2012 could be the best year we’ve had for
movies in a long time. My initial
opinion was formed by a glance at the blockbuster highlights, but the
supporting offerings are certainly doing their bit to back my conjecture. Coinciding with Paramount Pictures and
Universal Pictures celebrating their 100th anniversaries, it seems
to me that the bar has been raised.
Recent years gone-by had seen the frequency
of my trips to the cinema diminish, but 2012 has brought an abundance of
‘event’ movies demanding to be seen on the big screen. It is rare this year to come across a month
where you cannot find a crowd-pleaser.
Maybe it’s because of how relatively dire last year’s selection was, but
this year’s revival provides probably the most interesting selection since
1999. I’ll remind you, that was the year
of American Beauty, Fight Club, The
Matrix, Magnolia, The Sixth Sense, American Pie, The Blair Witch Project
and Toy Story 2, amongst others.
So far, this year has given us Joe
Carnahan’s The Grey, in January for
instance, with Liam Neeson on stunning form leading a group of stranded oil
workers in a struggle for survival when they are hunted by a pack of wolves in
Alaska. When it was released, Carnahan suggested it be re-released in cinemas later in the year so that Neeson would be eligible for Best Actor at next year’s Oscars. He was last nominated for playing a completely different kind of role as Oskar Schindler in 1993. Since then he’s been a Jedi Knight, Scottish Highlander Rob Roy, Revolutionary Irish Leader Michael Collins, The voice of Aslan in Narnia, One-Man-Army in Taken, Batman’s nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul and a God in Clash of The Titans, in which he played Zeus, brother to Ralph Fiennes’ Hades
With Voldermort behind him, Ralph Fiennes,
in his directorial debut, brought political relevance in a vivid and
intelligent adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Meanwhile, Daniel Radcliffe left his
spectacles behind and played the grieving widow in the spine-chilling Woman in Black, showing there’s a
promising career still ahead.
Then there’s been The Hunger Games, which turned out to be an essential modern
science-fiction action-adventure blockbuster satirising modern principles in a
dystopian-future setting. It was as
accessible to the teen audience, which the novel upon which it was adapted from
was aimed, as much as the mature.
2012 has not been without its glitches
however. Disney lost around $200million
with John Carter. It was not the big-screen E.R. spin-off for
Noah Wyle’s character from the Chicago-based hospital drama after all, but a
fantasy-romance adventure of an American Civil War soldier transported to
Mars. Fortunately for Disney, The Avengers subsequently assembled and
are still breaking box-office records worldwide.
Nobody can deny how much of a box-office
draw Will ‘Mr Summertime’ Smith is, yet he’s had a four-year hiatus since his
arguably underwhelming drama Seven
Pounds. He’s back and, despite it’s
relatively luke-warm reviews, Men in
Black 3 is pulled the audiences in, ten years after the sequel that nobody
thought would lead to another.
Men in Black 3 opened in a month when the
Cannes Film Festival showcased more filmmakers adding to their respectable
pedigree, opening with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise
Kingdom. Similar to previous
Anderson movies, Moonrise Kingdom boasts an encouragingly bold and eclectic
cast, with Bill Murray returning for a sixth collaboration following Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The
Darjeeling Limited and The Fantastic
Mr Fox. Joining him are Bruce
Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand and
other Anderson alumna Jason Schwartzman.
The end of the year will
see the conclusion to the Twilight Saga
when Breaking Dawn Part Two
hits. In the meantime, its two stars
presented their latest work at the festival.
Robert Pattinson stars in Cosmopolis,
directed by David Cronenberg. He plays a
28-year-old billionaire assets manager travelling across Manhattan in a stretch
limo on his way to getting a haircut.
However, this being Cronenberg territory, his day deteriorates into a
chaotic journey as various characters rip his life apart. It’s the first Cronenberg movie in ten years
that hasn’t starred Viggo Mortensen.
However Mortensen and Cronenberg’s partnership could increasingly be
likened to De-Niro and Scorcese, Burton and Depp, or Almodavar and
Banderas. Whilst in London promoting A Dangerous Method in February,
Mortensen popped into Empire Magazine’s office to participate in a
webchat. My wife is a huge fan of his
and, since she was conveniently off-work that day, she decided to ask him if
there was any news on a sequel to 2007’s Eastern
Promises. Astonishingly, he replied
and she was on cloud nine for the rest of the week. Schedules permitting, Eastern Promises Part
Two may be on the way. He said, “I wouldn't say it's
a definite, but it's looking more possible that that may be our next job
together. But you never know with David, because he always has several projects
in the works, hoping that one of them will come to pass.” Meanwhile, Mortensen played Old Bull
Lee alongside Twilight’s other star, Kristen Stewart, in an adaptation of Jack
Kerouac’s celebrated novel On The Road.
So far, I’ve only covered the first half of
the year. I haven’t even mentioned the
summer, when it always gets tasty.
Awesome is a word usually inappropriately overused, but on this occasion
it would slot in perfectly as a description of next season’s forthcoming
attractions. Following that, it doesn’t
let up until 2013, when hopefully the quality will continue. At a glance, and in my humble opinion, there
are at least thirty-four obvious must-see movies in 2012. Then you also get the unexpected sleeper-hits
and surprises along the way.
Ridley Scott's Prometheus kicked off the summer in style. I’d say it's one of the grandest films
released so far this year. Whilst it received a mixed response from
cinemagoers, I thought it was an outstanding piece of modern cinema. Many were expecting another ‘Alien’ film in the vein of the
Sigourney Weaver series, but this is truly an original story, distancing itself
from the xenomorphs (the alien monsters from the Weaver movies) and delving
into a mysterious adventure controversially addressing evolutionary theory and
spiritual beliefs. It is not the horror
film that many may have been expecting, but it still has moments of suspense
and scenes to make you squirm. When I
came out of the cinema, I was quick to point out certain inconsistencies with
1979’s Alien. In Alien,
Tom Skerritt, John Hurt and Veronica Cartwright discovered the bodily remains
of what became referred to as the ‘Space Jockey’ in a derelict spaceship. Prometheus
is set thirty-odd years prior and involves a team of scientific explorers
finding a derelict spaceship identical to that which will later be found by the
crew of Alien’s Nostromo. However, it would not be a spoiler to reveal
that these two ships cannot be the same one after all. Excuse my geekiness for a moment, but the
planet in Alien is called LV426, whereas
the planet in Prometheus is called
LV223. It’s not essential to the plot
and far from obvious to the viewer – it’s just an example of how the movie has
been written. The writer, Damon
Lindelof, was one of the showrunners on hit TV show LOST, so the use of vague and mysterious mythology scattered
throughout should come as no surprise.
Another much-loved and respected franchise
returning this summer is the Bourne series, which made an action star out of
Matt Damon. The fact that he does not
feature in the latest instalment, The
Bourne Legacy, may concern fans of the previous trilogy. However, trailers centring on another CIA
operative, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), suggest that his character would give
Jason Bourne more than a run for his money.
It boasts a stellar cast, with Edward Norton and Rachel Weisz joining
returning contributors Joan Allen, Albert Finney, David Straitharn, Scott Glenn
and Paddy Considine (one of whom was shot dead in The Bourne Ultimatum, suggesting events are tightly interwoven with
those previously witnessed). Renner’s
star-power is on the rise after last year’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol suggested he could front the
series moving forward sans Tom
Cruise. He played ace-archer Hawkeye in
this year’s The Avengers, but his
breakthrough performance came in 2008’s The
Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow - winner of most of the Directing
awards that year with the movie subsequently winning Best Picture. So far, the movie she will be releasing later
this year is still untitled, yet I can tell you that it stays in Middle-Eastern
territory with a thriller focussing on Navy Seals tracking down Osama Bin
Laden.
In the meantime, another one of the most innovative of directors
working today brings closure to his saga of Batman movies this month with The Dark Knight Rises. As far as I’m
concerned, this is The Film of the Year.
Be prepared for its epic-scale being matched by its running-time at
2hours 44minutes. The cast of the series
was already very impressive with Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman
and Michael Caine. Carrying through to The Dark Knight Rises, the ensemble
cast improves further with Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard and
Joseph Gordon-Levitt joining under Christopher
Nolan’s direction. I don’t need to say
much about this one - it’s going to be huge.
