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Johnny Depp's Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness (2024)

9/17/2024

The Ice Harvest (2005) or, It's a Difficult Life

♥♥

 

Cut-outs of the three stars are obviously photo-shopped together on this poster for Harold Ramis' The Ice Harvest

A disillusioned lawyer and his cynical buddy steal 2 mil. $ in Wichita Falls, Kansas on a wet Christmas Eve, but after this feat they run into a series of problems.

 

The Ice Harvest is written by Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde (1967)) and Richard Russo (Twilight (1998)), adapting Scott Phillips' (The Devil Raises His Own (2024)) same-titled 2000 novel, and directed by Illinoisan master filmmaker Harold Ramis (Caddyshack (1980)), whose 10th feature it was.

It is a sardonic, dark Christmas movie with a fine, well-acting cast in a knotty plot with many funny, superbly delivered lines. John Cusack (Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)) is good as the protagonist, and Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa 2 (2016)) is ideal as the ornery prick he gets to play here. Oliver Platt (Modern Family (2015-17)) plays a character that's both funny and somewhat tragic. Connie Nielsen (FBI (2018, TV-series)) is beautiful and provides depth to boot; and Mike Starr (Clowning (2022)) is very funny in a part that goes mostly unseen.

The look of The Ice Harvest is sometimes film noir inspired, and quite successfully so. This is a dark, wet, cold, strip, liquor and curse-word filled dose of yo-ho-ho. The plot leaves some things for us to ponder about: SPOILER Worst among these instances must be that Cusack's character feels impelled to murder Nielsen's, - at least without me being fully clear about why this was necessary, - and then proceeding to be fairly unaffected by the action. But over-all The Ice Harvest is too funny for these holes to ruin the experience.

 

Related posts:

Harold Ramis:
1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Analyze This (1999) - Analyze what, Ramis? 

1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

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

Groundhog Day (1993) - Rubin, Ramis and Murray's irresistible comedy masterpiece 

Ghostbusters II (1989) - Reitman's unjustifiably maligned sequel (co-writer/co-star)

Ghostbusters (1984) - Reitman and Co. conjure up the gleeful pomp and circumstance of the 1980s (co-writer/co-star)

Caddyshack (1980) - And you thought golf was boring?

 


 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 16 mil. $

Box office: 10.1 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.63 times its cost)

[The Ice Harvest premiered 3 September (Deauville Film Festival, France) and runs 89 minutes. Ramis approached his Ghostbusters co-star Bill Murray to star in the film, but Murray did not return his call. Monica Bellucci had to bow out due to her pregnancy. Shooting took place from April - June 2004 in Illinois. The film opened #10 to a 3.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, its peak there, grossing 9 mil. $ (89 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 599k $ (5.9 %) and France with 254k $ (2.5 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Ramis returned with Atlanta (2007, TV movie) and theatrically with Year One (2009). Cusack returned in The Contract (2006); Thornton in School for Scoundrels (2006); and Nielsen in The Situation (2006). The Ice Harvest is rotten at 47 % with a 5.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]


What do you think of The Ice Harvest?

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