Call it the cinematic Dead Zone, that period between the lucrative summer and award-worthy winter seasons when studios release less hyped titles they hope will nevertheless prove to be successful with audiences and critics. The year-end holiday season officially opens on Thanksgiving, but the truth is that the clarion call can be heard at the start of November (this year’s early rollouts include Chicken Little and The New World); to that effect, we’re offering only a checklist of the 32 movies slated to open locally in September and October, followed by a few limited releases that may or may not show up during that span.
SEPTEMBER 2: Based on a Ray Bradbury story, the time travel yarn A SOUND OF THUNDER stars Ben Kingsley as the head of a company with the means to send people back to prehistoric times to embark on hunting expeditions; Edward Burns plays the travel guide who first notices that tampering with the past can lead to devastating changes in the present . . . TRANSPORTER 2, the sequel to (duh) 2002’s The Transporter, finds ex-Special Forces operative Frank Martin (Jason Statham) serving as chauffeur to a wealthy family; when the young son gets kidnapped, he springs into bone-crushing action . . . A rookie detective (Nick Cannon) poses as a student at a posh private school in order to crack a case in UNDERCLASSMAN.
SEPTEMBER 9: Inspired by a factual event, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE casts Tom Wilkinson as a priest who performs an exorcism on a 19-year-old college student; after the girl dies and the priest is accused of criminal negligence, he hires a lawyer (Laura Linney) to defend him . . . In the action comedy THE MAN, a federal agent (Samuel L. Jackson) attempting to find out who killed his partner gets mixed up with a bumbling salesman (Eugene Levy).
SEPTEMBER 16: In the terror tale CRY WOLF, a group of high school kids fool their peers by insisting a serial killer known as The Wolf is on the loose — a game that goes too far once dead bodies start turning up . . . Refusing to believe she’s been killed in an accident, a young woman (Reese Witherspoon) haunts the new inhabitant (Mark Ruffalo) of her apartment in the romantic comedy JUST LIKE HEAVEN . . . LORD OF WAR stars Nicolas Cage as an international arms dealer who must wrestle with his own conscience as he’s being pursued by an Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke) . . . Based on David Auburn’s play, PROOF stars Gwyneth Paltrow as a young woman who attempts to take care of her brilliant but possibly demented father (Anthony Hopkins) while coping with the advances of one of his math students (Jake Gyllenhaal) . . . In the Louisiana swamps, a gang of teens must save themselves from a lurking menace in VENOM.
SEPTEMBER 23: In FLIGHTPLAN, a grieving widow (Jodie Foster) is alarmed after her six-year-old daughter disappears during a Berlin-to-New-York flight; as she frantically searches the plane, she’s repeatedly told by crew and passengers that she never had a child on board with her . . . Tim Burton and Johnny Depp follow up their Charlie and the Chocolate Factory success with TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE, which employs stop-motion animation (as did Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas) to relate the tale of a Victorian-era gentleman (Depp) whose planned wedding to his sweetheart (Emily Watson) is sideswiped by his forced marriage to the underworld’s Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham-Carter).
SEPTEMBER 30: Actor Bill Paxton steps behind the camera to direct THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, set at the 1913 Open when an amateur golf player (Shia Labeouf) managed to beat the defending champion (Stephen Dillane) . . . One of the most discussed films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE finds director David Cronenberg exploring the issue of violence in America via this story of the owner (Viggo Mortensen) of a diner who’s forced to take action during an attempted robbery. Ed Harris and William Hurt also star . . . Held from a summer release, INTO THE BLUE stars Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan and Ashley Scott as hot-bodied divers whose deep-sea discovery draws the attention of a local crime boss . . . There have been well over a dozen movie adaptations of OLIVER TWIST; the latest version of the Dickens chestnut, from the Oscar-winning team behind The Pianist (director Roman Polanski and writer Ronald Harwood), casts newcomer Barney Clark in the title role, with Ben Kingsley contributing the acting chops as Fagin . . . Adapted from the short-lived TV series Firefly, SERENITY is a futuristic adventure saga about the scruffy crew members of a spaceship and the troubles that develop after they welcome aboard two enigmatic passengers.
OCTOBER 7: IN HER SHOES, directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), is based on Jennifer Weiner’s novel about dissimilar sisters — one flirty and outgoing (Cameron Diaz), the other shy and reserved (Toni Collette). Shirley MacLaine co-stars . . . In TWO FOR THE MONEY, the head of a sports consulting firm (Al Pacino) carefully molds the career of his protégé (Matthew McConaughey), a former football college star with the ability to correctly predict outcomes of games. But once the two become suspicious of each other’s motives and ambitions, they begin trying to outwit one another . . . WAITING centers on the employees (Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Anna Faris) at a chain restaurant named Shenanigans; the press material promises “stoned busboys, unsanitary kitchen antics and lots of talk about sex” . . . Finally, a full-length Wallace & Gromit flick! WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT finds our clay-animated heroes endeavoring to discover who — or what — is destroying the town’s vegetable gardens.
OCTOBER 14: The latest from writer-director Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) is ELIZABETHTOWN, a Garden State-like tale about a hapless young man (Orlando Bloom) who, while returning home for his dad’s funeral, meets a vivacious woman (Kirsten Dunst) who pulls him out of his funk. Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin also star . . . The latest supernatural opus to go the remake route, THE FOG is an update of John Carpenter’s 1980 chiller about a coastal town being attacked by vengeful ghosts. This new version stars Selma Blair (in the Adrienne Barbeau role) and Smallville’s Tom Welling . . . New Zealand director Niki Caro follows up the global success of Whale Rider with NORTH COUNTRY, based on the true story of the first woman (played by Charlize Theron) to win a sexual harassment suit in the US. The cast also includes Frances McDormand, Sissy Spacek and Woody Harrelson.
OCTOBER 19: DOMINO explores the life of Domino Harvey, the teenage model (and daughter of The Manchurian Candidate actor Laurence Harvey) who later became an LA bounty hunter. Keira Knightley stars as this real-life figure, a drug addict who was found dead this past June in her bathtub at the age of 35.
OCTOBER 21: Two business executives (Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston) married to other people carry on an affair until a blackmailer comes calling in DERAILED . . . Based on the influential videogame, DOOM centers on a group of Marines (including one played by The Rock) who defend a research station on Mars from murderous creatures that are hiding around every corner . . . DREAMER: INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY (yes, that latter bit’s apparently part of the official title) focuses on a father and daughter (Kurt Russell and ubiquitous Dakota Fanning) who attempt to restore an ailing race horse back to his former glory . . . Director Marc Forster follows up his Oscar-winning pair Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball with STAY, a psychological thriller in which a therapist (Ewan McGregor) finds himself drawn into the warped mind of a suicidal college student (The Notebook’s Ryan Gosling). The cast also includes Naomi Watts and Janeane Garofalo.
OCTOBER 28: It took seven years, but the box office hit The Mask of Zorro is finally accorded its own sequel with THE LEGEND OF ZORRO, with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones respectively returning as the swashbuckling swordsman and his equally brave soulmate . . . The expected sequel to last fall’s minor hit Saw, SAW II finds a new detective (Mark Wahlberg) on the trail of serial killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who this time locks eight people (up from the original’s two) in a room in the hopes that they’ll all prove to be worthy victims . . . Nicolas Cage stars as THE WEATHER MAN, a Chicago TV meteorologist coping with a broken marriage (to Hope Davis), a sick father (Michael Caine) and the prospect of relocating to New York City.
NO DATE SET: THE BAXTER stars comedian Michael Showalter (who also wrote and directed) as a nice guy who, tired of repeatedly being dumped at the altar, swears off women — or at least until he meets a pair (Elizabeth Banks and Michelle Williams) who catch his eye . . . Actor Liev Schreiber turns to writing and directing with his adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, about a Jewish-American man (Elijah Wood) who searches for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis . . . George Clooney directs, co-writes and co-stars (as legendary journalist Fred Friendly) in GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, the fact-based account of how Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) helped put an end to the witch hunts spearheaded by the insidious Senator Joseph McCarthy . . . In the comedy PRIME, a therapist (Meryl Streep) encourages her 37-year-old patient (Uma Thurman) to enjoy her passionate tryst with a 23-year-old man (Bryan Greenberg) — until the doc learns that the lad in question is her own son . . . Paul Reiser wrote the script for THE THING ABOUT MY FOLKS, about a son (Reiser) who takes his dad (Peter Falk) on a road trip after the old man’s wife (Olympia Dukakis) leaves him . . . Vince Vaughn, Keanu Reeves and Vincent D’Onofrio are among the familiar faces who pop up in the indie film THUMBSUCKER, which earned 20-year-old Lou Taylor Pucci a special acting prize at Sundance for his portrayal of the neurotic title character . . . WHERE THE TRUTH LIES, the latest from writer-director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as successful entertainers whose lives tumble downhill when a dead girl turns up in their hotel suite following a raucous party.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2005.
