September 17, 2021
After a chaotic 2020, a slow Spring and a lukewarm Summer, the movie industry is putting all of its chips in the center of the table for the upcoming Fall release schedule. Fingers crossed that the latest pandemic hot spots cool down really fast, so we can continue on the road back to whatever the new normal is. The movie industry did have a few hits this summer (F9: The Fast Saga, A Quiet Place Part II, Free Guy, and Black Widow, although that last one came with a lawsuit from star Scarlett Johansson against Disney, but let’s not get distracted). Despite the hits, the box office is still way behind the pace of 2019 (no need to compare to last year’s anemic results), leaving the studios and distributors in desperate need for a strong finish to the year. Make no mistake about it, the Fall release schedule is loaded. Netflix alone announced a whopping 40 titles to be released between now and the end of the year.
Regardless of your preferred genres, and whether you feel comfortable going to the theaters or watching movies on your streaming services, there is something for everyone in the coming months. The jury is still out if any of these will get delayed to next year, or sold to a streaming service, but the industry needs this Fall season to be very strong. The economics surrounding one movie, in particular, are astounding – we’ll get to that one at the end of this post. This will be a jumbo preview in which I will cover over twenty films, most of which I have not seen, and some of which I only have cursory information about. So, we’re going to spread this out over three parts. As always, if I haven’t seen it, buyer beware – I’m not making these movies, just previewing them. OK, let’s dive in.
Wait, hold on…. What’s that? A press release from Paramount Pictures?
Oh, no. Say it ain’t so. Not my boy, Maverick….
Oh, for f*cks sake. Not again. Really?!?!?
Yup, another blockbuster pushed out. Paramount recently announced that they were moving Top Gun: Maverick from its scheduled release date in November to May of next year, taking the spot of its other major Tom Cruise project, Mission: Impossible 7, which was pushed to September 2022. Sigh….Guess I’ll wait for my Tom Cruise blog post until the Spring. Oh well, at least we know Memorial Day 2022 will be a fun movie weekend. And there is still plenty to see this Fall, even without Maverick. For instance, Disney just announced that they are moving forward with all of their releases going to theaters, on the heels of a very strong box office from its latest Marvel film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. OK, let’s really dive in and start with a movie that I have actually seen.
What’s the Value of a Human Life? – Worth
I’ve had this one on my radar for a year and a half – in fact, I wrote about it in my 2020 movie preview after reading about its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Based on a true story, Worth bounced around the acquisition merry go round, before it was picked up by Netflix and premiered two weeks ago, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Michael Keaton plays Ken Feinberg, an attorney who specializes in financial settlements and mediation. He volunteers to help the federal government figure out how to compensate the families of the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks, thinking this will be just like any other case he has worked on. What he quickly realizes is that this is not like an asbestos lawsuit or a plane crash settlement. He is dealing with the worst kind of horror that a family can endure and while he is facing a Congressional deadline to secure 80% of the victims’ families to agree to the terms of the fund’s payout provisions, he slowly realizes that these are actual people he is dealing with, not just names on a list.
Keaton is fantastic in this role, despite a Boston accent that I found distracting. Sidebar rant: Why do movies always do this? I looked up Feinberg and saw that he was from Brockton, Massachusetts, so I’m sure he has a heavy Boston accent. But would anyone have really cared if Keaton just sounded like any other Keaton role (well, maybe not Batman)? OK, it’s a little distracting, but doesn’t take away from the quality of the movie. As great as Keaton is, he is upstaged by the wonderful Stanley Tucci, who plays a man who lost his wife in the attacks, and fights the provisions of Feinberg’s fund as not valuing every victim’s worth in the unique way that they deserve. When Feinberg begins to get out of his spreadsheet and listen to the stories of the victims’ families, he starts to understand that there is no perfect formula for a person’s value in the world. This is a very good and effective drama, with enough of the 9/11 backstory to set some context of the individual characters in the movie, but I didn’t find those scenes to be exploitative like some documentaries about that fateful day tend to be. Worth is now available to stream on Netflix.
Holy Transformation – The Eyes of Tammy Faye
If you’ve seen the trailer for this film, you might not recognize the leading actors. Granted, Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield are not household names with the likes of DiCaprio and Lawrence (who are co-starring in a much-anticipated comedy from Netflix in December, which we will cover), but they have both been nominated for Oscars and have delivered strong performances before. The other reason you might not have recognized them is that they have been physically transformed into the legendary scam artists of the 1980s, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. The movie tells the story of the rise and fall of the televangelists who became famous and infamous when the details of their empire became public knowledge. Garfield and Chastain are very good actors, and the trailer for this one looks good, so my hopes are high that this will be a good biopic, but we know that these sometimes don’t live up to the hype.
Speaking of which, a quick word about one of the more anticipated movies of the Summer, the Aretha Franklin story Respect, featuring Jennifer Hudson in the lead role. First things first – Hudson was fantastic. She does all of her own singing (she is, after all, a professional musician) and embodies Franklin wonderfully throughout the film, which covers Franklin’s early life up until 1972, when she took the bold step of recording a gospel album, which was a very successful hit record. The problem for me wasn’t Hudson’s performance. It was the story itself. It felt like a typical “paint by numbers” biographical film that featured every cliché beat you could think of – the domineering parent, the domineering husband/manager, the battle with addiction, the rise from struggles, etc. Now, the music sequences, especially when she was writing songs with fellow musicians, were fantastic. But the overall story just wasn’t original enough for me, and I was underwhelmed. Oh well, let’s hope we get a better result with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is now playing in theaters.
A Broadway Musical Adaptation – Dear Evan Hansen
I’m not even sure if I’m going to see this movie (the early reviews coming out of the Toronto International Film Festival have been pretty rough), but I felt compelled to write about this after seeing the trailer. Warning: mini-rant coming up. Dear Evan Hansen is based on a hit Broadway musical, about a teenager struggling with his mental health, who goes on an emotional journey after a high-school tragedy involving a fellow student. The lead character is played by Ben Platt, who won a Tony for portraying the role on Broadway. Now, I have never seen the play, but after seeing the trailer (which clocks in at a whopping 3 minutes!), I think I know the entire story, so I’m questioning if I want to bother seeing the full movie.
Why do they do this to us? Normally, I try to avoid trailers for this very reason. I don’t want the whole damn picture spoiled for me before I even see it. Here’s what I need in a trailer – movie stars, a few cool montages, some good music, and a general feel for the film. Quick scenes that jump around, not extended monologues or scenes in a linear presentation that telegraph most of the plot. My wife and I used to laugh when we watched Mad Men. Every week they would show a 30 second preview of the next episode and it would be a number of random shots of characters saying lines with zero context. You had no idea what was going to happen, except you knew you were getting the cool vibe of 1950s Madison Avenue. You want to see examples of great trailers that give you a feel for the movie without giving away too much of the plot? Here you go: My beloved musical from 2016 featuring a soundtrack that I have played many times here, my favorite film from 2019 from the great Quentin Tarantino here, and the trailer from my most anticipated picture of 2021 here. That, my friends, is how you construct a movie trailer. Dear Evan Hansen premieres in theaters on September 24th.
Don’t Look Down – The Alpinist
Personal disclosure here – I hate heights. I mean, like I really don’t like heights. I don’t even like watching contestants on The Amazing Race bungee-jumping. So, it’s safe to say you aren’t going to catch me parachuting anytime soon (like, ever). But, I’ll overcome my queasiness if it’s a compelling story and that’s what it looks like we have with The Alpinist, a documentary about a daring young climber named Marc-André Leclerc, who lives a quiet life with his girlfriend, but takes on extreme risks in climbing rocks and ice peaks. If you think you’ve already seen this film, you might be thinking of Free Solo, a magnificent 2017 documentary about Alex Honnold, a similar daredevil rock climber. The trailer for The Alpinist looks amazing, and I have a feeling that it might be very similar to Free Solo, and maybe that’s ok. Either way, I think the images will be captivating and leave me wondering “How in the world does someone have the courage to do something like that?” The Alpinist is now playing in select theaters.
Going Back to Jersey – The Many Saints of Newark
I wrote about this one a few months ago as part of my Summer preview, but its premiere was pushed back, so I thought I would remind you that in a few short weeks, we get to see the early days of the Sopranos crime syndicate, from the creator of the television series, David Chase. This prequel film was co-written by Chase, so you have to figure that the storyline and characters will be top notch. If this project was from someone not affiliated with the original series, I’d have my doubts. That being said, no one knows if this one will be good. The trailer looks great and there are a number of wonderful actors featured in the film, but the spotlight is on one in particular – Michael Gandolfini, who is playing the role that made his father famous – Tony Soprano, future leader of the crime family.
The Many Saints of Newark takes place in the 1960s and 1970s and tells the story of the generation older than Tony (including Uncle Junior when he was younger, Christopher Moltisanti’s father Dickie, and many more), and how they came to power in New Jersey’s crime world. I enjoyed The Sopranos series a great deal and am looking forward to this one a lot. If you are a Sopranos junkie and want more content, check out Alan Sepinwall, the television critic for Rolling Stone and resident expert on all things Sopranos. He’s written a book about the series, has conducted many interviews with Chase and members of the cast, and has written a lengthy series of articles for Rolling Stone, leading up to the premiere of this film. The Many Saints of Newark premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on October 1st. Note that it will only be on HBO Max for thirty days.
Gotta Pay The Bills – No Time to Die
Of all of the storylines around films having their premiere dates moved and / or being sold to streaming services, the most compelling storyline about the movie business from the last eighteen months is that of the next James Bond film, No Time to Die. This is the fifth and final entry in the series to feature Daniel Craig and after wrapping production in late 2019, it was originally scheduled to be released in April of 2020. This movie’s release has been delayed so long that Billie Eilish has already won a Grammy for the title song, becoming the first artist to win for a song from a film that had yet to be released. At one point in late 2020, there were rumors that MGM was considering selling the rights to a big streaming service, with Apple in the mix, but a deal could not be reached. MGM stuck with its plan for releasing it in theaters.
Wait a minute, didn’t MGM just agree to be sold to Amazon? Couldn’t they just put this on Amazon Prime? Well, for those of us who have had the joy of working on a very large corporate merger, we’ve experienced going through what’s called “antitrust review.” You see, the Amazon / MGM deal is still going through review by the Federal Trade Commission and until that is resolved, MGM is still a stand-alone company without a streaming partner. So, why not wait until 2022 to release No Time to Die, when the pandemic may be even less of an issue? Well, you see MGM is burning cash on this movie every day until the film’s release because of the interest on the debt taken out to help finance the movie. When you factor in production costs, financing costs, marketing expenses (including campaigns for previous release dates), the split of ticket sales between theaters and the studio, a recent article estimated that No Time to Die needs to gross almost a billion dollars at the global box office for MGM to make money. That is absolutely crazy. Although, I’m not going to cry for Amazon about their pending deal for MGM – they’ve got plenty of cash, especially considering the skyrocketing business they had during the pandemic. But, the business side of this movie still fascinates me. The trailer looks fantastic and I’m hopeful it sends Craig off with a great ending to his tenure as Bond. I’m a little concerned about the runtime (a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes) and Rami Malek as the villain (hoping it’s not a big role), but I trust that this will be a good one. And from what I’ve read, we’re going to see it soon. It looks like MGM is moving forward with rolling out No Time to Die to premiere in theaters on October 8th.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed part one of my look at the Fall movie season. We’ve got many more to get to in part two next week. Thanks for reading and if you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.