She Hate Me (2004) or, Champion of the Lesbians

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+ Worst Dollar Return of the Year: 0.18 Times the Cost

Star Anthony Mackie has a deer-in-the-headlights kind of vacant look on his face on this brightly colored poster for Spike Lee's She Hate Me

Jack Armstrong works for a medical company, which manipulates the value of its new HIV-drug. He decides to blow the whistle on the scam, is consequently fired and instead begins impregnating lesbians for money. - Which ends him up in court.

She Hate Me is written by Michael Genet (Talk to Me (2007)) and great Georgian co-writer/co-producer/director Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have It (1986)). 
There's runs a tongue-in-cheek line from Lee's great theatrical debut She's Gotta Have It to She Hate Me almost 20 years later, - possibly implicitly saying something about the filmmaker's own private experiences with women? The latter film is way less youthful, fresh and vibrant than Lee's early work. Implicitly, again, She Hate Me is in favor of gay families, which are at the film's center, but it soaks its pro-LGBT politics in a heavy bath of vinegar, which seems always to be aware of these family constructions as being 'wrong' in some unexpressed way, which is weak and uncool of Lee.
She Hate Me still works as an off-center late-night watch with plenty of New York aroma to it. It has a sex idea at its core, - call it smart or fun, - that forces Armstrong to have actual sex with the lesbians, although this also comes off possibly male-chauvinist, as the lesbians are wildly excited about both the male body and sex with a man. (The very thing lesbians by definition are not traditionally interested in...)
What lifts this flawed conception, in the end, and gets it flying enjoyably still, are the performances: Anthony Mackie (We Are Marshall (2006)), Kerry Washington (Sin (2003)), Woody Harrelson (Wildcats (1986)) and John Turturro (Margot at the Wedding (2007)) are all good, the latter in a mafia part that has him as the father of Monica Bellucci (The Apartment (1996)), who is 7½ years younger than him in real life, a bit of a stretch. Despite all these problems, I still liked She Hate Me.

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2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
Top 10: Best crime movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
25th Hour (2002) or, Taking a Second Chance

Listen to 4 minutes of the film's soundtrack here

Cost: 8 mil. $
Box office: 1.5 mil. $
= Box office disaster (returned 0.18 times its cost)
[She Hate Me premiered 20 July (New York) and runs 138 minutes. Shooting took place in all of New York's 5 boroughs and in New Jersey from March - May 2004. The film opened #55 to a 55k $ first weekend in 11 theaters in North America, where it never achieved a higher rank, although it spread out to 28 theaters, grossing 366k $ (24.4 % of the total gross). The film's biggest market was France with 653k $ (43.5 %). North America was the 2nd biggest, and 3rd biggest was Italy with 226k $ (17.7 %). The film is the 2nd lowest-grossing of Lee's career, behind Red Hook Summer (2012). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Lee returned with a TV movie, 2 episodes of a miniseries, a short and a movie segment before hitting cinemas with a proper work of his own again with Inside Man (2006). Mackie returned in Haven (2004); Washington in Ray (2004). She Hate Me is rotten at 19 % with a 3.93/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of She Hate Me?

25th Hour (2002) or, Taking a Second Chance

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Best New York Movie of the Year

The simple, elegant poster for Spike Lee's 25th Hour

Monty (Edward Norton (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014))), a New York drug dealer, says goodbye to his girlfriend, friends, family and 'colleagues' on the last day before he has to do 7 years of jail time. 

The first New York City-set movie post 9/11, 25th Hour incorporates the tragedy into its story and is among great New Yorker filmmaker Spike Lee's (She's Gotta Have It (1986)) best films. Writer David Benioff's (When the Nines Roll Over (and Other Stories) (2004)) script, an adaptation of his own same-titled 2002 novel, is fresh and full of flesh-and-blood characters and substance. - There's lots of things going on in this great drama.
The superb ensemble cast elevates the already fine material; especially Norton and in supporting roles, Anna Paquin (The Piano (1993)), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Mission: Impossible III (2006)) and Brian Cox (L.I.E. (2001)) are uniformly strong. Ironically, since that seems to be the guiding theme of so many of Lee's films, this fine film of his lives fine without any significant racial themes.

 

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2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

In lieu of a trailer for the film, not currently on Youtube, here's a video of Lee and his stars talking of the film and its director

Cost: 5-15 mil. $ (different sources)
Box office: 23.9 mil. $
= Uncertainty (co-star Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan (1998)) cites a 15 mil. $ in the above video, which seems likely, and the film should therefore most likely count as a big flop)
[25th Hour premiered 16 December (New York) and runs 135 minutes. It opened #38 to a 108k $ first weekend in 5 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #10 and in 495 theaters (different weeks), grossing 13 mil. $ (54.4 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 4 mil. $ (16.7 %) and France with 1.9 mil. $ (7.9 %). San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle called the film "an urban historical document as Rosselini's Open City", and A. O. Scott, Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert placed the film on their best of the decade lists: Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Lee returned with She Hate Me (2004). Norton returned in The Italian Job (2003). 25th Hour is certified fresh at 78 % with a 7.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of 25th Hour?