(196) Days Of Movies

With Avengers, Prometheus, The Amazing Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises behind us – a contentious summer blockbuster season has drawn to a close, amongst cheers of excitement and groans of over-hype. So what’s the next big movie to look forward to? And what will flop like a decapitated android? Here’s a quick run down of 20 of the biggest features hitting our screens in the next six months. 

AUGUST

The Bourne Legacy
Dir: Tony Gilroy. Stars: Jeremy Renner, Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz.
Bourne, but without Bourne. Legacy instead follows the parallel storyline of assassin Aaron Cross, and his battle against the system that created him.

Brave

Dir: Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman. Stars (voices): Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane.  
This original Disney/Pixar story follows a strong Celtic Princess who must rely on her bravery and archery skills in order to undo a mythical curse.

The Expendables 2
Dir: Simon West. Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Liam Hemsworth, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews.
The plot is superfluous. All of the people above are in it. Plus guns and explosions.

The Watch
Dir: Akiva Schaffer. Stars: Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, Richard Ayoade
Co-written by Seth Rogen, this sci-fi comedy follows a neighbourhood watch group who must defend their sleepy suburb from alien invasion.

SEPTEMBER

Lawless
Dir: John Hillcoat. Stars: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain 

A bootlegging gang of brothers in depression-era Virginia are threatened by a corrupt Sheriff who is after a cut of their profits. 

Dredd 3D

Dir: Pete Travis. Stars: Karl Urban, Olivia Thrilby, Lena Headey 

Remake of Stallone’s 1995 action thriller flop set in a dystopian future in which urban cops are given the powers of judge, jury and executioner. 

OCTOBER

Taken 2
Dir: Olivier Megaton. Stars: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen
In Taken, criminals abduct Liam Neeson’s daughter, so he efficiently and mercilessly kills them all. This time, the criminals have taken his wife. Clever.

On The Road
Dir: Walter Salles. Stars: Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, Steve Buschemi
Big-screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical epic, exploring Beat culture in post-war America. 

Skyfall 

Dir: Sam Mendes. Stars: Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ben Whishaw 
James Bond must hunt down and eliminate a threat facing MI6, no matter how personal the cost. Also, Q’s back. So expect plenty of gadgets and product placement. 

Frankenweenie
Dir: Tim Burton. Stars: Martin Landau, Martin Short, Winona Ryder, Christopher Lee
Tim Burton returns to his stop-motion roots with a film that doesn’t feature Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter. Could this be a return to form?

NOVEMBER

The Master 

Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson. Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
The brooding trailers don’t give much away. Anderson’s latest offering follows an intellectual whose faith-based organization begins to catch on in America. 

Rise Of The Guardians
Dir: Peter Ramsey. Stars (voices): Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher, Jude Law, Chris Pine

Santa, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost and The Sandman unite to take on The Boogeyman. Conceptually confusing fare for gullible kids. 

DECEMBER

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 

Dir: Peter Jackson. Stars: Martin Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Evangeline Lily, Orlando Bloom, Billy Connolly, Bret McKenzie
From the director of The Lord Of The Rings, comes the first in a trilogy of films following Bilbo’s early adventures with the Dwarves seeking Smaug The Dragon’s stolen treasure.

The Great Gatsby
Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cary Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher, Joel Edgerton, Amitabh Bachchan
Stylised retelling of Fitzgerald’s classic novel. Set for a wide 3D release - and featuring the God of Bollywood - this is set to make a lot, internationally.

JANUARY

Gangster Squad
Dir: Ruben Fleischer. Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn, Giovanni Ribisi, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte
A neo-noir chronicling of the LAPD's fight to keep the East Coast Mafia out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.

Les Misérables
Dir: Tom Hooper. Stars: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen
Film adaptation of the hugely successful stage musical in which paroled prisoner Jean Valjean seeks redemption during the French Revolution.

Django Unchained 

Dir: Quentin Tarantino. Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L Jackson, Don Johnson, Kerry Washington, M.C. Gainey, Zoe Bell
Freed slave, Django, becomes deputy to a bounty hunter and sets out on a journey through the Deep South, seeking revenge against a cruel plantation owner.

Lincoln
Dir: Steven Spielberg. Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, Jared Harris
Steven Spielberg’s biopic follows Daniel Day-Lewis’ Abraham Lincoln as he leads the North to victory in the American Civil War.

FEBRUARY

Hitchcock 

Dir: Sacha Gervasi. Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Helen Mirren, Toni Collette
Adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho. An exploration of the effect Psycho had on its filmmaker, its cast, and the cinematic landscape.

A Good Day To Die Hard
Dir: John Moore. Stars: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Patrick Stewart (rumoured)
John McClane returns in the fifth Die Hard movie. This time with his son, though probably still without promotion, he fights evil forces in Russia.

It's Only A Movie

In the wake of the Aurora shootings, the more conservative and religious elements of the American press immediately turned on cinema as the motivation for a motiveless and abhorrent catastrophe. James Holmes' sadistic killing and wounding of tens of innocent audience members has raised the question that seems to be appear once in a generation – does watching violent films result in violent behaviour?

To believe such a proposition to be true is incredibly insulting to the audience and to film-makers. Anyone who holds such a view is at best ignorant and at worst suggestible to the point of lunacy. I have watched a lot of movies. I therefore have also watched a lot of movies containing scenes of brutality, abuse and sexual violence. However, I have at no point during watching such scenes considered replicating what I see on screen in real life. This is probably because I, like every other sane member of a cinema audience, can distinguish reality from fiction. The argument that cinema causes violence cannot really hold any weight until a mentally and emotionally stable person, with a happy upbringing and social life, suddenly watches a movie and is then transformed into a murdering psychopath. I have yet to hear of such an occurrence, but feel that if a person could do something as atrocious as what happened in Aurora, watching violent movies was probably the least of their problems.

The American Right’s necessity for a quick fix answer to a complex tragedy also seems to be incredibly biased. Films are blamed for violence despite passing through test screenings and national film certification committees in order to ensure that the filmmakers’ message successfully reaches an appropriate audience, in context. Yet no one tests real life on an audience to check they understand it properly. Real life isn’t given age-appropriate rating. Any kids film released in a given week won’t include murder, rape, war, abuse or abduction – but you can guarantee in that week the news will. The difference is that you don’t get to leave reality with your kids when the lights go up and discuss how the villain’s voice sounded. The safety of context and fiction is gone. Yet films are still targeted before the news media as the cause of violence.

The Legion of Decency, a US Catholic organisation, were so sure of the effect films had on immoral behaviour that they created their own film rating system - this including the ‘O’ rating (morally offensive) and the ‘C’ rating (condemned). If a film was given the ‘C’ rating by the Legion of Decency, Catholics were banned from seeing it. Some examples of ‘C’s include Some Like It Hot, Psycho, Spartacus, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Taxi Driver. Whilst Catholics of all ages were banned from seeing these movies, they are still encouraged from childhood to read The Bible. The Bible does not have an age rating, and tells its reader at several points that it is not fictional, but the God’s-honest truth. It also contains a plethora of passages explicitly encouraging genocide, public execution, homophobia, xenophobia and the subjugation of women as well as talk of demons and hellfire waiting for those that don’t comply with the will of the constantly mind-reading judge.

Why is it then that every Catholic does not literally follow the word of The Bible? You can read it at any age, and it is not presented as fiction, so why do Catholics not spend their days hunting Caananites and stoning people to death for breaking the Sabbath? It’s probably because they interpret the subject matter in context, ask questions, and draw their own conclusions about how it is applicable to their lives. It would therefore be much appreciated if the conservative and religious elements of the American press could allow movie-going audiences to do the same, and leave films alone whenever tragedy rears its ugly head. Nobody wants the horrors they may see on screen to occur in real-life; but the violence in films can provide us with an understanding of how the ugly side of life may look, yet within the safe, detached environment and the knowledge that it’s only a movie.

Sex, Lies, And A Chicken Leg

Killer Joe

Dir: William Friedkin

Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple

Due to its nature, dark comedy is a subgenre that will always alienate a large percentage of the average cinema-going public. Yet William Friedkin’s latest offering, Killer Joe, dances the line between chuckles and chills with such a careless lack of aplomb that it is bound to find very few audience members who will be completely satisfied with the film by the end credits.

The film revolves around an uninhibited, vacuous and morally repugnant redneck family who seek to have one of their number killed in order to cash in on her $50,000 life insurance policy. In order to get the job done, they hire cop-come-hitman ‘Killer’ Joe Cooper to bump her off; but without the ability to pay him up front, their naive lolita daughter is accepted by Killer Joe as collateral. Jealousy is ignited, deception uncovered and brutality dispensed before a messy final sequence involving sexual humiliation, copious violence, and the gross misuse of a fried chicken leg.

Although Killer Joe features an intense, career-changing performance from Matthew McConaughey, and is in parts both gross and hilarious – by the end of the film it is difficult to totally appreciate what exactly Friedkin is trying to do. When it’s flippant and ironic, there are certainly way more laughs to be had in Killer Joe than some recent mainstream comedies like 30 Minutes Or Less. Yet when at its most sick and malevolent, the viewer is left feeling like a voyeur of the most perverted and amoral kind. This dichotomy between ironic laughs and disgusted groans comes to a head in the final scene, which fails to solidly ground the direction of the film in either camp; with the aforementioned ‘chicken leg’ sequence feeling unnecessarily repulsive.

There is a continuous theme of apathy towards televisual violence that seems to point to some kind of message – although, not unlike Haneke’s Funny Games, it is likely to be seen by most as overshadowed by the frank savagery onscreen. Killer Joe’s scrappy editing and twisted narrative result in a divisive end product, which is likely to delight some, but disgust most.

6 / 10

Stanley Kubrick: A Cinematic Odyssey

During a recent trip to Holland, I had the pleasure of attending the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition held at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam. The masterfully curated exhibit housed a wealth of material from the life’s work of arguably the most beguiling, ingenious and imaginative filmmaker in the history of cinema.

The exhibition began by showcasing some of Kubrick’s early photography work for Look magazine, including his first professional photograph – that of a newsvendor displaying a look of grief when selling papers reporting the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Several other magazine photographs of post-war America led to a small television screen showing Kubrick’s first documentary short Day Of The Fight, beside the camera with which it was shot. 

Boxing was also the focus of his 1955 film Killer’s Kiss, which was projected on the first of the many large screens throughout the exhibit, alongside The Killing. An array of paperwork, from promotional material to budget calculation sheets, offered an insight into Kubrick’s early filmmaking efforts – and his rise to prominence.

These were followed by individual projections of key scenes from each of the director’s more seminal pictures, which perfectly illustrated the scale of his illustrious career. Screenings of Paths Of Glory and Spartacus were flanked by original artwork and continuity sheets, exposing the detail with which grandiose war sequences were planned, alongside the original costumes worn by Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier.

Lolita and Dr. Strangleove…, began the unravelling of Kubrick’s strongest period as an auteur. Lolita was played alongside creative correspondence between Kubrick and the book’s author Vladamir Nabokov, as well as angry letters from religious groups denouncing the film. Highlights of the wealth of material surrounding Dr. Strangelove… included the original “Plan R” prop, the notepad on which Kubrick brainstormed potential titles (such as “Dr. Strangelove’s Secret Uses Of Uranus”), a scale model of The War Room, The Bomb itself, and two tickets to the cancelled premiere from the day President Kennedy was shot. There were also a set of stills from the abandoned “pie fight” ending sequence – which despite a five day shoot involving 3,000 custard pies, was dismissed by Kubrick as too farcical for satire.

2001: A Space Odyssey tends to speak for itself, though also featured one of the original ape costumes from the first monolith scene, a functional model of the rotating set used to film the zero-gravity centrifuge walk sequence, and the actual face of HAL-9000. A Clockwork Orange was my personal favourite exhibit. International artwork dedicated to the film surrounded the screen, which was buttressed by the original ivory devotchkas from the milkbar. Kubrick’s several drafts of the script stood alongside the letters of outraged cinemagoers and religious organisations (and a single hand-written letter from a fan demanding the picture feature less violence and more sex). The standout piece was the original droog costume, hat and cane infamously adoned by Malcolm McDowell.

Barry Lyndon was displayed alongside period costumes, and the groundbreaking camera with which it was shot, which allowed for the entire film to neglect artificial light in favour of natural and candle lighting. The Shining exhibit was exceptional; featuring Kubrick’s personal annotated version of Stephen King’s novel, the original costumes worn by the ghostly twin girls, a scale model of the labyrinth, the original axe and knife used during the bathroom sequence, Jack’s typewriter, and the actual photograph of the party at The Outlook Hotel in 1921, headed by Jack Torrance.

Full Metal Jacket played out behind the several books and scripts used to create the final draft, as well as photos of Kubrick and Matthew Modine on set. Private Joker’s original “Born To Kill” helmet was a particular highlight, presented opposite the director’s chair in which Kubrick himself sat. Eyes Wide Shut was projected on the final screen, hauntingly surrounded by all of the original masks and robes used in the central orgy sequence.

A final exhibit was dedicated to two of Kubrick’s unrealised works, Napolean and Aryan Papers. Despite lacking great visual substance, the wealth of information gathered for these two unfinished projects gave perhaps the greatest insight into Kubrick’s intelligence and perfectionism. He read over 500 books on Napolean’s life, and hired a team of historians to research the most minute details of historical events (such as the probable weather conditions during battles) in order to create what he promised movie studios would have been “the greatest film ever made”. A spectacle unsurprisingly cancelled after pre-production ran way over budget. Aryan Papers, involved a similarly obsessive research process into the hiding of Jews during the Holocaust, but was abandoned due to the emotional strain it took on Kubrick. He eventually concluded that an accurate film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema, and abandoned the project around the release of Speilberg’s Schindler’s List.

The final piece displayed in the exhibition was Kubrick’s only personal Academy Award statue, received for special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is difficult to fathom how the man responsible for such breathtaking and iconic contributions to cinema, through incredible emotional and intellectual labour, could be so greatly undervalued by the Hollywood establishment. Yet the diversity and intensity of the body of work behind that single statuette served as an inspirational reminder that fame was never the reason that Stanley Kubrick wished to become involved in cinema. Instead, it was his unrelenting hunger to tell stories, his desire to raise questions, and his perfectionist approach towards every piece of work as having the potential to be the greatest possible contribution to cinema.

For more information on The Stanley Kubrick exhibition, including future dates and locations, please visit: http://www.stanleykubrick.de/eng.php?img=img-l-6&kubrick=news-eng