The Notebook (2004) - A modern, and very old-fashioned, love-story classic

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+ Best Breakthrough of the Year: Ryan Gosling + Best Melodrama of the Year + Best Romance of the Year + Best Screen Couple of the Year: Ryan Gosling & Rachel McAdams + Best South Carolina Movie of the Year

A delicate, sensual poster for Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook

The Notebook is an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember (1999)) novel by American director Nick Cassavetes (John Q (2002)), the son of great American actor-director John Cassavetes (Faces (1968)) and actress Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence (1974)).
It's a story of socially awkward love, as a belle of the high society falls for a lower class working country boy. Their relationship ends by orders of her family, and years pass by, in which he fights in WWII, and she gets engaged to another fine gentleman.
The story is told in a frame about an old man, who reads the story to an old lady in the present day in the nursing home where she resides. She has dementia, and by and by, we realize SPOILER that they are the two main characters of the 'story', which is the story of their lives and their strong love.

From the get-go, - a visually breathtaking boating sequence during the title credits, - The Notebook is a swooning, wildly emotional movie. It is securely placed in the melodrama genre and feels comfortable there, without any tinges of irony, elements that are unrelated to the story, or even scenes that do not completely flow with the general, extrovert emotionality of the film. Things are written OUT, and the lines are big, - the characters never hold back. Visually as well, the team go all out, as with the romantic boating scene amongst hundreds of white ducks.
This brings a level of unreality to the film at times. As with the facts that Noah (Ryan Gosling (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012))) writes 365 (no more, no less (!)) letters to his love. Or that they are away from each other 7 (!) years, (but obviously haven't aged more than a few days. - This could perhaps have just been 3 years...?) I swallowed these very minor reservations, because the film makes you do that and just go along and love it for what it is, - but totally real, The Notebook doesn't feel.
The performances of the two leads hooked me early: Gosling and Rachel McAdams (Morning Glory (2010)) are young and vivacious and sparks fly between them, as they command our attention to them wholeheartedly. There's real movie magic going on in The Notebook in their scenes, which gives us a wonderful, believable, impulsive romance that sweeps us away.
The fine cast also includes, playing 'third violin', a good James Marsden (X-Men 2 (2003)). And Cassavetes has cast his own mom, Rowlands to portray the aged, demented Allie, a part which is perfect for her, and she is strikingly beautiful throughout and really made that whole frame-story work for me. Her deeply human face and empathy once again draws you to her. 

James Garner and Gena Rowlands in Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook

In other very good supporting roles, Sam Shepard (Mud (2012)) and Joan Allen (Pleasantville (1998)) are solid. The Notebook is bereft of monsters and tough villains, which is liberating. It is an honest and wonderful love story with a beautiful, touching ending. 
Let yourself enjoy this one; it is a very fine movie and a modern romance classic.

The details:

The style of The Notebook is an impressive, well-crafted mix that almost instantly brings back memories of the Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life (1959)) melodramas of the 50's. One also thinks of Gone With the Wind (1939), yet often the camera does move in closer, so that the style never seems dated but still remains modern and fresh.
The costumes, hair, production and location work is top notch. Just look at McAdams in this picture and try not to get carried away to long lost times:

Rachel McAdams is a joy to the eyes and ears in Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook

Rowlands, who made her TV-debut in 1954, amazingly, is still in movies; Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (2014) being the coming attraction.
Cassavetes has earned tremendous box office but critical disregard for his latest, the vulgar chick flick The Other Woman (2014). His next project will be the real-life period drama Kentucky Rhapsody.
Gosling has premiered his directing debut, Lost River (2014) these days in Cannes to boos, ridicule and scattered praise. Cannes verdicts are notoriously unreliable, though, as with Nicholas Winding Refn's Gosling-starring Only God Forgives (2013), which critics chewed up and spat out last year, but which is really a great film.

 

Related post:

 

Nick Cassavetes: 2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 29 mil. $
Box office: 115.6 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of The Notebook?
Have you seen other Nicholas Sparks adaptations, and if so, how were they?

Dark Shadows (2012) - Fun, flamboyant vampire romp is a celebration of culture

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Johnny Depp in theatrics for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows

QUICK REVIEW:

The coffin of Barnabus Collins is found in the 1970's after he has rested in it for almost 200 years. And the culture shock during his re-assimilation with his current family members do not end with the fact that Collins is a vampire...!
This very cheerful horror comedy is based on a beloved Gothic soap opera of the same name that ran from 1966-71. 
Shadows by the great Tim Burton (Batman Returns (1992)) has lots of tongue-in-cheek gags, good effects, tomfoolery, and an enthusiastic, excellent Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands (1990)); Michelle Pfeiffer (What Lies Beneath (2000)) appears in a dashing 70's wig, and the film has cameos by Christopher Lee (The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)) and heavy-rocker Alice Cooper (Monster Dog (1984)). - And really groovy music, both contemporary (that is, 70's) and from composer Danny Elfman (Mars Attacks! (1996)). Dark Shadows is very Burtonesque and hard not to enjoy. Not his most original film, but a good, fun, entertaining time.
One reservation: The overly busy digital stylization of the movie threatens to impose on it a more anonymous, disgusting look. Burton, beware -- remember that texture and mistakes are natural and inherent in cinema!
Burton's next film, the interestingly sounding artist biopic Big Eyes, is coming out later this year and is being revealed in glimpses to eager reporters in Cannes at the moment.

Related reviews:

Tim Burton: Batman Returns (1992) - Burton gives us the ultimate, Gothic spin on Gotham City and its sinister characters
Batman (1989) - A huge, glitzy, empty joker
Beetle Juice (1988) - Burton and team serve one of the best horror comedies ever

A delicious character header for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows

Watch the very amusing trailer here

Budget: 150 mil. $
Box office: 245.5 mil. $
= Minor flop

What do you think of Dark Shadows?
Rate Johnny Depp's performances in Tim Burton's films, (if you are familiar with them)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or, Batman and the Storm, Darkness, Anarchy, Evil, Depression

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Christian Bale in his impressive suit on the poster for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises should undoubtedly attract people with leather and/or domination kinks

Batman has been a depressed hermit for 7 years, having retired Batman, in which time his business has gone to hell. Now a young woman steals a pearl necklace from his safe, and a lunatic by the name of Bain threatens Gotham City ...

Rises is impressive, partially shot in IMAX, and it has scenes, - especially action scenes and those featuring its futuristic vehicles, - which pack a wallop. The production values are top notch, and the huge budget involved here wasn't lost on CGI excesses.
The ensemble cast is huge and also overly so; the film suffers from too many characters and a running time that is way too permissive; the film should have lost about 40 minutes.

Hans Zimmer (Inferno (2016)) has created another rumbling, excitement-awakening score full of chanting and war drums, and Rises also has first-rate sound work. English master co-writer/director Christopher Nolan (Inception) wrote the movie with his brother Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer, trying to tie a highly mythical ending to the Nolan Batman trilogy, while introducing several new but familiar characters (namely Catwoman and Robin), and it becomes too much.
Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)) is menacing as the kind of super-terrorist madman Bain, but the Nolans have kept way too much of his gloom and doom speeches in their final movie. This also makes the film too dark and heavy for a superhero movie. (The film's overly dark mode was made an even more pregnant fact around the time of its summer release, when a young, deranged man shot 12 people and wounded 58, wearing a Bain-like gas mask at a midnight showing of the film in Aurora, Colorado. He later called himself the Joker. The tragedy pulled a heavy, dark shadow over a movie that already had too much darkness in itself.)
Despite its many good elements, Dark Knight Rises is a disappointing end of this Batman, and it also has a nonsense ending, SPOILER in which Batman's death is mourned, after he has sacrificed himself for Gotham in a nuclear explosion; only to mysteriously survive this impossible ordeal and pop up in Florence.

Related posts:

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Tom Hardy is fairly unrecognizable as the angry, strong, merciless Bain, in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises

Most of the principal characters of The Dark Knight Rises on display in this appropriately dark as !#?¤ artwork

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 230 mil. $ (after tax reductions)
Box office: 1 bl. $
= Mega-hit, 10th highest grossing film of all time

What do you think of The Dark Knight Rises?

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) - Flunky writing ruins abandoned city youth horror

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The evocative, eerie poster for Bradley Parker's Chernobyl Diaries

A group of young travelers decide to postpone going to Moscow to spend a day of 'extreme tourism' in Chernobyl, the Ukrainian city that was abandoned following the 1986 nuclear disaster at the plant there. But the travelers strand here and find themselves ... not alone.
An interesting idea is cluttered up here because of lack of any other good ideas. A few scares cannot counter the fact that all the characters are smooth, uninteresting and incredibly stupid! - They walk into every building, down into every cellar, and cannot possibly imagine to just run the measly 13 miles out of the abandoned zone. Furthermore, the 'monsters' and the ending is disappointing.
This youth-based horror movie is the directing debut for Bradley Parker, who has previously mostly worked as a visual artist on movies like The Time Machine (2002). He directs second unit on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014).
This below average, low-budget horror film proves with its impressive numbers below, why horror is still a profitable and popular genre to produce.

Related post:

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 1 mil. $
Box office: 37.1 mil. $
= Enormous hit

What do you think of Chernobyl Diaries?

Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg/DeLillo/Pattinson's speculative limo lullaby

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Robert Pattinson, look up! You're on the poster for David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis

A billionaire currency speculator drives around New  York in his Lincoln limo and bangs women and talks about money, markets, reality and his prostate, while anarchists protest outside. 
Cosmopolis, - the first novel by US writer Don DeLillo (Mao II (1992)) to be adapted onto the big screen, - is like listening to a group of philosophically inclined commerce students on drugs for almost two hours ...
One learns fast that plot is the last goal of the movie, which mostly takes place in the stretched vehicle and consists of a long row of prolonged conversations of speculative kinds. Big stars like Juliette Binoche enter the film shortly, - in her case mostly just to screw the uninteresting lead Robert Pattinson, which seems bizarre.
The gallery of characters is fundamentally very alienated and cerebrally concentrated, and no real emotions are engaged by watching Cosmopolis. Mostly, it seems ridiculous that all the characters wish to discuss philosophy - all the time.
The film instead seems like an invitation to read DeLillo's book, (which it is said to have adapted very loyally), - or to fall asleep.
Cosmopolis might very well be the worst film great Canadian director David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises (2007)) has ever done. It is extremely tiring.

Related posts:

David Cronenberg: 2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
A History of Violence (2005) or, Who Is Tom Stall?
The Brood (1979) or, Marital Fury and Craze!

Watch the trailer that makes Cosmopolis seem interesting

Budget: 20.5 mil. $
Box office: 6 mil. $
= Huge flop

What do you think of Cosmopolis?
Is Robert Pattinson an actor worthy of the attention and roles he gets? 
Why/why not?

Godzilla (2014) - The best US Godzilla

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+ Best Kaiju Movie of the Year + Best Screen Couple of the Year (Elizabeth Olsen & Aaron Taylor-Johnson)

Awesome, beautiful poster for Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

Godzilla is back!
After an American hiatus since the 1998 movie by Roland Emmerich, Godzilla, which wasn't terrible, but definitely wasn't great either, and the Japanese Toho's (owners of the franchise) Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), which I haven't seen, the giant, ancient creature is back, - and this time in the best Godzilla movie that I as a Godzilla fan have ever seen, (and yes, I have seen several of the classic Japanese entries.)
Godzilla begins in 1998, where a worried American nuclear scientist in Japan sees his worst fears realized, as an apparent earthquake causes his nuclear plant to come crashing down and kill his wife. Fifteen years later, the same man is still obsessed with the event and what is really going on. He gets arrested in Japan, and his son, - a Navy lieutenant with his own family now, - goes to get him home. But father's ideas turn out to be not so far-fetched at all ...

Beautiful Elizabeth Olsen is a very welcome feature in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

First of all, Godzilla bolsters a first class cast, led by one of the most handsome screen couples seen in a long time, Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)), who, however, doesn't have much to work with here, and hunky Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass (2010)). - Even in a mediocre monster movie, these two would have made an important difference.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a strong and handsome bomb defuse expert in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

They get great back-up from Bryan Cranston (Drive (2011)) in the strong role as the desperate father and Juliette Binoche (Three Colours: Blue (1993)) as the mother, though she is only in the movie very shortly.
Ken Watanabe is a scientist that brings a lot of the welcome 'philosophical' material of the original movies into Godzilla, about Godzilla's motivation, goal, and how we should behave towards him. His acting is mostly variations on this look, which does become a bit comical:

Ken Watanabe as flabbergasted scientist in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

- But it's part of the fun of the movie. Other minor steps that you as an audience had better jump over instead of pause to speculate at include: David Strathairn's Navy admiral, who seems to accept it right away, when his job becomes to chase MUTO's (giant mutated monsters) or rather lure them his way - with nuclear warheads! Another such 'step' is when the first monster breaks out of a huge mine with loads of people around and flees to the ocean, and the official strategy is then to keep that a secret, which I feel would be difficult if not impossible in our age. But this strategy doesn't remain in place for very long, as the MUTO isn't satisfied just scuba-diving oceans and laying low.
These objections are very minor and didn't hurt the overall experience, which was one of wild exhilaration! Read on to know exactly why. Godzilla allows its audience, what Emmerich's Godzilla did not; to root for Godzilla, (which will be most audiences biggest joy at a Godzilla movie, and especially what fans of the franchise are looking for.) We form a kind of alliance with Godzilla in the new movie, and He helps us to defeat the nasty MUTO's before the end of the movie, which I won't spoil, but I'll just say that it's PERFECT.  
Gareth Edwards' Godzilla leaves us uplifted, exhilarated and filled with boyish excitement and faith in the giant creature. - Which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, very appropriately with the release of this new film, which is my personal favorite in the series now. Edwards has impressed a lot of the right people with his low-budget monster adventure Monsters (2010). After the solid story is laid down, the monsters get the right amount of screen-time for themselves, and the MUTO's are very well-made, scary multi-legged mutant-freaks; their sounds are frightening, - they are very fascinating:

Concept image of one of the MUTO's' attack in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

Godzilla has grown, - he's more than double the size he was in 1954, which makes sense, because our cities have grown. He's HUGE in the new movie, and the coolest thing is that he gets to cast his blue flames (radiation?) out at his enemies. I loved that the people in the universe of the movie also get to see him as their savior and look at him with tremendous respect and fascination, (as we do). Godzilla really becomes God-like in Gareth Edwards' movie, which is just incredible.
Also it was nice to see a huge Hollywood picture actually end, as so many these days seem to think they have an off-putting obligation to promote the next entry at the end of the film. It is also a plus for Godzilla that it doesn't go overboard with Taylor-Johnson's heroic character; he never saves everything and becomes unreal; the movie is never that much his.
Locations include Japan - with references to the Fujiyama-catstrophe, - beautiful Hawaii, Las Vegas, - a fun few minutes of extreme destruction there, - and San Francisco, where the main fights go down. My favorite scene was on the Golden Gate Bridge involving a school bus full of kids desperately trying to get off the bridge, as the military try to attack a monster there. - Really exciting! Another favorite scene was the one where the special troops parachute down San Francisco, emitting red smoke, as Godzilla and the MUTO's prance around the city, - really beautifully achieved!
Online critique that Alexandre Desplat's (The King's Speech (2010)) score is below par for him, - because it isn't as 'sophisticated' as he usually is, - is ridiculous. Desplat's Godzilla-score is bombastic, as it should be, and intelligent, - as so many other decisions about the movie is, - and works perfectly with it. I especially liked the music at Godzilla's triumph at the end, which was just perfect.
Go enjoy this rare monster movie, bring your kids if you have any, and they're big enough to see it (age 6/8 depending on the child), enjoy the roars, because it may very well be years before a movie about giant monsters as good as this is released again. (But I am really hoping for Jurassic World (2015)!)
I didn't see it in 3D and enjoyed is just as much without it, but if you're a 3D fan, go for it.

Related posts:

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

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 160 mil. $
Box office: 489.4 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of Gareth Edwards' Godzilla?
Do you agree it is the best Godzilla movie to date?

A World Not Ours (2012) or, Palestinians Struggle

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A fine poster for Mahdi Fleifel's A World Not Ours

QUICK REVIEW:

The story of a Palestine refugee camp in Lebanon, Ein el-Helweh, told through the documentarian's personal perspective as an expatiate Palestinian, who has spend holidays his whole life in the camp visiting his trapped family there.

The documentarian Mahdi Fleifel's father points down to the small refugee camp Ein el-Helweh, where about 60-70,000 Palestinians have lived for decades and still live

Documentarian Mahdi Fleifel (Xenos (2014) short doc.) shows great handling of his sizable material, gathered through decades, of both personal family history, camp history and Israel-Palestine history in general. The film offers great insight into the Palestinian struggle and its development in the several decades since the country's overtake by the Jews following WWII.
Especially in the beginning, Not Ours is quite humorous, but soon its incredible sadness (which seems inherent in the telling of the Palestinian story) breaks through. The modern story of Palestine is very, very sad.

My favorite person in A World Not Ours, the documentarian Mahdi Fleifel's grandfather

A World Not Ours is a great documentary and a fine and touching human portrayal, especially of the desperate men that make up so much of the Palestinian people. Their profound disappointments and aggressions as refugee camp people for most if not all of their lives, is indeed a scary picture of despair.
A World Not Ours is a deeply personal cry for the Palestinian cause, which, unfortunately, doesn't point to any solutions for the future of the people.
That would be my only critique of it.

2012 in films - according to Film Excess 

Watch the film's fine trailer here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of A World Not Ours?
Is there a solution to the Palestinians' struggle?
Where should this people live?