09-15-2024 Fall Arts - Flipbook - Page 12
12 The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, September 15, 2024
FALL ENTERTAINMENT PREVIEW
MOVIES
FALL
S
R
E
D
WON
Left: Michael Keaton reprises his role as the
bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, seen with Bob, in
director Tim Burton’s“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT
Top right: Adam Driver plays a
visionary architect and peers into
filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s
vision of the future in“Megalopolis.”
LIONSGATE
Bottom right: Joaquin Phoenix returns
as Arthur Fleck and is joined by Lady
Gaga as Lee Quinzel in“Joker: Folie à
Deux.” WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT
GETTY
From ‘Joker II’ to ‘Wicked I,’ season’s
slate sparks questions that only
watching the films can answer
By Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune
onsidering that the screen
industry still holds enough
confusion for any 20 industries, the upcoming movie titles have
some promise. The fall season is
still the fall season, which means it’s
the run-up or run-down to awards
season late this year and early next.
It means imminent best-of-2024
lists destined for pushback (why
does everyone anoint the same
favorites?), Golden Globes and the
Academy Awards.
As always, much of what’ll likely
fill the ballots will come out of the
international film festival noisemakers this time of year, with events in
Venice, Italy; Telluride, Colorado;
Toronto; and New York City sharing many of the same movies in a
six-week blur through mid-October. And then there is, you know,
“Wicked.”
Here are 10 titles coming our way.
Each provokes a question that only
time and your opinion of the movies
themselves can answer. Release
dates are subject to change, like so
much in this life.
C
that. The question: Can the fellas and
director Watt recapture some of the
“Ocean’s 11” magic, wherever people
see the results?
‘Megalopolis’(Sept. 27): Francis
Ford Coppola spent $100 million
and more on realizing his decadesin-the-oven science fiction fantasy
about the clash between art and
business, starring Adam Driver as
a Howard Roark-flecked architect,
Giancarlo Esposito as a corrupt
mayor and a screenful of futuristic imaginings by Coppola and his
team. The question: Reviews from
the Cannes Film Festival ranged from
respectful to not-quite; will the filmmaker’s big gamble find a warmer
reception Stateside?
Fink the fox (voiced by Pedro Pascal) befriends Roz the robot (voiced by Lupita
Nyong’o) in“Wild Robot.” UNIVERSAL PICTURES/DREAMWORKS ANIMATION
‘The Wild Robot’(Sept. 27): Dream-
The two-part film version of the
musical“Wicked”stars Ariana Granda
as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba.
Part I arrives in Nov. 2024; Part II, same
time, next year. UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Works Animation adapts the Peter
Brown bestseller about shipwrecked
robot Roz (voiced by Oscar winner
Lupita Nyong’o) and her education
in caring for an orphaned gosling.
The question: Can director Chris
Sanders manage something closer
to the emotional satisfactions of the
“How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy
than the “Ice Age” movies?
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’(Oct. 4): The
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’(Sept. 6):
Thirty-six years ago, Tim Burton
made a scruffy, inventive ghost
comedy and created a uniquely
macabre playground for one of
Michael Keaton’s finest hours. Now,
with many times the original’s $15
million budget, comes a sequel
featuring ringers from the original
ensemble — and, one hopes, a bigger
role for Catherine O’Hara — plus
newbies Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux and Willem Dafoe. The question:
Can Burton’s more, more, more sequel
avoid swamping the material with
digital effects?
‘Wolfs’(Sept. 20, Apple TV+ on Sept.
27): A botched killing, a couple of
rival lone-wolf fixers learning how
to get along, George Clooney, Brad
Pitt, a little comedy, a little action.
Directed by Jon Watts of the recent,
pretty zippy “Spider-Man” trilogy,
“Wolves” is going to dink around in
multiplexes for a single week before
AppleTV+ gets it for streaming.
Clooney and Pitt are not happy about
2019 “Joker” caught the wave of
Trump-era vibes, to the tune of a
billion-dollar gross, and Joaquin
Phoenix won most every best actor
award in existence. The question:
Can Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn-intraining, plus director Todd Phillips’
notions of how to make this sequel its
own kind of nightmare musical, lead
to another hit — and a better one in
the bargain?
‘Anora’(Oct. 18): Writer-director
Sean Baker may not be a globally
recognized name, but his filmography deserves that recognition, with
such brash, humane portraits in
street-level, working-class seriocomedy as “Tangerine” and “The Florida
Project.” “Anora,” his latest, concerns
a Brooklyn sex worker (Mikey Madison) whose engagement to the son
of a Russian oligarch leads to trouble. The question: Can Baker keep the
streak going?
‘Nickel Boys’(Oct. 25): This adap-
tation of the Colson Whitehead
novel, inspired by the horrors of a
real-life Florida reform school, has
a huge challenge to meet, coming as
it does in the wake of director Barry
Jenkins’ epically superb Amazon
adaptation of the Whitehead novel
“The Underground Railroad.” The
question: Can director RaMell Ross
and his team do the source material
justice?
‘Here’(Nov. 1): Tom Hanks and
Robin Wright, de-aged and aging as
the century-spanning story requires,
star in this adaptation of the 2014
graphic novel. The movie’s the product of director Robert Zemeckis.
Always an early adopter of cinematic
technologies, he’s utilizing a generative artificial intelligence toolkit
known as Metaphysic Live, allowing
(don’t ask me how, at least not yet)
the actors to be de-aged or faceswapped not in post-production, but
on set, in “real” time. The question:
Does the AI truly help tell this story?
Or in 20 years, will “Here” look the
way Zemeckis’ “Polar Express” looks
to us now? The trailer’s mighty promising.
‘The Piano Lesson’(Nov. 8, Nov. 22
on Netflix): Set in 1936 Pittsburgh,
August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama (his second, after
An AI-de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin
Wright star in“Here,” director Robert
Zemeckis’ film about ordinary lives
lived in full, across the decades.
SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT
“Fences”) starred John David Washington, Danielle Brooks and Samuel
L. Jackson in a recent Broadway
revival. Now, with Danielle Deadwyler stepping into the female lead, this
story of a family heirloom (the piano
of the title) and its deep, urgent
historical legacy comes to the screen.
The question: One that many stageto-film translations have to answer
— can the source material survive and
thrive as a movie with a third of its
material cut for time?
‘Wicked’(Nov. 22): The phenom-
enally popular Broadway musical,
winding in and around the storyline
of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz,” brings its prologue
tale of female friendship sorely and
magically tested to the screen. “In
the Heights” director Jon M. Chu
and his team are halving this project;
“Wicked II,” basically the second
act of the stage version, arrives in
late 2025. The cast is led by Cynthia
Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande
(Glinda). The question: Can the movie
keep the “Wicked” phenom flying?
