The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Director: Peter Jackson; Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis

The Hobbit is one of my favourite books of all time, and The Lord of the Rings is without a doubt my favourite movie trilogy. Though I would have loved to have seen Guillermo Del Torro’s vision of Middle Earth, I’m tremendously happy that Peter Jackson is back in the directors seat. Adapting arguably Tolkien’s best book, with a phenomenal cast comprised of LOTR veterans and some talented new blood, I can’t wait to see what Peter Jackson and company have in store! It simply isn’t Christmas without hobbits, dwarves, wizards and one bloody epic-battle…

Release Date: December 2012

Skyfall

Director: Sam Mendes; Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Naomie Harris, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw

It’s felt like an eternity since we last saw Bond on the silver screen in Quantum of Solace (2008). Now that the MGM’s financial troubles are finally behind them, the world’s favourite secret agent is set to return with a vengeance in Skyfall – a brand new adventure, not directly tied to the events of Casino or Quantum. With Javier Bardem as the main villain, Ben Whishaw as the new Q, and Oscar winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) taking over directing duties, Skyfall promises to be a whole new class of Bond film – with a capital B. Which begs the question, greatest Bond movie ever?

Release Date: October 2012

Much Ado About Nothing

Director: Joss Whedon; Cast: Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Fran Kranz

Okay, the first curveball on the list. An adaption of Shakespeare’s immortal play, Much Ado About Nothing is a film written and directed by Joss Whedon – yes, the Joss Whedon: the creative mind behind Buffy, Angel, Firefly & Serenity, Dollhouse and Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, and director of this summers tent-pole blockbuster The Avengers.  With a cast made up almost exclusively of alumnus from Whedon’s past shows, the film was shot in just 12 days on location in Whedon’s Santa Monica home during a break from filming The Avengers. Once completed the film is headed for the festival circuit “because”, and I quote, “it is fancy.” Hopefully, it will be picked-up by a distributor and we’ll get the opportunity to watch it later in the year.

Men In Black 3

Director: Barry Sonnenfield; Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

With a great story and a strong chemistry between its two leads, the original Men In Black was one of the most enjoyable films of the late 90s. The third instalment in the series see’s Agent J (Smith) travelling back in time to the 1960’s to stop the assassination of his partner Agent K (Lee Jones) – which he must do with the help of a younger Agent K (Brolin). The film also stars Emma Thompson, as the new head of the MIB, Alice Eve as her younger 1960s counterpart, and the hilarious Bill Hader as Andy Warhol. The new trailer looks like a promising return to form for the series. At the very least, MIB 3 will give us the opportunity to watch Josh Brolin’s do an eerily spot on Tommy Lee Jones impression! Seriously, it’s really quite good…

Release Date: May 2012

The Dark Knight Rises

Director: Christopher Nolan; Cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway

After the phenomenal critical and commercial success of The Dark Knight, writer and director Christopher Nolan returns to Gotham to give the Dark Knight his final swansong. Set eight years after the last film, Gotham has been experiencing a new golden age of tranquillity whilst Batman (Bale) has gone into hiding, having taken down the Joker and taken the fall for Harvey Dents murderous rampage. However, the arrival of the mysterious Selina Kyle (Hathaway) and the villainous masked man Bane (Hardy) force the Dark Knight to rise up, one last time…

Arguably the most eagerly anticipated film of 2012, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to convince anyone to get excited about this film. I urge those of you who haven’t seen it yet to watch the six-minute prologue attached to IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, hopefully, this will tide you over until July…or make you even more excited and make the wait all the more unbearable!

Release Date: 20 July 2012

Looper

Director: Rian Johnson; Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

In this intriguing time-travel thriller, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a Looper, a killer who works for a crime syndicate based in the future. All is well until he realises that one of his next targets is his future self (Willis).  With Rian Johnson, the writer-director behind Brothers Bloom and phenomenal Brick, at the helm, count on things getting mighty complicated before the end credits role. Definitely, one to watch out for…

Release Date: 28 September 2012

The Avengers

Director: Joss Whedon; Cast: Samuel L Jackson, Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlet Johansson, Jeremy Renner

Having spent years and multiple films laying the groundwork, the stage is finally set for Marvel’s Avengers to finally hit the big screen. When a new threat emerges that jeopardises the fate of the entire world, Nic Fury (Jackson), director on the international peace keeping organisation SHIELD, brings together the earth’s mightiest heroes to combat it. Marvel Studios has a phenomenal track record with comic book movies, and I think they’ve made an excellent decision giving directorial duties to Joss Whedon. I’m confident that he will be able to tell a great story and juggle this impressive, dysfunctional ensemble of super-heroes.

Release Date: 27 April 2012

Prometheus

Director: Ridley Scott; Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron,  Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Patrick Wilson

A team of explorers travel to the darkest corners of the universe to search for the origins of humanity. There, they must face a terrifying battle to save the human race. Whether this much-hyped film takes place in the same universe as the Aliens films or just a universe that’s Aliens-adjacent, isn’t clear yet – but who cares, it’s Ridley Scott back in space with an all-star cast. Be happy!

Release Date: 1 June 2012

The Bourne Legacy

Director: Tony Gilroy; Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Wiez, Edward Norton, Joan Allen

Set within the same Bourne universe, Legacy is a brand new spin-off featuring a whole new cast of players. Jeremy Renner stars as Alex Cross, a CIA-trained spy, dealing with the ramifications of the previous films and a whole new conspiracy. Though I was initially apprehensive about a new Bourne films without either Matt Damon in the lead role or Paul Greengrass behind the lens, I’m getting more and more excited about the prospect of Legacy. I couldn’t think of a better choice to take on this lead than Jeremy Renner; he’s a fantastic actor and that has proven that he can do action well in Ghost Protocol. With an amazing supporting cast – including Rachel Wiez, Edward Norton and Joan Allen, returning to play Pamela Landy – and long-time series scribe Tony Gilroy taking on writing and directing duties, Bourne Legacy looks set to become a worthy addition to this spy brilliant series.

Release Date: 17 August 2012

The Amazing Spider-Man

Director: Marc Webb; Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Fields

Full confession, I’m a huge Spider-man fan. I have been ever since I was a kid, when I would engorge myself on the comics and cartoons. So the prospect of a brand new Spider-man film puts a smile on my face (seriously, there is an earnest/disturbing grin plastered on my face right now, whilst I write this). Though I doubt the debate over whether it was necessary to re-boot the franchise will ever cease, these is no reason not be excited about The Amazing Spider-man. Andrew Garfield is an incredibly talented actor, and his heart-felt speech at comic-con, dressed in a cheap Halloween Spider-man costume, has endeared him to the comic book community. The uber-taleneted Emma Stone will play Peter Parker’s first love, Gwen Stacey, Welshmen Rhys Evans gets double duty as Dr Connors and The Lizard, whilst Martin Sheen will get to say that immortal line – “with great power comes great responsibility” – as Uncle Ben. Check out the official website, where you’ll get a better look at the cast and the costume.

Release Date: 4 July 2012

Special mentions

The Raven

In The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe spends the last days of his life working with the police to track down a serial killer whose crime scenes mimic those found in the writers stories. Staring John Cusack as Poe with James McTeigue, the director V For Vendetta, at the helm The Raven could be one of 2012 dark horses.

Release Date: 9 March 2012

The Cabin in the Woods

Joss Whedon has teamed up Drew Goddard, the writer of Cloverfield, to create Cabin in the Woods – a film that takes the old clichéd horror story of a mysterious cabin in the woods and flips it on its head. Starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and some Whedon alumnus, Cabin in the Woods is finally going to be released in 2012. Expect an intelligent plot and big scares from this.

Release Date: 13 April 2012

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter:

The title says it all…

The Plot

The story follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) as one of the best ‘extractors’ in the world where his job is to enter the subconscious of a subject whilst they are asleep and extract, or essentially, steal secrets of the mind.  His skills have not only given him ample work as the best extractor in the business and lead him and his team into the world of corporate espionage, but his skills have also cost him his children, his wife and a life of normality.  Consequently he is also a fugitive of the United States and is unable to return home to his children until one day, the target of Cobb’s latest extraction job, Saito (Ken Watanabe) proposes an offer that he cannot refuse, the chance to be free of the suspected charges brought against him by the United States and to return home and be a father to his children.

With Cobb leading the charge, he and his trusted team (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao) are set the challenge to not extract secrets as normal, but to cause inception instead.  And what is inception? Inception is the ability to plant a seed, an idea, deep in someone’s subconscious without their knowledge and successfully let the idea mature and grow naturally until it eventually creates a far-reaching desired result in reality.  Sounds relatively simple enough but problems and sabotage are never far away with security companies training high-risk clients to mentally battle and protect themselves from extractors like Cobb from successfully penetrating their subconscious, and additional personal struggles come from within, with the image of Cobb’s deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) making haunting violent appearances as the caged lost soul, locked in Cobb’s memory of pain and guilt.

Cillian Murphy, Lukas Haas, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite also star.

The Thoughts

Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island, The Departed, Gangs Of New York, Titanic) plays Cobb, the expert extractor who, after attempting to extract secrets from Saito, a powerful Japanese business man (Ken Wanatabe), is given the tempting offer to have his life back if he can successfully pull off inception, to implant an idea into the subconscious of a rival energy company’s heir Robert Fischer Jr., (Cillian Murphy) that will in reality cause the Fischer corporation to destabilise and thus free up the market for Saito’s company.  If Cobb and his team can do it, the prize is worth more than any amount of money.  If Saito honours his promise, he can make one phone call and lift the charges brought against Cobb so that he may return home to the United States and be reunited with his two young children.

DiCaprio has really blossomed as a serious actor since becoming older and more experienced (his seminal performance for me was his role as Billy Costigan in Scorsese’s The Departed), he is as ever, wonderful to watch on screen, with his emotional performance in the role of Cobb being both captivating and necessary.

Looking at DiCaprio’s acting repertoire, it is clear to see that he will continue to be a firm favourite at the Academy Awards as his impeccable taste for choosing interesting roles with creative directors sees no way in slowing.

Academy Award winner Marion Cotilard (Nine, Public Enemies, La Vie En Rose) plays Mal, Cobb’s deceased wife who appears to him in his subconscious when he sleeps and works as an extractor.  Mal’s aggressive nature, violent outbursts and desire to sabotage and guilt-trip Cobb means that he is barely ever rested when he sleeps as she materialises in his dreams, angry, confused and lost.  Cotillard provides a solid performance as Mal, the distressed lost soul, her emotive presentation is almost scary and haunting at times and her character acts as a good plot developer to keep the audience guessing and questioning why Cobb is so fearful and guilt-ridden.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Wanatabe ,Ellen Page, Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao make up Cobb’s team of dream walkers.  Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer) plays Arthur, the planner of the team, his job is to research the target down to the last detail and to design the plan and anticipate any contingencies during the dream walking.  Ellen Page (Juno, Whip It!) plays Ariadne, a gifted young architecture student picked out by Miles (played by screen legend Michael Caine) as the person who could be up for the job of designing the complex three layered maze for their target Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to dream walk in.  Ken Wanatabe is Saito, the man who has the power to give Cobb his life back, he inadvertently joins Cobb’s team to ensure that inception happens.  Meanwhile Tom Hardy (Bronson, RocknRolla) plays Eames, the cheeky English chap who’s on screen banter with Arthur is both amusing and adds some comedic effect to what is quite a serious film.  Finally Dileep Rao (Avatar) plays Yusuf, the chemist who concocts sedative potions to send the dream walkers into a deep sleep so that they may do their job more effectively.

Cillian Murphy (The Dark Knight, 28 Days Later) plays Robert Fischer Jr., the target of Cobb’s team.  He is the heir to a vast energy empire and will soon take over once his already frail and sick father (Maurice Fischer, played by Pete Postlethwaite) passes away.  The only idea Cobb and his team need to implant in Fischer’s mind is that he needs to split his father’s empire up, thus freeing up the energy market for Saito and preventing the Fischer corporation from building a monopoly.  It is unsurprising to see Murphy appear in Inception as he also appeared as the villain Dr. Jonathon Crane aka The Scarecrow in Nolan’s Batman series (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) but it is wrong to think that Murphy got the role through association as his acting skills stands up for itself, especially in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, 28 Days Later and in Girl With A Pearl Earring.

Legends Michael Caine, Tom Berenger and Pete Postlethwaite all have relatively minor cameo roles but it is good to see them still active on screen.

As for the writing and direction: Christopher Nolan.  What can I say but ‘wow’?  Nolan impressed millions of moviegoers when he wrote and directed The Dark Knight, part of the Batman movie franchise and was especially touched when the late Heath Ledger posthumously received the Academy Award for best actor in a supporting role.  Nolan claimed that the reason he cast Ledger in the role of the Joker was that Ledger was apparently ‘fearless’ and he could not see anyone else playing the Joker.  Well, Nolan has done it again with Inception and delivered an impressive slice of escapism.  Not only is the cast well put together, but the combination of the complexity and intrigue of the story, script and the jaw-dropping camerawork and special effects make this movie exceptional.  There are moments that literally make you stop and think while you are watching, ‘how on earth did they film that?’ with some of the most impressive scenes being the super-slow motion camerawork and the zero-gravity scenes.

Complex and intense, Inception does not have the easiest of concepts and plot lines to follow, albeit that is part of the interest and pull of this movie, simply the mind-blowing notion that if it were possible to dream walk, just imagine what you could get up to!  However difficult some may conceive the ideas in Inception to be, forget all that and immerse yourself in Nolan’s vision, pay close enough attention and this clever mind-bending thriller will provide very high rewards indeed.

I do however, have one or two words of reservations.  They employ Ellen Page’s character (Ariadne) to be their dream world architect, but they do not go into detail in explaining how it is possible to construct an entirely fictional world in a dream.  In addition, Nolan also does not address how Eames (Tom Hardy’s character, the forger) is able to change his appearance to look like any other person.  Nevertheless, I do sympathise with Nolan and fully understand that too much explaining in film and suddenly it all becomes far too confusing for the average audience to follow, so in that vein, I completely understand why Nolan left those two issues unaddressed.  You just have to push those two questions aside and roll with it!

Inception is without doubt, the most unmissable film of the year.  It’s this year’s Avatar, completely original, with mind-blowing concepts, delectable special effects, emotional, yet often humorous and will keep you on the edge of your seat till the very end, begging the question as the house lights go up, will there be an Inception 2 or will that spinning top finally fall over?

The Film Buzz Review Rating: *********½ (9.5/10)

Release Date: 16^th July 2010 (in cinemas now and see it at a cinema for optimal viewing of both sight and sound!)

Director and Writer: Christopher Nolan

Links: IMDb, Official Site

It’s a bit late to be categorised in ‘Box Office’ and it’s not quite on DVD yet (DVD will be out 18 January 2010) but I had the chance to catch this film recently and wondered what took me so long to get to round to watching this genius film.

(500) Days of Summer is a romance/comedy but it is most definitely not a typical “rom-com”. I cannot stress it enough that this is not a boy-meets-girl, they-have-some-kind-of-misunderstanding-and-they-hate-each-other-but-for-some-wierd-fated-reason-they-are-forced-together-and-slowly-a-budding-romance-develops-and-eventually-turns-into-a-full-frontal-wedding. So if you’re looking for that – go check out The Proposal or something.

(500) Days of Summer‘s tagline is “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.”
But the film has way more to offer than just those three circumstances. This is an offbeat, slightly quirky romantic comedy with a play on the words of the title – this film isn’t about 500 days in the season of summer, it’s the memories of a boy’s relationship (or lack of) with a charming girl called Summer.

The Plot

Tom is a greeting card writer who dreams of finding his true love and one day comes across charming, vintage beauty Summer and falls head over heels in love instantly. However, Summer has very different views about love – she thinks it doesn’t exist. Furthermore she doesn’t want to be tied down to a relationship so to make things more complicated, so the couple serenade as ‘friends’ which throws Tom into ecstasy when they’re together on a relationship ‘high’ but at the same time frustrates Tom to no end when they’re on a relationship ‘low’ or rather when there is no established relationship.

Directed by Marc Webb who is relatively new but will be hugely in demand after this masterpiece which is written by  Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber starring the cute-as-hell Joseph Gordon-Levitt and beautiful Zooey Deschanel and also Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler as the two most awesome sidekicks, providing a good deal of the laughs and adding to the overall ingenuity of the plot.

The Thoughts

The beauty of this film is that it disregards the traditional linear plot of rom-com by visiting each memory of Tom in a seemingly random order. The audience is taken on a delightful journey through Tom’s mind as he jumps from moment to moment. This film is so magically put together that it manages the most unconventional twist i.e. stating at the beginning that “this is not a love story” but it somehow manages to make you feel “love butterflies” whilst being bitter-sweet at the same time.

I couldn’t think of two more perfect actors to portray the characters than Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom and Zooey Deschanel as Summer. Gordon-Levitt (10 Things I Hate About You) is the sweetest, most sincere, timid guy who is whole-heartedly chasing his one true love, and Deschanel (The Happening) is a pure beauty – so believable that you cannot help but fall deeply in love with her innocent blue eyes, blushed cheeks and sweet smile along with her charming, quirky ways – they make for a warm exterior but be prepared get your heart smashed in with her cold interior.

This is a highly recommended and highly intelligent film, resonating with raw insights and brimming with lessons in love, this will take a piece out of you and hopefully you will take a piece of it home with you.

You guys need. to. check. it. out. Catch it on DVD in just over a month’s time.

If you have seen this already, what did you think of it? Did it give you lovey-dovey goosebumps or was it just an average rom-com to you?

The Film Buzz Review Rating: 8.5/10

Cinema Release Date: 2 September 2009

DVD Release Date: 18 January 2010

Director: Marc Webb

Writer’s: Scott Neustadter (written by) Michael H. Weber (written by)

Links: IMDB, Official Site, Rotten Tomatoes

You should follow us on twitter here.