5 films om naar uit te kijken in 2018

Nu dat ik mijn gebruikelijke oudejaarslijstjes voor 2016 heb gepost, krijg ik van alle kanten de vraag opgedrongen naar welke releases ik het meest uitkijk in 2017. Daar kan ik natuurlijk een antwoord op geven, wat ik ook een paar keer gedaan heb. Of ik kan de vraag vanaf nu lekker negeren en niet aan de verwachtingen voldoen, door een lijstje te maken van films in 2018 waar ik reikhalzend naar uitkijk. Hierbij doe ik het laatste. Wat ook een beetje dom is natuurlijk, want de vraag voor 2017 blijft zo bestaan. Ach, een beetje vooruit werken kan geen kwaad...

Han Solo Star Wars spin-off

Met Rogue One als mijn onbetwiste nummer één van 2016 ligt de Han Solo-solofilm (wat bekt dat toch lekker!) voor de hand. Tuurlijk heb ik hier zin in. Han Solo is de ultieme schavuit van het witte doek. Hoe vaak zagen we charme en moed enerzijds en hebzucht en hartenleed anderzijds zo treffend verenigd in één personage? En je krijgt er altijd gratis een wandelend vloerkleed getooid met een ammunitiegordel bij. What's not to like? Nou, nieuwe acteurs die die iconische rollen spelen bijvoorbeeld. Harrison Ford doe je niet zo maar dunnetjes over. Dat is ook het bezwaar dat ik heb tegen prequels/re-imaginings/spin-offs gecentreerd rond personen in plaats van gebeurtenissen. Je bent afhankelijk van personages die je al kent maar die zowel herbevestigd als heruitgevonden moeten worden, en dat is een gevaarlijke zaak. Willen we überhaupt wel meer van hun achtergrond weten, neemt dat niet weg van hun mystiek? Bad Han Begins? Han Solo's ontstaansrelaas boeit me eerlijk gezegd minder dan de geschiedenis rond de eerste missie van de Rebel Alliance, een stukje historie waarvan we de afloop al kennen, maar waarvan we verder amper iets afwisten. Bleek Rogue One toch goed voor een hoop intrigerende nieuwe personages, alsmede voor optredens van oude in kleine rollen die onze harten deden smelten van nostalgisch wederzien. Het valt te bezien of de nog titelloze avonturen van Young Han Solo even aangrijpend blijken.

 
Avengers: Infinity War

Die andere grote actie-franchise onder Disney's paraplu, het Marvel Cinematic Universe, kijkt juist vooruit, naar de toekomst. Ook hier tig oude personages (en legio nieuwe), maar in nieuwe situaties. 'Tig' behelst in dit geval volgens Marvelbons Kevin Feige maar liefst 67 personages. Ik vond de hoeveelheid figuren in Captain America: Civil War al wat veel van het goede... Desondanks, in het bronmateriaal, de Marvel Comics die ik al ruim twintig jaar verslind, werkt dit soort mega-crossovers vaak als een tierelier, dus ik gun ze het voordeel van de twijfel. Infinity War is bovendien de apotheose van het MCU, sinds in The Avengers de eerste tease naar super-superschurk Thanos plaatshad en er vervolgens in elke tweede Marvelfilm wel zo'n Infinity Stone de revue passeerde. Tijd om na tien jaar alle plotlijnen bijeen te brengen en het kookpunt dat steeds verder bereikt lijkt in het MCU eindelijk eens tot bedaren te brengen. Waarop Marvel vervolgens vast een nieuw tienjarenplan in de kast heeft liggen. Marvel Zombies of zo.

Isle of Dogs

Voor wie minder opheeft met al dat Hollywoodspektakel, ligt er in 2018 eindelijk weer een nieuwe Wes Anderson in het verschiet. Wes wie? Je weet wel, die briljante Amerikaanse indie-regisseur met zijn unieke visuele stijl, die narratief altijd zo geslaagd het midden houdt tussen tragedie en komedie en wiens films zo quintessentieel 'quirky' zijn (een treffende Nederlandse vertaling is nog niet voorhanden). Misschien wel mijn favoriete regisseur. In 2018 is het alweer vier jaar sinds zijn laatste, het briljante The Grand Budapest Hotel, dus het wordt wel weer eens tijd. (Tenzij je kunt leven met zuiver commercials van zijn hand in de tussentijd, die mij juist alleen maar naar meer doen smaken...) Stop motion bovendien, slechts zijn tweede film in dat format, na het briljante Fantastic Mr. Fox. Waar gaat het over? Iets met honden en Japan en meer weten we nog niet, maar de naam Wes Anderson is voor mij al ruim voldoende. Dat geldt ook voor de acteurs, want het lijkt tegenwoordig wel alsof er een wachtlijst is voor rollen in Wes Anderson films, zo graag wil iedereen met die man in zee gaan. Vaste partners Bill Murray, Edward Norton en Jeff Goldblum zijn opnieuw van de partij, terwijl dit keer ook Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson en Tilda Swinton acte de présence geven. Als stemmetjes van stop motion honden, dat wel. Onder Anderson kan dat alleen maar tot briljante taferelen leiden.

Early Man

Over stop motion gesproken, 2018 zal een goed jaar worden voor die techniek, aangezien er ook een nieuwe Aardman op ons ligt te wachten. Je weet wel, die heerlijk Engelse animatiestudio van Wallace & Gromit en Shaun the Sheep. Dit keer geen vervolg op een prijzenwinnende short, maar een origineel concept. Over holbewoners die samenleven met dino's. Okee, zo origineel is dat concept niet - laat staan wetenschappelijk verantwoord! - maar het potentieel als de koddige versie van One Million Years B.C. is groot. De Britsheid blijft behouden met stemmenwerk van in ieder geval de heren Redmayne en Hiddleston. Hier kan simpelweg niets misgaan.

Jurassic World 2

En dan is er deze titel nog. Uiteraard de film waar ik, als Jurassic fanaat, het meest likkebaardend op zit te wachten. Nieuwe regisseur (want als je de kans geboden wordt om een Star Wars film te regisseren zeg je geen nee, zoals Colin Trevorrow) is de Spaanse J.A. Bayona, van wie ik nog niets aanschouwd heb (ligt aan mij, want hij heeft wel degelijk eerder films gemaakt). Dit keer geen park op een eiland, geen getrainde Raptors en geen mixklonen (of toch...?). In JW2 ligt de techniek voor het klonen van prehistorisch gespuis te grabbel, dus 'anything goes'. Chris Pratt (met gun) en Bryce Dallas Howard (met hoge hakken) mogen eens te meer aan de bak om het aantal verspilde mensenlevens te beperken. Aangezien iedereen het leuk vindt om te zien hoe dinosauriërs mensen opvreten, zullen ze daar niet geheel succesvol in zijn. Verder helaas nog weinig details. Rex & Raptors gegarandeerd. Hopelijk voor de afwisseling eens mét veren, zoals het hoort. Wordt uitgebracht een week vóór mijn verjaardag. Heel strategisch, Universal...

Today's Review: Shaun the Sheep Movie

Another review up!:

Shaun het Schaap: de Film - recensie

A great stop motion film for the whole family this turned out to be. Would you have expected anything different from Aardman? I certainly didn't and I'm glad the finest stop motion studio in the world once again hit its mark. I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen any of the episodes from Shaun's own television show, so all I knew him from was his debut in the terrific original Wallace & Gromuit short A Close Shave (1995). It's amazing how little Shaun appears to have changed since we first met him 20 years ago. He looks largely the same, doesn't talk and is still the smartest sheep around. I like how Aardman sticks to its all too British roots and knows beter than to needlessly update their own characters to modern times. Both the studio's characters and its masterful level of craftsmanship and the quality that comes with it, remain a beacon of stability and tranquility in this troubled world of ours. And if that isn't enough to convince young and old alike to take the trip to theaters, the lack of dialogue which prohibits the usual exasperatingly obnoxious Dutch dubbing process is thrown in as a bonus. I just wish they could have dropped that annoying rap song that runs over the end credits. And yes, there's some bonus footage shown after those.

Now for Shaun's TV show. All 130 episodes... It's Aardman, so I don't mind at all!

Today's News: some catching up required

It's been a busy week what with Sinterklaas and the news surrounding the Jurassic World trailer (and that other trailer too, which I won't mention here since it's been picked apart frame by frame everywhere else already), so here's a belated crop of this week's news from my hand:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158131/nieuwe_trailer_the_interview

The more I see of this movie, the more I want to see it in theaters. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up since it's by all accounts a rather generic raunchy Hollywood comedy starring all the usual suspects, but still it has piqued my interest. It probably has something to do with my fascination - coupled with a healthy dose of abjection - for dystopian societies, even though this one is sadly all too real. Everything we hear about North-Korea, and not everything being as trustworthy as it is considering the various ideologies at work, makes it sound a very incredulous yet all too actual place. I would never want to live there, but it's so shady and abhorrent there's this vast web of projected fantasies and horror stories surrounding it that remains intriguing. Of course this movie doesn't pretend to tell the truth about the nation, nor does the country ever tell the truth about itself. But it's so inherently 'other' that it's hard to deny its fascination. Even when that's exploited for stereotypical Hollywood jokes. This trailer made me snicker on more than one occasion. Some of the jokes might very well hold an uncomfortable and alarming truth though. But then, so did The Great Dictator in its days, even though the truth in hindsight was far more sinister than the fiction and in many ways, painfully unfunny. It's unlikely The Interview will ever be considered as great a classic as that film, but it's definitely in the same league, though obviously more contemporary.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158102/waltz_als_blofeld_in_bond_24

Why the heck not? As Skyfall showed, the rebooting has already progressed quite far in the 007 franchise, now that old characters appear in new guises (M, Q, Ms. Moneypenny). Much as keeps happening to the protagonist himself in fact, and that has worked out pretty well so far. Why would the same principle not apply to Bond's primary nemesis Blofeld? There's no reason it shouldn't. Of course, the studio has its mind firmly set on a powerful actor who can elegantly balance the precarious line between too realistic and too campy, which is the route the franchise currently seems to be taking, as Skyfall indicated (strong drama and character conflict, but also an outrageous villain and a pit full of Komodo Dragons). Christoph Waltz perfectly fits the bill. It's not the first time he plays an evil character who feels both all too frighteningly actual and totally over the top (e.g. Inglourious Basterds), so he knows the drill. It'll be delightful to see what the new look of the character will be. I doubt the bald head and the facial scar will be as overtly present as on previous incarnations. Probably a toned down version of that. And will the cat stay? If not, it'll definitely be referenced. It should.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158148/nieuwe_trailer_dreamworks_home

For some reason, this just can't excite me. I can't quite put my finger on it, since it has some things going for it that I like, including a full scale alien invasion. Maybe it just looks too generic, maybe the jokes and the bleeding heart message are too bland. Maybe I'm kinda done with Jim Parsons playing a social outcast, even though this is not our society for a change. It could be the trailer just gives away too much of the plot for me to care about the final product. Perhaps the aliens look too much like cuddly toys aimed for selling to kids. I shouldn't judge ahead so strongly, I know, but on all accounts I'm guilty as charged. Wouldn't be the first trailer for which I did so this week, though that other trailer got it worse. Probably because it gave away so little of the plot by comparison.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158149/nieuwe_posters_kingsman_the_secret_service

This movie, too, doesn't excite me that much, but in this case I know where the fault lies. It feels repetitive. It's from the same comic book writer as Wanted, and it has a lot of striking similarities with that title. Both feature secret organisations fighting to keep the world in balance. Both recruit an unlikely regular guy as their new agent and pin a lot of hopes on him because he looks so ordinary  but he's oh so special. Both star some grand actors to suck us into the world of the piece. Both feature all kinds of outrageous gun fights and assorted action scenes. The only thing Kingsman apparently doesn't have that Wanted did, is a strong female character - 'twas Angelina Jolie in Wanted's case - learning the upstart the tricks of the trade and giving us a good butt shot in the process. This time we have to make do with the very British Colin Firth to introduce both the young protagonist and us, the audience, into this crazy world. These posters indicate there's still room for some neat female butt though. No firing curved bullets this time, but there's room for other far-out stuff like a hit woman with robotic legs. And what's with the pug? Truth be told, I didn't care much for Wanted, so this movie will be hard pressed to do better.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158164/vervolg_independence_day_definitief_aangekondigd

Don't. Just don't. Please. This movie featured a solid plot that didn't seem to leave much room for more, unless it's more of the exact same. And I don't need a plot regurgitated for me to appear in a new guise for a younger generation. The only way this could be a sequel is if it featured recurring characters, and so far the old cast doesn't seem eager to jump on the same bandwagon again to sing the exact same tune. Even the studio itself seems a little hesitant on this one. First, the production was rescheduled to a full year later. Second, the number of sequels has been lowered from two to just the one. What does that tell you? It just seems nobody's heart is in this. The original 1996 movie really does suffice. If the studio truly does feel like making more dough on this title, just re-release it for its 20th anniversary (preferably not in 3D, but that's not a likely scenario these days). That's really all the celebration we need, for it's still a great thrill ride of a blockbuster flick.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158174/nieuwe_trailer_shaun_the_sheep

Well, that just looks adorable! Not that I expected otherwise from Aardman, but am I glad their style remains consistent. From the looks of it, it's not the fairly basic plot that counts here, it's the fun to be had out of it, coupled with the wonderful style of animation Aardman always delivers. I do have this unshakeable feeling it looks aimed a little too much at a younger audience, which may mean there won't be a subtitled version in Dutch theaters, only a dubbed one. That would be a damn shame, so I hope it proves untrue. I for one am definitely up for more delightful British humour, preferably in their own language. Then again, language? The trailer doesn't offer any actual lines of dialogue. Nor does IMDb have a cast list available, as if there's no voice acting present. If that's the case, I need not worry about shitty dubbing at all, and everybody is happy. Excellent solution to save on dubbing and subtitling costs, Aardman!

Chicken Run

 Rating: ****/*****, or 8/10

First full length feature film from the much beloved and critically acclaimed British Aardman Animations studio, which specializes in traditional claymation and stop motion animation (though the studio has since also made a foray into digital animation, to lesser appeal). Applying an otherwise rather grim story concerning the horrors of the bio-industry with the much needed levity via typical British humor, as Aardman did to great success before on their various Wallace & Gromit shorts, Chicken Run is both an hommage to classic escape films like Stalag 17 and The Great Escape and a very fun family film all ages can easily enjoy. On Mrs. Tweedy's chicken farm, a brutal regime rules the lives of a group of chicks who desperately want out and keep coming up with one bizarre escape attempt after another. All of these fail, but things brighten up when an American rooster (voiced by Mel Gibson) from a circus crashes the place one day. However, the opportunist cock may not be the much desired ticket out of the chicks' dreadful confinement. Though Chicken Run won a fair amount of prizes it was sadly snubbed at the Academy Awards. Aardman made sure this blatant oversight was corrected when the even funnier Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit took home the much deserved trophy five years later.

Starring: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Miranda Richardson

Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park

UK: Aardman Animations, 2000

Pirate of the Year, Scientist of the Year, Animated Movie of the Year

Rating: ****/*****, or 8/10

If Aardman Animation's most recent triumph The Pirates!: Band of Misfits in any way set out to make a point, its release couldn't have come at a more opportune moment. The current scandal involving the Spanish king Juan Carlos hunting African Elephants purely for the fun of it, despite his position as vice-president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund, bears a striking resemblance to certain events portrayed in the film, namely the way the British Queen Victoria uses her influence with the London Royal Society to procure dinner in the shape of the most exotic animals possible for the annual meeting of a dining club of heads of state that simply exists for the sake of eating its way through the animal kingdom. Victoria's particular meal of choice this year (that is, 1837) is a dodo, the last of its kind. Problem is, this bird is the mascotte of a Pirate Captain and his merry crew of oddball pirates, and they're not gonna let their beloved pet get eaten without a fight. Add to this mix pirate and scientist competitions, Charles Darwin and his “talking” chimpanzee, and a vast array of increasingly colourful pirates and here you have yet another wonderful recipe for Aardman's traditional claymation (moving clay puppets a tiny little bit for each frame to achieve the illusion of motion) family entertainment, that will indeed manage to successfully entertain every age group of any family.

In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, a nameless Pirate Captain (voiced with audible pleasure by Hugh Grant) and his band of equally nameless scoundrels – ironically, the dodo is the only crew member with a real name: considering the fairly naive pirates think she's just a big boned parrot, it's Polly – , sail the Seven Seas in search of ships to plunder and shiny booty to collect. Unfortunately, this crew, which consists of characters like the Albino Pirate, the Pirate with Gout and the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (i.e., a woman with a fake beard lowering her voice), is not particularly good at it, which their pesky pirate colleagues continue to remind them in many a tavern ashore. When the poor Captain makes his entry into the Pirate of the Year competition publicly known, he's met with ridicule by his fellow rogues, including a trio of dastardly successful pirates, that first appear in the movie with ever more absurd grand entrances, which climaxes when a huge sperm whale jumps out of the ocean, landing on a pier with its face against the local bar front door, opening his giant mouth to release a wave of golden booty with the third and final captain surfing down his tongue. With this kind of hilarious gags this early in the film, the audience knows it's never seen funnier pirates than the likes only Aardman could conceive.

His spirit untempered by the roaring laughter of his fellow criminal commanders, the Pirate Captain sets out on a wonderfully bizarre quest for anything of value to win him the Award, but fails to find rich merchant ships at sea, instead stumbling on increasingly silly vessels, such as naturist cruises, ghost ships and plague boats (the latter was called a 'leper boat' in the film's trailer, but this was apparently thought to be politically incorrect: the resulting joke is still the same, so the damage is luckily minimal when the leper's arm falls off). Just when all hope seems lost, the brigands run into Charles Darwin's ship, freshly returned from the Galapagos Isles with a cargo hold full of animal body parts (like Baboon's kidneys) and exotic live specimens (including a sad Baboon). For a pirate, such a collection is useless, but Darwin, portrayed as a wonderfully nerdy posh scientist with the typical condition of not being able to get a girlfriend (and voiced by David Tennant, who also sounds like he enjoys this role quite a lot), takes an unusual scientific interest in Polly, and in a funny plot parallel, convinces the Captain to co-attend the London Royal Society Scientist of the Year award ceremony (sneaking into the city disguised as a girl scout), under the pretense of winning a handsome fortune which would help his stature as a successful pirate. Unfortunately, this gets him under the radar of every pirate's nemesis, Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton adding yet another total bitch character to her repertoire, and obviously loving it all the way), who, for reasons mentioned above, also proves really fascinated by the poor dodo.

All the typical whacky ingredients of a good Aardman film, certain to appeal to almost every potential demographic in the audience, are present. As was the case with Chicken Run and the various Wallace & Gromit films (both long and short), only the most grumpy, tired and worn out negative nincompoops will not enjoy this flick with its full barrage of witty jokes, zany characters and silly situations. As a bonus, we get a fantastically detailed overall look to the film. Almost every scene is cramped with little details, all the way to the closing of the end credits, adding not only an authentic feel to the period part of the story (the film after all makes use of actual historical settings and characters, though bending them to its own comedic purposes), but making the movie seem that much more alive: it almost makes Aardman's previous movies look fairly bland by comparison. The trouble is, there's just so much to see it's impossible to take it all in, thus making a second viewing (preferably at home with the option of freeze framing the picture to facilitate a closer inspection) nigh obligatory, not that we would mind. The movie's 3D-effects, in themselves compulsory too for today's animated movies, never take away from the vast level of detailing, but even help making the whole setting feel that much more realistic (as they should, considering the actual use of three-dimensional puppets requires such realism more than computer animated environments do, since they're not really there to begin with). With regard to the look of the film, The Pirates!: Band of Misfits proves to be Aardman's most ambitious project yet, and the studio fully succeeds into making this film's world feel vibrant and compelling.

The Pirates!: Band of Misfits is only Aardman's fifth foray into the motion picture business, and the third to apply its trademark use of claymation. Most importantly, it's a return to form, and to Aardman's roots, since its previous two films, Flushed Away (2006) and last year's Arthur Christmas, used computer animation, the currently dominant style of animation. Though neither film was bad, both of them failed to really feel like Aardman productions, even though the computer generated characters much resembled the clay puppets that came before in overall look. Aardman now returns to their original style, which rightfully won the studio an Academy Award for the brilliant Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005. It proved the right choice, since the studio now clearly sets itself off against the other animation studios like Pixar and DreamWorks, which in recent years competed ever more aggressively for audience and critics' attention (Pixar still ruling supreme, certainly if the number of Oscars is taken into account) with their fully digitally animated movies, by maintaining a more traditional “old school” style of bringing life to inanimate characters (the use of digital backgrounds notwithstanding, since it's still the puppets that make the film come to life). It may very well win Aardman a second Academy Award, which at the moment certainly seems earned, though of course, in terms of animated films, the year has only just begun. However, it fully feels like a dinner starting with the tastiest course first. To stay in this metaphorical sense, let's hope this wonderful claymation piece doesn't prove a dodo itself: we could really use more ingenious alternatively animated movies like this one, instead of seeing it swallowed by the more standardly animated fare.

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/thepiratesbandofmisfits/