The early part of the Fall Movie Season
continues to look like a mixed bag in a good way, with movies of
various genres opening this weekend. This isn't the comprehensive
list, but within the four films previewed here, you're likely to find
something that piques your interest.
Opening this weekend, September 19,
2014.
The Guest
Director: Adam
Wingard
Writer: Simon
Barrett
Starring: Dan
Stevens, Sheila Kelley, Maika Monroe
After last year's
house invasion horror You're Next, writing-directing team
Wingard and Barrett look to be taking the next step to mainstream
thrillerdom. In their previous collaboration, they showed an ability
to create an uncannily functional movie. Everything that happens is a
result of character choices and motivations, and this functionality
is something that is sadly missing from most movies these days.
Joining Wingard and
Barrett is Dan Stevens, formerly of Downton Abbey, as a
southern veteran from one of our country's recent wars visiting the
family of his fallen friend. There appears to be more going on, some
lies are told, and severe violence looks to rule the day.
20,000 Days on Earth
Directors: Iain
Forsyth, Jane Pollard
Writers: Nick Cave,
Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard
Starring: Nick Cave
“That wasn't the
truth.” This is how the trailer for “documentary” 20,000
Days on Earth ends. It's not
surprising that Austrailian singer-songwriter Nick Cave would say
them. He's a famously slippery showman.
In
this film, it appears Cave and collaborators Forsyth and Pollard want
to do more than the typical question and answer documentary. There's
an effort to include a vaguer sense of the truth, the kind you may be
familiar with if you've ever seen a Werner Herzog documentary. Cave
wants his audience to share an experience rather than simply hear his
thoughts on aging, music, filmmaking, you name it. Those things will
be elements, but he wants to put on a show, and he seems perfectly at
home with the performative – some might say false – aspects of
that impulse.
This
is Where I Leave You
Director:
Shawn Levy
Writer:
Jonathan Tropper
Starring:
Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne
“A
bunch of people known for their comedic chops join together to do
something slightly more serious.” That would be my tagline and also
why I wouldn't make it as a tagline writer in Hollywood. But it's
true!
Bateman
and Fey are two of the titans of the single-camera wave from the
mid-2000s that revolutionized television comedy, making it more
cinematic and arguably sharper and funnier. Driver (Girls,
Frances Ha)
is a major up-and-comer, rumored to be the villain of the new Star
Wars trilogy – he's
in it for sure, but his role has yet to be divulged. Byrne has been
good in everything she's done for a decade or more. Fonda is a legend
– anyone who has never seen Klute
should remedy that
now.
And
they play a family dealing with the death of the patriarch. They
stay in their childhood home for a week following the funeral and
come to terms with it and their own problems. It could easily go off
the rails into schmaltz, but the trailer gives some hope that the
witty detachment of the leads will keep things grounded.
The
Maze Runner
Director:
Wes Ball
Writers:
Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, T.S. Nowlin
Starring:
Dylan O'Brien, Aml Ameen, Ki Hong Lee, Blake Cooper
Dystopian
fiction tends to catch on with teens, and Hollywood has taken note.
The success of The
Hunger Games and
Divergent series,
both in print and onscreen, paved the way for more gray-tinted
futurescapes in which young people die a lot for causes that aren't
their own. The Maze
Runner is the latest
in this trend.
Holy
moly that's bleak. But it also looks thrilling, with a better budget
than the first Hunger
Games, and some young
actors looking to break out. It looks a bit Lord
of the Flies, too,
which connected with yours truly as a cranky 15-year-old.
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