Hustle & Flow (2005) - Brewer's Memphis rapper breakthrough

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Tennessee Movie of the Year

 

A carefully balanced poster that showcases the bling and contrasts of Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow

DJay is a pimp in Memphis, Tennessee, who aspires to a life as a hiphop recording artist by conning his way close to local star Skinny Black. - He winds up incarcerated, - but with a radio hit.

 

Hustle & Flow is written and directed by Virginian master filmmaker Craig Brewer (The Poor & Hungry (2000)), whose 2nd film it is.

It is a fairly realistic and quite entertaining music crime-drama, despite the protagonist's path being too far away from many viewers' life to fully ignite identification. The film has good one-liners and performances, but also weary, expletive-filled lingo and male delusion. It is mainly a movie about dreams.

 

Related reviews:

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

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

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  

Black Snake Moan (2006) or, The Mississippi Blues 

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  

 

 

Watch a 3-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: 2.8 mil. $

Box office: 23.5 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 8.39 times its cost)

[Hustle & Flow premiered in January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 116 minutes. Shooting took place in Memphis, Tennessee from July - August 2004. The film opened #7 to a 8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it decreased from there but enjoyed a long theatrical run, grossing 22.2 mil. $ (94.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 416k $ (1.8 %) and Australia with 339k $ (1.4 %). The film was nominated for 2 Oscars, winning for Best Song (It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp by Three 6 Mafia). It lost Best Actor (Terrence Howard (Fighting (2009))) to Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote. It was also nominated for an Independent Spirit award, a Golden Globe, won 2 National Board of Review awards, and 2 awards at Sundance, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Brewer returned with Black Snake Moan (2006). Howard returned in Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005, TV movie) and theatrically with Four Brothers (2005). Hustle & Flow is certified fresh at 82 % with a 7.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Hustle & Flow? 

Get Low (2009) - Great stars caught in not very good period drama about a hermit and his funeral

♥♥

Contours of the stars against a dark sky and a Robert Duvall looking wise fill out this poster for Aaron Schneider's Get Low

An odd, old hermit, who has lived alone in his forest house for 40 years, comes out into society with a peculiar wish: To arrange his own funeral, which he wants to attend while still alive.

Audiences who expect a comedy will be disappointed here. Despite the involvement of Bill Murray (Coming Attractions (1978)) as an undertaker and short moments of some amusing value along the way, Get Low is clearly most of all a drama, and a small, short story-inspired-like one at that, (although it is actually inspired by a true 1938 Tennessee man.)
The overshadowing problem for the film is that for its entire duration it feels unclear, why this story is relayed to us. This is despite good efforts by Sissy Spacek (JFK (1991)) and particularly grand old man lead Robert Duvall (The Detective (1968)), whose character's outlandish, several decades long hermit life remains a claim that is never illuminated.
Get Low is written by Chris Provenzano (Silicon Valley (2017), TV-series) and C. Gaby Mitchell (Blood Diamond (2006), story), with Scott Seeke (Boxes (2013), short, producer) contributing story elements, and directed by debuting Aaron Schneider (Kiss the Girls (1997), cinematographer), who has kept himself to only operating the camera in his few credits since.  
Get Low is set in Tennessee in the 1930s but doesn't present a vivid portrayal of its time or place either. It is a film with some good parts and an interesting premise, which only makes it more of a shame that it simply doesn't work.

Related post:

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Reportedly 7 - 7.5 mil. $
Box office: 10.5 mil. $
= Big flop
[Get Low premiered 12 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 100 minutes. Shooting took place in Georgia, including in Atlanta. The film opened #32 in 4 theaters to a 88k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #16 and in 570 theaters (different weeks), played for a very long 29 weeks and grossed 9.1 mil. $ (86.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 491k $ (4.7 %) and Poland with 407k $ (3.9 %), (the film is a US-German-Polish co-production.) Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to two notches higher than this one. The film was nominated for two Film Independent Spirit Awards, winning for Best First Feature. Get Low is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Get Low?

The Blind Side (2009) or, Good Knows No Boundaries

♥♥♥♥

Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron with their backs turned to us on the green for John Lee Hancock's The Blind Side

QUICK REVIEW:

Against all odds, (as I am no biggie for sports pictures), I enjoyed this semi-biographical story about a young, black, troubled kid, who is taken under the wing of a do-good Tennessee housewife with good money, - and good values.
Blind Side always chooses the saccharine angle, which seems almost exotic for me, - being not only European, but Scandinavian at that, - but with a fabulous Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality (2000)), - in her first Oscar-winning part, (the film's only Oscar), - along with Kathy Bates (Six Feet Under (2003-05)) it almost all went down without problems.
The film is directed by Texan John Lee Hancock, who enjoyed (somewhat lesser) success last year with the behind-Mary Poppins-movie Saving Mr. Banks (2013).
Hugely successful, and an edifying film about individual charity against cultural and racial borders, - The Blind Side is a good movie.

Sandra Bullock lays it down in one of her power-moments in John Lee Hancock's beloved The Blind Side

 Watch the moving film's moving trailer here

Budget: 29 mil. $
Box office: 309.2 mil. $ (+ 107.9 mil. $ in DVD sales)
= Huge hit

What are your feelings about The Blind Side?
Did you see John Lee Hancock's other films?
How are they?