Hulk (2003) - Lee's fantastic comics adaptation drama

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+ Best San Francisco Movie of the Year + Best Superhero Movie of the Year + Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 38.92 mil. $ range

 

The green giant dominates this poster for Ang Lee's Hulk

Bruce Banner is a scientist who in a failed experiment is exposed to gamma radiation, which triggers a latent mutant gene in his body, put there by his crazed scientist father, so that the result is mad green giant persona the Hulk!

 

Hulk is written by John Turman (Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)), Michael France (The Punisher (2004)) and James Schamus (Pushing Hands/Tui shou (1991)), based on the Hulk comics (1962-) created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and directed by Taiwanese master filmmaker Ang Lee (Pushing Hands).

Lee makes an ambitious leap with Hulk, one of the most memorable of the modern superhero movies. Banner/Hulk is no conventional hero; rather a tragic hero if a hero at all. Lee thematizes the rage through several characters, - at least four, - and has success with a comics-inspired editing scheme, using split screen, among other things, as well as an impressive fusion of CGI and practical special effects.

The good performances from Eric Bana (Eric (1997, TV-series)) and Nick Nolte (Teachers (1984)) culminate in a father-son fight in the end, which underscores the film's drama, which is of Shakespearean heights. Hulk is ravishing entertainment.

 

Related posts:

Ang Lee: 2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]  
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date   

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
Life of Pi (2012) - Lee's triumphant, stunning faith-builder 

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

The 2000s in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Lust, Caution/色，戒/Sè, Jiè/Sik1Gaai3 (2007) - Lee's erotic spy thriller is an exquisite, complex masterpiece 

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
Brokeback Mountain (2005) or, That Place That Weren't Possible  

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

 

Watch a short trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 137 mil. $

Box office: 245.2 mil. $ 

=  Big flop (returned 1.78 times its cost)

[Hulk premiered 17 June (USA) and runs 138 minutes. Development of the film began in 1990. In 1998 Universal Pictures put the film in hiatus with reportedly 20 mil. $ already spent on numerous scripts as well as computer animation and prosthetics work. Jennifer Connelly (Little Children (2006)) was paid 1.5 mil. $ for her performance. Shooting took place from March - August 2002 in Utah, Arizona, California, including in San Francisco, and in Hawaii. 2.1 mil. $ were spent on a 30 second TV ad during the Super Bowl. The film opened #1 to a 62.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#5) and grossed 132.1 mil. $ (53.9 % of the total gross.) The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 13.9 mil. $ (5.7 %) and Mexico with 11.6 mil. $ (4.7 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. It earned an additional 61.2 mil. $ in DVD sales in 2003 in North America. Sequel plans were snuffed out due to the film's disappointing performance; a reboot was instead made with The Incredible Hulk (2008). Lee returned with The Hire (2003, segment) and theatrically with Brokeback Mountain (2005). Bana returned in Troy (2004). Hulk is fresh at 62 % with a 6.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Hulk?

Warrior (2011) - O'Connor's superbly acted MMA drama packs emotional fireworks

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4 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Actor: Joel Edgerton (lost to Jack Black for Bernie)
Best Supporting Actor: Tom Hardy (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Supporting Actor: Nick Nolte (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire)

 

 

+ Best Boxing Movie of the Year

 

Stars Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton flash commendable physiques on this poster for Gavin O'Connor's Warrior

 

Two alienated brothers, who are both estranged from their newly sober alcoholic father enter for each their own reasons into heavy training for a coming, big MMA tournament.

Joel Edgerton (Black Mass (2015))) is excellent as the physics teacher, who fights to keep his family's home, - with a very different strength than Tom Hardy (Child 44 (2015)), who fights on pure hate and gives a very strong and frightening performance in Warrior. In the middle is Nick Nolte (The Good Thief (2002)), who is heartbreaking as their improved father that returns to them hat-in-hand, wishing for a relationship with his now adult sons.

If you are an MMA enthusiast or like martial arts generally, the fights towards the end of Warrior are fantastic in themselves. As such, however, this is a powerfully and soberly staged film that lives on its story of brothers at odds, which reaches mythical heights. It is written by Anthony Tambakis (Jane Got a Gun (2016)), Cliff Dorfman (Entourage (2005), TV-series) and great New-Yorker co-writer-director Gavin O'Connor (The Accountant (2016)), whose 5th feature it is.

 

Related posts:

 

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Listen to the song by The National About Today here, which is featured in the film

Cost: 25 mil. $

Box office: 23.3 mil. $

= Huge flop

[Warrior was released September 9 and runs 140 minutes. Hardy went into heavy training for the part, gaining 28 pounds (13 kg), which he retained for his performance in The Dark Knight Rises. Filming took place in and around April 2009 in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. The film opened #3, behind newcomer Contagion and holdover hit The Help, to a 5.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 the following week and grossed 13.6 mil. $ (58.4 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 2.8 mil. $ (12 %) and 2.1 mil. $ (9%). Roger Ebert gave the film 3/4 stars, equal to a notch harder than this review. The film was nominated for 1 Oscar: Best Supporting Actor (Nolte), which it lost to Christopher Plummer in Beginners. It has won more popularity over time and now rests at #149 (between Sunrise/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) on IMDb's user-generated Top 250. Warrior is certified fresh at 82 % with a 7.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Warrior?

Arthur (2011) - Frenzied, colossal egotrip remake, irredeemable DOA

ZERO

+ Worst Movie of the Year
+ Stupidest Movie of the Year

The poster for Jason Winer's Arthur seem innocent enough, but ...

Arthur is born stinking rich. He lives with his nanny Hobson and driver in a giant apartment in New York, when his unloving mother gives him an ultimatum; to commit to a forced marriage or to lose his fortune.

Arthur is, luckily, an extreme rarity as a major studio production; it is a film completely bereft of value.
The gamble here, it seems, must have been that Russell Brand's (Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)) exhausting personality could carry an entire film on its own. - It can't.
Instead both he and the film here is extremely strenuous to sit through. Arthur is a remake of Steve Gordon's 1981 movie of the same name with Dudley Moore in the title role, written by Peter Baynham (Hotel Transylvania (2012)) and directed by Jason Winer (Modern Family (2009-14)). It is obvious just minutes into the film that it has no real content besides fluff and puff about a pampered billionaire without connection to reality.
Everyone besides Brand, who is kind of excused because a wealth of people must have propped him up to do this, (the starry cast also includes Helen Mirren (The Queen (2006)), Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha (2012)), Jennifer Garner (Juno (2007)), Luis Guzmán (Carlito's Way (1993)) and Nick Nolte (The Thin Red Line (1998))), should have known better than to accept as tasteless, dumb material as Arthur. The film is, simply put, formulaic and cringe-worthily poor, uninspired on all levels.
Arthur is also large and expensive to boot, a truly great waste of money and human energy. Tonally, it splats out across several chairs: Light, breezy fantasy-comedy/raunchy comedy/indie-feel/New York quirk ... None of it works for it. - Arthur is a Hollywood-constructed eyesore of dimensions.
Brand has had a down period since Diablo Cody's very low-rated Paradise (2013), but is set to make a comeback in funny-sounding Nicholas Cage-starring comedy Army of One (2016). 

Related posts:
 
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
 

Yes. Jason Winer makes Helen Mirren wear this outfit for his movie Arthur

Not only is the trailer for Arthur long like it'll never end ... even worse, characteristically tastelessly, it uses David Bowie's Rebel Rebel to promote itself

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 45.7 mil. $
= Big flop
[Perhaps the most uplifting thing about Arthur is that it was poorly received by critics and audiences alike and bombed commercially. It was nominated for Razzie Awards for Worst Actor (Brand) and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel. It made 32.8 mil. $ (72 % of its total gross) in the US and a big chunk of the rest of its gross (3 mil. £) in Brand's native UK.]

What do you think of Arthur?

Cape Fear (1991) - Scorsese adds lots of stuff to remake but loses the balance

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The overly ominous poster for Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear

QUICK REVIEW:

The 30 year-old original Cape Fear gets a real lift in terms of style, violence, language and sex here, - anything that sets off the red lights at the MPAA, who rate movies in America. Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear is a colorful and entertaining thriller.

Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte wrestle good and evil in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear

Oscar-nominated Robert De Niro's (Casino (1995)) character as the wronged former inmate, who has come out to take revenge on his ex-defendant, has gotten extra weight in the balance between him and his adversary in the remake, and Nick Nolte (The Thin Red Line (1998)) fails to make it seem an even match at all, which takes some excitement from the ordeal. Also because his part is no longer the hero (with a handicap) that Gregory Peck played in the original. In the 90's version, he comes off as a spineless whiner with a torn family.

Same still as above, only spiced up by an artist

Where the 1962 film focused on the uncontrollable, outer threat, Scorsese's film is a more moral (and Catholic) take on the story, which conclusively SPOILER reveals all humans' sinful nature. Personally I prefer the slightly more romantic view of the older film.
Juliette Lewis was also Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in Cape Fear, but lost (rightfully so) to Mercedes Ruehl in The Fisher King. Cape Fear also has stars Fred Dalton Thompson, Joe Don Baker and from the original film in cameos, Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam.
Scorsese returned to real greatness with Casino (1995), his eighth and final collaboration with De Niro. He is in pre-production at the moment with his coming Japan-set, religious period movie, Silence (2015).

Related reviews:

Cape Fear (1962) - Great suspense in effective home-attack thriller
Martin Scorsese: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - One helluva movie!
Boardwalk Empire - 1st season (2010) - Luxurious 1920's ensemble gangster treats
The Aviator (2004) - The grand American biopic 
The Age of Innocence (1993) or, Stayin' IN the Pants 

Watch the original trailer - which scandalously doesn't mention Juliette Lewis' name!

Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 182.2 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of the two Cape Fear movies?
Which do you prefer?

Gangster Squad (2013) or, Good Men vs. Bad Men!

♥♥♥
 

Los Angeles is ravaged by the Jewish gangster boss Mickey Cohen, but one good police chief wants to get rid of him, and he gets a pertinacious, tough cop to lead the group which is to crush Cohen.
Gangster Squad is highly stylized and handsomely produced, but cartoonish in its simplified representation of reality; good vs. bad.
Reality yields to action and gore in this forgettable, thoughtless, - but entertaining - shoot-em-up-movie. It is based on true events but takes so many liberties in its storytelling that it is more fiction than historical by any reasonable account.
Sean Penn (Mystic River (2003)) goes theatrical with his heavily make-up-created villain. Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) not so much plays a character as merely being a sex-steaming model for the film. The macho-picture that is Gangster Squad also mauls over one of its few female roles, Josh Brolin's wife in the movie (Mireille Enos), who only plays functional second banana to the inelegant, stomping picture.
It is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland (2009)), who had to reshoot a scene of a shooting at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood following the Aurora-shooting (during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 people and injured 58). The real-life massacre also changed the trailer and pushed back the release of Gangster Squad by around 6 months.
The squad that is the basis of Gangster Squad has also been the basis of another movie, Lee Tamahori's better Mulholland Falls (1996).
Since the relative flop of this and Fleischer's movie before it, 30 Minutes or Less (2011), he has reverted to TV gigs for the time being.


Related posts:

Ruben Fleischer: 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]

30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots

'Pulp' version of the Gangster Squad poster

 Watch the film's in-your-face trailer right here

Budget: 60 mil. $
Box office: 105.2 mil. $
= Minor flop

What do you think of Gangster Squad?

Another 48 Hrs. (1990) - More of the same from your buddies Hill, Murphy & Nolte

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'The boys are back in town', the tagline asserts on this deliciously 1980s-styled poster for Walter Hill's Another 48 Hrs.

Biker hoodlums want to kill Reggie Hammond, as he is finally released from jail. Meanwhile, officer Jack Cates has been hunting criminal mastermind 'The Iceman' for 3 years.

 

Another 48 Hrs. is written by John Fasano (The Visit (1999)), Jeb Stuart (Die Hard (1988)) and Larry Gross (Chinese Box (1997)), with co-writer/co-star Eddie Murphy (Harlem nights (1989)) contributing story elements, and directed by great Californian filmmaker Walter Hill (Hard Times (1975)).  

Murphy has become a superstar in the inevitable sequel to Hill's successful milestone in buddy action-comedy, 48 Hrs. (1982), which the film is tailored to cater to.
It doesn't in itself elevate the film, which falls into the familiar sequel curse in that it brings nothing new to the table, which makes it unoriginal and thereby less outstanding than the first one.
Still in Another 48 Hrs. favor: It is nevertheless an entertaining film, and it has Brion James (Time Runner (1993)) and Ed O'Ross (Six Feet Under (2001-2005)) as effective super bad guys.

Related posts:

Walter Hill: Alien 3 (1992) or, The Monsters Go to Jail! (co-writer)

48 Hrs. (1982) or, Reluctant Partners

The Getaway (1972) - McQueen/Peckinpah hit the bank with unrefined thriller (writer) 

 

Watch a 1-minute clip from the film featuring Murphy here

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 153.5 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.07 times its cost)

[Another 48 Hrs. was released 8 June (North America) and runs 95 minutes. Hill was apprehensive about making a sequel but has stated: " A lot of folks will say I'm just doing it for the money. What I want to know is, why do they think I made the first one?" Murphy's salary ballooned from 200k $ for the first film to 12 mil. $ and a gross percentage for the sequel, whereas co-star Nick Nolte's (Blue Chips (1994)) 1-2 mil. $ (different reports) original salary only went up to 3 mil. $ for Another 48 Hrs.. Shooting took place from January - April 1980 in California, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 145 minute work print was edited down to 120 minutes, but a week before release, the studio cut it down with 25 minutes, creating plot holes and continuity problems and removing any mention of a 48 hour deadline from the finished movie. The film opened #1 to a 19.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it remained in the top 5 for another 3 weeks (#2-#4-#5), grossing 80.8 mil. $ (52.6 % of the total gross). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Hill returned with Tales from the Crypt (1989-91) and theatrically with Trespass (1992). Murphy returned in Michael Jackson: Remember the Time (1992, music video) and theatrically in Boomerang (1992); Nolte in Cape Fear (1991). Another 48 Hrs. is rotten at 21 % with a 4.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Another 48 Hrs.?

48 Hrs. (1982) or, Reluctant Partners!

♥♥♥♥

A nicely painted,, in-your-face style poster for Walter Hill's 48 Hrs. with its 1980s quality radiating heavily from it

A drunken San Francisco cop named Jack Cates hunts a lunatic cop killer on a tight deadline and gets a new partner to help him in drug convict Reggie Hammond, who himself has a standing debt with the bad guys.
 
Both characters in 48 Hrs. are racists, basically, but charming racists. The chemistry between debuting Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop (1984)) and Nick Nolte (Cape Fear (1991)) in this possibly the first buddy cop comedy ever is real and palpable. The many arguments they have are almost solely fueled by racial tensions and prejudice. - Now, whether major hit 48 Hrs. let gas out of a tense racial discussion in the US, or predominantly enhanced the sense of division, I can't evaluate. In any regard, it is a highly entertaining, testosterone-filled high-concept movie that works.
48 Hrs. is written by Roger Spottiswoode (The 6th Day (2000), director), Larry Gross (We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004)), Steven E. de Souza (Blast (2004)) and Californian master co-writer/director Walter Hill (Red Heat (1988)).

Related post:

Walter Hill: Another 48 Hrs. (1990) - More of the same from your buddies Murphy & Nolte

Watch a theatrical trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 78.8 mil. $ (North America only)
= Huge hit (returned more than 6.56 times its cost)
[48 Hrs. was released 8 December and runs 96 minutes. Clint Eastwood (Escape from Alcatraz (1979)) and Richard Pryor (Silver Streak (1976)) were originally contacted to star. Filming took place in California, including LA and San Francisco, from May - August 1982. Also feature-debuting with the film was producer Joel Silver (Demolition Man (1993)), who also since became a powerful Hollywood figure. Paramount execs were worried the film was not funny enough and too violent and promised Hill he would never work for them again. (He still directed the sequel for Paramount 8 years later.) The film opened #3, behind The Toy and Airplane II: The Sequel, to a 4.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for an awesome 13 more weeks, climbing to #2 for 5 of those weeks. It seems likely that its world gross neared or maybe even passed the 100 mil. $ mark, but those figures are not public. Murphy was Golden Globe-nominated as Best Acting Debut - Male. Hill returned with Streets of Fire (1984). Nolte returned in Under Fire (1983), Murphy in Trading Places (1983). 48 Hrs. is fresh at 93 % with a 7.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.] 
 
What do you think of 48 Hrs.?
What id your favorite buddy cop movie?