Five Movies in 2012 You Should Be Looking Forward to (By People You Should Know)

                For every major film personality you know, there are three or four you don’t.  From young gun writer/directors to Oscar-winning animators making their live-action debut, there are many movies by names in the movie buff world that should be household names soon if not now.

5. Looper

                The third feature from Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) and second starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Also starring Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt, Looper is about a mob hitman in the future whose next hit is him.  Brick is a wonderful movie for those unfamiliar with both the filmmaker and the noir genre.  How far into the science fiction realm is Johnson will to go?

4. Gravity

                Alfonso Cuarón hasn’t a movie since 2006 (how dare you Hollywood!) with the brilliant Children of Men.  Here, he has Sandra Bullock as a survivor of a space mission desperate to get home.  Somehow, George Clooney is involved as an astronaut or something else.  Sometimes, the less you know about a movie the better.  Warning: the 3-D will be done in post-production.

3. Les Misérables

                The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences did most likely the most polarizing thing in voting Tom Hooper Best Director & The King’s Speech Best Picture, but that’s another story.  In December, Hooper, a Brit, directs two Aussies (Hugh Jackman & Russell Crowe) in a film adaptation of the stage musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel.  I am reluctant to give Hooper another try but I already heard the two magic words: Jackman & Crowe.

2. John Carter

                It only took 85 years but Edgar Rice Boroughs’ Civil War soldier transported to the red planet  comes to the silver screen.  Andrew Stanton’s (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) live action debut, has undergone re-writes, false starts and even a title change (was called John Carter of Mars).  Conventional wisdom right now is the film can’t possibly succeed with its budget, director and “star” (Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch).  A thin supporting cast, which includes Bryan Cranston & Willem Dafoe, doesn’t help either.

1. The Five-Year Engagement

Four  years ago, Jason Segel & Nicholas Stoller gave us the unexpected gem Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Last year, they teamed up again for The Muppets.  Now, they team up again to show how life and love affects two twenty- then thirty-somethings.  Segel is joined by Emily Blunt and a slew of sitcom & veteran actors.  April 27^th can’t get here soon enough.