The Notable Films of 2011: Part One

Back for its third year (see the 2010 edition) and bigger than ever, today kicks off the first in a fifteen-part look at the various cinematic releases hitting the U.S. in 2011. Each 'part' contains brief descriptions and editorial opinion/analysis of varying length covering twenty films. Expect the remaining ones to go up between now and the first major releases in mid-January.

Like all cinematic lists set within a timeframe, there's some overlap. Some films here have already opened worldwide but have yet to hit the U.S., some upcoming films you'd expect to be here aren't because they're either still in development or have already announced 2012 release dates, some were on last year's list but got delayed so have been included again (but with all new analysis).

I confined my list to films that have either set 2011 release dates or had begun/completed production, and only films that have a good chance of getting some kind of theatrical release - even then its come out just shy of 300 titles at present. So, away we go:

Abduction
Opens: September 23rd 2011
Cast: Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs 
Director: John Singleton

Summary: Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner) comes across a picture of himself on a missing persons’ web site. Setting out to uncover his real identity, Nathan quickly learns his parents are far from who they say they are. When the police, government agents and shadowy figures start to pursue him, Nathan goes on the run.

Analysis: Taylor Lautner's first leading man role since the "Twilight" craze made him a household name, the box-office fate of this young-skewing Bourne-esque thriller will be watched closely to determine how much pulling power the 18-year-old has on his own. His co-star Robert Pattinson has taken the 'serious actor' route with roles in indie films and period dramas like "Little Ashes," "Bel Ami" and "Water for Elephants". His pull alone managed to turn throwaway romance drama "Remember Me" into a decent little $55 million grosser. Lautner on the other hand is trying to maximise his star power while he has it, setting up potential franchise features like "Stretch Armstrong," "Incarceron", and this.

While Lautner's involvement will certainly pull in the younger crowds, it's the other elements of the production that are actually more impressive. Musician Shawn Christensen penned the script on spec and Lionsgate won a bidding war for it back in February. The mini-major made it a priority, quickly getting Jeffrey Nachmanoff ("Traitor," "The Day After Tomorrow") to do some rewrites before locking down a shoot in Pennsylvania in July. The high concept story actually sounds quite interesting and could have a lot of potential if executed properly.

John Singleton is directing, his first time since 2005's "Four Brothers", and the rest of the cast is excellent though female lead Lily Collins is still essentially an unknown. Supporting turns from great veterans like Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Sigourney Weaver, Maria Bello and Swedish "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" star Michael Nyqvist could hold promise. How the tone of this will come off is anybody's guess at this point, the mystery and action angles will hopefully be played up and give us at least an entertaining diversion in the early Fall.

Anonymous
Opens: September 30th 2011
Cast: Rhys Ifans, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis, Joely Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave
Director: Roland Emmerich

Summary: A political thriller about who actually wrote the plays of William Shakespeare-- Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford-- set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her.

Analysis: Having destroyed the world countless times over in big-budget disaster epics like "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," "Godzilla" and "2012", filmmaker Roland Emmerich is trying a change of pace with this "political thriller" exploring the Oxfordian theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the real author of Shakespeare's plays. That authorship issue is set against the backdrop of the failed coup by Essex and the political turmoil at the end of the Elizabethan age.

"Band of Brothers" and "A Mighty Heart" scribe John Orloff actually penned the script for this back in 1998. While it received strong reviews, the project never took off because "Shakespeare in Love" had just been released. Then back in 2005 Emmerich read the script and the pair did further research and revision before finally getting the green light to go ahead and film it this year. Emmerich himself says his past financial successes allowed him essentially carte blanche on this $30 million project in terms of letting him cast whom he wants and being able to film the script without studio interference.

Emmerich's FX work has come in handy as all but one of the many exterior shots in the film is being done entirely with green screen and a computer-animated late 16th century recreation of London to be used throughout. Interiors were shot in Berlin on seventy hand-built sets and Orloff claims in an interview that while the movie "takes it as a given that he [Shakespeare] did not write the plays", the film is "stunningly accurate" in terms of historical events and the period recreation.

Yet "Anonymous" also incorporates the far more dubious 'Prince Tudor' theory that de Vere was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth I. Emmerich himself says in an interview that "When Shakespeare wrote 'Henry V', he made things up and we’re making things up too." Orloff says in the same piece "there is a point where you have to go with the emotional truth, not the literal truth, because the drama is the primary concern." Stunningly accurate huh?

Given more serious subject matter in the past, Emmerich proved himself a robust director with "The Patriot". Whatever the quality of this, it has already sparked op-ed pieces and quotes from professors and actors alike - talk that will only grow in the lead-up to the film's release.

The Apparition
Opens: September 9th 2011
Cast: Tom Felton, Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Julianna Guill, Luke Pasqualino
Director: Todd Lincoln

Summary: A young couple are haunted by a scary ghost-like form, apparently brought into existence by students testing a whole new form of science. Who will help them escape the terrifying apparition?

Analysis: Dark Castle's horror entry for this year is a sci-fi meets haunted house tale that takes its inspiration from "Paranormal Activity," "Poltergeist" and "Flatliners" - with the plot following a couple being terrorised in their home by something unleashed after a university parapsychology experiment goes awry. Producer Joel Silver says that despite being shot in Berlin, the setting is around a cul-de-sac in LA's San Fernando Valley in an area where a lot of houses didn’t ever get finished (an unformed neighbourhood of sorts). Their aim is to be "really, really scary", taking the setup of films like 'Paranormal' and then pushing it beyond into something darker.

Filmmaker Lincoln is an unknown, this marks his screenwriting and directorial debut. The young cast though is surprisingly pretty good, the best actress of the "Twilight" films, Ashley Greene, makes her debut in a leading role here opposite one of my favourite young actors Sebastian Stan ("Kings," "Gossip Girl," "Hot Tub Time Machine," "Black Swan") who'll hopefully hit it big this year as the sidekick of "Captain America". Brits Tom Felton, best known for playing Draco Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" series, and "Skins" star Luke Pasqualino are also good choices to have onboard.

One thing this thankfully won't be is overly gory. Greene mentioned in a roundtable interview earlier this year that "It's not going to be that slash-gore movie. It's that thing that just scares you to the core, and it's terrifying. The way that I can best explain it is that we do everything that a normal person would do. Everyone is going to watch it and say, 'Do this!' And that's what we're going to do. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve things, and we're still having to deal with them. I think that's the scariest part, is when you do everything that you should do and you still end up ruined." Sounds like good fun to me.

Atlas Shrugged: Part One
Opens: April 15th 2011
Cast: Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Graham Beckel, Edi Gathegi
Director: Paul Johansson

Summary: Dagny Taggart, a railroad heiress, tries to save her company and faces increasingly corrupt government, her incompetent brother, and the systematic loss of her best workers. She soon suspects a sinister force working against her as a country-wide helplessness is spurred by the phrase – “Who is John Galt?”.

Analysis: The first attempts at an adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1957 magnum opus began long before I was born. In 1972 Albert S. Ruddy wanted to film a version, Rand refused. Rand approved NBC's proposed eight-hour mini-series back in 1978 but the network scrapped it. Rand attempt to adapt her own work into a script in the early 80's, but died with only one-third of it complete. Her student was given the rights but knocked back one attempt. In 1992 he sold the rights to entrepreneur John Aglialoro who retains them to this day.

Aglialoro himself oversaw an attempted TNT mini-series in 1999 which fell through after the AOL/Time Warner merger, while in 2004 another film version fell apart - that version had the likes of Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron linked. Things changed earlier this year as Aglialoro realised the studios weren't going to get a film into production in time before the deadline on his ownership of the rights ran out. Thus in May this year came the announcement about this independently financed, first of a planned trilogy of films based on the property which would begin production on June 13th, literally two days before Aglialoro's deadline.

With a budget said to be around $10 million, only five weeks of filming and no major stars - the obvious concern is that of quality. Actor Stephen Polk was originally slated to direct but was replaced at the last minute by "One Tree Hill" actor Paul Johansson whose only directing credits so far include twelve episodes of that teen drama and the TV movie "The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie". The lead role of Dagny Taggart (a name that always conjures up the image of Dabney Coleman in my mind for some reason) ultimately went to little known but quickly rising Taylor Schilling, the female lead of NBC's short-lived hospital drama "Mercy" and the upcoming Zac Efron-led Nicholas Sparks adaptation "The Lucky One".

Aglialoro has indicated that one of the main reasons for doing this film independently is that he's keen on staying as true to the novel as he can, whereas studios wanted to make some obvious changes. Staying true in this case could be detrimental. For all its popularity and status, 'Atlas' is also a famously self-indulgent exercise in literary masturbation. Rand uses a flimsy narrative mixed with colourful prose to incorporate her passionate if misguided thesis for objectivism - essentially a form of unbridled and unrestrained capitalism where self-interest is the only real rule. Gore Vidal, a man far more wise than either you or me, famously called it "nearly perfect in its immorality" - and this is the man who penned the oft-banned "Caligula".

Getting people excited about a film that celebrates this philosophy could be hard, especially considering it asks people to sympathise and champion big business CEOs - those whose unrestrained greed caused the recent global financial crisis. The material is extraordinarily difficult on its own to adapt, for example the big climax is a speech over seventy pages long, and the man given the unenviable task is Brian Patrick O’Toole whose most notable work to date is as writer/producer on low-budget schlock like "Evilution" and "Cemetery Gates". O'Toole mentioned in a forum posting that this film adapts the first 336 pages of the book and he did his "best to stay true to the spirit of Ayn Rand's novel".

It's a noble sentiment but can't hide the fact that this is one project that probably should've stayed on the shelf a bit longer. A book of this scale and ambition deserves a film of equal size and balls, what we're getting is something that's been heavily compromised and rushed into production to meet a legal deadline. Aglialoro may yet surprise us, but what's not surprising is that with the low budget on offer, the first photos from the film are decidedly unimpressive and have a very TV movie feel to them. Whether this is seen as a bold vision or an absolute trainwreck, it'll be interesting to watch nonetheless.

Barney's Version
Opens: January 14th 2011
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Scott Speedman
Director: Richard J. Lewis

Summary: Barney Panofsky (Giamatti) is a seemingly ordinary man who lives an extraordinary life. Barney's candid confessional spans three decades and two continents, and includes three wives, one outrageous father and a dangerously dissolute best friend.

Analysis: After thirteen years of development, the film adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s final novel is finally making its debut in a few weeks following its premiere a few months ago at the Toronto Film Festival. Producer Robert Lantos reportedly went through several different writers, including Richler himself and two Oscar winners, with ultimately little known Canadian television writer Michael Konyves finally nailing a draft Lantos was happy with. "The book is extremely difficult to adapt. It’s sprawling in nature, [has] a huge cast of characters, with flashbacks and flash-forwards, and it’s narrated by this character who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s" said Lantos in an interview earlier this year.

Armed with a $28 million budget and a stellar cast, reviews out of Toronto were decidedly mixed with the performances in particular praised, but the rather straightforward and linear approach to the adaptation seen as a disappointment. Clocking in at over two hours with a rather despicable lead character and a tone that's all over the place apparently hasn't done the film any favours, the likely blame going on newbie scribe Konyves and TV director Lewis. This might explain why the film isn't getting much in the way of a big push for awards consideration beyond Giamatti's performance. Filmmakers David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan also make cameos which might be fun though.

darkhorizons for the rest
xoxo
Carrie