Rom (2024) - Bendixen and terrific trio win with great romcom

♥♥♥♥♥

 

A beloved trio of seasoned actors in one of the world's most beloved cities tease on this poster for Niclas Bendixen's Rom

Gerda and Kristoffer have been married for 40 years and have been gifted a vacation in Rome by their daughter. But when they happen upon Gerda's old Swedish art teacher there, the stay gets thrown on its head, and old secrets and truths start to seep out.

Rom is written by co-writer/co-star Kristian Halken (A Funny Man/Dirch (2011)), co-writer/executive producer Christian Torpe (Rita (2012-20)) and co-writer/director, great Danish filmmaker Niclas Bendixen (Ditte & Louise (2018)). The original Danish title translates to 'Rome'.

The film's motor is first and foremost its star trio: Halken as the delightfully frank and ordinary man Kristoffer; Bodil Jørgensen (Hvide Sande (2011, TV-series)) as the more vivacious Gerda, whose buried passions are unearthed by Rolf Lassgård (Min Pappa Marianne (2020)) as the expat hedonist. They all three give delightful performances in a film that bursts with a sense of spontaneous fun and lightness.

Manuel Alberto Claro's (The Pact/Pagten (2021)) cinematography imbues the Roman holiday that encompasses the entire film with this sense of 'real-life' and spontaneity. The plot and lines are funny, filled with fine little details and unpretentious but charming turns. Underlying the misadventure rests a keen wisdom about love and marriage, and Bendixen and his stars capture this very well in a genuinely funny, very successful romcom that also wins on lots of lovely local Italian flavors in the guise of performances, locations and vocabulary.

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 2.592 mil. €, approximately 2.8 mil. $

Box office: 1.01 mil. $ and counting

= Uncertain

[Rom premiered 3 February (Göteborg Film Festival, Sweden) and runs 98 minutes. 1.347 mil. € of the film's budget came from a DFI subsidy. Shooting took place in Rome, Italy. Bendixen's mother passed away suddenly during shooting. The film opened #1 in Denmark, where it has sold 90k tickets to date and plays in the Biografklub Danmark/Cinema Club Denmark, meaning that a large portion of its patrons pay only half prize. It is set to release in Sweden on 5 April. Bendixen does not have his next film announced yet. Jørgensen returns in Seaside Hotel/Badehotellet (2013-) and theatrically in B.O.Y - Bruises of Yesterday; Lassgård in Whiskey on the Rocks (2024, miniseries), with no theatrical return announced yet; and Halken's return is not announced yet. 67 IMDb users have given Rom a 7.4/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Rom?

Paradise: Love/Paradies: Liebe (2012) - Woman's love safari proves fertile ground for Seidl drama

♥♥♥♥♥

 

European women enjoy drinks, the ocean and local male attention on this poster for Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love

Our plus-sized, love-starved heroine leaves her teenage daughter back in their home in Austria to go on a solo vacation to Africa, where the local men simply adore the middle-aged European woman "as they are!" - Or do they now also...?

 

Paradise: Love is written by Veronika Franz (Import Export (2007)) and great Austrian filmmaker, co-writer/producer/director Ulrich Seidl (Models (1999)). It it the first film in his Paradise trilogy, also comprised by Paradise: Faith/Paradies: Glaube (2012) and Paradise: Hope/Paradies: Hoffnung (2013). The title is a literal translation of the original German title.

Seidl's film about female sex tourism ultimately becomes a reflection of the fundamentally unjust layout of the world, - both as it has become arranged by man but also how it is handed to each one of us from God's or nature's hands. Watching Paradise: Love, I also couldn't help but wonder what might have been different if the film had looked into male sex tourism instead of female. 

Margarete Tiesel (Sargnagel - Der Film (2021)) is without vanity and fear in her lead performance, and Seidl (and cinematographers Edward Lachman (Carol (2015)) and Wolfgang Thaler (Toulouse (2018, TV movie))) capture a lot of absurd comedy with their visual mastering and eye for images, so that the film in periods is also pretty funny. It is also tender, sad, though-provoking and remarkably empathetic. If any of the individuals in the story are to be judged, that job is obviously left up to us.

Paradise: Love is an outstanding film with a couple of scenes that last a really long time, but which in doing so reveal something about the relations between the people involved, which is only possible due to their length. Something about the flux of exploitation in unnatural romantic relations.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Reportedly 3.6 mil. €, approximately 3.8 mil. $

Box office: 1.7 mil. $

= Mega-flop (returned 0.44 times its cost)

[Paradise: Love premiered 18 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 120 minutes. Shooting took place from October 2009 - September 2010 in Austria and Kenya, back-to-back with the other two films in the trilogy. They were initially planned to be one film but the length and other factors made Seidl realize that they should be released as three films. The film opened #84 to a 6k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #78 and in 4 theaters, grossing 24k $ (1.4 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were Germany with 698k $ (41.1 %), Austria with 448k $ (26.4 %) and Spain with 165k $ (9.7 %). The film lost the Palme d'Or to Amour. It was also nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Seidl returned with Paradise: Faith/Paradies: Glaube (2012). Tiesel returned in 2 TV and a short credit prior to her theatrical return in Das Pferd auf dem Balkon (2012). Paradise: Love is certified fresh at 78 % with a 6.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Paradise: Love?

Le Temps des Secrets (2022) - Barratier misses with period drama with an acute case of the cutes

♥♥

Three happy children roam the wild hills of Provence on this pleasant poster for Christophe Barratier's Le Temps des Secrets

Marcel goes away with his family for Summer vacation in Provence and reaffirms his friendship with the local peasant's son there. But this year, a girl comes between the two.

Le Temps des Secrets is written by Laurent Turner (La Chance de Ma Vie (2010)) and co-writer/director, French master filmmaker Christophe Barratier (The Chorus/Les Choristes (2004)). It is an adaptation of French writer/filmmaker Marcel Pagnol's autobiographical Souvenirs D'Enfance novels (1957-60). The title translates to 'the time of secrets'.

Barratier lavishes expensive camera work and production values but regrettably comes to present a film that feels too much like window dressing and prettying up of its period, France anno 1905, than an authentic travel back in time. The costumes are too neat, the actors too well-groomed, and the kids, though not bad performers, lack blemishes. It strains the naturalism that they look like they were tricked away from a soap commercial in this case anyway. The grand and 'storytelling' score is also too much and often only further alienates.

One comes to look at the story, which is a yarn of various boyhood experiences, including a dangerous grotto and snake capture, the strange and dubious family of the snooty girl that Marcel falls for, his own father's infidelity and mother's women's lib engagement and a few other entanglements. SPOILER The ending gives us a major reveal (the girl is actually a boy), but no more knowledge or insight into the curious fact, nor into the fate of her or her peculiar swindling family.

Despite sweet moments, beautiful landscapes and tolerable craftsmanship, Le Temps des Secrets is an unsatisfying experience, where one wonders what Barratier was aiming for. It is a bit here, a bit there, and generally too sentimental and pat. The Pagnol novel series have been adapted before, in the undoubtedly more worthwhile My Father's Glory (1990) and My Mother's Castle (1990) by Yves Robert, - lauded films that are on my watchlist now.

Related posts:

Christophe Barratier: Top 10: Best French movies

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Top 10: Best family movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Top 10: The best adaptations reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Chorus/Les Choristes (2004) - The inspiring-teacher masterpiece 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 9.27 mil. €, approximately 9.5 mil. $

Box office: 3 mil. $ and counting

= Mega-flop (has returned 0.31 times its cost to date)

[Le Temps des Secrets premiered 21 January (Alpe d'Huez Festival, France) and runs 108 minutes. 12 companies and support bodies collaborated in making the film. It opened #2 in France, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd weekend and has grossed 3 mil. $. Other markets are Belgium, Canada, Denmark and Sweden, with grosses from there not reported online yet and likely negligible. Barratier does not have his next movie announced yet. 161 IMDb users have given Le Temps des Secrets a 6.5/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Le Temps des Secrets?

Speak No Evil (2022) - Take a beating with Tadrup's awesome horror

♥♥♥♥♥

 

A boy with a wide open mouth, encased in darkness, makes up this striking poster for Christian Tafdrup's Speak No Evil

A big-city couple from Denmark receive an invitation by snail-mail from a couple from Holland that they met on holiday months earlier and decide to take them up on their offer and drive South with their daughter for a long weekend at their house.

 

Speak No Evil is written by Mads Tafdrup (Yes No Maybe (2019, TV-series)) and his brother, co-writer/director, great Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup (Parents/Forældre (2016)).

Tafdrup moves ahead in the same waters as his first films, Parents and En Frygtelig Kvinde (2017), with another film about gender power dynamics today and a young modern couple with relationship dysfunction, a male that seems castrated into modern submission and a female who on some level longs for a different type of man. This time the familiar dilemmas are put up against a Dutch couple who are the Danish couple's opposites; very old-fashioned, unrestricted by inhibitions and very politically incorrect.

This is quite funny for a long time, as issues around diet, child-raising, smoking, drinking and more are effectively skirted by the conflict-averse Danes, as their unwillingness to look straight at the human behavior of their hosts and draw some sensible consequences from them push them from one awkward situation to another, - and eventually all the way into the shark's mouth. Great cinematography (by Erik Molberg Hansen (Becoming Astrid/Unga Astrid (2018))) and a bombastically foreboding score (by Sune Kølster (Parents))) leave us with no doubt as to the sudden turn into horror that is bound to occur in Speak No Evil. SPOILER There are creepy, earlier scenes of near-invasion, feeling of immediate danger and threat of violence, and then the horrific scene with the child that is invoked on the poster above, which all help set the unnerving tone. 

The upbeat good time I had with the film lasted long, anyway, due to the fact that the dark social satire lasts long, and you have ample room to slap your forehead at the dispositions of the dysfunctional Danes here, SPOILER as they fail to heed the warnings and thus doom themselves - with some justification?

The performances from the unknown quartet of adults are very good: Morten Burian (Sons of Denmark/Danmarks Sønner (2019)) and Sidsel Siem Koch (Hvidstengruppen II - De Efterladte (2022)) play the troubled couple with exposed nerves, and Fedja van Huêt (Soof 2 (2016)) and Karina Smulders (Alle Tijd (2011)) are strong and eventually chilling as the disturbing Dutchmen.

Speak No Evil turns very dark and very gruesome in its conclusion, which mixes Old-Testamental religious symbolism into a truly wicked, horrific ending that only sets this serving of blackness further apart. Speak No Evil speaks loudly enough.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 3.2 mil. $

Box office: 1.7 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.53 times its cost)

[Speak No Evil premiered 21 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 105 minutes. Shooting took place in Denmark, Holland and Italy. The film has sold 68k tickets in Denmark to date, coming to around 7.5 mil. DKK, approximately 1.08 mil. $ (63.5 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Poland with 246k $ (14.5 %) and Netherlands with 195k $ (11.5 %). Tafdrup does not have his next gig announced yet. Burian returns in Loving Adults (2022); Koch returned in Hvidstengruppen II - De Efterladte (2022). Speak No Evil is fresh at 79 % with a 7.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Speak No Evil?

Grown Ups (2010) - Sandler & Co. look turgid in film with solely commercial appeal

♥

 

Five middle-aged male comedians in a water slide screaming make up this poster for Dennis Dugan's Grown Ups

Five childhood friends meet again as adults, when their high school basketball coach 'the Buzzer' passes away, and they decide to have a weekend vacation around the 4th of July.

 

Grown Ups is written by co-writer/co-producer/co-star Adam Sandler (Reign over Me (2007)) and Fred Wolf (Joe Dirt (2001)) and directed by Dennis Dugan (Problem Child (1990)).

In spite of the prominent funny-men (minus David Spade (Entourage (2015))) and comedienne Maya Rudolph (Sisters (2015)), Grown Ups is surprisingly unfunny. Bad jokes are mixed with vulgar or simplistic slapstick. Everyone: Maria Bello (Abduction (2011)), Salma Hayek (Traffic (2000)), Tim Meadows (Aliens in the Attic (2009)) and Steve Buscemi (Rampart (2011)) included, - look a little bit dumber for appearing in this immature, - immature in the bad way, - strained low-brow burp.

Grown Ups is a dopey product, and it seems a blatantly cynical (or is it merely dumb?) paycheck job. The characters laugh more than plenty in Grown Ups, but as audiences there's not much to grin at concerning these non-characters' outing.

 

Related post:

 

Dennis Dugan: I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) - James and Sandler marry in Dugan's crude, wrongfully maligned buddy-comedy

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 80 mil. $

Box office: 271.4 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 3.39 times its cost)

[Grown Ups premiered 24 June (Australia, Iceland) and runs 102 minutes. Sandler earned 25 mil. $ from the film. Shooting took place in Los Angeles and Massachusetts, including Boston, from May - August 2009. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Toy Story 3, to a 40.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#4-#4) and grossed 162 mil. $ (59.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 18.2 mil. $ (6.7 %) and the UK with 12.1 mil. $ (4.5 %). Sandler bought his four male co-stars new Maserati sports cars to celebrate the film's success. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Dugan returned to direct almost the entire cast for sequel Grown Ups 2 (2013), also a hit. Dugan returned first with Just Go With It (2011). Sandler also returned in Just Go With It (2011); Kevin James (Pixels (2015)) in The Dilemma (2011); and Chris Rock (Panther (1995)) in Two Days in New York (2012). Grown Ups is rotten at 11 % with a 3.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Grown Ups? 

The Great Outdoors (1988) - Deutch's low-brow comedy does the job

♥♥♥

 

A fun, magazine-styled poster for Howard Deutch's The Great Outdoors

A lovely family has headed off to vacation in a forest log cabin in Wisconsin, when their very different sister-in-law and her family turn up. - Will they be able to stand each other?

The Great Outdoors is written by John Hughes (Flubber (1997)) and directed by Howard Deutch (Pretty in Pink (1986)).

Stars John Candy (Stripes (1981)) and Dan Aykroyd (Unconditional Love (2002)) do what they can, while debuting Annette Bening (Being Julia (2004)) cackles her way through the film in the background. But there isn't much meat in this Hughes vegetable: There is a romance side story about two youths that's DOA. And then, well, what can one say about a film that's got eating a gigantic steak and killing an odd indoor bat as two of its significant plot points?

The Great Outdoors has good-looking bear scenes (with Bart the Bear (The Bear (1988))) and works as cozy entertainment, but it has lost lots of goodwill before its improbable ending binds a peculiar bow on the shenanigans. The Great Outdoors is no-one's best work.

 

Watch a clip from the film here

 

Cost: 24 mil. $

Box office: 43.4 mil. $ 

= Big flop (returned 1.80 times its cost)

[The Great Outdoors was released 17 June (USA) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in Chicago, Illinois and in California from October - December 1987. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release Red Heat and holdover hit Big, to a 6.1 mil. $ in North America, where it spent another week in the top 5 (#3) and grossed 41.5 mil. $ (95.6 % of the total gross). The film seems to have had been given a very limited international release, which also is reflected in its numbers. Deutch returned with Tales from the Crypt (1989-90)) and theatrically in Article 99 (1992). Candy returned with a voice performance in Hot to Trot (1988) and physically in Who's Harry Crumb? (1989); Aykroyd in Caddyshack II (1988). The Great Outdoors is rotten at 40 % with a 4.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Great Outdoors?

Before Midnight (2013) - Linklater, Hawke and Delpy's Before trilogy comes to a tender, incisive and chilling end

♥♥♥♥♥

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy by the Mediterranean Sea on the poster for Richard Linklater's Before Midnight

QUICK REVIEW:

Jesse and Celine of the two previous films in the Before trilogy, (Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004)), are now a married couple with two lovely twin daughters, who have just spend their summer together on the Greek Peloponnese peninsula. But as Jesse is sending his teenage son back on a plane to his ex-wife in the States, he feels that perhaps it is time that they should move with him over there.

The last Before film so far, (for who knows for sure that this will end as a trilogy?), starts marvelously in an airport and with a long car talking scene. A later dinner scene is perhaps a little long and over-populated with the extremely articulate Before types that Jesse and Celine seem to attract everywhere. - But it ends on a moving note.
SPOILER As the fight between the two breaks out, it is depressing because it is so real and such an accurate depiction of the way couples tend to behave in a midlife crisis situation.
Ethan Hawke (Training Day (2001)) is phenomenal, and so is Julie Delpy (Broken Flowers (2005)), although Celine definitely comes off as the most antagonistic. SPOILER The fight is steered back into romance in the end, but the way the married couple wear down each other's emotional blades, - which is really well captured here, - is still so disheartening that, for me, Before Midnight, though unmistakably great, is the least enjoyable in the trilogy.
In online forums others have attacked co-writer-director Richard Linklater, (who has written the films with Hawke and Delpy), for "trashing" the characters that have moved people profoundly since the first film. But these critics fail to accept that these characters and their relationship merely evolve and change in each 9 year span to some degree, just as real people do. That this change is heartbreaking in some sense is not something the artists are responsible for. This is just the way life turns out for many if not all people.

Related reviews:
 
2014 in films - according to Film Excess 2011 in films - according to Film Excess 
Richard Linklater: Boyhood (2014) or, Colored Mirror
Bernie (2011) - Linklater, Black and Hollandsworth's incredible true-crime dramedy
A Scanner Darkly (2006) - Dick and Linklater's drug-infested vision of the future 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 3 mil $
Box office: 23.3 mil. $
=  Huge hit
[Before Midnight was shot in the summer of 2012 in 15 days in and around Messenia, Greece. The film premiered at Sundance, played at Berlin International Film Festival and opened widest (897 theaters) in America on June 14th. It made 8.1 mil. $ (35 % of the total gross) domestically and was Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, (adapted since its based on existing characters.) It became the 2nd best reviewed film of the year according to Rotten Tomatoes, only bested by Gravity (2013). It also appeared on a long row of critic's top 10 lists of 2013 and was nominated for and won a slew of awards.]

What do you think of Before Midnight?