Here's the scene: your house is abuzz with holiday festivities, two-dozen family members talking about food and presents and relationships and the weather and sports. There is music in the background, hockey on the TV and a baby throwing up on the floor. Is somebody smoking? Who brought the dog?
This is the same crowd that had a friendly food fight, a not so friendly shouting match about how to save the Oilers, and a downright nasty after-dinner drink that nearly turned into a brawl over who carves a better turkey.
Family. Sometimes it's the best reason to say that you've already got plans to go out to a movie. After all, what's the point of escapism if you don't use it to escape?
This holiday season, there are a bunch of cool, exciting, fun and awesome movies that are already in theatres, and a bunch more that are set to come out before the new year. Here's a summary look at what you can find at your local multiplex to help you survive the season with your sanity intact.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
While it's true that five armies are not on the list of gifts from the 12 Days of Christmas, everybody loves golden rings, especially hobbits, elves, wizards and orcs. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the long awaited final chapter in director Peter Jackson's extended series set in Middle Earth, all based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien.
This one will see Bilbo Baggins and his merry band fight the aforementioned armies, as well as a fiery flying fiend named Smaug. These are the kinds of films that should come with a viewer's guide so that everyone can keep up with all of the funky names in the Bolg, Azog, Dol Guldur… I could have just made up those names by randomly typing keys and you wouldn't know the difference.
Still, it's a certainty to be a satisfying conclusion to those great many filmgoers who have already spent upwards of 15 hours watching the other films in both this and the Lord of the Rings series. What's another 2 hours to get to the very end of the marathon, right?
Annie
This is one of those perennial faves and a story that must get remade once every generation. As a boy, I fell in love with that little redheaded orphan from the 1982 version and I have a feeling that today's audiences will experience the same feeling for Quvenzhané Wallis from this modern retelling. She was, after all, the youngest Best Actress Oscar nominee ever. How could she go wrong?
The 11-year-old Beasts of the Southern Wild star takes the title role as the happy young orphan who lives with her mean-spirited and selfish foster mom, Miss Hannigan, here played by Cameron Diaz in what is sure to be one of her less goofy and likeable parts.
Lucky for Annie, a New York tycoon and mayoralty candidate named Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) decides to humanize himself to the electorate by adopting her.
We all know how it turns out and yes, there will be orphans, rich tycoons and mean foster parents all breaking out into song. It's a hard knock life but the sun will come out tomorrow, am I right?
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
It's going to be tough to see Robin Williams on the big screen for the last time, after last month's holiday snarkfest A Merry Friggin' Christmas. Here, he reprises his role as a statue of Teddy Roosevelt come to life in a museum full of other animated historical figures, dinosaurs and caricatures. And Ben Stiller.
Hey, the first two were pretty good so how could this one go wrong?
The magic power of Ahkmenrah is somehow fading, and this means that soon no creature will magically come to life in the Museum of Natural History. This gives Larry (Stiller) the opportunity to reunite everyone to save the day, so be prepared for one movie featuring Roosevelt, a Neanderthal, Jedediah the cowboy, Sir Lancelot, Ahkmenrah and his father the pharaoh Merenkahre, the Roman soldier Octavius, Attila the Hun, and Sacagawea.
The film also stars Crystal the Monkey, Rebel Wilson, Ricky Gervais, Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney who also makes his final film appearance. It had better be funny with two major talents getting their requiems in it.
Unbroken
Yes, Angelina Jolie is also a director with one movie (which she also co-wrote) out a few years ago. Now, she has a new movie, one that was co-written by such notable filmmakers as Richard LaGravenese and the Coen Brothers.
Much like her first effort, In the Land of Blood and Honey, her new film, Unbroken, is set in an atmosphere of war, prisoner camps and survival. It's based on a true story about an Olympic athlete named Louis Zamperini who enlisted during the Second World War only to survive a plane crash in the Pacific for seven weeks, before becoming a POW.
If the title suggests anything, one might guess that Zamperini pulls through the ordeal with his spirit intact. An uplifting, heartwarming drama perhaps?
Into the Woods
What would Christmas be without a Disney movie? Frozen 2? Nah… how about Into the Woods, a live action musical directed by the guy who made Chicago along with script and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim?
It's all about several Brothers Grimm fairy tale characters – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel – plus a wicked witch who put a curse on a baker and his wife. The two must collect some magical items in order to dispel a spell that the witch put on them. Maybe then they'll be able to start a family…
Did I mention that the witch is played by Meryl Streep? And that Johnny Depp is the Big Bad Wolf?
American Sniper
This is the second movie by director Clint Eastwood to come out this year alone. American Sniper is another story about how soldiers have trouble leaving the war behind.
Never one to shy away from exploring masculinity and the plight of modern man, this one is about a Navy SEAL sniper who is a marksman par excellence. When he returns home, however, he just doesn't seem to be able to get along with his wife and kids. Looks like Bradley Cooper is really trying to stretch his acting legs.
The Gambler
Mark Wahlberg will never be accused of being a Shakespearean thespian, and so he's sticking to what he knows best: moody actioners. This time, he's a literature professor (stunned silence) who is also a gambling addict (sigh of relief). Of course, he gets in trouble borrowing money to pay for his debts, just as his personal life faces a kind of implosion.
The Boston-born welterweight is joined in this endeavour by heavyweight talents Jessica Lange and John Goodman who will certainly bring much-needed gravitas to the proceedings. The real stars of this show, however, are the writers. The Departed screenwriter William Monahan adapts the script by James Toback whose original version of The Gambler was produced 40 years ago with James Caan in the lead.
Big Eyes
It's been 20 years since biographers and co-writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski joined forces with Tim Burton on the impeccable Ed Wood. They are the go-to guys for biopics (see The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon if you don't believe me) and now it's time to bring Burton back in.
Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) was a painter in the 1950s who focused on portraits with size-enhanced facial features. Did you even read the title? All of her paintings had faces with big eyes!
There was one problem: her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) who took credit for it. Not a classy move, by my ken.
This might just be a surefire hit, especially because of the powerhouse actors on screen, the golden pens behind the scenes, and the extraordinary visions of director Tim Burton.
The Interview – all screenings cancelled
Perhaps Seth Rogen, James Franco and Evan Goldberg should have spent more time considering their next big joint effort. The trio behind the dizzyingly funny This is the End thought that it would be hilarious to make a movie about some idiotic TV talk show hosts getting assigned by the CIA to kill Kim Jong Un of North Korea.
Interestingly enough, the real North Korea doesn't seem to think this was at all humorous. Last week, Sony Pictures cancelled the release of the film, after several major theatre chains refused to show it in the face of a threat of 9/11-level violence. Even the premiere was cancelled and Rogen and Franco had to bow out of doing any publicity. That was all after a major electronic hacking scandal that revealed some deeply embarrassing things about how Sony does business.
Who could have guessed that a movie featuring an assassination attempt against a real foreign dictator (who reportedly had his own uncle executed) would go awry? It's a sad state when gone are the golden days of Kim Jong-Il, who faced his own comeuppance in the absurdist marionette action fantasy Team America: World Police all the way back in 2004.
