Movies to look forward to

Sometimes the anticipation of a good movie is more exciting than the movie itself. So why not indulge in pre-release daydreaming? Here are the movies we're particularly looking forward to.

I'm still catching up on the pretty impressive oeuvre of French director Claire Denis but consider myself a fan based on her excellent Beau travail and White Material. Her newest effort is called Les salauds (international title: The Bastards) and it's been selected for the Cannes sidebar Un Certain Régard.

Sofia Coppola is one of  those directors that grew on me, which probably makes me the one person on earth who liked Somewhere better than Lost in Translation. With her latest project, The Bling Ring, Coppola once again digs into the theme of fame. The trailer reveals some small similarities to Harmony Korine's terrific Spring Breakers, mainly because of its airhead protagonists who curiously combine materialism with spirituality.

Check out the brand new trailer:


 
Then there's also the Susanne Bier Depression-era drama Serena to look forward to, featuring Silver Linings Playbook-duo Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.
We've also got a new Kelly Reichardt movie coming up, called Night Moves, with Dakota Fanning and Jesse Eisenberg leading the cast. You might know Reichardt from Wendy & Lucy or western Meek's Cutoff, both excellent.
And something else to get excited about: Abus de faiblesse, Catherine Breillat's latest effort, starring the always wonderful and ever busy Isabelle Huppert.

As for exciting performances, I can't wait to see Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Samantha Morton and Olivia Wilde rock Spike Jonze's Her.
Wes Anderson has got a way of writing fine female parts and his next movie The Grand Budapest Hotel credits great actresses like Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton and Léa Seydoux.
O, and speaking of Tilda Swinton: she's also got interesting parts coming up in Jim Jarmusch' new movie, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Snowpiercer, by my favorite Korean director Bong Joon-ho.

But the one female performance we're all looking forward to is this one:
 

Our girl Léa

Good news for Léa Seydoux fans (and let's face it, we're all Léa Seydoux fans): our girl has landed a part in the highly anticipated new Wes Anderson movie.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is said to be coming out later this year, though there's no definite release date yet. In fact, the whole project is pretty mysterious, so it shouldn't be a surprise that there's also no information on either the seize or the nature of Seydoux' role. But it's going to be awesome all the same, that much we do know.

The first time I saw Léa Seydoux was in La Belle Personne (Christophe Honoré, 2008), in which she portrays a high scool student caught in a love triangle. Yes, this movie is very, very French but definitely worth your while, for several reasons besides Seydoux.

Seydoux has kept herself busy since then. I've spotted her in small parts, like in Jessica Hausner's Lourdes and in Woody Allens Midnight in Paris (where she plays the boring part of The Right Girl Owen Wilson's character ends up with). I've spotted her in larger parts, like opposite Diane Kruger in  Les adieux à la reine and in Ursula Meier's L'enfant d'en haut (Sister). She also played the lead in Rebecca Zlotowski's impressive but obscure Belle Épine. And then she did some big time Hollywood stuff like Robin Hood, Inglourious Basterds and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (which I haven't seen but apparently features Seydoux in a cat fight with some other impossibly hot girl).

Furthermore, Seydoux  just finished shooting Le bleu est une couleur chaude, a film by Abdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film is the extraordinary Black Venus. Something to look forward to, for sure, with Seydoux playing the female lead.

Not sure in which movie you might have seen Léa Seydoux? Check out her résumé on IMDb.

Watch Léa Seydoux in the trailer for La Belle Personne

Watch Léa Seydoux in a three part commercial Wes Anderson made for Prada

Revolution!

What if Tommy and Annika hadn't been such goody two-shoes, but as fun loving and anarchic as Pippi Longstocking? And here's something else to ponder over: What would Pippi be like as a young woman?

Daisies (1966), the most iconic movie of the Czech New Wave, might give you an idea. Věra Chytilová's wild and funny movie is about two rebellious young women (both called Marie) who go on unprompted adventures and engage in silly games involving food, scissors and older gentlemen.

Though nowadays we may view Daisies as a fun sixties flick, back in the days of communist Czechoslovakia the movie screamed "revolution", years before the Prague Spring would actually ignite a revolution. Daisies was therefore banned, and so was director Chytilová, who wasn't allowed to work in here homeland until the mid-1970s.

But apart from its historical meaning, Daisies is a must see classic that clearly inspired a whole chain of modern directors. Imaginative, hilarious and provocative, this movie really is one of a kind.

The highly recommendable Second Run dvd label put out a nice edition of the movie. Read more about it on their website.

Scorsese for girls

Martin Scorsese built a glittering career out of the portrayal of machismo and male violence in the mean streets of New York City. But in the early seventies he took a short break from that to portray a 35 year old widow as she journeys to self realization across the southern States, bantering with her lippy kid along the way.

Martin Scorsese, feminist filmmaker, who'd have thought it? To be fair, it wasn't really his idea. He was hired by actress Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn felt inspired by the woman's movement, and Alice doesn't live here anymore was a project she really wanted to do. She was the one to suggest the script and the director to Warner bros. A pretty smart move on her part, too, cause her portrayal of Alice won her an Oscar, and it gave us a real and complex woman to watch, one who is the star of her own real and complex story.

Alice has been criticized by feminists at the time for being not feminist enough. The problem being that Alice, in the midst of redefining her life and her relationship with her son, living in a seedy motel and working as a waitress in a hellhole diner in Tucson, at one point sighs that she finds she really can't live without a man. And that she liked having a husband because, even though she was afraid of him, he made her feel like he took care of her. (Even though he didn't, really, she adds.) In the end, because she falls for a Tucson farmer, Alice abandons her original plan of going back to Monterey, the town of her happy childhood, and becoming a singer there. After all, a girl can sing anywhere, she reasons, so she might as well stay in Tucson and make a go of it with that cute farmer.

While it is understandable that the seventies feminists needed their independent women on screen to shake off their traditional roles and follow their own dreams in a more ruthless and radical way than Alice does, it's exactly Alice's ambivalent attitude towards these kind of dilemma's that makes her character still so interesting and believable today. Actually I kind of like her choice. After all (warning, cliche ahead) life is all about compromises, and mainly: aren't we all suckers for the girl getting the guy, especially one who can pull off a beard, and who throws in a nice ranch and a couple of horses. Please check out Alice, she really deserves to be more than 'that one Scorsese movie you have never seen'. And Scorsese-traditionalists, don't worry, you won't be disappointed. Harvey Keitel  is in it too. And he has a knife.

Cool girl Gena Rowlands

Fenomenal actress and muse to husband filmmaker John Cassavetes. Her heart breaking performance in Opening Night could be her most unforgettable one - but this 82 year old lady might just surprise us yet.

Look up Gena Rowlands on Wikipedia

Look up Gena Rowlands on IMDb

Opening Night is out on dvd on the terrific Criterion Collection label