2014
2013
3/4
Working For It: Tina Fey is a journalist who goes to Pakistan and Afghanistan to escape her life stateside. She buddies up with Margot Robbie. Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, and Josh Charles are all there too. It's got the directors of Crazy, Stupid Love and the screenplay was adapted by Robert Carlock, who has been Tina Fey's production partner for years (30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). This is checking off all my boxes.
Working Against It: For some reason, I keep missing Tina Fey movies that I say I'm a lock to see. It happened with Sisters (victim of a busy movie season) and Admission (victim of...I'm not sure). Maybe I'm scared of any time she's not writing for herself. Having Carlock write this is as close to "Screenplay by Tina Fey" as you'll get though.
Working For It: Gennifer Goodwin is a bunny cop in Zootopia, a world exactly the same as ours except with animals that can talk. She's investigating a crime and picks up Jason Bateman as a sly fox along the way. This is filled with familiar faces that are voice-over favorites (J.K. Simmons, Alan Tudyk, Idris Elba, etc.). Disney Animations is on one hell of a hot streak right now and I have no reason to think that Zootopia will end that.
Working Against It: Is anyone else worried by how much they're using that sloth scene at the DMV? It's funny, but it's become the centerpiece of the ad campaign. I'm telling myself that this is because Disney doesn't want to spoil the rest of the movie (they employed a similar strategy with Big Hero 6 and Wreck-It Ralph). I like going in a little skeptical though.
Working For It: In 2013, Olympus Has Fallen was a surprise March hit, and even beat out the higher profile, Summer-released White House Down. London Has Fallen is making all the right moves. Got the core cast back. Changed the setting. Upped the stakes. Gerard Butler pulls off terrorist fighting as well as Aaron Eckhart pulls off being president.
Working Against It: I have a hard time believing that Olympus Has Fallen wasn't a fluke. It made enough that, under the current studio system, Focus had to make a sequel, but it's hard to see how it will produce the same level of success.
Working For It: Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead) plays a mother whose son dies in an accident. She finds an ancient temple with a closed door that allows her to speak to her son on the other side. She cannot open the door, or else.
Working Against It: The nice thing about horror movies is that they're so cheap to make that there's almost always a new one coming out. The bad thing is that they are so dependent on exection rather than story, that it's almost impossible to tell which ones are going to be good. Based on writer/director Johannes Roberts' previous work, I'm not inclined to think this will be upper-tier horror.
Working For It: Terrence Malick is back at it. Instead of The Tree of Life, which was a man looking back at his childhood, this is about a man looking back at his past relationships. The trailer is intense, without giving away much of anything. The cast is undeniably alluring, including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Anotonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, and more pretty young Aussies and Brits than you can shake a stick at.
Working Against It: I wasn't a fan of The Tree of Life or The New World. Currently, those are the only Terrence Malick movies I have to go off. If I get around to seeing this, it'll probably be at home where I can take a break if I need to.
3/11
Working For It: Cloverfield holds a special place in my heart. I can't think of another movie like it in terms of the marketing and the final product. I like the idea that JJ Abrams and the Bad Robot team are making a weird kind of exapnded universe out of Cloverfield. 10 Cloverfield Lane looks completely different, a story of Mary Elizabeth Winstead being held captive by Jon Goodman. I'm purposely learning as little as I can about it.
Working Against It: Part of not knowing much about it means that there's a lot of room to disappoint. Just like Cloverfield, this is very ambitious and the danger with that is that when you swing big, you can easily miss big. It wouldn't take much for this to be, say, Red State.
Working For It: Sacha Baron Cohen is a soccer hooligan who reunites with his long lost brother, a super spy played by Mark Strong, at the worst time. Isla Fisher is in there too. I like Isla Fisher. Rebel Wilson, Penelope Cruz, and Ian McShane are there as well.
Working Against It: I really don't like Sacha Baron Cohen. I've liked him before when he's doing a part for someone else (like his character in Hugo). I can't stand him when he's playing a character he's written or developed. He wrote this screenplay. I'm not at all excited about this. Then again, I really like Isla Fisher. I should probably just watch Bachelorette again instead.
Working For It: A ladies man (Terrence Jenkins) starts dating a beautiful woman (Kali Hawk) to win a bet that he can stay in a relationship for some amount of time. It sounds desposible in a very watchable kind of way.
Working Against It: I've seen this movie what feels like dozens of times before. Most immediately, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days comes to mind. This is lacking in any kind of narrative hook. That means the audience is limited to anyone who loves this exact kind of movie always, which isn't a subset that includes me.
Working For It: In case Risen, the story of Jesus' ressurection wasn't enough for you this Easter season, how about a movie telling the story of Jesus as a child? That's about all you need to know. Sean Bean is in it, playing a character that I don't remember being in the New Testment, so he'll probably die.
Working Against It: I'm not a religious person. I have no issue with this movie, but it doesn't look like there's anything particularly new about its perspective. There's really nothing I'm seeing that interests me.
Working For It: Aaron Paul is a drone pilot with commands to bomb a target with known terrorists just as an innocent little girl comes out to play in that location. Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman play his commanding officers. Barkhad Abdi (from Captain Phillips) is their reconnaisance on the ground. In short, the casting is on point for what looks like a tense thriller about military ethics.
Working Against It: Gavin Hood previously directed movies like Ender's Game and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That's a double concern, because I don't know how he'd handle a movie like this, and I really disliked his most successful movie to date.
3/18
Working For It: Impeccable casting. Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Zoe Kravitzm and Theo James is as solid a young core as you'll find. Jeff Daniels, Naomi Watts, and Maggie Q are virtually beside the point.
Working Against It: Insurgent spoiled the relative goodwill I had from Divergent. At this point, all the YA dystopias are such a blur that I can hardly tell them apart.
Working For It: This Easter season, they are really doubling-down on the religious programming. This one is about a girl who gets mysteriously cured after getting in an accident. It's got Jennifer Garner, who I like in a "She's in it? Ok, cool" kind of way. Queen Latifah too. I like her.
Working Against It: There's no trailer for this on IMDB. Why is there no trailer for this on IMDB? What are they trying to hide?
Working For It: A comedy co-written by and starring Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory) as a lewd former Olympic gymnastic bronze medalist who takes up coaching an up-and-coming gymnastic star. It was first released at Sundance last year and has a very Sundance cast, including Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Cecily Strong, Sebastian Stan, and Haley Lu Richardson.
Working Against It: Nothing in the trailer damands my attention. I like all the people in it, so I'd like to get to it, but I don't see what's supposed to pull me in.
Working For It: A Science-Fiction movie about a boy with special powers and his father on the run from, I'm assuming, the government. It has a terrific cast, including Adam Driver, Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgarton, and Michael Shannon and is from the guy who made 2012's Mud, which I've only heard good things about. The trailer looks like a creepy E.T., which could be fantastic.
Working Against It: The ad campaign has maybe been too cryptic. I'm interested, but I'm not actually sure why.
3/25
Working For It: Read that title again and if you still don't get it, you never will. There's no chance I'm missing this for a lot of reasons. 1) I had issues with Man of Steel, but I still liked enough of what it did. 2) Ben Affleck as Batman intrigues me. 3) Amy Adams. Full stop. 4) How many Justice League members can they introduce in one movie? 5) I'm just plain fascinated to see how/if DC pulls off this accelerated-pace world building. 6) Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor sounds rather perfect.
Working Against It: Working against me seeing it? Nothing at all. Working against if it will be good? DC could be doing too much, too fast.
Working For It: Kate Beckinsale and her family are terrorized by something in the attic of their new home. It's from the director of Eagle Eye and Disturbia, so you can expect a good, PG-13 level of scares that won't keep you up at night.
Working Against It: Another case of IMDB not having a trailer for it when I checked. I'm sorry, but that always gets me suspicious. What are they trying to hide?
Working For It: There is no way to oversell how big a hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding was. It exceeded all expectations for it ten-fold. Pretty much everyone is back, 14 years later after it's discovered that Toula's parents were never legally married. It looks very much the same as the original.
Working Against It: In that time, Nia Vardalos hasn't been able to recapture that magic on anything since. She even had a My Big Fat Greek Life a year after the movie came out and that tanked. I'm not bold enough to suggest that John Corbett is the missing link to make all this work again. Then again, I'm not one of the people who contributed to making the first movie a hit.
Working For It: The story of Hank Williams as played by Tom Hiddleston and his wife, played by Elizabeth Olsen. I like those two and I liked Walk the Line. That seems like a pretty apples-to-apples comparison.
Working Against It: Context is key here. This was ready for a fall, awards season release, and you better believe that this would've been released then if it could've been a player. That it was moved to the middle of March, about as award season invisible as you can get*, is worrisome.
*Both The Monuments Men and Hail, Caesar! were still released in February to ride the Oscar wave without any of the pressure.
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