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| Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdeen in Far from the Madding Crowd. Fox Searchlight Pictures |
Far from the Madding Crowd
Dir. Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt)
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom
Sturridge, Michael Sheen.
Release date: May 1 (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
I have this vulgar habit of looking ahead to movies that
might be major players at TIFF and the Oscars, and then sifting through the
potential contenders to find any adaptations in the bunch so that I can read
the books before seeing the films. While I don’t share the dismissive opinion
that approaching a book before seeing an adaptation leads one to see a novel
purely as “source material,” I do think that reading to keep up on movie
releases often leads one to neglect a lot of good books worth reading, especially
classics. Fortunately, though, even classics fall within the world of
page-to-screen endeavors and I’m thankful that I finally have the opportunity
to read Thomas Hardy’s Far from the
Madding Crowd. It’s one of those literary staples I always look at it the
bookstore and neglect in favour of something more contemporary (I know, I
know!) and this sexy trailer featuring Carey Mulligan crooning “Let No Man
Steal your Time” is incentive enough to make a trip to one’s local bookshop.
Demolition
Dir.
Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts
Release: TBA (VVS Films is the Canadian distrib)
Three Jean-Marc Vallée films in three years? We are spoiled!
Vallée proves himself one of Canada’s best and most in-demand filmmakers, as
his one-two punch of Dallas Buyers Club and
Wild (my pick for the #1 film of 2014) are impressive coups. Demolition puts
Vallée back in the territory of trauma and memory, so expect more of that
wonderful editing as Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a man overcoming the death of his
wife with the help of a woman he meets through a chance encounter (Naomi
Watts). Vallée’s latest project takes a script by Bryan Sipe, which made the
2007 Black List of the best unproduced screenplays, and the director’s recent
spate of successes has caused the film to sell-outrapidly across the world, which proves that the Quebecois filmmaker is enjoying
a wild ride of success that one simply can’t find in Canadian film. Vallée’s
recent hits show the signature style and vision of his Canadian films, too, so
he’s paving the way for future artists in this country to see that there’s no
loss of artistic integrity required when signing off elsewhere. If anything, he’s
found more freedom to work on larger scales without having to worry that a
single music cue might cost an exorbitant percentage of his film’s modest
Canadian budget as it did on his breakout hit C.R.A.Z.Y.
Sicario
Dir. Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners)
Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro
Release: TBA (Lionsgate has the film in the USA)
So many Canadian directors are making it big in America, but
it’s refreshing to see so many of them staying true to the style and vision
they developed making films in Canada. Denis Villeneuve, for example, is
sticking to Hollywood following the success of the 2013’s tense drama Prisoners, and he’s back with a film
about the ethical and moral limits of the pursuit of justice. Sicario takes Villeneuve into the world
of the war on drugs as Emily Blunt stars as an upstart FBI agent on the hunt to
take down the leader of a Mexican cartel (Benicio Del Toro). Prisoners proves that Villeneuve can
make a major Hollywood film that carries the same depth and impact as Incendies, and Sicario sees him reuniting with Prisoners
DP Roger Deakins (who earned his 11th Oscar nom for the film), so I’m
content with Villeneuve working south of the border so long as he keeps making
films of such calibre.
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| Rooney Mara stars as Tiger Lily in Pan |
Pan
Dir. Joe Wright (Anna Karenina)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Levi
Miller
Release: July 17 (Warner Bros)
Origin stories are all the rage these days and, while I
usually deride them, I’m actually quite excited for this trip to Neverland.
Peter Pan himself has to escape and join the lost boys before flying Wendy and
the kids to the place where kids don’t grow up, and this magical return of the
world of Peter Pan and Captain Hook looks like a wild adventure of arrested
development. The film’s bound to garner some controversy in the casting of
Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, but Hugh Jackman is an inspired choice for
Blackbeard, Pan’s pirate nemesis before Captain Hook. I’m mostly excited
because Pan marks the latest offering
from director Joe Wright, who flies to the world of JM Barrie after giving
Tolstoy a thrilling reimagining in Anna
Karenina. I can’t wait to see what Wright has in store for the grand long
take that always marks the centrepiece of his films… and to see if he takes it
up a notch by shooting his signature showpiece in 3D!
Ricki and the Flash
Dir. Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married)
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer, Sebastian
Stan, Rick Springfield
Release date: June 26 (TriStar Films; Canada?)
It just wouldn’t be a list of exciting things on Cinemablographer without an entry for
Meryl Streep. Streep stars as an aging rocker determined to repair her
relationships with her estranged kids (one of which is played by Streep’s
daughter Mamie Gummer). Ricki and the
Flash has been garnering ample buzz thanks to the script by Oscar-winner
Diablo Cody (Juno) that’s been
generating lots of interest in Hollywood for months. One of three Streep pics
for 2015 (the others being the equally anticipated Suffragette and Florence
Foster Jenkins), Ricki and the Flash
looks to be the must-see Meryl Movie of the year as it reunites Streep with her
Manchurian Candidate director
Jonathan Demme. Demme brings to the film lots of experience combining film and
music thanks to his work with Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, and Ricki and the Flash sounds like a
perfect choice to put Demme in the director’s seat for this rock-n-roll Streep
vehicle, which sort of sounds like it has Streep circling Postcards from the Edge territory (yay!). Will Ricki and the Flash bring Meryl Streep her whopping twentieth Oscar nomination? (Assuming
she gets one for Into the Woods.)
Knight of Cups
Dir. Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, To the Wonder)
Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman,
Antonio Banderas
Release: TBA (eOne has the
film for Canada)
The title of Knight of
Cups refers to the tarot card of the same name, and a tarot card might be
the best likeness for a film from the philosophical mind of Terrence Malick.
Malick’s beautiful and evocative films are brilliant mind games infused with
lyrical wonder even when they’re as obtuse as his last film, To the Wonder. Malick usually takes
years to make a movie and To the Wonder
came just a year after The Tree of Life,
slinging the filmmaker into the hit/lesser offering trajectory of Woody Allen.
Fortunately, though, Malick did some extensive tinkering with this tale of
celebrity and excess, so let’s hope that he finds a better fusion of form and
content than he did with the aimlessly beautiful twirling of To the Wonder. Cups also brings a strong cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Christian
Bale and Natalie Portman, so this film might fare better thanks to actors who
can carry a film with their faces as the style of Malick demands. No word has
emerged as to which actors have been left on the cutting room floor, but there’s
scant imagery of Freida Pinto in the film’s outstanding trailer, which has me
breathing a big sigh of relief.
Remember
Dir. Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter)
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Dean Norris, Martin Landau
Release: TBA (eOne is distributing in Canada)
2015 will be a comeback for Atom Egoyan, right? Right?
I’m crossing my fingers that it is, since Egoyan, one of Canada’s top
directors, has been off his game a bit lately with the disappointing Devil’s Knot and the critically-dismissed
The Captive (which I still haven’t
seen). Details about Egoyan’s Remember
are slim, aside from a brief synopsis that reads, “The darkest chapter of the
20th century collides with a contemporary mission of revenge,” but Egoyan’s
been fairly forthcoming with the film in interviews
and the project sounds very promising. The film is a drama about a 90-year-old
Holocaust survivor, played by Christopher Plummer, who seeks to find the man
who killed his family during the war, and the reunion of Egoyan and Plummer
alone (after 2002’s Ararat) is reason
alone to be excited. Remember will
reportedly be ready in time for the fall festival circuit, so let’s hope that
Toronto applauds a return to form for Mr. Egoyan.
Starring: Malin Buska, Sarah Gadon, Lucas Bryant, François
Arnaud, Mathieu Almaric, Martina Gedeck, Michael Nyqvist
Release: TBA (Equinoxe Films is distributing for Canada)
Here’s another promising film that could be one of the major
Canadian offerings of the year. This epic co-production between Canada,
Finland, and Sweden stars rising Canuck star Sarah Gadon (Enemy, Maps to the Stars) in a lavish dramatization of the story of
Kristina of Sweden (Malin Buska), who ruled her country from the age of seven.
Gadon stars in this tale of the queen’s sexual awakening in the face of
conservative forces alongside some hot international players including Martina
Gedeck (The Lives of Others), Mathieu
Almaric (The Grand Budapest Hotel),
and Michael Nyqvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), while
director Mika Kaurismäki (who made the delightful road movie Road North, which screened at Ottawa’s
EUFF this fall) promises that this femme-centric period piece won’t fit the
typical bill of a typical costume drama. Could The Girl King be one of the breakout films for women both onscreen
and behind the camera in 2015? Demands for films by and about women are
growing, so let’s say yes.
Untitled Woody Allen Film
Dir. Woody Allen (Blue Jasmine)
Starring: Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie Blackley,
Parker Posey
Release: TBA (Sony Pictures Classics is reportedly supporting the film in the USA, so Mongrel Media presumably has
the film for Canada)
Is Emma Stone the new ScarJo? The Magic in the Moonlight star makes her second turn as the leading
lady of a Woody Allen film, and that’s just fine with me. Moonlight isn’t one of Allen’s best films, but it’s a delightful
romp of magical realism and fun in the sun thanks to Stone’s performance, which
jives perfectly with Allen’s form of humour. She’ll have a less-awkwardly aged
co-star this time, however, than her Magic
star Colin Firth, since the age difference between her and Joaquin Phoenix
is only fourteen years. I most excited for Allen’s latest film, however,
because it marks the director’s first time collaborating with indie queen Parker
Posey. It’s about time that Parker Posey did am Woody Allen film! Posey’s role
in the film, reportedly a murder-mystery dramedy, is unclear, since the film
has the usually murky Allen-film synopsis of a neurotic philosophy professor
(Phoenix) infatuated with one of his students (Stone), but I’m looking forward
to it regardless!
Spectre
Dir. Sam Mendes (Skyfall)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Monica Bellucci, Léa
Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw
Release: Nov. 6 (Sony)
Part of me wishes that James Bond could have retired with Skyfall. Skyfall, arguably the best Bond film since the Sean Connery days,
has expectations so high for the franchise that any film will struggle to meet
them. Spectre boasts a philosophy of ‘go
broke or go home,’ though, since it takes its name from the global terrorism
ring led by Dr. No and cat-stroking bald baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Ian
Fleming novels and early Bond films. The news had Bond fans a-Twitter in 2014, since
rumors circling the film have hinted at the return of an iconic villain.
(Assume Christoph Waltz’s Oberhausen is an alias.) The film also finally brings
Monica Bellucci to the role of a Bond girl, for she’s been circling the
franchise ever since she auditioned for the part that went to Teri Hatcher in Tomorrow Never Dies. (Bellucci, at the
age of fifty, becomes her the eldest Bond girl since Honor Blackman played
Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.) This
ambitious return to the franchise’s roots promises more of the old-school Bond
with which Skyfall brought 007 back
to life.
Also looking forward to: Tilda Swinton’s reunion with I am Love director Luca Guadagnigno, A Bigger Splash; Scott Cooper’s Black Mass, which’ll probably be one of
this year’s inclusions in the Benedict Cumberbatch programme at TIFF; Deepa
Mehta’s Beeba Boys; Maudie starring
Sally Hawkins; the Todda Haynes/Cate Blanchett/Rooney Mara pic Carol; and Macbeth starring Marion Cotillard!
