City Lights (1931) - Chaplin's acclaimed, sentimental tomfooleries

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Beautiful poster for Charlie Chaplin's City Lights

QUICK REVIEW:

The Tramp falls for a blind flower-seller and befriends an eccentric millionaire. Master filmmaker Charlie Chaplin's (Modern Times (1936)) iconic character also survives a boxing match and a gig as street sweeper, before SPOILER he is able to give the girl her sight back with a voyage to Austria.

The hilarities of City Lights are repeated several times, and many of the drunkard gags struck me as dumb and awkward. There are funny moments, but they are not as plenty as in Chaplin's best films. Also, I have a hard time swallowing SPOILER the very sentimental ending of City Lights.
- But I am pretty alone with these misgivings: Several respected critics and filmmakers find that this is Chaplin's best film, and that its ending is the best ever!

Watch an original trailer here

Cost: 1.5 mil. $
Box office: 5 mil. $
= Box office success
[Despite sound films' swift overtaking of the Hollywood production by 1928, Chaplin's affinity for the silent film conquered with City Lights, one of the last successful silent films, (it has a musical score though, by Chaplin, José Padilla and orchestration by Arthur Johnston and Alfred Newman.) Trivia: Guest of honor at the film's LA gala premiere were Alfred Einstein and wife.]

What do you think of City Lights?

Crank (2006) or, Testosterone Whopper!

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+ Best Action Movie of the Year + Best Los Angeles Movie of the Year

Jason Statham leaves a trail of chaos behind him on the poster for Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Crank

QUICK REVIEW:

Our hero has been poisoned and only has an hour left to live! Naturally, he wants to take revenge! Only with a constant, high level of adrenaline can he keep alive!

Crank is conceptualized in a consistently stressful style, (cinematography by Adam Biddle (Curse of the Phoenix (2014)), which is motivated by its plot. Jason Statham (The Expendables (2010)) is appropriately intense, and Amy Smart (Crank: High Voltage (2009)) makes a good partner for him here. This is arguably Statham's best starring actioner.
Crank is a wild action-comedy with many fun ideas, including a wild score (by Paul Haslinger (Underworld (2003)) and SPOILER the stars screwing in public in Chinatown!
This energetic, fun, crazy movie is the debut of writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. They followed it up with a 2009 sequel and have also directed Gamer (2009) and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) together. Neveldine has now gone solo to direct the possession horror The Vatican Tapes, which will premiere in a couple of months.

Related posts:

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

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

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

Top 10: The best action movies and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 42.9 mil. $
= Big hit
[Crank went #2 in the US in its 10.4 mil. $ opening weekend and ended up grossing 27.8 mil. $ there (65 % of the total gross.) Outside the US, the movie was biggest in Germany (3.3 mil. $/8%), the UK (2.9 mil. $/7%) and Spain (1.6 mil. $/4%).]

What do you think of Crank?
Is it Jason Statham's best starring action movie?

American Sniper (2014) - Eastwood conveys an American man and myth in electric masterpiece

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+ Best War Movie of the Year

The mythical poster for Clint Eastwood's American Sniper

American Sniper is the grand biopic war movie of real life US sniper Chris Kyle, 'the most lethal sniper in US history', with 255 kills, 160 of which were officially confirmed by the Department of Defense, from 4 tours in Iraq in the 2nd Golf War.

Kyle is an easy-going Texan rodeo cowboy, who has been brought up on some stern values of three types of people and right and wrong, as 9/11 happens and changes his ambitions: He signs up for the US Army and becomes a US Navy Seal.

Oscar-nominated co-producer/star Bradley Cooper (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)) has arguably his most difficult role to date here; he has gained lots of muscle weight to portray the singularly minded, strong but human Kyle, who will go to extreme lengths to protect his 'sheep', that is, his co-soldiers and family.
American Sniper hooks you straight away with its heady first scene, or repels you to dislike it throughout and perhaps even to go home and post infuriated critique about it somewhere online, as many seem to have done, and gotten more than their due notice for, I think.
The filmmakers dare to serve Kyle's complex, many-layered story in a straight-forward manner, which drives the viewer to look closer at the man without reducing him to either a patriotic slogan or a block of weeping meat.
A pivotal part of the film, which many people fail to notice and consider, is the mythical quality that Kyle came to carry some time into his soldiering. 84 year-old (!!!) master director Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino (2008)) has worked with this difficult, intangible entity of the American cultural mythical power before, as in his great films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and J. Edgar (2011), and you could well argue that his own career as an actor is infused with mythical energy and entangled in the organic fabric of US cultural myth as well.  In Sniper, this power gets conveyed through Kyle's rising fame as a US icon in a dark time of despair, as the nation and world backed or opposed the problematic second Iraq war and the war on terror in general. Eastwood or Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jason Hall (Paranoia (2013)), who adapted his lean, to-the-point script from Kyle's autobiographical 2012 book, did not make this status up, and their including it in the film doesn't mean that they cultivate the mythologizing without question, - but it was impossible to tell this story without the side of Kyle's effect on the American culture as a whole, his getting hailed and shaped into a national icon of strength and devotion, a patriot, a war hero, - in the midst of his personal trials.

Sienna Miller in a harrowing scene from Clint Eastwood's American Sniper

The story of Chris Kyle is an extraordinary one, and Eastwood and Hall naturally don't feel any need to add great amounts of storyteller's razzle-dazzle onto it. Perhaps this is the reason why Eastwood isn't Oscar-nominated as director for it, - or perhaps it is because he already has won 4 Oscars. No matter what, he clearly deserved a nomination for American Sniper in my opinion.
Fresh face actress Sienna Miller (Foxcatcher (2014)) gives a strong performance as Kyle's wife, and Jonathan Groff (Looking (2014-)) is good in a short supporting role.
Sniper has an amazing and intense sound and music universe, although surprisingly, it has no credited score. It runs 132 minutes, but is tightly edited and never runs long.
During it development, directors David O. Russell and Steven Spielberg were attached to direct it, before they both departed and Eastwood finally ended up doing it: It is a rich, complex and moving experience, a very masculine and poignant film, very much Eastwood, - at his best, - and I think we should be happy that it ended up being him directing it. 
If this film has somehow escaped you until now, go see it in a cinema immediately, because this one will stand the test of time with the very best.

Related posts:

Clint Eastwood: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
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] 

The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story
City Heat (1984) - Eastwood and Reynolds wrestle dispassionately in Benjamin's messy period affair 
Tightrope (1984) - An undervalued Clint Eastwood sex killer thriller (actor)
Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business! (actor)
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller (actor)
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It! (actor)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) or, Killer in a Poncho (actor)

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 58.8 mil. $
Box office: 428.1 mil. $ and counting
= Huge hit
[American Sniper is mostly a US phenomenon, where it has had first a spectacular limited release and then a similarly incredible wide one: Besides being Eastwood's most successful film to date and the 3rd highest-grossing film of 2014, it is also the highest grossing war film in the US ever. (If adjusted for inflation, it is bested by Saving Private Ryan though.) It has made 319 mil. $ in North America currently, which is more than all the other Best Film nominees of this year combined!]

What do you think of American Sniper?

The day after the day after... The Oscars 2015

I feel partly victorious after this year's ceremony, given that Film Excess' prognosis was 62 % correct this year (13/21), which is a lot better than last year's, (33 % or 7/21). Only partly since it mostly wasn't my favorites that won.

Here's a recap:

J. K. Simmons won Best Supporting Actor for Whiplash; Patricia Arquette Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood, probably the night's most deserved win in my opinion.
The tiny jazz drama Whiplash impressed by also taking Best Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars. 
Film Excess favorite American Sniper underwhelmed by only getting the Sound Editing Oscar: The film was snubbed, regrettably, in what looks like an overly liberal Academy's trying to hit the politically correct marks instead of honoring a truly great American movie.
Another Film Excess favorite, The Grand Budapest Hotel, took 4 'technical' Oscars: Production Design, Make-up and Hair, Costumes and Score (2 time nominee Alexandre Desplat (also nominated this year for The Imitation Game.)
Julianne Moore won Best Actress, as expected, for her role as a woman struggling with Alzheimer's Disease in Still Alice. British Eddie Redmayne surprised by getting Best Actor for his turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Common and John Legend won Best Song for their Glory from Selma and delivered one of the evening's political acceptance speeches, basically stating that America is still a racist country against African-Americans ... Interstellar won Best Visual Effects; Disney's Big Hero 6 Best Animation; Citizenfour Best Documentary; British Graham Moore Best Adapted Screenplay for his conventional Imitation Game script, and Polish nun-drama Ida won for Best Foreign Film.
As the above indicates, the Oscars were scattered over a number of films this year, but the evening's biggest winner was without doubt the bemusing Birdman: Though it won 4 statuettes like Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman's were by far the more prestigious: Best Film, Original Screenplay, Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki won for the second year in a row (after last year's Gravity, he was again honored for his acrobatically impressive 'show' photography in Birdman's one-shot illusion concept)) and Best Director: Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu, who was snubbed for his masterpiece Babel (2006), which only won for Best Score.
The short winners were Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 (Documentary Short), Feast (Animated Short) and Phone Call (Live Action Short).

Did the right movies win? - (Mostly) No.
The suspiciously hip, slick satire Birdman was the choice of cool admiration, while American Sniper and especially Boyhood was slighted; both should definitely have won more. The people behind 5-time nominee Foxcatcher, who all went home empty-handed, must also feel somewhat overlooked.

The host of the year, Neil Patrick Harris, was a definite flop. After an opening song that was forgotten before it was over, Harris wise-cracked his way through the ceremony with glib, forgettable jokes. He tried to stand out by poking fun at Birdman by doing Michael Keaton's 'underpants run', but succeeded only in getting some generous laughs and applause from the schmoozing audience. His 'big' joke was to get Octavia Spencer to watch over a box containing his Oscar predictions for the entire show ... They turned out to be very accurate, 'proving' either that the show is depressingly predictable, or that Harris is a host with extremely insufficient powers as an entertaining ditto. His scatter-shot, lackluster approach seemed lazy and uninspired. - He should not get a second chance.
But he wasn't the show's only problem: Most of the presenters were attractive but really dull stars, obviously primarily focused on blowing up their chests and looking pretty. - Where were the comedians? - The singing? (Besides Lady Gaga's Sound of Music tribute and the Best Song nominees.) - The surprises? - Memorable moments?
Unfortunately, the Oscars 2015 was a snoozer, if ever there was one.

Oscars 2015: Prognosis and Film Excess' favorites

Tonight is the night of the 87th annual Academy Awards, hosted this year by the handsome, entertaining Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother (2005-14)).
Below follows a list of most of the nominated films and performers.
Red marks the person or film I expect will win.
To the right is indicated which is Film Excess' favorite.

Best Sound Mixing

American Sniper Film Excess' favorite
Birdman
Interstellar
Unbroken
Whiplash

Best Sound Editing

American Sniper Film Excess' favorite
Birdman
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Unbroken

Best Visual Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar Film Excess' favorite
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Best Make-up and Hair

Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel Film Excess' favorite
Guardians of the Galaxy

Best Production Design

The Grand Budapest Hotel Film Excess' favorite
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Mr. Turner

Best Costume Design

The Grand Budapest Hotel Film Excess' favorite
Inherent Vice
Into the Woods
Maleficent
Mr. Turner 

Best Song

Selma
Begin Again Film Excess' favorite
The Lego Movie
Beyond the Lights
Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me

Best Editing

Boyhood
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Whiplash
American Sniper Film Excess' favorite

Best Animated Film

The Boxtrolls
Big Hero 6
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea Film Excess' favorite
The Tale of Princess Kaguya 

Best Documentary

Citizenfour
Finding Vivian Maier Film Excess' favorite
Last Days in Vietnam
The Salt of the Earth
Virunga

Best Supporting Actress

Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) Film Excess' favorite
Laura Dern (Wild)
Keira Knightley (The Imitation Game)
Emma Stone (Birdman)
Meryl Streep (Into the Woods)

Best Supporting Actor

Robert Duvall (The Judge)
Ethan Hawke (Boyhood) Film Excess' favorite
Edward Norton (Birdman)
Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher)
J. K. Simmons (Whiplash)

Best Adapted Script

American Sniper Film Excess' favorite
Inherent Vice
The Imitation Game
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash 

Best Score

The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel Film Excess' favorite
Interstellar
The Theory of Everything
Mr. Turner

Best Cinematography

Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel Film Excess' favorite
Mr. Turner
Unbroken
Ida

Best Foreign Film

Tangerines
Ida Film Excess' favorite
Leviathan
Wild Tales
Timbuktu

Best Actress

Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)
Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything)
Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)
Julianne Moore (Still Alice) Film Excess' favorite
Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

Best Actor

Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game)
Bradley Cooper (American Sniper) Film Excess' favorite
Michael Keaton (Birdman)
Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)

Best Original Screenplay

Boyhood Film Excess' favorite
Birdman
Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Nightcrawler

Best Director

Richard Linklater (Boyhood) Film Excess' favorite
Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Birdman)
Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher)
Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game)

Best Film

American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood Film Excess' favorite
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

NOTE:

The short film categories are left out, because I have no qualified opinion about them.
These guesses are just that. Guesses. And they will most likely be shown wrong (a good deal of them in any case) in a few hours. Then again, they may also all come true.

- Have a great Oscar evening and night 2015!

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) or, Gill-Man Begins!

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One of the colorful, sexually charged posters for Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon

QUICK REVIEW:

A rock mission on the Amazon river gets altered dramatically, when they discover that a local legend, 'the gill man', is not merely a legend but a real, strange, strong, homicidal creature!

Creature features neat photography (by William E. Snyder (The Conqueror (1956))), including underwater footage, but it is a severely dated movie.
Its heavy motif score gets repeated almost in eternity to the monster's hand, rising up... Score by uncredited Henry Mancini (The Square Jungle (1955)), Hans J. Salter (Red Sundown (1955)) and Herman Stein (The Mole People (1956)).
The film is not really scary, but often involuntarily humorous and also not exactly wild in, for instance, its character inventions, (script by Harry Essex (Dragnet (1947)) and Arthur A. Ross (The Great Race (1965))).
Creature from the Black Lagoon is directed by 50's sci-fi champ Jack Arnold (Tarantula (1955)); it is an entertaining but essentially overrated monster horror sci-fi.

A wonderful PR still for Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.3 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[The film premiered in Detroit in February and then opened on a regional basis on different dates, in 'flat' form as well as in 3D in larger downtown theaters, although the 50's 3D phenomenon was already dying out at the time. Fans of the film have been dreaming of seeing it in decent 3D for decades, which seems to have been realized in 2012. The film has two initial sequels, and a reboot has been ricocheting around Hollywood for decades now without happening.]

What do you think of Creature from the Black Lagoon?

Cedar Rapids (2011) or, Insurance-Man

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Ed Helms looking like a moron, frankly, on the poster for Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids

QUICK REIVEW:

Upheaval is coming to a small town insurance company, and a childish employee gets sent to the important award conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Here he learns a thing or two and gets forced to step up.

Cedar Rapids is a low-budget comedy, which looks like a low-budget comedy and is about people in the insurance business ... In other words, it is a pretty unsexy film starring Ed Helms (The Hangover (2009)), whom I didn't think was particularly funny in it.
The film gets lifted by John C. Reilly (Carnage (2011)), and it has some scenes that get laughs, but also many that either miss their targets or are just plain not funny. Its script is written by Phil Johnston (Wreck-It Ralph (2012)).
Cedar Rapids is a thin feel-good comedy that is a near unofficial spin-off of the spectacularly successful Hangover. Perhaps my main issue with it was that I didn't relate to Helm's protagonist at all.
It is directed by the talented Puerto-Rican director Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt (2009)), who most recently made the underwhelming Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014).

John C. Reilly, Ed Helms and Isiah Whitlock Jr. in Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids

Watch the trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 6.8 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[The few foreign numbers I can find suggest that the film also did not set any foreign markets on fire: It made 0.5 mil. $ in the UK, the foreign market where it apparently did best. The film was shot in Michigan due to a more lucrative tax credit offered there. Although I can't know for sure without cost information, it looks like it was a big flop.]

What do you think of Cedar Rapids?

Coach Carter (2005) or, Basketball and Beyond

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+ Best Sports Movie of the Year

Samuel L. Jackson's stopping the basketball on the poster for Thomas Carter's Coach Carter carries symbolic weight for the story of the film

QUICK REVIEW:

Carter is a veteran basketball champion, who now takes the challenge of training the basketball team of his old high school. But for Carter, success at ball isn't enough for the young men. His high ambitions bring him at a collision course with just about everyone.

Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction (1994)) is excellent as the proud, disciplined title hero, and he gets backed up here by a wealth of handsome young men like Robert Ri'chard (House of Wax (2005)), Antwon Tanner (One Tree Hill (2003-12)) and Channing Tatum (Side Effects (2013)) as well as Ashanti (Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)). This partly MTV Films production is also very enamored with its long string of contemporary (censored) hip-hop hits. - If any of the elements mentioned thus far are of interest to you, you should check out Coach Carter.
As the film takes its 3rd act leap, its conflicts unfortunately begin to repeat themselves in Mark Schwann (Whatever It Takes (2000)) and John Gatins' (Flight (2012)) script.
Still, Carter is a film with heart and sense behind its true story, and I couldn't help but getting happy in its company, despite its exaggerated pathos.
It is directed by Thomas Carter (When the Game Stands Tall (2014)). 

 

Related post:

 

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the great trailer for the film here

Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 76.6 mil. $
= Minor hit
[The film went # 1 in the US with a 24.2 mil. $ opening weekend, ending its 16-week domestic run with 67.2 mil. $, accounting for a whopping 88 % of the total gross. It seems to me that Coach Carter's distributors should have been able to scrape a better result together for the film internationally.]

What do you think of Coach Carter?

Cleaner (2008, video) or, Suit-Wearing Papa Cleaner-Man!

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One of the dark posters for Renny Harlin's Cleaner

QUICK REVIEW:

An ex-cop runs a cleaning company, which specializes in cleaning after deaths. He now takes an assignment to clean up after a murder that makes him start his own private investigation. - But his own past isn't spotless either ...

The excellent cast of Samuel L. Jackson (Django Unchained (2012)), Robert Forster (Jackie Brown (1997)), Ed Harris (A History of Violence (2005)), Eva Mendes (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)) and Luis Guzmán (The Last Stand (2013)) make this mediocre story worth seeing.
It is directed by Finnish Hollywood director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea (1999)) and written by Matthew Aldrich (El Patron (2016), pre-production). Some of Harlin's flash-editing ploys hit home, and others seem ridiculous.
Cleaner seems like commissioned work without any particular heart or engagement behind its storytelling, (which is a recurring problem for Harlin, whose career counts several films with similar issues.)
The ending SPOILER has a forced narration with lots of heavy-duty value concepts overlain, which Cleaner as a film just can't hold.
Harlin is premiering an ambitious new film later this year, Skiptrace with Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville, which I am sure it is hoped can become a cross-cultural (US-Chinese) smash.

Related posts:

2008 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2008 in films - according to Film Excess

Watch the trailer for the DVD release here

Cost: Estimated 25 mil. $
Box office: 4 mil. $ (foreign)
= Mega-flop
[Cleaner was released straight-to-DVD in the US, where it sold 400k units, accruing 7.8 mil. $ to the financial shipwreck the movie became. Harlin's career has suffered, and he has had to get by doing b-movies and TV since. Skiptrace is the major movie that has to prove his worth in the new Hollywood order, or perhaps cast him out for good.]

What do you think of Cleaner?
Any thoughts on Harlin's career?