The genre films of late 2012

Summer may be coming to a close in a few weeks, but genre fans won’t be disappointed by Hollywood’s Fall lineup.



Yes, it’s definitely going to be an interesting season with a lot of different films, including (finally) the end of Twilight, the latest flicks from Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg’s biopic of Abraham Lincoln starring Daniel Day Lewis, the next James Bond flick, and much more.

In Entertainment Weekly, Twilight is indeed on the cover, and what a fortuitous break that this big cheating scandal broke several months before Breaking Dawn’s November 16 release. But frankly I’m about as interested in writing about Twilight as you would be lighting your belly button lint on fire, and I think there’s far better movies worthy of attention coming up this Fall.

 

For more discerning genre fans, there’s Looper, starring Jospeh Gordon-Levitt (The Dark Knight Rises), and Bruce Willis, which sounds a bit like a Terminator time travel kind of idea where people are sent around in time to kill people, and Levitt has to kill himself when he’s thirty years older, played by Bruce Willis (hitting theaters September 28).

 

We’ve also got Dredd 3D marching in on September 21, which may finally be the movie the uber-judge has always deserved. (Early word has it it’s pretty balls out and violent, and he’s never without the helmet, so at least they got that right.) 

Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow up to There Will Be Blood, The Master, which is loosely based on the development of Scientology, has been moved up to September 14, and as EW and many others are predicting, there’s strong “Oscar buzz” already.

 

While I can’t stand Adam Sandler, and am glad the world finally agrees with me, I wouldn’t mind seeing the CGI animated Hotel Transylvania, which could be fun, and reminds me a bit of one of my all time favorite animated films, Mad Monster Party, which was helmed by Rankin Bass.

 

EW has also marked Oscar buzz for Argo, the true story of a fake movie production that was set up to free hostages from Tehran in 1979.

I’m especially interested to see this on October 12, and think it could definitely be a Fall sleeper if the good early buzz is true. I’m also curious how Cloud Atlas is going to turn out on October 26, and it’s clearly a very ambitious sci-fi flick from the Wachiowskis and Run Lola Run’s Tom Tykwer.

 

We’re also looking forward to see how Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie turns out as a feature length movie on October 5, and it’s also been cool to see the old school video game graphic posters around town for Wreck It Ralph, which is coming on November 2. Win, lose or draw, I also want to see Daniel Day Lewis play Lincoln on November 9.

 

Also in November is the chop-socky take-off The Man With the Iron Fists, the new Bond, Skyfall, on November 9, the remake of Red Dawn on November 21, and the new Robert Zemeckis film, Flight, on November 2. I didn’t think much of the trailer when I saw it, but it’s going to be playing at the New York Film Festival, so who knows?

 

And the big December releases we’ve been following much of the year are of course The Hobbit on December 14, and Django Unchained on Christmas Day.

 



 

I’m also looking forward to Kathryn Bigelow’s follow up to The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Bin Laden, which was in development for a while, and of course had to change its ending when we finally found and killed him last year.

And this is mostly genre films, but there’s plenty more flicks of all stripes coming in the next four months, and it should indeed be a very exciting movie season this fall.