NOVEMBER 21
November is the only month this fall to offer two wide-release animated films as DreamWorks Animation delivers Rise of the Guardians on the 21st with Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy teaming to take out a villain named Pitch. Jack Frost plays a part in there somewhere, but I’m not entirely sure where.
This is also the weekend the long-delayed remake Red Dawn arrives. Originally slated to hit theaters in 2010, MGM’s financial woes caused it to sit on the shelves until now. Lucky for them stars Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson have since added The Avengers and The Hunger Games to their stable of respective credits and perhaps this film about the forces of North Korea (previously China until it was digitally altered) invading the United States will enjoy a slightly larger box-office bump… though I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The final two films of the month are the most interesting. First David O. Russell delivers his follow-up to The Fighter in the form of The Silver Linings Playbook starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.
The film is based on Matthew Quick’s debut novel and centers on a former high school history teacher (Cooper) who has just been released from a mental institution after four years and placed in the care of his mother. He then occupies his time attempting to reunite with his estranged wife and become the man she had always desired. On the outside, the film looks little generic, but the same could have been said about The Fighter and Russell and his actors delivered a great film there so I’m curious to see what happens here.
Finally, the one film that may just wow us all is Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi, an adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel brought to life using endless visual effects and 3D.
The story revolves around the titular character, a zookeeper’s son who leads a rich life acquiring a broad knowledge of not only the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity about how the world works. However, political changes in India cause the Patel family to choose to move to Canada where Pi ultimately finds himself adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The rest of the story chronicles Pi’s 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the powerful story of faith and survival at the heart of Life of Pi.
I’ve included the trailer directly below.
And with that we come to the end of November with only one more month to preview. I have included a navigation for the other months directly below so feel free to click around and see what else is playing and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below. Which films look most exciting to you?
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Dec.
