Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) - Newell, Curtis and a stellar cast's romcom triumph

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+ Best British Movie of the Year + Best $ Return of the Year: 55.84 + Best Mega-hit Movie of the Year + Best On-screen Couple of the Year: Hugh Grant & Andie MacDowell + Most Profitable Movie of the Year: 93.88 mil. $ range + Best Romcom of the Year

The main characters of Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral are squashed together on this bright poster for the film

At a wedding our awkward hero, an indecisive, English heartbreaker, meets the one and only, who is a warm-blooded American. But, but, but ...

Four Weddings and a Funeral is written by Richard Curtis (Trash (2014)) and directed by great British filmmaker Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco (1997)). It is an extraordinarily well-greased romcom; well-written and acted, - and directed with an enormous flair.
Hugh Grant (Restoration (1995)), Andie MacDowell (Mighty Fine (2012)), Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy (2009)), John Hannah (Overboard (2018)), Rowan Atkinson (Keeping Mum (2005)) and Simon Callow (Creditors (2015)) as the festive Garth, who passes away, are all outstanding.
There's poor sound in a few scenes, and the film maybe repeats its own conventions a bit too willingly, but these are minor asides to one of the best and most widely loved romances of the 1990s.

Related posts:

Mike Newell: 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) - Newell straddles too much in fair action-adventure 

2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) - Newell's Márquez adaptation is a disaster

Donnie Brasco (1997) - Newell's fantastic, authentic gangster tale

1994 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

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

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 4.4 mil. $

Box office: 245.7 mil. $

= Blockbuster (returned 55.84 times its cost)

[Four Weddings and a Funeral premiered 20 January (Sundance Film Festival, Utah) and runs 117 minutes. The script was reportedly inspired by Curtis' having attended 65 weddings in 11 years and at one of them turned down a proposal, which he forever regretted. Grant was considering giving up acting before he got the part, which became his mainstream breakthrough. He was paid 40k £, with the other co-stars getting 17.5k £ per head. The tight budget meant that wedding extras wore their own garbs, and that shooting had to be completed in 36 days, taking place in England, including London, from May - July 1993. The US distributor objected to the film's profanity and tried, unsuccessfully, to have its title changed. The film opened in 5 theaters to a 138k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #1, spending a total of 6 weeks in the top 5 (#1-#2-#3-#2-#5-#5), grossing 52.7 mil. $ (21.4 % of the total gross). The US distributor, on realizing the film's popularity, spend 11 mil. $ on marketing it there. It grossed 27.8 mil. £ in the UK, and still stands as the highest-grossing UK film of all time. It was nominated for 2 Oscars: It lost Best Picture to Forrest Gump and Original Screenplay to Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary for Pulp Fiction. The film won 1/4 Golden Globe nominations, 4/11 BAFTA noms, a César award, was nominated for 2 David di Donatello awards, won a National Board of Review award and many other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, in line with this one. Newell returned with An Awfully Big Adventure (1995). Grant returned in Sirens (1994), MacDowell in Bad Girls (1994). Four Weddings and a Funeral is certified fresh at 96 % with a 7.64/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Four Weddings and a Funeral? 

War Horse (2011) - Spielberg visits WWI with problematic horse drama result

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An excessive sense of aestheticism either adorns or plagues the poster for Steven Spielberg's War Horse, depending on your viewpoint

QUICK REVIEW:

A little family is facing the prospect of losing their home, if their expensively bought show horse doesn't plow a stony field. - It does! But is then, by necessity, sold as a war horse for World War I.

War Horse is a grandiose epic by Steven Spielberg (Jaws (1975)), which, however, it's hard to see who is for: The story of the boy's (Jeremy Irvin (A Night in Old Mexico (2013))) relationship with his horse seems to be tailored for older kids, but the film's war scenes are decidedly not suited for children.
War Horse starts well with Emily Watson's (Breaking the Waves (1996)) fine performance as the boy's stouthearted mother, but then the story continues along a sappy, powdered path, in which man after man, during the horrors of war, is profoundly touched by the beautiful horse. It punctured my interest in War Horse, which has a fine John Williams (Munich (2005)) score and a handsome cast, but which seems to me as a mediocre serving from an aging Spielberg, who might have simply grown too comfortable in his plush producer-director's chair to give us something with the teeth that he once could. (Admittedly, he saddled up in a different way the year after with the great Lincoln (2012).)
War Horse is an adaptation of English Michael Morpurgo's (The Nine Lives of Montezuma (1980)) same-titled 1982 novel by Lee Hall (Billy Elliott (2000)) and Richard Curtis (Notting Hill (1999))

Related reviews:
 
Steven Spielberg: Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves! 
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock

Watch the picturesque trailer for the movie here

Cost: 66 mil. $
Box office: 177.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[War Horse was released December 25th to mostly good reviews. It made 79.8 mil. $ (45 % of the total gross) in North America and an impressive 16.4 mil. £ in the UK. It was 6 times Oscar-nominated, for Best Picture, Cinematography, Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Art Direction, winning none. Spielberg returned to the Oscars the year after with the much better Lincoln.]

What do you think of War Horse?

The Black Adder - season 1 (1983) - Historic fooleries with Rowan Atkinson and co.

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Stylized poster for Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson's The Black Adder

QUICK REVIEW:

The Black Adder is the first season of the long-running historical BBC sitcom, made upon the success of Fawlty Towers (1975-79) by writer-creators Richard Curtis (Notting Hill (1999), writer) and Rowan Atkinson (Bean (1997)).
The series is, in short, a barrel of laughs. The way that it stomps on and around Anglo-Saxon history, culture and traditions, - and the English language none the least, - is irreverent madcap fun, and it gets combined with a boastful pomposity, black humor en masse and actors with superb skills in mimicry and comedy; first and foremost, of course, Atkinson himself, but also Brian Blessed (Hamlet (1996)) as Richard III is phenomenal. The character of Black Adder is abominably ugly and hilarious; Atkinson's job here is a triumph for BBC and for England!
The plot in the show is often incoherent and always gaga. Because the season only spans six episodes, I will delineate their plots very shortly here:

1. The ever-scheming protagonist decides against the alias 'Black Vegetable' in the first episode and goes ahead with 'Black Adder' instead.
2. In Born to Be King, a primitive, Scottish duke comes visiting.
3. Prince Edmund 'Black Adder' is appointed bishop of Canterbury.
4. In The Queen of Spain's Beard, Black Adder tries to play homosexual so as to avoid matrimony with the horrid, Spanish queen, but instead ends up marrying a little girl!?!
5. Pest!
6. Black Adder joins a gang, who end up poisoning the entire royal house and themselves. SPOILER Everyone dies!
The anarchy of the show is redeeming fun, and is basically about the royal outsider, Edmond 'Black Adder', who wishes so badly to be king, but never succeeds in his many ploys to achieve his goal.
The edition that I enjoyed seeing was the official BBC release, but it badly needed a restoration, and I think it a scandal, if BBC still hasn't awarded this grand series proper care in that regard.
Another critique is that Black Adder is choreographed and filmed as if it were a recorded theatrical play. This is no great impediment, since smiles and laughs erupt so frequently, as one sees the series, but it still is a rather lax concept for a visual medium.

Here are some more faces of the singular Rowan Atkinson as Black Adder. Click to enlarge

Related review

Rowan Atkinson: Bean/Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie/Bean: The Movie (1997) or, A Bean in America

A 1 minute clip from the episode The Queen of Spain's Beard; unfortunately without Atkinson

What do you think of Black Adder, the first season?
What's your favorite part/line of the show?

Bean (1997) or, A Bean in America

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+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year

+ Breakthrough Actor of the Year: Rowan Atkinson + Best Comedy of the Year + Best Family Movie of the Year + Best Los Angeles Movie of the Year + Best Mega-Hit Movie of the Year 

If this poster doesn't amuse you at all, Mel Smith's Bean movie probably isn't for you

Mr. Bean of the UK flies to Los Angeles, America, where - through a case of mistaken credentials - he is being sent to function as an English art expert at the return of the famous painting Whistler's Mother to a fancy art gallery, staying with the curator's family for the duration of the stay.

 

Bean is written by Richard Curtis (Yesterday (2019)) and Robin Driscoll (Dramarama (1987, TV-series)) and directed by great English filmmaker Mel Smith (The Tall Guy (1989)). It is the first of two movies based on the Bean character of the same-titled 1991-95 sitcom.

Rowan Atkinson (Johnny English Reborn (2011)), the only man who can play Bean, is a great comedian! This is reaffirmed here. And Peter MacNicol (Ally McBeal (1997-2002)), who so often bounced around projects that were not really good enough for him, finally is in a good film here, and he is rock solid as Bean's well-meaning, increasingly desperate American ward.

Bean is a gaga laugh fest for silly people of all ages everywhere. If you can count yourself among this group, you will surely love every minute of it. Despite criticisms that it is too long, (it only runs 90 minutes), I find it tightly edited and enjoyable throughout, with a real warmth and irreverence to it that is uplifting and joyous.
Howard Goodall (The Black Adder (1982-83)) has made an appropriate disaster movie-like score for the film, which is also packed with big music hits from its time. Bean is a really good time and holds many, many laughs. 

Related posts:

 

Mel Smith: Top 10: Best family movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
1997 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess



Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 18 mil. $
Box office: 251.2 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 13.9 times its cost)

[Bean was released 3 July (Australia) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place from September - December 1996 in England, including in London and in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #10 to a 2.2 mil. $ first weekend in 242 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #2 and in 2,015 theaters (different weeks), grossing 45.3 mil. $ (18 % of the total gross). It was the 4th highest-grossing film of the year in the UK. Roger Ebert gave it a 2.5/4 star review, translating to 2 notches under this one. Bean returned in sequel Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007). Smith returned with High Heels and Low Lifes (2001). Atkinson returned in 10 video and short appearances prior to his theatrical return in Maybe Baby (2000). Bean is rotten at 43 % with a 5.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Bean?