Here are the biggest and best movies of Christmas 2010.
- Friday 19th November - (U.S. Release Dates)
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: David Yates
Alfonso Cuarón wanted back in, Guillermo del Toro expressed interest, but David Yates got to stay on and direct the final two instalments in the Harry Potter series. Part One is described as a road movie, with Hogwarts hardly seen, for the first time. Having an extra hour and a half to adapt one novel means it should be closer to J.K.Rowling’s version than ever before, but it could also mean it plays a little slower, especially as the three leads are on their own for much of the time. The movie will break box office records this weekend, it’s already grossed $25m just in advance ticket sales. Expect this to be packing them in until Christmas Day.
- Wednesday 24th November -
BurlesqueStarring: Christina Aguilera, Cher, Cam Gigandet. Alan Cumming, Kristen BellDirector: Steven Antin
Christina Aguilera plays a small-town girl with a big voice who heads out to LA and happens across The Burlesque Lounge, a majestic but ailing theater that is home to an inspired musical revue. Cher (who hasn’t aged a day since 1985) plays the club’s proprietor and headliner. Kristen Bell is Aguilera’s rival. Expect a camp spectacular. The trailer makes it look like a big ego trip for Aguilera – the moment where she sings for the first time is hilariously ridiculous.
Faster
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Maggie Grace, Moon Bloodgood
Director: George Tillman Jr.
An ex-con (Johnson) is out to avenge his brother’s death after they were double-crossed during a heist 10 years ago. Meanwhile there’s a veteran cop (Thornton) on his trail. Dwayne Johnson has much untapped potential and urgently needed to get away from Disney family movies. The plot here doesn’t inspire, but it’s great to see The Rock back doing action.
Love And Other Drugs
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh GadDirector: Edward Zwick
Edward Zwick, lifelong director of wartime epics (The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall etc) is doing this. Why?? Plastic face Gyllenhaal plays a hotshot in the world of pharmaceutical sales who meets his match in a free spirited woman (Hathaway). Despite initially hating each other, they soon discover that love is the ultimate drug. Judging from the trailer this is ‘romantic movie 101′, even down to the slobby best friend who’s meant to be ‘the funny one’ – Is this all Notting Hill’s fault? P.S. Gyllenhaal’s theory at the beginning makes absolutely no sense.
TangledStarring: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman
Directors: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Disney’s 50th animated feature is based loosely on the German fairy tale Rapunzel. A long-haired Princess has spent her entire life locked up in a tower, but when she encounters a passing bandit she takes the opportunity to venture into the outside world for the first time. The directors made Bolt, one of Disney’s funniest movies of recent times. Tangled is described in the press notes as a ‘musical’, but they’re keeping the songs well hidden. Looks pretty amusing as far as I can tell.
The King’s Speech (limited release)
Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon, Guy Pearce
Director: Tom Hooper
British historical drama starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist, who helped him overcome a debilitating stammer. Guy Pearce plays the King’s abdicating brother, Timothy Spall is Winston Churchill. Directing is Tom Hooper, the former British TV director who made his film debut last year with The Damned United. This is one of the best trailers of the year, packing more emotion, charm and wit into 2:24 than most movies do in two hours. The movie itself has been getting great early reviews.
- Friday 3rd December -
The Warrior’s Way
Starring: Jang Dong-gun, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Danny Huston, Tony Cox
Director: Sngmoo Lee
Before we get cowboys and aliens next year, we get cowboys and ninjas. The Warrior’s Way is a visually stunning martial arts western starring Korean actor Jang Dong-gun as an Asian warrior assassin hiding in a small town in the American Badlands. There he befriends the town drunk (Rush) and a circus knife thrower (Bosworth), both of whom have powerful secrets. This is an odd and financially risky movie – a $40 million genre-mixing American movie that looks foreign. It also finished shooting back in Feb 2008 and such a delay is rarely a good sign. Maybe they just weren’t sure how to market it. Black Swan
Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder, Barbara Hershey
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as rival ballet dancers in a New York production of Swan Lake. The production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. Portman’s character is suited for the former, her rival for the latter and as they compete, she finds a dark side of herself. Considered one of the best films of the year by critics.
- Friday 10th December -
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn TreaderStarring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Will Poulter, Ben Barnes, Liam Neeson (voice)
Director: Michael Apted
The movie Disney didn’t want. They gave up on the series after the worrying financial performace of the second movie, but Fox came in as distributor late in the day. The story sees Edmund (Keynes) and Lucy (Henley), staying at their cousin’s house, when they are drawn into a painting of an old ship. There they join the new King of Narnia, King Caspian, on a nautical quest. The movie looks like solid family entertainment. But why doesn’t Aslan’s roar sound anything like Liam Neeson?
The Tourist
Starring: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell, Timothy Dalton, Haley Webb
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Two of the three biggest stars in the world (Will Smith not present) team up for the story of an American tourist (Depp) visiting Italy to mend a broken heart, who’s used by a sophisticated English woman (Jolie) to flush out her former lover and distract the authorities on her trail. Expect way more double-crossing than is in the trailer. Tom Cruise was originally going to play the lead role but was replaced by Sam Worthington. Worthington then left and was replaced by Johnny Depp. – That’s right, Depp is getting Worthington’s hand-me-downs, how did that happen?
I Love You, Phillip Morris
Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro
Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Comedy-drama based on the real life events of con artist, impostor, and multiple prison escapee Steven Jay Russell played by Jim Carrey. While incarcerated, Russell falls in love with his fellow inmate, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). After Morris is released from prison, Russell escapes four times in order to be reunited. This movie has been knocking about looking for distribution for ages. Initially, nobody in the US wanted it until the explicit gay sexual content was toned down. That happened, then there were legal problems, the distributor had a change of heart etc. It’s already been released in the UK, where most critics found it to be offbeat, funny and daring in a good way, with a strong performance by Carrey. My question is, who is saying “sleep ever” at 1:28 in the trailer, cause it sure isn’t Ewan MacGregor.
- Friday 17th December -
How Do You Know
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson
Director: James L. Brooks
A romantic comedy centred on a former athlete (Witherspoon) who’s feeling a bit past her prime at 27 and finds herself in the middle of a love triangle, between a corporate guy in crisis (Rudd) and her current, baseball-playing beau (Wilson). ‘Ol Jack Nicholson in the mix too, in real life she’d surely choose him. James L. Brooks (The Simpsons, As Good as it Gets) is a great romantic-comedy director, so expect this to be a mature, well-observed piece of entertainment.
Tron Legacy
Starring: Joseph Kosinski
Director: Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Michael Sheen
The ’82 Tron was ahead of its time. Now is that time. Sam Flynn (Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 20 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant (Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous. So the movie, of course, looks spectacular. The weak link may be the villain, a ‘youthified’ cgi version of Jeff Bridges – so far it doesn’t look terribly convincing. Maybe that idea’s ahead of its time. Regardless, see it in IMAX, see it in 3D. Yogi Bear
Starring: Dan Aykroyd (voice), Justin Timberlake (voice), Anna Faris, Tom Cavanagh
Director: Eric Brevig
Thanks to the success of Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks, we get this. A live action/cgi Yogi Bear movie. If you’re unfamiliar, Yogi is a non-man-eating bear operating as a thief in Jellystone Park, stealing people’s meals and causing massive property damage. He is assisted by a juvenile bear called Boo-Boo. Park Ranger Smith finds himself having to devote a large part of his working day to stopping the pair when he could have spent that time concentrating on conservation or putting out forest fires. Dan Ackroyd voices Yogi and, in a piece of casting I can’t quite process, Justin Timberlake is Boo Boo.
The Fighter Starring: Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams
Director: David O. Russell
Wahlberg is reunited once again with the director of Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, but this time he’s getting ultra-serious for this true story of a boxer in the 80s and the bad-influence brother who helps train him. The movie is being lined up as an Oscar contender and it’s about time Bale got some recognition. (P.S. Bale’s hair was deliberately shaved back to look balding for the role. I know I got worried for Batman when I first saw it.)
- Wednesday 22nd December -
Little Fockers
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Harvey KeitelDirector: Paul Weitz
The method star of Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver continues his upward trend with Meet The Parents 3. De Niro returns to the role of retired-CIA man Jack, who becomes highly suspicious of his son-in-law’s ability to raise the twin grandkids. Meanwhile the son-in-law begins to go through a mid-life crisis, as there’s another baby on the way. This is the first movie in the series that’s not directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers), instead it’s Paul Weitz (About A Boy, American Dreamz). This is a franchise that desperately wants to keep going for the money, but has run out of things to do.
True Grit
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld, Barry Pepper
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stubborn 14 year old Mattie Ross undertakes a quest to avenge her father’s death at the hands of a drifter. Ross persuades an alcoholic marshal named Rooster Cogburn to join her in tracking him down. They are joined by a Texas Ranger, who wants the drifter for his own purposes. The Coen Brothers direct this remake of the ’69 movie (based on the ’68 novel) that won John Wayne an Oscar. Jeff Bridges takes on the gruff Wayne role. Outside of Tron Legacy, we’re looking forward to this movie more than anything else. Jeff Bridges owns Christmas.
- Saturday 25th December -
Gulliver’s Travels
Starring: Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Catherine TateDirector: Rob Letterman
Travel writer Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black) takes an assignment in Bermuda, but ends up on the island of Liliput, where he towers over its tiny citizens. The movie’s from the director of Shark Tale and Monsters vs Aliens, and has been converted to 3D in post-production. From the trailer it looks like they’ve taken rich source material and turned it into horrible commercial muck. Should have been retitled ‘Jack Black Is Big’. Via : movie-moron
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