He Got Game (1998) - Lee's basketball classic

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Huge Flop Movie of the Year + Best Sports Drama of the Year

 

Star Denzel Washington with a big afro and a praying gesture makes up most of this poster for Spike Lee's He Got Game

Jesus Shuttlesworth may be America's best high school basketball player, and as such he is heavily courted by colleges with deep pockets. Meanwhile his convict father is given a chance for freedom if he can convince his son to choose one particular college...

 

He Got Game is written and directed by Georgian master filmmaker Spike Lee (Joe's Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads (1983)).

Denzel Washington (Ricochet (1991)) and young actual NBA player Ray Allen (Harvard Man (2001)) are outstanding as father and son in this film, which is first and foremost a riveting high-stakes drama, and secondly a fine basketball-saluting sports picture. Lee knows his effects, and he uses them as a master here:

Strong dramatic scenes - scored with classical music, which heightens their importance, - montages with great cultural and social insight, and a strong knack for strong images and the traps of youth. Rosario Dawson (Iron Fist (2017, TV-series)), Jim Brown (Fingers (1978)) and especially Milla Jovovich (Ultraviolet (2006)) are strong in supporting parts. Public Enemy's songs in the film are very well-made, especially the title track. He Got Game is a highly commendable film.

 

Related posts:
 
Spike Lee: The day after the day after ... the 2019 Oscars

She Hate Me (2004) or, Champion of the Lesbians 

2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
Top 10: Best crime movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
25th Hour (2002) or, Taking a Second Chance 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 25 mil. $

Box office: 22.4 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.89 times its cost)

[He Got Game premiered 25 April (New York) and runs 136 minutes. Shooting took place from July - September 1997 in North Carolina, Virginia, Chicago, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and in Los Angeles, California. The film opened #1 to a 7.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#5), grossing 21.5 mil. $ (96 % of the total gross). The film's foreign gross numbers are not made public: The film was financed by Disney, who sold off the foreign rights, and the international gross stands at a tiny 844k $, which is still credible since US sports films, basketball and black films usually underperform abroad. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Lee returned with John Leguizamo: Freak (1998, TV special) and theatrically with Summer of Sam (1999). Washington returned in The Siege (1998). He Got Game is certified fresh at 81 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of He Got Game?

Unstoppable (2010) - T. Scott's mechanically exciting final movie

♥♥♥

 

This poster for Tony Scott's Unstoppable is similar in its fiery style to past posters for speed-themed action movies such as Speed (1994)

 

A series of mistakes make a huge train full of dangerous chemicals and fuel race along without steering towards a string of larger cities. A veteran railroad engineer and a newly begun same pick up the challenge; to try to derail a catastrophe about to happen!

 

For the train and/or mechanically interested in general, Unstoppable has sequences that cultivates that mechanical fascination that will make the diaphragm tighten in suspense. English master filmmaker Tony Scott (The Hunger (1983)), whose 17th and last movie this is, - before his tragic 2012 suicide, - creates a fundamental excitement that works, up to a point. - Because we never really believe that things will evolve as catastrophically as projected. And because leads Chris Pine (Star Trek Beyond (2016)) and Denzel Washington's (Flight (2012)) family sup-blots continue to be distant and uninteresting.

Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard (2007)) has written the script, based on a real 2001 incident in Ohio, which has its stakes raised drastically for the film. Rosario Dawson (Death Proof (2007)) is good as a train yardmaster. Unstoppable feels thick, but Scott keeps it mostly on its tracks.

 

Related reviews:
 
Tony Scott: Stoker (2013) - Chan-wook Park's over-styled American debut revolts and bores in turns (producer)  
Déjà Vu (2006) - T. Scott cuts a helluva suspense-cake!
Domino (2005) - T. Scott's bounty-hunter biopic a complete misfire, mega-flop  

Days of Thunder (1990) or, Very Little Thunder

Watch an interview with Chris Pine for the movie here

Cost: 85 - 100 mil. $

Box office: 167.8 mil. $

= Big flop

[Unstoppable premiered October 26 (Westwood, LA) and runs 98 minutes. Negotiations with Washington for the film fell through once, as Fox wanted him to accept 16 instead of 20 mil. $. Scott was also asked to cut his salary from 9 to 6 mil. $. Filming took place from August - November 2009 in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, California and New York. Production was halted for one day in November, as part of the train accidentally derailed. As with Scott's previous film, the remake The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), - also a big flop, and a little bit more mediocre, - Unstoppable is a run-amok train action movie with Washington as an everyday type of guy hero. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Megamind, to a 22.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of 5 weeks and grossed 81.5 mil. $ (48.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 12.8 mil. $ (7.6 %) and China with 9.8 mil. $ (5.8 %). The film was nominated for the Best Sound Editing Oscar, which it lost to Inception. Unstoppable is certified fresh at 87 % with a 6.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Unstoppable?

Eagle Eye (2008) - Caruso's wobbly sci-fi ride

♥♥

The slick, a bit dull poster for D. J. Caruso's Eagle Eye

The US Defense Department has launched an enormous computer database, but when it makes a recommendation in relation to a terrorist liquidation in the Middle East, which gets ignored, it 'activates' two citizens in an autonomous effort to coup the government with a super-bomb!

Surveillance grievances and state paranoia is dusted off and fed into a plot of running, worried glances and action spectacles that are mostly fast forgotten here.
Eagle Eye wants to be adrenaline-pumped suspense throughout. Shia LaBeouf (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)) speed-talking declarations, brillo hair and moist baby-face is utilized but often annoying and/or laughable. Other stars do their best, but this is a paycheck job for them all. Billy Bob Thornton (U Turn (1997)) contributes some dry humor and is watchable as usual, - and the film is generally wittily written by John Glenn (The Lazarus Project (2008)), Travis Wright (The Lazarus Project, producer), Hillary Seitz (Insomnia (2002)) and Dan McDermott (Human Target (2011), TV-series). D. J. Caruso (I Am Number Four (2011)) directed it.
Eagle Eye is a package deal that isn't all that.

Related posts:

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or, Humanity and Space  
D. J. Caruso: Disturbia (2007) or, Good Nightia

Shia LaBeouf does some serious running in D. J. Caruso's Eagle Eye

In lieu of a trailer for, not currently on Youtube, here's an interview with Shia LaBeouf for the movie

Cost: 80 mil. $
Box office: 178.9 mil. $
= Flop
[Eagle Eye was released September 26 and runs 118 minutes. The screenplay was written on behest of executive producer Steven Spielberg, who had an idea based on the Isaac Asimov short story All the Troubles of the World. Spielberg hired Caruso to helm the film, because he himself was busy with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, also with LaBeouf. The conveyor belt scene in the film was shot for real, without any use of CGI, and both Michelle Monaghan (Machine Gun Preacher (2011)) and Caruso were injured during its filming. The score for the film was recorded with the 88-piece Hollywood Studio Symphony. Eagle Eye was released to poor reviews, - Roger Ebert gave it a measly 2 stars, - but also a #1 opening weekend of 29.1 mil. $ in North America, where it grossed 101.4 mil. $ (56.7 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 13.2 mil. $ (7.4 %) and South Korea with 10.6 mil. $ (5.9 %). The film made in excess of 38 mil. $ on DVD sales alone, which, if added to the gross, makes it a success. Eagle Eye is rotten at 26 % with a 4.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Eagle Eye?

Death Proof (2007) - Tarantino's awesome, rubber-burning Grindhouse homage

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Los Angeles Movie of the Year + Best Car Movie of the Year + Best Car Chase of the Year (final girls vs. Stuntman Mike chase) + Best Comeback Actor of the Year: Kurt Russell

The gritty-cool poster for Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof

QUICK REVIEW:

Stuntman Mike is a distinguished stunt driver in Los Angeles, and a homicidal maniac! He preys upon attractive young women to kill with his death proof stunt car, - but some women are out of Mike's league.

Death Proof is master filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's (Jackie Brown (1997)) contribution to Grindhouse (2007), a double-feature release that paid homage to the 70s exploitation double feature culture in American so-called Grindhouse cinemas. The other feature is Robert Rodriguez' equally smutty and great Planet Terror (2007). Grindhouse was released as one long double-feature presentation in America and as two individual movies everywhere else, with Death Proof's playing time buffed up with 27 minutes. This is a review of the stand-alone movie.
The film is more Tarantino than Roger Corman, who headed some of the kind of films that are celebrated here, in that writer-director Tarantino doesn't restrain his own style and talents according to genre conventions here but make his own footprint in the car movie genre. But since the film is 100 % bad-ass fun, it's totally cool.
The empowering girls are the main attraction: Especially Zoë Bell (Raze (2013)) as herself, Sydney Tamiia Poitier (Hood of Horror (2006)) as Jungle Julia, Tracie Thoms (Veep (2014), TV-series) as Kim and Rosario Dawson (Eagle Eye (2008)) as Abernathy are some butt-kicking babes here. Kurt Russell (The Thing (1982)) is great fun and really creepy as a girl-munching wolf of a man, and it's very strange to think of the fact that Tarantino had 8 other male stars in mind, who were all unavailable, before he got the bright idea that Russell should play Stuntman Mike.
The music is all source here, meaning that the film has no score but just a lot of great songs and score tracks from other films, and it's a real treat for the ears. Finally, the many minutes long final car chase is one for the books.

Related post:

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

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 67 mil. $ (together with Planet Terror/full Grindhouse production cost)
Box office: 25 mil. $ (North America only) - for Grindhouse
= Uncertainty
[There aren't many numbers out on the unsuccessful release of Grindhouse and its two individual movies, but there is no doubt that the films flopped theatrically. Audiences didn't embrace the double feature throwback in America, and internationally, the films didn't accrue enough to change things around. Some are hard on Death Proof for this reason alone, and Tarantino has even himself stated that he considers it his worst film, probably greatly affected by suffering his first real flop. Death Proof, Planet Terror and Grindhouse were, regrettably, a huge flop.]

What do you think of Death Proof?

Kids (1995) - Larry Clark's power-punch debut

♥♥♥♥♥

A great poster for Larry Clark's Kids

In Kids, we follow a group of very unsupervised New York kids and teens over the course of just over a day, as they indulge in the different activities that make up their lives. These activities include thieving, violence, sex, drug-taking and talking, mostly about sex.

The film takes its time in getting us into the environment, before the suspense element gets introduced: SPOILER One of the girls learns that she has gotten HIV from the only boy she has ever been with, and we then follow her despairing journey to try to find the boy and stop him from infecting another young girl. Cross-cutting between the dark and lonely place where she finds herself, and the boy's routine advances to a young teenage girl is quite effective and terrible.
It seems clear from especially the first half hour of Kids that the film finds these juveniles charming in a way; worthy of our attention, and, despite their many flaws, not deserving of an unloving movie in their name.
Different audiences will feel that different parts of Kids is transgressive: The kids disobey so many basic rules of social conduct and are provocative and crude, but also the curiosity that the film allows its audiences in lingering in sex-related conversations between its young actors that often don't have any direct connection to the plot is provocative, and some have said lascivious (and even worse things.) I did feel voyeuristic at times, watching these scenes, but, more importantly, I didn't 'get enough' or reach a state where I had gotten tired of them; (appropriately, Kids is held at a tight 91 minute playtime.) The voyeuristic quality of this look inside the lives of some kids in a major metropolis just makes the experience all the more troubling. 
One can discard Kids and its characters with a swift justification that they are abominable, and certainly their behavior is very, very bad, (but, importantly, is presented unexcused by the film-makers, as especially SPOILER the shocking violent scene cements), but one must wonder and ask where the parenting generation is in their lives. And I laid most of my 'blame' for all the troubles presented in Kids at the doorsteps of these neglecting parents. In the film, we in fact only meet one parent, and she is a home-mother "without a cent to [my] name", simultaneously chain-smoking and breast-feeding her newest creation.

The details:

Kids' gritty guerrilla-style of film-making is accompanied by a great, contemporary soundtrack and four fine lead actors, who are all debuting. Especially Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry (1999)) is incredible as Jennie, and so are the two boys, Leo Fitzpatrick (Storytelling (2001)) and Justin Pierce (A Brother's Kiss (1997)), who plays Casper and very much was the kind of lost skateboarding kid of the streets that he portrays in the film. Pierce had run-ins with the law and drugs and tragically hanged himself in his hotel room in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in 2000 at age 25.
Kids is a forceful, great debut film for all involved, although its production does raise questions: Scenes like the one in the picture below where four minors are smoking weed would be interesting to read about, but I can find no such information.

Are these kids actually smoking weed and getting high in Larry Clark's Kids, or how was this scene achieved? If you know, shoot a comment about it

The film in itself doesn't glorify the troubled kids, in my opinion, but it successfully portrays the moral vacuum that they lead their random lives in, and it doesn't make many adult audiences ever want to bring up a family in New York I suppose.
It was written by a just 18 year-old Harmony Korine, who debuted as a director with Gummo (1997), and is directed by Vietnam veteran Larry Clark (Ken Park (2002)), who with Kids succeeded with one of the most controversial and strong debuts of a film director in recent American history.

Related post:

Larry Clark: Top 10: Best drug-themed movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Watch the punky trailer here

Cost: 1.5 mil. $
Box office: 20.4 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Miramax bought the worldwide distribution rights for this small, independent film for 3.5 mil. $. As the film got an NC-17-rating, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, owners of Miramax, had to buy the film back from their company due to Miramax's rule to not release NC-17-rated films, although the film was eventually released unrated in the US. Under another company name, Shining Excalibur Films, Kids went on to enjoy a warm reception both domestically (7.4 mil. $) and abroad, and the Weinsteins are said to have profited as much as 2 mil. $ each from their distribution of Kids.]

What do you think of Kids?
Any information on its making is very welcome