone is a lot less self-serious.
STEVE JOBS (BIOPIC/DRAMA)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sarah Snook, Adam Shapiro, Mackenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo
Rated R for language.
This was originally meant to be a reuniting of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, the team behind one of my all-time favorite movies, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, but negotiations with Fincher fell through, which was disappointing. On the other hand, Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) is no slouch, and it still has a Sorkin script that, based on the trailer, is a lot more aggressive and scathing than his take on Mark Zuckerberg. With a plot device intriguing enough to make the mouth water, STEVE JOBS is set behind the scenes of three iconic product launches and stars Michael Fassbender as the titular iconic innovator while exploring the tumultuous relationships and partnerships in his life. Also included in the cast are Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman co-developer of the original Macintosh and NeXT. Expect this movie to be a big player in the awards season and a subject of heated debate.
THE WALK (BIOPIC/DRAMA)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Steve Valentine, Charlotte Le Bon, Sergio Di Zio, Mark Camacho, Benedict Samuel
Rated PG for thematic elements involving perilous situations, and for some nudity, language, brief drug references and smoking.
A dramatic adaptation of the events previously depicted in the excellent documentary MAN ON WIRE, this latest film from Robert Zemeckis recounts the true story of Philippe Petit, who walked across a high-wire tied between the World Trade Center Twin Towers in 1974 without authorization. The marketing has emphasized the vertigo-inducing visuals of the presumably climactic walk, but the story also involves a heist aspect in planning the illegal stunt. I don't have strong feelings about Zemeckis's last film, FLIGHT, although it has developed some generally negative ones in people since it came out in 2012, but I still have goodwill towards him as a director. Hopefully the visual spectacle of the story crossed with the inherent drama of the subject will play to Zemeckis' strengths, but in any case, I'm interested to see what he comes up with.
BRIDGE OF SPIES (DRAMA/THRILLER)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Austin Stowell, Domenick Lombardozzi, Sebastian Koch, Michael Gaston, Peter McRobbie, Stephen Kunken, Joshua Harto, Edward James Hyland
Rated PG-13 for some violence and brief strong language.
Steven Spielberg's latest film is a truth-based Cold War thriller that reunites him with actor Tom Hanks in their first film together since THE TERMINAL in 2004. Hanks stars as James B. Donovan, a Brooklyn lawyer hired by the CIA to negotiate the release of Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), an American pilot shot down over the Soviet Union while performing a reconnaissance mission, during the 1960 U-2 incident that deteriorated the already tense relations between the two world powers. From a screenplay by the Coen brothers (although judging by GAMBIT and UNBROKEN, that may not mean much in the hands of another director), this is premium material for a Spielberg drama, with the tagline "In the shadow of war, one man showed the world what we stand for". In any case, Spielberg is one of the greatest directors working today, not to mention one of the greatest directors ever, and his output as a director is always worth looking forward to.
CRIMSON PEAK (HORROR/SUPERNATURAL-THRILLER)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Emily Coutts, Leslie Hope, Burn Gorman, Doug Jones, Sofia Wells, Laura Waddell
Rated R for bloody violence, some sexual content and brief strong language.
The most fun scary movies are haunted house movies, but good ones are so few and far in between, so as this Gothic horror/romance about an old English mansion teeming with ghostly entities is coming from the extremely talented filmmaker behind PAN'S LABYRINTH, PACIFIC RIM and the Hellboy films, I'm very excited. Guillermo del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK is an original story set in 19th-century England (a properly spooky time and place) where a young woman (played by ALICE IN WONDERLAND's Mia Wasikowska) falls in love with a nobleman (played by MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS' Tom Hiddleston), but discovers that he is not all that he seems after they marry and his ancestral home, an crumbling old mansion, hides many dark secrets of a supernatural variety.
With an R rating and an apparently lavish, atmospheric style, this looks like the E-ticket of the Halloween season. Stephen King has already called it "gorgeous and just f***ing terrifying".
THE PEANUTS MOVIE (ANIMATION/FAMILY-COMEDY)
Directed by Steve Martino
Featuring the Voices of: Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Alexander Garfin, Mariel Sheets, Noah Johnston, Venus Schultheis, AJ Teece, Francesca Capaldi, Mar Mar, Rebecca Bloom
Rated G
Clearly the world has gone and turned over on itself, because this movie from Blue Sky Studios (the studio behind the Ice Age and Rio series, and EPIC) shows a lot more promise than the movie coming out from Pixar later the same month (THE GOOD DINOSAUR). Computer-animated, but in a unique style that resembles the iconic Bill Melendez TV specials, it's a simple story about Charlie Brown trying to win the affections of the new girl in class, the Little Red-Haired Girl, that is. Meanwhile, of course, his dog Snoopy is going up against the Red Baron. With a voice cast made up primarily of children newcomers, it probably won't be as weighty and insightful as INSIDE OUT, but it looks like it has a finger on the pulse of the childlike charm and wit Charles M. Schulz's iconic characters.
SPECTRE (ACTION/ADVENTURE)
Directed by Sam Mendes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Monica Bellucci, Andrew Scott, Dave Bautista, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Wishaw, Rory Kinnear, Jesper Christensen
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and language.
SKYFALL director Sam Mendes is returning for the 24th James Bond movie and continues to further explore 007's origins and reintegrate the classic Bond with 21st-century Bond. While it's risky, it sure looks exciting. Daniel Craig returns as Bond, going up against the villainous classic Bond organization SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) and a mysterious man within the global crime syndicate named Franz Oberhauser (although widespread fan speculation says that he's secretly Blofeld, the leader of the organization in previous Bond films), played by Christoph Waltz. With Lea Seydoux (BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR) and Monica Bellucci as Bond girls, and Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris reprising their roles from SKYFALL, SPECTRE is the big blockbuster to kick off the holiday season.
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 (ACTION/SCI-FI)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Sam Claflin, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Donald Sutherland, Willow Shields, Jena Malone, Stanley Tucci, Jeffrey Wright
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and for some thematic material.
To date, THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1 has been the weakest of the series, primarily because it was only half a story, one book split in two in order to prolong the franchise, but after a year of waiting, we'll finally get the second half of the story to what is probably the best of the YA literature-based film franchises. Now we get the full-on war of revolution these films have been building to, as Katniss Everdeen (played by the ever-excellent Jennifer Lawrence) leads the attack on the Capitol and the sinister tyrant President Snow (Donald Sutherland), facing perils designed by the remaining "gamemakers", as well as the complicated moral dilemmas in a war that will determine the future of Panem.
CREED (SPORTS DRAMA)
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Tony Bellew, Graham McTavish, Phylicia Rashad, Wood Harris, Andre Ward
Not Yet Rated
This fascinating new direction for the Rocky series puts the focus on Adonis Creed (played by Michael B. Jordan), the son of Rocky Balboa's revered old boxing rival Apollo Creed, who is now trying to start a boxing career of his own and arrives in Philadelphia to be mentored by none other than Rocky himself (played by Sylvester Stallone). Directed and co-written by Ryan Coogler, the writer/director of the criminally under-seen 2013 drama FRUITVALE STATION, which also starred Jordan, one the most talented up-and-coming young stars around today, CREED looks like it will inject a hard, contemporary and relevant edge to the waning Rocky series. This is one of the most exciting prospects of the holiday movie season.
THE NIGHT BEFORE (COMEDY)
Directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring: Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anthony Mackie, Lizzy Caplan, Jillian Bell, Lorraine Toussaint, Kanye West, Aaron Hill, Helene Yorke
Not Yet Rated
I'm doubtful that this will be the new great comedy, but Seth Rogen's and Evan Goldberg's collaborations on NEIGHBORS, THIS IS THE END and SUPERBAD have been some the funniest, craziest comedies in recent years, and I'm always up for an irreverent treatment of Christmas. Directed by Jonathan Levine (director of 50/50 and WARM BODIES), THE NIGHT BEFORE stars Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie as longtime buddies who get together for a night out every Christmas Eve, but as this might be the last year they can do it, they decide to make it a night to remember full of drugs and debauchery. It looks funny enough to me.
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA (ADVENTURE/DRAMA)
Directed by Ron Howard
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Wishaw, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, Gary Beadle, Frank Dillane, Charlotte Ripley
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and peril, brief startling violence, and thematic material.
I was bummed out when movie was moved from its original March 13 release date to December, presumably to give it a stronger chance at awards consideration, which suggests a show of faith in the film by the studio, but meant I have to wait longer to see it. Based on the nonfiction book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick, this big-budget, fact-based adventure-thriller/drama tells the story of a whaling ship that was sunk by an attacking sperm whale, leaving the surviving crew stranded at sea in a small life boat for months, turning on each other and even resorting to cannibalism. The real life events later inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick. Chris Hemsworth stars as the ship's first mate, with Benjamin Walker (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) as the captain, Cillian Murphy (BATMAN BEGINS) as second mate, and Tom Holland (who will appear in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and future Marvel Studios films as Peter Parker/Spider-Man) as the cabin boy. This is the kind of movie that I wish they could make more of but are rarely bankable, a large-scale, historical adventure with adult drama and weight. It sort of reminds me of 2003's MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, an exceptional adventure-drama if you haven't seen it.
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Lupita Nyong'o, Gwendoline Christie, Simon Pegg
Not Yet Rated
I shouldn't have to explain this one.
SISTERS (COMEDY)
Directed by Jason Moore
Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ike Barinholtz, Samantha Bee, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Madison Davenport, John Leguizamo, John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Dan Byrd, James Brolin
Rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and for drug use.
The preview released some weeks ago was a disappointment, but I still have hope for this female buddy-comedy starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Directed by Jason Moore (director of PITCH PERFECT) and written by Saturday Night Live alum Paula Pell, the R-rated comedy stars Fey and Poehler as sisters who decide to through one last raging party with their adult friends in their childhood home before their parents sell it.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT (WESTERN/COMEDY-THRILLER)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Zoe Bell, Dana Gourrier
Not Yet Rated
I'm a little annoyed that Quentin Tarantino's latest film will be opening exclusively in the 70 mm format on Christmas Day (opens everywhere January 6, 2016), because that will make it harder to find, but if it's available within 70 miles or so, I'll make the drive. Following up DJANGO UNCHAINED with another western, albeit more directly a western this time, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is set in post-Civil War Wyoming where a colorful octet of characters, "The Hangman" (Kurt Russell), "The Bounty Hunter" (Samuel L. Jackson), "The Prisoner" (Jennifer Jason Leigh), "The Sheriff" (Walton Goggins), "The Mexican" (Demian Bichir), "The Little Man" (Tim Roth), "The Cow Puncher" (Michael Madsen), and "The Confederate" (Bruce Dern) are snowed in at a stagecoach stop during a terrible blizzard, but in a plot of deception and betrayal, not all is what it seems.
Tarantino is probably the most consistent and distinctive filmmaker working today, and THE HATEFUL EIGHT looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
SNOWDEN (BIOPIC/DRAMA)
Directed by Oliver Stone
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Scott Eastwood, Melissa Leo, Timothy Olyphant, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Nicolas Cage, Keith Stanfield, Rhys Ifans
Not Yet Rated
I wouldn't call any Oliver Stone film a safe bet, especially nowadays when it seems all his great films are so far behind him, but the source material of the events leading up to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's choice to violate the Espionage Act by leaking classified NSA documents that revealed the massive and extremely troubling U.S. surveillance programs in place since the Bush Administration and continued by the Obama Administration is relevant and ripe for cinematic dramatization and could play to Stone's strengths. With a strong cast led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character and Shailene Woodley as his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, it remains to be seen if Stone is up to the task.
