And a Happy New Year. That means its list making time, because that's how the Internet marks the beginning and end of things. You've already seen my favorite and worst lists, so today I'll be giving you a list of films that I'm looking forward to this year, but first there's something I have to clear up regarding how I date films on this site. I mentioned in my 2014 best list that to qualify a film had to have gotten a wide release by Christmas so you can have a chance to see it by the end of the year. That leaves a whole week in limbo, which is why as far as my dating is concerned the 26th' of December is the -6th' of January. Anyways, lets get to the movies, in order of release date...
- Selma (Jan. 9) This could not be a better time to release a biopic of Martin Luther King Jr. With recent events in Ferguson and New York City and the nationwide protests in response calling the achievements of the Civil Rights movement into question, what better way to remind the country that we have made progress, as hard as it can be to believe sometimes.
- Jupiter Ascending (Feb. 6) What's that? The Wachowskis are doing a big over the top space opera? And it looks like it jumped straight out of the pulp adventures of the 1950s' and put on a coat of state of the art effects on its way out the door? I'm on board, albeit hesitantly since this was pushed back from July of last year.
- Insurgent (Mar. 20) I'm not joking, I'm actually looking forward to Divergent 2. Yes, the first one ended up on my worst of the year list, and I stand by that decision, but have you seen the trailer for this thing? Sure, it looks bad, but it also looks hilarious. They have a dude jumping over a train track and they slow it down like it's the most epic thing ever. The production design still looks like a TV movie from 2004. Shailene Woodley gets into a fight to the death with herself. Maybe this one will embrace the absurdity of its teenage melodrama and become something worth watching in a so-bad-it's-good way.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1) So far Marvel Studios has yet to produce something I would call truly bad, and I doubt that the second Avengers film will. I like that it seems to be continuing the vein of post-9/11 allegory set by Iron Man 3 and Winter Soldier by using the robots as not-drones. I like that writer/director Joss Whedon is almost a big name now, and his talent for handling ensemble casts and writing natural banter has served him well with this section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far.
- Paper Towns (June 5) Oh, look. Another movie based on a book by John Green. It looks like a lot of the same actors from Fault In Our Stars are returning, and Green himself worked on the screenplay. Awesome. Though I do wonder if his tendency to write all sorts of debauchery can be carried over on what will almost definitely be a PG-13. Then again, The Fault In Our Stars got away with underage drinking and sex with a PG-13, so Paper Towns will probably be just fine.
- Tomorrowland (May 22) The idea behind this film from Pixar veteran Brad Bird seems to be "What if there was a place where the vision of the future of the Sixties became reality? Wouldn't that be so much better and less depressing than the future that actually came to pass?" It looks kind of like a more optimistic take on some of Interstellar's posing the death of the space program as the death of human ambition. That sounds like a party to me, enough that I can ignore basing a movie on a theme park ride.
- Inside Out (June 19) Is it just me, or has Pixar declined from its old position as the gold standard of American animation? I'd say that since Toy Story 3 they've been turning out noble misfires, toothless fluff, and straight up bad movies, coincidentally at the same time everyone else started to catch up to their golden age. This looks like they might be able to make a comeback, I hope they do.
- Ant-Man (July 17) After their embarrassing breakdown in relations with Edgar Wright, I'm surprised that Marvel Studios is still going through with their Ant-Man project, but it looks like they've found a friend of his to make it instead. I'm really interested in seeing what the final result of this troubled production looks like.
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Dec. 28) How could I not be interested in a new Star Wars project. I was as skeptical as anyone else when Disney bought Star Wars. I was just as irritated as anyone else when J.J. Abrams was given the director's chair. But now that we've actually seen some footage from it, I think this project might actually be in good hands. I especially like that he seems to have found a middle ground between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy in terms of visuals.
I hope these turn out well, and I still realize that most of my choices have a fanciful/fantastical bent to them. Part of my New Year's resolution is to broaden my horizons in that respect.
Have a nice day.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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