wrong ( film )
tahiti boy & mr. oizo - pizza note - wrong (original motion picture soundtrack )
in “the wrong move, ” wim wenders adds another element to the postwar rebirth of german cinema .
dupieux makes the viewer work for it with wrong. and it' s not always worth the effort ...
browse television, film, short film, music video, web series, documentary, drama and more categories .
in wrong, reality and the world of the film will regularly upend themselves; it' s never quite reliably clear, though, that these inexplicable events are happening for a purpose .
there’s almost no lynchian violence or exploration of society’s seedy underbelly in wrong. instead, dupieux keeps his film more squarely in the quirky humor camp, although there’s little in the way of actual lols. wrong is more like a nihilist napoleon dynamite for white - collar burnouts, without the endearing characters and satisfying story arc .
dupieux doesn' t care about standards and brings all the right goods to wrong. he' s batshit crazy and takes us on wild and hilarious ride of absurdity. bringing the fun into arthouse cinema, wrong will leave you strangely addicted to dupieux' s world .
it’s in the film of 2010 that the big world - saving stakes come to the forefront. and the film updates that final message, too :
absolutely nothing is right in wrong, the latest movie from absurdist french director quentin dupieux. while his previous film, rubber, revolved around the homicidal actions of a psychotic tire, his latest effort takes weirdness to a whole new level .
version one, for example, begins with a subtly jumbled title card – right then, wrong now – that perfectly sets the tone for the
hey, wait a second…
cognitive gymnastics that watching the rest of the film entail .
will smith aka the beloved box - office slugger has scored one of 2016’s biggest turkeys. we get out the baster and try to figure out what went so wrong
a work of much playfulness and imagination, wrong hints at a broader promise of budding, starburst auteurism upon which the film as a whole - - a nice, silly riff that could work better in truncated form - - doesn' t fully deliver .
if you can get past the clock that goes to 60, the enigmatic pine tree and the office where dolph goes to “work” each day, wrong is the kind of film that will have you wanting to watch it again to try to figure out exactly what the hell happened .
the whole film feels a bit like a dream after a late - night burrito, leaving you wondering if moments in the film actually happened, particularly when mulling over it the next day .
dupieux' s previous feature was
rubber
( 2010), a b - movie send - up about a sentient tire with telekinetic abilities .
wrong
dispenses with the earlier film' s over - the - top gore and heady meta - movie hijinks — characters addressing the viewer, an on - screen
audience
observing the action — in favor of unpretentious comedy and non - confrontational cutesiness. this makes
wrong
more palatable — but also blander. what
rubber
lacked in pay - off, it made up for with personality. while
wrong
exhibits a well - developed (though hardly original) comic sensibility, its flat style means that no gag, however weird, has any bite .
in that way, fichtner’s character is as close to a god - like being in wrong as dupieux’s cynicism will allow. chang creates problems because he anticipates them and makes a mess of everything. the notion of a bumbling deity that hurts people more than he helps them is a tempting philosophy. but it’s only tempting whenever wrong isn’t actively devolving into an interminable laundry list of strange things that mostly prove how jaded dupieux is .
speaking of jack reynor, he’s such a highlight of the film. how did that character develop ?
f you thought the irreconcilable natures of free will and fate were rivetingly examined by gwyneth paltrow in sliding doors, just wait until you get a load of the new hong sang - soo film. right now, wrong then, which screened at the tokyo film festival earlier this week, is an hour - long love story, told twice – but with tiny variations that send each version on a dramatically different emotional course .
in fact, you might as well check any semblance of reality at the door when viewing wrong, which is available on demand and was released theatrically friday. it’s a delightfully deranged bit of cinema filled with oddball characters, bizarre occurrences and strangely engaging philosophical discussions about the meaning of pizza parlor logos. in dupieux’s world, even clocks can’t be trusted. (see the wrong motion poster above, exclusively premiered by wired, for a taste of dupieux’s high strangeness. )
when strong - willed summer pratt takes a job at a beautiful estate as the new nanny to a sweet but sad little girl named sophie, she soon starts to suspect something is very wrong with the... see full summary »
update with more details: a24’s moonlight won the best picture oscar tonight after an epic mix - up on the stage in which presenter faye dunaway, onstage with warren beatty, read what turned out to be the wrong winner. she originally announced that lionsgate’s la la land won, to walk away with its seventh win of the night from its record - tying 14 nominations, and la la land ‘s producers even gave acceptance speeches before the mistake was discovered, and chaos ensued for the last and most marquee category of the night as reality set in that the wrong film was announced .
in damien chazelle’s new film “whiplash, ” the very idea of jazz is turned into a grotesque and ludicrous caricature .
written, directed, photographed, edited and co - scored by quentin dupieux — a man who is the living definition of
jack of all trades, master of none
—
wrong
often resembles a student film stretched to feature length. dupieux' s style is efficient but underdeveloped, and leans heavily on rack focus — where the camera dramatically re - focuses from one object to another — as a form of visual punctuation. his music is pleasant but often ill - fitting. his over - use of shallow depth - of - field gives
wrong
the visual texture of a well - produced web video .
wrong
is a surreal shaggy dog story about a loser who wakes up one morning to find that his beloved pooch has disappeared. composed of skit - like scenes and populated by gimmicky characters, the movie is flimsy, glib, and occasionally pretty funny .
in one of the final scenes of arrival, the new first - contact science fiction film with a focus on linguistics, dr. louise banks (amy adams) explains why she got divorced. “he said i made the wrong choice, ” the linguist tells her daughter hannah. it’s an easy line to overlook, especially as the gravity of the film’s second - half surprise sinks in. throughout the film, louise is experiencing not her memories of the past, but living out precognitive moments of her own future. she is experiencing time out of order, because her efforts to understand an alien language have irreversibly rewired her brain .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
unfortunately finishing off special effects and creating an' actor' s cut' of the film is less than likely, so we' ll probably never see the film as it was written – just what was left after garden shears were used in the editing room .
mr wrong tells the story of meg, a country girl who has just moved to the city and whose new car is making some strange and spooky noises... what' s more, it attracts the attention of a mysterious stranger who seems to materialise out of thin air .
there' s not enough here for a full length feature film - something that becomes obvious the longer the movie is on the screen .
and you’ve said eamon’s rabbits in the film came right out of real life. the actual eamon you knew as a teenager kept rabbits .
so what’s to like? for the more literal - minded moviegoer, possibly nothing. if you haven’t figured it out already, wrong is clearly not right for everybody: it’s one of those movies that makes you constantly wonder if you’re “getting it, ” and never really answers the nagging question .
the characters — by turns eccentric, amusing and annoying — all come across convincingly skewed, but if you can truly relate to any of them you might want to get your meds checked. to say much more than that would be to rob wrong of its chief charm: complete, uncanny unpredictability .
i raise two virtual pennies for your thought. did you love, hate, or just avoid this film? tell us in the comments !
however it does appear that an awful lot of character moments – essentially the heart, the star trek core of this film, were removed, leaving what is often thought of as a hollow action film by many. behind the scenes friction can' t have helped while filming, either .
if the film had any depth, dupieux' s humor could be subversive. his favorite targets, after all, are authority figures — cops, firemen, employers. the absurd can serve as a commentary on reality; without a firm grounding, however, all it can be is amusingly weird. in
wrong ,
dupieux opts for
shallow
laughs — jokes without characters, subtext, or a tinge of truth. his gags are gags and nothing more .
the ballad of narayama
is a japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. what a space it opens…
is substantially more entertaining than any film adapted from an app has any right to be - - which may or may not be much of an endorsement .
subscribe to trailers: urltoken subscribe to coming soon: urltoken subscribe to indie & film festivals: urltoken like us on facebook: urltoken follow us on twitter: urltoken wrong official trailer # 1 (2013) - quentin dupieux movie hd dolph springer wakes up one morning to realize he has lost the love of his life, his dog, paul. during his quest to get paul (and his life) back, dolph radically changes the lives of others - - risking his sanity all the while
the film won preston a nomination for best director at the 1986 gofta awards, as well as a win for best performance, female (heather bolton) .
he shine is coming off of la la land. the box - office smash and owner of a record - tying 14 oscar nominations premiered to rapturous reviews at film festivals last fall, but in the weeks that followed, and as the film screened for more and more critics, a backlash began to grow. representatives of various marginalized communities – women, african americans, and jazz lovers – emerged to take the film down a peg. what ensued was an all - out war (albeit one waged mostly on twitter) between the film’s fans and its detractors. while it might seem odd that a movie as guileless and nostalgic as
but actually, arrival more closely resembles contact, a film about jodie foster wearing headphones and listening to those headphones and then listening really hard to those headphones .
if director tate taylor wanted to make a film about the plight of domestic workers, he might have made one about a hispanic or haitian nanny in brooklyn .
i think jack reynor [ who plays conor’s brother brendan in the film ] liked her for the role, and i listened. when i’m talking to actors in my films, and they’re like ,
what about this? what about this ?
i like to listen to them as they connect to their characters, and to the film. she was on a list, and i knew her through friends, but there was no nod to the commitments in casting her in the film. someone even said the other day that there are rabbits in my film, and the main character in the commitments is called jimmy rabbitte. well, okay…
wrong is a movie starring jack plotnick, todd giebenhain, and eric judor. dolph springer wakes up one morning to realize he has lost the love of his life, his dog, paul. during his quest to get paul (and his life) back, dolph radically changes the lives of others - - risking his sanity all the while .
yeah, he had lots of rabbits in his house, and they became kind of a mascot for the film. and i also asked myself ,
if i put a bunch of rabbits in a film and i don’t explain it, will people ask about it ?
and then they do, and that’s kind of funny .
“dmx is the perfect actor for the stylized and satisfying film adaptation of goine’snever die alone, directed with street corner majesty by cinematographer - turned - director ernest dickerson .
in the opening half hour of star wars: rogue one we travel to several different planets, bases, and even time periods, hopping between locations as rapidly as a mission impossible film. we' re introduced to a bunch of different people and plots and have to keep track of all of it while the film pushes forward relentlessly .
writer - director john carney laments that his film once will inevitably be the first thing mentioned in his obituary, and he isn’t wrong. the low - budget 2007 indie, featuring markéta irglová and the frames’ glen hansard as musicians who sing together as a substitute for the relationship they can’t have, became an international hit, and won an oscar for hansard’s song “falling slowly. ” the broadway adaptation won eight tony awards and has been performed around the world. it’s the kind of success story that naturally becomes the benchmark for all future endeavors .
would such an extended cut be a better film? based on just the deleted scenes on the home releases, many have suggested it would not have made that much of a difference. i personally disagree and the scenes mentioned above are part of the film to me. however it seems there is far more footage to integrate than those few scenes .
a wanna - be director is given 48 hours by a producer to find the best groan of pain, worthy of an oscar, as the only condition to back his film .
if you' re an accompanying adult, be rest assured, there' s plenty of chuckles in it for you too. it' s a real egg - citing film .
this isn' t a long film, but it lacks propulsion at times. luckily, it maintains its wry outlook and never quite erases the good will that its best moments inspire .
it wouldn’t have been anything if they died in the end. it just wouldn’t have been a film. it just would have been a joke, or a twist, or something .
writer / director / composer / editor / cinematographer / auteur / weirdo quentin dupieux is a guy who pulls the mat right out from under the hollywood norm and takes bold and colorful chances. last year, dupieux created a feature - length film about a killer tire called rubber. he broke every rule he could and created something pretty fucking incredible. with wrong, dupieux turns a little story about a man' s quest to find his missing dog into a mind - bending, chopped and screwed reality where almost nothing makes sense. dear reader, this ain' t your average homeward bound .
away from the festival circuit, only one of hong’s 17 films to date, 2013’s our sunhi, has made it to british cinemas. but though right now, wrong then might not be as instantly loveable as last year’s culture - clash bonbon, hill of freedom, or his elliptical 2012 cannes entry in another country, it’s a film that deserves to grow hong’s overseas following. no director working today can carry out this kind of heavyweight emotional excavation with such feather - light flicks of his trowel. that’s hong’s gift, as counterintuitive as it is unique: he makes molehills out of mountains .
it' s not hard to come to the conclusion that the film simply got overlooked. after all, star trek is a product of the small screen and up against the cinematic experiences on offer from the other films, it' s hardly surprising that cinema - goers may have simply decided to wait to see the film... if they even knew it was out .
1996' s star trek: first contact took $ 150 million worldwide, on a budget of $ 46 million. 1998' s star trek: insurrection managed to swallow a budget of $ 70 million and only return $ 118 worldwide, but after the critical feedback about that film, surely a darker action film along the same lines as first contact would jump the box office back up ?
wenders doesn’t explode the film - noir framework of the movie, nor does he explore its historical origins or its implications, whether aesthetic or political. he embraces the genre uninhibitedly, as if asserting
i think it’s lazy journalism. but i’m completely okay with it! i think it’s obvious that i think it’s very tiresome. it’s an easy way to make copy, to say ,
it’s not as good as his first film ,
or compare it to my first film. i think people thought i was an amateur when i made once, because it looks so amateurish. that they were delighted with the idea that someone made something on a camcorder. that’s not the real story. i’d been making film for 10 years before then. i’d been making tv professionally for four years .
this has happened before, according to our colleague pete hammond, in 1964, when sammy davis jr. also got the wrong envelope for two music categories. regardless, the notice posted at the end of the abc telecast suggests that pwc has a lot of explaining to do: “the results of all the secret voting are known only to the independent accounting firm of pricewaterhousecoopers until the sealed envelopes are opened on the air. ”
. ” its very title rejects the return that wenders was attempting, and the film itself is among the most original and most daring films of the time, one of the era’s signal cinematic inventions .
the quasi - nihilistic and totally surrealistic ideology behind wrong, writer / director / editor / musician quentin dupieux’s follow - up to rubber, is more exciting in theory than it is in practice. wrong, which is set in a nondescript suburb where an abrupt and meaningless series of events proves that nothing means anything in dupieux’s films, begins with dolph springer (jack plotnick) waking up at 7: 60 a. m. to find that his dog paul is missing. the animals’ absence is meant to symbolize the lack of order in his owner’s life. that characteristic sense of disequilibrium is something that dolph’s been able to ignore right up until paul runs away. dolph’s very much in denial about how screwed up his life has become of late; though fired from his day job three months ago, he still shows up to his former office and pretends to do work .
those extras on the dvd and blu - ray release really do paint a picture of a different film that should have had a heart, and i strongly recommend exploring all the extras on the home releases of the film which puts a whole other light on the production... and leads you to discover patrick stewart' s enjoyment of the argo all terrain vehicle as supplied by ivan' ironman' stewart !
none of this is to suggest that the film is exactly racist. sebastian romanticizes parker simply because he lived and died before jazz started to change for the first time. but it’s impossible to separate jazz from black history, and it’s downright foolish to do so in a film by, for and largely about white people. it’s especially dangerous right now. geoff nelson at paste magazine links the film’s traditionalism and the satisfaction derived from its nostalgia to the trump campaign’s backwards - looking ethos: “there lies a profound irony in liberal white folks heading to la la land to repair after a political season overflowing with the nostalgia of white supremacy. ”
in 2014, christopher nolan delivered interstellar, a film which gilds wormhole physics with daddy - daughter emotionality. it’s a film i gather some people love — currently # 32 on the imdb top 250, whatever that means anymore. and it’s unquestionably a nice film. it declares that the whole fourth dimensional architecture of time and space is made out of love. it sends a man into a wormhole, where the universe sends him back to his daughter. interstellar even has its own variation of heptapods: extra - dimensional beings, evolved from humanity, who exist outside of time, so they can save humanity and provide third - act catharsis .
meanwhile, at almost the same time, the writer peter handke, who wrote the script for “the wrong move” as well as for wenders’s first feature, “the goalie’s anxiety at the penalty kick, ” out - wenders wenders with the 1978 film “ the left - handed woman. ” handke directed his own adaptation of his novella, which appeared in translation in the new yorker in 1977; it’s tactile as wenders’s earlier films were; it confronts the loss of cultural foundations as well as the political and personal implications (positive as well as negative) of that epochal shift; and it does so with precisely the emotional, familial, and artistic intimacy that wenders was leaving behind .
this film is a dire warning for the rest of the world. the euthanasia deception is a one - hour documentary featuring powerful testimonies from belgium and beyond - of those devastated by the false ideology of ‘mercy killing’ .
and yet... something was missing, both as a film on its own merits and as a star wars movie. the more i went over the movie in my mind, the more problems i uncovered .
most of these criticisms come with an admission that la la land is, on its surface, great entertainment. the snappy songs, brightly colored clothes and the virtuosic film - making are diverting enough that the film’s persistence in entertaining you is emotionally moving. for the millions of americans who are depressed and anxious about the state of the nation, la la land is a trifle that seems more substantial because of our desperate need for distraction .
the smaller characters were all more interesting. the droid k - 2so was a wonderful change from weaker droids who couldn' t fight, bringing both humor and some great action to the film. saw gerrera was wonderfully crazy in his paranoid militancy, though we didn' t get nearly enough of him, and i wonder if this film would have been better as an apocalypse now knock - off than a straight - up war movie .
the film was directed by neill blomkamp, who has since admitted that the story wasn’t quite all there. blomkamp had a reputation as a sci - fi thinker after district 9, but he’s never been as pretentious as his partisans. he likes action scenes, and he likes space guns. elysium is, in that sense, a fairly standard contemporary blockbuster action film. it suffers from our modern story gravity: the world is at stake .
i saw the film on friday afternoon, and came away feeling mostly happy about it. the movie was action - packed, had some great characters, and ended with a bang. it was funny and visually striking .
postwar life in ohio contains its peaceful moments, of bringing in the laundry or shelling peas, but the house at 124 bluestone road is forever saddened by what sethe did. was it wrong? yes, said the law: she was guilty of destroying property. the law did not see her or her child as human beings, and thus did not consider the death to be murder. in a society with those values, to kill can be seen as life - affirming .
watching further extras on the blu - ray offers snippets of alternative or extended versions of scenes where more of the characters we knew from the next generation shone through the action film surroundings. plus, there' s a film test of tom hardy feeling his way into the role of shinzon (with obvious relish in portraying the distanced lost soul of the character) opposite an in - uniform patrick stewart. that too suggests more meat to their interactions .
dolph’s need to turn a blind eye to the aspects of his life that are obviously, well, wrong is further established when a palm tree in his backyard mysteriously transforms into a pine tree. also, it’s raining inside dolph’s office even though none of his co - workers seem to notice it or care that they’re being soaked. but none of this matters to dolph as much as paul’s absence. so in order to put his life back together, he goes in search for his dog .
back in 2014, there were all these news stories about how you were collaborating with u2 on the film. but they aren’t credited on the songs or soundtrack, as far as i could tell. what happened with that collaboration ?
the loser (jack plotnick, sporting a mustache and a cowlick hairdo) is named dolph springer. though dolph is unemployed, he can somehow afford a roomy los angeles house and a full - time gardener (eric judor). however ,
wrong
is a movie where human - to - canine telepathy, indoor rainstorms, and a technology that visualizes the
memories
of feces all exist; perhaps its world also includes french landscapers who will come in five days a week for free .
the film is produced by the euthanasia prevention coalition in association with dunnmedia and supported by thousands of like - minded organizations and individuals throughout the world. please consider supporting these initiatives by purchasing a dvd and arranging a screening in your area .
the film had a curious effect on me. i was sometimes confused about events as they happened, but all the pieces are there, and the film creates an emotional whole. it' s more effective when it' s complete than during the unfolding experience. seeing it more than once would be rewarding, i think, because knowing the general outline - - having the road map - - would deepen the effect of the story and increase our appreciation of the fractured structure .
of course, master chang isn' t the only idiot in
wrong .
in fact, the movie has a whole cast of them: dolph' s fidgety neighbor (regan burns); a pet detective (steve little) who refuses to look at a picture of the dog he' s supposed to be looking for; a flighty, bird - brained pizzeria employee (alexis dziena) who thinks that dolph and his gardener are the same person and ends up leaving her husband for him / them .
the screenplay for mr wrong was based upon the story by well - known english writer elizabeth jane howard. director gaylene preston used the genre of thriller to examine sexual violence towards women, and what she calls' the cinderella syndrome'. using the story of an ordinary young woman leaving home to begin an independent life who is threatened by a quite extraordinary phenomenon, preston explores alternative reactions to fear and their consequences, as well as the unhappiness caused by the fantasy girls grow up with of
mr right
.
with expert analysis from both medical and legal professions, the film reveals the serious, long - term implications of assisted dying laws, and proves that all of us become vulnerable when end - of - life care is handed over to lawmakers .
the angry birds movie is really not bad. it is actually very actively okay. the film has taken its bird - brained brand... and used it to construct characters and plots that are certainly serviceable, and possibly even inspired .
over the past few years, there has been a concerted effort among pop culture critics to elevate the voices of the marginalized, both in works of art themselves and among the critical community. as necessary as this effort is, it can make it more difficult for a film to transcend racial and gender boundaries because there is always a group that can claim that the film ignores them. notably, la la land was also criticized for its lack of gay characters on the basis that, well, there are a lot of gay people in los angeles but none in the film. whether you think this is fair or not, it’s going to continue to be an issue until hollywood more generally solves its problem of inequality in gender, race and sexual identity .
indeed, that might just happen. hidden figures pulled off an upset at the sag awards two weeks ago, earning the prize for best ensemble, which is sometimes seen a precursor for best picture (la la land, weirdly, was not nominated). when the story of the year in cinema is written, we may say that la la land peaked too early, or that it was the right film at the wrong time, or that its other, less political criticisms – the story is a little thin, the characters don’t particularly sing or dance very well, and it may be just too self - indulgent for its own good – were exposed after its shine finally wore off. for now, we will have to wait to see if hollywood is more interested in looking forward or looking back .
arrival certainly has a lot in common with close encounters. spielberg’s film ends with scientists at a base camp trying to communicate with extraterrestrials in a floating ship. that’s where arrival begins, middles, and ends, what with time being such a flat circle .
the film cost $ 40 million, took years to make, required everyone involved (including cillian murphy, chris evans pre - captain america, and rose byrne pre - everything) to believe passionately that they had to work hard on an unsettling space movie with zero mass appeal about a spaceship moving realistically slowly toward total doom. the film came out, made less than $ 4 million in america, was generally vilified by scientists and totally ignored by critics. (it’s a cruddy business, sometimes, making movies. )
foster came back to science fiction in 2013’s elysium, a movie that boldly argues that there are rich people and there are poor people, and that’s uncool, man. having established a tone of bare social realism, the film immediately becomes an eerie fable of privilege bestowed: matt damon plays a white messiah to a working - class trashworld seemingly populated exclusively by hispanics. the film solves wealth disparity using advanced medical technology. it’s the least thoughtful sort of science fiction: having addressed a real problem, elysium invents an impossible solution .
in a revelation that will shock few who have seen the film, stuart baird (helmer of films such as executive decision and us marshalls, and long - time film editor) had no knowledge of star trek before becoming director of nemesis. he even refused to watch any of the next generation tv series to prepare (and reportedly went so far to say he hated the franchise, and had to be forced to watch the preceding films, allegedly), so it' s no wonder so many fans feel the characters act strangely .
star trek: nemesis left dangling threads, on purpose, as a story treatment for a direct sequel was already being worked on. the follow up film would have picked up on the slow re - establishment of data' s neural net within b - 4, as was hinted at the end of nemesis. probably in a way that was alluded to by ambassador spock, when he met his' old friend' captain data, in command of the enterprise - e in the official prequel to the 2009 star trek film, countdown .
these are all feelings that churn up after the film. “beloved, ” film and novel, is not a genre ghost story but a work that uses the supernatural to touch on deep feelings. like the turn of the screw, it has no final explanation. spirit manifestations come from madness and need not follow logical agendas. it is a remarkable and brave achievement for demme and his producer and star, winfrey, to face this difficult material head - on and not try to dumb it down into a more accessible, less evocative form .
as a southern - gothic fairy tale about post - katrina new orleans, beasts of the southern wild could have easily turned out to be a crass and unwittingly exploitative work. co - writer / director ben zeitlin’s fanciful approach to his understandably touchy subject matter theoretically seems glib. thankfully, every time zeitlin and co - writer lucy alibar threaten to oversimplify their story with mawkishly twee sentimentality, they steer the film’s elemental narrative in another direction. the hopefulness that viewers take away from the film, the most buzzed - about title at this year’s sundance, feels earned thanks to zeitlin and alibar’s focus on their characters’ fears of imminent abandonment and annihilation. as a film about the seductive and essential power of hope, beasts of the southern wild is a warm, accomplished, and fitting tribute to the fighting spirit of new orleans .
but why did star trek: nemesis take so little at the box office? well, let' s leave the critical view of the film to one side for the moment, as it was nowhere near as one sided in 2002 as it is now, with hindsight .
i hear a lot of people saying this is the best star wars film since the original trilogy. i' d say it' s the second best, after the force awakens, largely because it doesn' t capture what i think makes this franchise great and worthwhile .
maybe at this point it' s too much to hope for an animated film like the angry birds movie to exist as anything other than marketing fodder, but hopefully it' s not too much to ask for that # content to have a shred of substance to it .
on box office numbers alone, the film wouldn' t have crawled its way into the black. but the dvd steered it away from red ink, the disc being one of the most pre - ordered retail dvds in the us and uk come the time of its release .
in director gaylene preston' s genre - bending tale, meg (heather bolton) buys a stylish old jaguar so she can be more independent. while driving on a country road, she hears screams in the back – but there' s no one there. in the excerpt above, she picks up a mysterious woman in the rain. later she discovers that the woman was the car' s previous owner, and she is missing. now her killer might just be stalking meg too. for their first, acclaimed feature, preston and producer robin laing rented out local cinemas, conclusively proving that mr wrong had an audience .
no, i think if anyone is looking for him to be responsible in that sense, they’re not going to find it in this film. he is just bound for his own vision, and his own journey, and everyone in the film serves that. and that just is the story i’m talking about at the moment. that’s just a particular kid i’m telling the story about. there’s nothing deeper than that. it really is the story of just how he gets on that boat at the end, that’s all it really is. how he gets over that year of his life .
there’s genuinely no relationship to the commitments in this film, other than the fact that it does have songs in it. there really is no homage to the commitments, no connection to it. a lot of writers see that, and who wouldn’t? but it’s actually not there at all. the commitments was never a significant movie to me. it’s a perfectly good film, and a good script. but it wasn’t something that moved me as a kid. i was a film snob when i was that age. i would have steered away from the commitments when i was 19 or 20, whenever it came out. obviously people are going to draw comparisons, because there are so few films made in ireland, and so few musicals. but i’d say you could just as well compare once to the commitments. you’re not going to get much out of that, either .
easily the most off - putting moments of the film were the scenes with the cgi version of grand moff tarkin. the actor who originally played tarkin in the original films, peter cushing, passed away in 1994. this would have been a good reason to either a) not include tarkin in the film (which would have been fine and easy) or b) find some other way to include him that wasn' t so glaringly digital. while the special effects are remarkably good, tarkin still looks fake compared to the real humans around him, fake enough to make his inclusion puzzling .
instead of treating that message like a superpower to acquire, the film delivers it as a subtle worldview. hidden under arrival ’s more palatable themes about overcoming cultural differences and uniting as one species is chiang’s more direct message about learning how to appreciate life’s moments, to live outside the bounds of time .
the film tells the story of sethe (oprah winfrey), who was a slave on a kentucky plantation in the days before the civil war. now sethe is free, and lives in a frame house on a few acres on the outskirts of cincinnati - - ”124 bluestone road, ” the film informs us, as if it would be an ordinary house if it were not for the poltergeist that haunts it. when paul d (danny glover), who knew her years ago in kentucky, enters the house, the air glows red and the walls and floor shake violently; the spirit resents this visitor .
the film sets out to expose three main deceptions of doctor assisted dying: first, that euthanasia and assisted suicide are a form of compassion. the second is the myth of autonomy: that decisions made between doctor and patient operate in a vacuum. and finally, that government ‘safeguards’ can truly protect the vulnerable .
the commitments and sing street couldn’t be more different. in the commitments, they’re a cover band, doing cover versions of old soul songs. that’s fine, and it’s very funny and enjoyable. but we’re telling the story of a creative process, and of fashioning and shaping and hammering love songs to get the girl to improve your life, to get off the island, and to be a success. and what’s great about the commitments is that the band isn’t a success. they implode, which is a very truthful story. sing street is a fantasy film about the american dream, in a sense. it’s just dressed up as an irish film, but he’s punching the air and heading off, in his head. my film is about a really great band, and i think the songs in it are really great. like, i think
drive it like you stole it
is going to be a massive hit .
well, the family dynamic is nothing like my family, really. i think that’s an amalgam of very different families i thought i knew something about, from looking in the window, or through the kids. but the biggest departure is that conor is an incredibly handsome kid who can do no wrong, and is so full of confidence. i wasn’t like that at all. i had an inner belief in myself, but i didn’t walk around with that swagger. i didn’t look that way. the second ferdia got the part, the film changed quite significantly. i think it' s important to cut your cloth, not try to force an actor like that into saying things in a certain way. so i went with him, i went with the ridiculous confidence ferdia has. he’s hilarious. and it’s also very current. kids nowadays have that sort of confidence. it’s not that i used it, i just didn’t fight it. i didn' t resist it .
nemesis came as a bit of a surprise, to patrick stewart at least, as with the completion of star trek: insurrection the contracts of the core cast (except perhaps, michael dorn due to his involvement on deep space nine) were complete and none had any ongoing commitment to the studio or further star trek films. it was a phone call between brent spiner and his friend (and huge star trek fan) john logan, the writer of ridley scott' s gladiator, that led to the film' s development. one can only speculate how costly a one - film contract for the cast would have been .
the original plan for the opening credits was to show snippets of shinzon' s life, specifically his banishment to the reman mines, and the brutality he was forced to endure before his now viceroy came to protect him. a much more abbreviated version of this footage was used later in the film in the end .
the problem, i think, is that star wars has always still been about good vs. evil, and plainly so. even its most subtle and important battle - - - the battle for anakin skywalker' s soul - - - was still clearly about what was right and what was wrong. there was always hope, always the good guys vs. the bad guys. even in the prequels, when the jedi are not as good or just as they later become and the sith are not as clearly evil, the audience is still supposed to understand that anakin is twisted away from his destiny to restore balance to the force and toward something dark and power - hungry .
it’s not even a real fantasy film! it’s someone making will smith think he’s in a fantasy film. that extra layer of artifice is not necessary, and actually harmful to your ability to enjoy collateral beauty. as every negative review has pointed out about this movie, this might be the cruelest trick ever played on a grieving fictional character in the history of drama. but it gets worse! big willie styles starts going to a grief support group and falls for the head of the group, played by naomie harris. this is going to completely ruin this movie if you have some sick notion of seeing it, so fair warning .
still, it’s not quite right to say that the film endorses sebastian’s purity test. after all, keith makes a pretty good argument at one point that sebastian’s adherence to the purity of jazz is counter - productive and anathema to the boundary - busting spirit of jazz itself. to its great credit, the film refuses to pick sides. instead it lingers in the question, allowing sebastian to ultimately achieve all of his professional dreams – he gets his club in the end – while questioning what he sacrificed to get it. such an ambiguous ending should quash any attempts at certitude. unfortunately, that’s not how our culture works these days .
they have a lot in common with the martian, starring damon as a man who becomes his best self when he’s left alone in the cosmos. the bizarro - world inversion of dr. mann. i’m hesitant to even mention the martian in an essay about science fiction; the film is famously accurate about everything besides the dust storm at the beginning. actually, the most fantastical part of the martian is the stuff back on earth, where nasa has bottomless funding and china shares technology with any government that needs it. (apparently, the martian is set a couple decades in the future, making the film’s disco obsession even less convincing. )
hard decisions have to be made. the crew turns against itself, kind of, and people turn against themselves, for reasons that are maybe justified. then the movie takes an infamous left turn: an astronaut (played by mark strong looking like a fleshpile from hellraiser) from a previous mission somehow gets onboard, and starts killing people. what had been a capital - m meditation on the cosmos becomes a slasher film. it’s possible that sunshine needed the final act turn to get made — that, unable to find financing for a film about smart people feeling sad on a spaceship, someone had the brilliant idea of wedging in a serial killer .
the film, released in december 2002 in the us, would go on to take $ 67 million at the global box office, off the back of a $ 60 million budget. it' d sell 1. 3m dvds in its first week in america, and in the scheme of things, was a financial disappointment .
i could see sing street happening in that sense, but that’s academic until it does well at the box office as a film. i think it has to be something before it’s a play. but i would love to do that. i don’t think that would have worked on begin again, even though people wanted it .
in the mid - seventies, wenders moved from audacity to audacity with the trilogy “ alice in the cities, ” “ the wrong move, ” and “ kings of the road. ” he captured a particular mood of self - distance, that of a west german coming of age with american rock music and american movies. “alice in the cities” starts with its protagonist in the united states, doing a report on the real america of the road, but, with his insistence on making images rather than writing, he gets fired. marooned in new york while awaiting a flight to germany, he meets a woman and her young daughter. the woman goes off on a road trip of her own, leaving the man to bring the girl back to germany—a west germany that’s infused with the artifacts and moods of american pop culture. “the wrong move” is also a sort of road movie. it’s a loose adaptation of goethe’s 1795 novel “wilhelm meister’s apprenticeship, ” about a young man who leaves his mother’s house and travels through germany with an improvised group of wanderers, passing from the rural to the urban, from the horrors of recent history to the gleaming comforts of the new reconstruction, and from radical gestures to political reaction. “kings of the road, ” a cinema - centric adventure, follows a movie - projector repairman on his route through rural germany, as he gains a fellow - traveller as a companion and sounding board.
wrong is a 2012 french-american independent surreal comedy film written and directed by quentin dupieux . the film stars jack plotnick and premiered at the 2012 sundance film festival . it was part of the toronto international film festival 's official selection . the producers of the film are charles-marie anthonioz , gregory bernard , nicolas lhermitte , josef lieck and kevos van der meiren . 
wrong is a 2012 french-american independent surreal comedy film written and directed by quentin dupieux. the film stars jack plotnick and premiered at the 2012 sundance film festival. it was part of the toronto international film festival's official selection. the producers of the film are charles-marie anthonioz, gregory bernard, nicolas lhermitte, josef lieck and kevos van der meiren.
wrong is a 2012 french-american independent surreal comedy film written and directed by quentin dupieux. the film stars jack plotnick and premiered at the 2012 sundance film festival. it was part of the toronto international film festival's official selection. the producers of the film are charles-marie anthonioz, gregory bernard, nicolas lhermitte, josef lieck and kevos van der meiren.