The Paperboy (2012) - Daniels' off-putting and interesting Florida-yarn huffs and puffs

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+ Strangest Movie of the Year

The intense, curiosity-inspiring poster for Lee Daniels' The Paperboy

Jack is actually just a little brother and paperboy in a little Florida-paper, when a loony nymphomaniac shows up in town and wants to help the editorial staff to get a falsely accused man acquitted for murder.
Paperboy is a film that is thick with animosity, stupidity, sweat and vulgar scenes with sex, urine, blood etc. It is not exactly good understood as successful in the conventional sense, but it is a madly atypical and weird little thing, which all the characters seem to snuffle and grovel and mumble their way through, and which demands patience from its audience. - The characters aren't easy, smart or very sympathetic, but there is a zest behind the direction and in the performances, - as with John Cusack's (Being John Malkovich (1999)) heinous murderer, - which makes the film queerly fascinating nonetheless.
Zac Efron (Me and Orson Welles (2008)) again shows his depth and talent; e.g. in a moving scene with Macy Gray towards the ending in the God-forsaken swamp-environment.
Paperboy, a movie often called lurid, also features strange narration and sentimentality, (as well as, - yes, - that infamous scene of Nicole Kidman peeing all over Efron on a beach.)
This is American director Lee Daniels' (Precious (2009)) fourth film. It unfortunately flopped badly, showing that words like 'lurid' and 'strange' apparently hold people today away from a movie more so than they attract them, even from a film with major stars, (which I find weird.) 
Daniels returned to mainstream tribulation after this with the much straighter, if also much less interesting The Butler (2013).

Related posts:

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]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess 

Roughly edited trailer for The Paperboy

Budget: 12.5 mil. $
Box office: 2.4 mil. $
= Big flop 

What do you think of The Paperboy and Daniels' other films?

Backdraft (1991) - Ron Howard's giant, stupid Chicago-set firefighter movie

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French poster for Ron Howard's Backdraft

A pair of brothers in the Chicago Fire Dept., one already a veteran there and the other one barely making his entrance in their world, trail in their father's footsteps, when a series of terrible fires are set off by an unknown, crazed arsonist.

 

Ron Howard's (Frost/Nixon (2008)) tries to make the broadest possible action-adventure here, and in this he succeeds. Is the story, fire philosophy (laid out by Robert De Niro's fire investigator) and general environment preposterous, and the characters thin and one-sided? Sure. But the camaraderie and going-for-broke, massive score and ambitious production width is enticing. Backdraft has solid photography, - by Mikael Salomon (Hard Rain (1998), director), - and very impressive fire scenes, with stunts that defy expectations and are worth the time in themselves. Donald Sutherland is a compelling lunatic, and you couldn't ask for better hams than Kurt Russell and William Baldwin's (The Squid and the Whale (2005)) as the film's brothers.

Gregory Widen's (Highlander (1986)) scripted. Backdraft may be a somewhat stupid film but it is also the kind of spectacle that you want to pull out and watch again with admiration nonetheless from time to time.


Related review:

Ron Howard: A Beautiful Mind (2001) - John Nash given the Epic Treatment

Brothers (in the film) Kurt Russell and William Baldwin in their fire uniforms

Watch the overly long trailer for the overly long Backdraft here

Budget: 75 mil. $
Box office: 152.3 mil. $
= Flop

What are your thought on Backdraft?