Pearl Harbor (2001) - Bay's stuffed war melodrama baloney

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A sensual romance between two very photogenic young specimens of the human race and a dramatic war-plane situation attracts attention on this poster for Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor

Two brothers in the US Air Force: SPOILER One crashes, - and everyone expects him dead, - so his younger brother takes over his lady. But big brother returns alive, - Oahu's Pearl Harbor air base gets bombed by the Japanese, - and the younger brother dies in the attack!

 

Pearl Harbor is written by Randall Wallace (Braveheart (1995)) and directed by Michael Bay (Bad Boys (1995)).

Handsome flight sequences stand out in Bay's otherwise horrid and history-distorting film that's both grotesquely overlong and filled with tawdry romance. 

 

Related posts:

 

Michael Bay: 13 Hours/13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) - Bay portrays controversial recent history in generally thrilling actioner 

Armageddon (1998) or, Macho Men Save Earth From Disaster!  

Top 10: Best cop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Bad Boys (1995) - Bay's successful buddy cop debut is still fun

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 140 mil. $

Box office: 449.2 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 3.20 times its cost)

[Pearl Harbor premiered 21 May (Pearl Harbor, Hawaii) and runs 184 minutes. Wallace was paid 2 mil. $ for his script. Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer requested a 208 mil. $ budget from Disney, who turned that down and also demanded the film have a PG-13 rating. Ben Affleck (Reindeer Games (2000)) made approximately 10 mil. $ from his performance, coming from a 250k $ salary and a 7 % back-end participation deal. Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)) was paid a flat 50k $ fee. Shooting took place from April - September 2000 in Mexico, Indiana, Texas, including in Houston, California, including in Los Angeles, in Nevada, Hawaii, including at the actual Pearl Harbor, and in England. Disney lavished a 5 mil. $ premiere for almost 2,000 patrons at Pearl Harbor. The film opened #1 to a 59 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another weekend at #1 and then 2 more in the top 5 (#3-#5), grossing 198.5 mil. $ (44.2 % of the total gross). It was the 6th highest-grossing film of the year. It reportedly later made more than 130 mil. $ on domestic home video sales in its first week of release alone. Bay's gross earnings pay reportedly eventually added up to 25 mil. $. The film has been lambasted for its countless historical inaccuracies. It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning one, for Best Sound Editing. It lost Best Sound to Black Hawk Down, Visual Effects to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Song (There You'll Be by Diane Warren) to If I Didn't Have You by Randy Newman from Monsters, Inc.. It was also nominated for 2 Golden Globes and a Grammy, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 1.5/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. Bay returned with Faith Hill: There You'll Be (2001, music video) and theatrically with Bad Boys II (2003). Affleck returned in Daddy and Them (2001). Pearl Harbor is rotten at 24 % with a 4.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Pearl Harbor? 

Halloween H20/Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) - Myers spreads fresh terror in Miner's fine sequel

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Returning star Jamie Lee Curtis and an assortment of the fresh young faces against the ghoulish face of killer Michael Myers adorn this poster for Steve Miner's Halloween H20

It has been 20 years since Michael Myers' escape from a mental hospital and subsequent murderous spree on the fateful Halloween night of 1978. Laurie, his sister, has faked her own death and now works as the leader of a private school in California, as Michael strikes again.

Halloween H20 is written by Robert Zappia (Thunder Alley (1994-95)) and Matt Greenberg (Grey Knight (1993)) and directed by Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)). It is the 7th film in the Halloween franchise, although it retcons [effectively ignores] the plots of the preceding 3 films.

It has a nostalgic value to me due to the time it came out and the time that I first saw it, but it also simply just works, although its plot setup is extremely simple. - Yet that is the case with Halloween right from the first one by John Carpenter, - a boogieman out to slay you, - and the simplicity doesn't diminish its effect.

Jamie Lee Curtis (Queens Logic (1991)) makes all the difference, because it is so palpable that she wants to be this character and support this universe, and that that's why she's there. She also has a wonderful exterior scene here with her real-life mother Janet Leigh (Prince Valiant (1954)), which in a beautiful way brings these two biologically and generically related horror queens together in the same film, - and gives it an added quality in the process.

Halloween H20 is well-made, elementarily exciting and mostly tasteful in its effects, (SPOILER perhaps cute teen Josh Hartnett (O (20021)) with a hockey ice skate through his face is on the edge but besides that.) It is a terrific, compact screamer.

 

Related posts:

 

Halloween franchise: Halloween (2007) - Zombie's remake is a bloody stinker

Steve Miner: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) - Miner debuts with solid if formulaic first sequel

 

 

Watch a short TV trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 17 mil. $

Box office: 75 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.41 times its cost)

[Halloween H20 premiered 27 July (USA) and runs 86 minutes. Carpenter was in talks to direct but insisted on being paid 10 mil. $ and getting a 3-picture deal, which the Weinstein brothers of Dimension Films turned down. Shooting took place from February - April 1998 in Utah and California, including Los Angeles. The film opened #3, behind holdover hit Saving Private Ryan and fellow new release Snake Eyes, to a 16.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd weekend and grossed 55 mil. $ (73.3 % of the total gross). The 20 mil. $ international gross comes from a 1999 Variety article. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to 2 notches under this one. Myers returned with Curtis in Halloween: Resurrection (2002) by Rick Rosenthal. Miner returned with Lake Placid (1999). Curtis first returned in Virus (1999). Halloween H20 is rotten at 52 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Halloween H20?

Lucky Number Slevin/The Wrong Man (2006) - Hartnett and Co. are enjoyable in McGuigan's mischievous revenge story

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Bruce Willis' silencers seem to protrude right out of this cool-looking poster for Paul McGuigan's Lucky Number Slevin

"It all begins with a horse" Slevin's father bet all his money in 1979 on a horse, which underperformed, and the whole family were summarily executed. Except for Slevin. - Now he will take his revenge!

Lucky Number Slevin is written by Jason Smilovic (Karen Sisco (2003), TV-series)) and directed by Paul McGuigan (Wicker Park (2004)).
The film starts us out in its third act, without us realizing it straight away due to its virtuoso and entertaining narrative structure. It is well-written if a bit introverted at times.
The stars here are a scoop for Slevin: From hunky, down-to-earth Josh Hartnett (O (2001)), who wears only a towel for what in retrospect seems like half the film, over sweet Lucy Liu (Play It to the Bone (1999)) and raw Bruce Willis (Cop Out (2010)) to the mighty, dramatic cannons and gangster bosses here; Morgan Freeman (The Bucket List (2007)) and Ben Kingsley (Turtle Diary (1985)), who share one of the film's strongest scenes.
Lucky Number Slevin is a sly and good-looking piece of entertainment.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 27 mil. $
Box office: 56.3 mil. $ 
= Flop (returned 2.08 times the cost)
[Lucky Number Slevin premiered 24 February (UK, Ireland and Malta) and runs 110 minutes. Shooting took place in Montreal, Québec and in New York from December 2004 - ?. The film opened #5, behind holdover hit Ice Age: The Meltdown, fellow new releases The Benchwarmers and Take the Lead and holdover hit Inside Man to a 7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd week and grossed too small 22.4 mil. $ (39.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.9 mil. $ (14 %) and Spain with 4.5 mil. $ (8 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to two notches harder than this review. McGuigan returned with Thief (2006, TV-series) and theatrically with Push (2009). Hartnett returned in The Black Dahlia (2006), also co-starring Willis; Liu in Maya & Miguel (2004-06) and theatrically in Code Name: The Cleaner (2007). Lucky Number Slevin is rotten at 51 % with a 5.9/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Lucky Number Slevin?

The Faculty (1998) or, Teacher Encounters of the Third Kind

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+ Best Sci-fi-Horror of the Year

 

An attractive young cast, a brooding color scheme and hyping quotes make up this poster for Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty

Herrington High School in Ohio seems like a completely average high school with average teachers and students. But now the latter are beginning to suspect that their teachers and the student body's jocks may be ... extra-terrestrials!

A generous 4 ♥'s are awarded to this enjoyable high school life farce/genre film homage, which pulls a fast one on one of the big cliché movie types of the 1990s: the high school-set melodrama-comedy. The Faculty is written by Kevin Williamson (Scream (1996)), based on a script by Bruce Kimmel (The Creature Wasn't Nice (1983)) and David Wechter (Midnight Madness (1980)), and directed by great Texan filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (Machete Kills (2013)).
James Cameron's masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is among the appreciatively referenced films, and the T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick (Big Love (2011), TV-series) is employed here and bad-ass as usual. He is one in a celebrity mecca in The Faculty that also counts, among others: Usher Raymond (People You May Know (2017)), Famke Janssen (Eulogy (2004)) is great here, Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious (2001)), later talk show icon Jon Stewart (Mixed Nuts (1994)) in a wild superman-like part, Salma Hayek (Wild Wild West (1999)), a cute Elijah Wood (The Romantics (2010)), an annoying Josh Hartnett (I Come with the Rain (2009)), Laura Harris (Just the Ticket (1999)) SPOILER as the awesome mega-monster, Summer Phoenix (The Believer (2001)) in a small role and Christopher McDonald (Fanboys (2009)).
The soundtrack is bolstered by an inferno of 90's rock, which feels appropriate for The Faculty. Rodriguez knows how to stage a very entertaining genre treat, and despite plot holes, this movie is a hoot.

Related posts:

Robert Rodriguez: 1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

From Dusk till Dawn (1996) - Tarantino, Rodriguez and chums' enjoyable Mexico vampire extravaganza
Desperado (1995) - Rodriguez' second Mexico actioner is a sexy, latino fireball

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 40.2 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty - but at least a box office success
[The Faculty premiered 12 November (USA) and runs 104 minutes. Kimmel and Wechter's script was written in 1990 but did not find buyers until the hugely successful release of Scream (1996). Williamson was commissioned to rewrite their script and make it more 'hip'. Williamson was poised to direct but passed in favor of his own creation, the inferior Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999). Shooting took place in Texas, including Austin and Dallas, from April - June 1998. The film opened #5, behind fellow new releases Patch Adams and Stepmom and holdover hits You've Got Mail and The Prince of Egypt, to an 11.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it enjoyed a successful run of 16 weeks. Regrettably, the film's worldwide gross is not reported, but the film was at least a box office success and likely a big hit. Rodriguez returned with Spy Kids (2001). The Faculty is rotten at 53 % with a 5.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Faculty?