Fall Movie Preview Spectacular! Part 1

Looper

Release Date: September 28^th

Directed by Rian Johnson; Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Paul Dano, Emily Blunt, Noah Segan, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo, and Garrett Dillahunt

This is easily one of the four or five films I am most excited for this fall. Every last thing about Looper sounds fantastic. The premise is that in the future, hired guns called ‘loopers’ carry out kills by gunning down enemy agent sent back in time for execution. Levitt’s character recognizes one of his targets as his future self (played by Bruce Willis), and accidently lets the man go, causing a major catastrophe.

That set-up alone is incredibly inspired, and with the truly wonderful director Rian Johnson at the helm, I know none of it is a gimmick. The cast is entirely comprised of excellent character actors, but casting Levitt and Willis in the same role is a true stroke of genius. Early test screenings last year had wildly positive reception, and assuming Johnson has only perfected his film since then, I say we’re in for one hell of a treat.

Hotel Transylvania

Release Date: September 28^th

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky; Starring Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Andy Sandberg, Kevin James, David Spade, Fran Drescher, Jon Lovitz, Molly Shannon, and Cee-Lo Green

My general distaste for the American animation industry notwithstanding, absolutely nothing about Hotel Transylvania looks appealing to me. First and foremost, the premise – Dracula runs a luxury hotel for legendary monsters – doesn’t seem suited for a kid’s film at all. I would think the fun part of such a concept would be to explore all the variant horror iconography involved, but that would take fairly copious levels of adult content, and the trailer indicates this one is strictly for kiddies, who probably aren’t overly versed in horror history to begin with.

I am also never fond of the idea of large, celebrity vocal casts. Most Hollywood actors, even if they’re extraordinarily talented, simply aren’t good at voice acting, because they are entirely different skill sets. The only element that piques my interest is Genndy Tartakovsky’s name; he’s a wildly talented, truly subversive filmmaker, and he could absolutely do something special. Unless this project is as blatant a commercial cash-grab as it appears to be, in which case there may be nothing he can do for it. We shall see.

What films are you most excited for? Sound off in the comments, and make sure to read PART TWO of our FALL MOVIE PREVIEW SPECTACULAR!

obloodyhell

So far:

The Master looks like a thinly veiled attack on the inception of Scientology. I’d be a lot more impressed if they actually did a movie about Scientology’s inception….

Arbitrage looks like a lame, trite, cliche’d potboiler. The only hope it has of rising above the dreck concept is if the actors in it pull off magnificent performances. Possible but unlikely.

Wallflower: Yeesh… save me from the senselessly obligatory gay character in anything like this. Need a third wheel for it? Less see, a nerd? No. A music geek (of any kind, not necessarily “band”) No. An artistic type that WASN’T gay? Naww… Why be original, and use any of a number of possible third wheel types… No let’s go with the GAY outlier… Especially one that has to be flamingly so. “Ezra Miller was fantastic”… so much so that his only way to play a gay teen is to be so obviously gay that he’s going to regularly get beat up for it? I mean, really? Seems to me that the fantastic way to play a gay person would be one that WASN’T obviously gay from 100 paces. Because THAT is a heck of a lot more like most gays than the ones who look like they’re getting tooled up for a career in the ballet.

Looper looks good. Dredd might surprise (though releasing either in September, the “dead zone” for movies, is a bad sign for the studio’s opinions of them both).