Meet Joe Black (1998) - Radiant filmmaking - and Pitt - in Brest's under-appreciated epic

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Epic Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year 

 

Claire Forlani is enjoying a close moment with a black tie-wearing Brad Pitt on this smooth, intimate poster for Martin Brest's Meet Joe Black

Bill Parish's 65th birthday is going to be a major celebration, but it happens while his company is getting taken out of his hands, and a mysterious stranger is snatching his youngest daughter's heart away.

 

Meet Joe Black is written by Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno (Moonlighting (1985-89), both) and Kevin Wade (True Colors (1991)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Martin Brest (Hot Tomorrows (1977)). The story is loosely based on Death Takes a Holiday (1934) by Mitchell Leisen.

It is an unexpectedly great film with real class, which takes its time, lending the film a meditational quality. Anthony Hopkins (Hearts in Atlantis (2001)) is outstanding as Bill Parish; Claire Forlani (Triggermen (2002)), Jeffrey Tambor (Hellboy (2004)) and Marcia Gay Harden (If I Were You (2012)) are also great; and Brad Pitt (Babel (2006)) is a chapter unto himself here: Angelically blond and strangely sexually electric throughout the film, waif-like and attention-grabbing. Emmanuel Lubezki's (Bandidos (1991)) camera caresses him in fiercely beautiful images. SPOILER He is Death in disguise, - or Death as an inavoidable fact that is not our enemy?

Thomas Newman's (Get on Up (2014)) score adds depth and sounds to the epic romance drama. Meet your mortality in the most delectable Hollywood production on the topic in many years here.

 

Related post:

 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

 

Watch a 3-minute excerpt from the film here

 

Cost: 90 mil. $

Box office: 142.9 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.58 times its cost)

[Meet Joe Black premiered 2 November (USA) and runs 181 minutes. Pitt was paid 17.5 mil. $ for his performance. Shooting took place from June - November 1997 in Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey. The film opened #3, behind holdover hit The Waterboy and fellow new release I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, to a 15 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#4) and grossed 44.6 mil. $ (31.2 % of the total gross). Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars, translating to a notch under this review. Brest returned with Gigli (2003). Pitt returned with a cameo in Being John Malkovich (1999) and starring in Fight Club (1999); Hopkins in Instinct (1999). Meet Joe Black is rotten at 45 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Meet Joe Black?