Category: Lists

2014 Fall Movie Preview

“Gone Girl,” “Nightcrawler,” “Inherent Vice,” “Interstellar” and more are among my most anticipated films of Fall 2014.

Fall is that time of year when even a mediocre year for movies can transform into a stellar one, when established auteurs deliver instant classics as good as everyone anticipated them to be, when oddball indies turn into sure-fire prestige pictures and when under-the-radar studio movies become word of mouth smashes.

It’s a much more consistent time of year than the slowly eroding Summer movie season, in which good to great movies are drowned out by the louder ones and the biggest money makers are non-starters that aren’t remembered a month later.

2014’s lineup of movies features titles from David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Bennett Miller and Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as the third chapter to today’s truly great monster franchise. Below is my list of my most anticipated and a few more that may prove to be some of the season’s favorites.

Top 15 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall Continue reading “2014 Fall Movie Preview”

Summer Movie Preview 2014

“Boyhood,” “The Double,” “Tracks” and “The Fault in Our Stars” are some of the most interesting movies this summer.

There are more movies released in a single season, let alone a calendar year, than any one person knows what to do with. While the fall offers a good mix of prestige pictures and indie darlings that everyone can get excited for, the summer is graded mostly on the intrigue of the summer’s loudest, most saturated commercial exploits.

But in a year when most people are more excited for the next Avengers, Superman and Star Wars in 2015 than yet another Spiderman, X-Men and Transformers, wouldn’t this summer be better served playing the field?

Confirming what’s already known about movies that are everywhere gets exhausting each few months. So while my watch list hasn’t shrunk by much, the comprehensive preview for 2014 has.

The Double

The Double – May 9

The British comedian Richard Ayoade’s “Submarine” was a bit too much of a “400 Blows” pastiche, but he did manage to show wonderful stylistic promise. In “The Double,” he follows up that knack with a dark comedy reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.” It’s based on a Dostoevsky short story and features a dual performance by Jesse Eisenberg, one as a timid, nebbish office drone and the other as his confident, twisted (and possibly imaginary?) doppelganger.

Chef – May 9

It’ll be nice to see Jon Favreau step back from the action/sci-fi stuff for a while and give a taste to a small character comedy like “Chef”. Favreau stars as a chef who quits his kitchen job and goes to work for himself in the back of a food truck. The secret sauce of course is his big cast including Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Bobby Cannavale, John Leguizamo and Sofia Vergara.

Tracks – May 23

John Curran’s film is a true story about a young woman (Mia Wasikowska) determined to travel across the Australian desert with four camels. The film stars Adam Driver of “Girls” as her love interest and looks like an absolutely sumptuous adventure.

Night Moves – May 30

Here’s Jesse Eisenberg’s second (or third) appearance on this list. Kelly Reichardt makes slow, slow films (“Meek’s Cutoff,” “Wendy and Lucy”) but with this thriller about eco-terrorists trying to blow up the Hoover Dam, I can only expect that this film’s slow simmer will really boil over. Reichardt’s film also stars Dakota Fanning, Alia Shawkat and Peter Sarsgaard.

The Fault in Our Stars – June 6

Shailene Woodley may be going the full on J-Law route to stardom (tiny indie, blockbuster YA novel, mid-scale indie with Oscar potential), but “The Fault in Our Stars” looks lovely in a sardonic, acerbic way. It’s about two teen lovers who meet in a cancer ward and is based on John Green’s acclaimed novel I won’t finish reading before it comes out.

Begin Again – July 4

“Begin Again,” formerly titled “A Song Can Save Your Life,” is the follow-up of bassist turned filmmaker John Carney, the Irishman who gave us the beloved and tender musical “Once.” It stars Mark Ruffalo as an out-of-work record producer who works  with a fresh singer (Keira Knightley) after she’s dumped by her rock star boyfriend (Adam Levine).

Boyhood – July 11

Believe the hyperbole; Richard Linklater cast a 6-year-old boy and filmed a story over 12 years, and it’s said to be every bit as groundbreaking and moving as you would imagine. After “Before Midnight,” this was the second Linklater vehicle in two years that took Sundance by storm, and it gives us the privilege of maturing along with Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and newcomer Ellar Coltrane.

Life Itself – July 11

Roger Ebert passed away on April 4, 2013, and while Steve James’s documentary is a touching tribute regardless, the real shock is seeing the famous film critic in his final moments. Having seen the film as part of its Indiegogo release, I cried then just like I did on April 4. James, the documentarian behind “Hoop Dreams” and “The Interrupters,” captures the shaded nuance of Ebert and the Chicago he left an imprint on, but its likewise a film about criticism, friendships and as the title suggests, life itself. (My 4-star review will be released prior to release)

Land Ho! – July 11

One of this year’s more under-the-radar Sundance gems is “Land Ho!” a road-trip comedy set in Iceland between two elderly men who were once brothers in law. The men are polar opposites, one soft-spoken and the other brash and vulgar. Indiewire critic Eric Kohn calls it a “gentle meditation on growing old and bored.” It’s not quite “Neighbors,” but it should be an indie summer treat.

I Origins – July 18

Mike Cahill’s “Another Earth” is an underrated sci-fi classic, melodramatic and overtly parabolic, but it completely earns its broad strokes. That proved to be an excellent pairing between Cahill and actress/writer Brit Marling. She’s the co-star in “I Origins,” another sci-fi about a biologist (“Boardwalk Empire’s” Michael Pitt) trying to trace his deceased wife’s spirit by studying the pattern of human eyes. 

Mood Indigo – July 18

Michel Gondry has never really found the same magic he once did with “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but now he’s returned to his native France for a fantastical comedy and romance. Audrey Tautou is playing a very “Amelie” like role as a woman suffering from an unusual illness. The film also stars the French comedian Gad Elmaleh and Omar Sy of “The Intouchables.”

A Most Wanted Man – July 25

“A Most Wanted Man” will forever be famous as the last movie of Philip Seymour Hoffman, but Anton Corbijn is on his way to becoming a true auteur. His last film was the polarizing “The American,” and he’s back again with a spy thriller based on a John Le Carre (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) novel. Hoffman plays a German spy using a volatile and mysterious Islamic immigrant to nail a bigger fish.

The Two Faces of January – August 8

Oscar Isaac found his breakout role last year in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and this is the year he becomes a real movie star. The first of several films he stars in this year is “The Two Faces of January,” a debut film by the writer of “Drive” (also featuring Isaac), Hossein Amini. Isaac plays an American tour guide smitten with the wife (Kirsten Dunst) of a wealthy American con man (Viggo Mortensen) on the run from mobsters. The thriller is also based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Strangers on a Train”).

Love is Strange – August 22

Only shy of “Boyhood” as the most acclaimed festival darling of the new year, “Love is Strange” showcases the fascinating pairing of John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a gay couple in New York forced to live apart. It comes from Ira Sachs, who broke onto the scene with 2012’s gay romance “Keep the Lights On.”

Frank – August 22

Michael Fassbender’s big starring role this year is in “X-Men,” but his “biggest” role is under a ceramic, cartoon head in the screwy Sundance comedy “Frank.” While it starts as a high concept of the mysterious Frank as the leader of a rock band, it deepens as a character study about mental illness, art and psychology. Continue reading “Summer Movie Preview 2014”

15 Great Actors (other than Leo) who have never won an Oscar

Everyone wants Leonardo DiCaprio to win an Oscar, but his lack of one may not even be the most outrageous.

Leonardo DiCaprio is turning 40 this year, and in that time he has four Oscar nominations for acting to his name, including one for this past year’s performance in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but he has never won.

This, in some circles of the web, is viewed as an inexplicable tragedy on par with freezing to death after a giant shipwreck and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

The argument in his defense goes, if any actor deserves a lifetime achievement award, it’s him, or alternatively, if you’re going to give him one of those “career Oscars,” better give him one now while he’s in his “prime.”

Not everyone can win an Oscar. For many, the time or the movie just wasn’t right, the rest of the field was too strong, and the Academy will rely on history to rectify their mistake.

If Leo loses again this year (and he very well may to first time nominee Matthew McConaughey), he will only be behind an elite group of six actors who have managed to lose more times than he has (including this year’s five time nominee Amy Adams) without winning. But even of those he is ahead of in the losing streak, his lack of an Oscar may not even be the most egregious.

Click through each photo to read a not exhaustive list of 15 other great actors who have never won an Oscar.

Continue reading “15 Great Actors (other than Leo) who have never won an Oscar”

2014 Oscar Winner Predictions

“12 Years a Slave” will win Best Picture, along with three other Oscars.

The Oscars are here, although maybe not soon enough. A report recently said that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture winners yet. That to me doesn’t add up for a movie like “Gravity” that made as much money as it did, but the point is that this awards season, while interesting, has just gone on too long. A New York Times article wondered if the average individual is generally apathetic to the whole institution of the Oscars.

I hope that isn’t true, but it’s starting to feel that way when the debate over “12 Years a Slave” versus “American Hustle” has long since past, when we’ve heard the story about Jonah Hill getting paid as little as SAG would allow to work for Martin Scorsese over and over again, and when even “Let it Go” parodies are getting old.

Anyway, here are my final predictions. You may find there’s more consensus and predictability than you’d think.

12 Years a Slave

Best Picture

Months ago I wrote an article bluntly titled “Gravity Will NOT Win Best Picture… Probably.” It was smart of me to add on that last word, because the good news is that “Gravity,” my favorite film of the year, is still here. It is still as much of a favorite to win now as it was back when it premiered at Toronto, despite all the things I said about it technically having come true.

But in the case of “Gravity,” the nitpickers have beaten the dollars, and a more “worthy” title, one that isn’t seen as just “a ride” or a movie with a “bad script” will have to take its place. That film will be “12 Years a Slave,” as many predicted long ago that it was invincible. It has now survived with wins at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes as the one to beat, and yet its tie in the Producers Guild Awards with “Gravity” confirms just how close this race is.

“American Hustle” may not be the last minute favorite after all, and it’s a shame for David O. Russell, who would now be 0-3 in a row on his current hot streak. The third time is not the charm, it seems, but I’m betting he’ll strike again, whereas Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen may never make another Oscar friendly movie. The reason I feel it can’t win, and why some are predicting it might not win anything, is, what exactly is the narrative behind this movie winning? It’s a throwback, but not quite. It’s a crowd pleaser, but not entirely. It’s madcap fun, brilliant and original, but some would argue even that’s not all true.

“Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” each have their supporters who would say otherwise about all of the above, and a win for them will mean something special.

The 3rd Annual Anti-Oscars

The movies and the performers that don’t stand a chance of getting nominated this year.

Each year there are movies and performers that don’t just fail to get nominated for the Academy Awards but aren’t even in the conversation. This is where the Anti-Oscars were born.

Blogs, critics and Oscar pundits spend a lot of time discussing what’s in and less discussing what’s out. So although I’ve taken the time to do actual Oscar predictions, hopefully this piece can shed some light on under the radar work while placing it in the context of this behemoth we call the Oscar race.

See last year’s Anti-Oscars

Best Picture

  • Prisoners
  • The Spectacular Now
  • Spring Breakers
  • The Place Beyond the Pines
  • Upstream Color
  • Frances Ha
  • This is the End
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Some of this year’s actual Oscar nominees are as strong as they’ve ever been, and yet it still boggles the mind that the Academy considers there to be nine better movies than “Before Midnight”. That nominee, along with “Blue Jasmine,” “All is Lost” and “Fruitvale Station,” will likely miss the cut, but they were at least on someone’s radar.

Movies like “The Spectacular Now” and “Frances Ha” are those indie gems that never get noticed by the Academy, maybe an Original Screenplay nod if they’re lucky. They represent the modernity and the youth often missing in the Oscars. They’re actors’ films with minimal story but an exploration of a point in life, and they share the style that makes them distinctly cinema.

“Spring Breakers” and “Upstream Color” are on the other end of the spectrum, indies too weird and polarizing to even be considered by the old fashioned Academy, even if their membership is slanting younger. Both utilize excessive style and their directors’ daring vision to create jarring, innovative films, one about way too much and the other arguably about nothing at all. Both however are beguiling, hypnotic mysteries.

In the middle are “Prisoners” and “The Place Beyond the Pines,” both midsize thrillers that were labeled as either too ridiculous or too portentous. They stretch storytelling boundaries with their ambitious screenplays, and they earn major thrills that even some of the likely Best Picture contenders can’t muster.

And last are the two studio movies, “This is the End” and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” one a bit more massive than the other. These movies are why most people go to the movies, and they’re the ones that almost never show up on Hollywood’s most important night. They combine massive movie star appeal with rambunctious and accessible storytelling. But most of all, they’re fun. If the Oscars can be  self-serious homework, these movies are a different sort of escapism. Continue reading “The 3rd Annual Anti-Oscars”

2014 Oscars Final Predictions

Who all will be nominated for the 2014 Oscars on January 16.

The day has come. Everyone’s had their say, and the Oscar nominations are only days away. In one corner we have strong consensus on some absolute great movies, movies that could sit on any year’s Best Picture list and be stronger contenders than they are here. And in the other corner you have controversy, bitching, stewing and whining that maybe just about all of these are overrated to some degree. I mean, we knew “Spring Breakers” wasn’t about to be nominated, but does the Academy really think there are 10 better movies this year than “Before Midnight”?

It’s easy to get exhausted by all the bickering, but then that’s criticism, and that’s the Oscar race. It isn’t every year that we get three, maybe four plausible winners in such a vast field.

I tend to enjoy Oscar nomination morning even more so than Oscar night itself. There are more chances for surprise, for curveballs, snubs and the opportunity to pick the winner. Maybe not everyone is aware that Cate Blanchett’s Oscar win this year will be a foregone conclusion (watch me eat those words), but there’s a lot less certainty when it’s so close to being over.

This year my predictions have gone back and forth, but not as much as you might think. Movies like “Rush,” “August: Osage County” and “Fruitvale Station” have been pushed to the margins as the months have passed, and “Her” and “American Hustle” have emerged as more than gems. But this crop of films that we started with back in October has stayed mostly constant because all of them have been as good, if not better than expected. No amount of prognosticating, statistics and snubs can take all that away.

Best Picture

  1. 12 Years a Slave
  2. Gravity
  3. American Hustle
  4. Her
  5. Captain Phillips
  6. Saving Mr. Banks
  7. The Wolf of Wall Street
  8. Nebraska
  9. Inside Llewyn Davis

This remains a race between “12 Years a Slave,” “Gravity,” “American Hustle” and to a lesser degree “Her,” and it’s most exciting to know that not one is the runaway favorite. “12 Years” may be in the lead, but “American Hustle” pulled the hat trick of being recognized by all three guilds, the DGA, PGA and WGA.

“Captain Phillips” and “Saving Mr. Banks” seem like safe fifth and sixth bets, both studio films but one with an edgy action pulse and the other a family friendly affair full of Old Hollywood nostalgia.

A bigger question mark however hangs over “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the most controversial of all the contenders, and “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which has been hit or miss. Opposite “American Hustle,” it pulled the hat trick of being snubbed by all three guilds, and yet it swept the National Society of Film Critics’ Awards.

The reason I feel both are getting in is the little movie no one is talking about, “Nebraska.” This movie has quietly remained in the hunt despite only mild notices for its actors. Alexander Payne missed with the DGA, and no critics have really come to bat for it. But is there a fear that it can’t scrape together a measly 300 1st place votes? Both “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Wolf” have that kind of love, despite the hate, and this will be a nine horse race for the third year running. Continue reading “2014 Oscars Final Predictions”

Very Early 2014 Movie Preview

25 interesting films worth getting excited for at this very early stage.

This time last year I published a list of some of my most anticipated movies of 2013, and although I acknowledged at the time that I really had no clue of the quality of any of the films, let alone what they would even be about, it’s amazing the picks that landed and the ones that didn’t.

In the plus column, I plugged “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Gravity,” “Prisoners,” “The Place Beyond the Pines,” “Captain Phillips,” “This is the End,” “Before Midnight” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”  Not a bad batting average.

On the minus side however, I talked about “To the Wonder,” “Oldboy,” “Ender’s Game,” “I’m So Excited” and “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.”

And a handful, including “The Monuments Men,” “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” and “Labor Day”  still have not come out. How about that for a prediction?

So which of the 25 movies I’ve picked here will we be talking about at the end of 2014? It could be all of them.

Continue reading “Very Early 2014 Movie Preview”

The Best Movies of 2013

Championing a year in cinema and the stories only it can tell

The major theme across the intros to most of this year’s Best Film lists has been that the movies matter. Critics have championed the movies that could only be movies, ones that feel cinematic not because they’re big but because they can be small, because they can avoid “complex narrative” as championed by TV and use imagery and style above all to convey a different sort of complexity.

Here’s Richard Brody on the cinematic squabble:

“The ever-increasing prominence of television is, in turn, sparking a renewed reflection on the part of filmmakers about what cinema is, and what it can be. The conflict between the dependent image and the essential image, between the transparent and the conspicuous, is real and serious…The best movies this year are films of combative cinema, audacious inventions in vision. The specificity and originality of their moment-to-moment creation of images offers new ways for viewers to confront the notion of what “narrative” might be.”

And A.O. Scott:

“It is easy to conclude that movies have surrendered that long-held vanguard position. The creative flowering of television has exposed the complacency and conservatism that rules big-money filmmaking at the studio level… But within this landscape of bloat and desolation, there is quite a lot worth caring about. More important, there are filmmakers determined to refine and reinvigorate the medium, to recapture its newness and uniqueness and to figure out, in a post-film, platform-agnostic, digital-everything era, what the art of cinema might be.”

They seem to say in blunter terms, “Yeah, TV’s good, but fuck that.”

This is cinema. You can hurl around “golden age of TV” all you want, but I can’t imagine any of these stories, some of them with minimal plot, some with no discernable plot at all, being transplanted to TV.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t deeply moving works of art, experiences with beginnings, middles and ends that carry emotions, characters and visceral sensations through their durations.

These are the things you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t know if the movies are blooming or dying (the consensus seems to be both), but they continue to be groundbreaking and frankly amazing.

I’m aware there’s five seasons of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix, but these 25 movies, 15 ranked, eight unranked and two Honorable Mentions, are the stuff that will blow your mind if you gave it the time of day.

Click through to browse the gallery and read each blurb. Reviews to each film are linked in the caption of each photo. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2013”

2013: The Year in Superlatives

The Best of Everything Else in 2013

Each year there are so many great movie moments worth cherishing and recommending. This year got fairly ridiculous in how many media outlets had to make extensive lists for even the most minuscule things. I don’t have the time, patience or resources to write so many year-end lists, but it remains fun to make them. You can read my Best Movies of the Year list here; many included there can be found here.

Top 15 Scenes

  • Solomon Northup dangles from a noose struggling to keep his toes on the ground as other slaves go about their day in the background of an agonizingly long wide shot
  • Jesse and a half naked Celine argue in a Greek hotel room
  • Richie DiMasso and Edith Greensley dance in a club and agree in a bathroom stall to “No more fake shit” while a drunk Rosalyn predicts the exact moment when her husband Irving will say “We need to talk business”
  • The Weston family dinner table scene
  • The opening shot of “Gravity”
  • Captain Phillips can barely function as he’s just been rescued and Navy doctors tend to him
  • Theodore and his operating system Samantha have sex for the first time
  • Llewyn Davis auditions with a solo of “The Death of Queen Jane” before a producer coldly says to him “I don’t see any money here”
  • David and Ross Grant steal a compressor from a barn that turns out not to be their father’s
  • Detective Loki isn’t sure if he hears a faint whistle coming from somewhere
  • India and her uncle Charlie play a duet on piano complete with tension and forbidden sexual sensations
  • Audrina Patridge’s completely bright and see-through Hollywood home is robbed as seen from a single shot far off in the distance
  • Sutter has a fight with Aimee and kicks her out of his car
  • James Franco and Danny McBride argue about where they can and can’t masturbate
  • Kris is drugged and hypnotized by an unseen assailant with “a deformity in which his face is made by the same material as the sun” Continue reading “2013: The Year in Superlatives”

2014 Oscar Predictions Round 3

“Her” and “American Hustle” give “Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” a run for their money.

Checking Twitter in the past few weeks has been exhausting. It seems as though every hour there’s a new Top 10 list or set of nominations from a guild or critics group being handed out.

It’s not enough to merely list the best movies of the year but to give the best cast, score, soundtrack, performances, breakout performances, breakout directors, best movie posters, most underrated, most under the radar, best documentaries, best animated films, best foreign films and so on.

Would you know that each needs to be analyzed and has an impact on this thing we call the Oscar race? Critics awards in New York and L.A. (as dictated by people who live in New York and L.A.) hold a lot of influence, while others get laughed out of the room because they’re horrible barometers for the actual Oscar winner, as evidenced by statistics and numbers that often don’t hold up to a science anyway (ask Nate Silver).

What’s worse is when many of these Oscar pundits are shocked (SHOCKED) that a given critics’ group went the way it did. It’s as though every critics group is not just voting for the things they liked but are scrutinizing the “message” that a given selection will send. “Ooh, well we can’t choose ‘Gravity’ because that’ll make us look populist, but if we choose ‘American Hustle’ it’ll look like we were goaded by the most recent press screening, so we better choose ‘Her’ so that we keep our hip, indie cred.” How dare they not go for “12 Years a Slave” like everyone was sure they must?

The point is, all of these intangible drops in the pond do color the race as a whole. If we can pick up on those trends perhaps we can better predict. Suddenly it seems as though we have at least a four-horse race between “Gravity,” “American Hustle,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Her,” as all have picked up some major victories in the past few weeks. At the same time, certain contenders like Octavia Spencer, Tom Hanks or Paul Greengrass seem conspicuously absent from major nominations while people like Joaquin Phoenix, Will Forte and those behind “Before Midnight” look a lot less hopeless.

This remains anyone’s race, but somehow this wide open field feels a lot more treacherous.

* Designates a movie I’ve seen

Bulleted entries are Dark Horse candidates ranked in likelihood of getting in

Her

Best Picture

  1. Gravity*
  2. American Hustle
  3. 12 Years a Slave*
  4. Her*
  5. Captain Phillips*
  6. Saving Mr. Banks*
  7. Inside Llewyn Davis*
  8. Nebraska*
  9. The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Lee Daniels’ The Butler*
  • Dallas Buyers Club*
  • Fruitvale Station*
  • Before Midnight*
  • Rush*
  • All is Lost*
  • Blue Jasmine*
  • August: Osage County*
  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

If you want to make this easy, look at the American Film Institute’s unranked Top 10 list for the year, and that might be your Best Picture slate right there. Each of the movies selected has had well-rounded praise. “Gravity” is getting the populist vote, “American Hustle” scored with the New York film critics, “Her” with the Los Angeles critics and the National Board of Review, while “12 Years a Slave” has scored with everyone else.

As for the rest, the remaining films are using their winter season releases to drum up steam where those like “The Butler”, “Before Midnight” and “All is Lost” have to fight their way back into a crowded room. And those movies are getting no help from places like the Golden Globes. “The Butler” picked up a goose egg of nominations. But they did manage to shove “Rush” back into the hunt.

But Steve Pond has the reason above all why the cutoff may be at “The Wolf of Wall Street”: math. The Academy has yet to nominate 10 films under the new flexible rules, and in past years when the ballots were rerun, the magic number resulted in everywhere from five to nine movies, but never 10. Things could change, but as he explains, even the sheer numerical breakdown is against such an outcome. Continue reading “2014 Oscar Predictions Round 3”