So Long, Summer: 2016 Fall & Winter Movie Preview

A lot of us are doing Back to School shopping, so like it or not, summer is drawing to a close.

Suicide Squad just overcame a critical keel-hauling with box office gold, and it feels like that’s going to pretty much act as the capstone on the summer movie-going season. Latecomers Sausage Party, Pete’s Dragon, Hell or High Water and Hands of Stone could all see some sleeper success, while Ben-Hur is destined for disaster.

So what’s next? Looking ahead to the fall and winter months, I have to say, it doesn’t exactly look like the most awe-inspiring autumn, let alone Christmas. Unquestionably, films are going to surface we didn’t see coming, but as it stands now, there’s less than ten films that look cool enough to lure me into the theater. It’s a surprisingly short list this year.

The Magnificent Seven  (9/23) – Most remakes are just a cash-grab, but this 21^st Century Tombstone from Antoine Fuqua feels like the real McCoy, and seems likely to continue Chris Pratt’s winning streak. Note that these are all different characters than we saw in the Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner classic.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (9/30) – This feels like the return of the real Tim Burton – a surreal tale of misfits and outcasts. It’s sure coming out at the right time of the year.

Birth of a Nation (10/07) – by all accounts, Nate Parker’s Sundance triumph about slavery in the South is the film of the moment and seems destined to win Best Picture. But it’s still really early and Toronto hasn’t even happened yet. But as of now, Birth is the front-runner.

The Girl on the Train (10/07) – This Emily Blunt mystery was a massive best-seller and has already been tagged as this years’ Gone Girl. Fall’s a great time for a smart, moody thriller, and Blunt’s been picking ‘em really well.

Doctor Strange (11/04) – I love all the ingredients here. The Marvel Universe, I loved the comic, Cumberbatch is awesome – but that first trailer is a little too Inception lite, and we need a bigger sense of the supernatural forces at play here. Hopefully a stupendous trailer’s just around the corner. Marvel so rarely stumbles, and I want this one to be worthy.

Arrival (11/11) – Denis Villeneuve’s first sci-fi film before embarking on Blade Runner 2? Count me as interested! Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Villeneuve is an astonishing talent, so here’s hoping this doesn’t end up being The Invasion. 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (11/18) – Harry Potter is back in bookstores again, and the winter months have always been very welcoming to J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. Here’s to new characters and environments agreeing with audiences.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (12/16) – Reshoots be damned, this is the Mt. Everest of the holiday season. Disney is banking on December lightning striking twice, and director Gareth Edwards could sure use some love. It’s hard to imagine anything dampening my enthusiasm for this unique Dirty Dozen take on that galaxy far, far away. Plus, two words: Darth Vader.

Passengers (12/21) – More sci-fi, from John Spaihts' 2007 Black List story, tagged as one of the best unproduced scripts of the year. Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt star as two voyagers on an interstellar colony ship. Hundreds of travelers are in suspended animation for a journey lasting over a century. When Pratt somehow wakes up early, he decides to thaw out a companion, rather than endure a lifetime of solitude. Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) directs.

That's about it! I'm sure there will be other standouts yet to emerge, but from where I'm sitting here in August, these are the ones I'm most intrigued by.

Suicide Squad Review Wreckage

Well, I’m sure that the phones are ringing off the hook at Warner Bros. today – and pretty much not in a good way.

The reviews for Suicide Squad are about exactly the opposite from what everyone hoped. When a consistent theme of “Not as bad as last years’ Fantastic Four” begins to emerge, you know you’re in trouble.  They’re currently 33% Rotten over on Rotten Tomatoes, and it sounds like they continued the too-dark muddy nature that was a source of so many of the critiques of Batman v Superman. That the first part of the film rocks hard, but then quickly devolves into tame and muddlesome predictability. Everyone consistently praises the cast, especially Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, in what sounds like a completely star-making turn. But shockingly, Jared Leto’s highly anticipated Joker is evidently barely in the film. Sounding like a lot of bad decisions were made in terms of focus and editing, and that the vibe seems to be that director David Ayer took a good swing, but that studio meddling delivered a hamstrung product that pulls its punches. It will be interesting to see how all this translates into weekend box office. Can they even land first place, or will Jason Bourne continue to dominate? A huge factor is the Olympics, and if audiences decide to stay home and watch those this weekend and skip “Skwad,” it could be a killing blow for the picture. Man, DC just can’t seem to catch a break. Stay tuned.

The Needful Nostalgia of Stranger Things

By now, if you've got Netflix, you've likely already binged your way through all 8 episodes of Stranger Things, one of the few entertainment bright spots of the summer. Released with almost no advance word, the show caught fire instantly and became The must-watch show of the season.

 

In case you've been away, Stranger Things is a delirious fusion of all things Eighties, a frenzied and faithful story of childhood friends in peril that sprays gleeful reference shrapnel invoking the works of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. E.T., Poltergeist, Stand by Me, Firestarter, The Goonies - you'll get whiplash counting the nods and callbacks. The opening credits echo the font of every King book jacket, backed by a synthesizer score that screams John Carpenter. Even the poster art (from Kyle Lambert) is meant to evoke the legendary style of Drew Struzan, he of the iconic Star Wars and Indiana Jones one-sheets. For anyone who grew up loving eighties movies, Stranger Things is a heady trip back in the time machine. Set in 1983, it looks, smells and feels like a product of that simpler, pre-internet time. Part of the show's appeal has undoubtedly been the interactive fun of connecting the pop cultural dots, and bathing in a warm pool of nostalgia for a genre of film we kind of take for granted now.

 

But Stranger Things isn't just a magic act, and it's definitely not paint-by-numbers. Created and directed by The Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross), Stranger Things is the story of a lazy town next to a government research lab that's rocked by the disappearance of a small boy under disturbing circumstances - and his friends' determined quest to somehow find him.

 

Just watch that pilot, and if you aren't immediately all kinds of hooked, I'll be surprised. I may even sick a Demogorgon on you. Eighties stalwarts Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine are the most familiar faces, both doing excellent work. As the town Sheriff, David Harbour is a new face to me, but he won't stay unfamiliar long, as he's fantastic here. A damaged, near derelict sleepwalker straight out of Carpenter or Dean Koontz.

 

But it's the young cast of friends that deserve a huge amount of credit for Stranger Things' success. Led by Finn Wolfhard (right?), Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLoughlin, Charlie Heaton and Natalia Dyer do an amazing job of creating believable and unforced energy in their roles and keep you rooting for them every step of the way. But it's Millie Bobby Brown as "Eleven," who's going to come out of this thing in a major way. It's a star-making performance and she becomes a galvanizing force for this band of D&D loyalists in a way you won't soon forget.

 

With so much nostalgic hat-tipping, it may be tempting for some to view Stranger Things with a cynical lens. But viewers have embraced this show like a beer on a hot afternoon, and I gotta say I just enjoyed the hell out of my time in Hawkins, Indiana, and I can't wait to see where the Duffer Brothers take us next.