The Friday Feeling - Movies out this Week

It’s Friday the 13th, a day that many believe to be unlucky and filled with doom and gloom. Certainly today is filled with doom and gloom as it coincides with the release date for Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster porn movie, but I happen to believe that it is, in fact, quite lucky. Movies galore are entering screens near you and if you want to escape it all I recommend heading to your nearest cinema. So what is there to see?

First up is the movie everybody is sure to be talking about this weekend, 2012, master-of-disaster Roland Emmerich’s latest end of the world opus. The movie is inspired by the idea of the end of the world coinciding with the end of the ancient Mayan civilisations calendar on December 21st, 2012. Against the cataclysmic events we see the struggle of one man as he attempts to save his family from the devastation. Roland Emmerich has proved that he can make successful big-budget action films, having helmed Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. There are some good actors too. John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Chiwetel Ejiofor all turn in admirable performances but the main stand-out is Oliver Platt as the slimey White House Chief of Staff. The real star is the effects though. Volcanoes blow up, earthquakes abound and even California falls into the sea. All of that is in the trailer so I’m not really ruining anything (I hope). Suffice to say that the money here all went on the visual effects and very little was left for an actual coherent story. The movie looks amazing, the action sequences are spectacular, but close inspection reveals serious flaws in script and character development. All of this is easily overlooked as you watch the mayhem unfurl onscreen, and you’ll leave the cinema on a euphoric high. When you go home and think it through though you’ll hate yourself for loving this so much. Honestly, just go see it.

The second movie up has a much more relaxed vibe than our first. Taking Woodstock is a comedy-drama film about the Woodstock Festival of 1969 directed by Brokeback Mountain‘s Ang Lee. The screenplay from James Schamus is based on the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte. The film follows the true story of Elliot Tiber, an aspiring interior designer whose parents own the small dilapidated El Monaco Motel in White Lake, in the town of Bethel, New York. Initially he plans to hold a small music concert to raise funds for the motel but then cottons on to the idea of moving the Woodstock Festival once he learns of the trouble organisers are having at the original location. Suffice to say his plans meet with opposition from the towns people and local landowners. The movie is a homage by Lee to a time long gone, viewed through rose-tinted glasses. That said the man can direct when he needs to and the cast is top-notch, featuring Demetri Martin in the lead role, and Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber and Emile Hirsch amongst others. I haven’t had a chance to catch this yet but it looks like it could be interesting. Whether or not the movie will resonate with a younger generation is hard to know but anyone who lived through the 60/70s is bound to love the soundtrack.

Our third movie is the biopic Amelia, based on the life of female aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. Vanity Fair director Mira Nair brings us a movie based on a script by Ronald Bass, itself based on research from sources such as East to the Dawn by Susan Butler and The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell. The movie follows Amelia’s life from early childhood fascination with aviation, through her first flight and record attempts, right up to her last, ill-fated, flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to fly around the world. Two time Oscar winner Hilary Swank plays the title role, while former Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston plays her navigator Fred Noonan. Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor add their not inconsiderable weight in supporting roles for what was being tipped as an Oscar hopeful not long ago. That seems unlikely now as critical reception in the US has been less than favourable. Still it’s a story I know little about but am interested in so I’ll probably catch this when it comes to DVD, or appears on RTÉ on a Saturday afternoon.

The fourth and final featured film this Friday is Harry Brown, a British crime thriller film directed by Daniel Barber and starring Michael Caine. The movie is described as a “modern urban western,” and tells the story of Harry Brown an elderly widower and former Royal Marine who has lived to see his South London neighbourhood overrun by violent gangs, drugs and crime. After his best friend is brutally murdered and the gang leader responsible walks free, Harry finds himself turning to vigilantism to gain revenge on the young thugs. Sounds like Downfall meets Old Boy and with Caine in the driving seat that can be no bad thing. Emily Mortimer, Iain Glen, Jack O’Connell, and Ireland’s own Liam Cunningham pad the cast, but really Caine is the main man. The movie marks director Barber’s first full length feaure having being Oscar nominated for his short The Tonto Woman. Other than 2012 this is the one movie that will be worth seeing this weekend.

Also released this week is: Cold Souls, a movie starring Paul Giamatti as a fictionalised version of himself, an anxious, overwhelmed actor who decides to enlist the service of a company to deep freeze his soul. Complications ensue when his soul gets lost in a soul trafficking scheme which has taken his soul to St. Petersburg. The film then follows Giamatti desperately trying to find his soul.

And Paper Heart, starring Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera as fictionalised versions of themselves based on their rumoured relationship, though Yi has said they never dated and remain friends.