San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The fall season could offer one of the best film lineups in decades.
The pandemic has made the past few seasons rough on moviegoers, rough on the box office, rough on prognosticators and rough on studios and distributors trying to place their product. Nothing has been predictable.
Hit that pre-delta variant sweet spot, and you might have a $70 million opening weekend for “F9.” But miss that window by a few weeks or even a few days — open a movie as COVID-19 cases are spiking nationwide — and you end up with “The Suicide Squad,” an entertaining, wellreviewed movie that made only $27 million in its opening weekend and is on track to lose half of its investment.
So, this is an uncertain time for the business side of movies. But for the actual watching of movies, the fall season is something else altogether. On this score, there is no uncertainty at all: We’re approaching one of the best seasons in decades. Perhaps not since the 1970s has a list of movies looked so promising.
The next few months will show whether this is real or a mirage, but looking at the release schedule in September, the fall of 2021 looks like the best time to be a movie critic in nearly five decades, when directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese, Bob Rafelson, Alan J. Pakula, Hal Ashby, William Friedkin and others were cranking out great films.
The potency of this season’s list consists of two types of movies: those that were finished prior to the pandemic and postponed until it once again became possible to screen them theatrically, and major films that were in the midst of production when the pandemic hit and were subsequently finished when the pandemic started to ease.
As a result, we have about 18 months’ worth of superior movies converging on a single season. At the very least, we have 18 months’ worth of movies that its makers and backers to be superior. And now we can be the judge of whether they were right.
But what a break from the small kitchen-sink movies that we subsisted on throughout 2020. I always thought that I liked small movies, and I do. But a steady diet of small-scale, purposeful and sincere films like “Nomadland,” “The Father” and “Promising Young Woman” starts to feel, after eight or nine months, like a tofu overdose. You start craving a juicy steak, cooked up by a master chef like Ridley Scott.
Oh, yes, and Scott? He has
movies opening in the next few months. It will be that kind of season! Here are some upcoming movies to look forward to:
“Cry Macho”:
Clint Eastwood’s career is a miracle. Most directors start to go into decline in their 60s. Eastwood did his best work in his 70s and 80s, and now, at 91, he is releasing a film that he directed and stars in.
Eastwood plays a washedup old rodeo star who goes on a journey through rural Mexico with a teenager that he rescued from a troubled home. The trailer makes it look like a drama about redemption, a running theme in Eastwood’s work.
Streaming on HBO Max starting Sept. 17.
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”:
Jessica Chastain stars as Tammy Faye Bakker — wife of televangelist Jim Bakker — who became something of a national joke because of her eccentric makeup and personality.
The movie tells her story, including the lesser-known fact that she tried to stand against the tide of linking religion and right-wing politics and that she reached out to AIDS sufferers at the height of the AIDS crisis.
“Blue Bayou”:
Justin Chon is the writer, director and star of this heartbreaking drama about a Korean-born adoptee who, while struggling to make ends meet with his growing family in Louisiana, finds out
“Encanto”:
A Disney musical, featuring songs by LinManuel Miranda, this animated feature is the story of a young Colombian woman, living in a village where everyone has magical abilities except her. It looks lively.
Features the voices of Stephanie Beatriz, Diane Guerrero and Wilmer Valderrama.