The Promotion (2008) - Conrad's under-appreciated supermarket comedy

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+ Best Box Office Disaster of the Year + Best Comedy of the Year 

 

A tense stand-off in an office between two famous funny-men make up this poster for Steve Conrad's The Promotion

Doug is told that he is a 'shoe-in' for the open position of store manager of a large, newly opened Donaldson's grocery store, - but then the Canadian wildcard Richard enters the equation...

The Promotion is written and directed by great Floridian filmmaker Steve Conrad (Lawrence Melm (2004)).

Seann William Scott (Mr. Woodcock (2007)) gets totally free of the shadow of his goofy American Pie (1999; 2001; 2003; 2012) stardom here and is brilliant as an insecure, worried boss-to-be, and John C. Reilly (Dark Water (2005)) is incredibly funny as the imbecile Canadian competition with self-help audio in his ears. With a terrific supporting cast, this is a rare workplace comedy that's really good and hilarious. It challenges the power of the promotion for the regular Joe and succeeds handsomely with plenty of laughs at the expense of the often politically incorrect reality.

 

Related posts:

 

Steve Conrad: Wonder (2017) - Remember napkins for Chbosky's heart-warming family drama (co-writer)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) - Stiller's sweet, visually splendid Christmas present (writer) 

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

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) - Two Smiths inspire hearts and minds in true-story drama (writer)

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 8 mil. $

Box office: 457k $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.05 times its cost)

[The Promotion premiered 9 March (South by Southwest Film Festival, USA) and runs 86 minutes. Shooting took place around July 2006 in Chicago, Illinois. The film opened #46 to a 30k $ first weekend in 6 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #22 and in 81 theaters, grossing 408k $ (89.3 % of the total gross). The film only has two other recorded markets, (it was also released theatrically in Portugal but the result goes unreported.) Germany with 33k $ (7.2 %) and Singapore with 15k $ (3.3 %.) Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to 3 notches under this one. Conrad has not returned with a feature as a director since, instead directing some TV and more turning towards writing. Scott returned in Role Models (2008); Reilly in The Simpsons (2008, TV-series) and theatrically in Step Brothers (2008). The Promotion is rotten at 55 % with a 5.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Promotion?

The Station Agent (2003) - A little star is born

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+ Best Independent Movie of the Year + Best Dramedy of the Year + Best Shooting Star Actor of the Year: Peter Dinklage

Sundance awards and critical praise helps sell this poster's promise of decent, good, bright, grown-up company, for Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent

Fin's boss at the model train shop passes away and leaves a closed up train station in New Jersey to Fin, who decides to move there, where he encounters two new friends.

The Station Agent is written and directed by great New-Jerseyite filmmaker Tom McCarthy (The Cobbler (2014)), whose debut it is.
It is a small, 'good time' story with 4 delightful actors. Peter Dinklage (A Case of You (2013)) is excellent as Fin, and the film gives insight into the life as a little person. It also deals with train fascination and friendships. Bobby Cannavale's (Blue Bloods (2010-11)) character lacks some information; namely, how does he survive on selling hotdogs and coffee in virtual no-man's-land?
The Station Agent is built with warm humor and pleasant scenes with something at stake. It is a fine little picture.

Related posts:


Tom McCarthy: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  
The day after the day after ... the Oscars 2016
Spotlight (2015) - McCarthy puts an admirably bright and sober light on one of the major crimes of modern history

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

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

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 0.5 mil. $
Box office: 8.6 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 17.2 times its cost)
[The Station Agent premiered 26 January (Sundance Film Festival, Utah) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in August 2002. The film opened 55 to a 57k $ first weekend in 3 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #20 and in 198 theaters (different weeks), grossing 5.7 mil. $ (66.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 0.9 mil. $ (10.5 %) and New Zealand with 0.5 mil. $ (5.8 %). The film won a BAFTA, 3/4 Independent Spirit award nominations, 2 National Board of Review awards and 3 prizes at Sundance. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this one. McCarthy returned with The Visitor (2007). Dinklage returned in Tiptoes (2003), Cannavale in 3 TV credits before Shortcut to Happiness (2003); Michelle Williams (Lassie (1994)) in Dawson's Creek (1998-03)) and theatrically in A Hole in One (2004); and Patricia Clarkson (The East (2013)) in Dogville (2003). The Station Agent is certified fresh at 94 % with a 7.97/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Station Agent?

Spy (2015) - Feig and McCarthy score spy spoof gold!

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+ Best Action-Comedy of the Year + Best Fight Scene of the Year: McCarthy's kitchen fight scene

The stars of Paul Feig's Spy sell the film well on this funny poster

Spy is the fresh spy parody from great writer-director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids (2011)), the #1 movie in the US right now and a movie that is spreading its action-packed fun worldwide as this is being written.

Susan Cooper has been an analyst at the CIA for years, when sudden changes send her to the front as an agent in Europe, where some rich, shady characters are readying the sale of a nuke in a suitcase!

Feig may have learned from his huge 2013 hit comedy (also starring Melissa McCarthy (St. Vincent (2014))), - which was also an action comedy, - that a real action-type plot helps for such a film: Heat wasn't really going anywhere exciting plot-wise. - Spy, on the other hand, stomps around internationally with a well-defined, clear plot objective.
Spy's plot isn't very far from the plots of 'real' action spy movies. For a spy spoof, it has just the right amount of characters, comedy interplay and action. Furthermore the action of Spy is very well-staged and exciting, and the fights, - oh yes, there are fights! - are great. - Seeing McCarthy kick ass in completely unbelievable ways is pretty f-ing cool. Especially her kitchen fight in Spy is hilarious. The film has neat cinematography by Robert D. Yeoman (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)).
The comedy is a mix of wit, physical, gross-out, crude comedy - mostly insult comedy, - implicitly playing on McCarthy's character's coming into her own at work, as a person, and as a woman. There were a bunch of kids in the cinema I saw it in, and they had a blast, (although it is decidedly not a kids movie), as did the adults. Often in Spy, one gag or zinger's resulting laughs weren't over before the next made me laugh again. I really love the spy parody sub-genre, so it was a real joy for me to see such a resourceful cast play one out in a well-written script and clear direction, loaded with an abundance of inventive, fast-paced fun.

McCarthy is an energetic powerhouse in Spy, and I was glad to see that, perhaps due to her clout with director-friend Feig, she was not only confined to God-awful outfits. She gets to dress up here and look really good, (even if Rose Byrne's (Insidious (2010)) delightfully bitchy character tries to tear it apart for her.)
Jason Statham (Crank (2006)) is very funny in a ridiculously intense braggadocio part; Jude Law (A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)) works as Cooper's handsome idol; Brit Miranda Hart (Miranda (2009-15)) was a new face for me, but she was awkwardly funny as McCarthy's sidekick. Bobby Cannavale (Annie (2014)) makes a fun second villain; Allison Janney (The DUFF (2015)) is solid as a tough boss, and Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)) also took several laughs as a foreign, helpful (but awfully handsy) spy.
There are a ton of favorite moments to take away from Spy, the best light-hearted fun you'll have with a movie, perhaps for all of 2015. - So don't miss it!
Feig is a very busy man these days: He's creating a new sci-fi/comedy TV series titled Other Space (2015), directing a Reese Witherspoon comedy titled Wish List and heading the new, hugely anticipated Ghostbusters reboot, with McCarthy. - Film Excess can't wait.

Related posts:

Paul Feig: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Heat (2013) or, Prissy and Offensive in Boston  
Bridesmaids (2011) - Subversive comedy with laughs a-plenty

Here's the red band trailer for the movie - enjoy!

Cost: 65 mil. $
Box office: 86.5 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[There's no doubt in my mind that Spy will become a financial hit, as well as a critical, - it might be Feig and McCarthy's best reviewed title to date. It is blazing through cinemas globally right now.]

What do you think of Spy?

Blue Jasmine (2013) - Allen presents his own woman under the influence

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+ Best San Francisco Movie of the Year

Cate Blanchett and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge feature prominently on this poster for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

Jasmine arrives at her sister's in San Francisco and immediately starts to put down her mechanic fiancée. But she is on bare ground herself, SPOILER after being released from a mental hospital following her swindling husband's arrest and suicide.

An Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett, (her second Oscar; the first one was for The Aviator (2004)), glows ever so brightly in Blue Jasmine, where she gets backed up by a stellar cast that includes an Oscar-nominated Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)) as her sister, as well as Bobby Cannavale (Win Win (2011)), Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don't Cry (1999)) and Alec Baldwin (30 Rock (2006-13)) as the bastard husband, - they are a collective treat here, all of them showing what real acting is.
The film is really, really, really well-written, from the names to the dialog to the characters themselves and the structure, - by master filmmaker Woody Allen (Broadway Danny Rose (1984)), who was also Oscar-nominated for his job. - Blue Jasmine is superiorly constructed, totally plausible, and as much of a psychological drama as it is a comedy, in fact more so. It really is a sad film, - a very good, sad film, - and very well-titled as such.
Blanchett seems, though perhaps this derives from the part itself, to be very inspired by Gena Rowlands' performance in John Cassavetes' classic A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which is a bit like this film but without most of the laughs. Both films are spectacular in their own ways.
Blue Jasmine deals with the theme of happiness vs. eternally striving for better things in one's life, the American way, even if it leads to misery,  which is interesting and wisely served here. I wonder if he was inspired to write this after meeting a woman like Jasmine somewhere, talking to herself. If so, the inspiration was divine: Blue Jasmine is absolutely among the year's best films.

Related posts:


Woody Allen: Magic in the Moonlight (2014) - Allen's irresistible French Riviera romance

2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
To Rome with Love (2012) - Woody Allen's slightest film to date 
Cassandra's Dream (2007) - Allen's well-laid but inconsequentiel English cul-de-sac
Anything Else (2003) - Perfect contemporary relationship comedy 
Celebrity (1998) or, Beautiful Celebrities Talk About Sex (guest review)
Broadyway Danny Rose (1984) or, Keep Your Heart 
Annie Hall (1977) or, My Relationship with Alvie Singer 
Bananas (1971) - Woody Allen's South American misadventure is still a barrel of laughs 
Casino Royale (1967) - The packed spy spoof frontrunner, a film very much of its time (as actor)

Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett is an actress with formidable control of her talent, as seen in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

Alec Baldwin is superb as the fraudulent husband in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

Watch the fine trailer here

Cost: 18 mil. $
Box office: 97.7 mil. $
= Big hit
[With a limited opening in LA and New York, similar to that of his successful Midnight in Paris (2011)), Jasmine amazed with Allen's best per screen average ever, and it could then open very strongly both in and out of America, where his fans abound, with great reviews meeting it almost everywhere.]

What do you think of Blue Jasmine?
What is your favorite Cate Blanchett performance?