Eagerly anticipating this month ... (6-25)

Eagerly anticipating this month ... (6-25)
Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value (2025)
Showing posts with label Jay & Mark Duplass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jay & Mark Duplass. Show all posts

6/12/2016

Cyrus (2010) - The Duplass brothers score hilarious dramedy gold



+ Best Independent Movie of the Year

The simple, effective poster for Jay and Mark Duplass' Cyrus

John is a despairing, divorced man, who is thrilled to meet a genuinely sweet woman at a party, who becomes his girlfriend. The only problem is that she lives with her bizarre, 21 year-old son.

John C. Reilly (Carnage (2011)) is brilliant and really funny here in great New Orleanian writer-director brothers Jay and Mark Duplass' (Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), both) small dramedy pearl. It plays on our tendency towards manipulation and lies when under pressure.
The vivacious camera concept (cinematographer Jas Shelton (The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015))) works well in this intimate story. Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street (2012)) and Marisa Tomei (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)) are also outstanding.
Cyrus has a good story and is funny as hell. - Don't miss it!

Related posts:

Jay & Mark DuplassJeff Who Lives at Home (2011) or, Signs of Jeff
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess



The Duplass brothers give an interview about the film here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 9.9 mil. $
= Big flop
[Cyrus premiered January 23 (Sundance) and runs 91 minutes. It was shot in and around January 2009. It opened in just 4 theaters to a solid 181k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked in 454 theaters and grossed 7.4 mil. $ (74.7 % of the total gross). It screened in 14 other countries with the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets being the UK with 1.9 mil. $ (19.2 %) and Mexico with 0.1 mil. $ (1%). Reilly got nominated for the Best Male Lead Independent Spirit award for his performance in the film. Cyrus is certified fresh at 80% with a 6.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Cyrus?

6/05/2015

Jeff Who Lives at Home (2011) or, Signs of Jeff



The very small-typed tag-line above the picture of Ed Helms as a boy reads, 'The first step to finding your destiny is leaving your mother's basement.' For Mark and Jay Duplass' Jeff Who Lives at Home

QUICK REVIEW:

Jeff lives in his mother's basement and gets as his day's assignment to fix a shutter in a door. That leads him on an 'adventure' with his brother and later also their mother.

Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)) is back as comical male #1 of today as the pot-smoking Jeff, who follows different signs in his uneventful life to look for his destiny. Ed Helms (We're the Millers (2013)) is perfect as his dope of a brother, and Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise (1991)) is predictably good as their mother.
As an audience member you don't take an incredible lot with you from the dramedy romance Jeff, but it matters less as the film is so good and makes you roar with laughter so many times.
It is well-written and directed by New Orleanian brothers Mark and Jay Duplass (Cyrus (2010)) and very unusually, - and almost completely successfully, - shot hand-held and with plenty of zooms by Jas Shelton (C.O.G. (2013)). Jeff Who Lives at Home is one of the year's most pleasant and funniest films, one to watch.




Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 7.5 mil. $
Box office: 4.7 mil. $
= Huge flop
[After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, Jeff got its release many months hence in March 2012 and didn't score the audiences it deserved. It made 4.2 mil. $ in North America (89 % of the total gross), and its poor distribution was handled by Paramount Vantage.]

What do you think of Jeff Who Lives at Home?
Seen other movies by the Duplass brothers?
If so, how was/were it/they?

Eagerly anticipating this month ... (5-25)

Eagerly anticipating this month ... (5-25)
Kleber Mendonca Filho's The Secret Agent (2025)