So since this year is almost over now, which films are you looking forward to seeing next year? I'm looking forward to seeing Contraband, Underworld Awakening, Haywire, Premium Rush, Safehouse, So Undercover, Red Dawn remake, 21 Jump Street, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, One For The Money, Hunger Games, Act Of Valor, John Carter, Total Recall remake, Bourne Legacy, The Dark Knight Rises, Amazing Spider Man, Man On A Ledge, Safe, The Avengers, Battleship, Men In Black III, Lockout, Bullet To The Head, Cold Light Of Day, Expendables 2, Prometheus, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Neighborhood Watch, Taken 2, Resident Evil:Retribution, Looper, Savages, Skyfall, Parker and Hunter Killer.

The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit, The Hobbit.

I'll go by month.

January:

The Grey
Contraband
Haywire
Man on a Ledge

And although it doesn't look very good from the trailers, I've liked all of the other Underworld movies so I'll definitely be catching it.


February:

Safe House
This Means War
Act of Valor
Chronicle
Wanderlust
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island


Iffy on The Vow (love me some Rachel McAdams, it could be a decent tearjerker love story or it could be just plain sappy, not sure yet) and Ghost Rider 2 (first one sucked, not sure about this one, Cage's recent track record isn't very promising)


March:

John Carter
Hunger Games
Playing the Field
21 Jump Street
Butter
A Thousand Words
Goon

Not sure about The Raven. Could be a great, dark thriller or a real dud. Still waiting on a trailer for a few.


April:

American Reunion
Safe
Bullet to the Head
The Cold Light of Day
The Five Year Engagement


May:

The Avengers
What to Expect When You're Expecting
Men in Black 3


June:

Snow White and the Huntsman
Prometheus
Rock of Ages
Brave
G.I. Joe 2
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Magic Mike


July:

The Dark Knight Rises
Ted
Neighborhood Watch
The Amazing Spider-Man


August:

The Bourne Legacy
Total Recall
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Expendables 2


September:

Argo
Resident Evil: Retribution (but only because of Sienna's return)
Dredd
Looper
Savages


October:

Taken 2
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D
The Gangster Squad
Halloween 3D (mostly out of curiosity, will this franchise be forever doomed or can it go back to being cool now that Rob Zombie is no longer involved)


November:

Skyfall
Gravity
The Silver Linings Playbook
47 Ronin


December:

The Hobbit
Django Unchained
This is Forty
Great Hope Springs
Untitled Kathryn Bigelow/Osama Bin Laden film



TBA:

Lincoln
Rivals
Looper
The Master
Coogan's Trade

I almost forgot to mention This Means War, that looks very entertaining.

Ghost Rider 2 is supposed much more action-packed then the first film, (which I found pretty average) it's also going to be rated R, which is a plus. I guess i'm the only person who's actually excited about seeing Battleship, I know it's easy to dismiss the film because it's based on a board game, but it sounds so over-the-top that I just HAVE to give it a try. Premium Rush also looks exciting, nice to see JGL in an action role though i'm dissapointed that it got pushed all the way back to August. Also the Red Dawn remake FINALLY has a release date, November 2012, sucks that I have to wait a whole year to see it.

But doesn't Ghost Rider 2 come from those hacks who gave us Crank: High Voltage and Gamer? I mean, I did enjoy the first Crank, but that's looking more and more like an exception to their otherwise abysmal track record from there.

Kind of like someone like Alexander Aja, whose career likewise started off promisingly enough but has gotten increasingly worse with every movie from Hills Have Eyes and on.

Well I don't think they're hacks at all(, Crank 2 was a rocking good time for me(how can you not love the "Godzilla" scene?) and Gamer was pretty good too, so i'm really excited to see what Neveldine/Taylor do with Ghost Rider. I also strongly disagree about Aja, Hills Have Eyes and Piranha were awesome remakes that were far superior to the originals.

I thought Crank: High Voltage was garbage. And Gamer was just dull. No originality whatsoever which would be okay if it were entertaining but it was just dull and silly and dumb and it has that off-puttingly weird scene where Dexter is goes into a song and dance number. Bleh! The action scenes were not well done either. It was a rather joyless exercise in by the numbers style. Nothing to it at all. A completely empty movie.

Oh, I liked Hills Have Eyes but I never saw Piranha because of how bad it looked. And Mirrors was awful. Not even Jack Bauer could make that movie good. Although I did like the eerie opening scene and the twist at the end was kind of cool. But other than that, terrible movie.

Regarding Battleship, it doesn't look terrible. I'm just kind of tired of these alien invasion movies. We've gotten so many of them. It's like enough already! I do love Peter Berg. He's proven himself to be a great filmmaker. And Liam Neeson is always badass. So we'll see. The trailer was meh. But who knows.

Aw I loved the dance scene! Those films were so over-the-top and crazy that I couldn't help but love them.

Alien invasion films are indeed pretty popular right now, Darkest Hour(which i'm also looking forward to) looks VERY similar to Battle:LA. But Battleship at least looks different from most alien films,

I think you should give Piranha a chance, how exactly were you expecting a film about killer fish to look? You know Piranha's not giong to rival Jaws, but it was still a rip-roaring good time, it delivers on gore and nudity, and it even manages to generate some suspense. I'm really looking forward to Piranha 3DD, but i'm pissed that it got pushed back to next year. I thought Mirrors was a pretty decent film, though my expectations for it were a bit too high, and the ending kinda sucked. But I deifnitely wouldn't call Aja a hack.

You don't know what the true definition of a "hack" filmmaker is until you've seen an Uli Lommel film, his films are truly the worst of the worst, his first few films in the 80s and 90s weren't so bad, just really cheap, but then he started making those awful serial killer films VERY loosely based on real life murders cases, and anyone who's seen even one of them knows the definition of "real" suffering, I DARE you to watch something like Killer Nurse and tell me with a straight face that it's worse then Crank 2 or Gamer, hell those films look like best picture nominees by comparison!

I didn't mean to insinuate that I think Aja is a hack. I was just comparing him to the other two because they both had careers that started off promisingly and seem to getting worse and worse with each passing movie.

I suppose the Crank/Gamer guys aren't hacks on the level of, oh say, Uwe Boll. At least their movies look professional and are technically polished, which is more than I can say about Boll. But they still aren't good either.

Boll's direct to video actually look better then this theatrical ones, Tunnel Rats 1968 is actually a pretty well done war film, and Attack On Darfur and Rampage are both extremely brutal and thought-provoking films, I know it sounds crazy, but check them out for yourself and see.

I can vouch for Rampage.


The movies I'm looking forward to are "You're Next" which I think was picked up by Lionsgate at a film festival this year, but doesn't have a release date yet (I'm hoping it's 2012.) Also "The Inkeepers" was recommended to me on here which was shown at a recent film festival and is apparently pretty good. It's having a limited release early 2012.

I'd like to see John Carter.

Oh yeah, and the long delayed Cabin In The Woods is finally coming to theaters in April, that could be interesting.

The Hunger Games could be really good if the studios don't fuck it up. It's an excellent book.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has the potential to be really, really good or really awful. I don't see much middle ground.

I am very much looking forward to The Dark Knight Rises.

Savages looks like it could be interesting, but I'll hold my breath considering Oliver Stone hasn't made a truly good movie in over 10 years.

Django Unchained, of course.


And finally, whoever gave the green light to Battleship should be fired. Immediately.

If Battleship didn't claim to be based on a board game or anything like that, I don't think people would be bitching nearly as much. Personally, if anyone should be fired, it's the guy who greenlit the Smurfs.

Also I read a Cracked article about Hollywood secrets or something like that, one of the secrets was that most original screenplays get changed by producers into whatever the studio thinks will sell the most tickets. So i'm guessing the screenplay started as just another alien invasion film, then the execs decided to add in the Battleship angle later on to make it stand out more.

If it's any consolation, it's rather unlikely that Battleship is going to be very succesful money wise, it had a 250 million dollar budget, and I can't imagine that many people paying to see the film, so it'll be lucky to break even.

Oh, I think Battleship is going to bomb, and bomb hard. And there's no way it's going to turn a profit; it needs to put up Avatar-like numbers in order to do that, and I just don't see that happening.

I'm surprised the studio was willing to risk that much money on the film in the first place, it's understandable for a studio to take a gamble on something like Golden Compass, but 250 million on a film based on a board game? That's got to be the biggest and riskiest gamble in Hollywood history.

This book goes to show that lack of originality is a disease that afflicts the literary world as well as Hollywood. Sure, Collins "had never heard of Battle Royale" before writing her book.

Teaser trailer for Rian Johnson's Looper, starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1ylkD2RetY

Looks pretty great.