WON’T YOU BE TOM’S NEIGHBOUR?
The movies I can’t wait to see this year promise a lot of scares in between the blockbusters
Tom Hanks in role of Mr. Rogers is just one of film critic Peter Howell’s must-sees for 2019,
The next 12 months at the movies will bring the usual assortment of noisy amusements, among them superheroes ( Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel), super creeps (sequels to It and Godzilla) and Star Wars: Episode IX.
All will be duly scrutinized and criticized. Some will actually be good.
What I’m really looking forward to in 2019, though, are the movies that aren’t likely to be doing double duty selling burgers, breakfast cereal or action figures.
Films that tell stories in unique ways, like the 10 hopefuls listed here, in my annual optimistic assessment of what lies ahead.
I’m mostly going by the track record of the directors, actors and writers, who can surely disappoint — such as Canada’s Xavier Dolan, whose English-language debut The Death and Life of John F. Donovan made this list last year, but proved to be DOA at TIFF last
September. Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots also made my 2018 wanna-see list, but it was more of a pauper than a royal when it reached theatres in November.
My advance enthusiasm for 2018 was justified by Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, all of which made my Top 10 for the year or runners-up list.
I was also excited about Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which I enjoyed — and which audiences worldwide adored — despite its many liberties taken with the facts regarding rock band Queen and its lead singer, Freddie Mercury.
Then there’s Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, which impressed me at Sundance and which is finally opening this Friday in Toronto at TIFF Bell Lightbox, almost a year later.
Looking at my most-anticipated films of 2019, I note with a shudder that at least five of them could be considered horror movies. Wasn’t 2018 scary enough for me?
Here’s the list, presented in order of expected arrival, and please note that all release dates are subject to change:
Apollo 11 ( Jan. 24 Sundance world premiere, release TBA): The biggest “found footage” movie ever. In 2014, Todd Douglas Miller plumbed the depths with Dinosaur 13, a documentary about the largest Tyrannosaurus rex fossil find. Five years later, he shoots for the stars with Apollo 11, marking the 50th anniversary year of the first lunar landing with never-before-seen 70 mm footage and never-beforeheard audio. Incredible to think that NASA was just sitting on a cache of unseen images and sound of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins making history.
Velvet Buzzsaw ( Dan Gilroy, Jan. 27 Sundance world premiere, Feb. 1 Netflix): When writer/director Dan Gilroy last teamed with actor Jake Gyllenhaal for the crime-reporter drama Nightcrawler in 2014, the result was a powerful character study with social commentary about slippery journalistic ethics. Velvet Buzzsaw is billed as a horror comedy, recalling Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV series, with its account of the supernatural fury that erupts when greedy L.A. art collectors get their hands on paintings by a mysterious artist. Gyllenhaal’s costars include Rene Russo, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Zawe Ashton, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge and Daveed Diggs.
Us (March 15): Speaking of Serling, Get Out writer/director Jordan Peele reboots the man’s classic The Twilight Zone TV series this year. But before that we’ll see the psychological horror movie Us, which sounds like it could be an extended TZ episode. It’s a “social thriller” about two families — one Black, one white — who travel to a beach house looking for fun and instead find threatening “strangers” who embody the worst aspects of themselves. Peele told The Hollywood Reporter the film is not about race, but rather “the simple fact that we are our own worst enemies.” Cast includes Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Anna Diop and Kara Hayward.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ( Aug. 9) — It’s been called Quentin Tarantino’s Manson Family movie, and the Aug. 9 release date is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca mass slayings (a.k.a. the “Helter Skelter” murders) that helped bring the Swinging Sixties to a bloody end. Tarantino will surely not flinch from revisiting the event — there are on-set photos of a mini-skirted Margot Robbie dressed as actress Sharon Tate, one of the seven victims — but you can be sure he has more on his mind that just Charles Manson’s evil deeds. Robbie’s co-stars include Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell and Tim Roth.
ABeautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Oct. 18) — Are we ready for another movie about children’s entertainer Fred Rogers, so soon after last year’s lauded doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? My hunch is yes. Director Marielle Heller hasn’t failed us yet, and her dramatic treatment of the topic may reveal more about the man’s life than the doc was able to pry out, including the years he spent working for the CBC in Toronto. Tom Hanks wears the famous red sweater as Rogers and it will be fascinating to see what Heller does with a male protagonist, after the female leads of her Oscar-buzzed current film Can You Ever Forgive Me? and her 2015 debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Hanks’ co-stars include Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard and Matthew Rhys.
Little Women( Dec. 25) — Greta Gerwig shifts from the 21st-century angst of her stellar directing debut Lady Bird to the 19th century travails of Little Women, the Louisa May Alcott novel of four sisters struggling together in Massachusetts following the American Civil War. This is a welltold tale, often brought to screens big and small. But Gerwig’s talent and her great cast — Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen play the sisters — make me think she can bring a fresh perspective. Co-stars include Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Laura Dern and Bob Odenkirk.
Jojo Rabbit (TBA): A dictionary definition of “audacious” could include the Instagram photo Taika Waititi posted last June about his satire, set during the Second World War, in which he plays Adolf Hitler. The pic shows director/actor/co-writer Waititi giving the rigid digit salute to a photo of Hitler, above the caption, “What better way to insult Hitler than having him portrayed by a Polynesian Jew?” IMDb says it’s about “a young boy in Hitler’s army (who) finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish boy in their home.” Doesn’t sound like a laugh riot, but after Waititi’s genre-bending successes with Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do In the Shadows, I can’t wait to see how he’ll handle this hot topic. Co-stars include Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson. |
The Dead Don’t Die (TBA) — Writer/director Jim Jarmusch is another guy for whom “genre” is just another word. He’s returning to the horror themes he explored with his brainy 2013 vampire pic Only Lovers Left Alive. If you recall that laconic gem, he’s more interested in tickling grey matter than spilling red stuff, even though this is about skull-chomping zombies. It stars Bill Murray, but don’t get any Zombieland ideas — though there’s a sequel to Zombieland also in the works. “Jim Jarmusch has written a zombie script that’s so hilarious and it has a cast of great actors ... but, no, I will not play
Are we ready for another movie about children’s entertainer Fred Rogers? My hunch is yes. Tom Hanks wears that famous red sweater
a zombie,” Murray told Philly.com. His co-stars include Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits.
Blood Quantum ( TBA): Not just another zombie movie, Blood Quantum is unique: A feature-length walking-dead pic with a Canadian Indigenous director and cast. Mi’gmaq writer/director Jeff Barnaby follows Rhymes for Young Ghouls with a thriller filmed in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory and Listuguj, Quebec. It stars Michael Greyeyes of TV’s Fear the Walking Dead, whose character is a tribal sheriff grappling with a plague of non-Indigenous zombies on a remote reserve. His co-stars include Elle-Maija Apiniskim Tailfeathers ( On the Farm), Forrest Goodluck ( The Miseducation of Cameron Post), Kiowa Gordon ( The Twilight Saga), Olivia Scriven ( Degrassi: Next Class), Brandon Oakes ( Rhymes for Young Ghouls), Kawennahere Devery Jacobs ( Cardinal) and Gary Farmer ( The Red Road).
Shirley (TBA) — “A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple,” reads the IMDb logline, and that’s about all I can find about this latest work by Madeline’s Madeline director/ co-writer Josephine Decker. But that’s probably all we want to know going in, if you recall the head-spinning turns of last year’s Madeline’s Madeline and her earlier film Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. Consider me intrigued, not just by the talent behind the camera but also in front of it, which includes Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Logan Lerman and Odessa Young.