For those of you
looking to escape the crush of family obligations and the packed bar
scene for this Thanksgiving holiday, the movies certainly have plenty
to hold your attention. Depending on the age range of your family,
there's something hitting theaters for everyone. You can each choose
a different movie if you so desire, even. Because what is a holiday
without wanting to spend as little time with your loved ones as
possible? Let's run through your options.
The Good Dinosaur
Director: Peter
Sohn
Writers: Meg
LeFauve, Peter Sohn, Erik Benson, Kelsey Mann, Bob Peterson
Starring: Raymond
Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliot, Anna Paquin, Jeffrey Wright, Frances
McDormand
Pixar's back at it
only a few months after their last piece of excellence, Inside
Out. This time, they head to a world in which dinosaurs and
humans coexist thanks to a twist of fate that made a certain asteroid
miss the planet. There appears to be some Bambi-style pathos
thrown in, so expect some weepy moments.
But mostly, and
this is far from an original thought, be on the lookout for Pixar's
most realistic backdrops ever. They went to great lengths to get
photo-realistic in the backgrounds while making their characters
appear more cartoonish than usual. It's a juxtaposition that, on the
surface, sounds like it can cause cognitive dissonance, but it
probably blends together within a short amount of time.
Creed
Director: Ryan
Coogler
Writers: Ryan
Coogler, Aaron Covington
Starring: Michael
B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad
Here's the one I
have been waiting for. Creed has been one of my single most
anticipated movies of 2015 for quite some time. Yes, even more than
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens – the highs
of the Rocky movies are equal to or greater than the highs of
Star Wars, and the series overall has a lot more quality
control than the galaxy far, far away.
And now we are
finally into mantle-passing mode, with Michael B. Jordan as Adonis
Creed, the son of Rocky Balboa's former rival, trainer, and best
friend, a man Adonis never knew thanks to the Cold War-ending events
of Rocky IV, the only outright bad Rocky that is
somehow being repurposed for what is, by all appearances, a good
movie. I am thrilled to see this with a big Thanksgiving crowd. I'm
ready to cheer on the down-on-his luck hero.
Victor Frankenstein
Director: Paul
McGuigan
Writer: Max Landis
Starring: Daniel
Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Brown Findlay
Given the two leads
of this and the tropes involved, you'd expect more of a push to make
it a summer blockbuster. Releasing a horror-ish movie at Thanksgiving
just seems odd. But the studio heads who make the calendar know more
about this business than I do. Either way, it's a retelling of Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, starring two of the better leading men
types we have these days. The action and thrills are juiced up to
Barry Bondsian levels, and the upshot seems to be the Guy Ritchie
Sherlock Holmes movies or the late-'90s Mummy. The
downside might be heavy-handed in-jokes (like the trailer's
insistence on inverting the Young Frankenstein joke about how
to pronounce the family name) and plodding, lackadaisical
storytelling.
Legend
Director: Brian
Helgeland
Writer: Brian
Helgeland
Starring: Tom
Hardy, Colin Morgan, Christopher Eccleston, Emily Browning
Tom Hardy returns
to the duality of man stuff he explored so excellently in Nicolas
Winding Refn's Bronson, except this time he will literally be
two people, the Kray brothers of the English underworld in the Cold
War. Tom Hardy in a gangster pic is enough to get my butt in a seat,
but add the flashiness of a difficult two-role performance and my
longstanding love of gimmicks will take over. This one hasn't gotten
great buzz, but whatever. Hardy's Mad Max and Charlie Bronson. I'm
not about to pass up the chance to see him possibly create two more
iconic characters at once.
No comments:
Post a Comment