The Messenger 1999

MESSENGER 1999 EDITOR Tom Williams Assistant Editors Blythe King Joe Magliaro STAFF Dave Culley Laura Nazimek Andrew Chiacchierini Beth Thomas Saadia Iqbal Daniel Biegelsen Katherine Foret Tiffany Pender Irene Arce Carrie Kenady ADVISOR Dr. Joe Essid UNIVERSITY FACULTY Dr. Stephen Addiss Dr. The budget for The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc was a pricey $63 million, fully financed by Gaumont and they landed a huge international distribution deal with Sony at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival — which purchased worldwide rights outside of France. Terms of the pre-sold rights package to Sony were not disclosed. Friday, November 12, 1999 Milla Jovovich – cool hairdo and all – leads French troops into the battle of Orleans. 1999 may be remembered as the year of Joan of Arc: NBC created a miniseries in her honor, Carl Dreyer's long-lost The Passion of Joan of Arc was discovered in a mental hospital, and Facets re-released Jacques Rivette's Joan the Maid. Cinematically, The Messenger is stunning, with fantastical sequences of Joan in communication with higher.

The Messengers is a 2007 supernatural horror film directed by the Pang Brothers, and produced by Sam Raimi. It stars Kristen Stewart, John Corbett, William B. Davis, Dylan McDermott, Carter Kolbeck and Penelope Ann Miller. The film is about an ominous darkness that invades a seemingly serene sunflower farm in North Dakota, and the Solomon family—the owners of the farm—who are torn apart by suspicion, mayhem, and murder.

The film was released on February 2, 2007,^[1][4][5] and the DVD was released on June 5, 2007. Filming took place in the Qu'Appelle Valley near the small community of Abernethy, Saskatchewan, Canada. The graphic novel adaptation was published in January 2007 by Dark Horse Comics, written by Jason Hall, and illustrated by Kelley Jones. The prequel, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, was released in 2009.

Plot[edit]

A terrified mother and her young son are packing to flee when an unseen attacker kills the whole family.

Five years later, the Solomon family from Chicago moves into the house, near a small town in North Dakota. Roy Solomon hopes to start a sunflower farm. Everyone has issues. Their teenage daughter, Jess, is unhappy about moving, their son Ben has been traumatized ever since a car accident when Jess drove while drunk with him as a toddler, and crashed the car. Seriously injured, Ben endures extensive treatment, recovering only to be mute. Her parents, Roy and Denise, don't trust their irresponsible daughter, and are broke from all the medical expenses. Roy believes moving to the farm will help heal the family.

Ominous events begin to occur. Flocks of crows are constantly swarming the home. Some attack Roy but are driven off by a drifter named John Burwell, whom Roy hires as a farmhand. Ben can see ghosts of the mother and the children. In the night, Jess sees Ben walking into the barn, and follows him. When the doors slam shut, Jess flees to the house but steps into a quicksand-type mud pit, sinking until she is up to her neck, clawing to get free. She wakes thinking it was a dream, until lifting her blanket confirms that it was real.

Jess goes into town with Bobby to investigate the house's background. She discovers that the previous family left suddenly five years ago. Jess has her doubts and guesses something terrible happened to them. At a local store, she sees a newspaper clipping of the family, revealing the father to be none other than her dad's new farmhand. Burwell is actually John Rollins, the man who, in a fit of madness, murdered his entire family (as shown at the beginning of the film). Shocked, Jess and Bobby rush back home to warn her family.

Joan Of Arc The Messenger

Denise is in the basement when John attacks her. She attempts to run upstairs but John grabs her ankle as Bobby and Jess arrive, only for John to knock Bobby out. Jess runs into the cellar finding Denise and Ben. Denise is sorry for not believing her about the ghosts. John, believing them to be his own family, stabs Roy when he turns up. After a struggle with Jess, John drags her down to the basement into the mud with him. As she goes under, an injured Roy grabs her hand and with Denise's help, pulls her out.

Alerted by Bobby, police and paramedics arrive shortly after. As her dad is put in the ambulance, he apologizes to Jess. Awhile after, everything returns to normal and their happiness is restored: the crows no longer attack, ghosts stop appearing, and Ben starts talking again.

Cast[edit]

• Kristen Stewart as Jessica 'Jess' Solomon
• Dylan McDermott as Roy Solomon
• Penelope Ann Miller as Denise Solomon
• John Corbett as John Burwell/John Rollins
• Evan and Theodore Turner as Ben Solomon
• William B. Davis as Colby Price
• Brent Briscoe as Plume
• Dustin Milligan as Bobby
• Jodelle Ferland as Michael Rollins
• Michael Daingerfield as Police Officer
• Tatiana Maslany as Lindsay Rollins
• Shirley McQueen as Mary Rollins
• Kieria Robinson as Katy Turner

Production[edit]

Ravens were used in the movie, not crows, however the characters say 'crows' in the film. The production team could not obtain trained crows required for certain scenes.

The film began life as an original script called The Scarecrow by Todd Farmer. It was originally written as a psychological thriller as opposed to a more supernatural horror film. It was about a family on a farm suffering from financial problems and bad weather seasons. When the patriarch puts up a strange scarecrow out in the field, things start to change. But then people start to get killed, and the main character suspects the scarecrow. By the end, the main character is revealed actually to have caused the killings himself.

The script was sold to Revolution Studios. Director Patrick Lussier signed on to the film, and put a supernatural flair into the story. Revolution then brought in Stuart Beattie to rewrite the script. 'What I pitched was 'the horror version of A Beautiful Mind,' said Farmer, 'and what they wanted was 'The Shining on a farm.' Revolution then sold it to Ghost House Pictures, who then took it and hired Mark Wheaton to rewrite it. None of the original script survived through the rewrites, besides the farm setting, and character names.

The Messenger 1999 Poster

The original Scarecrow script was finally used as the basis for the prequel, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow.

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

The Messenger 1999 Movie Download

The Messengers placed first in box office receipts for the weekend of February 2–4, 2007. In its first weekend of release, the film grossed $14.7 million.^[6] The film grossed $55 million overall.^[3]

Critical response[edit]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 12% based on 84 reviews and an average rating of 3.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, 'The Messengers is an atmospheric but derivative rip-off of countless other horror movies.'^[7] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 34 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating 'generally unfavorable reviews'.^[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of 'C–' on an A+ to F scale.^[9]

Film critic Nigel Floyd wrote in Time Out, 'many of the images feel over-familiar, and the shocks a mite too forced.'^[10] IGN Movies wrote in its review, 'It's The Grudge on a farm,' and concluded, 'The problem with The Messengers is that it simply doesn't offer up much of anything new.'^[11] Lou Lumenick wrote in the New York Post that the films was 'nicely photographed but slow-moving, dull, and utterly predictable.' ^[12] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club wrote that the film was 'technically proficient enough to deliver the requisite jolts, but déjà vu haunts the film as surely as its pasty-faced, hitch-stepped ghoulies, and it's hard to shake the impression that we've seen this movie before.'^[13] Writing for the site Reel Views, James Berardinelli wrote that 'The Messengers borrows so heavily from (other horror movies) that it has no room left for anything of its own.^[14]

Prequel[edit]

A prequel titled Messengers 2: The Scarecrow was released on July 21, 2009. The Rollins Family are the film's main characters. It stars Norman Reedus and Australian actress Claire Holt.

The Messenger 1999 Movie Online

Book[edit]

A comic version of the film was published by Dark Horse Comics in January 2007.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcde'The Messengers (2007)'. AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 2018-02-24.
2. ^ ^ab'The Messengers (2006)'. British Film Institute. Retrieved 2017-04-18.
3. ^ ^abc'THE MESSENGERS'. Box Office Mojo.
4. ^'Sneaks 2007 – The Messengers'. Los Angeles Times. January 14, 2007. p. E24. Retrieved December 14, 2019. Screen Gems / Columbia Pictures, Feb. 2.
5. ^'filmcue – The Messengers'. The Santa Clarita Valley Signal. Santa Clarita, CA. p. TV Signal - 19. Retrieved December 14, 2019. ... released by Columbia on February 2.
6. ^'THE MESSENGERS'. Box Office Mojo.
7. ^'The Messengers (2007)'. Rotten Tomatoes.
8. ^'The Messengers Reviews'. Metacritic.
9. ^'CinemaScore'. cinemascore.com.
10. ^'The Messengers'. Time Out London. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
11. ^'The Messengers - IGN'. Retrieved 15 June 2020 – via www.ign.com.
12. ^''MESSENGERS' CAN'T DELIVER'. 3 February 2007. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
13. ^'The Messengers'. Film. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
14. ^'Review: Messengers, The'. preview.reelviews.net. Retrieved 15 June 2020.

External links[edit]

• The Messengers on IMDb
• The Messengers at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Messengers at AllMovie

Besson has cast Milla Jovovich as his Joan. She was his wife at the time they started shooting. They have since split--although he says they would still be together if they could only have made movies 365 days a year, a statement that may provide more insight than he intended. Jovovich, who also starred in Besson's 'The Fifth Element,' is a healthy, cheerful, open-faced 24-year-old actress who seems much too robust and uncomplicated to play Joan.

The movie is a mess: a gassy costume epic with nobody at the center. So deficient is Besson at suggesting the conscience which rules Joan's actions that the movie even uses another character, the Grand Inquisitor, as a surrogate conscience, and brings in Dustin Hoffman to play it. That Hoffman's performance is the best in the film should have been a nudge to the filmmaker that he could cut back on the extras and the battle scenes and make the movie about--well, about Joan.

Joan of Arc was a naive young French peasant woman, illiterate, who was told by voices that she must go to the aid of her king. France at that time was ill-supplied with kings; the best it could offer was the reluctant Dauphin (John Malkovich), later Charles VII. She informed him her destiny was to lead French troops on the battlefield against the English, who were godless (or foreign, which to the French was a negligible distinction).

Legend has it she ended the siege of Orleans. Legend may be wrong. A new book published in France by the historian Roger Caratini claims 'precious little of what we French have been taught in school about Joan of Arc is true.' He finds scant evidence that Joan did much more than go along for the ride and adds cruelly that she could not have raised the siege of Orleans because the city was never besieged in the first place. Her trial for heresy was not at the hands of the British but under the French Inquisition at the University of Paris, and her greatest crime may have been dressing like a boy and offending the ecclesiastical gender police. Her legend was 'more or less invented' in the 19th century, we learn, as a tonic for emerging French nationalism, which had a 'desperate need for a patriotic mascot.' Of course we do not expect 'The Messenger' to be a revisionist downgrading of the French national heroine, who was burned by a schismatic branch of the church and canonized by Rome five centuries later without having, perhaps, done much to deserve either. We expect a patriotic epic, in which the heroic young woman saves her country but is destroyed by an effete ruler and a lot of grim old clerics. Even if the film is not about a battle of opposing moralities, even if it is not about conscience (as the Dreyer and Bresson films are), it can at least be as much fun as, say, 'Braveheart,' wouldn't you think? No such luck. Besson's film is a thin, uninvolving historical romp in which the only juicy parts are played by supporting characters, such as the Dauphin, made by John Malkovich into a man whose interest in the crown essentially ends with whether it fits. Faye Dunaway has fun as his stepmother, Yolande D'Aragon, who schemes against Joan as any mother would when her son falls under the sway of a girl from the wrong side of the class divide. And Dustin Hoffman is really very good as the Inquisitor, even if his role seems inspired by the desperate need to somehow shoehorn philosophy into the film. I was reminded of the Roger Corman horror picture where holes in the plot were plugged by hiring two bit players and having one ask the other, 'Now explain what all this means.'