The Normal Heart (2014) - The early HIV/AIDS tragedy portrayed with appropriate fury and great performances

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+ Best Adaptation of the Year + Best TV Movie of the Year

The curiosity-inspiring poster for Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart

The gay parties rage in 1981, when HIV/AIDS begins ravaging and awakes self-criticism, reflection, sorrow and an upwards fight against the obdurate society at large.

The Normal Heart is Ryan Murphy's (Eat Pray Love (2010)) TV movie adaptation of Larry Kramer's (Faggots (1978)) same-titled 1985 play, adapted by Kramer himself. It is an eminent adaptation. The film dazzles with several fiery scenes and an Oscar-worthy lead Mark Ruffalo (Begin Again (2013)) and phenomenal, supporting Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman (1990)). Normal Heart also boasts a slew of other great supporting performances, from Matt Bomer (Magic Mike XXL (2015)), - who lost 40 pounds to portray his character's change, - Taylor Kitsch (Lone Survivor (2013)), Jim Parsons (Home (2015)) and Alfred Molina (The Truth About Emanuel (2013)).
The title of the film is never really explained, but not a heart remains untouched after watching The Normal Heart. - A must-see!

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Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: Reportedly 17-18 mil. $ 
Box office: None (TV movie)
= Uncertainty
[The Normal Heart has had an exceptionally long voyage to becoming a film, with several great talents involved before this finally happened with Murphy at the helm, for HBO. It was filmed in the summer of 2013 in New York. Normal Heart drew 1.4 mil. viewers on its Memorial Day first showings, which makes it HBO's 5th highest-rated TV movie since 2010 (out of 17). It also got fine reviews, 3 Globe nominations, - including a win for Bomer for Best Supporting Actor, - and 9 Emmy nominations including one win, for Outstanding TV Movie. The Normal Heart is certified fresh at 94 % with a 7.7 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Normal Heart? 
Other TV movies you consider must-sees?

Lone Survivor (2013) - Wahlberg and Berg's stout Navy SEAL war movie

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+ Best War Movie of the Year

Mark Wahlberg portrays a tough, real-life Navy Seal in Peter Berg's Lone Survivor

A Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan are sent on a risky mission behind enemy lines to kill a Taliban leader. But the opposition is greater than anticipated, the terrain is exceedingly difficult, and the communication gets severed.

Writer-director Peter Berg (The Kingdom (2007)) makes a gritty, effective movie out of this horrific true story, based on the 2007 novel by Marcus Luttrell (Service: A Navy SEAL at Work (2012)) and Patrick Robinson (Intercept (2010)). The war record that otherwise might be of the kind that would change young men's minds about joining the forces and risking their lives for dubious purposes in faraway, poor parts of the world, becomes a film that immortalizes these men as strong, good, tragic heroes, which doubtlessly impresses new youths to join the ranks. Lone Survivor boasts visceral fight and falling scenes to support its very simple story, (one of a small group of men's fight, death and struggle to survive.) It is a piece of American patriotic war-lore, manipulative and simple but well-made, earnest and without qualms.
Lone Survivor sports a strong cast that heightens it: Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild (2007)), Eric Bana (Black Hawk Down (2001)), Ben Foster (Kill Your Darlings (2013)), Taylor Kitsch (True Detective (2015), TV-series), - and Mark Wahlberg (The Happening (2008)) are all very good here.

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Battleship (2012) - 200+ mil. $ worth of brainless destruction

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 49 mil. $
Box office: 149.3 mil. $
= Box office success
[The rights to the book were sold to Universal in 2007 in a bidding war for more than 2 mil. $. The film was then made largely without studio interference, with key cast members working for scale and producers even putting a mil. $ each into the production. The cast underwent training for the movie; Berg even visited the families of the deceased SEALs and became embedded with SEALs in Iraq for a month, (the first civilian to have been allowed this); and Luttrell and other SEAL's were advisers on the film. Lone Survivor was shot in New Mexico September - November 2012 and received a 25 % tax credit. Several stunt performers were injured during the making of the fall scenes. The movie was screened for several American football teams, gaining word-of-mouth, before its limited release. It opened wide in January at #1 to a 38.2 mil. $ opening weekend domestically, the second-largest January opening ever, behind Cloverfield (2008). It grossed 125 mil. $ in North America (83.7 % of the total gross), with Australia (3.5 mil. $/2.3 %) and the UK (3.4 mil. $/2.3 %) being the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets. The film was nominated for Oscars for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, losing both to Gravity (2013). Lone Survivor is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Lone Survivor?

John Carter (2012) - Bloated Mars-nonsense yawner

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+ 3rd Worst Movie of the Year
+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year

Huge Mars-monsters trying to sell Andrew Stanton's John Carter

John Carter starts well:
From the mythic West, with bravado-filmed landscapes, Mr. Carter, who really doesn't want to fight Apache Indians (!), is thrown very mystically to Mars, where another, mythic narrative begins ...
- No, unfortunately it does not.

Taylor Kitsch looking at ... no-one knows. In Andrew Stanton's John Carter

Instead on Mars, a silly mash-up of Star Wars, Planet of the Apes and Transformers awaits, with overly powdered 'stars': Taylor Kitsch (Lone Survivor (2013)) and Lynn Collins (The Number 23 (2007)), who plays even less charmingly than he. And the plot is as bad; it seems like a film cut out of a target group template made to forcibly include everyone, but it instead comes out tiring, incredibly boring and about as dumb as corrugated cardboard.
Mark Strong (Zero Dark Thirty (2012)) and Dominic West (The Wire (2002-08)) play deadly boring, weirdly costumed, henna-tattooed villains. The good planet in Carter is idiotically named Helium, and the film wallows in violence, but has no sex and is supposed to be family entertainment, but is so boring it is more likely family punishment.
After the first hour, the most likable character in John Carter is the monster CGI-dog seen below, and so continues the over-long, romantic western/sci-fi action adventure:

The most likable character of Andrew Stanton's John Carter

Carter is an adaptation project that had lived in Hollywood for decades with different studios and talent involved, before it was finally made into Andrew Stanton's (Finding Nemo (2003)) debacle of a movie, his first live-action feature.
The then head of Disney, Rich Ross resigned following the movie which lost a great deal more than 100 mil. $, thus making it spectacular in one, definite way: As a flop.
Stanton is getting back to his (much more successful) roots with his next movie, the much anticipated sequel Finding Dory (2016).

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Watch the terrible trailer for John Carter here

Budget: 250 mil. $ (+ 100 mil. $ in marketing)
Box office: 284.1 mil. $
= Big flop

What do you think of John Carter?

Battleship (2012) - 200+ mil. $ worth of brainless destruction

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Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna look purposeful on the poster for Peter Berg's Battleship

Aliens enter our atmosphere and fall in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. - American and Japanese battleships have to fight them.

That is the premise in Battleship, crudely modeled over Hasbro's board game. The film offers good-looking effects, and there is no shortage of explosions, but it is still a boring sci-fi/military/disaster/action movie.
The characters are a bunch of Marines, who speak to each other in code and Navy-slang 90 % of the time, - pretty hard to relate strongly to, or to have any fun with.
When the world in the end has to be saved SPOILER by 'Mighty Mo' - the retired Pearl Harbor battleship - the film becomes involuntarily comical.
Battleship quickly became an infamous dud in Western minds, - although it actually did much better outside of North America, and thus didn't become quite the financial disaster that everyone had already somehow decided that it was. But it is a bad, stupid movie, - with some eye-candy to smoothen its digestion, like the VFX and ...

Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson in uniforms

men (and Rihanna) in uniforms.
The film's director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor (2013)) wasn't fully behind it; just weeks after its release, he was talking about its failure and his failure on it in a public Q&A.
Still, probably the main problem of Battleship is its awful script, by Jon and Erich Hoeber (the Red movies).

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Watch the film's trailer here

Budget: 209 mil. $
Box office: 303 mil. $
= Flop

What do you think of Battleship?
What board game would you like to see a major studio throw 200 mil. $ after?