E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Spielberg's greatest accomplishment, the ultimate in movie magic

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One of the marvelous posters for Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which references Michelangelo's classical painting The Creation of Adam and underscores the film's religious undercurrent

In a nice suburban neighborhood near Los Angeles lives the boy Elliott with his big brother, little sister and mother. Their father/husband has left them for Mexico. A creature from space meets Elliott, they bond, and it benefits from his warm child's heart.

E.T. is the second masterpiece of master Ohioan filmmaker Steven Spielberg's (Saving Private Ryan (1998)) incredible career, the first one, of course, being Jaws (1975). Every time I have watched it, it has moved me tremendously, like no other film. E.T. is a film that is made with such technical and visual mastery, humanity, artfulness and forcefulness, - it makes you swell up with warmth inside, and after seeing it feel positively purified. - What other films can you name that does all of that?
John Williams' (Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)) Oscar-winning score is sheer perfection, musically storytelling in the best possible way, boosting every moment of the film with wonder, adventure and emotion.

The story, developed by Spielberg with recently passed, great screenwriter Melissa Mathison (The BFG (2016)), is wonderful. Henry Thomas (The Last Ride (2012)), Drew Barrymore (Blended (2014)) and everyone else are fantastic in it. Thomas is especially phenomenal, and so, of course, is Carlo Rambaldi's legendary creature design of E.T.
E.T. can be enjoyed as a religious reminder of the existence and importance of goodness and innocence in the world, with E.T. interpreted as a Jesus-like character or a symbol of childhood. At the same time the film's entirety works as a unique allegory of the full passage of life; with its dangers, mysteries, losses, adventures, unity and love.
E.T. is Spielberg's greatest accomplishment to date, one that is impossible to top. An absolutely spectacular film.

Related posts:

Steven Spielberg: War Horse (2011) - Spielberg visits WWI with problematic horse drama Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves! 
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock  
Duel (1971) - Spielberg's truck terror is ideal afternoon fare

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 10.5 mil. $
Box office: 792.9 mil. $
= Blockbuster
[E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial premiered May 26 (Cannes) and runs 117 minutes. The story is inspired by the divorce of Spielberg's parents in 1960, his estrangement from his father and development of a fantasy friend. E.T. began development as Spielberg's darker sci-fi project Night Skies, about evil aliens, collapsed. Columbia Pictures made one of the great errors of movie history when their management at the time passed on E.T., calling it "a wimpy Walt Disney movie." The E.T. puppet took 3 months and 1.5 mil. $ to make, but was still so ugly, in the nervous eyes of some, that Mars, Incorporated refused the use of M&Ms in the film. The Hershey Company then jumped in, and their profits rose 65 % after the release of the film, prominently featuring their Reese's Pieces candy. Filming took place from September - December 1981, mostly in Culver City, LA. The shoot was mostly chronological, especially to help the children's performances, and production wrapped four days early. It was the first film on which Spielberg did not use meticulous storyboarding. The film premiered at the closing gala of the Cannes Film Festival, a screening that has gone down in Cannes history as among the greatest the festival has ever enjoyed. The film opened #1 with an 11.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for 6 consecutive weeks, fluctuating between #1 and #2 in October and returning #1 once again in December. By 1983, E.T. surpassed Star Wars (1977) as the highest-grossing film of all time (unadjusted for inflation). It had grossed 359 mil. $ in North America and 619 mil. $ worldwide. E.T. was re-released in 1985 and 2002, adding 60 and 68 mil. $, respectively, to its gross. The film held its top-grossing spot for 11 years until Spielberg bested it with Jurassic Park (1993), although it stayed #1 in North America until a 1997 Star Wars re-issue beat it. The North American gross stands at 435.1 mil. $ (54.9 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets are Japan with 66.9 mil. $ (8.4 %) and the UK with 29.6 mil. $ (3.7 %). E.T. is still the 4th highest-grossing film in North America ever, adjusted for inflation, only bested by Gone with the Wind, Star Wars and The Sound of Music. Bengali master filmmaker Satyajit Ray has claimed that Spielberg plagiarized his 1967 script The Alien, which Spielberg has refused, although Martin Scorsese and Richard Attenborough have substantiated the claims. Spielberg has addressed the Christian undertones of the film and made clear that they are unintentional on his part, pointing to his being Jewish.  Despite much pirating of the film was reported, it made an additional 75 mil. $ on VHS sales in North America alone. E.T. was nominated for 9 Oscars, winning for Best Score, Sound, Visual Effects and Sound Effects. It lost Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing to Attenborough's Gandhi. It was nominated for 5 Golden Globes, winning for Best Picture - Drama and Best Score. A 20 year anniversary edition of E.T. was released with some minor changes made using CGI, which prompted controversy. Spielberg has decided against doing so in the future releases of his past films and recommends watching the original 1982 version of E.T. Atari, Inc. released a video game based on the film in 1982, which is widely regarded among the worst video game ever made. A 40 mil. $ theme park ride based on the film was created for the Florida Universal Studios park in 1990. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is certified fresh at 98 % with a 9.2 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?
Do you agree that it is Spielberg's greatest achievement?

Zentropa/Europa (1991) - Von Trier's audacious ode to the heavy continent is a fever dream on celluloid

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One pretty poor poster for Lars Von Trier's Zentropa

An American idealist comes to Germany in 1945 to "do something good for the country", becoming a sleeping car conductor through a favor by his local uncle, but he soon gets himself mixed up in a hasty marriage and a dubious sabotage group.

Zentropa is Danish master co-writer-director Lars Von Trier's (Breaking the Waves (1996)) concluding film in his Europe trilogy, (also comprised by The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) and Epidemic (1987).) It is an opulent film and a technically and stylistically dizzying piece, which plays around with narration, B/W and color, rear-projection and much more, not to attain common realism but rather to refer to a wealth of past cinematic works (Touch of Evil, Casablanca, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean and more) and to induce us in a hypnotic state that's central to its narrative. Non-Europeans might view the film as extremely eccentric, high-brow or even pretentious. It isn't. Its swims around in heavy thematic waters, dealing with idealism clashing with guilt and sin, tied up also on continents, more specifically North America as opposed to Europe.
Jean-Marc Barr (City of Shadows/La Cité (2010)) is Von Trier's most beautiful male protagonist to date and a great central element of Zentropa. Ernst-Hugo Järegård (Valhalla (1986)) stands out among the other actors in a peculiar and disarming role, which points ahead to his great turn as Stig Helmer in Von Trier's great horror comedy TV-series The Kingdom/Riget (1994-97)). Zentropa is full of humor as well as references to primal anxiety states, side-qualities in its deft plot that at times smacks of Kafkaesque absurdity and Dostoyevskian individuality and passion. SPOILER It also contains a drowning scene that must go down in cinema history as among the worst (meaning best) of its kind.
Zentropa is one of a kind, a damned interesting and incredibly enticing film of impressive scope, vision and willpower, the work of a master filmmaker reaching, for the first time, the height of his abilities. Von Trier co-wrote, once again, with Niels Vørsel (The Element of Crime). 

Related posts: 

Lars Von Trier:  Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It  
Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections 
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror 
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy 
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)
Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama  
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant    
Epidemic (1987) - Von Trier's trippy, bizarre second film    
The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) - Von Trier's ultra-strange debut

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 4 mil. $
Box office: 1.45 mil. $ (North America, Denmark and Sweden only)
= Unknown (but probably a huge flop)
[Zentropa premiered May 12 (Cannes) and runs 114 minutes. The film is influenced by Franz Kafka's novel Amerika (1911-14). It was shot in various places in Poland and in Denmark in Copenhagen and in Nordisk Film's studio. The financing of the film, which was Von Trier's biggest up to the point, featuring a large, international cast, was a collaboration between 6 European countries, marking the future way Von Trier would get his films financed. The title was changed to Zentropa for the American release so as not to clash with Agnieszka Holland's Europa Europa (1990). The film won 3 prizes in Cannes (Best Artistic Contribution, the Jury Prize and the Technical Grand Prize), but when Von Trier learned he did not win the main prize for Zentropa, he gave the judges the finger and stormed out from the ceremony. An overview of the film's theatrical performance isn't available: 31,837 paid admission in its native Denmark, making approximately 0.3 mil. $. The film made almost half that in Sweden, and 1 mil. $ in the US, where it was shown in just one cinema. This makes up just 1.45 mil. $. If Zentropa was saved by French, Italian or Spanish audiences, we don't know, but it seems unlikely that such a fact would have been kept a secret, and so it looks like a huge flop. The film won the Danish Robert and Bodil awards as Best Danish Film of the Year. Zentropa is fresh at 85 % with a 7.3 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Zentropa?

Epidemic (1987) - Von Trier's trippy, bizarre second film

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The interesting French poster for Lars Von Trier's Epidemic

Danish master co-writer/director Lars Von Trier (Dogville (2003)) and co-writer Niels Vørsel (The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984), co-writer) are working on the script for a new film and have a week before they are to present their 1½ years of work to the important Danish Film Institute consultant. Pressed by the deadline, with nothing conventionally good to turn in, they choose to write a new film called Epidemic about the bubonic plague in Europe, meanwhile a real, new epidemic manifests itself in their present.

Epidemic, Von Trier's second film, is the follow-up to The Element of Crime and the second film in his Europe trilogy, which concludes with Europe (1991). It is a deeply strange mix of meta-filmmaking reflections, Von Trier's own phobia of and amusement with hospitals and their authorities and trippy Europe-lore. It points ahead to both The Kingdom/Riget (1994-97) and the detour structure of Nymphomaniac (2013), and so is especially interesting for fans of Von Trier.
While Element of Crime was, to some degree, pretentious, Epidemic is almost free of this burden. Its unpredictability, atmospheric locations, absurdism and dark sense of humor keeps one interested throughout. It is an experimental work by a filmmaker in his infancy, - which I often find are rewarding works, - and a deeply weird one at that. - What other film has a high-point which is the cutting open of a paste of tooth paste? But Epidemic is more than just a bizarre cult item. It is memorable through several scenes; some amusing, such as Vørsel recounting his pen pal relation to American teen girls, some troubling and sad, such as Udo Kier's (Nymphomaniac) earnest and deeply personal recount of a terrible story from his first days alive, told to him by his mother only recently on her death bed; and finally there is the film's last scene around the dinner table, which is truly harrowing.

Related posts: 

Lars Von Trier:  Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections 
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror 
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy 
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)
Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama  
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant    
The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) - Von Trier's ultra-strange debut

Watch the end credits of the film here with its very 1980s theme song

Cost: 1 - 1.1 mil. DKK ~ approximately 0.2 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (but likely a huge or mega-flop)
[Epidemic was released September 11 (Denmark) and runs 106 minutes. It was made on the extremely low budget mainly as an experiment to see if a worthwhile film could come from it. The experiment became a precursor for the Dogme movement, which Von Trier co-founded in 1995. Producer Jacob Eriksen's (Rocking Silver (1983)) production company Elementfilm A/S produced only this film. Epidemic was initially shown in just two countries; Denmark and in Portugal at the Fantasporto Film Festival, where Element of Crime had also screened. In its native Denmark, just 5,474 paid admission, which makes the film a major flop despite its tiny budget. Many have subsequently seen it: 3,747 IMDb users have given Epidemic a 6.2/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Epidemic?

The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) - Von Trier's ultra-strange debut

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An interesting, weird poster for Lars Von Trier's The Element of Crime

QUICK REVIEW:

A police detective returns to Europe after 13 years in Cairo to investigate a bestial serial killer case. His search, however, turns into an obsessive examination of the suspect Harry Gray.

The Element of Crime is the feature debut of Danish master co-writer-director Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves (1996)), written with Niels Vørsel (Europa (1991), co-writer).
The film marks a fascinating and unique highlight for artistic freedom and determination to experiment within Danish film and is visually stunningly beautiful. The plot is too intangible to ever produce any kind of real suspense, and that seems to me the film's loss. - It is pretentious, to some degree, and super-airy. But also artistic, poetic, with magical, fascinating sequences - SPOILER full of dead animals, - and with a final shot of a lemur, also completely unique. It opens up the Europe-trilogy's main theme of a diseased continent in disintegration, following the destruction of 'the great' wars.
The Element of Crime is, due to its deeply committed strangeness, especially a film for cinephiles and Von Trier fans.

Related reviews:

Lars Von Trier:  Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections 
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror 
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy 
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)
Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama  
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date   
Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant  

Watch a clip of the film with audio from Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass for some reason applied to it here, (the best Youtube can offer presently)

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (probably a big to huge flop)
[The Element of Crime was released May 14 (Denmark) and runs 103 minutes. It is the first of Von Trier's Europa trilogy, which deals with idealists of different kinds and also comprises Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991). The sepia-like tone of the film comes from its being filmed almost entirely in sodium light. The film is heavily inspired by the films and style of Russian master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. 37,743 paid admission to see the film in its native Denmark, which should be regarded as pretty impressive for a debut film as weird as The Element of Crime. The film was released in at least 7 countries up until 1990. - Without financial numbers released, it is impossible to say if it turned profitable, although it looks like a big to huge flop. The film won both the Danish Robert and Bodil awards for Best Danish Film of the Year as well as the Technical Grand Prize in Cannes and several other awards. The Element of Crime is fresh at 77 % with a 6.3 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Element of Crime?

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Some qualities aren't enough to lift burdened franchise spectacle

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The character-jammed poster for Bryan Singer's X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse is the 6th movie in the X-Men franchise (not counting the two Wolverine movies and Deadpool), directed by the series' main director, great New-Yorker filmmaker Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects (1995)). It is written by Simon Kinberg (Fantastic Four (2015)) with story by Kinberg, Singer, Michael Dougherty (Krampus (2015)) and Dan Harris (X-Men 2 (2003)).

An ancient mutant from Egypt known as Apocalypse has been gathering mutant superpowers for centuries and is awakened by the hand of his few modern followers in the 1980s. His ambition to dominate humans and mutants alike requires a firm response from the not yet formed X-Men.

Apocalypse starts out with a fascinating sequence in ancient Egypt that introduces the Apocalypse character, who is a formidable, great villain portrayed by Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)), who is unrecognizable and presumably spent countless painstaking hours being made up to play the part. Apocalypse seems especially inspired by Boris Karloff's look as The Mummy (1932).
The film later references The Exorcist (1973), slyly disses Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and has a good time with 1980s fashion and music. The X-Men films are interesting, because they create characters with fantastical powers, treat them with seriousness and put them squarely in seemingly real circumstances, historical, social or otherwise. SPOILER In Apocalypse, we return, for instance, to Auschwitz, which Magneto destroys in a matter of seconds.
The film's funniest, coolest scene sees Quicksilver (Evan Peters (Adult World (2013))) save all the mutants from professor Xavier's exploding academy to the sweet sounds of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). This is a refreshing change of tone in an otherwise brooding and very long movie.
X-Men: Apocalypse is also a busy movie. - Too busy for its own good. It storms past points that it would have made sense to give us logical answers to, (such as; where did all those nukes sent flying into space go?) The third act is wildly overlong. One part that was especially unnecessary: SPOILER Putting some of our friends in General Stryker's prison for a good long time and bringing in Wolverine for a completely redundant appearance. Fans will already know the Stryker/Wolverine storyline from more than one previous X-Men movie, so its reappearance here in an already bloated final part of Apocalypse is a shame. The X-Men universe is a character-driven one, which is mainly a strength, as we are treated to new and reappearing characters in each movie. In Apocalypse, the apocalyptic is balanced with some high school movie-like elements featuring Tye Sheridan (Mud (2012)) and Sophie Turner (Barely Lethal (2015)) as Cyclops and Jean, but despite being both young and good-looking, their budding romance is tame. (It never was interesting when it was James Marsden and Famke Janssen portraying the characters either.)
The franchise's key characters, played by James McAvoy (Filth (2013)) and Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank (2009)), have a Xavier-Magneto relationship dynamic that by now feels repetitive, which also bears down on this heavy spectacle. This X-Men doesn't get the magic back of the first couple of films either.

Related posts:
 
The X-Men franchise: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - A BAM in every direction for the tired franchise 
X-Men: First Class (2011) - Vaughn's handsome if cluttered reboot
 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 234 mil. $
Box office: Not out yet
= Too early to say
[X-Men: Apocalypse premiered May 9 (London) and runs 144 minutes. It was filmed from April - August 2015 in Canada, with additional shooting in September and January 2016. X-Men: Apocalypse is rotten at 51 % with a 5.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.] 

What do you think of X-Men: Apocalypse?

A Soap/En Soap (2006) - P. Christensen's great melodrama debut

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+ Best Copenhagen Movie of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year + Best Melodrama of the Year

The delicious, pink poster for Penille Fischer Christensen's A Soap

QUICK REVIEW:

In a block in Nordvest, Copenhagen, Charlotte (Trine Dyrholm (Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør (2012))) moves into a flat atop Veronica (David Dencik (Daisy Diamond (2007))), a pre-op transgender person, and the two gradually get closer and start to attract each other.

A Soap, the feature debut of great Danish co-writer-director Pernille Fischer Christensen (Someone You Love/En Du Elsker (2014)), is a really good, deeply melancholic film. It seeks boundaries and at times may make you uncomfortable. By demonstratively relegating a melodrama to us, using narration, the film transcends its earthbound base. A Soap, in a sense, shows us that life is a bagatelle, - a soap.
Christensen co-wrote with Kim Fupz Aakeson (In Order of Disappearence/Kraftidioten (2014)).

Related posts:

 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

David Dencik in Pernille Fischer Christensen's A Soap

 In lieu of a trailer for the film, which isn't on Youtube currently, here's a trailer for a more recent Fischer film, A Family/En Familie (2010) (which is far from the quality of A Soap) with English subtitles

Cost: 1.5 mil. $ 
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty (but looks like a huge flop)
[A Soap was released April 7 (Denmark) and runs 104 minutes. At the Berlin Film Festival, the film won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award and the Best First Feature Film Award. At the Danish Bodil awards, the film won the Best Danish Film of the Year award as well as the Best Actress Award for Dyrholm, her third up to that point. 29,060 paid admission (accounting for approximately 0.3 mil. $) to A Soap in its native Denmark, which is so few that it should likely count as a huge flop theatrically. The international figures available, from the US (where it played in 2 theaters for 8 weeks, making 4k $), Brazil, Mexico and Portugal, add 145k $ to the number, still firmly setting the film in the huge flop category. 1,649 Rotten Tomatoes users have given A Soap an average 3.6/5 rating.]

What do you think of A Soap?