#15
Queen of the Desert
DIR: Werner Herzog
TBA 2015
It was just announced Werner Herzog‘s Queen of the Desert will have its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival this year featuring a much anticipated performance from Nicole Kidman in the biopic of Gertrude Bellwhich, the traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attache for the British Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century. Robert Pattinson, Damian Lewis and James Franco co-star.
#14
Untitled Woody Allen Film
DIR: Woody Allen
TBA 2015
I can’t help it, if Woody Allen has a new movie coming out I’m going to anticipate it. Not a lot is known about his latest other than it’s a murder mystery, set on a college campus starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley and Ben Rosenfield. The fact it’s a Woody Allen movie is enough, but you add Phoenix, Stone and Posey into the picture and that makes it all the better.
#13
The Tale of Tales
DIR: Matteo Garrone
TBA 2015
Mateo Garrone‘s Gamorrah was wonderful, his follow-up, Reality, not so much, but his latest, The Tale of Tales, a film based on fairy tale collection of the same name by 17th century Italian author Giambattista Basile sounds fascinating. Serving as his English-language debut, the pic will interweave three separate story strands bookended by brief bits in which Italians Alba Rohrwacher and Massimo Ceccherini will play a street circus family.
As of now it is known Salma Hayek will play a jealous queen who forfeits her husband’s life in one of the story strands, and in another, Vincent Cassel will play a king whose passion is stoked by two mysterious sisters. Other members of the cast include John C. Reilly, Toby Jones and Shirley Henderson.
#12
Southpaw
DIR: Antoine Fuqua
TBA 2015
When it was first put together with Eminem starring in Southpaw I had no interest, but when the rapper dropped out and Jake Gyllenhaal stepped in I was all ears. The pic finds Gyllenhaal playing a boxer who fights his way to the top, only to find his life falling apart around him. Playing characters in that life around him are Rachel McAdams, Naomie Harris, Forest Whitaker, Victor Ortiz, Tyrese Gibson, 50 Cent, Clare Foley and Beau Knapp.
I can’t wait to see how this one turns out as Gyllenhaal has all my support given his latest swatch of films.
#11
The Lobster
DIR: Yorgos Lanthimos
TBA 2015
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos wowed us back in 2010 with Dogtooth then 2012’s The Alps wasn’t really the follow-up we’d hoped for, but his new comedy The Lobster looks too weird to resist.
Starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw, Lea Seydoux, Olivia Colman, Ariane Labad, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Ashley Jensen, Michael Smiley and Jessica Barden the pic is desribed as an unconventional love story set in a dystopian near future where single people, according to the rules of the Town, are arrested and transferred to the Hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into the woods. A desperate Man escapes from the Hotel to the Woods where the Loners live and there he falls in love, although it’s against their rules.
In a lot of ways it sounds as if Lanthimos has mashed Dogtooth and The Alps into one story idea and just as those films had us looking at ourselves, I expect nothing less from this one.
