Hugo (2011) - Scorsese's critically acclaimed, magical 3D family adventure/financial disaster

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2 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Non-adult Actor: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz (lost to Amara Miller for The Descendants)
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson (lost to Phedon Papamichael for The Descendants)


+ Best Family Movie of the Year
+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year
+ Best 3D Movie of the Year 
+ Worst Poster of the Year

Does the poster for Martin Scorsese's Hugo spell magic and adventure, in 3D? (Probably not as much as it should have.)

QUICK REVIEW:

Hugo Cabret lives in Paris' main train station in 1930, because he operates the clocks there alone after his father's death and his uncle's disappearance. Together with a girl, he wants to unlock his father's message from inside a robot that he has left him with.

Hugo is an adaptation of Brian Selznick's (The Houdini Box (1991)) 2007 illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by John Logan (Skyfall (2012)), directed by master filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Casino (1995)). It is a film that brings joy to its audiences simply through its images, which Scorsese and Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (Django Unchained (2012)) have created with enormous, visual talent and resources. Hugo is a 3D movie, and praised for its 3D use, among others by James Cameron (Avatar (2009)), which he has said was the best he had yet seen, but it can also be seen and enjoyed without 3D, - no problemo.
On the Hugo posters, Asa Butterfield (Ender's Game (2013)) and Chloë Grace Moretz (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)) look sickly pale, unappealing, almost ugly, (which is a really bad choice for the posters that have to mass-sell a film), but the two act fantastically in the film, and they are backed up by a first class ensemble: Jude Law (A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)), Ray Winstone (Edge of Darkness (2010)), Christopher Lee (The City of the Dead (1960)), Sacha Baron Cohen (The Dictator (2012)), - who is really funny here, - and Ben Kingsley (Gandhi (1982))!
This is a magical, touching, grandiose film about the amazing world of film and its importance. It might not be absolutely unforgettable, but it is certainly an outstanding movie.


Related posts:
 

Martin Scorsese:  2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - One helluva movie!  
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Boardwalk Empire - 1st season (2010) - Luxurious 1920's ensemble gangster treats  
The Aviator (2004) - The grand American biopic 
Casino (1995) - Scorsese's sumptuous Vegas gangster tale has the wingspan of a Greek tragedy   
The Age of Innocence (1993) or, Stayin' IN the Pants
Cape Fear (1991) - Scorsese adds lots of stuff to remake but loses the balance  

Sascha Baron Cohen is funny in Martin Scorsese's Hugo

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 150-170 mil. $
Box office: 185.8 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Hugo's production, co-produced by GK Films and Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil, shot in London and Paris, went way over budget, (a reported 70 mil. $!) due to runaway production and 3D-related costs. It was extremely well-received critically, making it to many top 10 lists of the year, and it won a mountain of awards, including 5 Oscars (Cinematography, Art Direction, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing), out of 11 nominations, making it the year's most Oscar-nominated film! But the public did not, regrettably, flock to see it in the required numbers. It was quite a hit in Italy, where it made 7.3 mil. €. In the US, it made 73.8 mil. $ (40 % of the total gross), following its 15.4 mil. $ opening weekend. Besides better posters, it might have helped it Hugo had had one or two significant non-white actors in its ensemble as well.]

What do you think of Hugo?

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) - Vinterberg's plush but grating English adaptation

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A romantically swooning poster for Thomas Vinterberg's Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd is the fourth adaptation of Thomas Hardy's (Jude the Obscure (1895)) 1874 novel of the same name. It is written by David Nicholls (Great Expectations (2012)) and directed by Danish master filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration/Festen (1998)).

Bathsheba is an attractive, eligible woman in 1870s England, where she inherits a farm and throws herself eagerly into attending it. She becomes courted by three very different men and has trouble finding the right one.

The film has a fine cast led by the enchanting Carey Mulligan (An Education (2009)) and Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead (2011)). Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon (2008)) is great in the film's most touching part as Mr. Boldwood, and Tom Sturridge (On the Road (2012)) makes a strong characterization of the loutish soldier.
There are neat costumes (by Janet Patterson (The Piano (1993))) and lovely countryside locales. - The film is shot on location in the part of England, where the story is actually set.

The details:

Far from the Madding Crowd is, in Vinterberg's hands here, a melodrama that has replaced, in its audiences, the heartache that usually accompanies the genre with knuckle-clenching frustration. This stems from Mulligan's character, SPOILER who has the answer to all of her problems literally right in front of her from the first shots of the film onwards, but simply can't seem to wrap her head around to seeing him. This is fatally annoying for the film, which also seems to drag out, though its story is mostly pretty predictable.
Fine performances, production values and respectability doesn't make a great film, if it feels as long as Far from the Madding Crowd, essentially because it spends its nearly two hours running time before it gives us what we want.
It is solid and meticulously made, but not exactly artistic. It does not become the film to break Vinterberg's not too formidable history of English-language movies (It's All About Love (2003) and Dear Wendy (2004) precedes it) that have not yet been good per se. He is soon releasing his second film this year, the Danish-language The Collective/Kollektivet (2015).

Related review:

Thomas Vinterberg: The Hunt/Jagten (2012) - Vinterberg's strongest film since 1998 is a reversed Celebration  
Dear Wendy (2004) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed mega-flop 

Watch the trailer here, - with the song Let No Man Steal Thy Thyme sung by Carey Mulligan and Michael Sheen

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 18.5 mil. $ and counting
= Uncertainty
[Without the film's budget released, it is impossible to know if Far from the Madding Crowd is close to breaking even yet. - But I think it has far to go yet, and probably will end up a minor flop. It has made 8.3 mil. $ (45 % of the total gross) in North America and a handsome 7.3 mil. $ in the UK (39 %).]

What do you think of Far from the Madding Crowd?
How does it compare to the novel and the earlier screen versions, if you have read or seen any of these?

Hostel: Part III (2011, video) - Spiegel ends Roth's beloved gore franchise

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The poster for Scott Spiegel's Hostel: Part III looks like a cheap rehash of the posters for the first two films

Four unsympathetic young men are en route to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Once there they go to a party way off the Strip, where one of them disappears.

Far into Hostel 3, I was in. - The characters of Eli Roth's (Cabin Fever (2002)) first two films (2005 and 2007) aren't angels as well, - but then at some point I realized that I had not even a mild liking for any of the guys here, and that the film's focus seemed to flap around between them, seemingly unclear about who of them was leading the narrative ahead. Michael D. Weiss (Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)) has written the script, 'based on Roth's characters', (although there doesn't seem to be any characters from the first two films in this one.) It is directed by a producer on the first two films, Scott Spiegel (From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999)), and Roth was not involved in making it.
When Kip Pardue (The Rules of Attraction (2002)), who plays the ultra-douche, SPOILER begins to fight his friend, the film becomes involuntarily funny, because things simply get too ridiculous. And although Thomas Kretschmann (Valkyrie (2008)) is in this one, he never really becomes a very good villain unfortunately.
Hostel 3 is still a fairly large production SPOILER with cockroach-, face-ripping- and Japanese cyberpunk/crossbow-kills and an intro scene, which cleverly turns the franchise from its Eastern Europe setting to the Americans home scene. But when it's over, a fan of the first two films will almost certainly feel pretty disappointed. The Hostel franchise provisionally dies here.

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
 

Here are the four schmucks that are in for some cultural punishment in Scott Spiegel's Hostel: Part III

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 6 mil. $
Box office: None - released straight-to-DVD and VoD
= Uncertainty
[But almost certainly a huge flop. - However, since DVD sales and VoD revenue have not been publicized, I can't know for sure. Hostel 3 is the first of the Hostel films to go straight-to-DVD. The release was meant to be followed by a viral marketing campaign, which was canceled, when the film got bad test screenings.]

What do you think of Hostel: Part III?

The Help (2011) - Taylor and an impeccable ensemble portray heart-thumping change in Jackson, Mississippi

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3 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Film (lost to The Descendants)
Best Director: Tate Taylor (lost to Agnieszka Holland for In Darkness)
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)

+ Best Mississippi Movie of the Year
+ Best Ensemble Movie of the Year

The late-summer treat of 2011, Tate Taylor's The Help

Jackson, Mississippi in 1963: An aspiring young, white female writer persuades a black housekeeper ('the help') to tell her about her life, plagued by the racism that defined the South at the time. That starts a change.

Splendid, handsomely produced, shot in Mississippi, (the biggest production there since O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)), The Help is an empowering, uplifting, marvelous film about a multitude of women.
In it plays an ensemble to be reckoned with: Emma Stone (Magic in the Moonlight (2014)), Viola Davis (Doubt (2008)), Bryce Dallas Howard (Manderlay (2005)), Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station (2013)), Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty (2012)), Allison Janney (Mom (2013-15)), Cicely Tyson (Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)) and Sissy Spacek (The Straight Story (1999)) are all inspiring and stand out individually. - Bravo!
Social and political change for the better is a powerful thing, which we witness in The Help. Tate Taylor (Pretty Ugly People (2008)) adapted the same-titled, bestselling 2009 novel by his childhood friend Kathryn Stockett and directed the film, making a precise and edifying heartbreaker and certainly one of the year's best films.

Related posts:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess 

Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in Tate Taylor's The Help

Watch the fantastic trailer for the film here

Cost: 25 mil. $
Box office: 216.6 mil. $
= Huge hit
[The Help took America by storm: Opening #2, behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the film took 26 mil. $ in its first weekend, but then rose to first place, which it held for impressive 25 days, the longest #1 streak for a movie in the US since The Sixth Sense (1999, 35 days #1), also an August premiere. The film ended up making a spectacular 169.7 mil. $ in the US (78 % of the total gross). At the Oscars, Spencer won her first Oscar so far as Minnie Jackson, and the film was nominated for three more statuettes.]

What do you think of The Help?
Other good films about racism and fighting it?

Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011) - Norwegian craftsman Tyldum's thriller springboard

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The slick, original poster for Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

QUICK REVIEW:

Roger is just 1.68 meters tall; he cheats and steals art pieces, beside his headhunting job, to fund his consumerist high-life. A candidate for a job owns an expensive painting that Roger now decides to steal. But this candidate is more dangerous than expected.

Headhunters is an exciting and handsomely produced romantic action thriller, based on Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø's (The Leopard/Panserhjerte (2011)) 2008 novel of the same name.
Once the hunt really gets started, the film gets unnecessarily gross. And the girlfriend's loyalty throughout the film is more than a little incredible. But Headhunters is still a very finely chiseled thriller with a somewhat surprising ending, SPOILER in which Roger leaves 'the game'.
It is written by Ulf Ryberg (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest/Luftslottet som Sprängdes (2009)) and Lars Gudmestad (The Orheim Company/Kompani Orheim (2012)) and directed by Norwegian shooting star director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game (2014)), who is now in pre-production with a thriller, Pattern Recognition, and a supernatural series, Counterpart.

Related review:

Morten Tyldum: The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

Watch the English-subtitled trailer for the film here

Cost: 30 mil. NOK. (around 4 mil. $)
Box office: 15.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Headhunters is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time, (although a Swedish-Danish-Norwegian-German co-production, it is mostly a Norwegian film.) It was a big hit in Norway, where 557k paid admission. It has gotten great reviews and several award nominations and a few wins. It made 1.1 mil. $ (7 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of Headhunters?

Haywire (2011) - Soderbergh's taut, stylish ensemble actioner is a masterpiece

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1 Time Film Excess Award Winner:

Best Practical Effects

4 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Film (lost to The Descendants)
Best Director: Steven Soderbergh (lost to Agnieszka Holland for In Darkness)
Best Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh (lost to Phedon Papamichael for The Descendants)
Best Practical Effects (won)

+ Best Breakthrough of the Year (Gina Carano)
+ Sexiest Movie of the Year
+ Most Undeserved Flop of the Year

The appropriately stylish, cool poster for Steven Soderbergh's Haywire

Mallory is an American assassin and a damned skilled one at that. On a job in Barcelona, she gets set up. - And when she kills the British agent, whose mission it was to kill her, things have really gone haywire!

Real-life MMA-fighter Gina Carano (Blood and Bone (2009)) is deeply impressive and a wagonload of cool in her starring debut as an actress, and not just in the fight scenes, which are masterly choreographed. Master director and cinematographer Steven Soderbergh (The Informant! (2009)) creates striking images with minimal use of lighting, which plays neatly with David Holmes' (Ocean's Thirteen (2007)) score that seduces with bulging, cool 70s-like percussion. The sound side features lots of periods of bold uses of silence, and the noiseless aspect of Haywire is liberating, since modern action movies in general seem to have cultivated a bad habit of reveling in being as infernally noisy as possible.
Haywire is consistently stylish, self-conscious in its teasing us cinephiles playfully. It is a huge pleasure to watch it, and its ending is the coolest that has come around in any film in a long while.
Haywire is written by Lem Dobbs (The Score (2001)). Although Soderbergh has made many great films in recent years, this is his best in a long while. It is a raw, girl-power-infused martial arts action gift. - Yeah!

Related posts:



Steven Soderbergh: Side Effects (2013) - Modern people screw up in excellent thriller 
Behind the Candelabra (2013) - Restraint and extravagance 
Magic Mike (2012) - Soderbergh and Tatum score big with cheeky male strip romp 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Contagion (2011) - Soderbergh's global pandemic creep-out  
Che Part One - The Argentine (2008) - Soderbergh's sober depiction of the Cuban revolution 
Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark  

Gina Carano in camouflage in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire

Cost: 23 mil. $
Box office: 33.3 mil. $
= Huge flop
[The public didn't respond warmly to Haywire, and many have even ridiculed Carano's great performance in it. A sophisticated, highly intelligent, polished piece of super-entertainment with a female hero for the decade of course is quite an unpleasant shock... After an opening weekend of 8.4 mil. $, it ended up grossing 18.9 mil. $ in the US (57 % of its total gross).]

What do you think of Haywire?

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) or, The Kink in the Woods

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+ Sexiest Movie of the Year

The sexually suggestive poster for Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy

The Duke of Burgundy is the new, third feature written and directed by English filmmaker Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga (2009)).

In a large estate in a forest, two women cultivate their sexual relationship that is based on the younger woman's subordination to the older.

Strickland has created a rare, rich and strange film that is infused with inspirations from 70's sexploitation cinema.
The success of Burgundy lies in its portrayal of the dynamics of the sub/dom-relationship, delightfully precise and as detailed as the formal plot and character blueprints are deliberately fuzzy. - The two characters and their relationship, which is basically the whole film, live in a place that seems outside of time, and which is solely inhabited by females.
The film is carried by two great performances: Danish Sidse Babett Knudsen (Speed-Walking/Kapgang (2014)) presents a new side of her talent as the positively sex-steaming moth-professor (!) dominatrix, and Italian Chiara D'Anna (Berberian Sound Studio (2012)) gives just the right both simultaneously subservient and demanding glances as her lover Evelyn.

Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D'Anna are resplendent in Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy

Duke is a really great, lustful piece of elegant erotica, much sexier than most all of the very sexually explicit films of recent years, regardless of the viewer's gender or sexuality. It might not appeal to the probably few individuals who cannot relate to the sexual bondage relationship, but its strong visuals, music and performances might persuade them anyway.
The problem in Duke only arises in tits third act, as Strickland doesn't know when to wrap it up and attaches a redundant final conflict of perhaps around 15 minutes length. He had the perfect opportunity to end his film, SPOILER as the camera zoomed in and seemed to disappear in Knudsen's dark, mysterious panties, but he didn't catch it.
Still, this good and very kinky film shouldn't be missed.

Related posts:

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2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: Estimated 1 mil. $
Box office: Around 120k $ (US and UK only) and counting
= Uncertainty
[But most likely a huge flop. The film has played at several festivals and earned many great reviews. It is in theaters in a range of countries right now and is pending summer premieres in Sweden, Australia, France and Holland. Read an interview with Strickland, talking about the making of the film here.]

What do you think of The Duke of Burgundy?
Seen Strickland's other films?
If so, how was/were it/they?

Horrible Bosses (2011) - The stars nearly make up for this rackety Hollywood raunch vehicle

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Stars stare at you to get you to see Seth Gordon's Horrible Bosses

QUICK REVIEW:

Three friends waste their lives under three totally psychopathic bosses. They decide to kill them, but it turns out to be easier said than done.

Around once a minute throughout Seth Gordon's (Identity Thief (2013)) Horrible Bosses, we are reminded that it's an R-rated, modern, raunchy comedy by another line or action thought of as transgressive, - which becomes a bit tiring. Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley (The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013), both) have written the script with Michael Markowitz (Becker (1999-2002)) and have not created one venerable character in the bunch.
Horrible Bosses gets away with it, because it is fairly amusing and very star-studded. Among the stars, Kevin Spacey (House of Cards (2013-15)) is awesomely cool here, while Charlie Day (Pacific Rim (2013)) is an obnoxious pain-in-the-ass, (although others actually think that he is brilliant here...!)

Watch the trailer here

Cost: Estimated 35-37 mil. $
Box office: 209.6 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Horrible Bosses opened stronger than expected with a 28.3 mil. $ opening weekend in the US, #2 behind Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It ended up making 117.5 mil. $ in the US (56 % of the total gross) and has surpassed The War of the Roses (1989, 86.8 mil. $) as the highest-grossing dark comedy in unadjusted dollars. Horrible Bosses 2 came out in 2014.]

What do you think of Horrible Bosses?
Seen the sequel?
How is it?

The Turin Horse/A Torinói Ló (2011) - Tarr's final delivery of Hungarian pointlessness

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+ 3rd Worst Movie of the Year
+ Most Sleep-inducing Movie of the Year

One sparse, elegant poster for Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse

Turin Horse is Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr's (Satantango/Sátántangó (1994)) final film, co-directed with editor Ágnes Hranitzky (Werckmeister Harmonies/Werckmeister Harmóniák (2000)), co-written by Tarr and László Krasznahorkai (Damnation/Kárhozat (1988))

The final week in the life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, upon his witnessing the flogging of a horse in Turin, Italy.

This makes for a mystifying, boring affair, instructive in Tarr's own theme of life's stoic harshness and a message which eludes the patient viewer until even after the last frame has left the screen. (The film is 146 relentlessly long minutes long.)
Without plot or development, the film drags its way on through its just 30 different shots, occasionally exciting compositions (by cinematographer Fred Kelemen (Frost (1997)) of the windblown landscape with beautiful music by Mihály Vig (The Man from London/A Londoni Férfi (2007)).
Father and daughter pull water from the well and eat potatoes, until they die, in Tarr's sleep-inducing Turin Horse.

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess

Watch the trailer for the film her

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 163k $
= Uncertainty
[But most likely a huge flop. The film was made with funds from Eurimages (240k €), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (100k €) as well as Hungarian, French, German, Swiss and American companies. The total budget was most likely around 1-3 mil. $. Shooting began in 2008 and went on for very long. The premiere was delayed until the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear. The film is held in high esteem by many critics, who mistake pretentious tediousness with High Art.]

What do you think of The Turin Horse?
And Tarr's other films, if you have seen any?