2014 Films

[sulkyblue]

Given that my summary of 2013 film was pretty long, to reflect the sheer number I watched, I thought I'd best separate out the list of things that have drawn my attention for 2014. Out already (or thereabouts) are all the Oscar bate films which half count as 2013 half as 2014. So 12 Years a Slave, Mandela, The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle amongst others. Also just released is 1: Life on the Limit, another formula 1 documentary which hopefully will add something beyond Senna and Rush.

In rough release date:

• Her - A peculiar sounding, about Joaquim Phoenix falling in love with an operating system (Scarlett Johansson), but the trailer was utterly compelling. Directed by Spike Jonze.
• The Book Thief - the book was beautiful, hopefully the film maintains the more unusual elements of the book, but they're missin from the trailer leaving something which looks a bit of a slog.
• The Lego Movie - the little lego scenes tha appear in the games are perfectly pitched, loving spoofs of the classics. Not sure how well they'll work all mushed together in a crazy collection. The fact it's by the director of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is no surprise after watching the trailer.
• The Monuments Men - "George Clooney stars and directs" is enough for me to be honest, but the rest of the cast is also a lure (Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville) the trailer is funny and fascinating and it was filmed at Duxford!
• Robocop - I'm not a particular fan of the original, but I@m reliably informed this looks like an interesting remake.
• Pompeii - Paul WS Anderson mixes period and disaster movie. From the looks of the trailer there's a lot of shouting and exploding, but not so much quality acting or writing.
• Veronica Mars - The television show is one of my favourite shows of all time and I am simultaneously amazed and utterly unsurprised that they raised so much money to create a movie. The trailer gives me all the confidence I need that this really will be a great continuation of the spectacular series.
• Divergent - A new female led series to tag along on The Hunger Games bandwagon. Could be interesting.
• Muppets Most Wanted - The most recent Muppets film perfectly captured all that can be great about the muppets, hopefully the departure of Jason Segel as writer and star won't leave this one falling into the traps the franchise has stumbled into in the past. Oh! Tom Hiddleston!
• Noah - Russell Crowe plays the eponymous biblical prophet. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. The trailer is beyond over-the-top and there's hideous dialogue. But maybe it's just a badly done trailer.
• Captain America - the constituants parts of the Avengers have their highs (Iron Man) and their lows (Thor), but the first Captain America was pretty good. While I'd much rather see a film exploring the new characters (Hulk and Hawkeye) at least Black Widow is heavily featured in this one. Not so sure about Guardians of the Galaxy mind you
• Transcendance - legendary cinematorgrapeher Wally Pfister jumps to the directors chair will be beautiful, and is a very interesting idea, whether it will work or not I'm not sure.
• Godzilla - I wasn't interested in this until I saw that it was directed by Gareth Edwards, whose excellent Monsters is a natural sibling to Godzilla.
• X-Men - finally the new and old come together. I've not been blown away by any of the films since X2, but we'll see what this one can do.
• Maleficent - Angelina Jolie as the villain from Sleeping Beauty before she was the villain. Sounds like they're trying to just recreate Wicked, but Jolie is usually interesting to watch
• Edge of Tomorrow - Groundhog day meets Starship Troopers. If it had ANYONE but Tom Cruise in it, I might care.
• How To Train Your Dragon 2 - I loved the first one, but the trailer for this was a little too heavy on the heavy and meaningful a bit too light on the humour and charm.
• How to Catch a Monster - "dark and dreamy fantasy" sounds good, the cast list of Christina Hendricks, Matt Smith and Saoirse Ronan sound good, Ryan Gosling writing and directing sounds uncertain.
• Dawn of The Planet of The Apes- a mouthful of a title, but the first one was surprisingly excellent.
• Jupiter Ascending- The Wachowskis do epic sci-fi and it is indeed epic!
• Guardians of the Galaxy - Given how much I enjoy most other Marvel films, I really should be more excited about this.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I've got a soft spot for these characters, when done right they're fun and interesting, a good mixture of irreverent teenagers and batman darkness. This trailer desperately needed a joke at the end of it though.
• Interstellar - sci fi from Christopher Nolan, hopefully not as pretensious and dull as the trailer makes out.
• The Imitation Game - Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Nuff said.

Also out but of minimal insufficient interest for me to go and search out trailers - Hobbit 3, Hunger Games 3 (I failed to see the second one), Spider-Man 2, Transformers 4, 300: Rise of An Empire, 50 Shades of Grey, and Sin City 2

Devastating news though - apparently the Minions Movie has been pushed to summer 2015. Also Pixar seem to be taking a year off because there's nothing between last year's Monsters University and 2015's Inside Out.

Thanks to den of geek and Total Film