Here’s part 2 of our Fall 2017 movie preview, continued from yesterday.
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“Blade Runner 2049” (Oct. 6)
Harrison Ford continues his late-career renaissance by finally making a sequel to the sci-fi classic he made outside the “Star Wars” series. Ryan Gosling plays a new blade runner for the Los Angeles police who embarks on a quest to find Ford’s Rick Deckard, who’s been missing for 30 years, after discovering a secret that could ruin society. Original director Ridley Scott is only on board as an executive producer here, but the film appears in good hands with director Denis Villeneuve, who proved he has the ability to craft stellar sci-fi with last year’s Best Picture nominee “Arrival”
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“Marshall” (Oct. 13)
Chadwick Boseman delivered strong performances as Jackie Robinson in “42” and James Brown in “Get On Up,” and he attempts a trifecta of winning portrayals of African-American icons with this film about a key case in Thurgood Marshall’s career prior to becoming the first black justice on the US Supreme Court.
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“Suburbicon” (Oct. 27)
The Coen brothers intended to make this darkly comic crime film even before their commercial breakthrough with 1987’s “Raising Arizona,” but it took their “Burn After Reading” star George Clooney as director to finally bring it to the big screen. Matt Damon plays a husband and father in 1959 suburbia who finds that his town’s idyllic surface is hiding a disturbing underbelly of secrets and violence. The trailer makes this look like an oddball winner.
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“Justice League” (Nov. 17)
Until this year’s terrific “Wonder Woman,” the films based on DC Comics have always taken a more somber approach to its superhero movies than its archrivals at Marvel. It will be interesting to see how this film will compare with the pure pop fun of “The Avengers” films, as “League” brings all of DC’s biggest heroes together when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are joined by Aquaman and The Flash for this adventure.
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“Darkest Hour” (Nov. 22)
This summer’s hugely successful “Dunkirk” has proven that today’s audiences will still line up for a serious WWII film, which bodes well for this biopic starring Gary Oldman as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This film follows Churchill as he faced the challenge of rallying England against the Nazis within days of taking office.
