Pride & Prejudice (2005) - Wright's marriage drama makes the mind wander off

♥♥

 

Star Keira Knightley and co-star Matthew Macfadyen in beautiful sunset light on a field makes up most of this pretty poster for Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice

Late 18th century England: The Bennet family have more than one daughter who are ready to get married off. A young soldier, a priest and the mysterious Mr. Darcy are among the suitors.

 

Pride & Prejudice is written by Deborah Moggach (Final Demand (2003, TV movie)), with Emma Thompson (Effie Gray (2014)) contributing uncredited work, adapting the same-titled 1813 novel by Jane Austen (Mansfield Park (2014)), and directed by debuting Joe Wright (The Soloist (2009)).

Overwrought over-acting characterizes more than one of the performances in this plush adaptation that is essentially a coming-of-age romance. The young women are extraordinarily giggly and excited, and I for one could not attach myself to them to the required degree, despite lead Keira Knightley's (Domino (2005)) at times charming nature. There are none other to seriously cling onto, and the archaic family story, which solely concerns getting the 'girls' married in a suitable fashion, thus becomes terribly distant and unappealing.

Darcy is played with almost humorous sulk and lack of positivity by Matthew Macfadyen (Ripper Street (2012-16)), and it sure is a mystery here why Knightley's Lizzy falls for him. Donald Sutherland's (Ad Astra (2019)) soft patriarch performance nevertheless stands out as moving. Wright's possible qualities as a director remain hidden here.

 

Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 28 mil. $

Box office: 121.6 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.34 times its cost)

[Pride & Prejudice premiered 25 July (Hamburg, Germany) and runs 127 minutes. Shooting took place from July - October 2004 in England. The film opened #10 to a 2.8 mil. $ first weekend in 215 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #6 and in 1,335 theaters (different weeks), grossing 38.4 mil. $ (31.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 26.5 mil. $ (21.8 %) and Germany with 7.1 mil. $ (5.8 %). The film was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning none: Best Actress (Knightley), lost to Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, Art Direction, lost to Memoirs of a Geisha, Costume Design, also lost to Memoirs of a Geisha, and Score (Dario Marianelli), lost to Gustavo Santaolalla for Brokeback Mountain. It also won 1/6 BAFTA nominations, was nominated for 3 European Film awards and 2 Golden Globes, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 4 notches over this one. Wright returned with Atonement (2007). Knightley returned in Domino (2005). Pride & Prejudice is certified fresh at 87 % with a 7.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Pride & Prejudice?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Wild ruckus in Verbinski's entertaining first Pirates sequel

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Action Adventure of the Year + Best Pirate Movie of the Year + Most Profitable Movie of the Year 201.44 mil. $ range

 

Exciting, fantastical scenarios and big, attractive stars lure from this poster for Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Beautiful newly wed couple Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are demanded executed, and Captain Jack Sparrow contracts a terrible curse that results in a raging Kraken!

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (The Lone Ranger (2013), both) and directed by great Tennessean filmmaker Gore Verbinski (Mousehunt (1997)). It is the 2nd film in Verbinski's Pirates trilogy, coming after Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and before Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).

The plot is almost impossible to recount, and the film is a bit messy with a hackneyed monster ending and a long middle sequence in which Orlando Bloom's (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)) Turner appears as yellow as bile. Despite the questionable color-grading job and excessive use of CGI, Dead Man's Chest is still a role-model study in franchise handling - and it's maddeningly entertaining. It has wacky, wonderful humor and a grand Hans Zimmer (The Son (2022)) score.

 

Related posts:

 

Pirates franchise: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Disney's tentpole franchise implodes

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Verbinski's sprawling Disney swashbuckler is a prime summer spectacle
Gore Verbinski: Rango (2011) - Verbinski's amusing family western animation

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Disney's tentpole franchise implodes 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Top 10: Best first-of-franchise movies 

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

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Verbinski's sprawling Disney swashbuckler is a prime summer spectacle 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 225 mil. $

Box office: 1,066.1 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.73 times its cost)

[Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest premiered 24 June (California) and runs 150 minutes. Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)) was paid 20 mil. $ for his performance; Bloom 11.9 mil. $. Shooting took place from February - September 2005 in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Bahamas, Dominica and in California, back-to-back with the third Pirates film, At World's End. Depp's stunt double Tony Angelotti was nearly killed in an free-fall stunt accident. He later sued Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer but the suit was dismissed. The film opened #1 to a record-breaking 135.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends at #1 and then another 2 in the top 5 (#2-#3), grossing 423.3 mil. $ (39.7 % of the total gross), selling approximately 64.6 mil. tickets there. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 98.6 mil. $ (9.2 %) and Japan with 84.5 mil. $ (7.9 %). The film was the year's highest-grossing, Disney's highest-grossing up to that point and the fastest to reach 1 bil. $ at the box office (63 days) at the time. It later made in excess of 320.8 mil. $ on the home video market. It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning for Best Visual Effects. It lost Best Art Direction to Pan's Labyrinth, Sound Mixing to Dreamgirls and Sound Editing to Letters from Iwo Jima. It won 1/5 BAFTA nominations, was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy, among many other honors. Verbinski returned with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), the next Pirates film and the end to his Pirates trilogy. Depp returned in At World's End; Bloom first in Love and Other Disasters (2006); and Knightley first in At World's End. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is rotten at 53 % with a 6.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest?

Domino (2005) - T. Scott's bounty-hunter biopic a complete misfire, mega-flop

♥♥

+ Worst Poster of the Year  

Keira Knightley, now obviously a shotgun-toting action heroine, on one of the lazily done and very uninspiring posters for Tony Scott's Domino

QUICK REVIEW:

A cool team of bounty hunters somehow become a reality TV series, but then get mixed up with a Vegas billionaire and a mob boss, SPOILER and everyone dies.

Domino is based on real-life model turned bounty hunter Domino Harvey, but how much of what happens in the film has any connection to reality is unclear. Unfortunately, by the end of the fatiguing, dull film, I didn't care at all.
Because what is Tony Scott's (The Hunger (1983)) Domino, written by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko (2001))? - An action movie? Nah... - A heist movie? Not really... - A thriller? Far from it... The film is like a failed mix of all these things.
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler (2008)) spits out his lines in the film, so that they glimmer of coolness, and the story does take some fun detours, like the bit about The First Ladies and Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green (Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-00), both) playing themselves.
But mostly, Scott's 127 minutes long Domino is a stressful, flashing, music-video-like creation, sure to be counted among the late, English master filmmaker's worst.

Related review:
Tony Scott:  Stoker (2013) - Chan-wook Park's over-styled American debut revolts and bores in turns (producer) 

Déjà Vu (2006) - T. Scott cuts a helluva suspense-cake!

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the horrible trailer for the film here

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 22.9 mil. $
= Mega-flop
[Fox, who had a refusal deal with Scott, must count themselves lucky that they decided to forgo any involvement in Domino. The real Domino was paid a huge sum for the rights to her story, but as a drug addict, this obviously backfired: Before the film opened, she died from a drug overdose.  Scott has said that the film is among his favorites of his own. He also committed suicide, 7 years after the release, in 2012. Domino's release was delayed several times, and the film eventually opened to bad reviews and a dismal 4.6 mil. $ opening weekend in North America, where it only played for 4 weeks, grossing 10.1 mil. $ (44 % of the total gross).]

What do you think of Domino?

A Dangerous Method (2011) - Cronenberg's rather disappointing waltz with the fathers of modern psychology

♥♥♥

The elegant French poster for David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method

QUICK REVIEW:

Carl Jung's work with Sigmund Freud's new psychoanalysis in 1904 quickly leads him directly to the founder himself: A particularly difficult case, a Jewish woman, seems to benefit from 'the method', but she then starts a fateful relationship to her doctor.

First the good parts of A Dangerous Method, great Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg's (Scanners (1981)) period psycho-sex drama biopic of three of the most important figures in the realm of psychology:
The film is well-written, by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons (1988)), based on his own play adaptation of John Kerr's non-fiction 1993 book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein. It is sober and thought-provoking and a handsomely produced historical drama with some of the finest actors of our day, Viggo Mortensen (Jauja (2014)), Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave (2013)) and Vincent Cassel (Eastern Promises (2007)).
But... The meaning of the title flutters in the wind. Keira Knightley's (Begin Again (2013)) overly mannered attacks in the beginning of the film are painfully clichéd. And, finally, it is frankly something of a disappointment to witness Cronenberg, a champion of the subconscious and primal urges, drives and fears on the screen, make a large film about Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, which is as sober and straightforward as this.

Related reviews:

David Cronenberg: Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg/DeLillo/Pattinson's speculative limo lullaby
A History of Violence (2005) or, Who Is Tom Stall? 
Spider (2002) - Cronenberg takes us to the tormented (and slightly dull) mind of a schizophrenic 
Dead Ringers (1988) or, Brothers and Their Instruments 
The Brood (1979) or, Marital Fury and Craze! 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 18 mil. $
Box office: 27.4 mil. $
= Big flop
[The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and got lukewarm notices most places. Mortensen was Globe-nominated as Best Supporting Actor. It made just 5.7 mil. $ (21 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of A Dangerous Method?

The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie

♥♥♥♥

Benedict Cumberbatch stares you right in the face on the poster for Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is the much-hyped top-grossing independent movie of 2014, 8 times Oscar-nominated and starring one of the most happening actors alive right now, England's Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking (2004), TVM).

Alan Turing is the arrogant, quaint mathematician, who claims that he will build a machine that can crack the Germans' enigma code during the distressful time of WWII. As Turing fights for his project, there is another code to be broken as well: the code of Turing himself.

I'll let it be said right off that the film is another Oscar favorite this year (like Birdman (2014)), which doesn't live up to its hype, and if it isn't clear to most people now, perhaps, then I think it will be clear in a few years, once the awards season dust has settled, so to speak.
The Imitation Game is a good period war movie that lives on mainly two qualities: Firstly, the great story at its core: Turing. Secondly, Cumberbatch's serious, transmorphing performance as him. While lots in the man's life has been polished and made easier to understand for a mass audience in 114 minutes' time, Cumberbatch has on the other hand been allowed to run wild with a deep-felt and unabashed characterization, which is the film's main selling point, and will quite likely earn him his first Oscar statuette in a couple of weeks' time. [Post-note: It didn't: Eddie Redmayne instead won for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014).]
Other distinguished performers here include secondaries Rory Kinnear (Cuban Fury (2014)) as the detective that gets a whiff of Turing's secrets, Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)) as his superior Menzies and young Alex Lawther (X+Y (2014)) as young Turing, who is stunningly close to Cumberbatch's portrait.
In the up-played part as Turing's friend Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice (2005)) does well but is basically second banana. - Her Oscar-nomination for this supporting performance (her second after Pride & Prejudice) is a bit hard to understand, and definitely shouldn't wind up giving her her first statuette.

Benedict Cumberbatch by the cinematically enlarged, redesigned 'Bombe' decode machine for Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

The details:

The film is based on the first sold feature script of young screenwriter Graham Moore (Pirates vs. Ninjas (2005), short), who also, amazingly, has been Oscar-nominated for this job. (The script was a Blacklist favorite in 2011.) The complexity of Turing and his math gets washed over here and cooked down to a kind of motto which is repeated by different characters at different times in the film. But the story of the film and its success is so good that scores of audiences and critics won't recognize its dubious reconstruction of Turing, which you can read about towards the bottom of this page.
Together with a visual and score side (by Alexander Desplat, also Oscar-nominated) that both are neat but nothing particularly outstanding, Imitation Game comes off somewhat dusty and old-fashioned, perhaps also because it follows the towering Oscar-winner of last year, the sensuous, emotionally overpowering masterpiece 12 Years a Slave (2013).
But even comparing it to more related fare like Ron Howard's great mathematician biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001) or the recent British home run period biopic The King's Speech (2010), The Imitation Game simply falls short.
It is the English-language debut of Norwegian director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011)), who should have given more of a damn of all the well-meaning forces undoubtedly securing that he "got it right" here with this heavy, important material, and instead have given us a bit wilder version of Turing's life. Incredibly, though, even Tyldum is Oscar-nominated for his direction.
At its core, the film presents a startling and incredible story; at its best, it is about how much of the 'great war' and the fate of much of Europe was controlled by mathematicians and statistics in a room in England. - That is new to the screen and mind-bending 'news' to boot. Turing's sad end, condemned for his homosexuality, ending his own life, becomes a a tragic end-note instead of a serious aftermath, the natural 3rd act for the film about his life, which might have made it excell. This doesn't happen.

Oscar-nominated, beautiful Keira Knightley, second banana in Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 134.6 mil. $ (and counting)
= Huge hit
[The Weinstein Company struck gold once again by purchasing the movie for 7 mil. $ for US distribution (the reportedly biggest sum paid for a foreign film ever), where it has made 69.8 mil. $ so far (52 % of the total gross). It premiered at Telluride, played at Toronto, and premiered in Europe at the BFI London Film Festival. It still has just over a dozen countries yet to premiere in, including, most prominently, Japan.]

What do you think of The Imitation Game?

Begin Again/Can a Song Save Your Life? (2013) - Carney's welcome New York music treat

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best New York Movie of the Year 

The promising, light poster for John Carney's Begin Again

Gretta is about to leave New York when an old friend forces her to perform one of her songs at a bar. Among the crowd sits a fired, unsuccessful record producer, who sees and hears possibilities in her.

Begin Again is a really good and very welcome film that I will warmly recommend. It is a tribute to creative DIY-spirit, and it is also in itself a very frank and unpolished project, which is shot over large parts of the beautiful metropolis. The shot continuity is at times not too great, but most will forgive it due to the film's unperfectionist creed.
The comedic music drama story is well told and sweet, - without ever becoming sentimental. Marc Ruffalo (Zodiac (2007)) and especially Catherine Keener (Enough Said (2013)) are truly wonderful. CeeLo Green (Hotel Transylvania, voice (2012)) is funny; and you don't have to be a Keira Knightley-fan to enjoy Begin Again, (I'm not.) She's credible in her role as the slightly awkward but sweet Gretta.
There's something anachronistic about this film, which is written and directed by Irish John Carney (Once (2006)). - Ruffalo's character seems painfully aware of his own outdatedness, which seems to characterize the film in general. But that feeling only makes it so much more of a pleasure to experience that there is a definite space in 2013/2014 (when Begin Again has been in theaters) for such a charming film.
The highly musical Carney is already shooting his next film, Sing Street (2015), which is an Irish music film about going to London. After Begin Again, I am full of great hope for this film.

Related posts:

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]

Watch the nice trailer here

Cost: Estimated 8-10 mil. $
Box office: 63.4 mil. $
= Big hit
[Begin Again has had a slow release, beginning at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013 under the title Can a Song Save Your Life?, reaching several other festivals before its limited American release in June '14. It was released nationwide in August, and still has premieres coming up in Italy (October 16th) and Japan (February 2015). It has done very well commercially.]

What do you think of Begin Again?
Other music films that you think are recommendable?