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+ Best Huge Flop Movie of the Year + Best New York Movie of the Year
The five main characters look straight at us from a white wall background on this simple poster for Ira Sachs' Little Men, which carries the poignant tagline; 'Be on each other's side'
Jacob is a 13 year-old, artistically disposed boy from New York. When his grandfather dies, the man leaves behind the ownership of a building in Brooklyn, whereto Jacob's family moves. The boy Tony who lives on the ground floor becomes Jacob's new best friend, - but his mother can't pay the new, elevated rent. Little Men is the 8th feature from great Tennessean co-writer/director Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On (2012)), written with Mauricio Zacharias (Love for Sale (2006)). It is a lovely film of friendship in the formative years, a friendship which, (true to form for Sachs, who usually makes LGBT-themed works), also contains a secret grain of a crush in it for Jacob, and also about the annoying life decisions made by one's family, which often changes an underage child's life. The boys, Theo Taplitz (Dybbuk (2017, short)) and Michael Barbieri (Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)), are well-cast as the the precocious, introverted roller-blader Jake, and Brooklyn-accented, extroverted Tony. The adult actors also are distinguished here; Greg Kinnear (Thin Ice (2011)) stands out (again), here as a weak family father, but Kinnear portrays him with brilliant honesty. The rent dilemma is a great invention and diabolically irritating. Little Men is a tender film, which keeps to its quiet realism over Movie Drama, SPOILER and finally it denies us the reunion of the boys, which we are hoping for. It goes to show that Sachs doesn't care to follow his audiences' wishes, which he doesn't in this fine, short-story-like gift of a youth drama.
Cost: 2 mil. $ Box office: 2 mil. $ = Huge flop (returned 1 times the cost) [Little Men premiered 25 January (Sundance Film Festival, Utah) and runs 85 minutes. Shooting took place in New York. The film opened #43 to a 30k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it widened to 59 theaters but never attained a higher rank and grossed 702k $ (35.1 % of the total gross). North America was the film's 2nd biggest market. The biggest and 3rd biggest markets were France with 749k $ (37.5 %) and the UK with 230k $ (11.5 %). The film was nominated for 2 Independent Spirit awards. Sachs returns with Frankie (2019), again starring Kinnear. Taplitz returned in The Middle (2017, TV-series) and theatrically in Gringo (2018), Barbieri in Nunsense (2016, TV-series) and theatrically in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Kinnear in Confirmation (2016, TV movie), BoJack Horseman (2016, TV-series) and theatrically in Brigsby Bear (2017). Little Men is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.] What do you think of Little Men?
The Expendables 2 The Woman in Black Skyfall Promised Land My Brother the Devil The Possession The Dark Knight Rises American Reunion/American Pie: Reunion Big Miracle The Amazing Spiderman Remarks: This first update of the 2012 film lists increases the amount of reviewed, mentioned films from 48 to 60. 2012 was a great year in movies. The top 10 includes 5 masterpieces, - good for any year. And the best film of the year, Stephen Chobosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a youth romance dramedy keeper that'll live for decades to come. Robert Zemeckis' Flight is the resounding character study of the year; Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need a charming, funny, moving romcom, - her (as with Zemeckis) best film to date. Dave Frankel's Hope Springs brought us some favorite actors in an extremely delicate marriage counseling dramedy, and Ben Lewin's The Sessions was a surprise sex dramedy smash. Dramedies of different kinds have been favorites of the year. J. A. Bayona's The Impossible
is technically stunning, as well as stunning due to actors'
performances; the 2004 tsunami couldn't have gotten a 'better' film. Jeff Nichols' Mud is an unusual coming-of-age drama revolving around the Mississippi River. Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines is a magnetic, hard crime epic. Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha is the witty, melancholic portrayal of a young woman's struggles in New York and elsewhere. And finally, Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On is a devastatingly intimate look at a gay couple's relationship, as one of them increasingly falls prey to his drug addiction. - Whoa, what a year! In the 'worst of 2012' section, some really expensive, stupid, huge movies made their mark; Andrew Stanton's John Carter above all, a desert walk to get through despite its lavish production, but also Peter Berg's Battleship fell through the roof. Filmmaker masters David Cronenberg and Woody Allen both had terrible releases in 2012 with Cosmopolis and To Rome With Love respectively. Cronenberg's son Brandon Cronenberg also debuted in 2012 with a sound dud, Antiviral. In other news, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy came to a disappointing end, Daniel Craig continued his Bond-travesty with the slightly better Skyfall; Spiderman got an unnecessary reboot, and America went nuts over Silver Linings Playbook and their new best actress friend Jennifer Lawrence, who won an Oscar for her work in the film before four other, way more deserving actresses. At the 2013 Oscars, the Academy threw most of their love over Ben Affleck's Argo and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, but also admired Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, his biggest hit yet. Both Lincoln and Django
haven't been officially reviewed at Film Excess yet, but have been
seen, and are both very good films indeed. As are Oscar favorites The Master and Life of Pi, the latter, however, a little less so. Many big 2012 releases remain to be seen and reviewed by Film Excess, among them such titles as: 21
Jump Street, Pitch Perfect, The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga:
Breaking Dawn - Part 2, Spring Breakers, The Lucky One,
Think Like a Man (seen - good), Stuck in Love, Ted, Les
Misérables, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Cloud
Atlas, The Vow, Wreck-It-Ralph, The Cabin in the Woods (seen - bad), This Is 40 (seen - very good), Lawless, Chronicle, Seeking a Friend For the End of the World, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Rust and Bone, Quartet, Holy Motors, Casa de mi Padre, Ernest & Celestine, A Late Quartet, Middle of Nowhere, Here Comes the Devil, No and many others. As always, lots of movies left to see, - great!
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