Falling Down (1993) - Schumacher's arguably best film, a fiery dragon of a societal thriller

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+ Best Los Angeles Movie of the Year + Best Societal Critique of the Year + Best Thriller of the Year 

Michael Douglas' white shirt, tie and crew cut character towers as a troubling exclamation mark in LA's simmering heat on this truly great poster for Joel Schumacher's Falling Down

A man leaves his car in a traffic jam under a bridge during a heatwave one day in Los Angeles. He has had enough, and he is determined to go home to his ex-wife for their daughter's birthday, no matter the cost.

Falling Down is written by Ebbe Roe Smith (Car 54, Where Are You? (1994)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Joel Schumacher (Flawless (1999)), whose best film it arguably is, matched in quality, probably, only by his very different type of thriller, Veronica Guerin (2003) .
Michael Douglas (Coma (1978)) is utterly peerless as the man who 'falls down', William 'D-FENS' Foster, in a kind of paralleled plot, which other side is Robert Duvall (Network (1976)) as the police sergeant on his last day on the job, who gets the unenviable task of stopping Foster's rampage.
Falling Down is lit by a zeitgeist in its bold tackling of modern, urban themes, an indignation in the Foster character, which may seem persuasive even as it becomes amoral and wrong, and a societal critique arriving in the guise of pure loathing. Foster is a unique character in mainstream American cinema, who is repelling yet keen in some of his observations.
Falling Down is a character-driven, masterly thriller with torrid scenes, major suspense and a killer plot. It is a must-see.

Related posts:

Joel Schumacher: 1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

The Lost Boys (1987) - A crazy 80's teen vampire bonanza

Watch the sensational opening scene of the film here

Cost: 25 mil. $
Box office: 40.9 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertain - but likely a box office success
[Falling Down was released 26 February (USA) and runs 113 minutes. Shooting took place from March - June 1992 in California, including Los Angeles, partly during the race riots, which caused production delays in March and April. The film opened #1 with an 8.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it retained the spot for another week and stayed in the top 5 for a 3rd week (#3), grossing 40.9 mil. $. The world gross is not reported, as was common at the time, but if we make the cautious estimate of the film making 50 % of its gross domestically, its 81.8 mil. $ end gross would render it a box office success. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Douglas' film legend father Kirk Douglas praised his son's performance as "his best piece of work to date." Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Korean Americans, Korean grocers and unemployed defense workers were among the groups who protested the film. The man responsible for shooting and killing 3 Muslim neighbors in an alleged parking dispute in North Carolina's 2015 Chapel Hill shooting allegedly praised Falling Down as his favorite film and watched it "incessantly". Schumacher returned with the European music video for Lenny Kravitz's Heaven Help (1993) and theatrically with The Client (1994). Douglas returned in Disclosure (1994). Falling Down is certified fresh at 73 % with a 6.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Falling Down?

Halloween (2007) - Zombie's remake is a bloody stinker

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A mask that seemingly holds back a mass of bothersome memories lights up this well-made poster for Rob Zombie's Halloween

Escaping after 17 years in a sanatorium, murder convict lunatic Michael Myers escapes and returns to Haddonfield and his little sister Laurie...

Halloween is written and directed by Rob Zombie (The Devil's Rejects (2005)), remaking John Carpenter's great slasher classic Halloween (1978). Zombie adds content to tell of Myers' almost comical childhood and his mask fetish, but seemingly only because most other areas of the Halloween universe have already been covered in the franchise's 8 preceding films.
Halloween features no real sense of character development or scene building, as everything is shot shakily and ultra-close in gritty images with a continually stressful quality. There is lots of blood but little in the way of actual, dazzling special effects. Worst for the film is that we are not made to care about a single one in it. This is an awfully bad remake.

Related posts:

Rob Zombie: 2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Devil's Rejects (2005) - Zombie's crazy serial killer Americana

Hear the theme for the film here, - which naturally reuses Carpenter's legendary original 1978 ditto

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 80.2 mil. $
= Big hit (5.34 times the cost)
[Halloween was released 31 August (North America) and runs 110 minutes. Carpenter is a friend of Zombie, and when Zombie informed him of the remake plans, he urged Zombie to "make it his own." Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles and in the neighborhood Carpenter shot in for the original film, from January - March 2007 with reshoots in June. 4 days before the release, a workprint, which Zombie stated was an older version of the film, was released online. The film opened #1 to a stellar 26.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#5) and grossed 58.2 mil. $ (72.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 3.6 mil. $ (4.5 %) and Italy with 3.4 mil. $ (4.2 %). It is the highest-grossing Halloween movie to date, unadjusted for inflation. Zombie returned with the much less successful Halloween II (2009). Halloween is rotten at 25 % with a 4.1/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Halloween?

Dementia 13/The Haunted and the Hunted (1963) - Coppola's Gothic AIP castle horror

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Posters for Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 seem to inform patrons that they would have to pass some kind of a psychiatric examination before seeing the film, - now that's creative marketing!

QUICK REVIEW:

A family in an Irish castle bicker over inheritance, as a mysterious ax murderer begins to wreck havoc.

Dementia 13 is the feature debut of master filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now (1979)), although the fact is contested, as he was heavily involved with directing a few other (dubious) films before it as well. It's a castle horror flick set and shot on location in Ireland. The film stirs up a traditional whodunit plot that is easily forgotten afterwards. Coppola wrote the script with the help of Jack Hill (Blood Bath (1966)).
But the staging of the proceedings stand out, as Coppola has directed the period plot in a modern fashion with close-ups, various quite visionary shots and actors that really act. William Campbell (Star Trek (1967), TV-series) and Luana Anders (Easy Rider (1969)), Bart Patton (THX 1138 (1971), voice) and Mary Mitchel (Panic in Year Zero! (1962)) are top-billed, and Patrick Magee (Tales from the Crypt (1972)) plays a small part.
The movie contains an ax murder that seems to have inspired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and a deeply atmospheric opening sequence, (the SPOILER heart attack on the lake scene.)

Related review:

Francis Ford Coppola: Apocalypse Now (1979) redux version - The horror of war

Watch the hammy trailer for the film here

Cost: Between 30k-42k $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[Coppola was one of the budding, young filmmakers attached to Roger Corman's (The Wild Angels (1966)) American International Pictures, who had provided him with 22k $ left over from The Young Racers (1963), which had wrapped under budget. Coppola himself raised another 20k from selling the European rights without Corman's knowledge. Dementia 13 was shot in 9 days and has since come to be regarded as a Gothic cult movie by some. This Indiewire article claims that it recouped its expenses at the box office.]

What do you think of Dementia 13?

Revenge for Jolly (2012) - An uneven, pitch-black stoner comedy debut

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A blood-splattered, shell-littered poster for Chadd Harbold's Revenge for Jolly!

Revenge for Jolly! is the feature debut of Chadd Harbold (Block (2011), short), a really dark comedy, the first feature written by lead Brian Petsos (Wasted Space: The Mark Rantana Story (2010), short).

Petsos plays a nerdy loner, whose tiny dog gets killed. He seeks revenge and partners up with his also not-too-bright cousin for this quest, which takes them on a violent killing spree.

Jolly! will mostly appeal to younger males of the more cynical kind, or emotionally blunted types, who probably don't really need to acquire role-models who do the kind of things the protagonists of this film do.
The film's humor is extremely dark, even more so because none of the action is totally unbelievable, and the effects are realistic. Many will writhe in their seats or simply switch off the film, because it is immoral, but if you can accept this in the context of it all just being one long, crude joke, then you may like the film or just find it entertaining as I must admit that I did.
Something has gone wrong in the DVD transfer, or perhaps the film was just shot on terrible HD cameras (?). In any case the result on my TV was a technically awful visual experience, as the images linger all over the screen, whenever the characters move fast in any way.
Petso's script is pretty one-sided and flawed and plays like a series of episodic, more or less comedic and grim scenes that all come to a very abrupt end. Rarely has a feature seemed more 'straight-out-of-film-school' than Revenge for Jolly!, which is totally lacking any seriousness or great ideas, apparently solely thrilled with violence, guns and profanity and really dark and nonsensical humor.

Writer-star Brian Petsos and Oscar Isaac in Chadd Harbold's Revenge for Jolly!

The details:

What may make you interested enough to watch it are the stars in it:
Petsos doesn't create an interesting lead, but Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)) is pretty good as his stoner cousin. They both seem to give it their all at least.
The funniest in the remaining cast are Garret Dillahunt (Deadwood (2004-05)) and Kevin Corrigan (The Departed (2006)), both in the wedding scene. The film also features stars Kristen Wiig, Elijah Wood (in yet another pretty obscure post-LOTR appearance) and Ryan Phillippe.
Jolly! may, in fact, be best described as mostly a stoner comedy. - The leads, who are wearing sombreros for a large portion of the film (...) have definitely smoked too much, anyway.
Incredibly, (since this film doesn't seem to have made any business), Harbold followed it up just the year after with another low-budget comedy, How to Be a Man (2013). And soon he will finish his next project, the short George and the Vacuum (2015) with Fred Armisen.

Watch the trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[No information out most likely means that the film hasn't made nearly anything (theatrically, anyway). It was shot in New York and premiered at the city's Tribeca Film Festival.]

What do you think of Revenge for Jolly!?