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Hamish Linklater, Miranda July, David Warshofsky, Isabella Acres, Joe Putterlik ... see more see more... , Angela Trimbur

When Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) decide to adopt a stray cat, their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time and space and testing their fait... read more read more...h in each other and themselves. -- (C) Official Site

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R, 1 hr. 31 min.

Directed by: Miranda July

Release Date: July 29, 2011

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DVD Release Date: November 29, 2011

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Flixster Reviews (258)

  • SirPant
    May 8, 2012
    SirPant
    The apprehension of responsibility and the subconscious realisation that maturity is long over due. The sort of thing that can drive you mad really. Of course, when you apply the art of movement and the ability to stop time in there and have the whole thing narrated by a Cat it c... read morean only be a good thing right? You will either tick 'Totally agree' or 'Totally disagree' but neither is wrong. I liked it, especially the talking Cat.
  • fb1672039553
    February 4, 2012
    fb1672039553
    In one way we should envy the caveman. When he looked at all the possibilities of his life, there couldn't be many, and he may have been content with he and his family just surviving, day by day. Today, in deciding life's journey, that nearly identical caveman has to wrestle all ... read morethe possibilities and abstractions of developed language, ideologies, and technology. Reason has defeated religious portrayals of a purpose beyond this life - we can easily panic over our limited time here. How do we spend this time? How do we know when we have seen the answer? When we stop asking the question.

    Every scene in this film is making an observation - not a statement, just observations of feelings born from self awareness in the modern age. I've responded to only one here, kick-starting the open discussion this movie is begging to have with me. It will continue, and I suggest any philosopher to initiate their own with this wonderful movie.
  • LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    December 21, 2011
    LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    "They petted me and I accidentally made that sound that said, 'I am a cat and I belong to you,' and upon making the sound I felt it to be true."

    When a couple decides to adopt a stray cat their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time a... read morend space and testing their faith in each other and themselves.

    REVIEW

    A 35 year old couple, Sophie and Jason (Miranda July and Hamish Linklater), goes through odd challenges trying to reach a peace in their self-examined life. That they are too similar in their deadpan defeatism is offset by their quirky eccentricity, giving lightness to the otherwise dark, sometimes dryly comedic deconstruction of the dull life. My summary takes no account of the lame, narrating cat they plan to adopt, Jason stopping time, and the shifting space as their life together progresses slowly from quiet contemplation to banal challenge. PawPaw the cat gives a philosophical overview about waiting for life to happen as it awaits the couple's adoption, just as the couple awaits the future with an old-fashioned hippy-like concentration on the small parts of life and a dangerous naiveté. Other magical occurrences place this lyrical but snail-paced film in the formalist mode including Jason's talking to the moon and Miranda's envisioning friends' children growing up before her eyes. July makes it work; so childlike and fantastic at times is the couple that the audience joins in the fantasy hoping to see more clearly the arc of life in order to arrange it more felicitously.
  • fb100001050230219
    December 10, 2011
    fb100001050230219
    This movie is incredibly weird. I mean, trippy as hell. But it's really good too :D
  • romy861
    November 21, 2011
    romy861
    Unusual little film that won't be to all tastes, but if you are familiar with Miranda July, you will probably really like this.
    It is a little more out there than her previous one, although that is not saying a lot. I found myself comparing her to Todd Solondz here (coming from ... read moreme, that is a compliment. I love his films!).
    This one centers around a young couple who have been together 4 years. The rot has started to set in, the opening scene of them sitting together on the sofa, both on their own computers, has a lot to say about how we relate to each other today.
    Though they are a good couple, dissatisfaction rears its head - particularly in Miranda's character. She is looking for something but what? Fame? Attention? Maybe herself reflected in another mans eyes? I think this movie is addressing how we measure our worth today. Just my interpretation. There's enough other wtf moments here to maybe disprove that, but that is what I took away from this. Paw paw is a strange twist (I won't say too much else about that here), but devastating.
    Unique story by one of the more interesting film makers. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next.
  • stevenecarrier
    September 22, 2011
    stevenecarrier
    If you are a fan of Miranda July's previous film, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," you will also really enjoy "The Future." If you hated that film, you will hate this film. I for one really enjoy her work. Sure its quirkiness literally slaps you across the face, but once you ge... read moret past the stylization, there is plenty to appreciate. July excels at finding the extraordinary hiding inside the ordinary. This is similar the themes of Richard Kelly's films and "The Future" has much in common with "Donnie Darko" (in terms of theme, tone). The characters of Jason and Sophie are two people who are able to access recesses (literal and figurative) that most people can't, due to their acute awareness of their situation (much like Donnie from Kelly's film). The film is very well written and beautiful to look at. July's images are visually expressive of her mind, her character's turmoil and reflective of her very specific 'un-reality" where her stories unfold. "The Future" is a odd little film and it's hard to pin down, but it's well worth your time if you are looking for a deep, well acted (especially from Hamish Linklater, what a find he is!) and beautiful experiment.
  • mrbungle7821
    September 18, 2011
    mrbungle7821
    Miranda July is a writer/performance artist/filmmaker whose unique voice earns as many praises of "precocious" as it does hails of "pretentious." Her previous effort, 2005's Me and You and Everyone We Know, had such oddities as a group of cars creating a caravan to save a goldfis... read moreh left atop one's roof and children engaging in online sex chat over sharing feces from behind to another ( ))<>(( is the visual articulation of this function). Yeah.

    With her second feature film, The Future, we follow Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater), a couple who decide to adopt an injured cat they find. Named Paw-Paw by Sophie, they must wait 30 days for the medical checks to clear before they can pick up the cat. They believe that they are doing a kindness and giving the cat a good place to live in its last month of life. Then the vet informs them that if bonded, the cat could live an additional five years. Sophie and Jason will be 40 in another five years, and this realization stops them cold in their tracks. Both are unhappy with their lives, he works as a technical help guru and she teaches dance to preschool-aged children. They decide that for the next 30 days they will reinvent themselves. They will take the road less traveled and see where it takes them. Jason volunteers to be an environmental solicitor on a whim. Sophie wants to do 30 dances in 30 days but is crippled by fear. She reaches out to Marshall (David Warshofsky), an older single dad who proves to be a source of unlikely temptation. Along the way to the conclusion of those 30 days, Jason will utilize his abilities to stop time, speak with the moon, an old T-shirt will crawl will come alive, and the story will be narrated at turns by Paw-Paw.

    It should be obvious at this point that July is not going to be everyone's taste. You could just as well furrow your brow at all this pseudo-intellectual bohemian artsy smartsy pretensions and make snide marks under your breath. And I can't say I'd blame you at points. However, if you happen to catch a ride on July's funky wavelengths, then The Future becomes a poignant, observant, and occasionally profound rumination on human connection. July's two main characters encounter a full crisis of self, fearing that their lives will essentially be over upon turning 35, which they reason is almost 40, which is practically 50, and all that back-half stuff is "loose change" (not enough to really get what you want). I believe I heard none other than Jessica Simpson herself utter a similar statement on her ill-fated Newlyweds reality TV show. She said, "I'm turning 23, which is practically 25, which is almost 30." Perhaps Ms. July was also watching that episode, and if so this will be the only time in print that I congratulate Jessica Simpson for anything. This manufactured anxiety over doing something of worth and lasting value with your time on this planet is nothing new but it is deeply relatable, despite the silly numbers game the characters endure. It's a paralyzing existential doubt. Who doesn't want to feel like their life had purpose? You only get one. July makes a series of observant comments about human interaction. For their life project, Sophie decides to cancel the couple's Internet connection. They have but moments, perhaps seconds left, before the Internet is lost to them for 30 days, and they scramble to open their laptops to do important stuff. "Only look up stuff we can't find in books or by talking to people," Jason intones. Slowly, both of them come to the same realization and close their laptops. It's a silent admission that the technology we feel dependant upon might not be so.

    There's a striking clarity when an artist cuts through everything and finds some dwelling inside your grey matter. For me, July is that kind of artist. I loved a sequence where Sophie, out of slumming desperation, takes a job as a receptionist back at her old work place. One day two of her female friends come into the studio. Both women are several months pregnant, and Sophie is aghast that she let time get the better of her. She keeps shaking her head, rationalizing that it must have only been a couple weeks since last she saw her friends. Then through a series of edits, we witness a fantastic fantasy that highlights Sophie's abject feelings of accomplishing little while time flies by. Every time the camera cuts back to the friends more time passes; we see them hold newborn babies, then we see those babies as kids, then as young adults, and finally as adults who themselves have married each other and wish to enroll their own daughter into pre-dance. They inform Sophie that their mothers passed some time ago. And all the while, Sophie is still in her dead-end job. It's a terrific scene that highlights the anxiety we all feel about being lead footed in life, watching others skirt by and negatively assessing our own personal journeys by someone else's accomplishments. The Future is full of moments like this that hit so hard you feel like the ground beneath you has vanished. Jason's refusal to restart time is painfully identifiable, the wish to stay frozen in time to defer facing the hard pains of a breakup, the rueful knowledge that life will be forever different, and worse, in the passing of a second. The future can be a painful place we'd all like to hide under the covers and avoid.

    Like July's previous film, The Future is more a series of encapsulated vignettes, each with their own peculiarities, than a fully formed coherent story. While I enjoyed the separate vignettes better in Me and You, the overall story congeals better in The Future even if the results are messy. This is a less romantic and hopeful film than Me and You. It's much more ambiguous (that's saying something) and bleak when it exposes the missed chances that can haunt, none more so than Paw-Paw, our bandaged feline narrator. Scurry to the next paragraph if you'd like this part unspoiled for you, sensitive animal-loving readers. Paw-Paw speaks about her new sense of happiness, about having owners that will be kind to her, and this new sense of belonging fills the cat with a ballooning hope that her real life has finally begun. But then Paw-Paw doesn't make it. She dies a day before either Sophie or Jason comes by to pick her up. But the cruel irony is that Sophie and Jason missed picking up their cat/metaphor of their relationship on its release date. Paw-Paw could have spent her last day on earth with the people she had yearned to be with, the people she wrote an imaginary letter to telling them how grateful she was and how much she promised to love them. Instead, the cat dies, forever waiting. That's pretty rough, and even though July's scratchy, high-pitched Paw-Paw voice can be annoying, God help me if the pet lover in me wasn't in tears every time this damn cat was narrating, including after its death. That's the kind of film The Future offers. It does not dish out easy answers for life's Big Questions. Even as the end credits roll, you're left to ponder whether you believe that Sophie and Jason will reconcile.

    July, resembling a cross between Kristen Schaal (Dinner for Schmucks) and Juliette Binoche (The English Patient), is probably also her biggest hindrance. She's not that developed as an actress, or is being purposely opaque, and thus Sophie seems to be lost in a medicated fog. This was less of a problem with Me and You because the ensemble was larger. Here, it's mainly three actors. July delivers every line in a flat style that makes her character harder to decipher, and harder to empathize with when she goes off into her affair. The entire storyline with the sign making "other man" is kept at a mystery. We're not really sure why Sophie would be attracted to this man or what problems are ailing her relationship with Jason. I suppose the early mid-life crisis could serve as a fire to get Sophie to reach out to someone who offers more security, but that's merely my best estimation. It's a detour that could use more attention to explain its significance. I suppose it could be July's version of a romantic comedy staple of being with the wrong man and finding out late your mistake. It'll be up to the viewer which guy fills the role of "wrong man." Luckily, Linklater (TV's New Adventures of Old Christine) is a winning presence, affable without being offbeat and striving for meaning without coming across as pompous.

    Whether it's a dance inside an oversized T-shirt or choosing a song to communicate undying love in the event of amnesia, The Future is chockablock with memorable moments, images, insights, and peculiarities. Whether all of that comes together into a fully realized movie is another matter. The scattershot nature and July's own acting shortcomings clip the film's momentum, but the uniqueness of voice and observant vision of July as writer/director makes me forgive much of The Future's faults. It's not exactly an easy sell of a movie, especially to concerned pet lovers, but July is one of those polarizing artists I'm glad finds the time to empty their brain every now and then. I may not fully understand everything but The Future held enough promise for me to leave feeling satisfied.

    Nate's Grade: B+
  • dunmyer
    July 31, 2011
    dunmyer
    "The Future" is a remarkable little film from the highly unique writer/director/actor Miranda July. By coincidence, July's husband, Mike Mills, also has a top-notch movie in current release: "Beginners," starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer.

    It's official: Indie film... read more has a new power couple.

    The central narrative of "The Future" concerns the break-up of a relationship. July plays the woman; Hamish Linklater plays the man. But what really makes the film special are the sub-themes, which are woven in exquisitely. The editing of "The Future" is masterful.

    One sub-theme involves the Linklater character, who has occasional visits with an old man. Initially, one thinks that this is just a depiction of a charming cross-generational friendship. But gradually it appears that this old man might be the Linklater character 40 years in the future. Is he visiting someone or catching glimpses of his own future?

    This sweet old man also appears in voice-over as a sort of guardian angel helping the Linklater character learn to control his gift for stopping time. The stoppage of time, which is not treated completely literally, brings a nice touch of science fiction to the film. It reminded me of another indie film in current release, "Another Earth" (also highly worth seeing), which has a much more pronounced element of science fiction.

    Another sub-theme concerns an injured stray cat that the couple finds and brings to a clinic. July tries to bring us into the mind of the cat by letting us hear the kinds of things it might be thinking. July herself delivers the interior monologue of the cat with the use of a voice-distortion program.

    Especially heart-breaking are the passages when the cat expresses his near-constant survival terror living outdoors. When July and Linklater visit him in the clinic, he purrs for the first time in his life and tells us what this feels like.

    I won't reveal what happens to the cat, but I'll just say that July pulls no punches. The brutal life experience of this cat gives the film a bracing and realistic edge. July may warmly poke fun at her characters' foibles (she is a goofball comedienne par excellence), but she also doesn't shy away from looking into the abyss. There's a dark undercurrent to "The Future." When you think about your future, there surely will be plenty of laughs along the way and plenty of love. But there's also something big, black and scary at the end of everybody's road.
  • fb1142797643
    December 8, 2011
    fb1142797643
    "The Future" isn't just bad. It's M. Night Shyamalan bad.

    Miranda July's first feature, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," was perceptive and refreshingly quirky, but the precious qualities that divided audiences are pushed to the front in "The Future." Your tolerance for this f... read moreilm may depend on whether you can stomach narrative interludes spoken by a cat. Named Paw-Paw. (July herself supplies the voice, giving the words a scratchy "meow" timbre that a seven-year-old could do equally well.)

    The wisp of a story revolves around July's character Sophie and her live-in boyfriend Jason (the dependably annoying Hamish Linklater). They have decided to enhance their spiritual life by adopting a sick kitty. Named Paw-Paw. Except poor Paw-Paw requires a month of treatment before he can be released to his new home.

    Prior to taking on this adult commitment, Sophie and Jason resolve to spend the month bettering themselves. Sophie quits her job as a dance instructor for kids and embarks on a "30 Dances in 30 Days" webcam project for YouTube. Except this pursuit is barely dramatized. And Jason drops his tech-support gig and volunteers his awkward manner to a pitiful environmental group that sells trees door to door. Meanwhile, Sophie is romantically tempted by a single father who sells sketches (everyone is a frustrated artist in July's world) and Jason trivially befriends an older man (a first-time actor who died before the film was released). Jon Brion ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Punch-Drunk Love") provides a cloying musical score while we wonder if the couple's relationship can survive all this traumatic upheaval.

    The cast is almost universally dazed, clumsy and ineffectual -- it's hard to fathom why July fantasizes about life with such an emotionally vacant population. Otherwise, she adds a variety of darling indulgences including conversations with the moon, stop-motion animation of an oversized T-shirt (she later hides inside it to perform sort of a writhing modern dance) and surreal distortions of time (Jason claims the power to stop time, yup).

    July needed six years to complete this film. Hopefully, the delay was due to financial rather than creative problems because, if this script was a revised draft, I don't even want to imagine the earlier versions.
  • fb796967648
    August 4, 2011
    fb796967648
    I loved Miranda July's ME AND YOU AND EVERYBODY WE KNOW, and was looking forward to her new film THE FUTURE with a kind of indie excitement that comes along only once in awhile. Well... Expectations can be the death of you. Taking quirk to the nth degree, July here tells the s... read moretory of two lost souls and their journey towards . . . um . . . each other? Maybe? It's narrated by a cat. The moon talks in it. And there's a guy who may have the power to stop time. And that's really not even close to the worst of it. Like her previous film, once she gets down to people, she has a beautifully keen eye in getting right into the heart of a person (both as an actress and a writer), but the tone here is so goofy that I just never really cared. Which, given her destination, is a huge problem. Everybody's good in it, I just wanted out of there. And I love cats. But not THE FUTURE.

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Critic Reviews

Tom Long
September 2, 2011
Tom Long, Detroit News

Miranda July may be a bit too weird for her own good. On the other hand, it is a glorious weird. Full Review

Roger Moore
August 29, 2011
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

The director of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" transcends cute and crosses into precious with this film, an unhappy blend of magical realism, alternative futures and "Cats." Full Review

Lisa Kennedy
August 19, 2011
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

What a strange, trippy, touching movie The Future is. Full Review

Mick LaSalle
August 18, 2011
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

At times - not all the time, just enough to notice - July gets it backward. Full Review

Chris Vognar
August 18, 2011
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

Miranda July's second feature is beguiling, quietly funny and finally very sad in a way that sneaks up on you before becoming clear as the Los Angeles skies beneath which it's set. Full Review

Bill Goodykoontz
August 18, 2011
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

Not everything about "The Future" works. But most of it does, in a quietly powerful way. Full Review

Peter Rainer
August 12, 2011
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

The Future, July's coy and precious new film, is just oddball enough to be interesting, if not good. Full Review

Colin Covert
August 11, 2011
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The actors are quite engaging, in their mopey way. Full Review

Steven Rea
August 11, 2011
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

July likes her rhythms to shuffle, her beats to go long. She is the master of sideways portent - the small act with big ramifications. Full Review

Anthony Lane
August 8, 2011
Anthony Lane, New Yorker

The notion that both this movie and "Battle: Los Angeles" could come out of the same place, in the same year, is a startling tribute to the city. Full Review

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    • Jason: Well, you know how...how like in the cartoons, when the building gets hit with the wrecking ball, right before the building falls down, there's always like this moment where it's perfectly still, right before it collapses? We're in that moment. The wrecking ball has already hit all of this, and this is just the moment before it all falls down.
    • Sophie: I have to tell you something.
    • Jason: What?
    • Sophie: Um... one thing is, that I'm wild.
    • Sophie: We'll be forty in five years.
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The Future Trivia

  • In which movie was Michael J Fox "the only kid ever to get into trouble before he was born?"  Answer »
  • "Whoa, this is heavy". "There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?"   Answer »
  • In which film did a car hold the liscence plate reading, "OUTATIME."  Answer »
  • What was the name of Michael J Fox's band in Back to the Future  Answer »
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