Karina LongworthWe know — you're excited about The Dark Knight Rises. And The Avengers. And Hunger Games. So are we. We're also excited about a lot of other movies whose marketing campaigns have not inundated us with white noise (yet). Allow us to suggest a few more films to put on your 2012 watch list.
Red Tails
Remember back in 2005, when George Lucas was making the press rounds to promote Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and he was all, “Now I can FINALLY make those experimental movies I've been talking about making for 30 years but for whatever reason have never actually made”? Instead of following through with that promise/threat, he financed Red Tails, an action period piece about the Tuskegee Airmen starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard. In development since the '80s, in production since 2009 under director Anthony Hemingway (Lucas reportedly directed reshoots himself due to Hemingway's Treme commitments), and set for release on Jan. 20, Red Tails will either benefit from or be overshadowed by Lucasfilm's other 2012 project, the 3-D re-releases of the Star Wars films, beginning with Episode I — The Phantom Menace on Feb. 10.
Gina Carano in Haywire
Soderbergh x 2
If Steven Soderbergh is still seriously considering a “sabbatical” from filmmaking, as he keeps threatening, it doesn't seem like it's going to start anytime soon. As of now he has two directorial efforts due for release in 2012 — Haywire (opening Jan. 20), a tricky, kinetic action mystery built around superfox mixed martial artist Gina Carano, and Magic Mike (June 29), based on star Channing Tatum's prefame gig as a male stripper.
Red Hook Summer
Spike Lee x several
While Red Hook Summer, an independently produced drama set in the titular Brooklyn neighborhood directed by and co-starring Spike Lee, was originally rumored to be a sequel to Do the Right Thing, reports have since surfaced that this is not technically the case — even if Lee does reprise his role as Mookie from his 1989 film. Either way, Summer's Sundance premiere in January will kick off a busy 2012 for Lee, who hasn't released a feature film since Miracle at St. Anna in 2008. He'll start shooting a Josh Brolin-starring remake of Chan-wook Park's Oldboy in March, and after that reportedly will direct a biopic of former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry for HBO, starring Eddie Murphy, collaborating with Lee for the first time.
Damsels in Distress
With four years between dramatic features, Spike Lee has nothing on Whit Stillman, whose last directorial effort, The Last Days of Disco, was released in 1998. After more than a decade of aborted follow-ups and false starts, the Oscar-nominated writer-director (Metropolitan) is back with this quasi-musical about a group of girlfriends (including Greta Gerwig and Crazy, Stupid, Love co-star Analeigh Tipton) and their “distressing” boyfriends (including nouveau nighttime soap hunks Adam Brody of The O.C. and Hugo Becker of Gossip Girl). Both of a piece with Stillman's previous deadpan deconstructions of group social life and infused with a gleeful lunacy heretofore unknown in his films, Damsels is worth the wait.
The Dictator
Three years after the disappointing Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a fresh character in another Larry Charles-directed comedy. At least, we think it's a comedy — in typical Baron Cohen fashion, details on The Dictator have been kept under wraps. In what would suggest some kind of a break from the prankish faux-documentary style of Borat and Bruno, Dictator features stars such as Anna Faris and Ben Kingsley playing characters other than themselves. The film is rumored to be based on Zabibah and the King, a romance novel set in the 8th century in Iraq believed to have been secretly written by Saddam Hussein, but it also apparently takes place, at least partially, in modern-day New York. All will be revealed, we guess, on May 11.
Moonrise Kingdom
Wes Anderson's first live-action film since The Darjeeling Limited, and his first period piece ever, Moonrise Kingdom stars newcomers Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman as two 12-year-olds who fall in love and run away together. Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand play some of the adults flummoxed by the young pair's disappearance. Though no U.S. premiere date has been set yet (Focus Features is releasing), the film is scheduled to open in mid-May in France, so a Cannes slot seems like a good possibility.
The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to There Will Be Blood stars PTA regular Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, a spiritual guru said to be inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Joaquin Phoenix co-stars as a Dodd follower, in his first post-I'm Still Here role. When the original financiers backed out of this long-percolating movie in 2010, the film was saved by Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison's daughter Megan Ellison, who has become a new Hollywood player, also investing in True Grit, Bridesmaids and upcoming films from Wong Kar Wai and Kathryn Bigelow. No specific release date has been set for Master, but a Weinstein Company spokesperson told us we can expect to see it in the fall of 2012. And speaking of Ellison and Bigelow …
The Hurt Locker
Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama Bin Laden project
The Hurt Locker was not just the first film directed by a woman to win the Best Picture Oscar but one of the lowest-grossing movies to do so in history — making it perhaps the only true underdog victor of the Hollywood popularity contest in decades. There's a cloud of secrecy around Bigelow's follow-up; its IMDb cast list is qualified as “rumored,” and even its temporary working title is in dispute. What we do know is that the movie, apparently at one point titled Kill Bin Laden, has something to do with the hunt to find and kill the al-Qaida leader; that it's Bigelow's second collaboration with Hurt Locker writer-producer Mark Boal; and that the release date has already been bumped from Oct. 12, allegedly due to the filmmakers not wanting to be perceived as trying to influence the presidential elections. The film now is scheduled for release on Dec. 19, 2012. Maybe.
Pete and Debbie from Knocked Up
This Is Forty
Another not-quite-a-sequel, Judd Apatow's fourth directorial effort focuses on the marriage of Pete and Debbie, the characters played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up. While a few actors from Apatow's 2007 hit are returning — including Charlyne Yi, Jason Segel and Apatow-Mann daughters Iris and Maude — the film also features a few high-profile newcomers to Apatovia, including Melissa McCarthy, Megan Fox, and Albert Brooks, playing Rudd's dad. Originally scheduled for a summer 2012 release, Universal pushed Forty to Dec. 21 so that the studio's Snow White and the Hunstman can beat that other Snow White movie, the Tarsem-directed Mirror, Mirror, to market by a month.
Artist rendering of Computer Chess
Computer Chess
Andrew Bujalski, American indie film's most stalwart advocate for celluloid (he cut each of his previous, 16mm-shot features, Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax, on an outdated flatbed machine), is pulling a 180 with his next film. Computer Chess, a period piece set in 1980, was shot in Austin in September on modified video cameras from that era. Having partially crowdsourced his financing through UnitedStatesArtists.org, Bujalski has been editing Chess this fall (yes, on a computer) with an eye toward a festival premiere in 2012.
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