Igby Goes Down (2002) - Steers' debut is a New York gemstone

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Huge Flop of the Year + Best Youth Movie of the Year

 

Off-center and pensive sits co-star Kieran Culkin upside a blue wall on this poster for Burr Steers' Igby Goes Down

Igby Slocumb is 17 years old and from a wealthy family, but he wants to break free and find his own path in life. Which is easier said than done.

 

Igby Goes Down is written and directed by debuting Burr Steers (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)).

It is a morbid, funny and tragic dramedy. Kieran Culkin (No Sudden Move (2021)) is strong as Igby; Claire Danes (Evening (2007)) is terribly cute, - until she chooses Ryan Phillippe's (Antitrust (2001)) Ollie over his younger brother Igby, - and Susan Sarandan (The Client (1994)) and Jeff Goldblum (Hotel Artemis (2018)) are funny. 

The film is very New-Yorker intellectual and too much at times. Bill Pullman (The Equalizer 2 (2018)) doesn't really work as Igby's mentally ill father, and the good-spirit Mickey-Mousing of the opening music is grating. But although Igby Goes Down, like its title character, isn't flawless, it is an original and brisk movie.

 

Related posts:

 

Burr Steers: Charlie St. Cloud (2010) - Steers and Efron's second collaboration is lukewarm

17 Again (2009) or, Teentainment Deluxe

2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

 

Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 9 mil. $

Box office: 6.9 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.76 times its cost)

[Igby Goes Down premiered 23 May (Seattle International Film Festival) and runs 98 minutes. Phillippe was paid 500k $ for his performance in the film. Shooting took place from February - April 2001 in New York. The film opened #24 to a 306k $ first weekend in 10 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #15 and in 156 theaters (different weeks), grossing 4.7 mil. $ (68.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd an 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 689k $ (10 %) and Germany with 499k $ (7.3 %). The film was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and an Independent Spirit award and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. The film is among the last to show the original World Trade Center twin towers before they were destroyed by Islamic terrorists 9/11 2001. Steers returned with 3 TV credits prior to his theatrical return 17 Again (2009). Culkin returned in Lymelife (2008); Danes in The Hours (2002). Igby Goes Down is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Igby Goes Down?

Wiener-Dog (2016) - Solondz's incisive and funny dog saga dramedy

♥♥♥♥

+ Most Under-Appreciated Movie of the Year + Best Dramedy of the Year + Best Dog Movie of the Year

A wiener-dog's butt features prominently on this pastel-colored poster for Todd Solodz's Wiener-Dog

We follow a wiener-dog, who incurs a nervous stomach from living with an overly modern, clean family and gets rescued from a lethal injection by a young woman, Dawn Wiener, who eventually gives it away to a couple who both have Downs syndrome. After a short break, the film moves to screenwriting teacher Dave Schmerz in New York, who also owns a wiener-dog. The last story concerns an old, untalkative woman, who has named her wiener-dog Cancer.

Master writer-director Todd Solondz (Happiness (1998)) returns with something worthwhile here after years of works of lesser quality (Palindromes (2004), Life During Wartime (2009) and his most negligible effort to date, Dark Horse (2011)). Wiener-Dog is a darkly funny, cinematic salute to peculiarly shaped, sausage-like wiener-dogs everywhere.
As usual, Solondz satirizes and spikes his country and its unintelligent, superficial, indifferent, greedy, selfish and joyless populace, (as seen from Solondz's perspective.) Here he does so with a strong cast of Tracy Letts (The Lovers (2017)), Julie Delpy (Sunny Side Up (1994)), Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha (2012)), Kieran Culkin (The Cider House Rules (1999)), Zosia Mamet (Bleeding Heart (2015)) and Ellen Burstyn (The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2004, TV movie)) all giving sound, fine performances. Also good are Keaton Nigel Cooke (American Masters (2016, TV documentary) as the boy of the first family, Connor Long (Actor Martinez (2016)) and Bridget Brown (LOL (2012)) as the lovely couple with Downs and Danny DeVito (Drowning Mona (2000)), who is a standout as Dave Schmerz, a man who gets ridiculed and shoved towards early retirement along with his priceless 'what-if; then-what' teaching dogma.
Wiener-Dog also has a wonderful country song about its title animal, (The Ballad of Wiener-Dog, sung by Eric Morris (Blue Bloods (2011-12, actor)), lyrics by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray (2007, composer)) and Scott Wittman (Smash (2012, TV-series, composer)). It is an acidic, harsh gumball of a dramedy, constructed by Solondz at his most hostile towards modern Western society, which he derides as if from a great distance. His hostility towards the way the modern world and its people function, as he sees it and them, is quite unique. The characters throughout Wiener-Dog are fairly well drawn, and I would have followed them for longer. For a film about a notoriously elongated dog also known as a dachshund, Wiener-Dog, regrettably, is a bit short.

Related post:

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 726k $
= Uncertain (but most likely a huge flop)
[Wiener-Dog premiered 22 January (Sundance) and runs 88 minutes. The film ties to Solondz's second film, the great Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) in that it reconnects us to the lead character of that film, Dawn Wiener, who is now portrayed by Gerwig, (original star Heather Matarazzo declined to star in Wiener-Dog.) The story is intended to be about one dachshund's journey from owner to owner, although I didn't realize this during watching it. Filming took place in 30 days from June - July 2015 in New York on an undisclosed but low budget. Brie Larson filmed a scene for the film, which was cut out. At the film's Sundance premiere, some audiences booed and walked out SPOILER by the film's end, in which the wiener-dog suffers a violent death. Some of these 'animal lovers' also subsequently attempted to spoil the film online, proving, perhaps, that Sundance can also be a ridiculous venue for opening a film. Amazon bought the distribution rights for the film for an undisclosed 7-figure sum. It opened #44 to a 24k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #34 and in 73 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 470k $ (64.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 112k $ (15.4 %) and Russia with 111k $ (15.3 %). Only 5 foreign markets have their grosses made public; the film had a few more, but they may have had too insignificant grosses to be posted. If assumed made a a very small 1 mil. $ budget, the film would count as a huge flop. Solondz is in pre-production with his next film, Love Child (2018) starring Penélope Cruz and Edgar Ramirez. Wiener-Dog is certified fresh at 77 % with a 6.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wiener-Dog?

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) - Care's heart-warming, mega-flopping coming-of-age debut

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Independent Movie of the Year

The comic book-inspired poster for Peter Care's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

QUICK REVIEW:

We are in a Catholic school in the American South in the 1970s, where 4 boys are drawing superheroes and pulling pranks like stealing the saint statue from the school. One of them now gets a girlfriend, and lots of tensions arise.

Altar Boys thrives on its dream cast: Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down (2002)), Emile Hirsch (The Mudge Boy (2003)), Jena Malone (Donnie Darko (2001)), Vincent D'Onofrio (Jurassic World (2015)) and Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs (1991)), who was also a co-producer on the film. They are all absolutely wonderful in this coming-of-age youth drama.
It is filmed with nice, rich colors by Lance Acord (Being John Malkovich (1999)) and interlaced with super-cool animated sequences that detail the boys' comic book fantasies and their conceptions of themselves.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical 1994 novel by Chris Fuhrman, written by Jeff Stockwell (Children of the Machine (2015-)) and Michael Petroni (The Book Thief (2013)) and directed by music video director Peter Care (Six Feet Under (2004), TV-series) as his feature debut. The film has a surprising ending, which I liked.
This is a good film.

 

Related post:

 

2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the trailer for the film - with Spanish subtitles - here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 2 mil. $
= Mega-flop
[This considerably budgeted debut independent film received mostly good reviews, but failed to attract the audiences it needed: It never even crossed 100 screens in North America, where it grossed 1.7 mil. $ (85 % of the total gross), and internationally, it seems it was only released to Italy, Spain and Mexico, - perhaps because these are big Catholic markets, - but it never did much business there either. The film did win the Best First Feature award at the Independent Spirit Awards, but Care hasn't come back since this major flop.]

What do you think of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys?