LOOPER
Looper, written and directed by Ryan Johnson and starring acting wunderkind Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as younger and older versions respectively of Joseph Simmons, a time-travelling mafia contract killer from 2044 who finds out that next his target is … himself, looks like the sort of movie that will have you on the edge of your seat, with your brain doing cartwheels trying to get to work out the usual time travel conundrums, and your adrenaline pumping as the action kicks into high gear early on and doesn’t let up.
The action centres on the younger version of Joseph Simmons, who is based in Kansas City in the year 2044, trying to track down his older self who escapes and goes on the run, forcing Simmons the Younger to give chase and kill him, or face death himself at the hands of his Shanghai-based employers who go after him when he fails to fulfil his latest contract.
The good thing about this futuristic movie, which stylistically tips its hat as much to the retro gangster stylings and art deco sensibilities of the 1930s and 1940s as it does to any school boy’s imagined idea of what cars, clothes and cities in the middle to late 21st century might look like, is that it gives the impression it will be an intelligent thriller with more than just gun fights and endless chase scenes to recommend it.
The movie opens later this month … or perhaps it has already opened? Who’s to say?
ARGO
Ben Affleck has made a remarkable recovery from a bad patch in the mid-Noughties when Gigli and Saving Christmas took some lustre from his bankability as a star (a period which included a relationship with Jennifer Lopez which had them less than winningly tagged as “Bennifer”) to become a director and actor of some note.
His latest movie, Argo, which follows on from earlier directorial efforts, Gone Baby Gone 2007), and The Town (2010) tells the story of an imaginative attempt to spirit six Americans out of Iran in 1979 in the wake of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran and the capture of 52 diplomatic staff who were held for 444 days.
The usual exit routes were out of the question, and the CIA quickly realised that the only way to get the six diplomats, who had escaped out the back door and found shelter at the Canadian Ambassador’s home, out of the country was to come with an out of the ordinary plan.
And come up with one they did. Or rather, Tony Mendez (who is played by Affleck in the film), then a CIA technical operations officer in charge of clandestine CIA operations did. The plan involved pretending that the small group of Americans were part of a production company scouting locations for a new film called Argo. Harebrained though the idea might have sounded, it worked, thanks to a well-constructed cover story using designs and a screenplay stolen from a Hollywood production company, and the Americans made it back home well ahead of their colleagues.
It looks to have it all – high calibre production (Affleck directing with George Clooney, Grant Heslov and David Klawans producing with a script by Chris Terrio), drama, humour and a good old dollop of “based on a true story” to support the whole enterprise.
It opens in October and is one of the movies I am most looking forward to.
CLOUD ATLAS
How on earth do you tell a story that ranges from the nineteenth century right through to a post apocalyptic future, moves between the remote South Pacific, Belgium and Hawaii (to name just three of the locations) and moves forward in time before retracing its steps back to where it started?
With great care I would imagine. The task of translating David Mitchell’s complex and imaginative series of six interlocking tales, published as Cloud Atlas in 2004, has been taken up by brother and sister production team Andy and Lana Wachowski, who along with Tom Tykwer (also co-composer of the soundtrack), have written and directed the movie which is due out in October.
To call the scope of the movie epic would be a massive understatement. Melding this complex but rewarding multiplicity of interweaving story lines together would have been no easy task and required a galaxy of stars including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, James McEvoy and Ian McKellen to play the various parts.
If nothing else, this ambitious movie looks like it will be a lush and visually gorgeous excursion into a myriad of possible pasts and futures, and while it could end up swallowing itself with its own complexity, the trailer inspires hope that it will instead be a sprawling coherent tale of mankind’s ability to survive down through the ages.
Until it opens, I will keep watching the trailer which frankly is one of the visually and musically beautiful advertisements for a movie I have seen.
SKYFALL
Bond. James Bond.
It is one of those classic catchphrases that immediately identifies a man and mythos that has endured since the character’s creation in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming who penned 12 novels and two short story collections and who spawned to date 22 films in the Bond franchise.
The 23rd film, Skyfall, starring the current Bond, Daniel Craig (who has also appeared in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace), and is largely responsible for me becoming belatedly besotted with the film series (well the recent films anyway), storms into theatres with equal mixtures of bravado and élan in November.
The release of the movie, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the release of the first film, Dr No in 1962, has been much delayed due to MGM’s financial troubles, but looks set to return James Bond to the centre of the spy-driven action thriller.
While the franchise now shares space with the likes of the Bourne franchise, there is something about a Bond movie, with its theme song, and requisite villain (in this case Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva), and lately a heapin’ helpin’ does of moral relativity – who is really good and who is really bad? – that captures your attention and holds it in a way few other movie franchises have been able to do.
I have no doubt Skyfall will be in much the same vein.
THIS IS 40
Billed as the “sort-of sequel” to Judd Apatow’s 2007 release, Knocked Up, This is 40 is in truth more of a spin off.
And a very amusing one at that.
Centering on Debbie (Leslie Mann, who played the sister to Katherine Heigl’s Alison in Knocked Up) and Pete (Paul Rudd) who played her husband, the movie updates the story of this couple and where they are as they approach an age that is a crunch time for many people – 40.
Both of them have a gnawing sense that life could be better than it is. They sense that their marriage could be more vital, their relationships with their kids closer and that the surreptitious glances over the fence to the greener grass of “What if?” (in the human form, for Debbie at least of her personal trainer, played by Jason Segel) are possibly signs of a discontent that could wreak havoc down the track if left unchecked.
But for all this introspection, it is still a comedy (albeit an Apatow one) which means that there will be gross out humour and out-and-out gags doing what comedy does best – helping the medicine of life’s lessons to go with a spoonful of laugh out loud sugar.
At least I think that’s what Apatow is aiming for.
Regardless it looks very funny and with Mann and Rudd front and centre, you know it’s going to be quality comedy you’re seeing.
But there are more movies on the list – of course there are! – so stay tuned for part 2, for which there may or may be a trailer …