Monsters (2010) - Edwards' fascinating, impressive guerilla filmmaking debut

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2 Film Excess nominations:

Best Lead Actress: Whitney Able (lost to Jennifer Connelly for Virginia/What's Wrong with Virginia)
Best Digital Effects (lost to Alice in Wonderland)

 

+ Best Monster Movie of the Year

+ Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year

 

Above the title on this poster for Gareth Edwards' Monsters is the film's cool tagline

Years after an alien invasion, the giant monsters have been interned in South America, where an American photographer is now given the assignment to get his boss' daughter back to the States. But the road is long and full of obstacles...

Monsters is based on an unusual, exciting and original idea: It is an ultra-low budget giant creature feature without the mass destruction scenes the subgenre has grown us accustomed to but scoring on other parameters. The story is driven by a special, terrific mood stemming from all the action taking place in a world that has restructured after the fact of the alien coming, a world that is post great ideals; the collapse has, on more than one front, already happened.
The chemistry and dynamic between the two fine leads, portrayed by now married Scoot McNairy (Gone Girl (2014)) and Whitney Able (Mercy (2009)), who is especially wonderful, is gold to the film. It was made in a real guerilla filmmaking spirit (read more below), and this is reflected in the sense of realism and truthfulness of the film, which is rarely found in its mega-budgeted cousins.
Some may feel themselves led on by the film's title, because the film really doesn't show too many monsters at all. Besides the qualities already mentioned, Monsters also has a strong, surprising ending and some very well-made CGI.
It is the feature debut for great British writer-director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla (2014)), who won the latter, mega-budgeted giant creature feature directing gig based on this impressive film.

Related posts:

Gareth Edwards: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Godzilla (2014) - Best Godzilla ever!!!
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 0.5 mil. $

Box office: 4.2 mil. $

= Huge hit

[Monsters premiered March 13 (SXSW, Austin, Texas) and runs 94 minutes. Edwards had wanted to make a giant creature feature for more than a decade, getting derailed by War of the Worlds and Cloverfield. The film was shot with only a treatment with almost all of its lines getting improvised during production and most of the extras getting played by willing strangers the crew met on their adventure. Filming took place in America, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Mexico in just 3 weeks with a total crew of 7 people. 100 hours of footage was edited down, and Edwards created the film's CGI effects himself in 5 months in his bedroom. The film opened #54 in just 3 theaters to a 20k $ first weekend, expanding to 25 theaters and grossing 237k $ (5.6 % of the total gross) in North America. Its 3 biggest markets were the UK with 1.44 mil. $ (34.3 %), Russia with 1.40 mil. $ (33.3 %) and Mexico with 463k $ (11 %). Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars, equal to one notch better than this review. It was nominated for 6 awards at the British Independent Film Awards, winning Best Director, Best Technical Achievement and Best Achievement in Production. Edwards was also nominated as Best Director's Debut at the BAFTAs, but didn't win. A sequel, Monsters: Dark Continent (2015), was made without the direct involvement of the creators of Monsters and flopped. Monsters is fresh at 72 % with a 6.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Monsters?

Casa de los Babys (2003) - Sayles' great adoption drama

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+ Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year

The impressive all-female primary cast are highlighted on this German poster for John Sayles' Casa de los Babys

QUICK REVIEW:

In a South American hotel, a group of American and one Irish woman live, awaiting the arrival of their soon-to-be adopted children. With each their own story.

New York-born writer-director John Sayles (The Brother From Another Planet (1984)) explores the human fates with a sensitive hand and seemingly real insight into his material here. As a quiet observer, we are here witnesses to the story's idle development.
The film is both touching and shocking; it has fine montages (cinematography by Mauricio Rubinstein (New York, I Love You (2008))) and music (by Mason Daring (Honeydripper (2007))), and it provides a serious, semi-critical look at the adoption business.
It gathers an impressive all-female primary cast; especially fine performances are given by Daryl Hannah (Grumpy Old Men (1993)), Rita Moreno (West Side Story (1961)), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary (2002)) and Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River (2003)), once again as a sinful heavy.

 

Related posts:

 

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

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

Wacth the feeble trailer here

Cost: 0.8 mil. $
Box office: 0.4 mil. $ (US only)
= Huge flop
[The film opened in Venice Film Festival. Despite good reviews, it had a weak, limited run in America. The only other number is that it made just under 50k in Spain. The unsatisfying fate for this great film is disheartening.]

What do you think of Casa de los Babys?
Other Sayles films that beckon a watch?

Bananas (1971) - Woody Allen's South American misadventure is still a barrel of laughs

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Humorous cartoon-style poster for Woody Allen's Bananas

QUICK REVIEW:

Our hero here is an aspiring but hopeless New York-charmer, who goes to the fictionally created Latin American nation San Marcos to impress a girl, but instead ends up getting kidnapped down there by the country's rebels and made the president of the tiny nation, - only to find himself later persecuted for this upon return to the States.
Bananas is (as the title suggests) a very, very silly crazy comedy; its humor is often silent film/early-sound-like, perhaps due to its writer-director-star Woody Allen's (Broadway Danny Rose (1984)) yen for Marx Brothers-comedies, but also because it is only scored with the kind of monkey business music that was used in most of their movies.
Allen plays the physical clown in Bananas, and has an unmistakable talent for doing so, and yet his talent for the verbal and intellectual comedy is greater, and that is luckily also at display here. In fact it seems that everything is tried in Bananas, and not all of it works, - some is just too silly, - but generally speaking, this is a very unique and very funny fooling-about picture with some very memorable scenes.
At the moment, we can look forward to Allen's coming picture, Magic in the Moonlight (2014), while he, as usual, is already in preproduction with his next one.

Related reviews:

Woody Allen: To Rome With Love (2012) - Woody Allen's slightest film to date 
Anything Else (2003) - Perfect contemporary relationship comedy 
Celebrity (1998) or, Beautiful Celebrities Talk About Sex guest review
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) or, Keep Your Heart 
Annie Hall (1977) or, My Relationship With Alvie Singer

 Watch very funny Woody Allen talk over his trailer for the movie here

Budget: 2 mil. $
Box office: 11.8 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of Bananas?

Apocalypto (2006) or, Journey to An Extinct World

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+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Epic of the Year + Best American Movie of the Year + Best Adventure Movie of the Year + Best Chase Movie of the Year

The mysterious and powerful poster for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto

New-Yorker master co-writer/director Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge (2016)) seems to pull off an impossible job with his fourth feature directorial effort, Apocalypto, which he co-wrote with Farhad Safinia (The Professor and the Madman (2017) writer-director): 

Set in the Mayan culture just before the fatal coming of the Spaniards around year 1511, a young man, Jaguar Paw, must fight for his life and those of his wife and unborn child, as an outside peril destroys his village.

Apocalypto presents this story in a hyper-energetic, virtuoso adventure epic, which treads virgin ground with confidence and persuasion and tells a story of fierce struggle for survival in the context of a doomed civilization. Setting a broadly targeting chase adventure in an exclusively indigenous environment with minimal use of CGI and characters exclusively speaking an extinct language (an approximation of the Yucatec Maya language) had not been attempted before Gibson's daring film.
Rudy Youngblood (Wind Walkers (2015)) brilliantly portrays our hero Jaguar Paw, a tremendously demanding and extremely physically taxing role.
A great part of the film's ingenuity is to make the entire story unfold before the real outsiders, the Europeans, came crashing down upon the Americas. What an adventure it is, and what an accomplishment, to seemingly bring back to life an extinct culture on screens the world over for a couple of hours of edge-of-your-seat, marvelous entertainment.
Gibson's keen eye for faces and cinematic thrills; an action-packed script that seems much like an endless, ever-exciting chase, (which is also the way it was consciously designed); stunning images crafted by great Aussie cinematographer Dean Semler (Last Action Hero (1993)), and a thundering score by James Horner (Avatar (2009)), based mostly on various exotic instruments, all contribute in making Apocalypto work flawlessly in every department.
The incredible story inflicts constant shivers and goosebumps and never turns sentimental. The film works like a constant, gripping bombardment of the senses that reconfirms Gibson's position as a master storyteller, who is intimately familiar with the stuff that myths are made of, as well as an extraordinary communicator. Its daunting uniqueness, perhaps, is what prevented it from being attempted copied in the subsequent years; Roland Emmerich's awful 10,000 BC (2008) is the only major film that seems directly inspired by Apocalypto.
Apocalypto is a violent, masterful and exhilarating ride that reinvented and broadened what an action film can be.

Related posts:

 

Mel Gibson: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - Gibson's intense, humbling WWII epic

The Expendables 3 (2014) - Unique, bizarre, largely entertaining third action fireball (actor)

Get the Gringo/How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012) - Mexico is just a little merrier with Mel Gibson (co-producer/co-writer/actor)

The Beaver (2011) - Odd depression-dramedy with great stars - for the open-minded (actor) 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Top 10: The best action movies and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess to date

Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

 

Listen to 4 minutes of the film's soundtrack while enjoying images from the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 120.6 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.01 times its cost)
[Apocalypto was released December 8 (North America) and runs 138 minutes. Safinia worked as an assistant on Gibson's previous film, The Passion of the Christ (2004). They developed the film as a chase action adventure and did much research into the Maya culture and civilization. The film was shot digitally in Mexico from November 2005 - July 2006, including in a period where massive floods displaced 1 mil. people in Mexico. The cast is made up of native amateur actors. The film moves the Mayan collapse up about 600 years so as to collide with the arrival of the Spaniards, and its portrayal of their culture is contested. The release was pushed from July due to its prolonged shoot, and it was released about 6 months after Gibson was embroiled in scandal, when he slurred anti-Semitic insults at an officer during his arrest for DUI. Still, distributor Disney gave it a broad release based on strong reaction at test screenings and belief in the film. The film opened #1 to a 15 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd week and grossed 50.8 mil. $ (42.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 8.6 mil. $ (7.1 %) and the UK with 8 mil. $ (6.6 %). It additionally made in excess of 28.2 mil. $ on video sales in North America, which, if added into its gross, changes it to a big hit. The film was hailed by many filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Robert Duvall. It was nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Makeup (lost to Pan's Labyrinth), Best Sound Mixing (lost to Dreamgirls) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Letters from Iwo Jima). It was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and some other awards. Gibson returned with Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Youngblood returned in Beatdown (2010). Apocalypto is fresh at 65 % with a 6.33/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Apocalypto ?