1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[Gropius]

Am I forgetting any essential 90s action films in the first category?

Woo's Hard Boiled and Face/Off would be popular choices; some would put in a word for Point Break, Last Action Hero, Demolition Man, or True Lies (and the aforementioned Total Recall). Beyond that, it rather depends on your taste for the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme. (And then there's the rest of the far more intricately choreographed Hong Kong martial arts stuff, amongst which Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series and The Blade stand out.)

[Cold Bishop]

Spotlight Title

Preface: At the turn of the decade – after the more pronounced 80s noir revival began to recede, but before Tarantino launched a generation of imitators – there was a bubble of American neo-noir that perhaps has not gotten it due critically. Not to damn Tarantino or rob his films of their laurels – the man can’t be blamed for his imitators, and his wry and postmodernist bent was already latent in these predecessors – but it does tease at what American crime cinema might have looked like if Pulp Fiction never became the juggernaut it did. Perhaps so varied as to resist any umbrella classification (although there was a clear sub-genre of small-town thrillers), this cycle of Neo-Noir seems nevertheless distinguished by certain traits. It’s adherence to noir sensibility read far more subtle and plainspoken than the ‘80s boom of “neon-noir” and “psycho-lover” thrillers. Period pieces were eschewed in favor of contemporary settings, and remakes and pastiches typically gave way to adaptations of the more modern second and third-generation genre writers (Jim Thompson chief among them). Stylistically, they favored a more slow-burn flash and fury, often paired with dark wit and offbeat flourishes, a propensity for erotic interludes, and sometimes fringed with satire. Above all, these were almost always studio products, and they balance their personal idiosyncrasies with that depersonalized ‘90s studio sheen. Lot of these films I hope to revisit. One False Move, Internal Affairs, Miami Blues, Red Rock West, After Dark My Sweet, The Hot Spot, Dead Again… all fine films, some great. But this, above all strikes me as the finest…

Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992) – A neo-noir that would have made Sam Fuller proud (and he knew Duke, so it possibly did), Deep Cover covers familiar territory – a young cop (Laurence Fishburne) is sent undercover in the L.A. drug trade and loses his way - but manages to stake out fresh, even revolutionary ground therein. It’s brimming with stylish verve and a razor-sharp sense of pacing and characterization. Above all, it’s a film that carries its social conscience on its sleeve, with fiery earnestness, but never at the cost of its pulp pleasures. It’s this Fuller-esque mix of showmanship and conviction that carry the film through, even when it flirts with heavy-handed histrionics. Undoubtedly this was sold as another “ghetto-thriller” in the vein of New Jack City, Juice or Ricochet. But Bill Duke, already a veteran character-actor and TV director at least a generation too old to be part of the New Black Cinema he was lumped in with, refuses to give in to the music-video imagery or hip-hop novelty of those young turks. It may be most famous for its soundtrack (mostly muted in the film), but the accompanying film still feels fresh and vital two decades later. If Duke’s approach is less youthful, it’s still decidedly brash and distinct. He may play to the obligations that come with making a studio thriller, but he uses that to his advantage, impressing the film with a personal and subversive sensibility, but also drawing on all the resources that come with a well-oiled machine. This is the sort of “well-made” sleeper that has all but been lost with the death of the mid-budget studio film, and which all too easily gets lost in the shuffle.

The Look: Bojan Bazelli, collaborator on some of Abel Ferrara’s pulpier projects, brings some of that same grit and style to the project, but with a much more subtle touch. Only in the more hysterical moments does the film tip its hand to its major noir leanings: there the film breaks up into old-school dutch-angles, noir’s pervasive shadows giving way to blasts of hot neon – bright greens, red, blues – supported by bright halos of side-and-backlight. In fact, taking its cue from its Christmas set opening, those three colors are woven in and out of the film in various ways. Really, this is a film I should probably rewatch with the sound off, as its front-to-back just crisply composed and masterfully lit. Just note how impossibly vivid the red van is at the end among all the gray and blue moonlight. Or a theater scene, the way the sidelight on the theater seats renders the auditorium into a series of bright white chalkmarks amidst a sea of inky black. Or the Gordon Willis-esque way the low-key lighting in the briefing scenes or the drifting sunlight in the courtroom scenes give everything an implacable auburn tint. It’s a polished, unfussed-about craftsmanship which rubs off on the rest of the film, lending an effortless feel to the film’s successes.

The Script: Ditto the script, which handles its genre elements with aplomb, but buzzes with forward momentum, snappy dialogue and quiet intelligence. It’s a script that knows it’s not a crime to chase a cliché if you can execute it properly. And it knows the use of convention is often the best way to sneak in the unconventional. Michael Tolkin (The Player, The New Age) wrote the first draft, and you can still see some of his sensibility: the acute understanding of the geography and landscape of L.A.; and the political undercurrent shows the outlines of his brand of satire. However, it is Henry Bean, who would later go on to direct Ryan Gosling in The Belliever, that seems to have been the principle writer here, even getting a production credit. He wrote Mike Figgis’s superb Internal Affairs, two years earlier, and this script seems a piece with that film’s seductive wit and escalating amorality, not to mention its theme of corruption. In fact, Duke kept Henry Bean on set for the duration of the film, and it shows: it has that mix of naturalness and precision that comes when a script is fine-tuned scene-by-scene to match where the actors and production need be.

The Cast: First, the two principles put in two of the best performances of their career. It’s hard not to view Fishburne’s performance in light of his other “hip-hop thriller” King of New York, here moving from breakout support to leading man. And the two performances couldn’t be more different. That movie, he’s a live-wire, all hinky energy and macho menace. Here, he’s composed, self-contained, hermetic. All his energy seems concentrated on his eyes, peering outward with keen intelligence and strangled conscience. Even his voiceover is deep and dulcet, almost a murmur, giving the film a weary and reflective quality, even as its poetic rhythms (patterned, I’m told, after Iceberg Slim prose) lend a distinctly black sensibility to that classic noir convention. Jeff Goldblum, as a white-collar Jewish lawyer out of his element, gives a quintessentially Goldblumian performance: brainy, neurotic, twitchy, the dialogue flowing out him with a stream-of-conscious regularity. Yet here Goldblum manages to make peak Goldblum feel genuinely terrifying, not by playing the role as psychotic, but by tapping into a very real sense of resentment bubbling over into murderous rage.

Yet, where the film really excels, and I’m reminded of Dom’s assessment of New Jack City, is that it understands the value of a well-placed character actor. This is a movie that, top to bottom, is filled with entertaining actors diving into chewy roles. There are familiar faces here, to be sure, doing what they do best: Charles Martin Smith’s bureaucratic Mephisto, Roger G. Smith’s lewd humored dandy-junky, Clarence William III’s voice of black-Christian conscience. But even less distinguished actors cut a memorable figure. Gregory Sierra, an actor I don’t recall ever noticing before, is particularly memorable, playing his Mexican drug-boss with a yuppie casualness and an almost nebbish patter, not to mention a conspicuous resemblance to Groucho Marx. But even the smallest, least inconsequential roles are allowed to add color to the film. Much like Takeshi Kitano this decade, Duke shows a skill in finding the right detail, gesture or line to give the most fleeting inconsequential characters something to leave an impression. When that fails, cast an interesting face. Case in point, Gopher, an unexplained cartel member who stands out for his anachronistic effeminacy and gentleness. Or the way a later drug dealer splays across a theater seat, almost annoyed that a drug deal is interrupting the movie he’s engrossed in. Part of the pleasure is just watching all these characters bounce off each other, where even the occasional scenery chewing is more charming than irritating.

Yet, for all this, this is still clearly Bill Duke’s film, poised, circa 1992, to become a major talent. After his earlier, more socially-realistic films failed to find distribution and were sold to PBS, Duke made his debut with another neo-noir, A Rage in Harlem (1991), an excellent, if liberal adaption of Chester Himes’s classic noir novel. This one-two punch should have made Duke’s career… but after the slight misstep of Hoodlum, he seemed to be drummed out of the industry. Nonetheless, these first two films make a strong case for Duke’s talent. They share a visual style: a seductive luster derived from Classic Hollywood touchstones; bold touches like neon-flares and rising steam left over from the neon-noir eighties; a hyper-realistic sense of city life, both its energy and squalor. He never allows either film to get too dour: a biting zinger or comic aside is never entirely out of place, and Duke never loses sight that he’s making an entertainment. Yet, neither film is flippant: both are grounded in the dispossessed reality of black urban life; both are punctuated by moments of graphic violence, unglamorous and unnerving, and both films balance their urban nihilism with a pointed moral dimension. Essentially, both films are studies of tortured men in worlds of corruption and ruthlessness, trying desperately to do the right thing through increasingly flawed means. More so than the manic and raunchy Rage, it is Deep Cover that does this theme justice, by adding a socio-political dimension which I am shocked to find in a Hollywood film of its era.

Fishburne’s cop remains throughout the film resolute in his resolve to make a difference. He allows himself to slide down into the life of a drug dealer because the ends justify the means. But here is a film where the ends, through bureaucratic red-tape and government policy, is constantly shifted, retraced or just plain erased. As he climbs up the hierarchical ladder, the lines between underworld power and political clout becames increasingly inextricable. Deep Cover is a neo-noir, a policier, an ghetto-thriller, yes. But it’s also a damning takedown on the Bush-era War on Drugs. Not until Traffic can I think of another Hollywood film this frank about the drug trade (And I’ve long suspected Soderbergh is fan of this film: Duke’s cameo in The Limey plays very much like a character from here). It doesn’t just paint government policy as failed; it goes as far as to implicate the government in trafficking. It’s refreshingly gutsy and honest. It’s also somewhat unbelievable that it made it into a Hollywood film in an era where, even after the Kerry Committee, such notions were still written off as black conspiracy theories. The movie never evokes the word “Iran-Contra”, and it stops just short of saying the CIA flew in cocaine themselves, but the implication throughout is something that, has since, been show to be distressingly true. And one that has been tragically unpunished and forgotten

It's hard to miss the coincidence of rewatching this film just as Kill the Messenger has brought these issues back into the news (only for the moment, of course). More than once I’ve seen people say the film stops short of masterpiece status because of its ending. But if it’s an ending that seems like (wholly relatable) wish-fulfillment, its one with a purpose: to give a disposed minority fictional justice against very real wrongs. If we can machine-gun Hitler in the face, we can surely speculate on what justice would look like for those responsible for the ‘80s explosion of crack-cocaine and gang violence. Faced with an evil system, Fishburne’s character chooses uncertain (and perhaps unrealistic) optimism over nihilistic despair. It’s an optimism that seemed momentarily rewarded when the Gary Webb exposes started… only to be buried again. Nearly twenty years later, this film, which can be so easily written off sight-unseen as just another slick Hollywood thriller… what some critics wrote off in its day as overly paranoid and glib in its cynicism… now plays like a requiem for a period where the sins against that generation could still maybe, possibly, against all odds, be redressed.

Afterword: Deliriously entertaining, politically engaged and sadly poignant, this deserves to be famous for much more than a (perfectly fine) single by Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

[colinr0380]

Sorry for posting this so soon after Cold Bishop's great piece on Deep Cover, but I was inspired by domino's Lethal Weapon comments and felt I had a bit more to add on Basic Instinct:

The problem with the last two Lethal Weapon films is that they feel so lazy. They pile on additional wacky characters like members of an extended family and it just twists the film away from its original 'family man clashing with loner psycho' dynamic until the central characters are both narrative irrelevancies (they're never going to change, or even retire despite the grumbling) and superhumans able to go through the carnage without a hair out of place. Which is perhaps unsurprising given that Richard Donner directed the early Superman films too, with their own almost complete lack of dramatic tension due to their overpowered central character. I do think the very first film has some worth, with its drugs vs family tensions, but every sequel that followed was problematically diluted in its own way.

The fourth film is just the one that takes things into actively offensive territory. We of course had the South African baddies in Lethal Weapon 2 to demonise, but at least with those broad characterisations there was at least the sense of that choice being in the context of a general (i.e. never brought up in the film itself) broadside against apartheid. But Lethal Weapon 4 really seems to hates the Chinese. It doesn't just make them the baddies, but it also treats them as a pathetic irrelevance barely considered by our bickering foursome, who have more trouble with domestic issues than bad guy ones (it is part of that trend in 90s films that has everyone having a madcap rush to the maternity unit to give birth to the next generation. Dumb but tolerable in Nine Months or Father of the Bride 2. Not so much in ostensibly an action film). Jet Li is entirely wasted in his role, barely even given a scene to show off martial arts skills even. I think that the Rush Hour films, the first of which turned up the same year as Lethal Weapon 4, are not particularly good either, espousing their own stereotypes and prejudices, but compared to this they at least treat treat the characters with some respect. (Unfortunately my dad loves part 4 and has a fondness for repeating the line "It's fried rice, you plick!" at the worst possible moments!)

But the Lethal Weapon 4 to Rush Hour shift is a telling cultural one, I think. Not just for treating Asian actors (and martial arts skills) with a tiny bit of respect but also for moving from insularity to a wider view of international culture clashes. And for completing the move from the quite dark and brutal first Lethal Weapon to the goofy family friendly knockabout humour of Rush Hour and its sequels.

Scary trivia titbit - one of my friends admitted that he had an almost permanent erection during the film...

I guess Michael Douglas's bare ass can do that to anyone!

If you haven't seen it already, National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 does a great parody of this (NSFW)

It is a spot-on skewering of Basic Instinct (and Lethal Weapon!). I think the scene in Basic Instinct is quite an important one, as it is showing Nick having consumated his relationship with Catherine for the first time walking with a cocky swagger. He's feeling good about himself (as he didn't after his frustrated violent sex scene with Beth) and can face down Roxy in the bathroom. There's a sense of smug, self satisfied confidence that is entirely misplaced on his part, as he has fatally compromised himself.

I also wonder whether it is a call back to the early Richard Gere films in which Gere appears nude, such as the post-coital pensive look through the window in American Gigolo or jumping in the shower in the remake of Breathless, a film in which politics gets replaced by posture. Both of those films are about a man almost totally self-assured getting caught up in a spiral of events out of his control.

To go back to the idea of Basic Instinct being a bad film, I think it is kind of knowingly playing up the troubling aspects of its material in order to throw a similar sense of complacency back at the audience. The audience that flocked to see the bad woman get defeated in Fatal Attraction (although the alternate ending of that would have solved the problem entirely, albeit not have been as 'commerical'!). Also I think it is interesting to see the central relationship in Basic Instinct being a gender swap of the one between Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges in Jagged Edge, also written by Eszterhas. In both films sexuality might be central, but it is just as much about ethics and morality being compromised by blind desire. And while Jagged Edge or Fatal Attraction for the most part play events 'straight', and are more morally dubious and disturbing for that, Basic Instinct revels in the ludicrous nature of its entire twisty-turny premise.

In a sense Basic Instinct doesn't need a parody, it is the parody itself, and an amusingly obscene crudening of Vertigo with its obsession, tailing sequences and doubling women. But it is great that it also inspired a couple of parody films. Loaded Weapon 1 has some fun jabs but I would also recommend the endearingly silly Troma film (and despite my nutty tastes you are not really going to be hearing me say those words too often!), Blondes Have More Guns (NSFW). It really helps that being a Troma film they can throw in all of the nudity that an erotic thriller parody needs! It's no Naked Gun classic parody, but then even the Zucker's aren't making aything of Naked Gun quality any more!

[knives]

Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be the big one in my mind. Other than that, I'd say Crimson Tide, The Rock (both of those probably the best movies Bruckheimer has ever put his name to, and the latter being Bay's best work hands-down) and Clear And Present Danger.

But there is an even bigger suggestion, and probably quite obvious coming from me, but I know you hate the director's work so I won't bother suggesting it.

I'm pretty sure Pain and Gain has taken that title.

[flyonthewall2983]

Can't disagree there, but I feel like I might be struck by lightning or something if I merely suggest he has two good films to his credit.

[knives]

That's survivable.

[domino harvey]

Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood 1997) Rewatching this again revealed it unexpectedly to be one of Eastwood's greatest films as director. It's telling that Eastwood's thief opines how younger thieves show no patience and therefore can't pull off the really big and impressive jobs, as the film his character is in is itself blessed with the virtue of patience. The film's pace is deliberate, not slow, and information is only slowly meted out-- this is a film that functions better outside of advertisement or advance reviews, as even the central, box office boosting high concept at the center of the film is not even fully revealed to the audience until over forty minutes have passed. But this low-key but no less menacing conspiracy thriller involving Eastwood's thief witnessing a brutal rape and murder committed by an important political figure is blessed with a great cast (Many of whom are always wonderful additions to any film's lineup just by themselves: Gene Hackman, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Ed Harris) and a smart script that sharply uses its pacing to its advantage. This is a smart, adult film done well-- Eastwood's calling card. Highly recommended.

Twilight (Robert Benton 1998) And here's the flipside of that experience: throwing a lot of great and/or capable actors together and hoping they'll rise above mediocre material. They can't and don't. I loved Benton's last take on updated noir, Nadine (I'm in the minority, though), and liked the Late Show, but this third bite at the apple provides meager sustenance. While watching I could intellectually rationalize how every component of the complicated plot could have gelled and worked, but something is just "off" in every interaction, every listless filmmaking choice, every phoned-in new weirdo just going through the motions. Even the notion of featuring characters at the end of their lives (in the titular twilight years) was already touched on better in the Late Show-- a cannibalization of a cannibalization sounds like a good set up to a punchline ending with this film. Paul Newman is okay in the central role of the former PI who may or may not have had his P shot off (this is indicative of the strange tone of the film, which often presents things which are not funny as though they were), but the rest of the cast-- Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Margo Martindale, Liev Schreiber, James Garner, Giancarlo Esposito-- are rudderless and/or embarrassing. And one especially wonders what Reese Witherspoon saw in her four minutes or so of inconsequential screentime that was worth a lifetime of unsafe Google Image search results. Actually, what anyone involved saw in this is the only real mystery afoot, but I can guess: Newman signed on, and then everyone said, "Well, if Paul Newman's doing it, and the guy making it has all those Oscars, I guess it must be good." Guess again.

[flyonthewall2983]

Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood 1997) Rewatching this again revealed it unexpectedly to be one of Eastwood's greatest films as director. It's telling that Eastwood's thief opines how younger thieves show no patience and therefore can't pull off the really big and impressive jobs, as the film his character is in is itself blessed with the virtue of patience. The film's pace is deliberate, not slow, and information is only slowly meted out-- this is a film that functions better outside of advertisement or advance reviews, as even the central, box office boosting high concept at the center of the film is not even fully revealed to the audience until over forty minutes have passed. But this low-key but no less menacing conspiracy thriller involving Eastwood's thief witnessing a brutal rape and murder committed by an important political figure is blessed with a great cast (Many of whom are always wonderful additions to any film's lineup just by themselves: Gene Hackman, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Ed Harris) and a smart script that sharply uses its pacing to its advantage. This is a smart, adult film done well-- Eastwood's calling card. Highly recommended.

This is one of those premium cable staples I always stop channel-surfing to watch. Even more than the high concept, Eastwood playing an estranged father trying to both prove his innocence and repair his damaged relationship with Linney's character gives it a more personal touch, as well as the subplot of her being awkwardly wooed by Ed Harris' character. And it probably has one of his best ensemble casts, with Dennis Haysbert, Scott Glenn, E.G. Marshall, Richard Jenkins, Mark Margolis and a few others in roles that range from rather important (Haysbert as the Secret Service agent who's loyalty takes him too far, and Marshall as the bereaved widower) to the blink-and-you'll miss it variety. Highly recommended here too.

[Forrest Taft]

Am I forgetting any essential 90s action films in the first category?)

Don't know if it qualifies as essential, but Walter Hill's Trespass is, along with Johnny Handsome and Undisputed, the best of his post 48 hrs.-work. An enjoyable take on The Treasure of Sierra Madre with the unlikely cast of Bill Paxton, William Sadler, Ice Cube and Ice-T, and lots of recognizable faces from the era (Argyle from Die Hard!).

Speaking of Hill, I seem to recall that you [Domino] had little love for Hill's particle brand of ugliness, which I take is aimed mainly at the unsympathetic traits of so many of his characters, so Steven Seagal is perhaps not up you alley, but if you're going to limit it to one of his pics, Out for Justice is the one to go for, and if you like this particular vicious brand of early 90-s action cinema with a ponytail-sporting hero, Marked for Death could be your next stop. At times absurdly violent, it's a great showcase for Seagal's um...skills, and it's also a lean and tough action film directed by the underrated John Flynn, who gives the film a great sense of time and place (a neighbouhood-film, of you will). It's the only movie I can think of where the hero visits the villains' parents (friends from childhood), to inform them that he intends to kill their child. Oh, and the villain is played by William Forsythe, in a genuinely frightening performance. Certain action tropes are more fun in Seagal-films than anywhere else, such as fights in bars and grocery stores. This one has both, and they are so much fun that they almost make up for the weirdly terrible two-scene subplot about a man mistreating puppies.

Speaking of action tropes: If anyone cares for those scenes where a character (often military) tells another character (and the audience) just how awesome the hero is, by listing his credentials, the very best of those scenes can be found in On Deadly Ground (Steven Seagal, 1994). Nothing wrong with villain Michael Caine (spoiler) describing him as "the patron saint of the impossible", but the winner is R. Lee Ermey's monologue, where he describes Seagal's awesomeness by saying something like "you could drop the guy on the north pole, dressed in a bikini, armed with nothing but a toothbrush, and he'd still etc.etc.". Essentially the Billy Jack of the 1990s, On Deadly Ground is one part effective action pic, and the other part is a well-meaning environmentalist film(including an endless vision quest, of course) that gets no points for subtlety but a googol points for sincerity. As a result, it's often howlingly funny (the infamous bar scene with it's hand-slapping game!). Too bizarre to make my list, but man how I love this crazy movie. Will be getting the blu-ray the day it comes out!

In fact, I'm not sure there'll be room for any 90s action pics on my list, except for Die Hard with a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995), surely the greatest New York-movie of them all, which will be charting high. McTiernan's The Hunt for Red October and The 13th Warrior are other 90s blockbusters I keep returning to, both of them great adventure movies. John Frankenheimer's Ronin is the only other list-worthy action film I can think of on the top of my head.

Edit: Here is R. Lee Ermey'd thoughtful monologue:

SpoilerShow

My guy in D.C. tells me that we are not dealing with a student here, we're dealing with the Professor. Any time the military has an operation that can't fail, they call this guy in to train the troops, OK? He's the kind of guy that would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss in your campfire! You could drop this guy off at the Arctic Circle wearing a pair of bikini underwear, without his toothbrush, and tomorrow afternoon he's going to show up at your pool side with a million dollar smile and fist full of pesos. This guy's a professional, you got me? If he reaches this rig, we're all gonna be nothing but a big goddamned hole right in the middle of Alaska. So let's go find him and kill him and get rid of the son of a bitch!

[Cold Bishop]

Speaking of hand-slapping games: all this talk of The Knick probably means I should have mentioned that if you get Cinemax, you can probably catch Deep Cover on demand right now. As the only other option is a decade old snapcase, I'd recommend it.

[thirtyframesasecond]

One particularly bad action movie of the 90s I like is The Specialist. It's terrible. Stallone and Stone try hard, Roberts and Steiger mug around, picking up an easy pay cheque, but this is completely James Woods' movie. He acts like he's in something totally different to the other actors. It's such a deranged OTT performance that you can't help but marvel at it.

[Cold Bishop]

One movie I have yet to see, but have had my ear talked off by various "vulgar auteurists" (blegh) is the dtv Drive starring Mark Dacascos. Some people swear by the thing and I might have to squeeze in a viewing, even if I do remain skeptical.

[Forrest Taft]

One particularly bad action movie of the 90s I like is The Specialist. It's terrible. Stallone and Stone try hard, Roberts and Steiger mug around, picking up an easy pay cheque, but this is completely James Woods' movie. He acts like he's in something totally different to the other actors. It's such a deranged OTT performance that you can't help but marvel at it.

Would make a great double bill with Jubal. "Rod Steiger: Method Acting Gone Wrong".

[Dr Amicus]

One particularly bad action movie of the 90s I like is The Specialist. It's terrible. Stallone and Stone try hard, Roberts and Steiger mug around, picking up an easy pay cheque, but this is completely James Woods' movie. He acts like he's in something totally different to the other actors. It's such a deranged OTT performance that you can't help but marvel at it.

Completely agree - Woods just steals the film. What's most annoying about it is that the first half in particular has a nice, downbeat feel to it which could have lead to moody, noirish piece of work. Unfortunately, it all rather goes to pot in the second half and the ending just annoyed me no end,

SpoilerShow

ie where Stallone goes off with Stone. Considering how she's behaved for much of the film, I'd have much rather he just leave her at the side of the road and drive off, impassive.

A couple of other favourites of mine in the genre are Van Damme in Sudden Death, which I know has its fans around here, and the Kurt Russell / Steven Seagal Executive Decision, both of which are clearly completely bonkers, and yet have a definite logical progression in the narrative.

[colinr0380]

I have a fondness for the silly dramatics of Sudden Death, not least that it is trying to turn ice hockey into a major sporting event that could be threatened by the bad guys. It also has my favourite moment in almost any action film, which I remember talking about before:

I also remembered from near the beginning of Sudden Death where Powers Booth's henchman have infiltrated the stadium posing as employees, including someone hiding away inside a penguin suit, and there's a brilliant moment where there's one of those generic 'thriller' scenes where Van Damme's security officer gets wary of someone he's not seen before who then turns towards him with a suspicious 'bad guy look' as he walks off. Only of course it is the penguin suit baddie looking over the crowd at him while the tense music plays!

That brief moment is almost better than the ensuing fight scene!

It has been a while since I saw Executive Decision but I remember at the time much preferring its craziness to the more dour Air Force One. It sort of occupies the mid-point of nutty 90s airplane thrillers in between Air Force One and the truly insane Turbulence. Plus it features a great twist and the 'generic Middle Eastern bad guy' gets played by Poirot (i.e. David Suchet)! (EDIT May 2018: And re-watching it again recently it has an absolutely fantastic cast : Halle Berry as the intrepid stewardess, Oliver Platt as the nervous person pressed into impromtu bomb disposal when the actual bomb disposal technician played by Joe Morton (in what is probably an intentional, amusing nod to his explosive moment in Terminator 2!) gets incapacitated, J.T. Walsh as one of the passengers, and the multicultural SWAT team rounded out with Steven Seagal, B.D. Wong (probably best known for his small role as the scientist during the tour in Jurassic Park) and John Leguizamo! Its a great ensemble cast and everyone gets given a bit of business and their moment to shine in the film. Its quite generous to its cast and characters in that sense! Well, the non-Middle Eastern ones at least!)

Passenger 57 is perhaps at the bottom of the pile, even below Die Hard 2. Strange how Die Hard 2 seemed to inspire a whole subgenre of copycat airplane take-over films.

[Gropius]

Where does Con Air fit in your schema?

[Forrest Taft]

Con Air is utter garbage, and a chore to sit through. I imagine it's 150 minutes long, but it feels like 300. Passenger 57, on the other hand, is only about 60 minutes long (PAL speed-up version, excluding opening- and end credits ), stars Wesley Snipes, and has a scene where he tells the villain to "always bet on black".

[domino harvey]

Passenger 57 is perhaps at the bottom of the pile, even below Die Hard 2. Strange how Die Hard 2 seemed to inspire a whole subgenre of copycat airplane take-over films.

I don't appreciate the implication that Die Hard 2 is anything but awesome

[colinr0380]

I like Con Air a lot, but then I think Simon West was the director most suited to the Bruckheimer style (even if Michael Bay is the ne plus ultra 'stylish destruction' Bruckheimer director and Tony Scott the slightly more 'serious themes' director in Bruckheimer's stable of the same period), being able to balance the action and sentimentality with a knowing wink to the audience to prevent things from getting too mawkish, perhaps best shown by the cheesy-hilarious goofy-sincere "Put the bunny back in the box" line. And without getting too incoherent in the stylisation either.

Con Air also has a great supporting cast who all get moments to shine, perhaps the most audacious of which is the Steve Buscemi child molester subplot with a brief seeming allusion to Frankenstein as he wanders off only to approach a little girl having a tea party! (This is also the film prior to Armageddon in which Buscemi plays a character tied to a chair making quips, as if it is the only way that the filmmakers can control him! Though Armageddon kind of inverts Buscemi's journey, tying him up in the final section of the film instead of at the beginning!)

I also like the catchy-cheesy tie in song too. If you'll forgive me for going Pop Idol on you: "How do I liiiive without you? I want to know. How do I ever, ever surviiiiiiiive?"

[domino harvey]

My entire familiarity with Con Air is through whatever clips were used in that music video. Now Trisha Yearwood has a really bad cooking show on Food Network (though it's not as awful as that ugly fake Paula Deen country cooking woman's show, Farmhouse Rules) (EDITed to be clear I'm not talking about Southern at Heart)

[colinr0380]

That reminds me that Nicolas Cage works very well here (better perhaps than in The Rock), with the wackiness to a minimum instead playing everything in a completely action hero mode, which makes moments like the "Bunny" line, or the brilliant prison montage voiceover at the beginning of the film (something that would have been horribly sentimental in a more serious film, or overplayed in a dumber one), great fun! He's almost a Leslie Neilsen-esque straight man here, letting everyone else around him overact like mad instead!

[Forrest Taft]

I know I lot of people like Con Air, and I watched it again last year, but I still can't see the appeal, and I like most of the other things I've seen from Simon West. I should add that I prefer Nicolas Cage, the mega-actor to the Cage playing it straight.

[domino harvey]

A quick rundown of JJL this decade, with extremely brief recs / admissions of inexperience where needed

Miami Blues -- Listworthy
Buried Alive -- Entertaining Tales From the Crypt riff but not worth going out of your way to see
Backdraft -- Have not seen since I was a kid. Hope to revisit
Rush -- In unwatched stack
Single White Female -- Listworthy
Short Cuts -- An okay film, but people here really enjoy it a lot so YMMV
the Hudsucker Proxy -- Have not seen since I was a kid. I don't like the Coens so I'm not necessarily the one to ask anyways. In unwatched stack to revisit
Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle -- Listworthy
Dolores Claiborne -- Great film, won't be making my list but worth seeing
Georgia -- Listworthy
Kansas City -- In unwatched stack
Bastard Out of Carolina -- In unwatched stack
Washington Square -- In unwatched stack
A Thousand Acres -- In unwatched stack
the Love Letter -- Unseen. It's a TV movie, not sure if it's even circulating?
eXistenZ -- Listworthy

I just realized this is incomplete, as I left out Thanks of a Grateful Nation AKA the Gulf War, which I wrote up here for the War List Project. I don't think anyone should rush out and see it, though

[Tommaso]

These two will almost certainly make my list:

Swan Lake - The Zone (Yuri Ilyenko, 1990): this is quite different from Ilyenko's earlier films which were often based on Ukrainian folk tales/history, but in spite of its contemporary story and harsh subject matter, it's every way as lyrical and visually breathtaking as the director's other films. Based on a script by Paradjanov, the film deals with Paradjanov's own experiences in prison. An escaped prisoner, half dead, hides in a giant monument representing the hammer and sickle and is found by a woman who becomes his lover. But his happiness is short-lived, as he's soon recaptured and his ordeal continues. The film is heavy with symbolism with the prisoner in the end being an almost Christ-like figure, but it's never preachy, and the story is told with a bare minimum of dialogue (actually, there's not one word spoken audibly in the first 40 min. or so). Ilyenko finds extremely memorable images for the representation of the protagonist's plight, especially during his flight and for the inside of the monument in which he hides. Tarkovsky's "Stalker" is an obvious comparison at least for this part of the film.

The Idiots (Lars von Trier, 1998): a highly provocative and controversial film, of course. A group of people plays at being mentally retarded, testing the reactions of 'normal' people to socially 'unacceptable' behaviour. But the longer the film continues, the more it focuses on the power relations within the group itself. Filmed in a fake documentary style and with all the interesting shortcomings of the 'Dogme'-rules (this is von Trier's only real 'Dogme'-film), The Idiots starts out with some very funny scenes if you share the director's sardonic kind of humour, but soon becomes deeply unsettling and intense, especially in its focus on Karen, a new member of the group, who - as is slowly revealed - is attracted to the group because of a traumatic experience which lets all the group's provocative actions appear as silly self-indulgence. The film has received very different interpretations, but one thing I'm sure of is that the film does NOT make inappropriate fun of mentally handicapped people, but rather of the people who feel repulsed by them but act 'politically correct' when encountering them: the behaviour of a woman - who wants to buy the house in which the group lives - after she is made to believe that her new neighbours are 'idiots' is simply priceless in this respect. But personally I think that von Trier's main interest is an indictment of the abusive roles of leaders of (for instance) hippie communities and self-styled 'drop-out' groups which were far more 'petty bourgeois' than they themselves believed. And the ending makes clear that reality can be far more frightening and disturbing than anything the group could have dreamed up. Deeply involving on both an intellectual and emotional level; and not only Bodil Jorgensen's performance as Karen is something that resonates even days after watching the film. What is often overlooked - also with other films of von Trier - is how compassionate the film is; which, I think, is what makes it so moving in the end.

[domino harvey]

Ebert and Scorsese's Best Films of the 1990s
The video is incomplete, but here are their full lists from the comments section:

Scorsese: 10 - Malcolm X / Heat, 9 - Fargo, 8 - Crash, 7 - Bottle Rocket, 6 - Breaking the Waves, 5 - Bad Lieutenant, 4 - Eyes Wide Shut, 3 - A Borrowed Life, 2 - The Thin Red Line, 1 - Horse Thief

Ebert: 10 - JFK, 9 - Malcolm X, 8 - Leaving Las Vegas, 7 - Breaking the Waves, 6 - Schindler's List, 5 - Three Colors Trilogy, 4 - Fargo, 3 - Goodfellas, 2 - Pulp Fiction, 1 - Hoop Dreams

I remember when this aired and I was as confused then as I am now at how Horse Thief, a film from 1986 that opened in the US in 1988 is a 90s film, but I guess if you're Scorsese no one's going to tell you no