The New Season: Fall movies
Today, and in weeks to come, we’re previewing the New Season: Our critic David Edelstein takes us to the movies:
Ah, what a fall it’s going to be: clown comedy, apocalyptic horror … and that’s just the election!
I have more confidence in the movies, though I gotta say I haven’t seen them yet. So I reserve to right to get you excited now and down the road say, “Never mind.”
The movie everyone’s talking about is “Birth of a Nation” -- not D.W. Griffith’s pro-Klan epic, but the one directed by Nate Parker, who stars as the slave Nat Turner. He doesn’t suffer passively, like the hero of “12 Years a Slave.” He becomes a bloody revolutionary, a terrorist, his cause righteous but his killing barbaric.
As if that weren’t controversial enough, Parker has been forced to search his soul publicly over a sexual assault charge dating from college days. A court cleared him, but the studio is worried about the court of Oscar voters.
- Sundance 2016: “The Birth of aNation” wins top honors (CBS News, 01/31/16)
- Nate Parker, cast argue for “Birth of a Nation” despite rape allegation scandal (09/11/16)
- Nate Parker writes Facebook post about rape accuser’s death (CBS News, 08/17/16)
Speaking of controversy, there’s a new movie from Mel Gibson. Say what you will about Mad Mel (and if you’re me, you could say plenty): he is a sensational filmmaker, and the response to “Hacksaw Ridge” at the Venice Film Festival was ecstatic.
It’s a great subject for Gibson, who always looks like he’s ready to pick up a gun and start blasting: the true story of a conscientious objector who refused to kill, or even carry a weapon, but served in World War II and saved lives.
There’s fantastic buzz on the sci-fi invasion thriller “Arrival,” from a short story by Ted Chiang and directed by Denis Villeneuve, who made “Sicario.” The hero isn’t a he-man but a female linguist played by Amy Adams, who strives to learn the aliens’ language to avert war.
What -- they can’t speak English? They’re not welcome in this country!
- Alien interpreters? How linguists would talk to E.T. (Live Science, 09/06/16)
- Residents of Hong Kong outraged by movie poster mistake (CBS News, 08/23/16)
The word is also amazing on “Manchester By the Sea,” directed by Kenneth Lonergan, one of America’s best living playwrights, in which Casey Affleck plays a Boston janitor who becomes the guardian of his dead brother’s 15-year-old son.
Well, that takes us through the holidays, which are also jammed with great-looking movies that I hope to love ... but reserve the right to say are terrible.