Catch a trend with these predictions
Postmedia film critic Chris Knight polishes off his crystal ball and gazes into 2019
It’s never easy to predict what the next year of movies will bring, but some things are carved in stone. Like Liam Neeson’s craggy features. And the fact that Neeson will kick butt in the June release of Men in Black: International. And in February’s Cold Pursuit, a remake of a Norwegian film that was crying out for Neeson to star in it.
Here are a few other predictions we feel pretty certain about:
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILMS WILL GET SOME RESPECT
Since 1938, only 10 foreign-language films have been nominated for best picture – the last one Michael Haneke’s Amour in 2012 – but none has won. Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma will almost certainly be nominated, and has a good chance of being the first to win. And unlike another great foreign film from 2018 — Lee Changdong’s Burning — no one’s even going to think about an English-language remake of this intensely personal story.
ANIMATED PICTURES WILL GET BETTER
Yes, 2018 was a pretty thin year for exciting, original animated movies — we had Isle of Dogs, the amazing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and a host of sequels, remakes and dreck. And while 2019 is full of sequels, they’ve got pedigree. Toy Story 4, How to Train Your Dragon 3, Frozen 2 — how could they disappoint? Especially when Angry Birds 2 almost certainly has the disappointment market covered.
ANIMATION WILL ALSO GET MORE CONFUSING
Disney’s The Lion King is ostensibly one of its live-action remakes. (Also coming out this year, a live-action Aladdin.) But it’s really just computer-generated animals with celebrity voices, so technically animation. Harder to classify is Dumbo, which features a host of human characters but stars a CG elephant in the title role. The lines continue to blur.
OLD GUYS WILL HANG ON
This season has seen a new film starring Robert Redford (The Old Man & the Gun), one directed by and starring Clint Eastwood (The Mule) and one produced by, starring and resurrected by Peter Bogdanovich (The Other Side of the Wind).
Average age of these guys: 83, yet nobody’s announced his retirement yet. Ivan Reitman has a new film in the works, though he’s only 72. But you know who is slowing down? Woody Allen. The 83-year-old filmmaker, problematic for a generation of critics (guilty) who once loved him and now find him a little creepy, did not release a movie in 2018 — his first dry year since 1976.
But he has a new one, A Rainy Day in New York, opening sometime in the new year.
OLD MOVIES WILL COME BACK
The PG-13 rated Once Upon a Deadpool may have grossed only $5 million at the box office last month against $318 million for the R-rated original, but it generated a lot of goodwill — and it let my Deadpool-obsessed 11-yearold see it at last.
Then there was The Room (not to be confused with the 2015 Brie, a 2003 so-bad-it’sgood cult favourite, which got its biggest release ever in January on the heels of James Franco’s The Disaster Artist, about the making of the film.
And recent packed screenings at Toronto’s Cinesphere of such sci-fi classics as Alien and Blade Runner show there’s an appetite for people to revisit their favourites on the big screen.
Expect more.
DISNEY WILL BE UNAVOIDABLE
In addition to animation (Toy Story 4, Frozen 2, The Lion King) and sort-of animation (Dumbo) there’s live action (Aladdin, Artemis Fowl), documentary (Penguins), superheroes (Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame) and, to round out the year, Star Wars: Episode IX. And that’s not even factoring Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, expected to close by June.