FILM
Maybe babies
Our annual look at the less obvious films we might love this coming year
Published: January 5, 2012
Argo Speaking of Garner, her husband, Ben Affleck, happened to make one of the best crime movies in recent years with 2010’s The Town, so his follow-up, based on Joshua Bearman’s Wired article about a CIA plot to free U.S. hostages by masquerading as a Hollywood production shooting a sci-fi film called Argo (even using storyboards by Jack Kirby – played in this film by Red State’s Michael Parks), can be considered fait accompli. Affleck directs and plays the plan’s creator, Tony Mendez. (Sept. 14)
Looper This would be on any film fan’s radar based soley on the fact that it’s the third outing from writer-director Rian Johnson, after his remarkable Brick and The Brothers Bloom. That he’s reteamed here with Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a time-traveling assassin suddenly charged with offing his future self (Bruce Willis) in order to “close his loop,” is just gravy. (Sept. 28)
My Mother’s Curse Writer Dan Fogelman has, in recent years, amassed one of the most unpredictable and solid résumés in Hollywood. A master at balancing the sweet with the sour, his screenplays for Tangled and Crazy, Stupid, Love, released less than a year apart from each other, have more than made up for his past Fred Claus sins. His new one, starring Seth Rogen as an inventor and Barbra Streisand as his mother, is rounded out by a great cast, including Colin Hanks, Adam Scott and Chuck’s beautiful Yvonne Strahovski. (Nov. 2)
Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds borrowed its title from a 1970s Italian war film for a delightfully revisionist revenge flick that imagined a gang of tough Jewish soldiers slaughtering Adolph Hitler. For his newest outing, Tarantino borrows, in part, the title of a 1960s Italian spaghetti western (1966’s Django) for a delightfully revisionist revenge flick that imagines a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) teaming with a stake-wielding Abraham Lincoln – sorry, scratch that – a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to buy back Django’s auctioned-off wife and kill his former plantation overseers. (Dec. 25)
> Email by Justin Strout
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