2012: The most anticipated movies

Second take

On top of my most anticipated movies list for the year is Quentin Tarantino’s new genre-bender, Django Unchained.

For someone from the Bangalore of the 70s and 80s, it’s just very nice to be reminded of the name Django in a movie title again. Bangaloreans from that vanished time will be all too familiar with this awe-inspiring legend.

It was quite common for school and college kids to say, “Who do you think you are — Django?” or “He thinks he’s Django.” I don’t know if that name is uttered anymore in the streets of Bangalore, but by invoking the name Django in the title, Tarantino is hoping exactly for that: immediate, awe-inspiring familiarity. Django was a 60s spaghetti Western starring Franco Nero as a drifter who drags a coffin behind him wherever he goes.

The coffin hides a machine gun (which shoots 48 men in a single round). He is, of course, looking for revenge. It spawned as many as 30 sequels. Whether you’ve seen the movie or the unofficial sequels doesn’t matter; what matters is the name which stuck. Django — meaning a reckless, over-stylish hero.

In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio will play a villainish owner of a vast slave plantation who is being hunted by Jamie Foxx, a freed slave who has become a skilled assassin under the tutelage of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz probably playing the role with the same scene chewing relish we saw in Inglorious Bastards). The cast is full of Tarantinoesque surprises, with a part for even Sacha Baron Cohen. It’s going to be a fantastic year for movies with filmmakers we haven’t seen anything from in years return with the kind of thing they do best: Ridley Scott with Prometheus, a science horror flick that will evoke Alien, Peter Jackson’s new Tolkien adaptation (The Hobbit) and Woody Allen starring in his own film after a five year hiatus. Tim Burton, Wong Kar Wai, Baz Luhrmann, the Coen Brothers, Ang Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson, Oliver Stone and Kathryn Bigelow all have new movies coming out. 

A movie I am very curious about (and it’s probably not just me) is the new retooling of The Great Gatsby in 3-D by Baz Luhrmann (this has made news in India for Amitabh Bachchan’s involvement). Di Caprio plays Gatsby, Carey Mulligan is Daisy and Tobey Maguire is Nick Carraway. It’s probably the first literary adaptation to get a 3-D treatment. If it works, Lurhman would have revolutionised how even dramas are made in the future. (We got a little taste of how even drama gets another depth when viewed in 3-D from Scorsese’s Hugo). On top of this interesting gimmick, Baz will bring something new and audacious to this modern classic (which has never been successfully adapted) as he did with Romeo and Juliet. 

The Grandmaster is Wong Kar Wai’s retelling of the Ip Man legend: the master who trained Bruce Lee. Tony Leung, of course, plays the master, and the martial arts action is choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. We can look forward to something gorgeous from the director of In the Mood for Love. A poetic martial arts epic, perhaps? The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson — returning with a movie for the first time since There Will Be Blood — is rumoured to be based on the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in the lead as a war veteran who returns home to found a new religion. Intriguing, and not to be missed. 

For his new outing, Nero Fiddled, Woody Allen goes to Rome, having toured Paris in his last comedy. What will be a little new about this is that it’s divided into four short stories — whether they’ll come together or stand alone isn’t known now, but what we do know is that Allen is in top form. Also to eagerly look forward to is the new Bond movie, Skyfall (with Sam Mendes directing!) and a remake of Total Recall! The biggest comic book movie so far will also open this year: The Avengers — which brings together Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow and Hulk in one story! 

Another comic book movie I am rooting for is the all new Amazing Spiderman with Andrew Garfield (from The Social Network) replacing Tobey Maguire, with Emma Stone replacing Kirsten Dunst as his new love interest. We’ll miss Sam Raimi at the helm, but my interest in this new reboot of the franchise is mainly Garfield who is an intense and likeable actor best seen in the Red Riding crime trilogy.

Finally, there is the new reboot of the Bourne series. When director Paul Greenglass didn’t sign up for the next installment, Matt Damon also quit, saying he’ll come back to the series only when Greenglass directs. So now Jeremy Renner (best known from The Hurt Locker) will be Aaron Cross (an operative like Jason Bourne) in The Bourne Legacy. I’m curious to see what the new director, Tony Gilroy, will bring to the series. One thing I’m betting on is that the script will have more depth (and twists): Gilroy wrote and directed Michael Clayton and Duplicity.

There are a number of small movies worth anticipating, like the new Whit Stillman movie, Damsels in Distress. Stillman’s movies are like Jane Austen crossed with Woody Allen, nostalgic literary talk movies about sophisticated young people set in Manhattan. But unlike Allen, he makes movies sparingly. Since his last movie in 98, The Last Days of Disco, we haven’t had anything from him.

Damsels is about three college girls at university hoping to change their lives, and in indie star Greta Gerwig, he has his ideal heroine: cute and cerebral. Director Alfonso Cuaron offers his first feature since the P D James sci-fi thriller, Gravity. A sci-fi in 3D with George Clooney in it. Clooney plays an astronaut whose mission goes wrong as he returns to Earth. Sounds very clichéd, but because this is Cuaron we are talking about, it will be cutting edge science fiction.    
 
There are also many big movies I am not anticipating with any eagerness. I’m not looking forward to Spielberg’s Lincoln (dealing with the last months of his presidency), Tim Burton’s fantasy, Dark Shadows, and Christopher Nolan’s final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. These filmmakers are getting far too predictable and formulaic.

Oh, also not too keen on Katherine Bigelow’s new (yet to be titled) thriller on the hunt for Bin Laden. She has become far too jingoist for my taste. On the very top of this not-looking-forward-to-list is The Dictator, the new Borat comedy. Well, not exactly Borat but it is Sacha Baron Cohen playing a close cousin. I’m sure it will be funny, but also offensive. He’s playing a Middle Eastern dictator deposed from power and exiled to America. It’s an easy target for caricature and broad comedy. It’s time Sacha Baron Cohen slash Borat moved on.