Movie Radar 2010 | Part 1

This is a quick and I am sure very incomplete list of movies that I am looking forward to in the first half of 2010 (January through June). I know there are indie and foreign releases I am missing (as well as movies I am sure I will love but don’t know about), but I wanted to get something out there to put some of my anticipation in writing. This is my list, so it does not have every blockbuster or highly anticipated film in the industry, but rather of my preference.

Unless my own words, plot summaries are from ComingSoon.net.

January

01/08 Daybreakers

Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race.

01/15 The Book of Eli

In the not-too-distant future, across the wasteland of what was once America, a lone warrior must fight to bring civilization the knowledge that could be the key to its redemption.

Everything about this movie screams love. It has Denzel Washington in a role that we don’t see often out of him; it’s post-apocalyptic, big budget, etc. Yet the spots and trailers thus far do not reach me at all. I am anticipating being surprised by what should be a cool action film.

01/19 Edge of Darkness

“Edge of Darkness” is an emotionally charged thriller set at the intersection of politics and big business. Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a veteran homicide detective for the Boston Police Department and a single father. When his only child, twenty-four year-old Emma (Bojana Novakovic), is murdered on the steps of his home, everyone assumes that he was the target. But he soon suspects otherwise, and embarks on a mission to find out about his daughter’s secret life and her killing. His investigation leads him into a dangerous, looking glass world of corporate cover-ups, government collusion and murder – and to shadowy government operative Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), who has been sent in to clean up the evidence. Craven’s solitary search for answers about his daughter’s death transforms into an odyssey of emotional discovery and redemption.

I know Mel Gibson is a crazy-as-hell drunk who hates gays, Jews, liberal Catholics, and probably puppies, but this is the type of role that he can nail and — in his prime — would nail while raking in big box office returns. Edge of Darkness should be a good measure of if Gibson can regain some of his star-power. It is also a movie that, if the script and all else is right, Gibson could hit out of the park.

February

02/05 District 13: Ultimatum

Two years have passed since elite police officer Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli) teamed up with reformed vigilante Leito (parkour originator David Belle) to save the notorious District 13, a racially charged ghetto populated by violent drug dealing gangs and vicious killers. Despite government promises to maintain order, the state of the district has deteriorated, and a group of corrupt cops and elected officials are conspiring to cause civil unrest in D13, looking for an excuse to raze the area and cash in on its redevelopment. Now Damian and Leito must join forces again, and use their mastery of martial arts and their unique physical skills to bring peace to the neighborhood by any means necessary… before a proposed nuclear air-strike wipes it off the map. With bone crunching fights and death defying leaps, this adrenaline charged sequel takes the groundbreaking parkour action from “District B13″ to thrilling new heights.

The bizarre parkour-martial arts mash-up is back. I have this movie on DVD but in a language I don’t speak. Looks like a copy of the first one, which frankly, is good enough for me.

02/05 I Love You Phillip Morris

Based on a book by Houston Chronicle crime reporter Steve McVicker, the fact-based film casts Carrey as Steven Russell, a married father whose exploits landed him in the Texas criminal justice system. He fell madly in love with his cellmate, who eventually was set free, which led Russell to escape from Texas prisons four times.

If nothing else, it seems Jim Carrey does try to balance his roles out similar to someone like John Cusak. I think he does dramatic pretty well sometimes and I can stomach those movies more than I can the crap that Carrey’s comedies often end up being. This sounds like an interesting turn.

02/19 Shutter Island

This book by Dennis Lehane is a gritty and messed-up story that works several layers into the narrative and conclusion. It is easily one of the best “thrillers” that I have ever read. The trailers and promotional information that I have seen from this Scorsese helmed movie looks to be set at the 107th level of awesome out of a possible 100. It would not be an over-statement to say that this is the film that I am anticipating most in 2010.

Important: Please please please, after you see it, do not give away the 3rd act to anyone no matter how much they beg.

02/26 The Crazies

It’s strange, but for some reason I have grown fond of Timothy Olyphant. I loved the first season of Deadwood before Olyphant’s Seth Bullock got neutered. I also enjoyed Hitman and A Perfect Getaway I think he has more range than one realizes and may still be on his way to leading manhood. Mix in what looks like a well realized re-make of a Romero pre-classic, and we might have a winner here.

Imagine living in a small town where everything is safe and happy… until suddenly it isn’t. Imagine your friends and neighbors going quickly and horrifically insane. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in “The Crazies,” a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (“Pulse,” “Case 39″) and Scott Kosar (“The Amityville Horror,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”).

David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his own house…after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Within days, the town has transformed into a sickening asylum; people who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives have now become depraved, blood-thirsty killers, hiding in the darkness with guns and knives. Sheriff Dutton tries to make sense of what’s happening as the horrific, nonsensical violence escalates. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh… with insanity. Now complete anarchy reigns as one by one the townsfolk succumb to an unknown toxin and turn sadistically violent. In an effort to keep the madness contained, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out – even those uninfected. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutton; his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutton’s deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for survival as they do their best to get out of town alive.

March

03/12 Green Zone

Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Supremacy,” “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “United 93″) re-team for their latest electrifying thriller in “Green Zone,” a film set in the chaotic early days of the Iraqi War when no one could be trusted and every decision could detonate unforeseen consequences.

During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his team of Army inspectors were dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that inverts the purpose of their mission.

Spun by operatives with intersecting agendas, Miller must hunt through covert and faulty intelligence hidden on foreign soil for answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war in an unstable region. And at this blistering time and in this combustible place, he will find the most elusive weapon of all is the truth.

03/19 Hubble 3D

This is what 3D is for.

Through the power of IMAX® 3D, “Hubble 3D” will enable moviegoers to journey through distant galaxies to explore the grandeur and mysteries of our celestial surroundings, and accompany space-walking astronauts as they attempt the most difficult and important tasks in NASA’s history. The seventh film from the award-winning IMAX® Space Team, “Hubble 3D” will offer an inspiring and unique look into the Hubble Space Telescope’s legacy and highlight its profound impact on the way we view the universe and ourselves.

03/16 The Eclipse

Hell no. Not the other movie called Eclipse .

Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds) is a widower living in a misty Irish seaside town who is struggling to adjust to his new role as the sole caretaker of his two children. Still reeling from the death of his wife, he has been plagued by terrifying apparitions. When he volunteers at a local literary festival, he finds he finds himself drawn to Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), an empathetic author of supernatural fiction. While Lena tries to help Michael with the mystery of his nightmarish visions, she must contend with problems of her own—she’s being jealously pursued by a self-obsessed novelist (Aidan Quinn), her one-time lover. As the three adults’ lives converge, the turbulence of the phantom world will soon have nothing on that of the living.

April

04/02 Repo Men

2009 was such a great year for sci-fi both small and big. I have hopes for a few titles in 2010. This is one of them.

In the futuristic action-thriller “Repo Men,” humans have extended and improved our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called The Union. The dark side of these medical breakthroughs is that if you don’t pay your bill, The Union sends its highly skilled repo men to take back its property… with no concern for your comfort or survival.

Jude Law plays Remy, one of the best organ repo men in the business. But when he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company’s top-of-the-line heart-replacement… as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart’s no longer in the job. When he can’t make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy’s former partner Jake (Academy Award® winner Forest Whitaker), to track him down.

Now that the hunter has become the hunted, Remy joins Beth (Alice Braga), another debtor who teaches him how to vanish from the system. And as he and Jake embark on a chase across a landscape populated by maniacal friends and foes, one man will become a reluctant champion for thousands on the run.

The film is based on the novel “The Repossession Mambo” by Eric Garcia.

04/02 Warlords

“Warlords” is set in the midst of war and political upheaval during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860s. Jet Li stars as General Pang, who after a surviving a massacre of his fellow soldiers by playing dead, joins a band of bandits led by Er Hu (Lau) and Wu Yang (Kaneshiro). After fighting back attackers from an helpless village, the three men take an oath to become “blood brothers,” pledging loyalty to one another until death, but things quickly turn sour and the three men become embroiled in a web of political deceit, and a love triangle between Pang, Er Hu and a beautiful courtesan (Wu Jing-Lei).

04/09 After.Life

“After.Life” centers on a young woman caught between life and death and a funeral director who appears to have the gift of transitioning the dead.

I trust Christina Ricci’s decisions on movie roles for the most part. I think she is a gifted actress and takes interesting roles that present a challenge to her. I’m rolling the dice on this one with a first time screenwriter and director at the helm. I do find that these first/first folks often do have at least one good film and one good story in them. We’ll see.

04/09 Date Night

Steve Carell and Tina Fey are set to play a married couple in “Date Night.” The story follows a couple who find their routine date night becomes much more than just dinner and a movie. [Mark] Wahlberg plays a successful and crazily buff securities expert who flirts with Fey’s character. [The couple gets mixed up in one of those whacky The Man That Knew Too Little type routines. Not original, but I think these two can pull it off.]

I’m not a fan of straight-up comedies, especially couple comedies, but I do think that Carell and Fey are both aces and I have to have a little variety on my list.

04/16 Kick-Ass

“Kick-Ass” tells the story of average teenager Dave Lizewski (Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. As any good superhero would, he chooses a new name — Kick-Ass — assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. There’s only one problem standing in his way: Kick-Ass has absolutely no superpowers.

His life is forever changed as he inspires a subculture of copy cats, is hunted by assorted violent and unpleasant characters, and meets up with a pair of crazed vigilantes, including an 11-year-old sword-wielding dynamo, Hit Girl (Moretz) and her father, Big Daddy (Cage).

“Kick-Ass” is based on the groundbreaking, best-selling comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

I’ve been showing steady anticipated love for this film for a long time.

04/30 Nightmare On Elm Street

We all know what this is about. There is a Big Three of iconic supernatural slasher franchises: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm St. The F13 re-make was lame and just passed itself off as like every F13 movie but with modern FX, clothes, and music. Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies took a new route and de-mystified the monster. Take that for what its worth, but it certainly moved Michael Myers out of the realm of iconic and into the realm of a big fucked up psychopath with a mommy complex — or something. So, here is the last stand; the last of the Big Three to get re-make treatment. Unfortunately the trailer makes it appear that A Nightmare of Elm St. might be taking the Friday the 13th route and just updating the cast and setting while telling basically the same story with themes and scenes meshed from the body of the franchise. Maybe it can be done well. I hope so.

May

05/07 Iron Man 2

/obvious

05/14 Robin Hood

[Robin Hood] chronicles the life of an expert archer, previously interested only in self-preservation, from his service in King Richard’s army against the French. Upon Richard’s death, Robin travels to Nottingham, a town suffering from the corruption of a despotic sheriff and crippling taxation, where he falls for the spirited widow Lady Marion (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), a woman skeptical of the identity and motivations of this crusader from the forest. Hoping to earn the hand of Maid Marion and salvage the village, Robin assembles a gang whose lethal mercenary skills are matched only by its appetite for life. Together, they begin preying on the indulgent upper class to correct injustices under the sheriff.

View Gladiator as a fantasy movie with no magic and one gets one of the best film of its type. I don’t care about historical accuracy in a world where I watch movies primarily for escapism. Maestro Ridley Scott and a long line of screenwriters can’t take too much heat drawing from a legend with multitude deviations and origins. This is the type of movie Scott and star Russell Crowe do well – so I expect Robin Hood will be a fun time.

June

06/11 The A-Team

Pro: It can’t be worse than Transformers: ROTFL or GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Con: The series doesn’t really hold up well so a movie will have to be a bit of a re-invention. The hairs being split will make all the difference.

Whatever the case, this was my favorite show among favorite shows when I was a kid. I’ll be there to see it.

06/11 The Karate Kid

Set in an exotic Asian locale, the new film will borrow elements of the original plot, wherein a bullied youth ([Jaden] Smith) learns to stand up for himself with the help of an eccentric mentor ([Jackie] Chan).

I thought this was hopeless but the trailer makes it look less so. Jackie Chan actually does know martial arts, so he will not have to act as much as Pat Morita who was nominated for an Oscar in the original movie. Having no Elisabeth Shue makes me sad.

06/18 Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort, a tough and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone… and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other side.” His only human connection is with Leila (Megan Fox), whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own. But Jonah’s past is about to catch up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: in exchange for his freedom from the warrants on his head, he must track down and stop the dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). But Turnbull, who is gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead. Based on the legendary graphic novel, “Jonah Hex” is an epic adventure thriller about one man’s personal quest for redemption against the vast canvas of the battle between good and evil.

Similar Posts:

• Cinematic Blues – 2/22/2010
• [Trailer] The Green Zone (2010)
• [Review] Super (2011)
• Edge of Darkness (2010)
• Can’t Stop the Signal: New Life for Old Shows
• [Retro Bunker] Debbie Gibson
• 300 Word Review: The Crazies (2010)

Popularity: 1% [?]