About Endlessness/Om det Oändliga (2019) - Andersson retires with so-so trademark work

♥♥♥

 

A couple are floating away under grey clouds on this grey-toned poster for Roy Andersson's About Endlessness

The priest who has lost his faith, - and who doesn't find much care or comfort at the psychologist's office, - is the through-line motif.

 

About Endlessness is written and directed by great Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson (Lördagen den 5.10 (1969)).

Andersson's latest, and likely his last feature, repeats his familiar style with a long row of more or less poignant tableaus. But the Swedish reality outside of Andersson's creative universe unfortunately seems to have changed more at this point, than the auteur is able to reflect (and likely understand.) And About Endlessness feels somewhat ritualistic.

 

Related posts:

 

Roy Andersson: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence/En Duva Satt på en Gren och Funderade på Tillvaron (2014) - Perhaps Andersson's best film yet

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Reportedly 4.558 mil. €, approximately 4.68 mil. $

Box office: In excess of 434k $

= Some uncertainty but likely a box office disaster (projected return of 0.16 times its cost)

[About Endlessness premiered 3 September (Venice Film Festival) and runs 78 minutes. Shooting took place in Stockholm, Sweden. The film opened #31 to an 8k $ first weekend in 17 theaters in North America, where it did not achieve a higher position and grossed 51k $. The film's Box Office Mojo site regrettably is missing its likely most important market (Sweden), with Germany the biggest one recorded there with 193k $. A projected final gross with Sweden and a small (also unlisted) contribution from Denmark also, is 750k $. The film won a European Film award, 1/4 Guldbagge awards and the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, among other honors. Andersson, who was 76 at the time of the film's release, has not returned with a film since and has likely retired. About Endlessness is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of About Endlessness? 

The Fly (1958) - Neumann's great existential angst sci-fi classic

♥♥♥♥♥

An excitement-building, eerily creepy poster for Kurt Neumann's The Fly

A brilliant scientist works to create a teleportation device in his basement laboratory, but when he starts to experiment, a terrible mistake takes place.

The Fly is a wholly incredible experience, an extraordinarily well-made sci-fi horror drama. Its first half is quite entertaining; its second half produces an anxiety-provoking fear that is extremely rarely provoked by films. The existential anxiety that grabbed me felt as if it completely consumed me on my first time of watching the film, and to me The Fly will always have something insanely eerie, mysteriously terrifying about it.
The Fly is written by Australian James Clavell (Savage Justice (1967)) (his first produced screenplay), based on the same-titled 1957 Playboy magazine short story by George Lagelaan (The Dolphin Speaks Too (1964)), and directed by great German filmmaker Kurt Neumann (The Big Cage (1933)). It marks the major horror genre entrance for Vincent Price (Diary of a Madman (1963)), who went on to become one of the genre's biggest stars of all time, and is shot in glorious colors by Karl Struss (It's a Small World (1950)).

Watch the great, Vincent Price-hosted trailer for the film here

Cost: 350k $ - 495k $ (different reports)
Box office: 3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[The Fly was released 16 July (USA) and runs 93 minutes. The film was to be distributed by Fox's B movie sub-company Regal Pictures, but Fox upgraded the film and took it for its own in the end, probably realizing its high quality. The laboratory set cost 28k $ to produce. Filming took place in Montreal, Canada and in Los Angeles, California for 18 days in March 1958. The film is reportedly loyal to Langelaan's story for the most part; it does change the setting from France to Canada and erases a suicide by the Hélène character in the end. In North America, the film was released on a double bill with Space Master X-7 by Edward Bernds. It earned 1.7 mil. $ in rentals and was one of Fox's biggest hits of the year and reportedly the 8th highest-grossing film of the year overall. Neumann passed away a few weeks after the premiere and did not live to realize that he had made his career's most successful film. Two sequels were made; Return of the Fly (1959), by Bernds, with Price, and Curse of the Fly (1965), without either of them. David Cronenberg made an acclaimed new version, The Fly (1986), which had one sequel, The Fly II (1989). Price returned in Have Gun - Will Travel (1958, TV-series) and theatrically in House on Haunted Hill (1959). Neumann had completed 3 more pictures that were released after The Fly: Machete (1958), Watusi (1959) and Counterplot (1959). The Fly is fresh at 95 % with a 7.1/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Fly?

Anomalisa (2015) or, Depressed Adult Male

♥♥♥

Lead character Michael Stone looks himself in the mirror dejectedly on this poster for Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa

Our protagonist Michael is a guru for the service industry and comes to Cincinnati to give a lecture but finds himself in a mentally disturbed state.

Anomalisa is an existential romance-drama written by Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York (2008)), based on his same-titled 2005 play, and co-directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson (Mary Shelley's Frankenhole (2010-12)). It is made in fascinating, almost masochistically time-consuming stop-motion animation, which is carried out in very detailed and vivid fashion.
The story of Anomalisa is relentlessly downbeat; the theme of alienation dominates everything; the lighting, Michael's sudden infatuation with Lisa, a woman he meets in the hotel, and the day after. It takes place in a dispiriting tone of near futility in any kind of human relation, which is the feeling that encapsulates the overall very melancholic Anomalisa. It doesn't indicate that Kaufman has gotten any better, or lighter, mentally speaking.
Ultimately a question of temperament, taste and tolerance will decide whether you'll love Anomalisa to death or mostly shrug it off like a miserable cold, as was the way I more or less felt about it.

Related posts:

Charlie Kaufman: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Adaptation (2002) or, Charlie Kaufman's Fictional Life (writer)
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) or, The Gong Show Killer (writer)
Being John Malkovich (1999) - Jonze, Kaufman and Malkovich's great triumph (writer)

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 8 mil. $
Box office: 5.6 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Anomalisa premiered 4 September (Telluride Film Festival, USA) and runs 90 minutes. In the play, David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan also played the parts and sat on different parts of the stage and didn't move, only interacting through dialog. The film version should be identical, only different in terms of its media and that the action actually takes place. The film started as a short film that got off as a Kickstarter campaign that gathered 400k $, enabling funding for it as a feature to come together. The puppets were created with a 3D printer, and production lasted for two years. Paramount bought the worldwide distribution rights after the film's Toronto screening. It opened #34 in 4 theaters to a 135k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked #18 in 573 theaters and grossed 3.7 mil. $ (66.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 321k $ (5.7 %) and France with 167k $ (3 %). The film was nominated for the Best Animation Oscar as the first R-rated animation to ever achieve this, but lost to masterpiece Inside Out. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe, 4 Independent Spirit Awards, and was the first animation to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival. Anomalisa is certified fresh at 92 % with a 8.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Anomalisa?

Enter the Void (2009) - Noé's Tokyo-set, visually magical bad trip

♥♥♥

 

A trippy, psychedelic poster for Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void

The first part of Enter the Void is seen through the eyes of protagonist drug dealer Lucas', as he takes drugs SPOILER and gets shot dead in the toilet of a Tokyo nightclub. The rest of the film consists of a lot of memories that relate the story of Lucas and his little sister Linda's lives, which is violently tragic, and since of the drifting around of Lucas' consciousness or soul in the Japanese mega-city, while the rest of his environment falls apart.

Enter the Void is the 3rd movie from Argentinian master co-writer-director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible (2002)), co-writen with Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence (2004)) and shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie (Get the Gringo/How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012)).
With Enter the Void, Noé comes across visually as something of a super-human wizard, and so much the worse, more anxiety-provoking and traumatizing is the experience of watching this in every sense extreme film. Enter the Void is terrible to watch and completely unforgettable at once, - it feels like a very long journey on a very bad trip.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 12.38 mil. €, equal to approximately 13.23 mil. $

Box office: Reportedly 1.4 mil. $

= Box office disaster

[Enter the Void premiered May 22 (Cannes, in an unfinished cut) and runs 143 minutes in its international version and 161 minutes in its extended version. Noé had developed the narrative since watching Lady in the Lake (1947), also shot from the a person's perspective, as a youth, high on mushrooms. He had tried to make it for almost a decade, but it was too expensive and risky for anyone to be willing to fund it, - until Irreversible turned out a hit. Noé has since called Irreversible, his masterpiece, a 'bank robbery' and a helpful exercise for him in order to make Enter the Void. Paz de la Huerta (Boardwalk Empire (2010-11)) is the only one of the main actors who was already a professional actor. The visualization of the film was much dependent on Noé's own experiences taking hallucinogenic drugs. Financing proved possible as a co-production of no less than 13 companies and governmental support funds. Filming took place from October - December 2007 in Tokyo, with additional shoots in Montreal in April - May 2008. Very little of the film's dialog was reportedly scripted. The producers made agreements with the Yakuza (Japanese mob) for its Japanese shoot. Complex crane shots, helicopter shooting and shooting in huge sets of the city made at Toho Studios were accomplished, and every shot in the film uses CGI. - Post production lasted over a year. Noé has explained about the film: "The whole movie is a dream of someone who read The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and heard about it before being shot by a gun. It's not the story of someone who dies, flies and is reincarnated, it's the story of someone who is stoned when he gets shot and who has an intonation of his own dream." Since the Cannes premiere, where the film was shown in competition but lost to Michael Haneke's great The White Ribbon/Das Weiße Band - Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009), the film continued to be refined and alter in following screenings. Noé himself says that the material that isn't in the short version of the film isn't essential; he had to make the shorter version due to a finance contract over length. In North America, the film opened #52 in 3 theaters to a 43k $ first weekend, later widening to 13 theaters and grossing 336k $ (24 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 137k $ (9.8 %) and France with 134k $ (9.6 %). One of the producers blamed the financial crisis for the film's poor performance. Enter the Void is fresh at 70 % with a 6.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Enter the Void?

Somewhere (2010) - S. Coppola's phenomenal existential character study

♥♥♥♥♥♥

 

3 Film Excess wins:

Best Actor: Stephen Dorff
Best Director: Sofia Coppola
Best Editing    

7 Film Excess nominations:

Best Film (lost to The King's Speech)
Best Actor: Stephen Dorff (won)
Best Supporting Actress: Elle Fanning (lost to Dianne Wiest for Rabbit Hole)
Best Director: Sofia Coppola (won)
Best Cinematography: Harris Savides (lost to Wally Phister for Inception)
Best Editing (won)
Best Music: Phoenix (lost to Treme S1)

 

+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year

+ Best American Movie of the Year 

+ Best Character Study of the Year

 

With Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel looming in the back, the poster for Sofia Coppola's Somewhere

 

We follow action star Johnny Marco, who lives a distanced, floating life in a fancy Los Angeles hotel. For a while he lives with his teenage daughter Cleo.

 

Stephen Dorff (The Iceman (2012)) and Elle Fanning (The Neon Demon (2016)) are indescribably good in New Yorker master writer-director Sofia Coppola's (The Virgin Suicides (1999)) masterpiece of realizing you have gotten stuck in life and setting a new course. Dorff inhabits his character physically as well as psychologically. Somewhere also has a beautiful score by French indie-pop band Phoenix, (whose front singer Thomas Mars is Coppola's husband), and bold, simple and very elegant photography by the great Harris Savides (Milk (2008)).

This is an awesomely fine film, in which the lack of formal events and action lead our focus to its existential core meditations: Can one change? And, even more to the point; can one really act in one's own life? SPOILER The sophisticated ending seems to respond a tentative yes. (And if you don't get it, watch the film again, understand its journey and look at its title.)  Somewhere is beautiful.

 

Related posts:

 

Sofia Coppola: Top 10: Best Hollywood-set movies   

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]

The Bling Ring (2013) - Coppola misfire, boooooooring

Coppola is interviewed about the film here

Cost: 7 mil. $

Box office: 13.9 mil. $

= Flop

[Somewhere premiered September 11 (Venice International Film Festival) and runs 98 minutes. Coppola drew inspiration from countless movies, acquaintances and her own upbringing as cinema royalty (as the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola.) Filming took place in Italy and LA, including the real Chateau Marmont, and Las Vegas from June - July 2009. The film opened #26 with a 119k $ first weekend in 7 theaters in North America, where it peaked in 83 theaters and grossed 1.7 mil. $ (12.2 % of the total gross). Before North America, the film's biggest 2 market were France with 3.3 mil. $ (23.7 %) and Italy with 2.7 mil. $ (19.4 %). The film won the Golden Lion in Venice. It received mixed reviews, but Roger Ebert, agreeing with me, gave it 4/4 stars. Somewhere is certified fresh at 71 % with a 6.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Somewhere?

Truth About Men/Sandheden om Mænd (2010) - Arcel's witty meta-dramedy

♥♥♥♥

 

'An (anti)romantic comedy' reads the translated tagline on this Danish poster for Nikolaj Arcel's Truth About Men

 

Mads is in his 30s; he has moved into a house with his girlfriend, who now feels broody. He then moves out and gets a younger girlfriend, until she splits on him, and he also has problems with his writing. Alas and alack!

 

This midlife-crisis dramedy is skillfully told and visualized, as could be expected from its great Danish co-writer-director Nikolaj Arcel (King's Game/Kongespil (2004)). It's got poignant lines and lots of material to mirror ourselves in, (whether we want to or not.) And Thure Lindhardt (Keep the Lights On (2012)) is good in the lead.

Detractors: SPOILER The 'good story' fanaticism of the film's structure gets the best of it towards the end. And the closing point of the basic mediocrity of life just sucks.

Truth About Men is written by Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg (A Royal Affair/En Kongelig Affære (2012)) and Lars Kaalund (Hjørdis (2015), TV-series).

 

Related reviews:

 

Nikolaj Arcel: The Keeper of Lost Causes/Kvinden i Buret (2013) or, Grumpy and Ethnic Find a Woman in a Pressure Chamber (writer) 

A Royal Affair/En Kongelig Affære (2012) or, Mad King of Denmark!  (co-writer-director)

Cecilie (2007) - Well-made but unoriginal Danish horror  (co-writer)

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Unknown

= Unknown (but likely a big flop)

[Truth About Men was released October 7 (Denmark) and runs 91 minutes. It was made with support from the Danish Film Institute and DR (Danish public radio and TV). Its budget is undisclosed. It sold 94,998 tickets in its native Denmark and was also released in Germany and in festivals in Sweden and Finland. Unless any of these markets boomed to a surprising degree, the film should probably be counted as a big flop. It got nominated for 12 Roberts and Bodils in Denmark. It was also chosen as Denmark's candidate for the Nordic Council's Film Prize. 1,038 IMDb-users have given Truth About Men a 6.8/10 average.]

What do you think of Truth About Men?

Dogtooth/Κυνόδοντας (Kynodontas) (2009) - Lanthimos establishes himself internationally with an unsettling family portrait

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Greek Movie of the Year

Life presented clinically, as a scale that moves in directions of + and -, on the poster for Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth

QUICK REVIEW:

A parenting couple have their three grown children living in their home. They have taught them an alternative vocabulary; that they can't go out in the world before they lose their dogtooth, and several other similarly grotesque things.

Greek Dogtooth is an incredibly strange film with a very consistent photographic language, (cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis (Blind (2014))), a whole lot of very mechanical, unsexy and just plain 'wrong' sex scenes and some actors' performances that transgress what is normally expected. The film is fraught with an absurd, dark humor, as we get to know this deeply messed-up family, without any story per se unfolding. And yet the film moves slowly and unpleasantly forward.
It is especially the questions, discussions and thoughts that follow watching it that make Dogtooth exciting. It is the third feature by Athenian Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster (2015)), which he co-wrote with Efthymis Filippou (Alps (2011)).

Related posts:

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

Watch the great trailer for the film with English subtitles here

Cost: 0.25 mil. € (0.32 mil. $)
Box office: 0.38 mil. $
= Big flop
[Yet Dogtooth is considered one of the most successful Greek films in recent history: The film was given 0.2 mil. € from The Greek Film Center, and was achieved on its very low budget with the help of volunteers. It premiered in Cannes, where it won the Prix Un Certain Regard and the Prix de la Jeunesse. It was unanimously chosen by the Greek Film Committee to represent the country at the Oscars, where it was nominated as Best Foreign Film in 2011, but lost to the Danish In a Better World/Hævnen (2010). The film grossed 110k $ in North America (28.6 % of the total gross) on a maximum of just 5 screens. Its biggest market was Spain (163k $/42.4 %), and 3rd biggest was native Greece (49k $/12.8 %). Dogtooth is certified fresh at 92 % with a 7.7 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Dogtooth?
Also, please, report your opinion of other Lanthimos films, if you've seen any