It's a Wonderful Life (1946) or, The Big, Marvelous, Sappy Christmas Miracle for George Bailey

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Images of family and rapturous love make up this bright, uplifting poster for Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life

George Bailey has been a good person, who put his own ambitions aside in order to run a little town's loan's bank, when his father passed away, but now, due to a kind of accident, he is falling on his heels and considers ending things. Guardian angel Clarence must attempt to salvage him.

 

It's a Wonderful Life is written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett  (A Certain Smile (1958), both) and Italian-American master filmmaker Frank Capra (The Strong Man (1926)), whose 32th feature it was. Jo Swerling (Thunder in the East (1952)) and Michael Wilson (Friendly Persuasion (1956)) made screenplay contributions. It is based on the short story The Greatest Gift (1943) by Philip Von Doren Stern (They Were There (1959)), in turn inspired by Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol (1843).

Capra's grand Christmas narrative quickly conquers one's heart and plays American football with it until its end. There are wonderful performances from James Stewart (Rope (1948)) and Lionel Barrymore (The Tender Hearted Boy (1913)) as the dastardly Potter. Stewart's Bailey is a matter of taste. I actually find him fairly intolerable both at his peak of positivity and when he hits bottom, as well as after this.

But It's a Wonderful Life is also a very funny picture, which always elects 'the high road': More is better here in the thick tale; Bailey does not get romance; all the townspeople bring buckets of cash to help out their fellow man etc. It is childishly sentimental in the extreme, yet also inventive and highly memorable. There are continuity issues and a high count of jump cuts. But a bona fide classic it is.

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 3.18 mil. $

Box office: In excess of 16.4 mil. $ (projected original release and post 2000 re-releases only)

= Initial flop, later hit (projected original return of 2.10 times its cost; later grown to more than 5.15 times its cost)

[It's a Wonderful Life premiered 20 December (New York) and runs 131 minutes. Capra claimed to have paid 50k $ for the rights to the story from RKO Pictures, who claimed it was 10k $, the same amount they had paid for it before also paying for screenplays written. Husband and wife writing team Goodrich and Hackett soured over Capra's involvement with the script, and Hackett summed up that the filmmaker was "a very arrogant son of a bitch." Shooting took place from April - July 1946 in New York and California, including in Los Angeles. The fictional Bedford Falls town was a massive movie set. Composer Dmitri Tiomkin also fell out with Capra over the film, as his work was left out or cut needlessly, in his opinion. Capra also had issues with the cinematographer Victor Milner, and once he fell ill had him replaced, until the replacement also needed to be replaced. The film was the year's 26th highest-grossing domestically of the year (out of +400 released pictures) but reportedly resulted in a 525k $ loss for distributor RKO. We may from this presume a total original gross around 6.7 mil. $. Box Office Mojo records post 2000 re-release earnings of 9.7 mil. $, especially from North America and the UK, where the film is extremely popular. It was nominated for 5 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Actor (Stewart) to Fredric March for The Best Years of Our Lives, Director to William Wyler for the same film, Editing and Picture also to The Best Years of Our Lives, and Sound, Recording to The Jolson Story. It won a Golden Globe and a National Board of Review award, among other honors. It was Capra's favorite of all his films, and he was thrilled to experience how its popularity blossomed, as it became grew into a Christmas stable on TV decades after its release. IMDb's users have rated the film in at #21 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between Se7en (1995) and Seven Samurai (1954). Capra returned with State of the Union (1948). Stewart returned in Magic Town (1947). It's a Wonderful Life is certified fresh at 94 % with a 9.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of It's a Wonderful Life? 

Legion (2010) - Stewart's religious action horror nonsense

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+ 3rd Worst Movie of the Year

Paul Betttany with wings on this brooding poster for Scott Stewart's Legion

God has lost faith in humanity (for some unknown reason), and so He sends his army of angels to annihilate us. But one woman is pregnant with a savior, and one angel fights for us.

This blasphemous mess is served with terrible dialog, (courtesy of writer Peter Schink (Gotham Cafe (2005), short) and co-writer-director Scott Stewart (Dark Skies (2013))), which is so sentimental and thick as to be completely ridiculous. The only extenuating element of this awful film is some of its effects, namely a couple of its monsters, an old lady zombie and one weirdo with very long arms and legs.

Related posts:

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: 26 mil. $
Box office: 67.9 mil. $
= Box office success
[Legion was released January 22 and runs 100 minutes. It was filmed in New Mexico from August 2008 - February 2009. The film opened #2 with a 17.5 mil. $ first weekend, (behind Avatar, dropping to #6 in its 2nd week), in North America, where it grossed 40.1 mil. $ (59.1 % of the total gross.) Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 7.3 mil. $ (10.8 %) and Spain with 3.2 mil. $ (4.7 %). A spinoff series titled Dominion was headed by Stewart for SyFy in 2014 and got canceled after its second season. Legion is rotten at 19 % with a 3.8 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Legion?

Angels in America (2003, miniseries) or, Dying in the 80s, of AIDS, at L-E-N-G-T-H

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Emma Thompson is the visiting angel on this dramatic poster for Mike Nichols' Angels in America

Tony Kushner (Munich (2005)) wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in the 1980s on AIDS, politics, religion, sex and homosexuality, which premiered in 1991. Adapting it was attempted first by master filmmaker Robert Altman, who ultimately didn't secure the necessary funding. Kushner tried adapting it into a single film but failed. He then started adapting it to miniseries format, and HBO agreed to finance the effort, directed by German master filmmaker Mike Nichols (Catch-22 (1970)) which was released in two versions: You can either see Angels as two roughly 3 hour movies, or as six episodes of around an hour. This review is based on the latter option.

New York in the 1980s: A young, Jewish gay couple are struck by tragedy, when the one part is diagnosed with AIDS. SPOILER The city's shark-like lawyer and Republican, Roy Cohn, dies equally slow from the disease at the same time. Meanwhile the healthy Jew leaves his sick sweetheart and has sex with Cohn's secretary, who has a wife. Next his Mormon mother enters the story, and later; angels.

Angels in America has a stellar cast that includes Al Pacino (The Godfather (1972)), James Cromwell (Owd Bob (1998)), Jeffrey Wright (Lady in the Water (2006)) and Emma Thompson (Beautiful Creatures (2013)). But the stars that really stand out and distinguish themselves here are Meryl Streep (The Manchurian Candidate (2004)) as the Mormon mother, a conflicted part she plays perfectly; and Patrick Wilson (Fargo (2015, TV-series)), who plays the closeted, married gay secretary coming out with lots of charm and intensity.
After the angels enter the story, the metaphysical elements get out of hand in a rainbow of pomposity and self-importance. The limit for this audience member's engagement in the tale gets crossed somewhere between the ethereal, the political, the racial politics and all the dramatic gays, but many others slurp it all up with a quivering smile.
Pacino is Cohn, the dying big-shot lawyer in denial, and he is almost so sick, feeble and skeletal here that you feel physically ill yourself by just watching him, (which you'll do at length in Angels in America).
The ending is excessively lengthy, so in spite of the series' qualities, it is far from being the gemstone that it is hailed as. Better AIDS-themed works include Philadelphia (1993), How to Survive a Plague (2012, documentary), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Normal Heart (2014, TV movie), BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) and more.

Related posts:

Mike Nichols: Closer (2004) - Nichols and Marber's intelligent film of love and infidelity 

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

Biloxi Blues (1988) or, '45 Army Camp Confidential   
Catch-22 (1970) - Nichols wages war on war with ensemble cast in absurdist satire 

Watch a 4-minute clip from the miniseries here

Cost: 60 mil. $
Box office: None (TV miniseries)
= Uncertain
[Angels in America was first broadcast from 7 December - 14 December (HBO) and runs 352 minutes. Shooting took place for 137 days in New York and in Rome, Italy from March 2002 - January 2003. It was reportedly the most-seen TV movie of 2003, - whether this made it profitable also is regrettably unreported. It won 5/7 Golden Globe nominations, 11/21 Emmy nominations, an AFI award, a National Board of Review award, was nominated for a Grammy and several other honors. Nichols returned with Closer (2004). Streep returned in Freedom: A History of Us (2003, documentary TV-series) and theatrically in The Manchurian Candidate (2004)); Thompson in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004); and Pacino in The Merchant of Venice (2004). Angels in America is certified fresh at 92 % with a 9.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Angels in America?