Blood Work (2002) - Eastwood churns out uninspired thriller adaptation

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Star/producer/director Clint Eastwood looks determined here on a simple poster for Blood Work in black and reds

McCaleb is a locally famous homicide detective, who is retiring just as he suddenly requires a heart transplantation. A couple of years later he is contacted by a woman, whose sister's heart he now has, who comes to him with a sincere plea: Find her murderer!

Blood Work is written by Brian Helgeland (Payback (1999)), adapting Michael Connelly's (Echo Park (2006)) same-titled 1998 novel, and directed by Californian master filmmaker Clint Eastwood (Play Misty for Me (1971)), whose 23rd feature it is. Eastwood also produced and plays the protagonist McCaleb in the film.
Eastwood seems hopeful to recapture the success he enjoyed with previous cop thrillers like Richard Tuggle's great Tightrope (1984), which he starred in, but Blood Work lacks more than the sex of that fine film.
Wanda de Jesus (CSI: Miami (2002-03)) plays the young Latin-American woman who comes to McCaleb with her plea for him to help, while she falls for him despite their enormous age difference; a romance which the film doesn't make entirely credible. McCaleb also has a somewhat closer age-wise African-American ex whom he could have gone back to, but instead the filmmakers make this other reach.
Several elements in Blood Work don't come together: Jeff Daniels (Steve Jobs (2015)) is a comic sidekick 'dude' on a boat, SPOILER - who turns out to be a psychopath. His character's 180 degree turn from sympathetic to a racist madman is also not made credible.
An Eastwood fan will have patience with Blood Work due to the star's presence in it, but it is undeniably one of his poorest films, heavy on clichés, unoriginal and lacking in suspense. A big oops.

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2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
American Sniper (2014) - Eastwood conveys an American man and myth in electric masterpiece  
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess   
J. Edgar (2011) - Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio's great, intense biopic   
Gran Torino (2008) - Eastwood's actor persona comes full circle in absolute smash (co-producer/director/starring actor)
The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story  
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]    
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Letters from Iwo Jima/硫黄島からの手紙 [Öjima Kara no Tegami] (2006) - The Japanese side of Eastwood's remarkable WWII two-parter   
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - Eastwood's Iwo Jima portrayal is captivating and profoundly moving

2002 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  
The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie (starring actor)
City Heat (1984) - Eastwood and Reynolds wrestle dispassionately in Benjamin's messy period affair (co-starring actor)
Tightrope (1984) - An undervalued Clint Eastwood sex killer thriller (starring actor)
Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business! (starring actor)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979) - Siegel, Tuggle and Eastwood's phenomenal prison escape thriller (starring actor)
Every Which Way but Loose (1978) or, Honky Tonk Monkey Business! (starring actor)
The Enforcer (1976) - Eastwood teaches revolutionaries a lesson in third, less punchy Dirty Harry (starring star)
The Eiger Sanction (1975) - Eastwood's mountain climbing dud
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller (starring actor)  
Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life (starring actor)
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It! (starring actor)  
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - Leone ends his poncho trilogy with certified classic (starring actor)
For a Few Dollars More/Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (1965) or, Return of the Poncho Killer (co-starring actor)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) or, Killer in a Poncho (starring actor) 

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 31.7 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.63 times its cost)
[Blood Work premiered 6 August (California) and runs 110 minutes. Shooting lasted 38 days in February - ? in California, including Los Angeles. The film opened #5, behind fellow new release xXx, holdover hit Signs, new release Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and holdover hit Austin Powers in Goldmember, to a 7.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd weekend and grossed 26.2 mil. $ (82.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 1.3 mil. $ (4.1 %) and Spain with 987k $ (3.1 %). The film won an award at the Venice International Film Festival. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to 3 notches higher than this one. Eastwood returned with Mystic River (2003) as a filmmaker and in his own Million Dollar Baby (2004) as an actor. Blood Work is rotten at 53 % with a 5.54/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Blood Work?

A Christmas Tale/Un Conte de Noël (2008) - Desplechin and Amalric shred my patience in overlong and overstuffed drama

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A rave-filled,  present-shaped poster for Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale

A family of very strained, strong-headed individuals have their internal conflicts, but this year they celebrate Christmas together, with the family's matriarch's deadly disease hanging over them all.

A Christmas Tale is written by Emmanuel Bourdieu (Poison Friends/Les Amitiés Maléfiques (2006)) and co-writer-director Arnaud Desplechin (Kings & Queen/Rois et Reine (2004)), based on the non-fiction book La Greffe (2004) by Jacques Asher and Jean-Pierre Jouet.
Catherine Deneuve (Dangerous Liaisons (2003, miniseries)) is incredibly beautiful and still richly erotic as the sick matriarch here in this very long French drama. It forces the brain synapses to work in the beginning in order to grasp the family structure and characters, but some time in A Christmas Tale is revealed to be a desert walk, which tires with its eagerness to use effects; both visually and narratively, (poems and narration are relayed directly to the camera again and again), with music, a rapid editing pace and, of course, with a dialog density that only rarely leaves a second for reflection. - People with serious cases of Francophilia may experience this elegy differently.
Mathieu Amalric (Struggle for Life/La Loi de la Jungle (2016)) is especially taxing in A Christmas Tale, - in fact, I found him exceedingly aggravating.
Never before has so much soup been boiled on questions of who and why and if they should help Deneuve out with a spinal transplant, - an issue that should seem pretty straight forward in my eyes. A Christmas Tale is at turns infuriating and boring, a wildly overrated Christmas movie for the very back corner of the closet.

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2008 in films - according to Film Excess

Watch a trailer for the film with English subtitles here

Cost: 6.3 mil. $
Box office: 7.3 mil. $
= Big flop
[A Christmas Tale premiered 16 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 150 minutes. It was funded with participation of no less than 10 companies and support bodies. Shooting took place in France, including in Paris. The film opened #40 to a 63k $ first weekend in 7 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #25 and in 48 cinemas (different weeks) and grossed 1 mil. $ (13.7 % of the total gross). Its biggest market was the production country France with 5.2 mil. $ (71.2 %), and the 3rd biggest was Italy with 232k $ (3.2 %). The film won 1/9 César award nominations (France's Oscar) and was nominated for a European Film award. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to approximately the opposite of this review. Desplechin returned with Jimmy P. (2013). Deneuve returned in I Want to See/Je Veux Voir (2008). A Christmas Tale is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of A Christmas Tale?

The Eye (2008) - French talents Moreau/Palud fail in Hollywood with Asian horror remake

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There's something seriously amiss with an eye. On the poster for David Moreau and Xavier Palud's The Eye

A blind, extremely pretty violinist finally gets a chance to have a cornea transplant operation. But problems arise with her newfound sight ... - Ghost kind of problems!

The Eye starts out alright, because its premise, - a person who experiences a corrosion of her reality, - is highly creepy and frightening. Unfortunately the promising ingredients are later wasted:
A barrage of unsuccessful shock moments, flash editing and a climax that doesn't fulfill the premise's scare are among The Eye's chief problems. It also struggles with a protagonist in Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four (2005)), who plays blind and later sight-impaired very convincingly, but who also goes through an awkward romance with her eye specialist here, just as parts of the film's dialog and plot points feel dubious and awkward.
SPOILER The Eye closes down with a final point about Alba's not requiring eyes to see, (her own old useless eyes have apparently at this point been operated back into her eye sockets), - which is just plain silly.
The Eye is written by Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika (2003)), based on the same-titled 2002 Hong-Kong/Singaporean film by the Pang brothers, and directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud (Them/Ils (2006), both).

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Jessica Alba gives an interview about the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 56.9 mil. $
= Big hit
[The Eye premiered 31 January (Hollywood) and runs 98 minutes. The Asian film had already been remade once, in India as Naina (2005). Shooting took place in New Mexico, Los Angeles, California and in Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada from February 2007 - ?. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, to a 12.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another week in the top 5 (#4) and grossed a solid 31.4 mil. $ (55.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 3.6 mil. $ (6.3 %) and Spain with 2.8 mil. $ (4.9 %). Moreau has stated dissatisfaction with the finished film and alleged that he was barred from its editing. He returned after a five year break with It Boy (2013), while Palud returned with an episode of XIII: The Series (2011) and theatrically with Blind Man (2012). The Eye is rotten at 22 % with a 4.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Eye?