The Number 23 (2007) - Carrey's big ol' turkey

♥

 

Someone's ruined star Jim Carrey's face with a black marker on this poster for Joel Schumacher's The Number 23

An animal control officer gets introduced to a strange book about obsession with the number 23, which is put in connection to all types of disasters all over the world, - and the family father's own life. - Is the book actually about his own life?

 

The Number 23 is written by Fernley Phillips (U Want Me 2 Kill Him? (2013, story contribution)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Joel Schumacher (The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)).

It is an absolute mega-sized turkey, which doesn't necessarily have a bad premise for a movie about obsession, but which is done in by poor execution. Jim Carrey (Batman Forever (1995)) has a tough time with this character and often falls through, probably because the script is racked with nonsense. It gets seriously dull once it seems the film has evolved into simply rattling off fatal events with the number 23 involved.

The Number 23 is mostly a film about mental illness, compulsive neurosis of some kind, but it is hard to get the protagonist's family's behavior and statements to make sense. Logan Lerman (Noah (2014)) co-stars as Carrey's twinkie son with a big headful of wonderful curls.

Another unpleasant layer to this already unpleasant star vehicle, a dead-end movie if there ever was one, is its preoccupation with suicide, which later haunted Carrey's own life, as his 2012-15 girlfriend committed suicide in 2015. The Number 23 is a sad and terrible movie, the year's worst star vehicle to be sure.

 

Related posts:

Joel Schumacher: Falling Down (1993) - Schumacher's arguably best film, a fiery dragon of a societal thriller

The Lost Boys (1987) - A crazy 80's teen vampire bonanza 

 

Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 30 mil. $

Box office: 77.6 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.58 times its cost)

[The Number 23 premiered 13 February (Los Angeles) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place from January 2006 - ? in California, including in Los Angeles, and in Florida. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Ghost Rider, to a 15.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 35.1 mil. $ (45.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.7 mil. $ (9.9 %) and Italy with 4 mil. $ (5.2 %). The-Numbers.com estimate that the film made additional 28.3 mil. $ on the domestic home video market. Schumacher returned with Choose or Lose (2008, TV special) and theatrically with Blood Creek (2009). Carrey returned with a voice performance in Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and physically in Yes Man (2008). The Number 23 is rotten at 8 % with a 3.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Number 23? 

Cherry Blossoms/Kirchblüten (2008) or, Rudi in Japan

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Tokyo Movie of the Year  

 

A man and a woman from different cultures, standing together in a Japanese garden make up this poster for Doris Dörrie's Cherry Blossoms

When an aging married couple learn that the man, Rudi, is terminally ill with cancer, his wife hides the fact from him and arranges a visit to their two children in Germany. Her wish for them to travel to their son in Japan is wholly rejected by Rudi, - until the wife's sudden passing.

 

Cherry Blossoms is written and directed by Doris Dörrie (Der Erste Walzer (1978)).

The story develops with increasing emotional depth during Rudi's time in Japan, and Elmar Wepper (Der Fischer und Seine Frau (2005)) and Aya Irizuki (Cherry Blossoms and Demons/Kirschblüten & Dämonen (2019)) as Rudi and Yu excel. The film handles sorrow and death in a way, which can't but lead the audience to ponder over his or her own journey towards this end, - and the end for one's loved ones.

The poignant and at times amusing aspects of Rudi's journey are partially impaired by a few minor issues: The title is questionable as to its relevance for the story, and the credit sequence is poorly designed. The image quality throughout the film seems to come from digital technology and is a bit amateurish in craftsmanship and feel. These are minor side notes. The biggest drawback for Cherry Blossoms is that the central couple's three adult children are so uniformly horrible; narrow-minded, selfish and insensitive. - Why are they all like this? This feels a bit film school-like in its simplicity.

 

Related post:

 

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 12.8 mil. $

= Uncertain - but likely a big hit

[Cherry Blossoms premiered 11 February (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 127 minutes. Shooting took place from March - April 2007 in Germany, including in Berlin, and in Japan, including in Tokyo. The film opened #71 to a 3k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, where it peaked at #67 and in 8 theaters (different weeks), grossing 104k $ (0.8 % of the total gross). The 3 biggest markets were Germany with 10.1 mil. $ (78.9 %), Switzerland with 763k $ (6 %) and Austria with 457k $ (3.6 %). The film did not get a general release in Japan. If made on a likely 3 mil. $ budget, the film would rank as a big hit. It was nominated for a European Film award and won 3/6 German Film award nominations, among other honors. Dörrie returned with Die Friseuse (2010). Wepper returned in 7 TV credits prior to his theatrical return in Dreiviertelmond (2011); Irizuki in Greetings from Fukushima/Grüsse aus Fukushima (2016). Cherry Blossoms is certified fresh at 79 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Cherry Blossoms?

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005, documentary) - Travel back in time with Scorsese and Dylan

♥♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year

+ Best Epic of the Year + Best Music Movie of the Year

 

Bob Dylan looks beatnik cool by a gas station in the middle of nowhere on this poster for Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Bob was a musically interested young man in Minnesota. We follow him through his fascination and fandom of folk legend Woody Guthrie, his own establishing as a musician as a young man, as a groundbreaking 'song-and-dance' man and a protest singer through the stormy changes of the 1960s.

 

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is directed by Martin Scorsese (New York City... Melting Point (1966, documentary)). The title is taken from Dylan's song Like a Rolling Stone (1965).

It is an eminent documentary, highly focused and thorough, which keeps its eyes firmly fixed on the musical aspect of the man and legend that is Dylan: The inspiration for his work, the times which informed it, the individual songs, and the process and development of them. It is filled with both fantastical witness accounts and anecdotes (Joan Baez is wonderful, but there are many terrific participants; memorable also is the musician who is convinced that it is the Holy Spirit that is working through Bob Dylan.) Also central of course are the insightful reflections from Dylan himself, and a wealth of recordings from the many years of his formidable career; from concerts, documentaries etc.

No Direction Home is riveting and probably the closest we'll get to a time travel without an actual time machine, back to this fantastically exciting era and time, - particularly the Greenwich Village culture is captivating, (and the center of the Coen brothers' masterpiece Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)).

Finally a great aspect of the film is that Dylan's lyrics get a chance to unfold themselves, so that goosebumps and tears almost invariably occur during their exhibition. The first part of the documentary is the most magical; the second part hits the later tragedies, the draining madness of the music business and the press, and the rage of the audience, when Dylan went electric. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is another masterpiece and must-see in Scorsese's incredible body of work.

 

Related posts:

Martin Scorsese: 2019 in films - according to Film Excess

The Irishman (I Heard You Paint Houses) (2019, VOD) - Scorsese's great gangster epic of growing old and death 

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - One helluva movie!  

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) - Stapleton's Corman doc. is among the year's best films (interview subject)
Hugo (2011) - Scorsese's critically acclaimed, magical 3D family adventure/financial disaster 

Shutter Island (2010) - Scorsese's heavy-handed, long, second huge thriller attempt
Boardwalk Empire - 1st season (2010) - Luxurious 1920's ensemble gangster treats (executive producer)

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

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

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

The Departed (2006) - Scorsese's Boston-set wildcat of a capital letter Movie

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  
The Aviator (2004) - The grand American biopic 

Gangs of New York (2002) - Death, violence and squalor in charmless period epic 

Top 10: Best 'box office success' movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Top 10: The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Casino (1995) - Scorsese's sumptuous Vegas gangster tale has the wingspan of a Greek tragedy   
The Age of Innocence (1993) or, Stayin' IN the Pants
Cape Fear (1991) - Scorsese adds lots of stuff to remake but loses the balance     

Goodfellas (1990) or, Citizen Gangster

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Reportedly 2 mil. $

Box office: None - TV documentary

= Uncertain

[No Direction Home: Bob Dylan premiered 3 September (Telluride Film Festival) and runs 208 minutes. The project began in 1995 with Dylan's manager Jeff Rosen conducting interviews with friends and collaborators of the man. Scorsese was hired to shape the material and was granted access to huge amounts of previously unused content. Shooting took place in New York and Minnesota, including in Minneapolis. The documentary was screened on US TV on PBS as part of their American Masters documentary series. The film won 1/4 Primetime Emmy awards, was nominated for a BAFTA, and won 1 /2 Grammy nominations, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Scorsese has since made another Dylan documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019). Scorsese returned first with The Departed (2006). No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is fresh at 88 % with an 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan?

Charlie Countryman/The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2013) - LaBeouf trips in Romania in commercial director's hollow blunder

♥

 

+ Career-Killer of the Year: Shia LaBeouf

 

 

A man falls from the running mascara of a massive woman's eye on this artistic poster for Fredrik Bond's Charlie Countryman

Charlie's mother dies of cancer, whereupon her spirit tells young Charlie that he should go to Bucharest, Romania. Without real purpose he travels there and falls in love with the wife of a gangster.

Charlie Countryman is written by Matt Drake (Project X (2012)) and directed by debuting commercial director Fredrik Bond (The Mood (2004, short)).

Bond must have bet that a sufficiently cute lead would bar the audience against asking questions of Charlie's inscrutable dispositions, but I for one did ask questions despite Shia LaBeouf's (Nymphomaniac (2013)) attractiveness. We know next to nothing about Charlie and his headlong journey to Romania, a country that seems uniformly horrible here, and he is impossible to identify with. All the characters around him are thin sketches, and several of the actors struggle with the vagueness. It doesn't raise the already strained level of authenticity that Evan Rachel Wood (Barefoot (2014)) is playing a Romanian; and Mads Mikkelsen (After the Wedding/Efter Brylluppet (2006)) an unspecified brute named Nigel; but LaBeouf is committed - and has great hair, (although we already knew that.)

But Charlie Countryman is involuntarily comical; it is so obvious as a commercial gun's somewhat pretentious and very hollow, futile attempt at a light and yet deep and visually striking fantasy, which also transcends genres, (it would have been an impressive feat if pulled off, surely.) Bond's film instead reeks of beginner's firsts and holds no great insights into film or the 'rules' of the medium.

Think of Charlie Countryman as Tom Tykwer's 17 year-old son's Romanian ecstasy movie. It is basically LaBeouf's romanian acid trip, deservedly the butt of a joke.

 

Related post:

 

2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 443k $

= Uncertain, but undoubtedly a box office disaster

[Charlie Countryman premiered 21 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 103 minutes. The project was moved forward due to LaBeouf's fondness of the script. Shooting took place from May 2012 - ? in Chicago, Illinois and Bucharest, Romania. LaBeouf actually ingested LSD for realism in the scene where his character is on acid. The film opened #72 to a 7k $ first weekend in 15 theaters in North America, where it grossed 11k $ (2.5 % of the total gross). Its 3 biggest markets were Russia with 340k $ (76.7 %), France with 35k $ (7.9 %) and the UK with 19k $ (4.3 %). If made on a very low budget of 5 mil. $ (10 mil. $ is more likely), the film would rank as a box office disaster with a projected return of just 0.08 times its cost. The-Numbers.com estimate the film's domestic home video sales at 332k $. Bond has stuck with making commercials since, but is announced to direct soccer drama Fearless. LaBeouf returned in Nymphomaniac (2013). Charlie Countryman is rotten at 27 % with a 4.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Charlie Countryman?

Nowhere Boy (2009) - Fall for Johnson, with Taylor-Wood

♥♥♥♥

 

Aaron Johnson's awfully pretty face under a cloud on this poster for Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy

John Lennon grows up to become a rebel; the germ of it being his uncertainty of his parentage, which is enlightened when he rediscovers his mother, right around the same time that he forms his own pop-rock band.

 

Nowhere Boy is written by Matt Greenhalgh (Control (2007)), based on Lennon's half-sister Julia Baird's memoir Imagine This - Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon (2007), and directed by debuting Sam Taylor-Wood (Misfit (1996, short)).

Aaron Johnson (Shanghai Knights (2003)) as Lennon at first has his enthralling good looks against himself; he is simply too good-looking for his own good. But he is still fascinating, vivacious and dedicated here in a part he obviously enjoys taking on, which coincides with his becoming the real-life partner of his 23 years older director here, (the two married in 2021 and changed names to Sam Taylor-Johnson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.) Johnson gets splendid support here from a glorious Kristin Scott Thomas (Agent Trouble (1987)), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)) as Paul McCartney and Anne-Marie Duff (On Chesil Beach (2017)) as his mother.

It is impossible (for me at least) to see the Lennon I have seen, - the limp, drowsy Beatle hippie, - in the virile, dominant Johnson, and a hardcore Beatle-fan may protest this fact. But taken as it is, this is a fine and well-acted, delicate film of Lennon's youth, ultimately moving.

 

Watch  a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 1.2 mil. £, approximately 1.6 mil. $

Box office: 6.5 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.06 times its cost)

[Nowhere Boy premiered 29 October (London) and runs 97 minutes. Shooting took place in March 2009 - ? in England, including in London. It opened #45 to a 52k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #23 and in 215 theaters, grossing 1.4 mil. $ (21.5 % of the total gross). The film's biggest market was the UK with 1.5 mil. $ (23.1 %). North America was 2nd biggest, and Australia 3rd biggest with 807k $ (12.4 %). The film was nominated for 4 BAFTAs and won 1/6 British Independent Film awards. among other honors. Taylor-Wood returned with two music videos and a short before her theatrical return with Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). Johnson returned in Kick-Ass (2010); Scott Thomas in Love Crime (2010); and Duff in Margot (2009, TV movie) and theatrically in Sanctuary (2012). Nowhere Boy is certified fresh at 80 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Nowhere Boy?