DEN OF GEEK
FALL MOVIE PREVIEW 2015 B N OV E M
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JOY DECEMBER 25 VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN NOVEMBER 25 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the genesis of all horror, and it’s as much about post-romanticism philosophy as it is a horror tale. Shelley was only 18 when she gave the world a secular creation myth, and created a genre unto itself. It also eventually birthed the most iconic of movie monsters. Victor Frankenstein puts the focus back on the original protagonist of Shelley’s novel with a new take from director Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) and screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle). Foregoing the hunchback of Bela Lugosi’s paterfamilias “Ygor,” Daniel Radcliffe embodies the dashing Igor Strausman, assistant to a gifted but enigmatic medical student named Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy). Together, they will play God and raise the dead. But their friendship will need to endure these resurrected monstrosities, lest they soon go on to meet their own maker too.
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With all the biopics released in any given year, the subject of Joy Mangano never seemed like an obvious candidate for the big screen treatment. Nonetheless, this New York businesswoman who invented the “Miracle Mop” is the titular character in one of Christmas Day’s most anticipated movie house gifts. That’s what happens when director David O. Russell and star Jennifer Lawrence team up. Joy is the third collaboration between director Russell and Lawrence that seeks to maintain the filmmaker’s interest in grandiose drama and sliceof-life human comedy, not to mention the frantic energy of familial dysfunction that’s a Russell hallmark. For Joy, this means tracking four generations of a family that informed how inventor Mangano became a matriarch in her own right while facing treachery, back-stabbing, and all the other hidden betrayals locked into the glistening world of commerce. The movie also returns Russell stalwarts Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper to his troupe of players, and welcomes to the fold Édgar Ramírez, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen.
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THE GOOD DINOSAUR
After Rocky Balboa, it seemed that the Italian Stallion franchise had gone the distance for the last time. But despite the return of Sylvester Stallone to his signature role, we are actually most curious about Michael B. Jordan and his portrayal of the son of Apollo Creed. As Adonis Johnson, Jordan reteams with his Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler for what looks like the most authentic Philadelphia-set boxing movie since the original Rocky. Adonis might lack Apollo’s actual surname, but Creed looks permeated with the legacy of what came before. Rising up from streets just as mean as those stomped by Balboa, it is Stallone’s Old Man Rock that will get Adonis into fighting shape, ready for professional boxing. Creed has a lot of history on its shoulders, which should be all the better for delivering a Thanksgiving haymaker.
The reception among families and animation enthusiasts has been so jubilant this year for Pixar’s Inside Out that they often need to be reminded about how Pixar has another picture coming out this year, and it looks to be (pre)historic. The Good Dinosaur seeks to answer an amusing bit of Mesozoic speculation about what could have happened if an asteroid didn’t kill the dinosaurs. Apparently, they would not only remain the dominant life form on an agrarian Earth, but they’d also be having adventures with those furry things called humans after a few more eons. In that vein, Pix-
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ar turns its gaze to Arlo, a young Apatosaurus who befriends a human boy named Spot. Together, they are homeward bound on a journey to return Arlo to his family, but not before meeting a variety of scaly critters, including a clan of backcountry Tyrannosaurus Rex and even a beatnik Velociraptor or two. The Good Dinosaur was delayed from its original 2014 release date, but the film’s new vision by director Peter Sohn, which meshes photorealistic American landscapes and animated talking dinosaurs, offers some genuinely new ground for Pixar fans to traverse.
Fresh off his Oscar win for Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu has his next project ready to make a wintry bow, and it appears to be an even more extreme experience. Describing The Revenant as the harder film to shoot, everything Iñárritu has so far revealed about the frigid western confirms that it’s a uniquely grisly cinematic vision. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, the early 19th century fur trapper who was famously abandoned to die following a grizzly bear mauling. While on an expedition in the Northwestern corridor during a period when the United States was still in its infancy, Glass was left bleeding 200 miles from the nearest American settlement… yet he still somehow survived, if only to deliver a furious vengeance upon those that left him to die. The Revenant squares DiCaprio against Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, and Domhnall Gleeson as Glass’ treacherous companions, and it promises to be another curious experiment; it was shot exclusively on location (first in Canada and then Argentina) with only natural light and there is not one frame of CGI. Since the shoot sounds almost as hellacious as Glass’ survival, The Revenant appears to really have bled for its art.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT DECEMBER 25 There is nothing like a roadshow theatrical release. That’s probably because there hasn’t been a serious or grandiose roadshow film in about 35 years. Until now. For Christmas, Quentin Tarantino fans and cinephiles everywhere will be able to see in limited engagement, and with reserved seating and film programs, The Hateful Eight in glorious 70mm. Composer Ennio Morricone will provide a classical overture for his first western in 40 years. In a little bit of monkey’s paw amusement, Tarantino has finally made his first full-fledged “Spaghetti” western—set in Wyoming during the dead of winter. It’s six, or eight, or perhaps 12 years after the Civil War when a stagecoach with John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his soon-todie prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) arrives at a stopover mountain pass during a blizzard. There, eight personalities will lie, spy, and die as Tarantino builds from his trusted repertoire of actors. Since The Hateful Eight almost didn’t happen thanks to an internet leak, the fact that it still came to fruition, and was shot with the same 70mm lenses used on Ben-Hur no less, raises this Stagecoach-meets-Ten Little Indians’ profile immensely. Happy holidays. DEN OF GEEK ■ WWW.DENOFGEEK.US
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