Wednesday, June 16, 2004
You know, Wobbles... I'm kinda mad at you
Good movies are few and far between, but from time to time there's a flick that's able to properly balance script, direction, visual style, acting, and soundtrack into a glorious, wondrous movie that will possibly make it into my collection. Tarantino, P.T. "Boogie Nights" Anderson, Terry Gilliam of the Monty Python crew, Sergio "Spaghetti Western" Leone, Robert Rodriguez, and Wes Anderson of Royal Tenenbaums fame have all made some excellent movies. It's no surprise that these guys all write their own screenplays as well. They know their movies inside and out, that's why they're able to deliver such a fantastic blast of awesome into the face of the viewer. There are, of course, many directors who only direct and still turn out a great flick, Michel Gondry comes to mind, David Fincher (pre-Panic Room)... I can't really think of many others, none too worthwhile anyway. The point is, great movies don't come along too often, but I'm going to try and make some predictions of good movies to come. Some will be released this summer, some this fall, the rest will be out next year or years to come, and some of them may get canned, ultimately, it's all left up to the sands of time. So, without further adieu, I give you my first list of Random Upcoming Movies That Might be Good or RUMTMG for short.
Spider-Man 2: I really liked the first one, up until the spirited ending with Spidey hanging off the top of an American flag. I don't doubt that an ending like that showed terrorists all over the world that America was unchanged by 9/11 (never forget). I also disagreed with the Green Goblin outfit, though Willem Dafoe is still a god among men. Speaking of gods among men, look forward to seeing 2 incredibly awesome badasses in Spider-Man 2. I am of course speaking of Alfred Molina and naturally another cameo by Bruce "Check out Bubba Ho-tep" Campbell. Alfred Molina is a vision in Boogie Nights, in fact I think his scene is probably my favorite in the movie, next to the ending scene of course. He's actually been a badass for even longer than that, think back to Raiders of the Lost Ark, he made the movie what it is as Indy's double-crossing sidekick in the beginning. Director Sam Raimi is sure to make plenty of bank come July 2nd.
Anchorman: Will Ferrell's been a busy man of late. He's got about ten projects in the works and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Anchorman looks to be a funny movie, the latest preview is delightful, and Will Ferrell has said that this is his dream role. So July 9th, we should be in for something special, at least somethin better than Elf.
Donnie Darko: This wondrous gem of a movie is being re-released on July 23rd as a limited release. Richard Kelly's directing and writing debut has been thoroughly stripped and molded into something that may even be better than the original release. We're not just talking deleted scenes thrown back into the movie, there's going to be at least 20 minutes of new footage attached to the actual movie, along with a new soundtrack and sound FX. When Donnie Darko was first released, nobody knew about it since it got little to no advertising and was hardly released nation wide. Now we can all enjoy Patrick Swayze in a role written specifically for him.
Garden State: Zach Braff's directorial debut made quite a splash at the Sundance film festival. The trailer shows some incredible visual flare, it looks very mood oriented. This movie is supposed to be released July 30th, but I believe that's the New York and LA release date, so we might have to expect it a couple weeks later than that perhaps. Braff is currently working on two other scripts before he gets back to his Scrubs show, which is one of the few sitcoms on television that doesn't suck, perhaps the only one - in general, television sucks anymore.
Collateral: This movie could go either way. It has an interesting premise and Tom Cruise plays a hitman. I sort of hate Jamie Foxx though. Let's hope director Michael Mann can pull this one off. He's shown that he knows what he's doing with his movie Heat. Though I despise Al Pacino, he wasn't so bad in Heat. Speaking of Heat, rent it, Val Kilmer plays one of his good roles in it, it's always hit and miss with Val, Heat is a hit, The Doors is a miss. Collateral comes out August 6th, the same week as Little Black Book starring Brittany Murphy (You'll remember her from piles of crap) - needless to say, I don't think it'll have much competition.
Hero: 7 Hong Kong Film Awards, 6 amazing lead actors, and 2003 Foreign Language Oscar nominee. Miramax, being Tarantino's bitch, picked this little piece of heaven up from somewhere in Asia and slapped Quentin Tarantino Presents on the front of it, just like Iron Monkey. Hero was made by the folks who put together Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and stars Jet Li as a soldier with no name. The trailer is marvelous, an opus of color and visual effects, this movie is one I'm really looking forward to come August 20th.
There's not much else coming out this summer that sounds like it's worth a damn, sadly, I know I'll be seeing and paying for (in more ways than one) a lot of crap. Speaking of crap, there are two more sequels planned for the Shrek franchise due to ogre-whelming demand, so all you Shrek aficionados will have all your Shrek questions answered in the 3rd and 4th films. There're some awesome projects in the works slated for release much further in the future that I'll mention next time. Until then... May your coffin be made of 100 year old oak from a tree that I plant tomorrow.
Good movies are few and far between, but from time to time there's a flick that's able to properly balance script, direction, visual style, acting, and soundtrack into a glorious, wondrous movie that will possibly make it into my collection. Tarantino, P.T. "Boogie Nights" Anderson, Terry Gilliam of the Monty Python crew, Sergio "Spaghetti Western" Leone, Robert Rodriguez, and Wes Anderson of Royal Tenenbaums fame have all made some excellent movies. It's no surprise that these guys all write their own screenplays as well. They know their movies inside and out, that's why they're able to deliver such a fantastic blast of awesome into the face of the viewer. There are, of course, many directors who only direct and still turn out a great flick, Michel Gondry comes to mind, David Fincher (pre-Panic Room)... I can't really think of many others, none too worthwhile anyway. The point is, great movies don't come along too often, but I'm going to try and make some predictions of good movies to come. Some will be released this summer, some this fall, the rest will be out next year or years to come, and some of them may get canned, ultimately, it's all left up to the sands of time. So, without further adieu, I give you my first list of Random Upcoming Movies That Might be Good or RUMTMG for short.
Spider-Man 2: I really liked the first one, up until the spirited ending with Spidey hanging off the top of an American flag. I don't doubt that an ending like that showed terrorists all over the world that America was unchanged by 9/11 (never forget). I also disagreed with the Green Goblin outfit, though Willem Dafoe is still a god among men. Speaking of gods among men, look forward to seeing 2 incredibly awesome badasses in Spider-Man 2. I am of course speaking of Alfred Molina and naturally another cameo by Bruce "Check out Bubba Ho-tep" Campbell. Alfred Molina is a vision in Boogie Nights, in fact I think his scene is probably my favorite in the movie, next to the ending scene of course. He's actually been a badass for even longer than that, think back to Raiders of the Lost Ark, he made the movie what it is as Indy's double-crossing sidekick in the beginning. Director Sam Raimi is sure to make plenty of bank come July 2nd.
Anchorman: Will Ferrell's been a busy man of late. He's got about ten projects in the works and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Anchorman looks to be a funny movie, the latest preview is delightful, and Will Ferrell has said that this is his dream role. So July 9th, we should be in for something special, at least somethin better than Elf.
Donnie Darko: This wondrous gem of a movie is being re-released on July 23rd as a limited release. Richard Kelly's directing and writing debut has been thoroughly stripped and molded into something that may even be better than the original release. We're not just talking deleted scenes thrown back into the movie, there's going to be at least 20 minutes of new footage attached to the actual movie, along with a new soundtrack and sound FX. When Donnie Darko was first released, nobody knew about it since it got little to no advertising and was hardly released nation wide. Now we can all enjoy Patrick Swayze in a role written specifically for him.
Garden State: Zach Braff's directorial debut made quite a splash at the Sundance film festival. The trailer shows some incredible visual flare, it looks very mood oriented. This movie is supposed to be released July 30th, but I believe that's the New York and LA release date, so we might have to expect it a couple weeks later than that perhaps. Braff is currently working on two other scripts before he gets back to his Scrubs show, which is one of the few sitcoms on television that doesn't suck, perhaps the only one - in general, television sucks anymore.
Collateral: This movie could go either way. It has an interesting premise and Tom Cruise plays a hitman. I sort of hate Jamie Foxx though. Let's hope director Michael Mann can pull this one off. He's shown that he knows what he's doing with his movie Heat. Though I despise Al Pacino, he wasn't so bad in Heat. Speaking of Heat, rent it, Val Kilmer plays one of his good roles in it, it's always hit and miss with Val, Heat is a hit, The Doors is a miss. Collateral comes out August 6th, the same week as Little Black Book starring Brittany Murphy (You'll remember her from piles of crap) - needless to say, I don't think it'll have much competition.
Hero: 7 Hong Kong Film Awards, 6 amazing lead actors, and 2003 Foreign Language Oscar nominee. Miramax, being Tarantino's bitch, picked this little piece of heaven up from somewhere in Asia and slapped Quentin Tarantino Presents on the front of it, just like Iron Monkey. Hero was made by the folks who put together Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and stars Jet Li as a soldier with no name. The trailer is marvelous, an opus of color and visual effects, this movie is one I'm really looking forward to come August 20th.
There's not much else coming out this summer that sounds like it's worth a damn, sadly, I know I'll be seeing and paying for (in more ways than one) a lot of crap. Speaking of crap, there are two more sequels planned for the Shrek franchise due to ogre-whelming demand, so all you Shrek aficionados will have all your Shrek questions answered in the 3rd and 4th films. There're some awesome projects in the works slated for release much further in the future that I'll mention next time. Until then... May your coffin be made of 100 year old oak from a tree that I plant tomorrow.
