#8
Gravity
October 4
Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and while I’ve skimmed the review round-ups I didn’t read too closely as I will be seeing it soon enough for myself. Suffice to say, the positivity brimming off the early reaction makes me wonder if I’ve placed this one too low on the list.
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone–tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth…and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.
#7
The Monuments Men
December 18
The cast and subject matter of The Monuments Men is enough to make it a film to highly anticipate, but Clooney has played the fun card before and it ended up being Leatherheads. I don’t expect this one to end up being as farcical as that film was (or nearly as bad), but the “jaunty” tone as some have described it makes me hesitate ever so slightly. Yet, Leatherheads wasn’t a screenplay collaboration by Clooney and Grant Heslov (Good Night, and Good Luck., The Ides of March) and it didn’t have this film’s cast — George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban.
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men focuses on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.
#6
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
December 25
Should The Secret Life of Walter Mitty excite audiences as much as the trailer did, Ben Stiller may prove to be a director to keep on the permanent radar as it would make three hot titles right in a row following on the heels of Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. And as much as I expect this film to be laced with comedy throughout, it appears to be much more of a drama than anything he’s done since 1994’s Reality Bites.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye starrer, which itself was based on the 1939 short story by James Thurber. The story centers on Mitty, a man who escapes his unexciting daily life by delving into elaborate daydreams in which he is suddenly a heroic character.
