2:34 pm - 02/17/2013
13 Movies We’re Looking Forward To in 2013
2012 wasn’t exactly the best year for movies. Sure, there was the brilliantly-executed, Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained and David O. Russell’s romantic-dramedy Silver Linings Playbook – both of which are nominated for Academy Awards. But 2012 was also the year of The Three Stooges and the Adam Sandler-led That’s My Boy (with a special appearance by Vanilla Ice as himself).
2013 has had a rough start with Movie 43, which – for some reason – made a goal out of packing more high-profile celebrities and poop jokes into a single movie than anything else I have ever seen. But we’re still holding out hope that 2013 has a little more potential than that. These are some of the movies we’re excited for.
The Great Gatsby
Baz Luhrmann last worked with Leonardo DiCaprio in the cult favorite Romeo + Juliet, which came out in 1996. The Great Gatsby, assigned reading in most high school English classes, is their next big project together. It was initially due to be released last year, but got pushed up to May of this year. It looks glitzier, more theatrical than the book but that’s not a bad thing – not in the least. The costumes and set design look amazing. DiCaprio is sure to deliver a knockout performance as Jay Gatsby. The question is whether this movie will finally launch him towards that long-deserved Oscar or be another notch on the List of Snubs. (I’m still disappointed that he wasn’t nominated for his performance in Django Unchained.)
Pacific Rim
From director Guillermo del Toro comes the action-packed, science-fiction movie Pacific Rim. The movie is as much of a tribute to those “epic” monster movies like Godzilla as it is an “epic” monster movie itself. Del Toro’s original project was an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s "At the Mountains of Madness", but when that didn’t fall through because of budget restraints, he focused instead on directing, writing, and producing Pacific Rim. The cast includes Charlie Hunnam, his Sons of Anarchy co-star Ron Perlman, Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, Golden Globe winner Idris Elba, and Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Star Trek Into Darkness
While I don’t have much to say about the first one, other than that it was mostly fluff (very well-executed fluff), I enjoyed it. The second helping seems like it’s trying to copy The Dark Knight a little, but what the hell isn’t trying to copy that nowadays? Then I saw the trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness and I found myself more excited than I expected to be. Overall, I’m cautiously optimistic that the second will succeed based on what I’ve heard so far. The same players are back, along with a few new, fun-sounding additions, so what could go wrong? Right?
Before Midnight
Before Sunrise was good, but Before Sunset lands somewhere near the top on my list of favorite movies. Something about the real-time setup and the partially improvised dialogue clicked for me, and I fell in love with that movie. I can’t help but be excited for a sequel to one of my favorite series. Plus, the reviews that have come out of Sundance, where the film premiered earlier this year, have done nothing but add to my excitement.
Stoker
Park Chan-wook is perhaps most well-known for his Vengeance trilogy, and is making his debut in the American filmmaking industry with Stoker - starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode. I’ve only seen the first of the Vengeance trilogy – the earliest of them, entitled Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance – but I was blown away by Chan-wook’s directing abilities.
His style is quite unique, and I’m intrigued to see how it will translate in an American film. The story itself follows Wasikowska as she struggles in the wake of her father’s recent death, her mother’s emotional instability, and her suspicious (and downright frightening) uncle moving in with them. A clip of Nicole Kidman, who plays Wasikowska’s mother, was recently released and I found her performance to be absolutely chilling. Many people are calling Stoker the female Hamlet, and if that’s true, then I am totally here for that.
This is the End
Apocalyptic stories have been pretty popular, especially in recent years. For whatever reason, people are really into watching zombies, aliens, and meteors (oh my!) decimate huge chunks of the Earth’s population – perhaps so they can take notes on what not to do during the end of the world. And now that the most recent “threat” of The Great Apocalypse of 12/21/2012 has passed, it’s safe to laugh about the fact that as skeptical as we all pretended to be, an itty bitty part of us considered the possibility that it might actually not be a hoax.
Enter This Is The End, which stars Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Emma Watson, and more. In the movie, the actors play themselves, caught up in the struggle to survive as their world crumbles and burns around them… but not without being really fucking hilarious while doing so. I may or may not have cackled out loud at the above trailer, even after my third viewing. I’m very much looking forward to this one, if only for the hilarity and snarky references to each actor’s resume.
This Is The End premieres June 14.
READ MORE AT THE SOURCE
2013 has had a rough start with Movie 43, which – for some reason – made a goal out of packing more high-profile celebrities and poop jokes into a single movie than anything else I have ever seen. But we’re still holding out hope that 2013 has a little more potential than that. These are some of the movies we’re excited for.
The Great Gatsby
Baz Luhrmann last worked with Leonardo DiCaprio in the cult favorite Romeo + Juliet, which came out in 1996. The Great Gatsby, assigned reading in most high school English classes, is their next big project together. It was initially due to be released last year, but got pushed up to May of this year. It looks glitzier, more theatrical than the book but that’s not a bad thing – not in the least. The costumes and set design look amazing. DiCaprio is sure to deliver a knockout performance as Jay Gatsby. The question is whether this movie will finally launch him towards that long-deserved Oscar or be another notch on the List of Snubs. (I’m still disappointed that he wasn’t nominated for his performance in Django Unchained.)
Pacific Rim
From director Guillermo del Toro comes the action-packed, science-fiction movie Pacific Rim. The movie is as much of a tribute to those “epic” monster movies like Godzilla as it is an “epic” monster movie itself. Del Toro’s original project was an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s "At the Mountains of Madness", but when that didn’t fall through because of budget restraints, he focused instead on directing, writing, and producing Pacific Rim. The cast includes Charlie Hunnam, his Sons of Anarchy co-star Ron Perlman, Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, Golden Globe winner Idris Elba, and Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Star Trek Into Darkness
While I don’t have much to say about the first one, other than that it was mostly fluff (very well-executed fluff), I enjoyed it. The second helping seems like it’s trying to copy The Dark Knight a little, but what the hell isn’t trying to copy that nowadays? Then I saw the trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness and I found myself more excited than I expected to be. Overall, I’m cautiously optimistic that the second will succeed based on what I’ve heard so far. The same players are back, along with a few new, fun-sounding additions, so what could go wrong? Right?
Before Midnight
Before Sunrise was good, but Before Sunset lands somewhere near the top on my list of favorite movies. Something about the real-time setup and the partially improvised dialogue clicked for me, and I fell in love with that movie. I can’t help but be excited for a sequel to one of my favorite series. Plus, the reviews that have come out of Sundance, where the film premiered earlier this year, have done nothing but add to my excitement.
Stoker
Park Chan-wook is perhaps most well-known for his Vengeance trilogy, and is making his debut in the American filmmaking industry with Stoker - starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode. I’ve only seen the first of the Vengeance trilogy – the earliest of them, entitled Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance – but I was blown away by Chan-wook’s directing abilities.
His style is quite unique, and I’m intrigued to see how it will translate in an American film. The story itself follows Wasikowska as she struggles in the wake of her father’s recent death, her mother’s emotional instability, and her suspicious (and downright frightening) uncle moving in with them. A clip of Nicole Kidman, who plays Wasikowska’s mother, was recently released and I found her performance to be absolutely chilling. Many people are calling Stoker the female Hamlet, and if that’s true, then I am totally here for that.
This is the End
Apocalyptic stories have been pretty popular, especially in recent years. For whatever reason, people are really into watching zombies, aliens, and meteors (oh my!) decimate huge chunks of the Earth’s population – perhaps so they can take notes on what not to do during the end of the world. And now that the most recent “threat” of The Great Apocalypse of 12/21/2012 has passed, it’s safe to laugh about the fact that as skeptical as we all pretended to be, an itty bitty part of us considered the possibility that it might actually not be a hoax.
Enter This Is The End, which stars Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Emma Watson, and more. In the movie, the actors play themselves, caught up in the struggle to survive as their world crumbles and burns around them… but not without being really fucking hilarious while doing so. I may or may not have cackled out loud at the above trailer, even after my third viewing. I’m very much looking forward to this one, if only for the hilarity and snarky references to each actor’s resume.
This Is The End premieres June 14.
READ MORE AT THE SOURCE
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