We made it. The last month of our Fall Movie Preview. For November, we got more family fare which is traditional around Thanksgiving, as well as the odd-timed release of the Piranha sequel. And if October was more about the smaller films being worth your time, November was all about star-driven Oscar bait with Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) and the George Clooney starrer The Descendants. But with December you could easily confuse the last two weeks of the year as Summer 2011 2.0. Read the rest of the preview and find out why.
December 2nd
This is a week of indie releases after the Post-Thanksgiving hangover … Outrage and We Need to Talk About Kevin are both coming in limited release.
Pick of the Week: We Need to Talk About Kevin
December 9th
A pseudo-sequel to Valentine’s Day is promised in <I>New Year’s Eve</I>, this year’s “shove every star possible into a film” entry and another candidate for worst film of the year. Jonah Hill’s The Sitter is promising, if only for the premise of a sex-fueled, foul mouthed version of Adventures in Babysitting. But the film to track down this week will be Young Adult, Jason Reitman’s latest and his second collaboration with Diablo Cody. The first time together they produced Juno and Reitman is on a streak of epic proportions to begin his career. I can’t see him faltering, especially with Charlize Theron in an actual dramatic role with a great director for once.
Pick of the Week: Young Adult
December 16th
This’ll probably turn out to be the week of two of the highest grossing films of 2011 and two films littered with award nominations. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is another in the franchise that has shockingly grossed ridiculous amounts of money and doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon. Robert Downey Jr’s other franchise returns with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, this time marking his first battle with Moriarty as well as the debut to most American cinema-goers of Noomi Rapace. Polanski’s Carnage has a stellar cast and reputation; watch for it come Oscar season, when it might be the film to have a cast seemingly nominated en masse like The Fighter. Meryl Streep takes her turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, which the buzz from Britain is remarkably foul over the sheer lunacy of how Thatcher’s career and life have been changed.
Pick of the Week: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Christmas (December 23rd releases)
This is perhaps the strongest week of the year in terms of new releases. Hollywood is beginning to realize that the winter months can be just as profitable as the summer months. As such they’ve adjusted their release schedules accordingly as nearly every single film being released wide this week could’ve found a home in the summer months. The Darkest Hour (opens Christmas Day) gives a new spin to the alien invasion theme of 2011, this time featuring American tourists in Moscow. Steve Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his debut using motion capture technology, is based off the comic of the same name and looks to capture some of the Amblin magic. It’s rather amusing because in less than a week another Spielberg directed film will be going after nearly the same audience.
David Fincher’s remake/reboot/adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be competing for nearly the same audience as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (both open on Dec. 21) in terms of the youth market, though the latter will be helped by having the lesser rating. Cameron Crowe steps up for his first feature film since Elizabethtown with We Bought a Zoo. The week’s limited release, prestige picture is Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (opens Christmas Day), a film based off the novel of the same name about a child coming to grips with the death of his father on 9/11 with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.
Pick of the Week: The Adventures of Tintin
December 28th
Spielberg caps the year off with War Horse, another awards-oriented picture from a man with a handful of Oscars.
