Inglourious Basterds (2009) - The Movies take revenge on Nazi scum

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The stars stand out on the stylish poster for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

A group of Jewish American soldiers known as the Basterds and a Jewish French cinema owner, who has had her family obliterated by the Nazis, join forces to blow up her cinema at the night when it will contain Hitler, Goebbels and more top Nazi leaders.

Inglourious Basterds is the 8th feature from Tennessean master writer-director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction (1994)). It is his first major film, (that is, not counting his first, My Best Friend's Birthday (1987), which I have yet to see), which I at first viewing thought was a bad movie. On second viewing I have revised this opinion some, though I still can't profess to really like this war dramedy exploitation escapade that puts a fictional end to the Nazis of WWII, and I will definitely still call it overrated.
Brad Pitt (Babel (2006)) is good as Basterd leader, lieutenant Aldo Raine, and he is featured in most of the film's funny moments. The title of the film is a reference to Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards/Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato (1978), but Inglourious Basterds is not a remake of the latter film, and the strange title, which deliberately contains two spelling mistakes (an extra u in inglorious and an e instead of an a in bastards) may be a way of setting the newer film aside from Castellari's, or of securing it against any copyright liability in connection with the older film.
Inglourious Basterds has some good ideas in it but is terribly overlong and demonstratively pompous. Christoph Waltz (Our God's Brother (1997)) won his first Oscar for his energetic, endlessly aggravating performance as psychopath pedant colonel Hans Landa. Co-starring actor-filmmaker Eli Roth (Rock of Ages (2012)) directed the Nation's Pride propaganda film in Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino's wrestling with WWII is opulent, enjoyable, bloated and tense.

Related posts:

Quentin Tarantino: 2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Django Unchained (2012) - Tarantino's gutsy, colorful 'Southern' 
Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
Death Proof (2007) - Tarantino's awesome, rubber-burning Grindhouse homage 
Desperado (1995) - Rodriguez' second Mexico actioner is a sexy, latino fireball (actor) 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 70 mil. $
Box office: 321.4 mil. $
= Big hit
[Inglourious Basterds premiered 20 May (Cannes) and runs 153 minutes. Tarantino wrote the first script in 1998 but struggled with the film's ending and made Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007) and other smaller projects in the meantime, believing that Inglourious Basterds would be a masterpiece. Casting the previously widely unknown Austrian-German actor Waltz, Tarantino has said, "gave me my movie." Shooting took place from October 2008 - February 2009 in Paris, France and in Germany, including in Brandenburg's Studio Babelsberg. SPOILER Tarantino has stated that he used his own hands in the scene where Diane Kruger (Mr. Nobody (2009)) gets strangled. The final draft script for the film was leaked online prior to the film's release. Promotion of the film in Germany required digitally altering posters to remove the swastikas, which are illegal to flaunt in public but allowed in works of art such as in the film itself. The film opened #1 to a 38 mil. $ first weekend in North America, Tarantino's best opening up to that point. It spent 5 consecutive weeks in the top 5 (#1-#2-#2-#2-#3) there and grossed 120.5 mil. $ (37.5 % of the total gross). The film also did terrific business abroad; its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 24.9 mil. $ (7.7 %) and Germany with 23.5 mil. $ (7.3 %). It became Tarantino's highest-grossing film until beaten by his next, Django Unchained (2012). Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star rating, translating to two notches higher than this review. The film was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning one for Waltz as Best Supporting Actor. It lost Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Sound Mixing, Editing and Sound Editing to Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and Cinematography to James Cameron's masterpiece Avatar. It was also nominated for 4 Golden Globes, winning one, 6 BAFTAs, winning one; it won Waltz the Best Actor award in Cannes, a David di Donatello award, was one of National Board of Review's Top 10 Films of the Year, along with many other awards and honors. Inglourious Basterds is certified fresh at 89 % with a 7.8 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Inglourious Basterds?

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) - Reeves and Co. astonish with truly spectacular film that finishes the Ape circle

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+ Best Sci-Fi Movie of the Year

Without giving much away, this poster for Matt Reeves' War for the Planet of the Apes indicates the seriousness that marks the film

War for the Planet of the Apes is the 9th movie in the Apes franchise, following the 5 in the original series (1968-73), Tim Burton's unsuccessful reboot of the original film, Planet of the Apes (2001) and the two previous entries in the new 'trilogy', (which may not be a trilogy because more chapters could manifest depending on the performance of War), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It is written by Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard (2007)) and New-Yorker master co-writer/director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield (2008)), who also directed the previous film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

When ape leader Caesar's wife and oldest son are killed by an evil human colonel and his forces, he leaves his group on a quest for revenge that takes huge tolls and teaches him more about himself and the colonel.

It seems just plain unlikely that War is as good as it is. Following the somewhat disappointing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I missed Dawn and have yet to watch it. War for the Planet of the Apes is the only Apes sequel or reboot to reach the height of the very first film, which broke new grounds for science fiction in terms of scope and technical elements (effects, costumes, makeup and prosthetics) and showed its possibilities with a thought-provoking - and much copied - story of humans, exploration and apes with deeper, underlying, very timely themes of racism, segregation, democracy, science, religion and man-created (nuclear) doom.
In War for the Planet of the Apes, we meet a perverted, militarized, fascism-resembling army gathered around a colonel who has sacrificed his own humanity in a quest to save the human species. - The type of wrong decision that makes a leader dangerous. Elements of the story are as universal as they are thematically timeless: War and destruction; fight for survival against the stranger, the other kind or race and its progeny vs. peaceful co-existence and a respect for earth and the universe and the sufferings and losses of others.
The powerful narrative is told in a cinematography (by Michael Seresin (Foxes (1980))) with a delicious kind of texture and depth to it, combined with a sound universe and with a great, grand score (by Michael Giacchino (Star Trek Into Darkness (2013))) that seem to have a direct line to the original classic film. War doesn't have a single showy camera tracking or an unnecessary cut; it is fixed, most of the time, on the faces of the apes and humans involved in the scene, and its relaxed pace feels assured in the strength of these faces, lines spoken and the underlying narrative. There is something a bit old-fashioned about this, but in the best way possible: It takes its time to tell its compelling story in its own pace, and again and again scenes astonish and show real depth that would have been lost with any other, faster, flashier, more 'current' approach.
Of course a primary part of the spectacle that this huge film also contains lies in these very faces, especially in the faces of the apes, which in War actually seem to have more humanity and relatable emotion to them than the faces of the humans, who are for the most part unwise brutes. It is impossible to overstate the brilliance of the visual effects accomplishments in War for the Planet of the Apes, especially in creating the faces of the ape characters, which are modeled using acting performances from a talented cast. It is inevitably impossible to ascertain for an outsider, just how much of the greatly affecting performance onscreen is thanks to the actor involved and how much to the team of visual effects wizards who crafted the ape, but Andy Serkis (Wild Bill (2011)), who has made it into his personal specialty to give life to later animated characters in this way, (he was Gollum, King Kong and Captain Haddock, among others), is certainly deeply felt in his truly great lead performance as Caesar, a portrayal that is as dramatic as they come, simply, and deserves great recognition. The other ape performances that go over and beyond what I have ever seen before and truly touch audiences include Steve Zahn (A Perfect Getaway (2009)) as Bad Ape, Judy Greer (Californication (2007-12)) as Cornelia and especially Karin Konoval (The Quality of Life (2008), TV movie) as Maurice. War also has a terrific child performance from Amiah Miller (Lights Out (2016)) as Nova and Woody Harrelson (Play It to the Bone (1999)) a magnetic lump of muscle and mean determination as the Colonel, a character with clear linkage to Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz character in Apocalypse Now (1979).
For those familiar with the original film, War ties neat strings that lead up to the universe that meets Charlton Heston's astronaut Taylor in the first film, which must be some 20-25 years after the events of this film.
War for the Planet of the Apes is a rare science-fiction film that is both compelling, breathtaking, deeply moving and meaningful. Furthermore, you are guaranteed to regret it, if you miss seeing this in a cinema, so make sure that you don't!

Related posts:

The Apes franchise: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) or, Ape 3.1: Mad Apes!
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) or, The Final Ape!  
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) or, The Ape Uprising   
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) - The enjoyable if farfetched second Apes sequel
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) - Decent follow-up to the SF milestone  
Matt Reeves: Top 10: Best franchise movies

2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2017 in films - according to Film Excess
Cloverfield (2008) or, It Tore Her Head Off!

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 186.4 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[War for the Planet of the Apes premiered 11 July (UK and Ireland) and runs 140 minutes. Bomback and Reeves were given a longer period to write the script for War than they had been given for Dawn, and they saw and were inspired by countless classic movies, including all the Apes films, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Great Escape, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Apocalypse Now and others. Shooting took place in British Columbia, Canada, including Vancouver, from October 2015 - March 2016. The film opened #1 to a 56.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, significantly lower than Dawn's 72.6 mil. $ debut, and took a sharp 62.9 % drop in its second week, dropping to #4. The film has yet to open in several major markets, including Germany, France, Japan and South Korea, but it has not gotten a Chinese release, a major problem for such an expensive film, which is suffering an underwhelming performance in North America. Reeves and Bomback are already booked to write and direct The Batman, starring Ben Affleck, Jeremy Irons, J.K. Simmons and Joe Manganiello, which should shoot in spring 2018. War for the Planet of the Apes is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8.1/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of War for the Planet of the Apes?

Hung - season 1 (2009) - Ray Drecker overcomes bad circumstances in mostly promising dramedy

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The simple poster for Colette Burson and Dmitry Lipkin's Hung S1 gets its basic premise across effectively

Hung season 1 is a ten episodes long dramedy series, with each episode averaging 28 minutes, from husband-wife creator team Dmitry Lipkin (The Riches (2007-08)) and Colette Burson (Permanent (2017), writer-director). 

The series focuses on high school basket ball teacher, divorcee and middle-aged father Ray Drecker from the Detroit area, his struggles and exploits as a gigolo.

Following here is a short recap of the developments through the episodes of the season:

1. Ray Drecker's life has taken a downwards turn: His wife has left him, he has suffered kidney stones. His uninsured house burns down due to sketchy electric wiring, and his teenage children move away to live with their mother and her new husband Ronnie, while Ray lives in a tent on his property.
2. Ray meets unsuccessful poet Tanya Skagle in a motivational class for becoming a millionaire that he attends. She wants to conquer the world with her 'poetry bread', and the idea of prostituting Ray comes up. Ray accepts Tanya's former colleague Lenore (Rebecca Creskoff (Bates Motel (2014), TV-series)) as his first customer, a domineering woman whose job is to shop for rich people, but she loses his wallet during the commanding encounter. A firing round is announced at Ray's workplace, but he is only cautioned to stop cursing. His twin children Damon and Darby express a wish to move back to their dad.
3. Ray's ex-wife Jessica buys a sick dog for her family. Ray has a beef with his affluent neighbor. His pimp Tanya struggles with first customer Lenore, who refuses to pay for the sex and has even given herself a 400 $ commission. In exchange she gives Tanya some numbers of possible future clients.
4. Ray's students donate their earnings from a charity car wash to their down-on-his-luck teacher, but he is still unable to purchase the pillar that is necessary for the renovation of his home. Ray's second client (Margo Martindale (Beautiful Creatures (2013))) at first makes him ill, because she isn't immediately attractive, but on their second try, they achieve success.
5. Ray's third client, complicated blond Jemma (Natalie Zea (Under the Dome (2013), TV-series)), wants something with love and fate involved, which Ray finds difficult to improvise into existence on the spot. Jessica and Ron have the sick dog put to sleep, and Tanya gets rejected by motivational teacher Floyd (Steve Hytner (Should've Been Romeo (2012))), who is himself a major failure.
6. Jemma is proving to be a rather strange client; she pays Ray to accompany her to her therapist, and he is intrigued. - To the point where he kisses her in public, when his basketball team reap a rare victory, and Jessica and kids Damon and Darby stand gazing at them.
7. Tanya is in low spirits and hooks up with a photo artist, who hangs around the following day for two visits to her mother, while she also attempts to write poetry again. Meanwhile Ray tries to make it as his own pimp. Jemma is not interested in a conventional relationship, and Ray's neighbor's hot wife has sex with him but her payment turns out to just be to keep her husband from writing any more citations of complaint with Ray's property and behavior to the city authorities.
8. More troubles, as Ray visits Jessica and Ron for dinner. He also contracts a new, well-paying customer (Lauren Weedman (Looking: The Movie (2016), TV movie)), and Tanya continues to struggle with life.
9. Ray and Tanya are unsure of how to get more clients. Lenore suggests raising the prizes, and takes Jessica shopping (without realizing she is Ray's ex-wife), while Tanya suggests lowering them. Ray's son Damon might be gay, and he talks to Darby about it in a really funny scene on a climbing wall.
10. Tanya is very discouraged and freaks out about flies in her home and her runaway artist boyfriend. Ray discovers that he is up for a budget-dictated layoff from work and gives in to Lenore's continued offer of assistance, prompting that Ray and Tanya's 'Happiness Consultants' gigolo business becomes a three-person venture. Ray fucks his neighbor again. Lenore unknowingly books Jessica as a client for Ray, who ultimately leaves the appointment, before he would have revealed his new job to his ex-wife.

Hung begins very successfully with a hilarious, well-written and well-directed pilot that reveals that it has more content than its title, which refers to Ray's natural-born gift of being well-endowed between his legs, indicates.
Thomas Jane (The Buzzer (2006)) and Jane Adams (Silver Bullets (2011)) are both eminent and perfectly cast as Ray and Tanya, and Anne Heche (Nip/Tuck (2005), TV-series) is also quite good as Jessica, although her character isn't as fleshed out as theirs and talks a bit strange at times.
The show loses some of its freshness about half way through the season and becomes, at times, somewhat humdrum. It isn't above throwing in some gratuitous but not too lengthy shots of eroticism during some of its sex scenes, and it picks up again towards its last episode, ending in a very good and vibrant place. Hung has a couple of good leading characters (Ray and Tanya) and creates many funny situations. The first season is a mostly promising start.

Best episode:

1: Pilot - written by Burson & Lipkin; directed by master filmmaker Alexander Payne (The Descendants (2011)), who also served as an executive producer on the show
Ray's life is in a bad way. He attends a self-help class and locates his personal "winning tool".

Related posts:
 
Alexander Payne: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]   
Nebraska (2013) or, Father and Son
Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
The Descendants (2011) - Payne and Clooney score with a Hawaiian story of heartbreak, loss and family  
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] 
About Schmidt (2002) or, Dear Ndugu ...  
Election (1999) - Payne's high school politics dramedy

Cost: Unknown
Box office: None - TV-series
= Uncertain (but should likely be counted as a cable TV hit)
[Hung S1 premiered 28 June and ended its first run 13 September, totaling an estimated 280 minutes. Shooting took place in Michigan, including in Detroit. The season was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award and two Golden Globes (for Jane and Adams). I haven't been able to find the season's average HBO ratings, only that they were higher than season 2 and 3's average. The series declined in viewership until it was canceled after season 3. Season 2 boasted 2.46 mil. viewers, so S1 was at least higher than that. Hung was definitely not a highly expensive series in HBO's context, so its first season should probably be counted as a cable TV hit. Hung S1 is the series' highest rated on Rotten Tomatoes: It is rotten at 56 % with a 5.79/10 critical average.]

What do you think of Hung S1?

Dunkirk (2017) - Nolan champions cinema with masterful war movie

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+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best English Movie of the Year + Most Suspenseful Movie of the Year + Best War Movie of the Year

Fionn Whitehead finds himself in a hellish inferno on this poster for Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk

Summer 1940, France: WWII is raging in its early stages, and a huge number of Allied soldiers, mainly English, are pushed towards the long beach stretch of Dunkirk. Evacuation Operation Dynamo is launched.

Dunkirk is the 10th feature from British master writer-director Christopher Nolan (Inception (2010)), and it is a beast of a movie. It grabs you with its very first scene, - which shows us one of the film's leads, young Fionn Whitehead (Him (2016), TV miniseries) fleeing a rain of bullets to the barren beach, - and it doesn't let you off its hook again until it ends. Even thereafter, it is sure to stay in the minds and hearts of everyone who sees it.
It is violently intense, comparable to Steven Spielberg's masterpiece Saving Private Ryan (1998) in this respect, yet in focusing on this gigantic retreat, which must be among the largest in human history, (400,000 British troops are said to have been rescued in the 9-day long military and civil effort), it is really more about survival than combat.
The film has been called impressionist, and it is an auspicious description of it. We follow the major undertaking in three scenarios: One from the viewpoint of a few British fighter planes which are heading over towards Dunkirk, facing enemies along the way. One from the viewpoint of a young cadet, who as thousands of others is a part of the evacuation effort and finds himself in mortal danger several times. The last scenario is from the viewpoint of one of the civilian boats that sailed across with brave upstanding citizen seamen at the helms, risking their lives to bring home as many of their temporarily beaten countrymen as possible. Dunkirk lets us go along with these men and see and feel what they did during this calamitous situation, as it unfolds. Although its scope and ambition seems also comparable to older WWII films such as The Longest Day (1962), Dunkirk does not burden its portrayal with the political discussions behind the evacuation, neither with the war's experience from the German nor other nation's soldiers' point of view. Because of this, and because it portrays a British effort of defeat but also of humanistic splendor, some critique the film as being nationalistic and restricted. I don't believe that the inevitably proud English feeling that runs through the film robs it of any power, and I believe the criticism mostly grows out of an unhappiness with the Great Britain that is today.
Contrarily, Dunkirk shows an honest and tremendously powerful and intimate portrayal of a specific historic event, while also implicitly schooling its audiences in the inhumane nature and the horror of war, when lives become nothing but enemy numbers, and the world nothing but a battlefield.
Dunkirk is shot on glorious 65mm and 65mm IMAX film stock, making for a huge picture that has an encompassing feel to it; the flying sequences in particular are dizzying and among the finest such ever created. Never do we sense an artificially rendered part of an image here. The cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema (Her (2013)) is astounding, and the film's editing by Lee Smith (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)) is masterful. Dunkirk is almost too exciting, SPOILER and especially its scenes of getting trapped underwater are sure to go straight into the nightmares of thousands if not millions of people. Another element that pushes the film to its constant high is its first-rate, very loud sound design coupled with a ticking, unrelenting tension-building score by Hans Zimmer (The Boss Baby (2017)).
Dunkirk, in part due to its structure, is not primarily an actors' film, but it still has many fine performances: Newcomers Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard (Bitter Harvest (2017)), pop-star Harry Styles, Tom Glynn (The Last Post (2017), TV-series) and Barry Keoghan (The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)) do well and show promises for the future. They are supported by veterans who deliver portrayals full of integrity and dignity: Mark Rylance (Anonymous (2011)), Tom Hardy (This Means War (2012)), Cillian Murphy (Sunshine (2007)) and Kenneth Branagh (Five Children and It (2004)), relishing a paternal performance as Commander Bolton.
Dunkirk is what cinemas are made for. It is suspenseful and emotionally arresting to a fault. Furthermore it stays with you. It is a war movie for the ages and possibly the year's best film.

Related posts:

Christopher Nolan: Top 10: Best UK movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2017 in films - according to Film Excess
Interstellar (2014) - Nolan heads to space in opulent, exciting epic
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or, Batman and the Storm, Darkness, Anarchy, Evil, Depression
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Inception (2010) - Nolan's best is a grand piece of action sci-fi, perfectly awesome nonsense 
The Dark Knight (2008) - Nolan's best Batman  
Batman Begins (2005) or, Modern, Dark, Smooth Batman  

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 105.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Dunkirk premiered 13 July (London) and runs 106 minutes. Nolan reportedly got the idea for the film 25 years ago but waited until he was a veteran of huge blockbusters to launch his vision, based on a 76-page script. Shooting took place from May 2016 in France, including Dunkirk, as well as in Holland, England and California. 12 of the boats used for filming had actually been used in the evacuation. 6,000 extras worked on the film. The film opened #1 to a 50.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America. Dunkirk is certified fresh at 95 % with an 8.9/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Dunkirk?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) or, The Anemic British Teen Wizards Fly Again!

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+ Most Undeserved Hit Movie of the Year

The three young wizard chums are with Dumbledore in an unusually grey and hostile-looking London on this poster for David Yates' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry must help Dumbledore extract teacher Slughorn's knowledge of Voldemort's childhood, and he and pal Ron are also occupied quite a bit with some young ladies in this the 6th Potter movie, in which Draco, Snape and Bellatrix are villainous.

David Yates (The Legend of Tarzan (2016)) returns as Potter director, after also helming its preceding chapter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), with a script by Steve Kloves (Wonder Boys (2000)), adapting the same-titled 2005 novel by J.K. Rowling (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), screenwriter).
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an extremely dull film. It has an overly simple visual concept of an often greater distance from the camera to the action mixed with many closeups and a color palette that continually cultivates brown, grey and dark tones. It's a very cold serving, as if someone intentionally conjured up brooding, grey clouds for us to stare at for 2½ hour while still insisting that it was broad family entertainment. 
The many scenes that imply some romance never lead to the sex that the series now so obviously lacks, its characters having now clearly passed the age for their maturity into this natural activity. Instead of this, our now fully grown wizard trio, (youngest of whom is Emma Watson (Beauty and the Beast (2017)), who was 19 at the film's release), carry on pitifully in this very long and very thinly plotted cup of bitter, English tea.
Among the few mitigating elements are Jim Broadbent (Valiant (2005)) and Maggie Smith's (Ladies in Lavender (2004)) exquisite performances as two Hogwarts teachers.
SPOILER Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at least seems to accidentally end on an honest note: Ron states in conclusion that "all was for nothing", before an ugly CGI-rendered bird flies away in the horizon. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince truly is a futile piece of work, and a puzzling audience phenomenon.

Related posts:

David Yates/The Harry Potter franchise: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010) - Harry's abysmally dour and long penultimate chapter

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 a trailer for the film here

Cost: 250 mil. $ (+ an estimated 155 mil. $ on marketing and distribution costs)
Box office: 934.4 mil. $
= Big hit
[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premiered 6 July (Tokyo, Japan) and runs 153 minutes. Shooting took place from September 2007 - May 2008 in Norway, Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. The film opened #1 to a 77.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent 4 consecutive weeks in the top 5 (#1-#2-#2-#4) and grossed 301.9 mil. $ (32.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 84 mil. $ (9 %) and Japan with 83.7 mil. $ (9 %). It broke records for best midnight showing, highest single-day worldwide gross (104 mil. $) and biggest ever five-day opening worldwide (394.7 mil. $). It was the 2nd highest-grossing film of 2009, behind James Cameron's masterpiece Avatar, but only the 5th highest-grossing Potter movie, and if the extraordinary marketing and distribution costs are taken into account, the film would actually rank as a minor flop theatrically. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to two notches better than this one. Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe (Trainwreck (2015)) has said in a 2014 interview that the film is, for him, " hard to watch", since he is "just not very good in it." He has also revealed that he was drunk during shooting of some of the latter Potter films. The film was nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar (Bruno Delbonnel), which it lost to Mauro Fiore for Avatar. It was also nominated for 2 BAFTAs, won an AFI award and a slew of other awards. It sold millions of DVDs and Blu-ray, but a gross figure for this is not available. The financing forces involved were happy with Yates to the degree that he got the job of directing the last two films, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011). He also got the gig of directing Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) and is even announced to direct that franchise's following four slated sequels! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is certified fresh at 84 % with a 7.1 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?