Dan in Real Life “A widower (Steve Carell) falls in love with a woman (Juliette Binoche) before realizing she’s his brother’s girlfriend.” I don’t know, the plot sounds trite to me, but Carell’s been on a roll lately, so maybe this will be better than I think. Still, it’s kind of hard to imagine feeling sympathy for the sort of asshole who would…. Oh, wait, the brother is played by Dane Cook. Never mind.September.
The Darjeeling Limited This will be Wes Anderson’s latest movie, about three brother attempting to connect on a trip to India. Anderson’s films have been a case of diminishing returns, I think, but he’s one of the few guys out there making movies that are like nobody else’s, and intelligent ones, to boot. He’s sort of like a Woody Allen, the earlier one, anyway; but one who isn’t nearly as interested in his own greatness or that of his hometown. Hopefully this will represent a return to form for him.Fall.
The Dark is Rising Everyone’s looking for the next big fantasy franchise, and they might hit it with this Harry Potter-ish tale of a young lad who learns that he’s destined to oppose a force of darkness rising throughout the land. Dead Silence A ghost story by the makers of Saw Well, that should be interesting. Ghost stories normally don’t lend themselves to extreme gore, so we’ll see where this goes. March.
Delta Farce “Larry the Cable Guy…” Well, I think we can stop right about there, can’t we?May.
Diggers: “Two generations of clam diggers in the Hamptons on Long Island in the 1970s’ struggle to maintain their way of life as the area around them becomes a playground for the rich.” Good grief, I realize this is arthouse stuff, but the plot sounds like what The Producers would have put on if they hadn’t found that script about Hitler. April.
Disturbia: A bored, under house arrest teenager begins to believe his next door neighbor is a serial killer.” It’s Rear Window meets Fright Night meets Silence of the Lambs! By the way, that’s a horrible title. April.
Enchanted. A fairy tale princess is magically exiled from her animated world to real life New York, where she falls in love with divorce attorney Patrick Dempsey.
Evening: “A dying woman (Vanessa Redgrave) is compelled to share her life story with her daughters, explaining about the horrific dangers posed by the Zionist threat”…oops, sorry, the story is actually about a passionate affair she had when he was young and played by Claire Danes. Also starring Toni Collette, Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. Meanwhile, every guy in the country is compelled to do their best to avoid seeing this movie. April.
The Eye: Jessica Alba in this month’s American remake of an Asian horror movie. December.
Fast Track: The latest film by Zach Branff, and it might be time to show if he’s going to grow out of the small, independent movie phase. Otherwise he might as well stay on Scrubs. This sounds potentially more mainstream than his earlier films, but the plot of a Gen-Xer who must grow up and become a responsible adult when his wife decides to stay at home with their baby. Branff still has indie pull, however, and has assembled a good cast, including the inevitable Amanda Peet (the distaff Samuel L. Jackson), Charles Grodin, Mia Farrow and Arrested Development veterans Amy Poehler and Jason Bateman.
Fido: Carrying through on the ending of Shaun of the Dead, this comedy features a 1950’s-era world which has zombies, but in which they’ve been (more or less) domesticated. Billy Connelly plays the titular flesh-eating undead guy, while Timmy is the young boy who calls him Fido. This sounds more like a sketch than a movie, but it will be a blast if they can pull it off. March.
Firehouse Dog: “A pampered Hollywood pooch gets separated from its owner and winds up as the mascot of a run-down firehouse.” You know, when you make a movie with a premise like that, you’re just asking for trouble when you put the word ‘dog’ in the title. June.
Foodfight!: Animated movie about grocery store items that come to life at night and are threatened by a generic food brand, or something. I’d actually be more likely to see this if they used real brands and such rather than made up ones. Sort of like those old Warners cartoons where the characters of famous books would run around after the book store closed. Of course, those were all like seven minutes long. Still, probably a higher percentage of animated films have been good over the last ten years than live action ones, so who knows? On the other hand, like last year, there are now so many animated movies that it’s easy to lose track of them. November.
Fracture: Anthony Hopkins has been acquitted of trying to murder his wife, but a prosecutor is sure he did it.
Fred Clause: Paul Giamatti is Santa, and Vince Vaugn is his crooked, underachieving older (!) brother, Fred. You had me at “Paul Giamatti is Santa.” Nov.
