September 2019 | Rolling Stone | 93
Star Wars: The Rise
of Skywalker
December 20th
It’s here — the final episode of
the nine-part Skywalker saga.
No spoilers, but Daisy Ridley
is back as Rey, the last known
Jedi, in fierce resistance to
Kylo Ren (Adam Driver),
the Supreme Leader of the
First Order. Will director J.J.
Abrams (The Force Awakens)
reunite the whole gang for
the fade-out? May the Force
be with tradition.Marriage Story
Date TBD
Noah Baumbach’s best film
yet concerns the breakup
of a New York theater
director (Adam Driver) and
his actress wife (Scarlett
Johansson). Can they divorce
and yet survive as parents to
their son (Azhy Robertson)?
Sublime performances,
and let’s just say it: Driver is
one of the finest
actors on the planet.Little Women
December 25th
What happens when
Greta Gerwig, the
Oscar-touted creator
of Lady Bird, tackles
the eighth film of
Louisa May Alcott’s
1868 novel? Will
the young lives of the March
sisters — Jo (Saoirse Ronan),
Meg (Emma Watson), and
Amy (Florence Pugh) — speak
to our current moment?1917
December 25th
Set in the depths of World
War I, this epic from Skyfall
director Sam Mendes puts
two Brit soldiers (George
MacKay and Dean-Charles
Chapman) on a suicide
mission. Producer Steven
Spielberg calls 1917 “hugely
daring and ambitious.” So are
all the top fall films. But who
gets the Oscar gold?The Irishman
Date TBD
It’s unlikely that any film this
fall can top this epic crime
saga from Martin Scorsese,
reunited for the ninth time
with Robert De Niro and
directing Al Pacino for the
first time. De Niro plays Frank
Sheeran, the hitman linked
to the disappearance of labor
leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino).
The digital de-aging of the
actors, including Scorsese
regular Joe Pesci, helped
balloon the film’s cost past
$200 million. But with these
titans playing goodfellas
through the decades, expect
history in the making.A Beautiful Day in the
Neighborhood
November 22nd
Mr. Nice Guy Tom Hanks
portrays Fred Rogers, the
beloved Mr. Nice Guy of
preschool TV programming.Where’s the tension? It’s
in the script, based on
an Esquire article by Tom
Junod, in which a skeptical
journalist, played by Matthew
Rhys (an Emmy winner for
The Americans), attempts
a deep-dive probe into the
gentle creator and host of
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
From Hanks and skilled
director Marielle Heller (Can
You Ever Forgive Me?), expect
the unexpected.Uncut Gems
December 13th
Josh and Benny Safdie follow
up their sensational Good
Time with another crime
caper laced with mirth and
malice. Uncut Gems stars
Adam Sandler, proving again
that when he wants to, he
can act with the best of them.
Sandler plays a Manhattan
jeweler who freaks when
diamonds go missing,
sparking cinematic anarchy
only the Safdies can deliver.It boy:
Pennywise
reflects.I
N A NUTSHELL, It: Chapter Two
is a better movie than the first
one. The upgrade to the adult
version of the “Losers Club” —
now played by Jessica Chastain,
Bill Hader, James McAvoy, and others
— makes the story feel less like a faded
copy of other films and TV shows that
have cannibalized Stephen King’s
work in the name of homage (looking
at you, Stranger Things). It’s as much
about trauma, healing, and making
peace with your past as it is about
jump scares. The ending is... well, it’s
the book’s ending, which, yeesh. And
the clown? The clown is even more
terrifying this time around. Seriously.
When King conceived It, he ad-
mitted that the idea was to write an
epic book featuring, in his words, “all
of the monsters.” The vampire, the
werewolf, the mummy — the entire
stable of vintage-horror, bump-in-the-
night fodder. But he needed one char-
acter outside this old creature-feature
canon, something that would inspire
a sense of fear and revulsion on
sight. “What scares kids the most?”
he asked himself. Thus was born
Pennywise, circus-centric chomper
of children, destroyer of innocence,
the most name-recognizable King cre-
ation this side of Cujo, and the single
most horrifying nightmare the author
ever dreamed up. The monster-mash
idea quickly went away. Who needsStephen King’s most
terrifying character is at
his nightmare-inducing,
all-time best By DAVID FEAR‘It: Chapter Two’ —
In Praise of Pennywise
Frankenstein’s monster when you
have a fucked-up clown?
And with all due respect to Tim
Curry, whose portrayal of Pennywise
in the 1990 TV miniseries scarred
a generation, it’s Swedish actor Bill
Skarsgård’s interpretation of this
fright-haired bogeyman that has made
the character iconic. His introduction
as a voice and a pair of glowing eyes
beckoning a little boy to come closer,
closer, closer to a sewer grate chan-
neled the book’s mix of Grimm’s Fairy
Tale and gross-out horror flick. Now,
in Chapter Two, we get an even more
off-the-leash Pennywise from him,
one that ups the drooling and the
singsong voice and the rancid, per-
verse giggling. When he lures a little
girl into his trap under the bleachers,
you see Skarsgård go from dopey to
dreamlike to slightly demented, be-
fore finding the predatory sweet spot
of sympathetic vulnerability. Then out
spring the fangs, and you see every
childhood nightmare come to life.
King’s greatest works have always
revolved around finding a primal-fear
button and brutally mashing it, and
Pennywise was his phobic master-
piece in pancake makeup. On the
page, he read like a precisely pitched
blend of Freddie Krueger and Ronald
McDonald. Onscreen, he feels like
he’s burrowing into your psyche.
“There were points where I felt
like I was going insane,” Skarsgård
said after playing the role the first
time. For Round Two, he succeeds
in making viewers feel they’re going
insane — which makes him the perfect
King nightmare for 2019. Accept no
psycho-clown substitutes.HORRORTotal copies
in It’s first
printing:
800,000
Number of
Stephen King
books sold
overall:
350 million
Rating for
It — the two-
part 1990 TV
miniseries:
36.7 million
households
Box-office
gross of It
(2017) on
opening
weekend:
$123 million
Box office
gross of It
(2017)
worldwide:
$700 millionCL
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