15 main films of November
We tell you what to expect in online cinemas and the Russian box office in November: from festival hits to new films by Gaspar Noe and Thomas Vinterberg.
The new film by David Eyre, the director of "Fury" and "Suicide Squad", after several financial failures, returned to a small movie about the criminal world, which initially made him famous.
However, it is clearly far from the "Training Day" or "Patrol ""Knocking out debts" — critics scolded the film for its lack of assembly and secondary nature. However, absolutely everyone praises Shia LaBeouf in the role of the main character's friend: the actor has once again completely transformed for the role and even got a real tattoo.
What's funny is that this tattoo is never shown in the film, so the victim was superfluous. Unless the audience can now go to the cinema and wonder what the actors are willing to do for the sake of not that worthwhile pictures.
A Russian horror film based on the urban legend about the "well to hell".
According to it, at the really existing Kola ultra-deep well, Soviet scientists drilled the earth so far that they reached hell itself and recorded the terrifying sounds of the torment of sinners there. However, there is no biblical hell in Arseny Syukhin's film, but that's why it's not easier for his heroes. Here, scientists and soldiers encounter a kind of fungus that absorbs people, almost like in the game The Last of Us.
This is probably one of the first body-horror films in the history of Russian cinema with really interesting practical effects. Not without dramatic problems, of course, but interesting at least from the point of view of the genre.
Korean classic Hong Sang-soo returns after a black-and-white trilogy and a short illness with a new color film.
The Woman Who Ran Away, awarded the prize for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival, is a typically minimalistic film for Sang — soo with a convenient timing. This time, the plot focuses on a young married woman (again the star of "The Handmaid" and the muse of Sang-soo Kim Min-hee), who, after her husband leaves for a business trip, goes to the sleeping areas of Seoul to talk with three close friends.
Only through long table dialogues will the patient viewer find out why the heroine "ran away".
This year, Riz Ahmed's career went uphill — the actor coincidentally played in two highly rated films about musicians who suffer from health problems.
One of them — "The Sound of Metal" about a drummer losing his hearing — will be released in December on Amazon Prime. But "Where are you from?" will be available to watch in early November. This is a story about a young rapper Zed, who, on the eve of an important world tour for his career, fell ill due to a strange illness. During the treatment, he tries to reconsider his views on life and make a choice between world fame and the role of an exemplary son who observes family traditions.
"Where are you from?" - personal cinema for Ahmed: the actor wrote the script and produced the film.
A crime drama about a guy who goes to catch a dangerous criminal in 1930s America for the sake of a reward, with the help of which he plans to save his native farm.
It is difficult to say anything specific about the film yet — according to the trailers, it looks like an exemplary adventurous movie in the polished aesthetics of the American south, and the choice of Margot Robbie for the role of a bank robber is definitely intriguing.
But director Miles Joris-Peyfarit does not have a special track record yet: his only full-length work is the indie drama "As Is", which was quite warmly received by critics and viewers. Well, let's hope that "Dreamland" is his big step towards big cinema. And we will test our hopes very soon.
The director of the animated film "Persepolis" (and the author of the graphic novel of the same name) Marzhan Satrapi decided to try her hand at the biopic genre — the great Maria Sklodovskaya-Curie got under her microscope.
"Dangerous Element" will tell about her acquaintance with her husband, Pierre Curie, about their marriage and joint scientific activity. In 1903, they together received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radium (Curie became the first woman to receive the award), and 8 years later Curie became the sole Nobel laureate in chemistry.
Alexey the Teacher's life has not, ahem, taught him anything. After the scandalous "Matilda", he took up "Tsoi" — a film about how the legendary musician was taken to the cemetery in the bus of the same driver who crashed into his"Moskvich".
The story, of course, is absolutely fictional, and it offended Tsoi's relatives very much — the father of the soloist of "Cinema" is still trying to ensure that the picture does not go out at all. As in the case of" Matilda", however, the devil is not as terrible as he is painted.
"Choi" is a rather harmless and, frankly, stupid picture, which quickly turns from an attempt to comprehend the loss into an ordinary television melodrama.
Director Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen have teamed up for the first time after the triumphant "Hunt" to work on a new film.
"One more thing" boasts almost the most interesting synopsis among the festival premieres: four friends during a midlife crisis decide to test one theory: they believe that constant alcohol consumption should make a person more efficient. The experiment has a particularly good effect on the main character of the film — the teacher Martin, who improves relations not only with students, but also with his long-estranged wife.
Vinterberg decided to investigate the Danish culture of alcohol consumption and its impact on humans. With a high probability, the director will at some point take a step aside and begin to mix genres — the film, which begins as a comedy, will quickly turn into a heartbreaking drama about aging with another excellent acting work from Mikkelsen.
From Venice via Kinotavr and finally to the cinema. Andrey Konchalovsky's new painting is definitely the best thing he has done in recent years.
This is a restrained and aesthetic drama about a convinced communist whose world collapses when during the protests in Novocherkassk in 1962, security officers open fire on striking factory workers. In this chaos, the heroine's daughter is lost somewhere, and the authoritarian government apparatus is trying to quickly cover up the traces of its crime.
"Dear comrades!" - an unexpectedly relevant and very painful movie, which only becomes stronger from the realization that its author was clearly trying to say not exactly how it is read in the end.
The writer and director of "Happy Death Day" Christopher Landon is again trying himself in the genre of conceptual comedy slasher.
In his new film, a high school student does not end up in "groundhog day", but instead changes bodies with a maniac. She has 24 hours to somehow fix the situation-while the killer with her face walks around her native school and communicates with close friends.
The concept is really funny, and the choice of Vince Vaughn for the role of a high school maniac looks extremely successful. Moreover, Landon knows how to work with such ideas — the main thing is that he does not shoot an unsuccessful sequel later, as it was with "The Day of Death".
The famous war photographer Eugene Smith goes to the Japanese city of Minamata in the middle of the 70s.
There is a real ecological catastrophe unfolding there, which he must capture — and against this background realize his own aspirations and rethink life as a whole.
"Minamata" was shown at the beginning of the year at the Berlin Film Festival, where the film was mostly praised: this is a strong academic drama about a really important and strongly resonating with the modern problem of ecology. And Johnny Depp, if you believe the critics, played one of the strongest roles here in recent times.
Gaspard Noe showed "Eternal Light" last year at the Cannes Film Festival.
Two actresses, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beatrice Dahl, sitting on the set, begin to discuss everything in a row: from personal problems to relationships with colleagues, producer and director. Suddenly we are talking about witches, and one of the actresses compares herself to them.
Last year, it was an average meter, shot by order of Yves Saint Laurent. After that, the director finished shooting some of the scenes and increased the timing to an hour, but, as promised, he kept the main thing: a crazy video sequence that looks like a visualization of a psychedelic trip.
The last swallows from Kinotavr finally reach the rental.
"The man from Podolsk" is a film adaptation of the play of the same name about a guy who is caught by the police and forced to do various strange things: dance, sing and remember the year of the foundation of his native city near Moscow. This is an absurd comedy that sarcastically interprets the Russian reality and is most similar to Kirill Serebrennikov's "Portraying the Victim".
It is likely that " A person from Podolsk" will even become the same popular hit and a cult film in narrow circles. At least, there are all the prerequisites for that — the movie is really cool.
Ron Howard's new film is a potential participant in the awards season, which is not coincidentally released at the end of autumn.
Netflix Makes a big bet on "Hillbilly Elegy": this is an adaptation of the memoir, which in 2016 became a real bestseller and helped progressive Americans understand how the country's provincial white population lives and why it trusts only Republicans. The film will tell about three generations of one family and clearly show the problems faced by residents of small towns, such as poverty, unemployment and drug addiction.
Judging by the trailer, the story will focus on the relationship of the eternally quarreling heroines Amy Adams and Glenn Close. Perhaps, for these roles, both actresses will receive their ordinary Oscar nominations.
The debut film of Brenda Chapman-the winner of the Academy Award for the cartoon "Braveheart".
The fantasy with the telling title "Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland" offers the audience an extraordinary, but dubious look at the origin of the famous characters of Lewis Carroll and James Barry: in the film they are represented by a little brother and sister who live with their parents away from society.
When their older brother dies, the parents gradually begin to move away from each other, and the children try to escape to the magical worlds created by the imagination: Alice invents a Wonderland, and Peter — Neverland.