Tasha: Way back in January, we laid out an ambitious list of our most anticipated films of 2014. It was a younger time, a more innocent time, when we were still a little worried about whether this Under The Skin thingy would be good, and whether The Grand Budapest Hotel might be worth a look. As it happens, several of our most anticipated films of the year did become some of our favorite films of 2014 so far. It also turns out that the majority of our most anticipated films of 2014 have already hit screens: The Lego Movie, Veronica Mars, 22 Jump Street, Maleficent, Noah, Nymphomaniac, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men, Days Of Future Past, Blue Ruin, 12 O’Clock Boys, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Muppets Most Wanted, Only Lovers Left Alive, Stranger By The Lake, How To Train Your Dragon 2, They Came Together, and Tammy. Not all of those were winners, but on average, they’re a well-above-average batch, as odd as that sounds. We anticipated reasonably well, and mostly picked winners. But with most of what we were looking forward to already behind us, what else is there to get excited about in 2014?
A few of the films we were looking forward to in January are still on the way, including David Fincher’s bestseller adaptation Gone Girl, James Gunn’s wacky-looking Marvel movie Guardians Of The Galaxy, the next Hunger Games film, David Cross’ directorial debut Hits, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice, Laika’s new stop-motion wonderland The Boxtrolls, and the much-gossiped-about Stephen Sondheim adaptation Into The Woods. We’re still waiting on U.S. release dates for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s The Trip To Italy, and Tsai Ming-liang’s controversial Stray Dogs, but we’re excited to see that Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem now has a trailer and an American release date in September.
But what else is coming up on your radar at this point? By the time this piece hits the site, Noel at least will have already seen The Congress, the part-animated, part-live-action feature from Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman. But I’ll still be salivating over it, no matter what he says about it; some things, you have to see for yourself. The trailer and concept for this film, which has Princess Bride star Robin Wright (playing “Princess Bride star Robin Wright”) allowing herself to be scanned into a computer system and uploaded as a virtual animated actress, reminds me of something between Waking Life and the work of Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue director Satoshi Kon. It looks phantasmagorical and self-aware in the best ways, and I can’t wait.
At this point, I’m also heavily anticipating Luc Besson’s Lucy, which may be a bad idea because it’s Luc Besson, whose movies don’t dig very far past the surface of stylish mayhem. On the other hand, I do love some good stylish mayhem, and after Under The Skin and The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 2, Scarlett Johansson has finally gotten past my resistance to her, and has become an ass-kicker worth anticipating. I won’t get into the plot, since the first 15 seconds or so of the trailer below spell it out in too much detail, but I’m looking forward to what seems to be, essentially, a superhero origin story with Haywire levels of physical mayhem and a take on Limitless that seems much more inclined toward action than smug Bradley Cooper posturing.
What’s hit your anticipation list since January, guys?
Matt: Lucy is definitely one that I find myself more interested in than when we did that first anticipation list, if only because Scarlett Johansson is in the middle of the most interesting run of her career, and that gives me hope that she’s going to find more to play in Lucy than butt-kicking and crazy mind powers. (Although I am very much down with butt-kicking and crazy mind powers as well.) I missed Besson’s last film, The Family, but I’m generally a fan of his style of run-and-gun (and gun and gun and gun and gun) Euro-thrillers. I’ve pinned a lot of my late-summer hopes on Lucy.
Another movie that wasn’t on my radar the last time we did this is St. Vincent, which is Bill Murray’s first comedy in ages. I’m not familiar with its writer and director, Theodore Melfi, and based on the trailer, there are some hints the film could ultimately tip over from black comedy to full-on schmaltz. But there are also some big laughs in this clip, and the promise of an excellent supporting cast that includes Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, and Chris O’Dowd. It looks like St. Vincent could have been pitched as “Bad Santa meets Lost In Translation” an idea I would have invested in, and now, would happily pay to see.
Actually, a lot of my most anticipated movies of the fall are comedies. Unlike Kim Jong-un, I’m excited to see Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s The Interview, with Rogen and James Franco as the producer and host of a talk show who are invited to interview the North Korean dictator and then recruited by the CIA to assassinate him. Apparently Kim wasn’t a huge fan of This Is The End, but I was, and I’m hoping for a repeat of that movie’s smart take on dumb comedy. And speaking of dumb comedy, am I the only one who’s genuinely looking forward to Dumb And Dumber To? When the trailer debuted online recently, and the world got its first look in 20 years at Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as nitwits Lloyd and Harry, I couldn’t believe how many people tweeted, “This looks so dumb!” and meant it as an insult. C’mon, Internet! “This looks so dumb!” is the greatest praise one could bestow upon this fine piece of entertainment:
We can all agree that this looks great, right? Right? Don’t all respond at once.
Genevieve: I’m afraid I can’t co-sign that, Matt—I’m not a fan of the original, or really the Farrellys in general—but since we’re talking dumb stuff, I’m not afraid to admit I’m sort of looking forward to the so-bad-it’s-bad-but-in-a-fun-way dregs of blockbuster season. Both the Twister redux Into The Storm and the umpteenth Step Up movie seem primed to fill my empty-spectacle needs, and I might even succumb to my curiosity about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if it’s somehow, by some miracle, under two hours long, which is the maximum amount of time I can tolerate empty spectacle.
What I will co-sign is Matt’s excitement for upcoming comedies, The Interview among them. Additionally, the premise of Let’s Be Cops sounds mighty sketchy, and the trailers seem a little, well, scream-y, but stars Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. are doing some of my favorite sitcom work on TV right now on New Girl (and in the latter’s case, the dearly departed Happy Endings), and seem more capable than most of elevating this type of bro-tastic material. And co-writer/director Luke Greenfield helmed The Girl Next Door, which is one of my favorite underappreciated comedies. (Then again, he also directed Something Borrowed, which I just now remembered was a movie.) Let’s Be Cops could definitely go either way, but after last summer and the first half of this year, big-screen comedies seem to be on a hot streak, so I’m going to remain optimistic.
On a similar note, despite the tepid reviews out of Sundance, I’m remaining hopeful about Life After Beth, primarily because I like Aubrey Plaza so damn much and want to see her in something that plays to her strengths without just copying her sullen, wry Parks And Recreation character. (Last year’s The To Do List was a noble effort, but ultimately felt like a poor fit, in part because the movie itself was kind of ill-fitting in general.)
And hey, Anna Kendrick is in it too, which means I can transfer the waning excitement I feel about her being in Into The Woods—which I grow less enthused about the closer its release date gets—onto this.
Right now, Into The Woods and Annie are battling for my morbid-curiosity dollars on the movie-musical front. I love Into The Woods’ source material infinitely more than Annie’s, but it sounds more and more like Disney has stripped out much of Woods’ Sondheim-y eccentricity; Annie, on the other hand, looks like it could be compellingly weird, starting with Cameron Diaz’s casting as Miss Hannigan. And while Into The Woods director Rob Marshall has the big-screen musical experience (for Chicago, which is not really an encouraging sign for Into The Woods), Annie director Will Gluck has helmed a couple flawed-but-entertaining comedies that I love (Easy A and Friends With Benefits) and whose comedic style I would like to see translated to this dusty old musical. Basically, at this point I’m still curious about Annie, whereas I’m having trouble conjuring anything besides dread for Into The Woods.
Oh, and speaking of morbid curiosity, I can’t be the only one wondering what the hell this is going to be, right?
Nathan: Geez, y’all took all the movies with the potential to be great, so I am reduced to claiming movies that at best have the capacity to be entertainingly terrible, like the aforementioned Left Behind: Money Never Sleeps, the long-awaited, achingly essential reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (finally, my calls and letters paid off!), and, dear God, another Step Up movie that Genevieve and I are going to have to fight over who gets to review it.
The 12-year-old in me is excited about the return of the heroes in a halfshell, but also of every action hero I grew up loving, liking, or vaguely tolerating in The Expendables 3, a.k.a. We’re All Too Old For This Shit. I’m also morbidly intrigued by Ouija (you pretended it was moving of its own accord as a child, now see the movie!) and Dracula Untold based solely on their titles.
It remains to be seen which of these movies will go on to cult infamy, but my many years in the bad-movie biz have taught me to always bet on Cage, especially when the X-factor of the film’s Christian/Kirk Cameron lineage is factored into the equation. I can’t imagine a world where a Nicolas Cage Left Behind movie would be legitimately good, but oh sweet Lord does it have boundless potential to be unforgettably terrible.
Keith: Well, the rest of 2014 is obviously going to be about Dracula Untold. How long have we waited for Dracula’s origin story to be told? And now someone’s gonna tell it! Beyond that, I’m excited about Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh’s biopic of painter J.M.W. Turner that wowed everyone at Cannes. I don’t think Leigh has ever let me down, and his past foray into 19th-century lives, Topsy-Turvy, is a particular favorite. Then there’s Untitled Cameron Crowe Project starring Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone. We Bought A Zoo aside, I almost always like Crowe’s movies. (Even Elizabethtown has its moments.) He’s due for a comeback and I hope this is it. If it’s not, it can at least be said to inspire the most perplexing entry on ComingSoon.net I’ve ever seen:
The film is said to feature Cooper as a Hawaii-based defense contractor who has to work with an Air Force pilot (Stone) to stop the launch of a weapons satellite. In the process, the pair begin to fall for one another as they're forced to contend with supernatural island magic and a talking computer.
And, hey, why not just use Supernatural Island Magic And A Talking Computer as the title? I’d see that.
Noel: We’re angling toward fall festival season, so while I have some residual hope for a lot of the movies you guys have already mentioned (c’mon, Lucy!), my eyes are already trained on some movies that may turn up at at Venice, Telluride, Toronto, or New York. Rumor has it that Terrence Malick’s long-gestating Christian Bale/Natalie Portman project Knight Of Cups is going to be released this year, which means there’s a good chance it’ll debut at one of the major fall fests. I also fully expect that J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year will get a release from its U.S. distributor, A24, by year’s end, though it doesn’t have a set date yet, and I wonder if A24 is waiting to see how it plays on the circuit before committing to a plan. Either way, given how great Chandor’s All Is Lost was last year, I’m excited to see him jump from making a mostly wordless, single-character seafaring adventure to a sprawling historical drama, set in New York City in 1981, starring Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, and Albert Brooks, among others. (Also, the cinematographer is Bradford Young, who shot Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Mother Of George, so the movie should look fantastic.) I don’t know much about A Most Violent Year, except that Isaac plays an immigrant who runs into trouble with criminals when he tries to build his business. I’m hoping it’ll play in Toronto, but I suspect that the New York fest is a stronger possibility, given the location.
Also, while I haven’t been a fan of any movie that Alejandro González Iñárritu has made since Amores Perros, his debut, I have a good feeling about Birdman, which is coming out October 17, and undoubtedly will play one or more of the fests before then. The film stars Michael Keaton as an actor trying to mount a Broadway production and dealing with all kinds of personal and career troubles—including public recognition for the superhero he used to play. Judging by the teaser trailer, this is going to be a departure for Iñárritu: a stylish semi-comedy, reportedly shot by Emmanuel Lubezki to look like one long, fluid take. Maybe it’ll come off too stunt-y, I don’t know. But I can’t wait to find out.
And those are just three of the movies I’m pretty sure are coming out this year. I have a whole other list of movies that I’m hoping will show up in Toronto but don’t have distribution yet, including Noah Baumbach’s latest, While We’re Young, which reunites him with his Greenberg star Ben Stiller. Baumbach’s in my personal top five of working American filmmakers, so whatever he’s up to next, I want to see.
Scott: I often look to Cannes to determine my most anticipated films for the back half of any given year—or sometimes the front half of the year following—and since Keith has already mentioned Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, I’ll cite two highly regarded films from directors I love: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, which won the Palme D’Or, and Olivier Assayas’ The Clouds Of Sils Maria. Set in the same region as Ceylan’s last film, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia—and continuing to tell stories of greater length, this one at three hours and 16 minutes—Winter Sleep concerns the proprietor of a mountaintop hotel, a man detested by the townspeople below and beset by marital problems, too. By all accounts, the film looks as beautiful as Ceylan’s past work, and it sounds as if the psychological acuity of my favorite Ceylan films, Distant and Climates, carries over here, too. The Clouds Of Sils Maria will likely get wider play, due to the casting of a reportedly excellent Kristen Stewart alongside Juliette Binoche and Chloë Grace Moretz. Binoche stars as an actress who retreats to remote Switzerland with her assistant (Stewart) after a young star (Moretz) reinterprets the role that made her famous. Assayas has such range as a filmmaker—from the film-as-film-criticism cult favorite Irma Vep to the decorous period piece Sentimental Destinies to the personal coming-of-age movie Something In The Air—that it’s hard to know what to expect from him, other than reliable intelligence and a great soundtrack.
Keith: So, we’re all in agreement then, right? Dracula Untold it is!