Folks, I’ve been doing this game since 1999 and I can assure you there has never been a movie year in the U.S. quite as bad as this one. Something feels off this year. Hollywood has decided to turn into the top recycling company in the world. Everything and anything now needs a sequel, reboot, remake and/or reimagining. It’s pathetic. Add in the fact that the indie cinema circuit has decided to prioritize wokeness instead of efficient storytelling and you have where we are right now. Sure, there have been some highlights in 2019, but here we are, entering the 8th month of 2019 and, as it stands, the last great hope this fall seems to be Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” set to be released, supposedly, on November 27th.
Of course, a stacked lineup from TIFF and Venice could change things around, there always seems to be one movie every fall that is unanimously praised upon as the second-coming (“Roma,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “La La Land,” and “Lady Bird” this decade). Will it this year be Noah Baumach’s “Marriage Story,” which is gaining the kind of buzz it now has to match up and then some when it premieres next month, or maybe it’ll be The Safdies’ “Uncut Gems.”
Regardless, you could tell, purely based on the Toronto and Venice lineups, that there seems to be a divide as to what will be the consensus winner this fall. Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” Steven Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat” and Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood” will be going to Toronto but not Venice and Telluride, why? The only movie that will likely be at all three festivals is the Baumbach.
On foreign shores things are looking a little brighter, Olivier Assayas’ “Wasp Network,” Roman Polanski’s “J’accuse,” Roy Andersson’s “About Endlessness,” Pablo Larrain’s “Ema” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “The Truth,” are all ready to land. You can always count on Europe to fill in the lagging blanks in any given movie year.
Here’s Venice Film Festival boss Alberto Barbera’s theory as to why the well is so dry this year in American theaters [via Variety]:
“There is a strange situation this year with American cinema due to what’s happening in the industry. There’s an earthquake undermining the U.S. film industry as we know it: Disney buying Fox and dismantling it, so that in a while people won’t even remember it existed; Paramount just distributing movies made by other outfits….Fortunately, Warner Bros. is holding up. Disney has a become such a colossus that it’s even alarming due to its size and its ability to shape the future.”
“There is also some uncertainty about Sony. Lionsgate…is now on the verge of a sale. The landscape is changing so rapidly that it’s normal for this to impact product [output]. There were definitely less quality [U.S.] titles on offer this year, even though we have no shortage of good movies.”