Autumn is finally upon us, and like millions of other Americans, we can’t wait for the start of a new season of NFL football. Even more exciting than the action on the gridiron, however, is the crop of new movies unspooling at the cineplex. And just like a pack of delusional Oakland Raiders fans, we truly believe every one of them has a shot at greatness.
In the spirit of the season, we separated our fall movie preview into six different “divisions,” breaking down the strengths and weaknesses of each release before finally choosing our favorites from each group:
Teen Angst Division: Jennifer’s Body, The Vampire’s Assistant, Gentlemen Broncos, Youth in Revolt
Testosterific Division: Whiteout, Surrogates, Couples Retreat, Law Abiding Citizen
Vagilicious Division: Love Happens, Fame, Whip It
Splat-tacular Division: Pandorum, Zombieland, Saw VI
Oscar Bait Division: The Informant!, A Serious Man, The Road, Amelia
Babysitter Divison: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Where the Wild Things Are, Astro Boy
Who will come out on top? Who is destined to flop? The battle begins on the next page:
NEXT: The Teen Angst Division[PAGEBREAK]
Teen Angst Division
Movies packed with raging hormones and assorted high school horrors:
Jennifer’s Body
September 18
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody
Juno writer Diablo Cody brings her hipster wit to the horror genre with this dark comedy, starring Fox as a small-town cheerleader who becomes possessed by a ravenous, man-hating demon.
Strengths: Costar Seyfried’s understated hotness complements Fox’s patently obvious variety. Word is they make out at some point.
Weaknesses: Fox’s skills at comedy (the unintentional hilarity of the Transformers flicks doesn’t count) remain to be seen. Director Karyn Kusama’s last flick was the dreadful Aeon Flux.
Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
October 23
Starring: John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek
A teenager is recruited to work for the eccentric manager of a traveling sideshow and unwittingly becomes immersed in a centuries-long war between vampires and werewolves.
Strengths: Reilly is an underrated comic actor, who rarely lends his name to crap. (Step Brothers wasn’t his fault, OK?)
Weaknesses: Could just be another brazen attempt to piggyback on the Twilight phenomenon. Hayek’s character wears a beard, effectively neutralizing her hotness.
Gentlemen Broncos
October 30
Starring: Jemaine Clement, Michael Angarano
Flight of the Conchords’ Clement stars in this comedy about a high-school writing teacher whose debut novel is plagued by allegations of plagiarism by one of his students.
Strengths: Directed by Jared Hess, the man who gave us Napoleon Dynamite.
Weaknesses: Directed by Jared Hess, the man who gave us Nacho Libre.
Youth in Revolt October 30 January 15, 2010
Starring: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Ray Liotta
Cera plays a neurotic, sexually frustrated teen living in a trailer park who adopts a new identity to win over the beautiful girl that spurned him. (UPDATE: The release date for Youth in Revolt has been pushed back to 2010. Bummer.)
Strengths: Based on an acclaimed novel. Stellar supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi and Zach Galifianakis.
Weaknesses: We know this is borderline blasphemy, but Cera’s nervous shtick is starting to get a little old.
OUR PICK: Jennifer’s Body. Sure, she may be wildly overexposed, but Megan Fox still beguiles us. We’re only human.
NEXT: The Testosterific Division[PAGEBREAK]
Testosterific Division
Featuring hot chicks, explosions, shootouts and/or Vince Vaughn, these titles skew heavily toward more male-oriented audiences:
Whiteout
September 11
Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Tom Skerritt
After hanging up her leather Underworld duds for (probably) good, Beckinsale heads south — waaaay south — to play a U.S. Marshall hunting a killer in Antarctica.
Strengths: As far as we know, there aren’t any vampires in this one.
Weaknesses: Sub-zero weather limits opportunities for Becksinale to wear skimpy, form-fitting outfits.
Surrogates
September 25
Starring: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames
A sci-fi thriller set in a future where most of the population lives vicariously through identical robot “surrogates.” When a series of surrogate murders also result in the death of their respective hosts, a cop (Willis) must leave his home for the first time in years to investigate.
Strengths: Has the potential to be Matrix-esque, sans the new-age philosophy and fetish apparel.
Weaknesses: Big-budget sci-fi flicks like Surrogates are usually released during the summer months, not late September. That is, unless they suck.
Couples Retreat
October 9
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman
Four couples head to an island resort for a vacation, all but one of them unaware that they’ve been signed up for a self-help “couple’s retreat” in which daily group therapy sessions are NOT optional.
Strengths: Swingers pals Vaughn and Favreau have always been great together on-screen. Throwing Bateman into the mix can only help matters.
Weaknesses: The plot sounds suspiciously like Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married? Be on the lookout for a large African-American man dressed in drag.
Law Abiding Citizen
October 16
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx
A widower takes the law into his own hands after being denied justice for his family’s murder, initiating a series of elaborate killings that continue after he’s imprisoned.
Strengths: Pitting Butler against Foxx, who plays the prosecutor whose plea deal inspired the victim’s rage, is highly intriguing.
Weaknesses: Butler has made only one decent flick, 2007’s RocknRolla, since his 300 breakout. Director F. Gary Gray’s last movie was the 2005 flop, Be Cool.
OUR PICK: Law Abiding Citizen. The trailer, which presents the movie as a brainy, twisted crime thriller in the vein of Se7en, is what ultimately sold us.
NEXT: The Vagilicious Division[PAGEBREAK]
Vagilicious Division
Movies featuring, or primarily geared toward, members of the the fairer sex:
Love Happens
September 18
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Aaron Eckhart, Dan Fogler
Eckhart plays a successful self-help author/motivational speaker whose personal life isn’t nearly as perfect as he lets on. Aniston plays a quirky florist recovering from a series of bad relationships. Can love blossom between them?
Strengths: Aniston has a surprisingly good track record, scoring with hits like He’s Just Not That Into You, Marley & Me and The Break-Up.
Weaknesses: Subject matter suggests the possibility of new-age platitudes. Fogler might not be able to sufficiently tone down his irrepressible wackiness.
Fame
September 25
Starring: Kay Panabaker, Kherington Payne, Kelsey Grammer
Panabaker, Payne and a host of other fresh-faced pretty young things try to dance their way to Broadway in this update of the 1980 musical that gave birth to a hit TV show.
Strengths: To our knowledge, Grammer does not perform any dance routines.
Weaknesses: Looks kinda like America’s Got Talent: The Movie, or another High School Musical. Neither of which strikes us as all that appealing.
Whip It
October 2
Starring: Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Drew Barrymore
Small-town girl Bliss Cavendar (Page) casts off the shackles of her beauty-pageant upbringing and joins a roller-derby league, where her tough new teammates teach her to be independent and self-confident.
Strengths: Juno star Page has more than enough talent to realistically sell the awkward introvert-turned-sexy badass role.
Weaknesses: Can Barrymore, who makes her directorial debut with Whip It, turn it into something more than just a trite female-empowerment flick?
OUR PICK: Whip It. It’s impossible not to like Ms. Page. Seriously, try it. You can’t, can you?
NEXT: The Splat-tacular Division[PAGEBREAK]
Splat-tacular Division
Looking for a bloody good time? Give these flicks a try:
Pandorum
September 25
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet
This futuristic thriller features Quaid and Foster as astronauts who awaken from hyper-sleep to find their spacecraft stranded in deep space, its passengers and crew nowhere to be found. Assorted otherworldly terrors awaits as they seek out the source of their predicament.
Strengths: After playing a violent, unstable villains in movies like 30 Days of Night and 3:10 to Yuma, Foster gets to be the good guy for once. At least, we think he’s the good guy. Either way, he’s still pretty scary.
Weaknesses: The tagline “From the Producers of the Resident Evil Films” does NOT inspire confidence.
Zombieland
October 2
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone
Combining the horror-comedy trend with the recent revival of zombie flicks, Harrelson and Eisenberg play two human survivors who embark on a road trip across undead America in the hopes of finding refuge in a west coast amusement park.
Strengths: First-time director Ruben Fleischer worked on Borat and the Jimmy Kimmel Show, which gives this movie at least a 50 percent chance of being funny.
Weaknesses: Harrelson hasn’t made a quality comedy since 1996’s Kingpin. Eisenberg’s fraidy-cat routine tends to wear thin at times.
Saw VI
October 23
Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor
In what’s become an annual Halloween tradition, an ethnically diverse group of attractive stupid people are ensnared in a variety of elaborately sadistic traps, the bulk of which result in painful, gruesome death.
Strengths: Cary Elwes, the unfortunate chap who lost his foot in the first Saw movie, is rumored to be returning for the sixth chapter.
Weaknesses: The franchise has become so tired and unimaginative that the return of Elwes is actually considered a strength.
OUR PICK: Zombieland. It sounds like Vacation with zombies, which is A-OK with us. But more than anything, we just want to know what the deal is with this dude.
NEXT: The Oscar Bait Division[PAGEBREAK]
Oscar Bait Division
Look for heavy doses of “relevance,” “poignance” and “tour-de-force performances” from this prestigious group of titles:
The Informant!
September 18
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Patton Oswalt
Damon plays the anti-Bourne as a bipolar whistleblower in this Steven Soderbergh-directed dark comedy about the U.S. government’s true-life efforts to expose the price-fixing practices of agriculture powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland in the early ‘90s.
Strengths: Early trailers hint at a lighter, more comedic version of A Beautiful Mind. Exclamation point in title promises excitement of some kind.
Weaknesses: Soderbergh is a tough director to pin down. Will we see the crazy experimental Soderbergh from Bubble and Schizopolis? Or the mainstream, occasionally lazy Soderbergh from the Ocean’s films?
A Serious Man
October 2
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed
After the relatively whimsical Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers return to darker territory (but not No Country for Old Men dark, thank God) for this period dramedy about Jewish intellectuals immersed in various personal and professional crises in the late ‘60s.
Strengths: It’s hard to bet against the Coens and their monumental pedigree.
Weaknesses: A cast of relative unknowns. A potentially inaccessible story.
The Road
October 16
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron
In this dark, post-apocalyptic drama, Mortensen plays a father who travels with his son in search of humanity amidst a landscape of rampant starvation and roving bands of cannibals. Based on the acclaimed novel by No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy.
Strengths: Dude, it’s Viggo. Oh, and that McCarthy guy is supposed to be pretty cool, too.
Weaknesses: Several releases date changes are a bad sign. Early negative reviews are even worse.
Amelia
October 23
Starring: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor
Two-time Oscar winner Swank trims her locks and takes to the skies to play Amelia Earhart, the aerospace pioneer who vanished in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
Strengths: Compelling subject matter. Solid cast. Swank’s a dead-ringer for Earhart.
Weaknesses: It has the potential to wander into cliched biopic territory.
OUR PICK: The Road. Train wreck or not, any movie featuring a bearded, dystopian Viggo is still a must-see. (UPDATE: The Road’s been pushed back again, to November 25. Son of a b**ch.)
NEXT: The Babysitter Division[PAGEBREAK]
Babysitter Division
If spending a few hours in a darkened room with dozens of screaming children is your idea of a good time, check these flicks out:
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
September 18
Starring: Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Neil Patrick Harris
Hader plays Flint Lockwood, an ambitious inventor who manages to create an entirely new weather phenomenon in his quest to save his small town.
Strengths: Based on an acclaimed children’s book. Produced by Sony’s fledgling animation unit, which gave us 2007’s surprisingly good, sadly overlooked Surf’s Up. Ideally suited for 3-D (Hamburgers falling from the sky! Whoa!).
Weaknesses: Not all beloved children’s books translate well to the big screen. (Prince Caspian, anyone?)
Where the Wild Things Are
October 16
Starring: Forest Whitaker, Catherine O’Hara, Max Records
Hipster auteur Spike Jonze takes a stab at adapting Maurice Sendak’s cherished ode to childhood imagination. Newcomer Records stars as a boy whose room is suddenly transformed into a land of wondrous creatures.
Strengths: Jonze’s recently-released trailers for the film received solidly positive responses. Karen O’s debut track from the soundtrack is an absolute delight.
Weaknesses: The film’s troubled production was plagued by reports of frightened children bawling at test screenings, suggesting that this one might not be for the kiddies after all.
Astro Boy
October 23
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Samuel L. Jackson
Freddie Highmore lends his voice to the title character, a sort of robot Pinocchio created by a scientist mourning the death of his young son. Only Astro Boy has super powers, which he uses to fight evil. Based on the popular Japanese animated series.
Strengths: A star-studded voice cast. Terrific animation.
Weaknesses: Movies based on Japanese titles have a mixed track record at best (think Speed Racer and Dragonball Evolution).
OUR PICK: Where the Wild Things Are. The thought of the director of Being John Malkovich adapting a children’s book has a strange appeal. The bawling kids story only tantalizes us more.
