Hannibal Rising (2007) - Harris returns famed cannibal in sub-par origins flick

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New Hannibal Lector, Gaspard Ulliel, is restrained in what looks like an iron mask on this dark poster for Peter Webber's Hannibal Rising

As a child, Hannibal Lecter's family die in the atrocities of WWII. As a young man he develops an unhealthily close relationship to his aunt and becomes consumed by thirst for revenge.

Hannibal Rising is written by Thomas Harris (Black Sunday (1975)), his only screenplay, based on his own same-titled 2006 novel, and directed by Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)). It is the 5th movie in the Hannibal Lecter franchise, following Manhunter (1986), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), being a prequel to them all.
Gaspard Ulliel (Saint Laurent (2014)) is well cast in the titular role as cinema's most famous cannibal, but Harris' script doesn't give us new insights, an exciting plot or any very sensational elements: Hannibal does have an Asian aunt (played by Li Gong (To Live/Huo Zhe (1994))) in Europe in 1949, which remains unexplained, which makes it seem like a bit of a stretch.
The production design is not bad in Hannibal Rising, but in the context of the preceding Lecter films, of which only Ridley Scott's Hannibal is a solid dud and the rest are great, thrilling movies, Hannibal Rising falls through as a both flat and boring origins story.

Related post:

2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Hannibal Lecter franchise: Manhunter (1986) - Perhaps the best criminal profiling picture ever

Watch a short trailer for the film with Japanese subtitles here

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 82.1 mil. $
= Big flop (1.64 times the cost)
[Hannibal Rising was released 7 February (France) and runs 121 minutes. It was shot in Lithuania, France and the Czech Republic, including Prague, from October 2005 - ?. The film opened #2, behind Eddie Murphy-starring Norbit, to a 13 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its second week and grossed 27.6 mil. $ (33.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 7.5 mil. $ (9.1 %) and Japan with 6.4 mil. $ (7.8 %). Webber returned with Jasim (2009, short) and theatrically with Emperor (2012). Ulliel returned in L'Inconnu (2007, short) and theatrically in La Troisième Partie du Monde (2008). Hannibal Rising is rotten at 15 % with a 3.9/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Hannibal Rising?

Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result

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You can't blame the posters for David Lynch's Dune for not promising a grand space adventure

QUICK REVIEW:

It is notoriously difficult to account for the plot of David Lynch's (Blue Velvet (1986)) huge science fiction debacle Dune, but here's a taste of it:

Dune takes place thousands of years out in the future and revolves around the interplanetary struggle for control over the spice 'melange' and huge sand-worms monsters, - SPOILER that turn out to be said spice!

Dune is a very strange film, just as one might expect a major SF adaptation (of Frank Herber's (Soul Catcher (1972)) 1965 novel), shot by Lynch in Mexico to be.
The film's very solemn form and the space travels in the film seem very inspired by the spectacularly successful Star Wars movies (1977; '80; '83), but Dune doesn't technically reach those films by a long-shot, and the warmth and humor from George Lucas' space universe is also nowhere to be found.
Dune brings a huge, curious star cast together: Brad Dourif (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)), José Ferrer (Lawrence of Arabia (1962)), Kyle McLachlan (Twin Peaks (1990-91)), Virginia Madsen (Sideways (2004)), Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot (1981)), Patrick Stewart (X-Men 2 (2003)), Sting (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)), Max Von Sydow (The Exorcist (1973)), Sean Young (Blade Runner (1982)) and many more. 
It is at times dreamy and fascinating, and at other times boring and elongated. - Although the 137 minute theatrical cut that I have seen is, obviously, quite a bit shorter than the 3-hour cut that Lynch had hoped to release. He did not have final cut, - producers Dino de Laurentiis (Conan the Destroyer (1984)) and daughter Raffaella de Laurentiis (Conan the Barbarian (1982)) did, and they were aiming for a 2-hour film, which they had agreed upon with distributor Universal Pictures and achieved, almost, with huge difficulties.
Dune had a long development story, spanning more than a decade: Chilean auteur director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain (1973)) was one of the directors who was highly involved with it, before the job finally went to Lynch. Jodorowsky's work on his unmade version of the film is chronicled in the recent, praised documentary Jodorowsky's Dune (2013).

Related reviews:

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive (2001) or, A Woman Searching For Her Identity (guest review)
Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World 

Sting ... this is what he looks like ... in David Lynch's Dune

Kyle McLachlan in David Lynch's Dune

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 30.9 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[But certainly a flop. How dismal the flop size was is not possible to ascertain without a world gross figure. I do see that 2.3 mil. people paid admission to it in France, which isn't bad, plus 675k Spaniards, and it made 2.3 AU$ in Australia. It was most likely a huge flop. It did get Oscar-nominated for Best Sound. In the US, it premiered #2 behind Beverly Hills Cop (1984).]

What do you think of Dune?
Anyone seen the 2000 mini-series with the same name?
And/or read the novels?
If so, how is/are it/they?

Chino/Valdez, Il Mezzosangue/Valdez the Half BreedThe Valdez Horses (1973) - Bronson is his own man only in Sturges' good spaghetti western

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Charles Bronson, just announced as BRONSON, leads John Sturges' Chino

QUICK REVIEW:

Chino owns a horse ranch that lies on another man's soil. Together with the boy Jimmy, he runs the place, but when he falls in love with the landowner's sister, open animosity breaks out.
Chino has some of the best about westerns in it; the unsentimental depiction of some people's relations to each other for a while. The film SPOILER turns out to be a tragedy: Chino doesn't get his love; has to leave his ranch, and also gets rid of the sweet lad who works for him.
Chino is a quiet film that also has various horses in front.
The play between Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)) and his real-life wife Jill Ireland (Violent City (1970)) is hot as usual, although some of the simplicity of the era seems deeply comical today. - As when Chino announces to his love that he wants to marry her, whereupon he in complete earnest tells her, "We'll meet in church tomorrow", - and leaves!
Chino is directed by Illinoisan John Sturges (The Great Escape (1963)), who now shares IMDb-director's credit for the film with Italian director Duilio Coletti (The Mask of Cesare Borgia (1941)), although Coletti is only mentioned on the old French poster for the film:

The whole movie is on Youtube here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of Chino?
And of Bronson-Ireland's other films together?

Nights of Cabiria/Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) - Fellini serves private infatuation as incredible masterpiece

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Giulietta Masina sends us a look on the poster for Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria

Cabiria is the Cannes' Grand Prix- and Best Foreign Film Oscar-winning film by Italian master director Federico Fellini (8½ (1963)). In it, we follow the street girl Cabiria, a prostitute, as she is betrayed by her boyfriend in the very beginning of the film: 'Her' Giorgio steals her purse and pushes her into the river. She gets saved and later continues her destitute life in search of other men that might save her, SPOILER visiting a church, other prostitutes, a vaudeville club, going home with a movie star, joining a magic act and finally, she thinks, finding the man she will marry.
Cabiria moves forward like a river; things happen, but there's never any sense of suspense, so that our entire involvement rests on our ability to identify with Cabiria.
She is played by Giulietta Masina (La Strada (1954)), and she is a mercurial, loud-mouthed, gullible soul. Masina has a magic to her way and that smile she gives to convince someone else of a human bond between her and him, even if he's a cop on the nightly streets of Rome trying to get her to conduct her business elsewhere. She's wonderful in La Strada, which is a masterpiece that hits so many more keys. Here I couldn't get past the distraction that co-writer/director Fellini cast her in the lead again, - Masina was Fellini's wife for 50 years (1943-93), until they both died shortly after one another, - and he seems to have created the whole film around his infatuation with her, which would have to carry on to the audiences for it to work, - which clearly it did, just not for me.
I think the story is pretty thin, and maybe there's too much Italian shouting going on for me to get very emotionally involved in the film. Also some of the Fellini-elements, (the magic act, the African dance act), seem forced into the film just for it to have some content. It didn't get magical for me in Cabiria; I didn't feel transported to another place as I did in La Strada, - instead it got dull, and I almost dozed off a few times.

The details:

Still, Cabiria is worth seeing for Masina's charismatic performance and some fine moments and light amusement. The film also has what is termed 'neorealistic elements' understood mostly as poor Romans of the time, as Italy was still financially drained after WWII; we see a woman that lives in a cave and witness poverty in other ways. Contradictorily, which annoyed me, we never really learn how Cabiria affords her house, or, more mysteriously, how she is able to gather so much money for her marriage dowry at the end of the film.
She is then, once again, SPOILER betrayed and ripped off by a scoundrel posing as a gentleman, and Cabiria is in tatters, having now lost everything, we assume. She goes crying to the streets, and the film ends with Masina's legendary move from despairing tears to an optimistic smile and even to look at us, the audience, as she walks the noisy, happy streets of Rome. A wonderful end to a film that is whimsical and rackety, a meager dalliance.
Cabiria was produced by legendary Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who showed his infamous daring here in producing a film about a prostitute heroine, something no-one else wanted to at the time. Fellini made it after The Swindle/The Swindlers/Il Bidone (1955) a mostly forgotten swindler drama between La Strada and the acclaimed Cabiria. Fellini was in the process of changing styles quite dramatically at this time, just as Italy was changing, as his next picture became the acclaimed, long comedy-drama La Dolce Vita (1960)

Related review:

Federico Fellini:  8½ (1963) or, Vive la Cinema!

One of the striking images in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria

A short trailer for the restored version of the film

Budget: Unknown
Box office: 0.7 mil. $ (US 1998 reissue only)
= Unknown

What do you think of Nights of Cabiria?
And of Fellini's other films?