I went to see Lady in the Water this afternoon, a matinee show. I wanted to catch it before too many more reviews came out. I liked it–a lot. I’ll leave it at that–I have a personal fetish for M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, I love them all, YMMV. See it if you like that sort of thing!
But the movie, at least at the cinema where I saw it (an AMC chain), was preceded by a series of trailers for some rather unusual films. I hadn’t heard about any of them before, and they aren’t your run of the mill mainstream Hollywood dross. Oddly, none of the trailers started with that MPAA green ratings screen, which you usually see even when the film hasn’t been rated yet.
Most striking was the trailer for The Prestige, due out on October 27th. The story involves two 19th century Houdini-like stage magicians, but the trailer hints that the situation becomes far more complex. It has an amazing cast: Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as the dueling magicians, David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, and Andy Serkis (Smeagol in the LotR movies).
Busy boy Hugh Jackman also stars in The Fountain, a film with a checkered history that looks very intriguing–it’s about immortality. Apparently, it was begun in 2004 with Brad Pitt, who quarreled with writer/director Darren Aronofsky and quit to go make “Troy.” Now it’s been completed with a different cast, including Rachel Weisz (“The Constant Gardener”), Ellen Burstyn and Sean Patrick Thomas. This is also due out in October.
We also saw trailers for a movie with Will Smith called The Search for Happyness which looks very affecting, and for a downright weird-looking (and grim) SF movie, with Clive Owens (“King Arthur”) and Michael Caine, again, called The Children of Men. The latter is set in a future in which every woman has become inexplicably infertile, not a single baby has been born for almost 27 years and it appears that the human race will die out. It’s directed by Alfonso Cuaron who did the third Harry Potter movie.
It certainly looks like some interesting movies are coming out this fall!