What to look forward to in the year ahead, plus a few sneak previews.
Of the three films I singled out this time last year as titles I was particularly looking forward to seeing in 2010, one was moderately interesting but deeply flawed (The Killer Inside Me), another was a well-liked romp that hardly anyone went to see (Scott Pilgrim Vs the World) and the third ended up on DVD after unfairly scathing reviews and only a few days in cinemas (Gentlemen Broncos). So now, I’m casting my net wider. Surely one of the films below is going to go down well . . .
The Fighter
The unpredictable genius David O Russell (Three Kings) returns after the folly/triumph (delete as applicable) of I Heart Huckabees with a drama about a boxer (Mark Wahlberg) and his junkie brother (Christian Bale), who is also his coach. Just when you thought you’d seen everything Bale could do . . . (4 February)
Two in the Wave
A documentary about Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut; there’s also a Truffaut season coming up at the BFI Southbank in February. (11 February)
Archipelago
The second film from Joanna Hogg, director of the marvellous Unrelated. Something tells me it’s not going to be a screwball comedy. (4 March)
Restless
Gus Van Sant’s first film since the Oscar-winning Milk stars Henry Hopper (son of Dennis) and Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) as a crazy couple of mixed-up kids. He attends strangers’ funerals! She’s terminally ill! The trailer looks . . . cute. (11 March)
Ballast
I’ve deliberately avoided reading anything much about this 2008 US indie set in the Mississippi Delta but have still managed to notice the waves of acclaim and respect it has received. (18 March)
Attack the Block
Joe Cornish, one half of Adam & Joe, already deserves a place in film history for his alternative theme for Quantum of Solace. This year, he has writing credits on two pictures: Attack the Block (8 April), which also marks his directing debut, is an alien-invasion movie shot in Elephant and Castle, south London. It’s not to be confused with Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn (26 October) a motion-capture adaptation of Hergé, co-written by Cornish, Edgar Wright and Doctor Who‘s Steven Moffat.
Source Code
The second feature from Duncan Jones, director of Moon. No further enticement necessary, surely. (22 April)
The Tree of Life
Do I even need to mention that Terrence Malick has a new film out? Have a butcher’s at the trailer, which is typically sumptuous, if ever-so-slightly redolent of a Malick pastiche, or the product of a computer programme that can generate its own trailers for imaginary Malick movies. The film, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, is likely to premiere at Cannes before going on release soon after. It’s the director’s first since 2005’s The New World but the six-year wait has been a mere toilet break compared to the two decades that elapsed between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. (May/June/anyone’s guess)
Cowboys and Aliens
If this looks like a straight-faced Wild Wild West, that shouldn’t preclude the chances of it being thrilling — if you’re going to trust any director with making a decent popcorn movie these days, it should be Jon Favreau (especially after Zathura and the first Iron Man). (12 August)
We Need to Talk About Kevin
All hail the return of Lynne Ramsay, with this adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s provocative novel. Starring Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly as the parents of a boy gone ferociously astray. (2 September)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (16 September),Wuthering Heights and One Day (both 30 September)
Three literary adaptations to get the mouth (and, in two cases, the eyes) watering. TTSS is directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and stars Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch , Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Stephen Graham — every decent British actor, more or less, working today. The Brontë adaptation is by Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank), who has attracted attention for the not-at-all controversial move of actually reading what the text says and casting a non-Caucasian actor as Heathcliff (that’s newcomer James Howson). Meanwhile, One Day stars Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway as two university pals glimpsed on the same day each year over a two-decade period. Lone Scherfig (An Education) directs, David Nicholls adapts his own novel. I gobbled up the book — didn’t you?
On the Road
Walter Salles is still working on his film version of Jack Kerouac’s Beat bible, starring Sam Riley (also to be seen in another literary adaptation, Brighton Rock, out in February), but it should be released before the end of the year.
There. I got all the way to the end of my 2011 list without admitting that I was looking forward to The Green Hornet.
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