The Haunting in Connecticut (2009) - Virginia Madsen as strong mama leads eerie haunting horror

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+ Best Haunting Movie of the Year

One of the inexplicable, horrific events of the film has made its way onto this poster for Peter Cornwell's The Haunting in Connecticut

A hard-pressed working class family with four children, including one who has cancer and undergoes expensive treatment, relocate to a house in Connecticut, where an experimental mortuary formerly resided...

The Haunting in Connecticut is a classic haunting story, SPOILER which uses at least its first half with characters wondering, if they really saw this or that or are losing their minds. The filmmakers make at least one too many references to Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece The Shining (1980), and the use of CGI does go a bit out of control towards the end.
But this is still a seriously unsettling story, which is well-orchestrated and furnished with credible acting. Virginia Madsen (Candyman (1992)) stands at the center in an inspiring, strong part as the family's indomitable wife and mother.
The Haunting in Connecticut is written by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe (Bones (2001), both) and directed by feature-debuting Peter Cornwell (Mercy (2014)).

Related posts:

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Young star Kyle Gallner gives an interview about his work in the movie here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 77.5 mil. $
= Huge hit
[The Haunting in Connecticut was released 27 March and runs 92 minutes. The film is based on an actual 1986 Connecticut case, which was investigated by Ed & Lorraine Warren (known from The Conjuring films), but the truthfulness of the haunting is disputed. Filming took place in Manitoba, Canada, from September - December 2007. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Monsters vs. Aliens, to a 23 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another week (#3) and grossed 55.3 mil. $ (71.4 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.1 mil. $ (7.9 %) and Mexico with 2.7 mil. $ (3.5 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to two notches harder than this one. The success resulted in a sequel: The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013) and a proposed second sequel set on Long Island, which is still in development. The Haunting in Connecticut is rotten at 16 % with a 4.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Haunting in Connecticut?

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) - Another terrible remake of a horror classic

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Jackie Earle Haley awaits us as the new Freddy Krueger in Samuel Bayer's A Nightmare on Elm Street

A group of youths from the same high school begin to get the same nightmare of a disfigured man in a striped sweater with a knife-hand that can cut them in reality!

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a shamefully uninspired remake of Wes Craven's 1984 classic of the same title, written by Wesley Strick (Doom (2005)) and Eric Heisserer (Final Destination 5 (2011)) and directed by music video director Samuel Bayer (Max (2005), short), making his feature debut. The film even allows itself to give Strick a separate story credit, although the story is all Craven's.
Nightmare starts by focusing on a young blond, who looks like a 25 year-old porn star, but who is supposed to be a regular high school girl. Her mother of course looks like an about two year older sister. SPOILER Then she dies, and we get a new protagonist, an increasingly bleary-eyes Rooney Mara (Carol (2015)). She and Kyle Gallner (Red State (2011)) make an honest attempt here, but they can far from save this a bit more ornery version of the original story, which remains a good one.
Worst about the Nightmare remake is that the personality is stripped from its iconic villain, Freddy Krueger, and that the film doesn't have the strange dream-state horror of the original. Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen (2009)) as Freddy is stuck with a mask so tight that he can give the role neither facial expressions nor real life. It's awful. Connie Britton (The Lather Effect (2006)) has good hair in the film, SPOILER but has an ungrateful role and ends up getting her eyes splatted out.
A Nightmare on Elm Street must be among the year's worst films.

Related posts:

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]
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or, Don't Fall Asleep!

Here's a promo clip for the film

Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 115.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered April 27 (Hollywood) and runs 95 minutes. As part of the film's development, it was decided to take the witticism away from the new Krueger, have him look more like a real burn victim and also change him from only a child murderer to also a child molester. Filming took place from May - July 2009 in Illinois and Indiana. The film opened #1 with a 32.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it fell a steep 72 % in its second week but still made #2 and eventually grossed 63 mil. $ (54.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 5.7 mil. $ (4.9 %) and the UK with 5 mil. $(4.3 %). Haley is contracted for two sequels, Mara for one, but development of any sequel has stood still since the film's release, and Bayer has not done a film since. A Nightmare on Elm Street is rotten at 15 % with a 3.7 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street?

Red State (2011) or, End of Days II

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3 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Parks (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)
Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire)

+ Wildest Movie of the Year
+ Best Independent Movie of the Year

The gritty-cool poster for Kevin Smith's Red State

Three high school friends find a middle-aged woman online, who wants to screw them. But as they search her out, they walk right into a trap set up by a hateful, Christian doomsday sect.

Red State is a hard-boiled, crazy, cool little indie film, replete with biting societal criticism of both government and religious fanaticism and bolstered by vivid action and pitch black (sometimes nearly bizarre) humor by writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks (1994)). It is well-written and dazzlingly carried out with very limited funds, (the budget for special effects were reportedly just 5,000 $.)
Red State has some fantastic performances; by John Goodman (Flight (2012)) and particularly by Melissa Leo (Flight) and Michael Parks (Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)), who plays the deluded father in the film with an intensity and gusto that simply knocks you over: In his long speech scene, his charisma and rationale almost gets us to understand his congregation.
The film is intermittently very dark, funny and scary. A wild ride and probably the most kick-ass piece of independent American film-making of 2011.
Smith has several projects in the making; he is involved with the filming of Holidays right now, a horror movie that he both stars in and co-directs, with several others. He is also debuting his new movie Yoga Hosers, the sequel to Tusk (2014), later this year.

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Kevin Smith: Tusk (2014) - Smith goes all-out wack
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Cop Out (2010) or, A Couple of Dicks 

Michael Parks' lunacy is quite convincing in Kevin Smith's Red State

John Goodman is a no-bullshit type government agent in Kevin Smith's Red State

Watch Kevin Smith introduce the teaser for the movie here

Cost: 4 mil. $
Box office: 1.8 mil. $ + 3 mil. $ from VoD
= Even Steven
[Red State's distribution was as controversial if not more controversial than the film itself: After its Sundance screening, Smith had said publicly that he would sell the distribution right auction-style, so he gave the crowd long faces when he told them after the screening that that wouldn't be the case anyway; because he would sell the rights to himself for 20 $, and that he thinks that it is the way forward for independent filmmakers of today, - distributing their own films and avoiding the distributor's often sizable box office cut. Smith then showed Red State for a week in his pal Quentin Tarantino's cinema in Los Angeles and went on a roadshow in North America, starting in Radio City Music Hall, with the film and himself, whereupon it was released to VoD and video. The reception to the film has been wildly mixed, and Smith has burned many bridges for himself with his 'auction', but Red State has been praised by peers such as Richard Kelly, Tarantino and Ben Affleck. Note that the VoD-figure listed above comes from Smith and could be misleading.]

What do you think of Red State?

American Sniper (2014) - Eastwood conveys an American man and myth in electric masterpiece

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+ Best War Movie of the Year

The mythical poster for Clint Eastwood's American Sniper

American Sniper is the grand biopic war movie of real life US sniper Chris Kyle, 'the most lethal sniper in US history', with 255 kills, 160 of which were officially confirmed by the Department of Defense, from 4 tours in Iraq in the 2nd Golf War.

Kyle is an easy-going Texan rodeo cowboy, who has been brought up on some stern values of three types of people and right and wrong, as 9/11 happens and changes his ambitions: He signs up for the US Army and becomes a US Navy Seal.

Oscar-nominated co-producer/star Bradley Cooper (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)) has arguably his most difficult role to date here; he has gained lots of muscle weight to portray the singularly minded, strong but human Kyle, who will go to extreme lengths to protect his 'sheep', that is, his co-soldiers and family.
American Sniper hooks you straight away with its heady first scene, or repels you to dislike it throughout and perhaps even to go home and post infuriated critique about it somewhere online, as many seem to have done, and gotten more than their due notice for, I think.
The filmmakers dare to serve Kyle's complex, many-layered story in a straight-forward manner, which drives the viewer to look closer at the man without reducing him to either a patriotic slogan or a block of weeping meat.
A pivotal part of the film, which many people fail to notice and consider, is the mythical quality that Kyle came to carry some time into his soldiering. 84 year-old (!!!) master director Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino (2008)) has worked with this difficult, intangible entity of the American cultural mythical power before, as in his great films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and J. Edgar (2011), and you could well argue that his own career as an actor is infused with mythical energy and entangled in the organic fabric of US cultural myth as well.  In Sniper, this power gets conveyed through Kyle's rising fame as a US icon in a dark time of despair, as the nation and world backed or opposed the problematic second Iraq war and the war on terror in general. Eastwood or Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jason Hall (Paranoia (2013)), who adapted his lean, to-the-point script from Kyle's autobiographical 2012 book, did not make this status up, and their including it in the film doesn't mean that they cultivate the mythologizing without question, - but it was impossible to tell this story without the side of Kyle's effect on the American culture as a whole, his getting hailed and shaped into a national icon of strength and devotion, a patriot, a war hero, - in the midst of his personal trials.

Sienna Miller in a harrowing scene from Clint Eastwood's American Sniper

The story of Chris Kyle is an extraordinary one, and Eastwood and Hall naturally don't feel any need to add great amounts of storyteller's razzle-dazzle onto it. Perhaps this is the reason why Eastwood isn't Oscar-nominated as director for it, - or perhaps it is because he already has won 4 Oscars. No matter what, he clearly deserved a nomination for American Sniper in my opinion.
Fresh face actress Sienna Miller (Foxcatcher (2014)) gives a strong performance as Kyle's wife, and Jonathan Groff (Looking (2014-)) is good in a short supporting role.
Sniper has an amazing and intense sound and music universe, although surprisingly, it has no credited score. It runs 132 minutes, but is tightly edited and never runs long.
During it development, directors David O. Russell and Steven Spielberg were attached to direct it, before they both departed and Eastwood finally ended up doing it: It is a rich, complex and moving experience, a very masculine and poignant film, very much Eastwood, - at his best, - and I think we should be happy that it ended up being him directing it. 
If this film has somehow escaped you until now, go see it in a cinema immediately, because this one will stand the test of time with the very best.

Related posts:

Clint Eastwood: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V] 

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story
City Heat (1984) - Eastwood and Reynolds wrestle dispassionately in Benjamin's messy period affair 
Tightrope (1984) - An undervalued Clint Eastwood sex killer thriller (actor)
Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business! (actor)
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller (actor)
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It! (actor)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) or, Killer in a Poncho (actor)

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 58.8 mil. $
Box office: 428.1 mil. $ and counting
= Huge hit
[American Sniper is mostly a US phenomenon, where it has had first a spectacular limited release and then a similarly incredible wide one: Besides being Eastwood's most successful film to date and the 3rd highest-grossing film of 2014, it is also the highest grossing war film in the US ever. (If adjusted for inflation, it is bested by Saving Private Ryan though.) It has made 319 mil. $ in North America currently, which is more than all the other Best Film nominees of this year combined!]

What do you think of American Sniper?