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FILMS TO WATCH 2008
There Will Be Blood
"I can't keep doing this, with these...people," spits oil prospector Daniel Plainview towards the end of the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. It's a spine-tingling line, delivered with muted but still chilling venom by Daniel Day Lewis, who will once again take time out from making shoes - or whatever it is that he does at the moment - to take the lead in this adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!. With a name like that, you won't be surprised to learn it's about the sloppy black stuff, but don't expect this to be a searing indictment on that little dust-up that's going on in the Middle East at the moment. (After all, that's got nothing to do with oil, as we all know.) Instead, this looks set to be another sprawling, ambitious examination of human nature and the effect of greed on people that will hopefully find Anderson on his usual masterful form. That it's already attracted comparisons to the likes of The Treasure of Sierra Madre bodes very well indeed. Film of 2008? Hopefully. |
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The man in the hat is back. Nineteen years and several rewritten scripts after his Last Crusade, Indiana Jones will be back in action this year trying to save the world from some overpriced Damien Hirst artwork. Or something. Yes, as this is a George Lucas production, plot details are as rare as a good line of dialogue in a Star Wars movie, but what we do know is promising. Shia LeBouf will play Indy's young assistant, while Cate Blanchett will be able to wrap her chops around a bad guy (well, girl) role. Ray Winstone will also appear a roguish fellow treasure hunter, but best of all, Karen Allen is coming back to resurrect Marion Ravenwood, the finest of all Indy's girlfriends. A note of caution though. One of the aforementioned rejected scripts was written by Frank Darabont. Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford loved it. George Lucas didn't. Lucas won. Yes, that's right. The men behind The Shawshank Redemption, Close Encounters and Han Solo being vetoed by the man behind Howard the Duck. Keep the faith, everybody. Keep the faith... |
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The Dark Knight
That happy looking chappy to the left of your screen is Heath Ledger. Yep, the same Heath Ledger who appeared in 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale. Hell, even after his stunning turn in Brokeback Mountain, who would have thought he'd look quite as good as The Joker as he does here? Like Indy 4, little is known about Christopher Nolan's follow up to Batman Begins, but the first trailer released in December promised darkness, huge action set-pieces (eighteen-wheeler doing a flip!) and an awful lot of the clown prince of crime, portrayed by Ledger not as your slightly deranged uncle (like Jack Nicholson), but a hypnotic psychopath with no agenda whatsoever, apart from sheer chaos. Sadly, very little has been seen of Batman himself, and Nolan would do well to avoid to problems of Tim Burton's films which concentrated too much on the villains and not enough on the hero. However, we're sure Bats's role in this psychotic cat and mouse chase will be revealed closer to the release date, which is still, frustratingly, six months off. |
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Juno
Mark my words: this time next year, we’ll be talking about Ellen Page as one of the stars of 2008. Despite having acted since she was a child, Page still hasn’t completely broken through into the mainstream. Sure, she’s (brilliantly) filled the role of Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand, but she also starred in Hard Candy, a revenge flick about a young girl torturing a suspected paedophile. Hardly multiplex material then and Juno, on the surface at least, doesn’t look any more crowd-pleasing, covering as it does the not exactly chirpy subject of teenage pregnancy. However, in these post-Knocked Up times it at least has a precedent to be compared to on the poster and, more importantly, thanks to Page’s apparently magnificent performance and the deft direction of Jason ‘son of Ivan’ Reitman, it's being spoken of as an Oscar contender. My advice: stick a sneaky fiver on Page for Best Actress and a tenner on writer Cody Diablo for Best Original Screenplay. If they win, you owe me a pint. If they lose, well, serves you right for gambling. |
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No Country For Old Men
Normally, this wouldn’t get on my list because it’s already being reviewed in the press and it‘s release date is just a few weeks away. However, the new Coen brothers film can never be overlooked, especially after what happened to their last two films. Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers were hardly disasters, but they weren’t up to the brothers’ usual standards and led many critics to question whether the indie darlings had finally given into mainstream mediocrity. No County For Old Men appears to answers those queries with a resounding no. Based upon Cormac McCarthy’s same titled novel, it’s a harsh, uncompromising western that has been tipped for Oscar glory (especially for lead actor Javier Bardem) and been compared to Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing. The former you’d expect (the Academy does love a Western, no matter how dark it is), but the latter is what’s really got me excited about No County. They may be loved by critics, but I can’t make my mind up about the Coens. For my money, they work best when they poke their head out of Coen world and touch reality a little, as they did in Fargo and the two aforementioned flicks. So if they are back on that sort of form, this could be a real classic. |
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WALL-E
Robots in space sounds like a perfect sell for a kids film. Robots in space, with no dialogue, however, does not. Yet this is exactly what Pixar are doing with their follow-up to 2007’s Ratatouille. Directed by Finding Nemo’s Andrew Stanton, it’s the story of a small android whose job it is to solemnly clean up a now abandoned and polluted earth. Naturally, he dreams of escaping this tired old rock and eventually finds a hope in the shape of EVE, a sexy lady robot who helps him achieve his dreams of seeing the stars. Frankly, Pixar had me at hello with this one. A small, googly eyed robot? In space? Love story? Why don’t they just throw a random Spider-Man reference and have it done with. But what makes this really interesting to my more rational, non-geeky side, is the no dialogue thing. Kids today are supposed to like refined comedy: the postmodern pop culture references of Shrek, for example. So how they’ll react to this, then is anyone’s guess. With the trailers looking as irresistibly sweet as they are at the moment, though, WALL-E could well be the studio’s biggest critical and commercial hit since Finding Nemo. |
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Bond 22
Obviously next to nothing is known about Bond 22. Rumours are flying that the title will simply be ‘007’, that one of the actresses from St Trinians will be a Bond girl and that Eva Green will come back from the dead (probably by way of a pre-recorded message) to play Vesper Lynd once more. All speculation and all, probably, nonsense. So, what do we know? Well, screenwriter Paul Haggis has said that the film will pick up almost immediately after the end of Casino Royale. He has also suggested that Bond will be a man looking for revenge, that Ms Moneypenny and Q will still not be appearing and that the unseen boyfriend whose mysterious indiscretions led to Vesper’s death at the end of Royale may also play a part. Again, however, nothing is one hundred per cent certain and it’s unlikely to be anytime soon, especially with a film as big as Bond. So, is there anything concrete we can latch onto to sate our thirst for all things 007? Uhm. Err. Oh, oh: it won’t be the worst Bond film. Well, it can’t be worse than Moonraker. Can it? |
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The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
If you’ve read my Films of 2007 list, you’ll know that I wasn’t quite as overwhelmed by David Fincher’s Zodiac as most other people were. Yes, it’s a fine technical achievement, it dealt with murder in a mature, non-hyperbolic manner and it’s well-deserving of its place in anyone’s Top Twenty films of the year countdown. But masterpiece? Not quite. Too much detail, not enough analysis for my liking. So, why is Fincher’s next film on this list? Simply because it’s genuinely intriguing. Written by Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a doomed love story (from Fincher?) about a man who ages in reverse. So, it’s just Jack, then? Not quite. This is a story which will touch upon themes of identity, remorse and, of course, death, all of which will be lapped up by Fincher, who seems more confident in his abilities now than ever before. Mind you, we said that about Francis Ford Coppola when he started making his aging clunker, and look what happened there…. |
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Iron Man
I may be a huge Marvel fan, but Iron Man isn’t really that big a blip on my radar. Tony Stark was always a bit of a smug twat as far as I was concerned, and his suit was far cooler when it was a big tin can, instead of the red and gold monstrosity he has worn in recent years. So, why has his big screen debut made it onto this list? Because, quite simply, I have big hopes for director Jon Favreau. You may remember him as the slender dumpee from Swingers. Well, now he’s grown up and become the slightly lardier director of Elf and Zathura. You may groan that I’m suggesting you see the film of a director of kids flicks, but both those movies were wonderful, well-made and semi-nostalgic pieces of work that showed Favreau has a bright future ahead of him. Iron Man, however, is a whole different ball game. He’s never had the big budget and internet hype that will accompany this film weighing down on him and whether he can take it and create a good film will say a lot about his future. Personally, I’m hoping (and expecting), him to make a corking little slice of entertainment. Lacking the depth of Batman Begins and the maturity of Spider-Man, perhaps, but a film that will complete his ascension from actor to director with some style. |
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The Brothers Bloom
As Richard Kelly proved in 2007 with Southland Tales, following up your wildly successful debut feature is a tricky task indeed. So it’s good luck to Rian Johnson, who will look to emulate the brilliance of his first film Brick with this sophomore effort. Again focussing on crime, The Brothers Bloom stars Mark Ruffalo and Adrian Brody as the titular conmen, who team-up with sidekick Bang-Bang (Babel’s Rinko Kukuchi) for one last job: conning millionairess Penelope (Rachel Weiz). Alas, all does not go smoothly and during the course of the job, Brody’s character falls in love with Penelope, throwing the venture into doubt. Early pictures have revealed a visually resplendent film, complete with all the cool and smarts of Brick. So, here’s hoping that Johnson can keep himself on the straight and narrow and avoid the kind of self-indulgence Kelly was accused of in Southland. |
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