‘A Most Violent Year’
November 12 (limited)
It’s a big year for Jessica Chastain. Between The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, Interstellar, Miss Julie (which didn’t even make the list due to not yet having a U.S. release date), and A Most Violent Year, 2014 is a year of several incredible projects for Chastain. Her costars Oscar Isaac (The Two Faces of January, Mojave) and David Oyelowo (more on him later) are similarly busy, and with the three of them this is definitely a movie to watch.
J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year is set during the winter of 1981 in New York City during one of the most violent year’s in the history of the city. The story capitalizes on an immigrant family trying to capitalize on opportunities during the violence.
‘Dumb and Dumber To’
November 14
Can Dumb and Dumber To recapture the Dumb and Dumber magic? In all honesty we’re not very hopeful. The odds are probably closer to 1 in 1 million than 1 in 100, but we’re telling you there’s a chance. Jokes aside, we’re hopeful that this is good. (Scratch that, don’t put the jokes aside. We want jokes, and lots of them.)
There aren’t a lot of comedies coming out in this last third of the the year that’s mainly devoted to prestige films and the few holiday blockbusters, so at the very least it could wind up being a nice change of pace. Hopefully Jim Carrey will be on his A-game, it will be interesting to see Jeff Daniels in this kind of role again after The Newsroom, and the cast is filled with lots of other surprises.
‘Foxcatcher’
November 14 (limited)
Foxcatcher is expected to make a run at Best Picture this year, and it might be Birdman‘s biggest threat. This shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise after Bennett Miller’s prior two films Capote and Moneyball, and by winning the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, it’s confirmed that he’s made it three for three in directing stellar narrative movies.
Steve Carell is expected to be as big of a Best Actor contender as anyone this year, and that’s not too surprising given how little he looks like himself in the film, something the Oscars love. Carell is expected to go lead, but there’s a chance he could be campaigned for Supporting Actor instead. Mark Ruffalo is expected to make a strong run at Supporting Actor, and Channing Tatum’s performance is reportedly very strong too.
‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1’
November 21
Of the movies yet to be released this year, if Interstellar doesn’t make the most money it will be The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. If Inception and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire are good indicators, the two films could be very close in terms of box office totals.
We’re hoping that Mockingjay will be as much of a critical success as its predecessor. Francis Lawrence surprised everyone with how well he did helming Catching Fire, and his work was definitely cut out for him to make Mockingjay – Part 1 not a disappointment. It’ll be interesting to see what new material was added for the movie and to see how fans react to it.
Unless Serena finally finds distribution this will be the only Jennifer Lawrence performance left this year, so that’s worth looking forward to as well.
‘The Imitation Game’
November 21 (limited)
When we started writing this fall movie preview, not much was expected out of The Imitation Game, but then it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was instantly proclaimed a big awards season contender. The problem with trying to predict the best movies of the year (and tangentially the ones that have huge awards potential) before the films have screened anywhere is evident; last year 12 Years a Slave went from intriguing historical biopic to Best Picture frontrunner after its Telluride premiere.
In the early The Imitation Game reviews, Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as English mathematician and logician Alan Turing who helped crack the Enigma code during World War II was described as a Best Actor worthy performance. This will certainly be a movie to keep an eye on.
‘Horrible Bosses 2’
November 26
Horrible Bosses was a big financial success for Warner Bros. and New Line by making just under $210 million internationally on a $35 million budget. Because of this, Warner Bros. decided to make a sequel. Horrible Bosses 2 will feature much of the same cast as the first.
Lead funnymen Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis have all returned along with Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, and Kevin Spacey. The only original star who hasn’t returned is Colin Farrell, and he’s been made up for with the additions of Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine.
Can the sequel capture the same spirit as this first? Given that it was primarily successful because of the strength of the cast, we’re certainly hopeful.
December
‘Wild’
December 5 (limited)
Reviews are still trickling in from the Wild premiere at Telluride, and this movie looks to be the opposite of The Imitation Game. Every year there are films that look good on paper, but reviews come in far too mixed for them to make big awards season pushes. Will that be the case for Wild?
There have only been a handful of reviews thus far, but they’ve been far less than glowing. Reviews have cited a terrific performance from Reese Witherspoon, but often great performances in less than stellar movies are lost by awards season. It’ll be a lot easier to see where Wild is headed after it screens at TIFF next week.
‘Exodus: Gods And Kings’
December 12
Can Ridley Scott put it together again with Exodus: Gods and Kings? This movie certainly does look good on paper, especially with its talented cast that stars Christian Bale as Moses and also includes Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, and Indira Varma.
While we don’t agree with Scott’s decision to cast an inaccurate, primarily white cast (or buy his bogus excuses about it) and we can empathize with those who wish to boycott the film, we’re willing to withhold judgement until we see the film for ourselves, particularly since the cast in undeniably talented.
Given Scott’s patchy track record over the last decade, we’re not confident this will be great, but there’s certainly a chance it could be.
‘Inherent Vice’
December 12 (limited)
Paul Thomas Anderson. We shouldn’t have to say more, but we will. Every time Anderson makes a movie it’s an event, and that’s because he every movie he’s made has been great. At this point it’s hard it imagine him making a bad movie.
He’s made the great but small debut film Hard Eight, the terrific Boogie Nights that put him on the map, the epic masterpiece Magnolia, the remarkable Punch-Drunk Love that showed that Adam Sandler could be a good actor in the right hands, the multi-Oscar winning There Will Be Blood, and the appropriately titled The Master.
Only two years after The Master, Anderson is back with Inherent Vice, a movie that much is not known about. Anyone who has read Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name will know that the source material is weird, and there’s thought that the film might wind up being too bizarre for the Oscars to reward it, though Anderson’s name and the likelihood of stellar reviews may be enough.
But with Anderson writing and directing and a stellar cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Jena Malone, Sasha Pieterse, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, and so many more, this looks to be something special. With a return to the ’70s we hope it captures some of that Boogie Nights magic, and we can’t wait to reaction out of the New York Film Festival in October.
‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’
December 17
Though we’ve been disappointed by the last two Hobbit movies, we still can’t help but be excited for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, if only mildly so. Opinions on An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug have been polarizing by fans and critics alike.
In this writer’s opinion, the Hobbit films are a disappointment, and it’s easy to see where the Lord of the Rings films were better. The Hobbit films have seen a degradation of the quality of effects as well as in story and character development. There’s a chance The Battle of the Five Armies will return to form, and we’re hopeful that it will.
In addition to focusing on the titular battle, this film can be a success if focus is put on the development of the characters. An interesting place to see this will be where the movie bridges the gap between the stories contained in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.
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