Top 5: Holiday Movies

It's that time of year...when critics groups around the country start handing out awards to movies most people haven't seen yet. So far, No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild and There Will Be Blood are all looking pretty good (and Amy Ryan has won every Best Supporting Actress award for her role in Gone Baby, Gone. This makes me very happy...not because I saw the movie and thought she was amazing, but because, as McNulty's girlfriend, she needs all the positive accolades she can get). Anyhoo, here are the movies I am now really looking forward to seeing before the end of the year:

1. There Will Be Blood - I've been looking forward to this one forever (I've even mentioned it here before). Love, love, love Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia is one of my all time favorites). I think I'm most looking forward to Paul Dano's performance (aka the mute brother in Little Miss Sunshine) as a young preacher. He looks phenomenal in the previews. I wish it would hurry up and come out already!!!
2. Atonement - I kinda hate to admit it, but Keira Knightly is growing on me. I didn't hate her in the last Pirates movie and I actually really liked Pride and Prejudice (although, can we please stop remaking this story now? The BBC version is perfect and the KK version is good too if you only have 2 hours and Bridget Jones is the ultimate updated version. It's done. Let's move on to something else...Jane Eyre perhaps?). I'm also looking forward to James McAvoy. He is so dreamy...

3. Sweeny Todd - The more previews I see for this, the more excited I get. I love that the studio is trying to trick people into thinking it's not a musical (and I don't mean with a few songs here and there. Almost the entire thing is sung. It's kinda like when they marketed Evita so people wouldn't know it was a musical. I remember, whoever I went with, turned to me in the first 5 minutes and said "This is a musical?" Uh, yeah). For me, the fact that Johnny and HBC and Sasha Baron Cohen will sing is part of the draw (but then I am a complete musical geek, so I guess I don't really represent the typical moviegoer). It's gonna be great. Go see it and don't be afraid of the singing.

4. Grace is Gone - Like every woman my age, I am in love with John Cusack (well, really in love with Lloyd Dobler, but same difference, right?) This is common knowledge among my friends and family. My mother called me from Vegas to tell me she saw him at the Hard Rock and my friend Monick called once to say she'd made eye contact with him at some bar in LA. I hated them both for a few days after their calls. All that to say, I will see pretty much anything JC is in (this includes train wrecks like Must Love Dogs). Grace is Gone is supposed to be JC's Oscar chance. He created all kinds of buzz at Sundance with his performance as a father of 2 girls who has to figure out how to tell them their mother died in the Iraq war. I cried at the preview...enough said.

5. Juno - This year's quirky, indie serio-comedy. I'm not 100% sold on it (mainly because Jennifer Garner is in it), but it does star Jason Bateman and Michael Cera (aka Michael and George Michael Bluth...nice to see the Bluth men together again). It was also written by a former stripper...so that's pretty cool. We all need a funny movie about teenage pregnancy to get us through the holiday, right?

Your turn. What are you still looking forward to seeing this holiday season?