Top 10: Best 'box office success' movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Explanation
Following 'minor flop' and 'even' status on Film Excess, 'box office success' is the first label that marks a real theatrical hit, which in most cases has grossed between 2.5 - 3.49 times its own budget at the box office. Some older films with unknown budgets and/or grosses end up in this category if reported theatrical hits elsewhere

1. The Leopard/Il Gattopardo/Le Guépard (1963) - Luchino Visconti

2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) - Stephen Chbosky

3. The Shining (1980) - Stanley Kubrick

4. Casino (1995) - Martin Scorsese

5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari/Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) - Robert Wiene

6. Mommy (2014) - Xavier Dolan

7. Carol (2015) - Todd Haynes

8. Elephant (2003) - Gus Van Sant

9. Bad Hair/Pelo Malo (2013) - Mariana Rondón

10. 21 Grams (2003) - Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu

Other great 'box office success' movies (in alphabetical order)

A Star Is Born (1937) - William A. Wellman, Jack Conway
August: Osage County (2013) - John Wells
Biloxi Blues (1988) - Mike Nichols
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage/L'uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo (1970) - Dario Argento
Brave (2012) - Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell
The Constant Gardner (2005) - Fernando Meirelles
Cria Cuervos/Cría Cuervos/Cria! (1976) - Carlos Saura
Date Night (2010) - Shawn Levy
The Deer Hunter (1978) - Michael Cimino
Die Another Day (2002) - Lee Tamahori
El Dorado (1966) - Howard Hawks
Elizabeth (1998) - Shekhar Kapur 
Enough Said (2013) - Nicole Holofcener
Exotica (1994) - Atom Egoyan 
The Expendables (2010) - Sylvester Stallone 
GasLand (2010, documentary) - Josh Fox 
Live Free or Die Hard/Die Hard 4.0 (2007) - Len Wiseman
Men in Black 3 (2012) - Barry Sonnenfeld
Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011) - Mark Waters
Mud (2012) - Jeff Nichols
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) - Derek Cianfrance
Saving Mr. Banks (2013) - John Lee Hancock 

Good 'box office success' movies (in alphabetical order)

17 Again (2009) - Burr Steers
Alien 3 (1992) - David Fincher
Anchorman: The Legend Continues (2013) - Adam McKay
Bus Stop (1956) - Joshua Logan
Charlie's Angels (2000) - McG
Congo (1995) - Frank Marshall
Creepshow (1982) - George A. Romero
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) - Scott Derrickson
Demolition Man (1993) - Marco Brambilla
Due Date (2010) - Todd Phillips
Friends with Money (2006) - Nicole Holofcener
How to Train Your Dragon (2010) - Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders 
Iron Man 2 (2010) - Jon Favreau 
Lone Survivor (2013) - Peter Berg
Piranha 3D (2010) - Alexandre Aja 
Predators (2010) - Nimród Antal 
Primal Fear (1996) - Gregory Hoblit
Sex and the City 2 (2010) - Michael Patrick King 
Shame (2011) - Steve McQueen
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - John Landis, Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, George Miller

Less than good 'box office success' movies (in alphabetical order)

127 Hours (2010) - Danny Boyle 
The American (2010) - Anton Corbijn 
The Car (1977) - Elliot Silverstein
City Lights (1931) - Charlie Chaplin
Corpse Bride (2005) - Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) - Glenn Flicarra, John Requa
Days of Thunder (1990) - Tony Scott
Deep Blue Sea (1999) - Renny Harlin
Derailed (2005) - Mikael Håfström
The Devil's Rejects (2005) - Rob Zombie
Die Hard 2 (1990) - Renny Harlin
Dumb and Dumber To (2014) - Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Julia's Eyes/Los Ojos de Julia (2010) - Guillem Morales 
Kick-Ass (2010) - Matthew Vaughn 
The Last Exorcism Part 2 (2013) - Ed Gass-Donnelly
This Life/Hvidsten Gruppen (2012) - Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis
War Horse (2011) - Steven Spielberg
Warm Bodies (2013) - Jonathan Levine 
Weekend at Bernie's (1989) - Ted Kotcheff
Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - Rich Moore 

Turkey 'box office success' movies (in alphabetical order)

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) - John Moore
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) - Samuel Bayer 
The Crazies (2010) - Breck Eisner 
Legion (2010) - Scott Stewart 
RED (2010) - Robert Schwentke 
World War Z (2013) - Marc Forster 

[78 in total] 


Previous Top 10 lists:

The best action movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best adapted movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  
The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

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Bad Hair/Pelo Malo (2013) - Rondón's excellent drama of growing up different in a Caracas slum

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Venezuelan Movie of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year

 

A great poster for Mariana Rondón's Bad Hair, which shows its theme of the difficulties of identity creation in a nutshell

 

Junior lives with his baby brother and single mother, who is struggling to get her security guard job back, in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela. This summer he is obsessed with straightening his unruly hair, which causes his mother extreme worries.

 

Bad Hair is a truly wonderful film, which takes us to a new place, (I and probably most audiences won't be familiar with its setting), where a little, very dear boy (played superbly by debuting Samuel Lange Zambrano) is struggling with his surroundings due to his budding homosexuality. The film is very well-acted and sweet; particularly the portrayed world of the children is funny, - but it is also realistic and grim at times. Its portrayal of Junior's mother, - played by Samantha Castillo (Le Badanti (2015)), - a stressed individual who behaves as a tormented prison guard at their home, and who doesn't really love her son, is tough. It is hard to see her as anything but a just plain bad mother.

Bad Hair is skillfully filmed (by Micaela Cajahuaringa (Postcards from Leningrad (2007))) and at times develops slowly. SPOILER It chooses to leave us with a strong scene with no sugarcoating that highlights the mined mother-son-relationship.

Bad Hair is written and directed by the great Mariana Rondón (At Midnight and a Half/A la Medianoche y Media (1999)) as her third feature. It is a beautiful Venezuelan blues that implicitly screams out for acceptance of sexual minorities.

 

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]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 2.4 mil. $ (Venezuela only)

= Unknown (but likely a box office success or big hit)

[Bad Hair premiered September 7 (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 93 minutes. It was shot in Caracas. It has reportedly played in 29 markets, including in a long line of film festivals, where it has likely been a darling. It has won 12 awards, including two at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. It was the 30th highest-grossing movie in its native Venezuela in 2014, indicating a strong national interest and support. Bad Hair is fresh at 94 % with a 7.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Bad Hair?