Honeydripper (2007) - Sayles' warm Alabama blues yarn

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Warm images of vivacious actors and the musical theme are front and center on this poster for John Sayles' Honeydripper

Pine Top Purvis' Alabama bar is on the downturn in competition with a more popular newer establishment circa 1950, when a young man rides in to town on the train, bringing with him a gift for a different type of guitar-playing.

 

Honeydripper is written, directed and edited by great New-Yorker filmmaker John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)).

Sayles' fiery lines and some warm, dedicated performances from Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)), Charles S. Dutton (Android Cop (2014)), LisaGay Hamilton (The Blacklist (2019, TV-series)), young Gary Clark, Jr. (Elvis (2022)) and Yaya DaCosta (The Nice Guys (2016)) as China Doll, who have great chemistry, and Stacy Keach (Tokyo Trial (2017)) as the bastard local sheriff, all help make this slowly paced yarn worthwhile. Along the way you may think to yourself that, for the kind of story this is, it really isn't that great of a tale. But the aforementioned qualities make it work fine nonetheless, up until the film's marvelously rocking culmination. Sayles chooses to hold back in terms of violence and pathos, and his ode to early rock also works without these popular spices.

 

Related posts:

 

John Sayles: 2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Casa de los Babys (2003) - Sayles' great adoption drama 

The Howling (1981) - Colorful escapade from Dante, Sayles et al. (co-writer)

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Estimated 5 mil. $

Box office: 544k $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.10 times its cost)

[Honeydripper premiered 10 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 123 minutes. Shooting took place from September 2006 - ? in Alabama. The film opened #61 to a 9k $ weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #55 and in 26 theaters (different weeks), grossing 267k $ (49.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 168k $ (30.9 %) and Spain with 85k $ (15.6 %). The film won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to 2 notches over this one. Sayles returned with Amigo (2010). Glover returned in Be Kind Rewind (2008); Hamilton in Deception (2008); and Dutton in The Third Nail (2007). Honeydripper is fresh at 69 % with a 6.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Honeydripper?

Body Snatchers (1993) - Third Snatchers-adaptation is a piece of mediocre Ferrara

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+ Worst Movie of the Year

Evocative, stylish poster for Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers

QUICK REVIEW:

The man of a family is a chemist with a new job in a military base in the Alabama countryside. Here a foreign life form is overtaking human bodies as worms through noses etc. and making them into a conform, efficient race ...
This basic idea, which is a loose adaptation of a 1955 novel by Jack Finney, which has already been made into two movies (in 1956 and 1978), is still wildly anxiety-provoking. But unfortunately, Body Snatchers is not a super-successful reinterpretation, (and apparently the least loyal to the novel of the three.)
The first half depends too much upon the acting performance of a small boy, who is no good. The photography is ugly and by Yugoslavian DP Bojan Bazelli, who has also shot other dubious films such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010). Not until the end do we get something that impresses, and that is giant explosions.
However, the film does have an awesome, intense scene with R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket (1987)) and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland (2006)).
The famous Bronxite director of Body Snatchers, Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant (1992)) has put out both memorable (Driller Killer (1979), Ms. 45 (1981)), truly great (Lieutenant) and forgettable (King of New York (1990)) movies; he is busy now finishing Welcome to New York (2014) about the Dominic Strauss Kahn IMF-scandal a few years back and is also filming his next, Pasolini (2014) about the wild, Italian filmmaker, with Willem Dafoe in the title lead. Both highly interesting project.
Body Snatchers was actually in competition in Cannes and was hailed with a top rating of 4 hearts by notorious horror-novice 'guru', the now late Roger Ebert, but was more or less 'thrown out' by its distributor, Warner Bros, who perhaps saw it for what it was; mediocre.

Related posts:

Abel Ferrara: 1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Bad Lieutenant (1992) or, World of Hurt

Watch the film's unexciting trailer here

Budget: 13 mil. $
Box office: 0.4 mil. $
= Huge flop

What do you think of Ferrara's Body Snatchers?
How do you rate it compared to the other versions?