Fall Holiday Movie Preview
September Previews
Our picks for September’s must-see movies
Miracle at St. Anna
September 26
What’s a Spike Lee movie without controversy?
While at Cannes to promote this movie, Lee started a war of words with Clint Eastwood when he said Eastwood hadn’t featured a single black soldier in either of his WWII movies — Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood said neither had an appropriate role for a black soldier, and that Lee should “shut his face.”
Miracle at St. Anna, you see, is Lee’s response to the omission of black soldiers from WWII movies.
Based on the novel by James McBride, the film uses the real-life Sant’Ana di Stazzema massacre as its backdrop. In 1944 the Nazis attacked the Tuscan village killing 560 people. In Lee’s movie, four African-American soldiers (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller) are trapped in the village after one rescues an Italian boy.
But the film’s first whiff of controversy came before shooting had even started, when residents of Sant’Ana said the dramatic liberties taken in the film would dishonour their sad history.
The movie has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Lee showed only eight minutes at Cannes) and opens across the country at the end of the month.
Bangkok Dangerous
Directing brothers Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun remake their 1999 Thai thriller Bangkok Dangerous with Nicolas Cage as Joe the hitman. Joe tries to live his life by a simple code: don’t ask questions, and don’t get involved with anyone. Whadda ya know? While in Thailand to carry out a hit, Joe breaks both rules.
Release date: September 5
Burn After Reading
After he’s fired, CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) decides to get drunk and write his memoirs. Unfortunately, they fall into the hands of Hardbodies Fitness Centers employees Linda and Chad (Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt), who try to take advantage. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the fantasy cast includes Tilda Swinton as Cox’s wife and George Clooney as her married lover. See Brad Pitt interview.
Release date: September 12
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Robert De Niro and Al Pacino star together in Righteous Kill
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Righteous Kill
You’d think the first on-screen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino since 1995’s Heat
would have garnered more buzz. Hmmm... The quintessential tough-guy
actors play NYPD partners Turk and Rooster who are asked to investigate
a pimp’s murder. Strangely, all evidence connects the killing to a case
they thought they solved years before. Jon Avnet (88 Minutes) directs.
Release date: September 12
The Women
This remake of the 1939 George Cukor movie stars Meg Ryan as Mary, a rich New Yorker whose husband is cheating on her with a perfume-counter attendant (Eva Mendes, who looks more and more like Raquel Welch every day). Candice Bergen is Mary’s mother and Carrie Fisher, Annette Bening and Debra Messing are her friends. Smart marketing saw the trailer run before Sex and the City screenings; expect the same audience to fall for this comedy.
Release date: September 12 |
Ghost Town
English funnyman Ricky Gervais stars as mean-spirited dentist Bertram Pincus, who dies during a colonoscopy, but then comes back to life. The experience has left him with the ability to see ghosts, and one very persistent dead guy (Greg Kinnear) wants Bertram to stop his widow (Téa Leoni) from remarrying.
Release date: September 12
The Family That Preys
One-man show Tyler Perry — he writes, directs, designs sets and acts in his own movies — churns out pics at an astonishing rate. His latest concerns a wealthy socialite (Kathy Bates) and her best friend (Alfre Woodard), whose married children — Cole Hauser and Sanaa Lathan — are having an affair with each other.
Release date: September 12
Taken
A retired spy’s (Liam Neeson) daughter (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped by slave traders while on vacation in Paris, so daddy dearest puts on his game face and sets out to rescue his daughter and kill the scum who took her. Directed by French cinematogrpaher Pierre Morel.
Release date: September 19
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Igor
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Igor
This animated flick focuses on Igor, well, actually a lot of
Igors, because that’s what all of the assistants who work for the mad
scientists in the kingdom of Malaria are named. One Igor (John Cusack)
threatens the social order when he sets out to design his own evil
creature and enter it in Malaria’s annual “Evil Science Fair.” Steve Buscemi and John Cleese also lend their pipes.
Release date: September 19
The Duchess
Late-18th-century English society is scandalized by the exploits of Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire (Keira Knightley), whose passion for gambling, politics, fashion and a handsome lover (Dominic Cooper) make her unique among women of her time. Too bad her staid husband (Ralph Fiennes) and nervous mother (Charlotte Rampling) don’t share the Duchess’s sense of adventure.
Release date: September 19
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My Best Friend’s Girl
When Dustin (Jason Biggs) is dumped by his girlfriend Alexis (Kate Hudson), he calls out the big guns, his best friend Tank (Dane Cook), who makes a living by going out with a guy’s ex-girlfriend and then treating her so badly that she runs back into the arms of the guy she just kicked to the curb.
Release date: September 19
Lakeview Terrace
If you think your neighbour reorganizing your recycling bin or spying over your back fence is bad, wait until you meet Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), a by-the-book L.A. cop who can’t stand the fact that an interracial couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) has moved into his neighbourhood so terrorizes them. They have no choice but to fight back against this cop who knows how to manipulate the law to get what he wants.
Release date: September 19
Eagle Eye
Stuff blows up real good in this explosive thriller starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan as two innocent people who are framed as terrorists by a secret organization that needs them to carry out an assassination.
Release date: September 26
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Richard Gere and Diane Lane in
Nights in Rodanthe
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Nights in Rodanthe
After a summer of superhero movies comes this adult-oriented love story about an unhappily married woman (Diane Lane) who takes care of her friend’s beachfront inn for a weekend and falls in love with the inn’s only guest, a hunky doctor (Richard Gere). James Franco
plays the doctor’s son. Lane and Gere can probably tell you where every
mole is on each other’s bodies, having played lovers in The Cotton Club, Unfaithful and now here. This is also the fourth Nicholas Sparks novel to be turned into a film, after Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and The Notebook. See James Franco interview.
Release date: September 26
Management
An uptight travelling sales-woman (Jennifer Aniston) has a fling with a motel manager (Steve Zahn) who thinks he’s the perfect man for her and follows her across the country trying to win her love.
Release date: September 26
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SPECIAL EVENTS ON THE BIG SCREEN
The Metropolitan Opera
Opening Night Gala
(Soprano Renée Fleming performs excerpts from three acclaimed roles)
Live: Monday, Sept. 22, 6:30 p.m. ET/PT
WWE Pay-Per-View
Unforgiven
Sunday, Sept. 7, 8 p.m. ET