Crumb (1994) or, The Artist As a Cartoonist

♥♥♥♥♥

+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year

The curiosity-inspiring poster for Terry Zwigoff's Crumb

QUICK REVIEW:

Robert Crumb, the famed American cartoon experimentalist and societal critic, gets his work and large parts of his life documented here through comic strips, his current and former girlfriends, his children, brothers and mother, as well as through connoisseurs, critics and admirers.

We get very far around the person Crumb in this artist portrayal, and particularly his brothers as well, who couldn't be termed any more well than the man himself, in the two hours that this great documentary runs, which isn't a second too long. Crumb's brother Charles actually committed suicide before the film was released.
Crumb is no technical wonder, almost on the opposite, it is disinterested in technical brilliance. It is made by Wisconsinite master movie-maker Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World (2001)), who has said that at the time of making of the film, (which may well account for its technical side), he was “averaging an income of about $200 a month and living with back pain so intense that I spent three years with a loaded gun on the pillow next to my bed, trying to get up the nerve to kill myself.”
Crumb's own observations, as well as those of his brothers, are sharp and loaded with a similar kind of pessimism and hopelessness. Art is examined and borders are explored and challenged. The film has been called the greatest and one of the greatest documentaries ever made by a slew of critics, and together with the also greatly Oscar-snubbed Hoop Dreams (1994), it became instrumental for an improvement of the Oscar documentary nomination procedure.
Crumb is really good and full of heavy material, unlike Zwigoff's previous documentary, the still good Louie Bluie (1985).

Related review:

Terry Zwigoff: Art School Confidential (2006) or, World of Phoney
Bad Santa (2003) - Zwigoff sticks dynamite under Christmas in this modern dark comedy classic 

1994 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

Here's some of Crumb's evocative cartoons:

Watch the amazing trailer for this amazing movie right here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 3.1 mil. $ (US only)
= Big hit
[But considering the nine (!) years it took Zwigoff to make the film, the success is relative. Crumb won Best Documentary prizes from Sundance, National Board of Review, Los Angeles, New York and Boston Film Critics as well as the National Society of Film Critics.]

What do you think of Crumb?
Have you ever seen a documentary like it?

Children of Men (2006) - Cuarón's multi-faceted, great sci-fi offering

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Sci-fi Movie of the Year

One hooking poster for Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men

QUICK REVIEW:

2027: The world development has stagnated. No new babies have been born for 18 years, when a refugee in England turns up pregnant. Surrounded by desperate fanaticism, the job of protecting her is both difficult and potentially lethal.

I was hesitant of this existential sci-fi drama thriller for a while due to the polemical core of the dystopia it presents. But once the story really kicks in, I got very invested in the film, which is compelling and has the feeling of importance. It is an adaptation of a 1992 novel of the same name by English female writer P.D. James (A Taste for Death (1986)) by great Mexican co-writer/director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También (2001)), Timothy J. Sexton (Cesar Chavez (2014)), David Arata (Spy Game (2001)) and Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man (2008)), who were Oscar-nominated for their script.
Cuarón and his Oscar-nominated, great, regular cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's (Y Tu Mamá También) photographic concept of many long, vivacious single shots is dynamic and very impressive. It also fuels the film with a highly convincing realism.
Children of Men is a thought-provoking and remarkable movie with lots of strong images. Hard-to-forget and in sci-fi terms a big step better than Cuarón's later, much more acclaimed and commercially successful space opera Gravity (2013).

Related reviews:

The day after ... The Oscars 2014 
Alfonso Cuarón: 2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Gravity (2013) or, Survival in Space: The Ride

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

 

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 76 mil. $
Box office: 69.9 mil. $
= Big flop
[While the dark yet hope-infused UK/US co-production failed to set the ticket booths on fire, it was recognized by critics and sci-fi fans as an extraordinary film and even one of the decade's best: According to Metacritic's survey, the film is placed as the 11th best of the 2000's as ranked on critics' lists. It was also Oscar-nominated for its editing (3 nominations in all), and won a bunch of other awards. It made 35.5 mil. $ (50 % of the total gross) in the States.]

What do you think of Children of Men?
How would you like to see Cuarón tackle another big, smart, edgy sci-fi movie?

Crazy Heart (2009) or, The Weary Kind

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Music Movie of the Year

A scruffy-looking Jeff Bridges with a guitar on the poster for Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart

QUICK REVIEW:

Bad Blake lives the destructive life on the road as a touring musician, which comes with his name and the shitty venues he gets booked at. He meets a wonderful woman in Santa Fe, but SPOILER the booze gets to become fateful for him.

Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski (1998)), winning his only Oscar so far for the effort, acts well, and so does his co-stars,Colin Farrell (Minority Report (2002)) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary (2002)), who was Oscar-nominated for her performance.
The music by T Bone Burnett (Walk the Line (2005)) and Stephen Bruton (Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas (1991)) is terrific, and Burnett also won the Best Original Song Oscar along with Ryan Bingham (The Bridge (2013-14)) for their The Weary Kind.
Crazy Heart is a fine, warm, down-played Americana serving, a romantic drama in a blanket of country music. However, it is actually so subdued in its languid pace that it just manages to get by on its charm without getting boring. The suspense curve is almost non-existing.
It is the successful debut of Virginian Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace (2013)), who adapted the script from a 1987 novel by Thomas Cobb. Cooper is busy now with the big gangster movie Black Mass (2015) about Whitey Bulger.

Related posts:

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 47.4 mil. $
= Big hit
[Funded by Country Music Television, the film was pitched for a direct-to-DVD-release, but was then picked up for theatrical release by Fox Searchlight Pictures and made 39.4 mil. (83 % of its gross) in the US, where it hit home with a lot of people.]

What do you think of Crazy Heart?
Other fine country music movies?

Captain Apache/Deathwork/The Guns of April Morning/Hunt the Man Down (1971) - Cheesy entertainment with Cleef as an Indian hero

♥♥♥♥

A blazingly colorful poster for Alexander Singer's Captain Apache

QUICK REVIEW:

Captain Apache is a damn fine Spanish-British, romantic low-budget western with a funky score (by Dolores Claman (Mr. Scrooge (1964), TV movie), heavy 70's-style and so many western elements and corny lines in it that a western fan (and especially a lover of Euro-westerns) simply has to love it.

Lee Van Cleef (God's Gun (1976)) is the titular Indian captain, who is hated by every evil white man, can lay every lady down, and who hunts for the truth behind the mysterious codeword, 'April Morning'.

The film was possibly thought up as an Indian counterpart to the burgeoning blaxploitation sub-genre. Apache also has one odd, gratuitous scene in which Cleef disrobes before a chief as if his bulgy muscles were supposed to carry forward some inherent meaning. Cleef also performs the film's opening and credit songs, for the first and only time in his career.
Apache is directed by New Yorker director Alexander Singer (The Fugitive (1965-66)), who mostly directed TV.
Here's an example of the film's many straight-faced, funny dialogs:

New Indian chief: "We're gonna move the Indians to Yellow Snake Creek."
Captain Apache: "Yellow Snake Creek...? - But it's full of snakes!"

Watch the cheesy trailer for the movie here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 25.6 mil. ESP (Spain only)
= Uncertainty
[About half a million people paid to see the film in Spain, and 75,000 in Sweden. But with no other numbers, it's impossible to say whether or not Captain Apache was a hit or not.]

What do you think of Captain Apache?
Know of any other movies that could count as 'Indiansploitation'?

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) - Whitaker serves ancient samurai justice in Jarmusch's cool treat

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best New Jersey Movie of the Year + Best Samurai Movie of the Year

The cool poster for Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Ghost Dog is the 7th feature from American master writer-director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man (1995)). It is an urban samurai movie.

Ghost Dog is a lone samurai, who's a retainer for a mob guy. When a hit he carries out gets witnessed by the boss's daughter, the boss sets out to kill the strange man. But that is easier said than done.

The film opens slowly and starts by driving us into the meditative pace of its title character, as he cruises around New Jersey in a stolen car. The hang-low mood is nicely in line with the chilled beats that are produced by RZA (of The Wu Tang Clan, who also has a cameo towards the end), who makes a deft composer debut here. He has since composed scores for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and other things.
Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland (2006)) is Ghost Dog, and Jarmusch also makes good use of his younger brother Damon Whitaker (Bird (1988)) in two flash-back scenes. Ghost Dog has a wonderful row of faces in secondary parts: John Tormey (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)) as the hero's complexed employer Louie; Henry Silva (Thirst (1979)) as the reptile-like boss; Cliff Gorman (The Boys in the Band (1970)) as his son, and Victor Argo (Bad Lieutenant (1992)) as a strong-arm. - There are many more, and the gangster ensemble is pretty hilarious; most of them play them straight-faced, as heaving, idiotic fatsoes.
The film also features Isaach De Bankolé (The Limits of Control (2009)) as our hero's French-speaking best friend and Camille Winbush (Eraser (1996)) as the nice literate girl from the park.

The details:


Ghost Dog is infused with several quotations from a samurai book (Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure (1709-16)), many of which are thought-provoking, (a few nonsensical.) The film sends a warm reference to samurai movie master Akira Kurosawa (through the use of the book Rashômon, which is also the title of his great 1950 film.) It also references Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967).
Depending on your analytical powers, at some point you will realize that Ghost Dog has a symbolic meaning beneath its cool, violent, wry surface: Ghost Dog symbolizes the profound, ancient traditions and values, while the gangsters symbolize the depravity and indifference and stupidity of today. Ghost Dog carries out his justified vengeance as a kind of blast from the past, especially poignant in the scenes with the racist poachers.
It isn't necessary to buy into the samurai philosophy or way of life to treasure Ghost Dog. For most who love samurai movies and Jarmusch pictures, Ghost Dog is simply a wonderful gift that came as perhaps the last great samurai movie before the arrival of the new millennium.


Related posts:

Jim Jarmusch: Broken Flowers (2005) - Hip search for son and self with Jarmusch and Murray
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) - Pleasant, precious vignette sit-down with some wonderful people  

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 2 mil. $
Box office: 9.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Ghost Dog made 3.3 mil. $ or 35 % of its gross in the States. It was popular in many countries, especially France, where it also was nominated for the Palm d'Or in Cannes, (but didn't win.)]


What do you think of Jarmusch's samurai movie?
What's your favorite samurai movie?

The Villain/Cactus Jack (1979) or, The Wackadoodle West!

♥♥

The cartoon-style western poster for Hal Needham's The Villain

QUICK REVIEW:

Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)) is Handsome Stranger, who has to help Miss Charming with a money transport, while Cactus Jack fights "Indians" and tries to get the money!

Kirk Douglas (Spartacus (1960)) really does what he can in the title role of this slapstick western spoof by legendary stunt-man/director Hal Needham (Smokey and the Bandit (1977)). Schwarzenegger is odd and looks hilariously clueless in his campy cowboy-outfit. The film is mostly pretty bad; forced and weird. Very little gets introduced or explained. The flirt between Arnold and Swedish Ann Margret (Grumpy Old Men (1993)) is charmless and without legs.
Made three years before Schwarzenegger's breakthrough (Conan the Barbarian (1982)), this film is interesting mostly as movie curio. It was released in the US as The Villain and in the UK and Australia as Cactus Jack. Its Looney Tunes/Blazing Saddles (1974))-inspired crazy comedy falls through, while the overly instructive music keeps on telling us that it's all just gaga fun.
- A few of the Indian scenes, with Paul Lynde (Bewitched (1965-71)), - whose last acting credit this was, - as Indian chief 'Nervous Elk', are admittedly funny. You can see one of them in the clip below.

Ann Margret and Kirk Douglas in Hal Needham's The Villain

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hal Needham's The Villain

This is also the film in which Kirk Douglas does this

... and this

Watch a 2-minute clip with Ann-Margret, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paul Lynde as the Indian chief from the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of The Villain?
And Needham's directorial brand of low-brow entertainment?

Spirited Away/千と千尋の神隠し (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (2001) - Miyazaki's highly Japanese, enormously weird story of a girl

♥♥♥♥

A mystery-ladden poster for Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away

QUICK REVIEW:

The little girl Chihiro and her parents make a stop at a closed amusement park. In there, the parents get transformed into pigs, and Chihiro gets entangled in a plot with two twin witches, a giant baby, a dragon/boy and a slew of 'gods'.

The animation in Spirited Away is exuberantly detailed, ambitious and grand, and at times beautiful. But the film's content, - with the animalistic overtones and long row of characters, each one seemingly odder than the last, - was simply too culturally alien for me in order to understand the film.
It should be said that I am pretty alone with this rather cool experience of the film: Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Film; it has a whopping 8.6 average on IMDb, where it also rests on #36 (at the moment) in the Top 250. It is critically acclaimed and was a tremendous success in all aspects for its Japanese studio Ghibli and master director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke (1997)).
While I can't claim to understand much of the film on a level beyond its being perhaps the strangest child-centered adventure that I can think of, I was astonished by the story and its strangeness and elaborateness. I wouldn't want to have missed seeing Spirited Away.

Watch Disney's American trailer for the film here

Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 330 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Spirited Away's US-English-language version was undertaken by Disney and director Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast (1991)). Due to Ghibli withholding merchandise rights, Disney didn't market the film, which still managed to made 10 mil. $ in the US. The film was a huge hit in many other countries outside of Japan, particularly France and South Korea. It won the Berlin Golden Bear (tied with Bloody Sunday (2002)), Best Film and Best Song at the Japanese Academy Awards and Best Asian Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It was a colossal hit in its native Japan, where it beat Titanic (1997) as the highest-earning film of all time with a spectacular 290 mil. $.]

What do you think of Spirited Away?
Can you explain the film?

Creepshow (1982) - Fun, campy horror anthology from King and Romero

♥♥♥♥

The morbidly festive poster for George A. Romero's Creepshow

QUICK REVIEW:

With a framing story about a voodoo-practicing boy, whose father throws his Creepshow comic out, 5 ghoulish stories are served: SPOILER About a living corpse, who wants his cake; a meteor, which transforms a fool into a Plant Man; a jealous millionaire, who favors monitored drowning; a monster from the North Pole in a crate; and finally one about a neurotic city magnate with a bug problem ...

- Particularly this last story is a true nightmare for all of us who can't stand tingling insects, (in this case cockroaches.) 
Creepshow is an anthology horror movie homage to 1950's horror comic, written by horror maestro Stephen King (Christine (1983)) and directed by master horror director George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead (1978)). Its stories are deliberately corny and sensationalist with some holes here and there.
The film boasts several stars: Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild (2007)), Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)), Ted Danson (Cheers (1982-93)), King gives a highly physical performance as the fool, and E. G. Marshall (Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)) amuses as the unlucky magnate in the final story, which also showcases Romero's keen satirical talent.
The lighting throughout is refreshingly high-key Bavaesque, the animations are cool, and Tom Savini's (Martin (1976)) special effects are somewhat crude but effective. The film is a joy (especially for a horror-fan.)

Related reviews:

George A. Romero: Dawn of the Dead (1978) or, Mall of Death!

Watch the awesome original trailer here

Cost: 8 mil. $
Box office: 21 mil. $ (US only)
= Box office success
[The film is labeled a sleeper hit. Including other territories (which I can't find numbers for, except that nearly 350,000 people paid admission in Spain) and video, TV and merchandise, Creepshow must surely have been a great source of income for Warner Bros. It took First Blood's #1 spot at the US box office and was Warner's top horror film of the year. It got one official sequel in 1987 and a direct-to-DVD unrelated sequel in 2007.]

What do you think of Creepshow?
Other horror anthologies that you like or dislike?

The Red Circle/Le Cercle Rouge (1970) - Melville spins a deft, ice-cold, minimalist heist thriller

♥♥♥♥

A gritty poster for Jean-Pierre Melville's The Red Circle

QUICK REVIEW:

The film starts with two convicts achieving freedom: One is released, the other escapes his transport on a train with a plan: Along with an ex-cop with ballistic expertise, he will rob a jewelery store.

Great French director Jean-Pierre Melville's (The Gambler/Bob le Flambeur (1956)) film-language is extremely minimalistic in this hyper-elegant heist thriller, both in terms of dialog, the drawing of the characters and the music and lack of same: SPOILER The approximately 20 minutes long heist scene takes place in almost absolute silence.
The three thugs, dark Alain Delon (Rocco and His Brothers/Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (1960)) in particular, appear as cold and professional opposite the skilled inspector (crooked-nosed André Bourvil (The Longest Day (1962)) and his cynical boss; ("All men are guilty.")
The Red Circle is a solid, elegant, uncommonly downplayed crime serving that curries no favor with us in terms of romance or other sentimentalities.
A fun fact about it is that the Buddha quote in the the film's epigraph, which sort of explains the film's title, was entirely made up by Melville himself.

Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's The Red Circle

Watch the cool, original, French trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 0.3 mil. $ (2003 US re-release)
= Uncertainty
[The film had many admissions in its own country France (4.3 mil.) and seems to have done very well in Italy (1,350 mil. lire). Whether this makes it a hit on its initial release or not is not certain. It enjoyed a long American re-release in '03 (January-September) on a few screens and has a fan in great Chinese action director John Woo (Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)).]

What do you think of The Red Circle?
What's Melville's best film in your opinion?

Dumb and Dumber To (2014) or, Harry and Lloyd: Still Dumb and Lovin' It!

♥♥♥

They're back! In Peter and Bobby Farrelly's Dumb and Dumber To

20 years after the original Dumb and Dumber (1994), a modern comedy classic, its creators (and four (!) other writers) have summoned the two stars for another really dumb adventure:

Lloyd (Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)) has been in a mental institution for the last 20 years, where his pal Harry (Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale (2005)) has taken care of him. - But it was all just an elaborate (and very lengthy) joke! Harry needs a new kidney, so when they learn that he has a daughter who has been given away for adoption, they head out to find her and get him one of her kidneys.

This loony plot doesn't really lead anywhere, although there is an amusing tail to the dedicated pointlessness at hand in Dumb and Dumber To. It takes quite a while before it really gets started, and then it's not an exciting plot in any way, more just an excuse for all the goofiness that ensues. A MacGuffin pack is introduced along with a slew of other more of less confusing ideas that are wrapped around a continuous row of gags, quite a few of them funny, if you just relax and get into the redonkulous mood of the film.
I saw it in a packed theater with lots of kids, who couldn't control themselves laughing at the hilarities of Harry and Lloyd. It raised the atmosphere (as kids' laughter tends to), even if I thought to myself that the kids might have exploded with laughter, if they had run the original film instead by mistake.
Carrey is giving it his all as usually, and as does Daniels, even though the years have obviously been rougher on him. He has really red eyes through much of the film, which got me speculating if he might be high while acting here. - It's hard to tell, because the characters are so idiotic in themselves, but I definitely wouldn't rule out the possibility.

The details:

The trailer for Dumb and Dumber To seemed to dispel the relative innocence of the original with a very vulgar humor replacing it. I was glad to find that that wasn't exactly the case. - Sure To is vulgar and coarse, but not overly so, I thought. Mostly it's just incredibly silly. Some of the funniest things in the film, I thought, are the fantasy scenes.
The film has Laurie Holden (The Mist (2007)) and a refreshing, self-mocking Kathleen Turner (Romancing the Stone (1984)) in supporting roles.
It has been slaughtered by most critics, but it is far from as bad as they say. Dumb and Dumber To is far from greatness, but it is a decent goofball comedy from the modern masters of that kind of comedy, brothers Peter & Bobby Farrelly (Kingpin (1996)).

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 169.8 mil. $ and counting
= Box office success
[The success of this sequel was not at all a sure thing, the studios felt: Warner Bros. declined to make it, although they made heaps from the original. Independent company Red Granite finally financed it. And as it turned out, lots of people were ready to catch up with more Dumb and Dumber: Opening first in the US, the film was Carrey's biggest hit since Bruce Almighty (2003) and even bested the original. The film has done very well in many other countries as well.]

What do you think of Dumb and Dumber To?
What is the Farrelly Brothers' best film in your opinion and why?

Chungking Express/重慶森林 (1994) - Kar-Wai's urban love drama is a visual treat

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Hong Kong Movie of the Year

A beautiful, evocative poster for Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express

QUICK REVIEW:

In the big city, people live very close to each other, but carry on their lives very far apart as well: A restless cop loses his girlfriend and seeks solace with a drug smuggler donning a blond wig. Another cop loses his flight attendant girlfriend and begins seeing a girl at the snack bar, where he picks up his boss's daily salad.

The plot arc is unusual in Express, which tells one story and then another. The film drifts forward in much the same aimless, intimacy-seeking pace that its lead characters live their lives in. Their in some ways transparent lives break through in melancholic grandeur in the film's most evocative images (by cinematographers Wai-keung Lau (Infernal Affairs/Mou Gaan Dou (2002)) and Christopher Doyle (Hero/Ying Xiong (2002))), in the rainy night or the ones where time seems to stand still. 
Tony Chiu Wai Leung (In the Mood for Love/Fa Yeung Nin Wa (2000)) gives a tender performance, and Express is visually strong and beautiful. It does, I think, overuse two of its gimmicks a bit: SPOILER The use of the song California Dreamin' by The Mamas and the Papas and Leung's characters 'dialog' with objects. 
The film is directed by great Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love), who wrote and made the film as a creatively freer exercise during his making of the big sword adventure Ashes of Time/Dung Che Sai Duk (1994)). He is busy at the moment with pre-production on his next film, The Ferryman (2015), which will star both male leads from Express.

 

Related post:

 

1994 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express

Watch the not very good US trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 0.6 mil. $ (US), 7.6 mil. HK$

= Uncertainty

[Express seems to have been a big local hit in Hong Kong, but without any budget information, - besides the director's statement in different interviews that it was "very low-budget", - we cannot know for sure whether the film, - which received a slim US distribution through Quentin Tarantino's (a fan of Kar-Wai) Rolling Thunder Pictures distribution company, - was a financial success.]

What do you think of Chungking Express?