►Top 25 of the 00s◄

Started by Stefen, September 23, 2009, 10:26:47 PM

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socketlevel

ya and i wasn't talking about style either. i was talking about going directly making the process of adapting a book the subject matter, and all the po mo elements that come along with it.
the one last hit that spent you...

MacGuffin

Top 10 movie flops of the decade

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Movie flops aren't just about losing money. Yes, big budgets that go bust are one consideration. But flops are also about lofty expectations dashed and high profiles brought low. They trigger embarrassing catcalls from the peanut gallery and a general whoever-thought-that-was-a-good-idea-in-the-first-place bewilderment.

Any judgments of flopitude are necessarily subjective, but here are 10 movies from the past decade that made those few moviegoers who saw them cringe. Disagree? Talk among yourselves.

10. THE SPIRIT

* Release date: December 25, 2008

* Estimated cost: $60 million

* Domestic gross: $19.8 million

Frank Miller, the man who created the comics "300" and "Sin City," and who redefined Batman and Daredevil for the modern age, directed this adaptation of Will Eisner's comic-strip hero. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and a bevy of beauties, it may have looked good on the page. But onscreen, the heavily stylized, nearly black-and-white results were disastrous. The expensive movie was killed by comic fans, who wanted Miller to go back to comics, and critics, who trashed the movie's over-the-top tones and aesthetics. Consequently, the partners at the company behind the production, Odd Lot Entertainment, parted ways after 23 years together. It even killed plans for a Miller-directed version of "Buck Rogers."

9. GRINDHOUSE

* Release date: April 6, 2007

* Estimated cost: $67 million

* Domestic gross: $25 million

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez managed to turn twice the filmmaking firepower into half the box office (and a third of the critical praise). With "Grindhouse," what began as an explicit exercise in joyous B-movie cinema homage -- a double bill of '70s-style schlock, one film from each director -- ended up aping its scuzzy genre ancestors a little too closely in the receipts department. After the three-hour-plus "Grindhouse" opened to a mere $11.6 million, Harvey Weinstein split the film's two parts -- "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" -- and shuttled them to international markets individually. While that recouped a little of the Weinstein Co.'s money, it incurred the wrath of purists who were angry that the original film had been corrupted. Tarantino and Weinstein are famously loyal to each other, and while the writer-director eventually made good on the losses with the $120 million-grossing "Inglourious Basterds" this year, "Grindhouse" was one instance where loyalty nearly brought down the house.

8. ROLLERBALL

* Release date: February 8, 2002

* Estimated cost: $70 million

* Domestic gross: $19 million

Norman Jewison's 1975 comment on violence, corporatism and spectacle has its place in the paranoid '70s-era cult film pantheon. John McTiernan's remake, on the other hand, would be totally forgettable if it weren't so spectacularly misconceived in every way. The cast -- Jean Reno, Chris Klein, LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos -- was a C-list mishmash closer to reality TV than big-budget studio moviemaking. McTiernan had long since dented his box-office bona fides with "Last Action Hero" and "The 13th Warrior." And the studio releasing it -- MGM -- was so aware of its bomb-worthiness that it pushed the release back four times, out of the summer 2001 field and into the barren wasteland of February. In a last act of desperation, the movie was also re-edited from an R to a PG-13 rating, sabotaging any last chance it had at an audience. Ultimately, it pretty much wrecked McTiernan's career (he has directed only one film since).

7. THE INVASION

* Release date: August 17, 2007

* Estimated cost: $80 million

* Domestic gross: $15.1 million

Nicole Kidman couldn't have started the decade any hotter, scoring with "Moulin Rouge," "The Others" and "The Hours." But after 2002, her career went cold in the U.S. ("Stepford Wives," "Bewitched," "Australia" and "The Golden Compass"); it's as if the actress was abducted by some sort of soul-draining body snatcher. But wait, isn't that what she's fighting in "The Invasion," Hollywood's latest remake of the 1956 film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"? This time around, the eerie premise, based on a novel by Jack Finney, failed to catch fire. The Wachowski brothers' second unit director, James McTeigue, was called in to shoot additional scenes written by the "Matrix" whiz kids after original director Oliver Hirschbiegel was sent packing, having filmed the bulk of the movie. In an omen of things to come, Kidman suffered an on-set fender-bender during the reshoots. When the film arrived in theaters more than a year late, Kidman's regal bearing took another dent.

6. CATWOMAN

* Release date: July 23, 2004

* Estimated cost: $100 million

* Domestic gross: $40 million

It was inevitable after Michelle Pfeiffer stole scenes as Catwoman in "Batman Returns" that her black-latexed anti-heroine would get a spinoff of her own. But when the inevitable occurred in 2004, this time with Halle Berry playing the character, audiences tried hard to cover up the kitty litter. No one involved with the movie came out unscathed. Not Berry, who just two years earlier had won an Oscar for "Monster's Ball"; not Sharon Stone, who chewed up the scenery as the movie's villainess; and not Pitof, the French filmmaker making his American directorial debut. He went back to his native land and hasn't directed a theatrical feature since. The movie is another example cited by studios in their long-held contention that female superhero movies just don't work.

5. TOWN & COUNTRY

* Release date: April 27, 2001

* Estimated cost: $90 million

* Domestic gross: $6.7 million

Twenty-five years after he seduced audiences in "Shampoo," Warren Beatty decided the time was ripe for another sex comedy, albeit one with a somewhat older circle of friends. He somehow persuaded New Line, which usually concentrated on the youth market, to foot the bill. And what a bill it was: With the script still furiously going through rewrites, Peter Chelsom began shooting in June 1998; 10 months and take after take after take later, the film was still shooting. That's when co-stars like Diane Keaton and Gary Shandling had to leave to fulfill other commitments. A full year later, the whole cast regrouped to finish the shoot, which had escalated to more than twice its original $44 million price tag. The completed film was actually something of a tepid affair. Beatty dithers as a New York architect who cheats on his wife with several women; Shandling's his best pal trying to come out as gay. And then there's Charlton Heston, playing against type, as a gun nut.

4. GIGLI

* Release date: August 1, 2003

* Estimated cost: $54 million

* Domestic gross: $6.1 million

If the course of true love rarely runs smoothly, then "Gigli" is an object lesson in how rocky it can get. As the new century dawned, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez -- tabloid code name: Bennifer -- were the couple of the moment. With an Oscar for writing "Good Will Hunting" and starring roles in "Pearl Harbor" and "The Sum of All Fears," his movie career was in high gear; she could boast a solid-gold music resume and rom-com appeal in movies like "The Wedding Planner" and "Maid in Manhattan." Onscreen romantic sparks seemed made to order. So what went wrong? Start with that title, "Gigli," that no one was sure how to pronounce. Add lots of lovey-dovey media appearances that erased a bit of their mystique. And then there was Martin Brest's film itself: a low-rent-mobster-boy-meets-enforcer-chick tale complete with a kidnapping, severed thumbs and Al Pacino in high dudgeon. Bennifer split in 2004, just before sharing the bill in another film not too far away on the flop-o-meter, "Jersey Girl."

3. LAND OF THE LOST

* Release date: June 5, 2009

* Estimated cost: $100 million

* Domestic gross: $65 million

Producer/puppeteers Sid and Marty Kroft were masters of the weird and cheesy; their old Saturday morning TV show, "Land of the Lost," is remembered fondly by kids who grew up in the '70s. But the material experienced something of a time warp when director Brad Silbering tried to give it a hipster spin this summer with the help of Will Ferrell, playing a paleontologist who journeys to a parallel universe where he meets the Sleestaks. Normally, any movie with a rampaging Tyrannosaurus (see "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Night at the Museum") can't miss, but "Lost" was, well, lost in translation. The movie's PG-13 rating wasn't a comfort to many families when word got around of its toilet humor. Older moviegoers weren't interested, and Kroft purists weren't amused. Over the years, Disney and Sony had both held remake rights, but ultimately this hot potato landed at Universal, where it was one of the factors that resulted in the ouster of the studio's two top executives in October.

2. BATTLEFIELD EARTH

* Release date: May 12, 2000

* Estimated cost: $75 million

* Domestic gross: $21 million

Blame it on the Thetans if you want, but John Travolta's space oddity "Battlefield Earth" virtually imploded on the launching pad. Travolta's career was enjoying a resurgence in the wake of "Pulp Fiction" when he wagered a big chunk of his newfound credibility, as well as some of his own coin, on this passion project. "Battlefield Earth" was based on a 1972 sci-fi novel by Scientology guru L. Ron Hubbard, which Travolta promised would be "like 'Star Wars,' only better." Studios shied away, but Travolta found financing from Franchise Pictures, which would later be sued by investors for overstating the movie's costs as $100 million. Originally, Travolta hoped to play the young hero who leads a rebellion against the alien race that enslaves Earth, but the film took so long to assemble he ultimately opted instead to don dreadlocks and platform shoes to play the villain, barking lines like "Execute all man-animals at will, and happy hunting!" A planned sequel, which would have covered the second half of the novel, never materialized. "Some movies run off the rails," observed Roger Ebert. "This one is like the train crash in 'The Fugitive.'"

1. THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH

* Release date: August 6, 2002

* Estimated cost: $100 million

* Domestic gross: $4.4 million

Eddie Murphy is some kind of miracle. Five of his recent films lost more than $250 million, and yet he not only still gets hired but also commands his salary quote. But on the flop-o-meter, one Murphy title towers above even "Meet Dave," "Showtime" and "I Spy": Trumpets, please, for "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," whose release was delayed for 14 months. It instantly became the "Cleopatra" of our age. A sci-fi gangster comedy, complete with robot sidekick, set on the moon, "Pluto" was neither fish nor fowl -- but mostly foul. But unlike most stars who are tarnished by a mega-flop, Murphy -- who did take time off from broad comedies to redeem himself with his Oscar-nominated turn in "Dreamgirls" -- just keeps going and going and going.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

polkablues

The amazing thing is that only "Grindhouse" (as little as I care for Death Proof) is the only movie on the list that was wrongly ignored. Other than that, that is one big list of stinkers that deserved every bad thing that happened to them.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Myxo

I'll bite.

In no particular order:

There Will Be Blood
Punch-Drunk Love
WALL-E
About Schmidt
Secretary
No Country for Old Men
Million Dollar Baby
Memento
V for Vendetta
Almost Famous
Hero
Requiem for a Dream
Spirited Away (One of my favorite theater experiences ever.)
Mulholland Drive
Pan's Labyrinth
City of God
Closer
In The Bedroom
Sideways
Capturing the Friedman's (Still one of the more chilling documentaries I've seen.)
Traffic
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Little Miss Sunshine
The Host
Donnie Darko (Yeah yeah, I know. It's bad. But I love it.)

john

Quote from: Myxo on December 01, 2009, 02:15:10 AM

Spirited Away (One of my favorite theater experiences ever.)


Lucky bastard.

Also, revisiting Requiem For a Dream - it seems a bit heavy-handed in retrospect. It's effective, sure, but so is being kicked in the face.

This isn't to say that it's a bad film, I am still a fan of it (even if it's my least favorite of Aronofsky's films)

The point I'm trying to make is that it's a shame you (and others) have to be apologetic about Donnie Darko mostly for the fan base it has collected, but not something like Requiem For A Dream. To me, their both mid-level successes, technically innovative and occasionally emotionally succinct. I own both and I am unapologetic about either.

A few bad apples (and Kelly's occasional obnoxiousness) should ruin the commendable, memorable film he's made. I fully endorse you having both of those films on your list.


In The Bedroom, on the other hand...
Maybe every day is Saturday morning.

Alexandro

I also revisited Requiem for a Dream recently, after years and years of not watching a single frame. To me it is just as powerfull as before.

I don't know why this particular movie has had some backlash from the audiences that fully embraced it back in 2000-01, but I think it has to do with people being young and impressionable, never seeing something quite like that before, thinking that movie was the whole guacamole, and slowly through the decade, via new films and old films, rethinking that position to the point of being ashamed that once it was considered by everyone as the new amazing shit down the block.

It's boldness, the in-your-face quality of the images, editing, music and performance is usually held against it, when actually those are the things that make it so compelling. And of course, the depressing, pessimistic view of the world it has. This is an ugly fucking world these people live in, and it has become easy to dismiss such worldview as misanthropic or shocking but empty. The thing is, the film is portraying an empty world, devoid of hope or ways out. It's called Requiem for a Dream for something.

The difference between Requiem for a Dream and any number of other depressing films is that in this one it makes sense. More than that, it's inevitable. The written material and all the other elements fit perfectly with one another. And the execution is flawless. Ellen Burstyn's performance has an undeniable power, and it should be admired the way Arronofsky delved with such consistency into the grotesque. Honestly, to create such a wild ride with a film that's mostly a drama should be enough to earn this a spot in any top 25 of the decade. This is the first film I ever saw that deglamorizes drug use without portraying it in an aesthetically ugly or boring way.

And going back to the ending, a lot of filmmakers today are afraid of being seen as misantropic or too pessimistic. Accusations of being cheaply shocking or adolescent are easy to come. This guy went with it in a way that almost no one does anymore. PTA did it too in There Will be Blood and also got a lot of shit for it from some corners.

socketlevel

Quote from: john on December 01, 2009, 02:41:02 AM
Quote from: Myxo on December 01, 2009, 02:15:10 AM

Spirited Away (One of my favorite theater experiences ever.)


Lucky bastard.


ya i saw it in the theatres as well, and contrary to the norm I'd argue the English dub is a better experience, IE: "now that's an esophagus!" isn't in the Japanese language one. That moment put a big smile on my face. i think whoever at Disney did the dub, did a great job. maybe john laseter? I'm not sure, but i bet he had his fingers in the pie.

one movie i forgot, and will have to change my list once i figure which one to drop is Julien Donkey Boy...
the one last hit that spent you...

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: john on December 01, 2009, 02:41:02 AMAlso, revisiting Requiem For a Dream - it seems a bit heavy-handed in retrospect. It's effective, sure, but so is being kicked in the face.

Dunno, I rather like being kicked in the face by a film. Requiem is quite an experience in the theater. I was also 17 at the time and had been building up anticipation for it, so perhaps that helped. As soon as that first title card slammed down, I was in.

Stefen

Requiem for a Dream and Fight Club (1999, I know) are two movies for me, that at the time, really changed the way I saw movies. They were both responsible for putting me on the path I'm on now, but I don't consider either of them great movies anymore. They both hold sentimental value to me, so because of that, I'll always have a soft spot for them.

Donnie Darko has always been fucking stupid, though. Even when I first saw it I thought it was fucking stupid. At least Aronofsky has gone on to do other good to great stuff. Dick Kelly ain't done shit.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

socketlevel

yes i think fight club and Donnie darko are not only messes in their own right but very pretentious as well.  my "do you think fight club is pretentious" thread made many years ago got peeps flamin' back when it was the bible film nerd movie. i could also go on about dick Kelly and how by listening to his audio commentaries I've figured him out for the fraud he is, but i think I've done that elsewhere on xixax as well.  in short just in case i haven't: listen to both Donnie darko commentaries, the one that he's alone in, and the director's cut with Kevin smith. the reason Donnie darko worked was because he failed to convey his intent with the film, which o.ooo1% of the time the film can fluke out and inadvertently end up with the guise of being deep. just look at southland tales, that's what happens the other 99.9999% of the time. you can even hear Kevin change his opinion about Donnie Darko and Dick's abilities as they talk about it. it's quite entertaining.

however requiem... now despite it's over the top editing and style, it's still quite a genuine piece of narrative.  it has the right intent in my opinion. i think it's a loud movie, though it shouldn't be slighted for that alone.  movies like Donnie darko, fight club, lock stock, snatch etc... are the type of loud films that scream at you with a very masculine style, in hopes to win people over with their rhetoric. as years pass when the "cool" amped up factor no longer resonates in the viewer, it becomes clearer the movies have little else interesting going on. Requiem's content still interests me years later.
the one last hit that spent you...

matt35mm

These last few posts have been interesting to read, because many of these movies mentioned were so seminal to probably most of us here on the board.  It's made me think about how my feelings about those films are now.

It's been a while since I've seen any of these.  I'm with Stefan in that I never liked Donnie Darko, which I saw only once when it first came out on DVD.  I didn't feel like there was anything there, past the glossy, cool look of the film, and the hip cynicism of Donnie.

I re-watched Requiem for a Dream not too long ago, after I had started to re-evaluate my initial opinion of the film.  The first time I watched it, I loved it, like most did.  Several years later, I found myself thinking, "Well, it's pretty unsubtle in style and has such an obvious message."  But then I re-watched it and was surprised by how well it works as a melodrama... I want to say that it almost worked as one sustained musical piece, with a healthy dose of the operatic and circus-y.  The montages and repeated shots almost work to feel like a dance, which I would swoon to and, via this, get absorbed into the drama.  I came to really appreciate this aspect of the film.  I don't even feel like the movie has a message beyond that anymore.  In a way, I actually see the film as more escapist than harsh realist, with all those swoonable qualities of the neat construction of the film acting almost like a drug.  This movie takes my mind off of my life and gives me a ride.  It's a drug movie for people who have cinema as their drug.

Fight Club is something I also appreciate a lot more now than I did before.  I thought it was a good movie when it came out, but not as deep as maybe it thought it was.  Now when I think back on it, I am just so damn impressed with how funny it is, and how far it goes with the anarchic side of things, that my respect for the film has grown.  It's a film full of ideas that we never get to see explored in movies.

Right now I have two films that I am really, really looking forward to seeing.  One is Ry Russo-Young's You Wont Miss Me, which I probably won't get to see until next year, and the other is Magnolia on its 10th anniversary.  I haven't seen Magnolia in a good 4 or 5 years, but I listened to the score a couple of weeks ago on a bus ride and felt like I was transported back to 1999, when I demanded that my cousin drive me, in the pouring rain, to one of the 7 cinemas that was playing Magnolia on its first week of limited release (before it rolled out in January).

Ladies and Gentleman, I have not had a cinematic experience more revelatory and meaningful before or since that day.  Listening to the score brought all that back, and I JUST KNOW that I will love love love Magnolia when I watch it again later this month.  I'm not gonna argue that it's PTA's best film; I don't give a fuck about that.  THE FILM MOVES MY HEART.

Anyway, this was totally the wrong thread for the end bit of that ramble.  So let me make a list:

NO ORDER (And definitely favorites, not best)

Before Sunset
Ratcatcher
All The Real Girls
George Washington
Punch-Drunk Love
There Will Be Blood
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Lord of the Rings
The Incredibles
The Company
Mulholland Drive
About Schmidt
Almost Famous
When The Levees Broke
The New World
Wall-E
Zodiac
Old Joy
Vera Drake
Wendy and Lucy
Lake of Fire
A Serious Man
Waking Life
Pride & Prejudice
Morvern Callar

Stefen

Magnolia is still the G.O.A.T. movie for me, simply because it pretty much changed EVERYTHING for me. I think it's the same way with a lot of us. I wonder if, now in 2009, there's a movie this year that is touching 15 and 16 year old's now (the age most of us were) the way Magnolia touched us then.

Sometimes I watch the Magnolia trailers (especially the second one with momentum) just to be reminded of when I used to watch them over and over and over and over and over again on quicktime. Seriously, I must have watched those trailers a billion times. I think I even went to see Green Mile just to watch the trailer on the big screen. 
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

matt35mm

I watched that trailer on Quicktime over and over, too.  When I watched that trailer for the first time, I knew, with a calm sort of confidence, that Magnolia would be my favorite movie, Paul Thomas Anderson would be my hero, and that I would have to make films or die trying.  It was like a vision.

I don't think the teenagers have that going on right now.  They certainly missed out on having loud-mouth, wild, chain-smoking, possibly-coke-doing PTA as their hero.  I have the feeling that PTA is not a big deal to anyone under 20, because they missed the whole Boogie Nights and Magnolia thing (one of my friend's is 17 years old; she quoted "Wise Up" on her Facebook and I said something like, "Great scene from a great movie," and she said, "What movie?"), and PDL and TWBB aren't really appealing to teenagers.

I think we were really, really, really lucky to be teenagers in 1999.

socketlevel

Quote from: matt35mm on December 02, 2009, 03:25:06 AM
I watched that trailer on Quicktime over and over, too.  When I watched that trailer for the first time, I knew, with a calm sort of confidence, that Magnolia would be my favorite movie, Paul Thomas Anderson would be my hero, and that I would have to make films or die trying.  It was like a vision.

I don't think the teenagers have that going on right now.  They certainly missed out on having loud-mouth, wild, chain-smoking, possibly-coke-doing PTA as their hero.  I have the feeling that PTA is not a big deal to anyone under 20, because they missed the whole Boogie Nights and Magnolia thing (one of my friend's is 17 years old; she quoted "Wise Up" on her Facebook and I said something like, "Great scene from a great movie," and she said, "What movie?"), and PDL and TWBB aren't really appealing to teenagers.

I think we were really, really, really lucky to be teenagers in 1999.

i was 20 but i so agree. i remember every 2 weeks a great movie came out that blew my mind.
the one last hit that spent you...

Alexandro

I'm pretty sure teenagers must have something going on right now that incites passion like Magnolia did for you guys. I bet some teenagers are in awe of Quentin Tarantino, between the Kill Bill movies and Inglorious Basterds. Wes Anderson is very popular too with the movie freak crowd. However, anyone who was old enough to get grown up movies in 1999 was lucky because the combination of wild independent spirit and studio support resulted, as we all know, in a whole bunch of amazing movies.

I was exactly 17 when I watched Boogie Nights and concluded right there that Paul Thomas Anderson was the new great film director around. To me he was like a young out of his mind Martin Scorsese, who was already my favorite director. By the time Magnolia came out, I had already seen Boogie Nights around 30 times, had recommended it to everyone, and persuaded my screenplay teacher at college to play it for every class as a part of the course, which he kept on doing for years after I left. At 19 when I saw Magnolia, it just was confirmed for me the tremendous awesomeness of this guy. I remember when some magazine asked Scorsese who he thought was the new Martin Scorsese and he said Wes Anderson and I thought "you must be joking, haven't you seen Boogie Nights?" Now PTA is on his way to surpass Scorsese and who knows how many others.

At work we are preparing a top 50 of the decade between a bunch of people and some outsourced critics, there are only two films mentioned by everyone in their lists: the royal tenembaums and there will be blood.