New on DVD/Blu-ray: Alpha and Omega, The Social Network, Piranha 3D
Like the weather, January and February are kind of the Siberia of cinema. It’s a desolate and cold stretch much of the way until the spring starts warming things up. Of course there are many movies to be thrilled about in 2011, and there is the bargain bin of sequels and comic book movies, too, that just might produce the occasional gem, but here are my “Top 11 in ‘11” that on my radar right now.
1. Biutiful (January 28)
Babel director Alejandro González Ińárritu’s critically acclaimed and unflinching family drama finally arrived in the states later this month. Staring Javier Bardem in a Cannes-winning Best Actor Performance, Biutiful follows a downtrodden father and black market businessman who must confront enemies on all sides, including his own psychosis, in order to survive.
2. Source Code (April 1)
Duncan Jones surprised many with his low-budget but spectacular lunar base drama Moon last year. Now he returns with a time-warping crime thriller staring Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier who wakes up on a high speed train in the body of a mysterious man. Soon he realizes he’s part of a military experiment and charged with finding the train’s bomber before hundreds are killed. Michelle Monaghan and Jeffrey Wright co-star.
3. The Tree of Life (May 28)
Enigmatic writer and director Terence Malick returns with this heady multi-generational meditation on the meaning of existence and the loss of innocence. Brad Pitt stars as a demanding patriarch in the 1950s sections of the film. He and his wife raise three boys, one of who is played in his later years by Sean Penn, a man still grappling with the mysteries of his youth and his place in the modern world as an adult. Jessica Chastain co-stars.
4. Super 8 (June 10)
Details of this Spielberg-influenced coming film are about as secretive as those of director J.J. Abrams’ last monster-starring movie, Cloverfield. Is it about an alien escaped from that crashed Area 51 train in the teaser caught on old Super 8 film by some young kids? Is “Super 8” a code name for a group of students given telekinesis and inhuman strength in a government experiment gone wrong? We won’t know until the next trailer drops, but we do know that young Somewhere star Elle Fanning and Friday Night Lights ball coach Kyle Chandler are in it.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (July 15)
This is it. The final chapter in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, and the young wizard’s ultimate showdown with the dark Lord Voldemort. As Harry, Ron and Hermoine race to find the objects that hold the key to Voldemort’s power, he seeks the Deathly Hallows, three items that combined could make him unstoppable.
6. Contagion (Oct. 21)
Director Steven Soderbergh plans to retire soon, so this sweeping virus thriller could be his last ensemble drama in the Traffic mold he made famous. As a global disease spreads, a team of scientists at the CDC in Atlanta are tasked with saving the world from a new unstoppable plague. Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Laurence Fishbourne star.
7. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (TDB fall)
Famed spy novel writer John Le Carre’s 1974 Cold War novel comes to life with the story of espionage veteran played by Gary Oldman who is forced out of retirement to join MI6 and uncover sinister Soviet agents. Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Mark Strong co-star in what may be the best ensemble of English actors in recent memory.
8. The Rum Diary (TBD October)
Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow in the latest Pirates movie earlier this year, but his most welcome return is playing another Hunter Thompson stand-in (after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) in this adaptation of Thompson’s early novel The Rum Diary. Depp plays a wayward journalist who takes a post at a run-down newspaper in San Juan where he finds himself surrounded by similarly lost souls played by Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard.
9. The Ides of March (TDB December)
George Clooney steps behind the camera once again to direct this political coming-of-age drama that follows Ryan Gosling as an idealistic staffer for a presidential candidate who learns the dirty side of politics on the campaign trail. Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood co-star.
10. Cosmopolis (TBD)
Leave it to director David Cronenberg to turn Don Dilello’s largely limo-set Ulysseys-esque novel Cosmopolis—about a young billionaire hedge fund manager crossing Manhattan to get a haircut—into a bold family and financial drama with a stellar cast including Marion Cotillard, Paul Giamatti, and Robert Pattinson.
11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (December 21)
Director David Fincher tackles an English adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s worldwide smash hit novel with his muse/Zuckerberg ex-Rooney Mara from The Social Network playing hard edged lead Lisbeth Salander and James Bond star Daniel Craig and Christopher Plummer co-staring.
