A VERY GOOD YEAR
By Rob Fagin
Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part II
N
ovember is generally loaded with
quality movie releases as we begin
gearing up for both the holidays
and awards season, the culmination being
the Academy Awards ("Oscars") in February.
It’s also an ideal time for broody popcorn
fare as people begin looking for indoor activities away from the cold. After a dismal
domestic summer box office season, we’re
already seeing a rebound thanks to a bunch
of diverse, more adult-oriented fall releases,
including David Fincher’s Gone Girl, David
Ayer’s Fury, and Antoine Fuqua’s The
Equalizer. This year’s November new release
schedule has a good, if not compulsory,
blend of offerings:
November 7 brings us the poignant
story of the brilliant physicist/cosmologist,
Stephen Hawking, and his devastating diagnosis with motor neuron disease (ALS) in
The Theory of Everything. Directed by James
Marsh and featuring Eddie Redmayne as
Hawking and Felicity Jones as his first wife,
Jane, the film has garnered festival raves and
16 illinoisentertainer.com november 2014
Oscar buzz for both Redmayne and Jones.
We’ll also see Big Hero 6, the latest animated, comic book adventure tale from the reinvigorated Disney Animation Studios.
Steve Carell’s first aggressive bid for a
Best Actor Oscar, Foxcatcher (directed by
Bennett Miller), pits him again Jim Carrey
and Jeff Daniels, who both, after 20 years of
trying for their own dramatic statuettes,
finally said "screw it," and went ahead and
made Dumb and Dumber To. Both films bow
on November 14.
November 21 sees the highly-anticipated
release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part
1 (directed by Francis Lawrence), while
Sherlock Holmes, er, Benedict Cumberbatch
takes a big, grand-slam swing at the ultimate
male thespian award with The Imitation
Game, Morten Tyldum’s riveting look at the
Brit mathematician that helped crack the
German Enigma code during WWII.
Undoubtedly, one of the year’s most
anticipated releases is Christopher Nolan’s
epic sci-fi space drama, Interstellar, out
November 5. The closely guarded story and
lack of trailers (until recently) have kept
most of us in the dark about the storyline,
but if the recent hype is half as good as the
movie (some who have seen it compare its
"epic-ness" to Nolan’s beloved 2001: A Space
Odyssey), this film may help redeem the
entire year based on early buzz.
Nolan, whose projects are always
shrouded in secrecy, has pulled some sort of
impossible hat trick by positioning himself
as one of the most thrilling directors of highly anticipated "event" movies. From the
enigmatic gimmick of Memento, to the
somber refreshment of Batman Begins; the
wildly profitable terror of The Dark Knight, to
the cathartic head-games of Inception; all of
which allowed him to make his strangest
movie yet, The Dark Knight Rises. He is
somehow able to tap into a populist sense of
our collective dread and excitement for danger.
Most crucially, Nolan is capable of spinning a heady yarn with exquisite urgency
and walloping emotion. He’s bought himself
the clout that allows him to paint intimately
singular tales onto a behemoth canvas.
Unlikely partners Paramount, Warner Bros.
and Legendary Pictures all co-financed the
film, inspired by the works of theoretical
physicist
Kip
Thorne.
Matthew
McConaughey and Anne Hathaway provide the human heart to a story about wormholes, environmental disasters and hope.
This could be something huge, and,
whether or not it lives up to the hype, a film
that could hopefully serve as a sweeping
reminder of the monumental rush a true
"epic" can deliver.
Speaking of epic, Francis Ford Coppola
had a banner year in 1974, with two Best
Picture Oscar nominations for two very different films. Back then, there were only 5
nominated films per year (the Academy
increased the nomination field to 10 in 2009),
which is even more impressive. He was not
only up against his own film, but also some
of the world’s biggest, most epic films in history: Chinatown (Roman Polanski); Lenny
(Bob Fosse) and The Towering Inferno (John
Guillermin)…
First up:
The Godfather Part II (200 min)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
Availability: DVD/Blu-ray
The first feature film to ever use the now
ubiquitous numbering of sequels, The
Godfather Part II certainly is a continuation
(even a prequel) to the original film about
the Corleone crime family - but, above all, it
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