Due Date (2010) or, Riding with Tremblay

♥♥♥♥

Robert Downey Jr. and Zack Galifianakis are the odd couple of Todd Phillips' Due Date

QUICK REVIEW:

A businessman is caught in the countryside, when he finds himself on a 'no-fly' list due to a moron he runs into, who subsequently becomes his driving partner back to Los Angeles.

I had to give in to Due Date pretty early in the film. - It's funny. Funny writing and amusingly played by Robert Downey Jr. (Wonder Boys (2000)) and Zack Galifianakis (Youth in Revolt (2009)) with Juliette Lewis (August: Osage County (2013)), Danny McBride (This Is the End (2013)) and Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained (2012)) doing great in funny supporting roles.
The film is co-written by Alan R. Cohen (American Dad (2010-12)), Alan Freedland (King of the Hill (1997-02)), Adam Sztykiel (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015)) and great Brooklynite co-writer/director Todd Phillips (The Hangover (2009)), inspired by the classic comedy Plains, Trains and Automobiles (1987)). 
Once again Phillips is putting something out in the world about the great difficulties of being a middle-aged, well-off, white male in America. - It's incredible he can make it float! Meanwhile there's a dark, almost misanthropic core to Due Date, - in which every one is simply ridiculous. I found it frequently hysterical.

Related review:

Todd Phillips: The Hangover Part II (2011) - Phillips & Co. follow up their sensational comedy hit with a disappointing sequel

Watch the trailer for the film here, - if you don't find it amusing at all, the film isn't for you

Cost: 65 mil. $
Box office: 211.7 mil. $
= Box office success
[Due Date premiered October 31 (at the Night Visions film festival in Helsinki) and runs 95 minutes. Due Date was shot on location in New Mexico, Georgia and Alabama. The movie opened #2, behind Megamind, to a 32.6 mil. $ opening weekend in North America, where it grossed 100.5 mil. $ (47.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets for the film were the UK with 16.3 mil. $ (7.7 %) and Germany with 13 mil. $ (6.1 %). Due Date is rotten at 40 % with a 5.2 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Due Date?

Derailed (2005) - Håfström's pointless romance thriller

♥♥

+ Most Undeserved Hit of the Year

Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston look graphically inserted and sorely misplaced in the subway here for Mikael Håfström's Derailed

QUICK REVIEW:

Jennifer Aniston (She's Funny That Way (2014)), playing it oh-so sweet, and Vincent Cassel (Irreversible/Irréversible (2002)), - with Xzibit (8 Mile (2002)) as his wingman, - SPOILER make scam rapes that victimize unknowing, British gentlemen into giving away large sums of money. Clive Owen (Children of Men (2006)) is the boring, Neanderthal-like 'modern man', who will rather waste away his savings to ensure his sick daughter's future than do the obviously right thing SPOILER (until the very end); and simply kill the creep.

Derailed, written by Stuart Beattie (Collateral (2004)), based on the 2003 novel of the same title by James Siegel (Detour (2005)), is directed by Swedish director Mikael Håfström (Escape Plan (2013)). It is a film that truly says nothing at all.
The technical sides are just so-so, generally alright, but the plot is what really kills this; it is predictable and unengaging. - A horrible film.
It was the first film distributed by the Weinstein Company in the US, and it has, to my great dismay, been adapted into both two Indian films (Pachaikli Mutchucharam (2007) and The Train (2007)) and one Ghanaian film (Temptation (2010)).

Related reviews:

Mikael Håfström:  Escape Plan (2013) or, Prison Break for the Elderly (guest review)

1408 (2007) or, The Haunted Hotel Room

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

Jennifer Aniston's expression in this still seems to sum up Mikael Håfström's insipid Derailed pretty well

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 22 mil. $
Box office: 57.4 mil. $
= Box office success
[A relatively large number of audiences braved the film's poor reviews: Derailed summed up 36 mil. $ (63 % of the total gross) in the US, giving the Weinstein Company a minor (but probably important) hit as their first released film. - One might add that this relatively low-budgeted, star-headed thriller was a pretty safe first bet for them.]

What do you think of Derailed?

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) - Whitaker serves ancient samurai justice in Jarmusch's cool treat

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best New Jersey Movie of the Year + Best Samurai Movie of the Year

The cool poster for Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Ghost Dog is the 7th feature from American master writer-director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man (1995)). It is an urban samurai movie.

Ghost Dog is a lone samurai, who's a retainer for a mob guy. When a hit he carries out gets witnessed by the boss's daughter, the boss sets out to kill the strange man. But that is easier said than done.

The film opens slowly and starts by driving us into the meditative pace of its title character, as he cruises around New Jersey in a stolen car. The hang-low mood is nicely in line with the chilled beats that are produced by RZA (of The Wu Tang Clan, who also has a cameo towards the end), who makes a deft composer debut here. He has since composed scores for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and other things.
Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland (2006)) is Ghost Dog, and Jarmusch also makes good use of his younger brother Damon Whitaker (Bird (1988)) in two flash-back scenes. Ghost Dog has a wonderful row of faces in secondary parts: John Tormey (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)) as the hero's complexed employer Louie; Henry Silva (Thirst (1979)) as the reptile-like boss; Cliff Gorman (The Boys in the Band (1970)) as his son, and Victor Argo (Bad Lieutenant (1992)) as a strong-arm. - There are many more, and the gangster ensemble is pretty hilarious; most of them play them straight-faced, as heaving, idiotic fatsoes.
The film also features Isaach De Bankolé (The Limits of Control (2009)) as our hero's French-speaking best friend and Camille Winbush (Eraser (1996)) as the nice literate girl from the park.

The details:


Ghost Dog is infused with several quotations from a samurai book (Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure (1709-16)), many of which are thought-provoking, (a few nonsensical.) The film sends a warm reference to samurai movie master Akira Kurosawa (through the use of the book Rashômon, which is also the title of his great 1950 film.) It also references Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967).
Depending on your analytical powers, at some point you will realize that Ghost Dog has a symbolic meaning beneath its cool, violent, wry surface: Ghost Dog symbolizes the profound, ancient traditions and values, while the gangsters symbolize the depravity and indifference and stupidity of today. Ghost Dog carries out his justified vengeance as a kind of blast from the past, especially poignant in the scenes with the racist poachers.
It isn't necessary to buy into the samurai philosophy or way of life to treasure Ghost Dog. For most who love samurai movies and Jarmusch pictures, Ghost Dog is simply a wonderful gift that came as perhaps the last great samurai movie before the arrival of the new millennium.


Related posts:

Jim Jarmusch: Broken Flowers (2005) - Hip search for son and self with Jarmusch and Murray
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) - Pleasant, precious vignette sit-down with some wonderful people  

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 2 mil. $
Box office: 9.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Ghost Dog made 3.3 mil. $ or 35 % of its gross in the States. It was popular in many countries, especially France, where it also was nominated for the Palm d'Or in Cannes, (but didn't win.)]


What do you think of Jarmusch's samurai movie?
What's your favorite samurai movie?

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) - Precious, pleasant vignette sit-down with some wonderful people

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best B/W Movie of the Year

Checkered coffee table with neat character pictures inserted, for Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes

QUICK REVIEW:

Coffee and Cigarettes consists of a row of human meetings over coffee and cigarettes (d'uh), carried out by a string of cool celebrities: There's vignettes with Cate Blanchett and a fictional cousin, Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, RZA and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan meeting Bill Murray, Jack and Meg White of The White Stripes and Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, among others. Eleven scenes in all.
Writer-director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man (1995)) elevates the precious and random qualities of human meetings in some beautiful situations here in this little gem, which is based on three short films that Jarmusch had already made in 1986, '89 and '95, (called Coffee and Cigarettes, Coffee and Cigarettes II and Coffee and Cigarettes III), which are all three incorporated into this feature.

Related posts:

Jim Jarmusch: Broken Flowers (2005) - Hip search for son and self with Jarmusch and Murray

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

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

 

Iggy Pop and Tom Waits in their segment of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 7.9 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[But probably a hit, with nice numbers overseas especially; the film only made 1.9 mil. $ of its revenue in the US. Coffee and Cigarettes was probably a very affordable film, seeing as 3 of the 11 scenes in it were already shot as previous shorts, and the rest are simple sit-down scenes of celebrities who are friendly admirers of Jarmusch and may even have appeared as favors, however; we don't know for sure.]

What do you think of Coffee and Cigarettes?
What is your favorite Jim Jarmusch movie?