Mortdecai (2015) - Comedic wonder Depp creates mirth in divisive Koepp adaptation

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 41.12 mil. $ range

 

 

Johnny Depp is lounged on a chaise longue looking foolish beneath a smug Gwyneth Palthrow on this poster for David Koepp's Mortdecai

Charlie Mortdecai is an anachronistic Brit, an art expert and a bon vivant. - But he is getting to be financially seriously on his tail, and so he agrees to help the MI5 in a case concerning lost art.

 

Mortdecai is written by Eric Aronson (On the Line (2002)), adapting the novel Don't Point that Thing at Me (1972) from the Mortdecai novel series by Kyril Bonfiglioli (All the Tea in China (1978)), and directed by David Koepp (The Trigger Effect (1996)).

The plot (and to some degree the film as such) is enormously forgettable, but blast me if I wasn't entertained and had a fun time while Mortdecai was on. Johnny Depp (Rango (2011)) is the affected title character, an occasion for having ingenious fun with more or less antiquated words and idioms from the English language, - paired with slapstick and vulgar elements, which hit the mark often for this reviewer, (if for few others.)

Ewan McGregor (Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)) works well as Mortdecai's 'straight face', and Gwyneth Pathrow (Sylvia (2003)) is a sweet wife to Depp here, while Paul Bettany (Bent (1997)) is a real kick as a clenched-teeth, sex-mad man servant.

Mortdecai is elegantly directed in a laid-back style, which doesn't put the film's action elements in the foreground. Depp is a Peter Sellers-like comedic star here in my opinion.

 

Related post:

 

David Koepp: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

Carlito's Way (1993) - De Palma's best gangster movie (writer)

 

Watch a trailer for the film here 

 

Cost: 60 mil. $

Box office: 47.2 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.78 times its cost)

[Mortdecai premiered 21 January (Belgium, France) and runs 107 minutes. Shooting took place in England, including London, and in California, including Los Angeles, from October 2013 - ?. The film opened #9 to a 4.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it never improved its rank and grossed 7.6 mil. $ (16.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 6.2 mil. $ (13.1 %) and China with 3.5 mil. $ (7.4 %). Koepp returned with You Should Have Left (2020). Depp returned in Black Mass (2015); Palthrow in Nightcap (2016, TV-series) and theatrically in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017); McGregor in Last Days in the Desert (2015). Mortdecai is rotten at 12 % with a 3.50/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Mortdecai?

Molly's Game (2017) - Chastain is luminous in Sorkin's great true-crime debut

♥♥♥♥♥

 

Star Jessica Chastain in an extreme close-up in B/W and shades looks cool AF on the poster for Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game

 

Molly Bloom's career as an Olympic skier collapses with an accident, and a few years later she gets arrested by a small army of FBI agents, now as the leader the country's highest stakes illegal poker game.

Molly's Game is written and directed by debuting great New-Yorker filmmaker Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men (1992, writer)), adapting the same-titled 2014 memoir by the real-life Molly Bloom.

Jessica Chastain (The Color of Time (2012)) is out of this world in the complex, riveting part as the extremely driven and intelligent Bloom, SPOILER who eventually finds herself in over her head in pursuit of a goal that begins to fade in the horizon. She is radiant here as the tough survivor. Idris Elba (Thor (2011)) is good as the sexy attorney who takes her case despite its legally dubious elements.

Sorkin relates the story with dense dialog and a high pace. Molly's Game is grand in width, comparable to a down-played style-wise recent film in the Martin Scorsese tradition, though with a female protagonist, which Sorkin's great script and Chastain's flawless performance never makes a sensational point in and of itself.

There is fun (Chris O'Dowd! (The Program (2015))), dramatically satisfying moments, - Kevin Costner (Dragonfly (2002)) is good as Bloom's psychologist father, - excellent lighting, editing and more. Molly's Game is a splendid piece of work that is more than it may appear.

Related posts:

Aaron Sorkin: The day after the day after ... the 2018 Oscars

Oscars 2018: Predictions and Film Excess' favorites

Moneyball (2011) - Miller makes compelling baseball movie history (co-writer) 

The Social Network (2010) - Fincher's a-hole biopic leaves me cold (and more anti-Facebook than ever) (writer)

A Few Good Men (1992) or, You Can't Handle the Truth! (writer)

 Watch a trailer for the film here 

 

Cost: 30 mil.$

Box office: 59.2 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.97 times its cost)

[Molly's Game premiered 8 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 141 minutes. Bloom approached Sorkin with her book on her own, as he was her favorite writer. Shooting took place in Ontario, including Toronto, and in New York from November 2016 - January 2017. The film opened #19 to a 1.1 mil. $ first weekend in 271 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #7 and in 1,708 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 28.7 mil. $ (48.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 5.8 mil. $ (9.8 %) and France with 4.3 mil. $ (7.3 %). The film was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, lost to James Ivory for Call Me By Your Name. It was also nominated for 2 Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and several other honors. Sorkin returned with The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020, VOD). Chastain returned in Woman Walks Ahead (2017); Elba in The Mountain Between Us (2017); Costner in The Highwaymen (2019). Molly's Game is certified fresh at 82 % with a 7.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Molly's Game?

Riders of Justice/Retfærdighedens Ryttere (2020) - Jensen delivers another explosive charge of idiosyncratic entertainment

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Action Comedy of the Year + Best Revenge Movie of the Year 

 

Four armed men and a teenage girl are standing in a barn on the smile-inducing poster for Anders Thomas Jensen's Riders of Justice

 

Marcus returns from active soldier's duty far away, when his wife's life ends in a mysterious train accident. He struggles to meet their teenager daughter eye to eye, when a couple of strange men turn up to tell him that the accident was no accident.

Riders of Justice is written and directed by great Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen (Flickering Lights/Blinkende Lygter (2001)) with Nikolaj Arcel (Klatretøsen (2002)) contributing story elements.

We are back in classic Jensen turf with a male-dominated story with deformity, pent-up anger, violence and the randomness of existence on the menu. Riders of Justice is a hilarious comedy; it also has a couple of genuinely moving scenes, impressive in their far-out action-comedy context, featuring the mesmerizing talent of Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt /Jagten (2012)) as the beleaguered Marcus and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Kandidaten (2008)) as his new friend Otto, who has gone through a similar ordeal in losing his wife. There is a framing story on the film about a bicycle purchase in Estonia, which is also very neat and finally also moving, helped along by the power of music. (In this case Nicolas Bro (Dræberne fra Nibe (2017)) on a French horn (!), which sounds beautiful!!)

The film is punchy and doesn't duck neither action nor dramatically related scenes and dialog. The world is a dark and ruthless place, but it packs both good and bad. The plot may be said to have more than its fair share of incredible coincidences; but on the same time the conclusion of it cleverly implies that even incredible coincidences do not point to correlations or meanings, necessarily. SPOILER Randomness is the guiding principle often in life, and in this case Marcus and his team kill countless (terrible) criminals based on a faulty deduction of facts.

Personally I still relish Jensen's preceding film most in his body of work, the outrageously weird and funny Men & Chicken/Mænd og Høns (2015), but Riders of Justice is strictly speaking just as good, especially due to the rich gallery of characters that are invoked: Bro as the obese face recognition expert and guns enthusiast; Gustav Lindh (All Inclusive (2017)) as a kind and wise Ukranian trafficking victim who comes under the team's wings; and Lars Brygmann (King's Game/Kongekabale (2004)), who arguably takes the cake as an abuse victim hacker with extraordinary abilities and issues. Andrea Heick Gadeberg (Daniel/Ser Du Månen Daniel (2019)) carries her weight effortlessly as Marcus' strong daughter.

Related posts:

Anders Thomas Jensen: 2020 in films - according to Film Excess

Men & Chicken/Mænd & Høns (2015) - Jensen scores with hilarious cinema bizarro original

The Salvation (2014) - Classic western yarn meets Danish dynamite (co-writer)
Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør (2012) - Bier strikes gold with Italy-set romcom (co-writer)
In a Better World/Hævnen (2010) - Bier's Big Moral Drama lives on its actors' performances (co-writer)
Sprængfarlig Bombe (2006) - The two Jensens' satire is unrefined but hilarious (writer) 
Murk/Mørke (2005) or, Shutter Jutland (co-writer)

The Green Butchers/De Grønne Slagtere (2003) - Great performances in Jensen's hilarious morbid comedy 
Open Hearts/Elsker Dig for Evigt (2002) - Bier's excruciating Dogme chamber drama (writer)

Grev Axel (2001) - Frödin and Gråbøl pull laughter from 18th century-set crazy-comedy (writer) 

The King Is Alive (2000) - Levring's trying desert theatrics (co-writer) 

 

 

Watch a short clip of Brygmann as Lennart from the film here

 

Cost: 39 mil. DKK, approximately 6.24 mil. $

Box office: 2.4 mil. $ and counting

[Riders of Justice was released 19 November (Denmark) and runs 116 minutes. Shooting took place in Funen, Denmark. The film sold 125k tickets in its first weekend in Denmark, where it has topped 150k tickets after less than 10 days and is poised to exceed 750k tickets in coming weeks in the languished China Virus film landscape, possibly becoming Jensen's top-grossing film to date. Due to the pandemic the film does not have releases scheduled in foreign markets yet. Jensen does not have his next project announced yet. Mikkelsen returns in Chaos Walking (2021); Kaas does not have his next gig announced yet. 619 IMDb users have given Riders of Justice a 8.4/10 average rating.]

 

What do you think of Riders of Justice? 

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013) - Mikkelsen simmers in stern historical drama

♥♥♥

 

Mads Mikkelsen with silvery hair, a sword and a sheepskin in a dramatic landscape on the poster for Arnaud des Pallières' Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas

 

Kohlhaas is a merchant in France in the 16th century, who is dealt an injustice by the court and then rejected redress by the legal system, which makes him go his own way and hire a smaller army.

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas is written by Christelle Berthevas (Orpheline (2016)) and co-writer/director/co-editor Arnaud de Pallières (Drancy Avenir (1997)), adapting Heinrich von Kleist's (The Broken Jug/Der Zerbrochne Krug (1808)) novella Michael Kohlhaas (1808), based on the real Michael Kohlhase.

How much should one risk to get satisfaction, and are there limits to what can be forgiven? What is the Christian's relationship to justice in general? These are some of the large themes that this very European film raises. - Very European in that it is littered with long silences, has almost no music and only observes bloodshed from a far away distance. It attracts with a peculiar combination of beautiful nature-set photography and a strong cast led forcefully by good and very photogenic Mads Mikkelsen (Doctor Strange (2016)). His scenes with Denis Lavant (Journey to the West/Xi you (2014)) are the film's best: Here Kohlhaas (Mikkelsen) is questioned spiritually; are you only out for revenge?

Even still the mysterious reality in Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas is very distant from ours, and the film is hard to fully warm up to. SPOILER There is also the matter of the ending, in which the now otherwise satisfied Kohlhaas has his head removed, which seems inscrutable, and makes one leave the film with a 'why?' feeling.

Watch a trailer for the film here with English subtitles

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 813k $

= Uncertain - but certainly a box office disaster

[Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas premiered 24 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 122 minutes. No less than 18 companies and support organs were involved with the financing and production of the film. Shooting took place in France. The film opened #90 to a 3k $ (0.3 % of the total gross) first and only week in 4 theaters in North America, where it was pulled directly from distribution. The 3 biggest markets were France with 371k $ (45.6 %), Germany with 303k $ (37.3 %) and Austria with 54k $ (6.6 %). If made on a scant 5 mil. $ budget, the film the film would have returned 0.16 times its cost. The film won 2/6 César award nominations, among other honors. Pallières returned with Orpheline (2016). Mikkelsen returned in The Salvation (2014). Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas is rotten at 47 % with a 5.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas?

The Meg (2018) - Moments of cruel fun enliven Turteltaub's monster shark feast

♥♥

 

A deliciously splashy color scheme and an eye-popping monster shark visual adorns this fine poster for Jon Turteltaub's The Meg

 

A scientist team gets ready to break through a mist that was believed to be the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But under this veil lies a previously unknown marine animal life, - including a megalodon, which escapes with them up into the open sea!

The Meg is written by Dean Georgaris (Clementine (2014, TV movie)), Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber (RED (2010, both)), adapting Steve Alten's (Domain (2001)) The Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror (1997), and directed by Jon Turteltaub (Think Big (1989)).

Jason Statham (Homefront (2013)) is the intensely looking man, who is brought to the rescue, when the shit hits the fan; apparently to spit wisecracks and participate in some of the year's worst dramatic scenes together with Li Bingbing's (Cat and Mouse (2003)) daughter in the film, who gets a lot of unnatural dialog to doodle around in here. The racially (demographically sales motivated) diversified team also consists of the science station's head engineer, played by Ruby Rose (Pitch Perfect 3 (2017)) who looks like a starving, punky supermodel... A lot of The Meg takes place in Asia, again for commercial reasons, as giant monster movies are especially big business there.

Rainn Wilson (Mom (2019-20)) is very good as a douchebag billionaire, who is awarded a death scene which is among the film's few highlights. A late in the film catastrophe scene on a crowded beach is pretty much the other highlight, and you can guess what happens.

We never feel anything for the protagonist or the extras in The Meg, which means that it never becomes exciting or terrifying in anything resembling the heights we have experienced in Jaws (1975), but it does cultivate its own brand of 'mean fun' without shame and scores some points there.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 130 - 178 mil. $ (different reports)

Box office: 530.2 mil. $

= Box office success (returned between 2.97 - 4.07 times its cost)

[The Meg premiered 8 August (Indonesia, the Philippines) and runs 113 minutes. Disney held the rights until 1999 without coming up with a script they were satisfied with. New Line Cinema then developed the project but dropped it also. Eli Roth was hired to direct the eventual film but was 'replaced' due to 'creative differences'. Shooting took place in New Zealand and China from October 2016 - January 2017. The film opened #1 to a 45.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, the biggest in both Turteltaub and Statham's careers, and it stayed in the top 5 for another 5 weekends (#2-#2-#2-#2-#4), grossing 145.4 mil. $ (27.4 % of the total gross). North America was the film's 2nd largest market; China beat it with a 153 mil. $ (28.9 %) gross. 3rd largest was Mexico with 21 mil. $ (4 %). 140 mil. $ were reportedly spent on marketing and prints. Sequel The Meg 2: The Trench is currently in development. The Meg is rotten at 45 % with a 5.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Meg?

Man of Steel (2013) or, Superman v Zod: Sunset of Destruction

♥♥

 

Superman shoots for the sky on this animated poster for Zack Snyder's Man of Steel

 

Kal has been sent to Earth by his desperate parents to protect him from the destruction of evil ruler Zod. But evil finds him nevertheless, and his Kryptonite super-powers become necessary.

Man of Steel is a Superman franchise reboot written by David S. Goyer (Blade II (2002)), with story elements by Christopher Nolan (Following (1998)), based on the DC character by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created in 1938, and directed by Wisconsinite master filmmaker Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead (2004)).

The film starts promising with grand drama on Krypton. For some reason many years then pass, before Zod attacks Superman and planet Earth. Michael Shannon (Dead Birds (2004)) gives Zod a raging edge, but the film is over-filled with exposition; story-setting dialog and uneven generalizations as well as a few jarring uses of expletives.

The CGI effects are impressive, even when product placements are obviously the driving motif for some of them, but Man of Steel worships major destruction to an unnecessary degree.

Henry Cavill (Night Hunter (2018)) is buff beyond reason, - and sexy too, - but as in the past the problem is that the empathetic and flawless Superman is simply not an exciting (or relatable) character. He is too smooth, too ... super. It doesn't help matters that Hans Zimmer's (Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)) score, - drumming and industrial, - inevitably leads one's thoughts to Nolan's similarly dark but endlessly better three Batman spectacle pictures, which are forever linked to Zimmer's musical style.

Snyder does not manage here to refurbish the to some degree simply unmanageable Superman into the sensation that was needed.

 

Related posts:

 

Zack Snyder: Wonder Woman (2017) - Jenkins' idealistic, thrilling adventure is the best earnest superhero movie in years (story elements)

300: Rise of an Empire (2014) - Murro's off-putting 3D bore sequel (co-writer)

Dawn of the Dead (2004) - Snyder's great remake of Romero's classic

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 225 - 258 mil. $ (different reports)

Box office: 668 mil. $

= Box office success (returned between 2.58 - 2.96 times its cost)

[Man of Steel premiered 10 June (New York) and runs 143 minutes. Development began in 2008 in direct contention with the underwhelming Superman Returns (2006) by Bryan Singer. Shooting took place from August 2011 - January 2012 in British Columbia, including Vancouver, Illinois, including Chicago and in California. The film opened #1 to a 116.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#5) and grossed 291 mil. $ (43.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were China with 63.4 mil. $ (9.5 %) and the UK with 46.1 mil. $ (6.9 %). According to Deadline.com the team behind the film had etched out 58 mil. $ in gross participation deals. The film reportedly earned 160+ mil. $ from promotional tie-in deals. And it made 119.4 mil. $ from domestic video sales. The film was nominated for a BAFTA, among other honors. Snyder returned with Cavill in even more successful sequel Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Before this Snyder directed short TV documentary Superman 75 (2013). Cavill returned first in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Amy Adams (Serving Sara (2002)) in Her (2013); and Shannon in The Harvest (2013). Man of Steel is rotten at 56 % with a 6.22/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Man of Steel?