COMING ATTRACTIONS
OUR FILM CRITICS CHOOSE 13 MOVIES TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS YEAR
Meryl Streep sings Stephen Sondheim! Christian Bale plays Moses! The Hunger Games is finally full!
As the movie year comes to a close, 2014 offers a tantalizing banquet of delicious possibilities: New movies by Christopher Nolan and David Fincher, a chance to see the much-lauded Spike Jonze film Her, and so much more.
Postmedia film critics Katherine Monk and Jay Stone have combed the lists and come up with a baker’s dozen — 13 movies to look forward to in 2014:
Her
It’s already on a lot of Best 10 lists of 2013, but this fantasy from the imaginative director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) doesn’t hit most theatres until the new year. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, who’s being touted for an Oscar nomination, as a lonely writer of love letters for other people — physician, heal thyself — who falls in love with the artificial intelligence operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Makes sense: After all, who doesn’t cherish their cellphone? (Jan. 10) — JS
The Monuments Men
Delayed from 2013 (a bad sign) but starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Matt Damon (a good sign), this ripped-fromreally-old-headlines adventure tells the story of a Second World War platoon that rescues art masterpieces from the Nazis who stole it. The combination of high culture and fast action — directed, by the way, by Clooney — seems irresistible. (Feb. 7) — JS
Divergent
Bella Swan has come and gone and soon the adventures of Katniss will be history. Who better to pick up the tear-soaked hanky of teen romance than rising star Shailene Woodley (The Descendants)? Woodley plays Tris Prior in this sci-fi adventure that costars Ashley Judd and Kate Winslet. The plot follows the yarn penned by Veronica Roth, which deals with a strain of specially gifted humans and their fight to stay alive when a dictator decides they must be exterminated. Neil Burger (The Illusionist) directs. (March 21) — KM
The Other Woman
I’m hoping it’s the antidote to The Notebook, because we all need a little sour to make the sweet taste good — and this story of love and revenge has the same director. Nick Cassavetes carved his name in schmaltz when he brought Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams together forever, but this could burn his initials into the annals of black comedy as he casts Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton as three gals who fall for the same twotiming womanizer played by the uberhunk Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. When the women learn of his sexual hijinks, they plot to get even. Not since the 1970s have the sexes battled with such abandon. (April 25) — KM
Edge of Tomorrow
No movie slate would be complete without a picture of Tom Cruise wearing some kind of armour. The big star of short stature can still command an action movie. He also likes to seduce the ingenue du jour. Last year in Oblivion, he courted Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko. Here, he’s got the hots for Emily Blunt, who developed some impressive guns of her own during the training period for this action-heavy sci-fi adventure from the ever-compelling Doug Liman (Go, Bourne Identity). Part Groundhog Day and part Jacob’s Ladder, Cruise plays a soldier who becomes trapped in a time loop that forces him to die over and over again. (June 6) — KM
Jersey Boys
If you care about this musical about the Four Seasons — and who doesn’t love Sherry and Dawn and a thousand other falsetto classics? — you may have already seen the stage show. But not all of us have and, furthermore, this film version is (a) directed by Clint Eastwood (!), (b) features Tony-winner John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli and (c) has Christopher Walken in it. Girl, hang on to what we’ve got. (June 20) — JS
Gone Girl
David Fincher, another name to reckon with, directs this adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller about a woman who mysteriously disappears on the day of her wedding anniversary. The stars are Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, two performers who seem ideally suited to telling a kind-of-pulpish, kind-of-smart thriller. We expect to be on the edge of our seats. (Oct. 3) — JS
Interstellar
Anything by Christopher Nolan is worth waiting for, and this scifi adventure has an, ahem, stellar cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine … and those are just the Cs. It’s about a group of explorers who discover a wormhole that allows them to travel great distances through space (and time?). The visual prospects are amazing. (Nov. 7) — JS
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I
The start of the exciting conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy (although chopping the final chapter in half makes it a tetralogy) is already on the calendar of the fans of the Suzanne Collins novels. But star Jennifer Lawrence and director Francis Lawrence picked up a lot of new fans along the way. The film adaptations have been surprisingly sophisticated and edgy, and the prospect raised in the second instalment (“this is the revolution”) is delicious. (Nov. 21) — JS
Ridley Scott’s Exodus
We’re going to have to wait an entire year before this special effects extravaganza hits the multiplex next Christmas, but why not let expectations ramp up in the meantime? Certainly, it’s a lot more pleasant to think about Christian Bale as Moses than pondering Ben Affleck under the cowl. Also, Gotham is all apocalypsed-out, but it’s been decades since anyone used the latest in digital rendering to part the Red Sea. Batman gets old. The Bible does not, and so I say let his people go … so they can see miracles in high-def digital 3D. (Dec. 12) — KM
Into the Woods
Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway hit deconstructed several fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel) to create a new tale — about a baker and his wife who wish for a son — that was as much about the form itself. Pretty sophisticated stuff, and now those dark and imaginative songs come to the big screen with (hold on) Johnny Depp as the Wolf and Meryl Streep as the Witch. Once upon a time can’t come soon enough. (Dec. 25) — JS
A Little Chaos
It’s a costume drama set against the gilt-edged court of Louis XIV as the Sun King craves a lovely new garden for Versailles, and hires two landscape architects to compete for the job. If that sounds like an episode of Dragons’ Den with wigs and lice, consider this: Alan Rickman plays the legendary Louis Le Grand. He also directs this drama that features Stanley Tucci and Kate Winslet as the warring rose growers. (TBA) — KM
The Homesman
The logline may sound a little airy — a claim-jumper and a pioneer woman team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa — but with Tommy Lee Jones behind the camera as well as starring in a central role, we know the movie will be intensely sincere — and just a little bleak. Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was a solid feature debut that boasted excellent performances. So with a cast that includes Meryl Streep and Hilary Swank, chances are this one is going places. (TBA) — KM