One Hour Photo (2002) - Romanek, Williams and Co. capture a troubling thriller

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Psychological Thriller of the Year 

 

Star Robin Williams develops film wearing white gloves on this poster for Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo

The kind department store photo developer Sy does his job with care and a smile. But he is in fact a devastatingly lonely man, who over the course of several years have brought home with him the photos of one specific family. Now he loses his job, which is his only connection to reality.

 

One Hour Photo is written and directed by great Illinoisan filmmaker Mark Romanek (Static (1985)).

Robin Williams (Aladdin (1992)) once again shows new facets to his vast acting talent as Sy, the tormented protagonist that he makes us both feel sympathy and fear for here. Connie Nielsen (Gladiator (2000)) and the rest of the supporting cast are also fantastic.

One Hour Photo is almost mechanical in its visual competence, (Romanek is an accomplished music video director; Jeff Cronenweth (Hitchcock (2012)) did the cinematography here.) The film is tight and thrilling. One Hour Photo never sensationalizes its plot. It is a role-model of a psychological thriller.

 

Related post:

 

2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $

Box office: 52.2 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.35 times its cost)

[One Hour Photo premiered 13 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 96 minutes. Shooting took place from October 2000 - January 2001 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #24 to a 321k $ first weekend in 7 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #3 and in 1,332 theaters (different weeks), grossing 31.5 mil. $ ( 60.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 3.3 mil. $ (6.3 %) and Australia with 2.2 mil. $ (5.2 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Romanek returned with scores of music video and theatrically with Never Let Me Go (2010). Williams returned in Death to Smoochy (2002). One Hour Photo is certified fresh at 81 % with a 7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of One Hour Photo? 

Blind (2014) - Vogt's artistic debut about blindness makes its audience confused and depressed

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Lead Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Thelma (2017)) exhibits her naked backside on the poster for Eskil Vogt's Blind

A blind woman remembers her boyfriend, when he is away from her, and when he is there, she feels far away from him. Another lonely woman misses her son, when he is not with her, and she seeks a new human connection.

Blind is the feature directing debut for writer-director Eskil Vogt (Oslo, August 31st/Oslo, 31. August (2011), co-writer). It is a depressing Norwegian drama, in which characters are lonely, awkward, disloyal SPOILER and, - as if to make matters worse, - the woman with the son also suddenly and inexplicably becomes blind. The introverted male character guides us thoroughly through his masturbation and porn habits. - But what for? Besides it possibly adding a tangent to the general, grey picture of depressing adult life in Norway, which is projected in Blind.
The blindness that the film deals with certainly makes it more uncomfortable, because audiences unavoidably imagine themselves put in the horrific situation of losing one's vision, and the inevitable everyday results of the handicap: The spots that would go unnoticed, the things we would be walking into; the secrets that might evolve due to our defect, and the distance to the surrounding world. Blind cultivates these issues and in doing so leaves the one-sided impression that life with blindness is only sad, lonely and miserable. The artistic strokes of Vogt's film don't save it from being uncompelling and depressing.

Related posts:

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

Vogt gave en interview at the London Film Festival about Blind that you can watch here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (likely at least a huge flop)
[Blind premiered 17 January (Sundance) and runs 96 minutes. Shooting took place in Oslo, Norway. The film won festival and some critical acclaim but has no box office performances released and is likely to have made very little money and become a huge flop theatrically. This article indicates that it was also a box office disappointment in Norway, where it had sold some 6k tickets after two weeks. The film was nominated for two Sundance awards, winning Vogt a screenwriting prize, nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize, won a distribution prize at Berlin International Film Festival, an AFI Fest nomination and 4 out of 7 nominations at the Norwegian Amanda Awards. Vogt has focused on screenwriting since the film; he has written for countryman Joachim Trier's latest two films, Louder Than Bombs (2015) and Thelma (2017). Blind is fresh at 94 % with a 7.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Blind?

Nothing's All Bad/Smukke Mennesker (2010) - Fals' promising, unusual and sincere debut

♥♥♥♥♥

 

  + Best Debut Movie of the Year

 

This tongue-in-cheek, well-made poster for Mikkel Munch-Fals' Nothing's All Bad hints at the film's dark comedy elements

 

A family father visits a prostitute. A daughter with only one breast. A rent boy. A flasher. A lonely widow. All come together in Nothing's All Bad.

There is very little wrong with Nothing's All Bad, the debut film of great Danish writer-director Mikkel Munch-Fals (Swinger (2016)): Its chapter structure foregrounds the filmmaker's urge to over-control his film and seems unimportant. But that's about it.

The actors impress, and especially young Sebastian Jessen (Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør (2012)) is great. Nothing's All Bad is a wonderful mix of exhibiting and ironically playing with the ailments and hypocrisies of Danish society, while simultaneously embracing its flawed characters. SPOILER Its both surprising, humoristic and light ending leaves us with a distinct feeling that joy in human relations is a possibility.

Nothing's All Bad, - the original Danish title translates to 'beautiful people', - is something new in Danish cinema, which brazes an important message: That we may be sexual freaks, freaks of nature or whatever you want to call it, but that we're also beautiful people. I heartily recommend it.

 

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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]

Writer-director Fals directs his actors during filming of Nothing's All Bad

 

Writer-director Fals talks of the film at the Stockholm International Film Festival here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Unknown

= Unknown (but most likely a mega-flop)

[Nothing's All Bad was released September 23 (Denmark) and runs 93 minutes. Its budget is unknown, but it was supported with more than 5 mil. DKK (about 0.9 mil. $) from New Danish Screen, the debuting organ within the Danish Film Institute. It sold only 6,207 tickets in Danish cinemas but was screened at 19 film festivals around the world. However, there is no doubt that Nothing's All Bad lost some money. It was nominated for 6 Roberts, winning Bodil Jørgensen the Best Supporting Actress award, and for three Bodils, winning Kurt Ravn the Best Supporting Actor award. 833 IMDb-users have given Nothing's All Bad an average rating of 7.1/10.]

What do you think of Nothing's All Bad?

Chungking Express/重慶森林 (1994) - Kar-Wai's urban love drama is a visual treat

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Hong Kong Movie of the Year

A beautiful, evocative poster for Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express

QUICK REVIEW:

In the big city, people live very close to each other, but carry on their lives very far apart as well: A restless cop loses his girlfriend and seeks solace with a drug smuggler donning a blond wig. Another cop loses his flight attendant girlfriend and begins seeing a girl at the snack bar, where he picks up his boss's daily salad.

The plot arc is unusual in Express, which tells one story and then another. The film drifts forward in much the same aimless, intimacy-seeking pace that its lead characters live their lives in. Their in some ways transparent lives break through in melancholic grandeur in the film's most evocative images (by cinematographers Wai-keung Lau (Infernal Affairs/Mou Gaan Dou (2002)) and Christopher Doyle (Hero/Ying Xiong (2002))), in the rainy night or the ones where time seems to stand still. 
Tony Chiu Wai Leung (In the Mood for Love/Fa Yeung Nin Wa (2000)) gives a tender performance, and Express is visually strong and beautiful. It does, I think, overuse two of its gimmicks a bit: SPOILER The use of the song California Dreamin' by The Mamas and the Papas and Leung's characters 'dialog' with objects. 
The film is directed by great Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love), who wrote and made the film as a creatively freer exercise during his making of the big sword adventure Ashes of Time/Dung Che Sai Duk (1994)). He is busy at the moment with pre-production on his next film, The Ferryman (2015), which will star both male leads from Express.

 

Related post:

 

1994 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

 

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express

Watch the not very good US trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 0.6 mil. $ (US), 7.6 mil. HK$

= Uncertainty

[Express seems to have been a big local hit in Hong Kong, but without any budget information, - besides the director's statement in different interviews that it was "very low-budget", - we cannot know for sure whether the film, - which received a slim US distribution through Quentin Tarantino's (a fan of Kar-Wai) Rolling Thunder Pictures distribution company, - was a financial success.]

What do you think of Chungking Express?

A Real Friend/Adivina Quién Soy (2006, TV movie) - Confusing TV horror drama

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The girl with some unusual invisible friends make up this dark poster for Enrique Urbizu's A Real Friend

We follow a lonely girl, whose only friends are Leatherface (from Tobe Hooper's horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)) and a vampire, SPOILER who turns out to be her father.

The end of this strange, Spanish horror TV-movie did not make a whole lot of sense to me, and the surely well-meant drama it contains before this also fell somewhat to the ground for this reason. The film relies mostly not on dialog but instead on its countless horror movie references, so that passages in it seem surreal. If the idea behind A Real Friend comes from a personal experience, I must admit it is disturbing.
The film is part of the Spanish horror TV movie series, Películas Para No Dormir ('films to keep you awake') in which I found Álex de la Iglesia's The Baby's Room (2006) to be the best, and, as opposed to the mostly merely strange A Real Friend, - very scary!
A Real Friend is written by Jorge Arenillas (Invader/Invasor (2012)) and co-writer-director Enrique Urbizu (Life Marks/La Vida Mancha (2003)), with James Phillips (Hiroku: Defendors of Gaia (2013)) voice-directing the English version.

Watch the great American trailer for the horror TV movie series that A Real Friend is part of here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: None - TV movie
= Uncertain
[A Real Friend premiered on TV on 25 October (Spain) and runs 73 minutes. It was shot in Barcelona, Spain. Urbizu returned with No Rest for the Wicked/No Habrá Paz para los Malvados (2011). Goya Toledo (Rated R/Los Años Desnudos (2008)), who plays widow mother Angela, returned in Joaquín Sabina - ... y Seguido 1992-2005 (2006, video), La Contessa di Castiglione (2006, TV movie) and theatrically in El Último Justo (2007) 888 IMDb users have given A Real Friend a 5.2/10 average rating.]

What do you think of A Real Friend?