Films To See In 2009

It’s a tight run race for most anticipated movie for the Mint in 2009 with some major league big hitters returning to the screen from all strata of US film and a couple of foreign numbers that sound terrific. So on with the show;

 

‘Tree Of Life‘ – Terence Malick is back and it quite simply doesn’t get much better than that. He’s moving at lightning speed these days, spending a mere four years between films as well as producing a couple of other projects in the hiatus. Plot details are sketchy (that was from last April) on this but it seems to center on the coming of age of a group of friends in 1950’s America. The cast is heavyweight with the likes of Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in the main roles, filming wrapped in August last year so no doubt Malick has spent the intervening period putting his meticulous touches to another visual poem. Like ‘The New World‘ this story has been floating around in Malicks cerebellum since the 1970’s so this will certainly be an opening night visit, to whet your appetite I’ve read that the intention of the film is nothing less than a metaphysical examination of the purpose of time. So, nothing too ambitious then…. 

 

‘Avatar‘ – The more I hear about this the more excited I get. James Cameron is back after a ten year hiatus with what sounds like the most ambitious SF project since ‘2001’. Plot details are scant but it sounds like it’s the tale of one man who gets pulled into an intergalactic war with an alien race who are able to possess humans. That’s not exactly inspiring (and probably deliberately  murky) but when you delve into the approach that Cameron is taking in terms of incorporating photo-realistic CGI, 3D motion capture, miniature design and every other tool at the forefront of visual design then I for one am getting hugely excited. I’m going to go out on a limb here and claim that Cameron is aiming for nothing less than taking cinema forward into the 21st century by realising the full potential of the new technologies available to platinum standard, astronomical budget wielding directors and exactly how these technologies can be fused to transform the art form – think the ‘The Jazz Singer‘ and the introduction of sound, ‘The Robe‘ with the first introduction of the wide-screen format or the aforementioned ‘2001‘ and the use of mattes, process shots and miniatures which still pass muster today, 40 years on. Of course what is essential is that the story and characters are not dwarfed by the technology on show which is something Cameron is quite rightly acutely aware of, it will be good to see him back with Ripley as well. He’s actually hired Harvard and Oxford sociologists, linguists, ethnologists and the like in an effort to research and construct a believable alien species culture – that’s a positively Kubrickian level of pre-production. A long wait alas as it’s not due until December, here is the first teaser video. EDIT – OK so the teaser says Summer 2009, looks like they may have brought it forward. I ain’t complaining…

     

‘Public Enemies‘ – Michael Mann is back and seems to have taken a new direction, climbed into a time machine and taken his unique approach to the crime milieu back to the 1920’s with a thoroughly amazing cast. Details are sketchy, there’s no trailer or other promotional material to speak of as yet  but I’m sure it will be another great crime film with a stunning evocation of the jazz age, a trademark examination of the blurring of lines between the criminal and legal, some terrific production design with nods to the rich vein of American gangster movie history coupled with some cunning film noir visual motifs. Here is a great article on Mann and the influence of the genius that is Edward Hopper on his work. I expect more of the same given the ‘Public Enemies’ time period.

 

‘The Road‘ – Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian masterpiece gets the big screen treatment with this adaptation of his post 9/11, post Katrina global-warming Armageddon fable. I can’t think of a better marriage of subject matter and director, if anyone can get those bane blasted landscapes visualised, if anyone can master the chilling nature of humanity reverting back to a medieval era of utter brutality with that tangible sense of absolute despair that permeates the novel up on then it’s John Hillcoat, the brilliant director behind ‘The Proposition‘ and cult ‘Ghosts Of The Civil Dead‘ which is a tough, tough movie. Viggo Mortensen is perfectly cast as ‘The Man’ with newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee as ‘The Son’, it should be interesting to see how they tackle some of the religious subtleties of the novel. ‘The Road‘ is one of the most brutal yet moving books I’ve ever read, I really hope they do it justice.

 

‘Let The Right One In‘ – has been getting universally amazing reviews and is hotly debated on many of the podcasts I frequent, it’s very irritating when like me you do everything humanly possible to avoid spoilers of even the smallest kind. Also annoyingly the damn thing isn’t out until April February in the UK and I refuse to torrent it as I’m pulling the purist card on this one, if it’s half as good as the reviews make out (it even got on the Sight & Sound best film list for 2008, quite a rarity for a ‘genre’ picture) then it’s a must see cinema jaunt. It also looks very much like a ‘winter’ film so I’m mystified why it isn’t getting an earlier release given so I’m quite glad the release has been moved forward in order to exploit the critical kudos that would have dissipated over the next few months. The brilliant Kim Newman said this film has the most ‘heartwarming massacre of children ever seen in a movie’ and that’s good enough for me.

 

‘Tokyo Gore Police‘ – Is there anything more refreshing than some total, utter Japanese lunacy that makes you want to have your eyes exorcised following a screening? This was premiered in 2008 at the London Frightfest festival but they had already sold out by the time I got round to booking tickets such was the anticipation of UK genre fans. It’s the first picture that Japanese special effects guru Yoshihiro Nishimura has directed and I’ll think you’ll agree from the trailer (massively, utterly NSFW) that he has decided to really, really go for it. Sometimes I think you just need to throw away any sense of normality, of sense, of decency and submit yourself to the whims of a throughly deranged vision – this looks like absolutely mental nonsense, if that makes me sick then so be it. Hmm, it makes me wonder what happened to that Miike film I was looking forward to this time last year but screw it, I’m sure ‘TGP‘ will satisfy my regular fix of oriental phantasmagoric excess. 

 

‘Watchmen‘ – Well, maybe we’ll get this in 2009 and maybe we won’t. Whilst the trailer(s) are technically impressive and I suppose you have to admire Snyder’s faithful re-production of the graphic novel panels I suspect this will suffer the same fate as ‘300’ and be a lifeless, soulless adaptation of a hugely admired comic book series. Let me be clear, I’m not being precious about the graphic novel – I love it, it was instrumental in my appreciation of the form that I used to follow diligently but even if you resurrected Kubrick, throw £200 million at the project and shot issue nine on Mars then it still wouldn’t be the same thing as the original book. It couldn’t possibly. It’s a different form of communication, a story that by definition can’t be told in a two, three hour movie but that is always the case with these dense literary templates – I’m fairly sure that some scenes from ‘Gone With The Wind’ or ‘Dr Zhivago’ were dropped despite their immense running time and the challenge to fidelity of the source material. But just to contradict all that I still can’t escape being secretly excited about this as like ‘300‘ at the very least we’ll get some cool imagery and fighting. I for one will be lowering my expectations accordingly in the hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised and ignore the fact that they’ve already changed the ending. Here’s my Ozymandias moment of 2008. 

 

‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button‘ – David Fincher. I could of course deny my excitement and perhaps unrealistic expectations of every new project of his but this gets an instant Minty circle in the calendar based on pedigree alone.  Based on a short story by F.Scott Fitzgerald the film is the tale of a man born at the age of eighty who matures in reverse, reverting back to middle-age and onward which is a premise that is rich in pathos and perhaps a perfect foil to the post Christmas, January blues. What I’m also look forward to with this is a two and a half hour epic tale that will hopefully weave in a unique take on cinema storytelling with some subtle special effects that have caused quite a stir over in the States for their ingenious afflections, I’m in the mood for something uplifting, reflective and worthy of immersion. I’m somewhat wary that it’s something of a ‘Forrest Gump’ type movie with early reviews citing Button as being something of an observer rather than protagonist in the tale but we shall see. C’mon, it’s Fincher so it’s always worth looking forward to…

 

One honorable mention to add to those listed in my previous post is ”Los-Cronocrímenes‘ which continues the recent tradition of interesting films emerging from Spain, the other good news is yet another Kubrick retrospective in London over February and March, this time at the BFI which even I think is a bit premature after last years Barbican season. Nevertheless this has got me all a flutter as has the ‘Kubrick Study Day‘ event that I’ve just confirmed tickets for which from the write-up sounds like six hours of bliss. Roll on 2009….