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

[domino harvey]

Home Alone (Chris Columbus 1990) / Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (Chris Columbus 1992) Childhood favorites I've been meaning to revisit and sad to say they don't much hold up to my golden-hued memories. Precocious tot Macaulay Culkin carries the first film with an extension in some ways of his role in Uncle Buck (John Candy even has an unbilled cameo) as the film bides its time with mildly diverting shenanigans until the time comes for Culkin to wreak unlikely and hellish torment upon some burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. It's easy to see the appeal for a kid, but a little harder to explain the absurd popularity of this film-- I was shocked to discover it played in first run theaters for at least seven months and spent twelve straight weeks at number one and despite being released in November of 1990 its last appearance in the Box Office Top 10 was in June of the following year! It's still the highest grossing comedy of all time, no doubt from eager audiences wanting to come back to relive the fun (if not quite as fun as I remembered) final twenty minutes of mayhem.

It's only natural that Hollywood would demand a sequel, and so thus came Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which seems to flip the premise on its head (Instead of defending the homestead, Little Kevin is now turned loose in the big bad world all by himself) while being transparently sequel-y in its echoes, ripoffs, and continuations of jokes from the first film. It is a blatant cash grab, culminating with an outrageous house of horrors inside a dilapidated tenement house that outdoes the first film in sheer gristly forthrightness and gives an audience eager for yuks at the expense of pain and torment their money's worth. Here's the thing though: the sequel is without a doubt a better film. It has no claims to be anything other than a cash-grab, and it is so gleeful in its upping of the already established antes of the first flick that getting upset about it hardly seems worth it. Home Alone is hardly a classic unless you're eight years old, and the wonderful excesses of the sequel are executed with an admirable bravado (and the treacly "feel good" moments are so artificial and shoehorned in that they almost function on the level of a David Wain-type parody) that also has the foresight to be snappily paced, features better continuity editing than the sloppy first film, and despite being longer feels shorter. Also, though there is even less excusing the booby traps this round (there is no conceivable reason for Little Kevin to not call the cops at almost every juncture of his NYC journey and subsequent interactions with Harry and Marv), they are so brutally sadistic and actually funny in their Wile E Coyote manner that unlike the first film I found myself laughing out loud at their tastelessness. It helps that Stern and Pesci are given more broadly comic perimeters this round and their cartoonish buffoonery during their mutilation helps ease the pill of what is essentially a rather dark exploitation of the basic principle of comedy. Great art or even escapism it's not, but there's a certain crude charm to the sequel, and so I was surprised to discover that for all its excesses and lack of originality, sometimes bigger really is better.

[colinr0380]

I sometimes think that Home Alone is a family film version of something like Straw Dogs or Night of the Living Dead: all slow boiling tension and mounting menace until the final cathartic bloodbath. It is also strange that the old man that Kevin teaches to appreciate the joy of family during the holiday season is played by Roberts Blossom, whose perhaps biggest role was in the horror film Deranged!

I agree that Home Alone 2 is strangely faker and more contrived in its set up (especially in the airport mix-up that I remember thinking could never occur even at the time, let alone now) and features a similar lonely-but-magical old person being taught to love again by Kevin (Brenda Fricker in a strangely out of time pigeon lady role that makes it seem as if she has wandered in from Mary Poppins). The bad guys are cartoonishly larger than life, and so over-confident or pompous that they are begging to be brought down a peg or two. And I agree that as soon as the conveniently empty yet half refurbished building owned by an extended relative gets brought up, the audience immediately knows where the climax is going to be set!

Despite throwing out the McAllister family and the Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern characters (I like the implication that it takes a much larger band of thugs to replace our previous villains!), turning it into a cut-price version of the more celebrated first two films, I did not mind Home Alone 3. Particularly for the character of a grumpy old biddy neighbour who the bad guys kidnap and drug, which ends up teaching her some sort of lesson about being a better person, which somehow turns her into a fully rounded person able to appreciate the joy of children by the happy ending.

Scarlett Johannson turns up in an early role for about thirty seconds which just require her to wander past her younger brother's door and verbally bully him a couple of times. The film, as usual for the series, takes a bit too long to get the kid and the crooks together. And the use of the 'death traps' for the crooks depends far too much on characters doing an action at precisely the right time or in the right order for maximum impact. The presence of a far too cute pet rat and parrot, neither of whom act like animals but like choreographed stage animals with precise actions are also part of why the death traps are so unbelievable! Also I noted the sudden introduction of a deus ex machina dumb waiter near the end of the film obviously ends up having a significant part to play in the action.

Here are some miscellaneous questions inspired by Home Alone 3, but it would also generally apply to the first film too: Why does this seemingly 'normal' 'middle-class' suburban family have both a swimming pool and a giant trampoline coincidentally exactly the same shape as the pool AND a small motorised vehicle whose only function appears to be transporting the trampoline around from place to place? Do all American families live inside gigantic palatial multi-floor suburban mansions? Is there a part of the US where it is always winter-time with just the right amount of snow to look picturesque but not bring civilised life to a halt, all the better to let the parents get urgently called away to urgent work meetings?

Does this foray into child-centred John Hughes films mean that you will be looking at the father-daughter con artist-turned sentimental treatise on the importance of family, Curly Sue domino?

[domino harvey]

Curly Sue isn't on the docket but I already saw Hughes' other 90s forays into extending the last act of Home Alone into cheap kids entertainment, Dennis the Menace and Baby's Day Out, though I'm not sure my childhood memories could withstand revisiting!

[domino harvey]

Hudson Hawk (Michael Lehmann 1991) I've really got to stop letting my viewing choices be led by variations on "How bad could it really be?" Oh brother, this much-maligned Bruce Willis vanity pic is every bit as awful as its punchline reputation suggests, with Willis playing a standards-singing cat burglar forced to pilfer the secret parts to Da Vinci's alchemy machine. Or something. Who cares, no one in the film does. Intentional overacting for comic effect can occasionally work, but here's the worst case scenario: dumb, audience-insulting nonsense masquerading as hep superiority. Sorry guys, but you can't bluff your way into a seat at the cool table. At one point Andie MacDowell (who, it must be said, is quite possibly the worst deliverer of line readings in Hollywood history) starts making dolphin noises for no reason and it's the least confusing element on screen at that moment (I believe this is around the time she's tied to a chair and communicating with a silver spray-painted chameleon named Kit Kat, played by David Caruso, via pre-printed business cards, to give you some context), so there's also that.

Under Siege (Andrew Davis 1992) Ah Steven Seagal. Though I know I've seen bits and pieces of his work given that I grew up with basic cable and all the premium channels, I'm not sure I've seen a full-length work from his oeuvre til now. Under Siege is helped along by strong maniacal performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey as the villains (though those two could do this kinda stuff in their sleep, and have). Seagal himself is a weirder presence: sexless and cryptic, his soft-spoken nature and vocal awkwardness are at direct odds with his choreographed fighting skills, and it's easy to see why he could lead an action film, but he struggles anytime he's not called upon killing someone (luckily that's pretty rare here). I know action films in general are rarely the place to look for strong female characters, but holy hell is Erika Eleniak's Playboy Playmate tagalong the most worthless female character in any action film I think I can think of. Though the future Baywatcher is hardly a thesp to begin with, she's not exactly gifted with a role anyone could do anything with (Though she does get the film's biggest laugh when she literally starts shadowing Seagal because "the safest place is right behind you"). Super secondhand cringes at the out of nowhere romantic punchline with these two as well!

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Geoff Murphy 1995) Unfortunately, if Under Siege is just barely a good action film, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is just barely a bad one. Set on a train rather than a sub, the film finds Seagal improbably cavorting in and around a moving Grand Continental which has been taken over by tech-savvy domestic terrorists. Eric Bogosian is at-times amusing in a familiar villain role, but his scheme is so dumb that it should never have made it past a first draft: He demands a billion dollars from foreign terrorists in return for using a secret military satellite to blow up a nuclear reactor under the Pentagon. Above everything else wrong with this plan, what precisely does he expect will happen to the value of American currency is all of Washington and the Eastern seaboard is blown up? Though this is almost undermined as the stupidest thing in the film by the part where one of the foreign interests offers Bogosian an extra $100 million to blow up a plane with the foreigner's ex-wife aboard. $100 million. Sure, that could happen… ON OPPOSITE DAY. I know I'm not supposed to actually think about anything in an action movie, but this film's not good enough to keep me distracted from idiocy like this (or how an important CD-ROM isn't destroyed immediately upon its usurpation, or how two trained military intelligence officers wouldn't just succumb to certain death rather than give top secret codes at the expense of the safety of millions, or why Katherine Heigl's bratty niece is placed in a noose and given a live grenade for the last ten minutes by the bad guys instead of just being killed and yet she doesn't use the grenade to kill any of the bad guys, or how Steven Seagal is able to outrun and board a train in a beat-up pickup truck, or why the bad guys would let Jonathan Banks keep driving their train if it was going to hit the gas tanker head on, or why Jonathan Banks would hit the gas tanker head on and kill himself in the process, or or or or or or or or). I somehow still kinda enjoyed this low rent waste of time, maybe because I kept waiting for it to top itself in mid-90s action nonsense. And on that front the film delivers.

[swo17]

Spotlight: Bouquets 1-10 (Rose Lowder)
The centerpiece of Re:voir's DVD devoted to this director comprises 10 one-minute films each attempting to form the cinematic equivalent of a bouquet of flowers--un bouquet d'images. In other words, Lowder quickly cuts between two distinct images (usually of what else but flowers) to give a kinetic boost to the mostly static shots, and to create the illusion of superimposition between them (which you can only see is not the case if you watch one frame at a time). And then occasionally when the component images are more fluid to begin with, things can get pretty wild, sort of like if real-life bouquets could be made out of mountains and waterfalls instead of just flowers. The films were all made between '94 and '95 (as announced at the end of each one) and are presented in seemingly random order here. But if you train your eyes well enough you might be able to start predicting which ones were made earlier vs. later, as Lowder seems to develop a better sense of what make for the most compelling juxtapositions as she goes along. That being said, the films play well together and are regularly mentioned as one combined entry in Lowder's filmography, so feel free to vote for them that way if you are so inclined.

The Adjuster (Atom Egoyan)
Somehow, instead of having hope for the future and working to rebuild, the lesson that we seem to have learned from the story of Noah's ark is to put things in categories so that we can have two of everything. The characters in Egoyan's (surprise) ensemble film find themselves at various points in this spectrum--an insurance adjuster who deals daily with abject loss but who also (lovingly) collects victims like playing cards (gotta have 'em all!), a movie censor who categorizes offensive material into well delineated buckets so that she can carry them home with her that way, or a rich couple so far beyond merely having what they need that they choose to role-play increasingly bizarre scenarios involving people that have less than them, perhaps in an effort to get back to the basics. It's heady stuff, and when these characters cross paths, it usually only makes sense in ways that can be felt rather than explained. And yet, did I mention that this is maybe Egoyan's funniest film, striking a careful balance between sincere naivety and knowing crassness that can perhaps best be described as Lynchian? It must also be acknowledged that Elias Koteas and Maury Chaykin are at career-best levels here.

[bamwc2]

First viewing log of the project:

Dr. Akagi (Shôhei Imamura, 1998): In what is bound to be only the first of two Imamura films that I will watch for the project, Akira Emoto stars as Dr. Fuu Akagi, a provincial Japanese physician who fights a private battle against hepatitis during the waning days of WWII. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of patients that he has on his plate constantly thwarts his attempts to study the disease. To make matters worse, the military takes interest in his efforts, but prove to be more trouble than they're worth when the humanitarian doctor begins to shelter an escaped Dutch P.O.W. Akira Emoto does a typically wonderful job in the lead role, playing a complex role with an underlying humanity that cannot be denied. There is, sadly, a bit of fat on this film that could have been trimmed out with a more critical eye, but overall, it's another winner from Imamura that falls just short of greatness.

From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport, 1995): Speaking of greatness, this docudrama from Rappaport effortlessly achieves the definitive interpretation of Seberg's life and career through a meticulously crafted script that seamlessly blends clips from her career with narration from Mary Beth Hurt. Rappaport's knowledge of his subject is as vast as is his apparent admiration for her character and appreciation of what she achieved despite the overwhelming way that life beat her down. Though not every film in her catalog gets a mention, we see both the highlights and the lowlights, from her start as a naive 17 year old in over her head playing Joan of Arc for the tyrannical Otto Premminger to the final series of forgettable turns in her husband's vanity projects. Along the way, we're treated to thoughtful tangents on Jean-Luc Godard, Clint Eastwood, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jane Fonda. The latter two are cast as the rivals to Seberg's status of transatlantic female lead, while Eastwood's "love 'em and leave 'em" attitude toward their on set affair only further plunges the actress deeper into depression. While Rappaport does a great job on his end, none of it would have worked without the tour de force performance by Hurt as the ghost of the departed actress, guiding through her doomed life while hitting every emotional note exactly right. After seeing this and The Celluloid Closet, I sure hope that Rappaport has another documentary in him, or two, or three...

JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December (Jean-Luc Godard, 1994): Speaking of Jean-Luc Godard, I'll being the first of several of his entries on my log with this autobiographical tale of him going through the motions of the day. We begin with him fretting over everything that could go wrong with his current project, and go through his reflections on art, cinema, music, France, tennis, and life. There is no coherent plot to speak of, just Godard talking about whatever he feels like. I honestly can't tell if this was brilliant or a waste of time. Like many of JLG's latter works, it doesn't even feel like it's open to critical appraisal.

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksey German, 1998): Toward the end of his life Joseph Stalin became convinced that he was the victim (or soon to be victim) of a cabal of Jewish doctors. During this time many Jewish doctors were purged across the nation, with this pogrom ending only with the death of the mad tyrant. This doesn't sound like the ideal subject matter for a comedy, but German's pitch black film attempts exactly that, following army surgeon Yuri Glinshi (Yuri Tsourilo) expulsion from his rank and exile in a Siberian gulag. Yuri goes through some very rough treatment, but isn't exactly the easiest character to sympathize with given his own propensity to narcissism and tyranny within his own ranks. I suppose that perhaps the best way to describe it might be to say that it's the sort of film that you'd get if Emir Kusturica gave up all faith in humanity and made his own version of Salo. As interesting as that might sound, it wasn't quite my cup of tea.

May Fools (Louis Malle, 1990): Malle's antepenultimate film opens with the death of the matriarch of a provincial French family. As the family gathers to divide the estate it seems to be another film of manners akin to say his previous work Au Revoir Les Enfants. However as it continues on, it's quite clear that Malle's aim is closer to the surreal skewering of bourgeois culture found in late Buñuel. Toward the end it even turns out closer to Ruiz's The Territory. The final result again falls short of greatness, but still makes for a very entertaining ride. It's not going to make my final list, but it's worth a viewing and I'd certainly welcome any eventual Criterion release.

Rônin-gai (Kazuo Kuroki and Masahiro Makino, 1990): A group of Samurai without masters congregate in a feudal bar/bordello. They spend their days in a drunken stupor an getting angry at one another, but still dream of regaining their glory and escaping their lives. However, things change when local prostitutes begin to be found butchered at the hands of retinue of a constable that believe themselves to be cleansing the world of evil. When they kidnap one of the brothel's most beloved employees, their quest for purity takes a back seat to their avarice, culminating in one heck of a battle. After watching this, all I can say is thank God for Criterion's Hulu channel. This film is no masterpiece, but it's very good. It's also the sort of film that failed to garner an audience upon its initial US debut. Without a company that devotes its space to the loving preservation of the deep cuts of world cinema, it also never have been on my radar in the first place.

[knives]

Dom's already done this more thoroughly than I care to, but that Rappaport junk is more lies and misinformation than a definitive portrait of a complex figure.

[Tommaso]

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksey German, 1998): Toward the end of his life Joseph Stalin became convinced that he was the victim (or soon to be victim) of a cabal of Jewish doctors. During this time many Jewish doctors were purged across the nation, with this pogrom ending only with the death of the mad tyrant. This doesn't sound like the ideal subject matter for a comedy, but German's pitch black film attempts exactly that, following army surgeon Yuri Glinshi (Yuri Tsourilo) expulsion from his rank and exile in a Siberian gulag. Yuri goes through some very rough treatment, but isn't exactly the easiest character to sympathize with given his own propensity to narcissism and tyranny within his own ranks. I suppose that perhaps the best way to describe it might be to say that it's the sort of film that you'd get if Emir Kusturica gave up all faith in humanity and made his own version of Salo. As interesting as that might sound, it wasn't quite my cup of tea.

I watched this one recently, too, and found it rewarding but very difficult to follow. Seriously, if you don't read up on the end of the Stalin era and especially on the so-called "doctor's plot" before watching the film, the narrative will be almost impenetrable (even more so than in "Hard to be a God"). Still, German's fascinating way of cramming the frame with people and objects in the indoor scenes perfectly underlines the general feeling of terror and oppression, and in visual terms this is quite outstanding in general. And it doesn't skimp on humour, either. The scene when Glinshi visits the dying Stalin on his deathbed is priceless, but only one example for the film's dark, sardonic comedy. A very unusual and probably brilliant film.

[bamwc2]

Dom's already done this more thoroughly than I care to, but that Rappaport junk is more lies and misinformation than a definitive portrait of a complex figure.

Really? I don't know about any of this? Do you know here it's discussed on here?

[domino harvey]

I've talked about it in All That Heaven Allows and Breathless threads. In short, Rappaport's take on Seberg is heavily filtered through an agenda that twists and manipulates his "evidence" (the films in question) to fit his thesis-- kind of like when students write their research paper first and then find quotes to support what they've already "found." I don't know how familiar you are with some of the films he cherry-picks, but some of his misreadings (like for Tall Story) are just straight-up insulting, and because I can't trust his perspective on the films I've seen (which is most in the doc), I can't take his word for it on the rarer (and unseen by me) films Seberg made with her ex, which Rappaport makes out to be testaments to all things wrong with men. His thesis is reductive (Seberg is a victim and by default Hollywood makes victims of all its ingenues) and not borne out by the evidence in the films he uses. As a fellow educator, I'd encourage you to check his Works Cited more closely!

[Tommaso]

Some of the films I watched in the last weeks:

Gohatto (Nagisa Oshima 1999): Oshima's final film is about the destructive power of homosexual erotic attraction in an all-male society (in this case a school for samurai in the 1860s) and as such harks back to "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", but the film has a much more slow-going, almost meditative quality. 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano as the old samurai who sees order fall apart but who is secretly as fascinated by the young, androgynous newcomer Sano as everybody else is a great casting choice. All in all though, the film is far less provocative than I expected from Oshima. Instead, much of it plays like an homage to the great classical masters of the Japanese cinema. The use of wipe cuts, occasional intertitles and a certain feeling of distanced observation makes this reminiscent of early Kurosawa and especially Mizoguchi, while the dreamlike final sequence looks like something straight out of Kobayashi's "Kwaidan". Not a great masterwork, but quite a beautiful film.

Industrial Symphony #1 (David Lynch 1990): This 45 min. film is the result of a stage performance by Lynch and Badalamenti featuring Julee Cruise as the dream incarnation of a woman who has just been left by her boyfriend: in the 'real life' introduction we see Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the telephone, so this plays a little like an off-shoot of "Wild at Heart". However, the main part is the 'dream of the brokenhearted' (the additional title of the film) set in a large industrial hall peopled with the usual Lynch assembly of weird characters and filmed in Lynch's typical oneiric style. Much of it could be part of an Einstürzende Neubauten video were it not for the beautiful dreamlike music and enchanting moments like Cruise floating through the air singing; something that nobody but Lynch could have filmed this way. Brilliant.

Faust (Jan Svankmajer 1994): Svankmajer's adaptation of the Faust legend uses the texts of the classical literary renderings of the story (mostly Goethe and Marlowe, among some others) but transfers it to the present day. His Faust character is an everyman who just becomes involved in the story by receiving a map on which some mysterious spot is marked (a touch of Rivette here?) and which spurns his interest. Then the proceedings begin: the place he finds in a backyard is half marionette theatre, half alchemical laboratory, and Svankmajer's animation technique is extremely effective in conveying the supernatural machinations of Mephistopheles of whom Faust becomes - literally - a marionette. Not sure what the intended meaning of all this might be, but it's an absurd, surrealist and often also darkly funny film.

Careful (Guy Maddin 1992): Alledgedly Maddin wanted to make a film set in the mountains while his screenwriter wanted to make a 'pro-incest' film, so the two of them simply put the two ideas together, and out came this brilliantly weird film which references quite a number of things, from classical horror films and melodrama to mountain films, Arnold Fanck style. Intertitles, crackly soundtrack and especially the various beautiful tintings make this a wonderful homage to silent films but peopled with exceedingly strange chracacters, not unlike the dream world of some of the Quay Brothers' films. In spite of all these references a highly original film which I find hard to describe but can't recommend enough.

[domino harvey]

A Time to Kill (Joel Schumacher 1996) I'm pretty sure I spent the summer of '96 with the TV permanently turned to E! so I saw the trailer for this film (during Coming Attractions with ultra-bland Todd Newton!) enough that I could easily reconstruct it from memory during an actual viewing. I probably could have stuck with the trailer, but on the whole this is a well-made and well-acted film, better than you'd expect from it being an Important Film about race in the South and the Klan and legal maneuvering &c &c &c. Cribbing from the Pelican Brief cheat-sheet, this Grisham adaptation follows suit and casts America's Sweetheart at the time of casting, the top-billed Sandra Bullock, though she only has about twenty minutes of screen time out of the two and a half hours. The film is really Matthew McConaughey's as the well-meaning lawyer who defends a guilty Samuel L Jackson against the charge of shooting the white trash who raped his ten-year-old daughter before they could even go to trial. There is some lurid over-excitement in the way the film devotes so much time to Klan activities and terrorization, and the film does much better when it sticks to the colorful characters surrounding McConaughey and doesn't try to swing out of its weight class with the preachiness. Overall it's not nearly good enough to recommend on its merits, but despite its unfashionable status it's not bad enough to recommend against either.

After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley 1990) Artsy noir adaptation of the Jim Thompson novel, shot with visual wit and smartly plotted and laid out. This is a movie made by people who understand noir conventions and hold their source material in just the right amount of reverence to produce a strong film adaptation. Jason Patric is surprisingly effective in the lead as an escaped mental patient who finds his way into a conventional noir kidnapping scheme and double-cross. There's also an interesting b-plot that hints without ever making explicit a local doctor's prurient interest in Patric's patient that for all the sex and language and violence in this film manages to transport the film back forty years prior (and it works!). Bruce Dern is a lot of fun as "Uncle Bud" (Which is just the perfect name for a man too unflaggingly genial to be trusted about anything) and Rachel Ward makes a better noir femme fatale here than she did in Against All Odds. Full of the requisite twists and tragedies of the best noirs, this is an easy film to recommend for this and our upcoming Noirs redux, should you be moved to vote for a few post-classic era titles.

Johnny Mnemonic (Robert Longo 1995) As a rule, the internet-exploiting films of the 90s have not held up well, as evidenced earlier in this thread re: the Net and Hackers, and while this is markedly the weakest of that trio, it like the others has a certain charm in its awfulness. At least this film goes balls-to-the-wall in its terrible ideas and execution, with Keanu Reeves playing a human USB drive (it's unfair to the film to judge it by today's technology, but how far we've come that I can fit an entire Keanu Reeves into a portable hard drive the size of a wallet and still have room for several more human couriers within) who must race against time to dump a large download from his head before his brain explodes, or something. The movie, like most dystopian future flicks, is ugly to look at and uglier still to spend time with, and if you ever wanted to see Henry Rollins shouting swears as a medical doctor, this is your flick. And I haven't even mentioned Dolph Lundgren as a bionic preacher or Ice-T as a hobo clan leader with the anarchy symbol tattooed between his brows. Yeah, it's that kind of film.

the Pelican Brief (Alan J Pakula 1993) The master of the conspiracy film gives it one last try here with this high-profile John Grisham adaptation concerning a convoluted plot to assassinate two Supreme Court justices. I don't know how I had the patience as a kid to sit through all 141 minutes of this, but watching it again as an adult I can speak to my enjoyment of how patient the film is with its pacing and structure. Maybe a bit too patient, at times, but the film is ultimately more successful than the rather lame the Firm adaptation of the same year at giving a satisfying resolution to all the shadowy mechanics in play. Julia Roberts is on hand as the plucky law student who solves the crime and then inadvertently causes the death of everyone she involves in her theory, and most of the film consists of Roberts running away or towards someone or somewhere. Presumably Tulane has a nice gym to prepare its students for such needs. While Denzel Washington is wasted as the reporter who eventually (maybe halfway through the film!) gets roped into helping Roberts, the rest of the cast is solid in their small roles. I particularly enjoyed Stanley Tucci as the disguise-happy foreign assassin-- I suspect the only two things anyone remembers about this film after the fact are the parking lot chase finale and the porno theatre murder scene, and Tucci's calm demeanor and measured movements in the latter greatly help set its tone. Pakula also wrote the adaptation and while this isn't remotely in the same league as his best work in the field, it's pretty good as far as late period auteur efforts go.

Trespass (Walter Hill 1992) Finally, another Walter Hill film I liked! Scripted by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis of Back to the Future, this basic cable staple features Arkansas firefighters William Sadler and Bill Paxton acting on a treasure map by driving down to East St Louis and tearing up the floors of the same abandoned factory where a gang led by Ice-T has just executed one of their own. The resultant chaos and complications as Paxton and Sadler hole up in the residential quarters in the middle of the building as Ice-T and his men, which include Ice Cube and Tony Lister, find all sorts of ways to keep them from escaping without first freeing their hostage, Ice-T's crippled brother, move things along well. Oh, and the gold. There is gold, and you can imagine how that complicates things. Fast-paced and full of fun performances, this is fine entertainment with a mean spirit suiting the Treasure of Sierra Madre-lite plot, and I appreciated the varying degrees of racial commentary afforded by the extreme gentrification of Paxton and Sadler and how they interact with the "villains" (who are frequently more interesting than our ostensible "heroes").

[knives]

It relaxes me to know there's still at least one more good Pakula to treat myself to. My library surprisingly has all of his '90s flicks so hopefully that means you'll hear back from me on that account soon.

[Dr Amicus]

Johnny Mnemonic was the surprise film at the London Film Festival that year - and you could hear the very audible sighs of disppointment in the 900 or so strong audience. What was particularly galling was that there was a competition before the film to guess what it is was going to be - and the prize was a pair of tickets to the closing night Gala of Casino, tickets for which were like gold dust. Amazingly, 7 people made the right guess...
As to the film itself, I agree with Domino's assessment - you know you're in trouble when Dolph Lundgren has the best role. There is a longer cut (by about 16 mins I think) for the Japanese market with more Beat Takeshi in - I haven't seen it so I don't know if it's superior in any way or just prolongs the agony. Even stranger, it was the cover film of Sight and Sound that month - the accompanying article being a lot more interesting the film IIRC.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Gosh, I really really hate A Time To Kill. It's such an idiotic "serious" movie. There's no cliché that can't be used to full effect. Even the judge is called Noose! Take this and Schumacher's 'Falling Down' as a double bill and you've a pair of morally ambiguous movies that make my stomach a little nervous.

[domino harvey]

Cutthroat Island (Renny Harlin 1995) Infamous mega-bomb that sunk careers and a studio in addition to pirate ships. This period piece tries for a tone imitating flippant 30s adventure flicks, but few on hand are capable of replicating the right presence needed to pull off such throwback aping. Geena Davis is spectacularly miscast here as the heroine, though she'll prove in the next year's the Long Kiss Goodnight (also directed by her then-husband Harlin) that she is capable of being an effective action film lead. Just not this one. Only Matthew Modine as the requisite Errol Flynn-ish wag finds a way of making the overwritten and impossible lines he's asked to spit out work. Some of the action is mildly involving, some not. Though ultimately not much of a film, its inflated reputation and notoriety are unearned-- this is a mild and inoffensive misfire, not a disaster. Or at least, it shouldn't have been.

Hard to Kill (Bruce Malmuth 1990) As the film opens, cop Steven Seagal is stuck doing surveillance on Oscars night, and the fun little runner of him and his partner caring about the Oscars gave me hope that this could be an action film with a sense of willingness to give its characters interesting and unexpected beats. This optimism lasts entire minutes before it all devolves into a really dumb revenge story as Seagal's wife is murdered and he's put into a coma for seven years before awaking and seeking revenge on the crew who tried to take him out. Hey, that sounds familiar… is everyone's favorite director a fan? It's a bad enough movie to presume so!

Lansky (John McNaughton 1999) Perhaps screenwriter David Mamet got jealous of Bugsy doing such a good Mamet imitation that he felt he had to even the score by covering much of the same material on his own terms. Sadly, while the script has some requisite Mamet bon mots (When a crime boss complains that a hot head keeps wanting to shoot people, Lansky replies "You go to a barber, he's going to suggest you get your hair cut"), the direction on McNaughton's part is perfunctory and uninspired. Mamet's approach of handling Meyer Lansky primarily through a lens focusing on his Jewishness (and indeed strongly arguing that the government's pursuit of organized crime was out of racial oppression more than desire for justice, a position fittingly bonkers for Mamet given some of his longer walks down similar piers) is an intriguing one, but is ultimately undeveloped. Richard Dreyfuss is okay in the central role, but no one else even leaves an impression, and McNaughton's confused direction and lack of understanding on how to structure Mamet's rapidfire lines within his pedestrian blocking and pacing is ultimately more than the film can bear.

My Cousin Vinny (Jonathan Lynn 1992) Overlong but ultimately charming (if slight) culture clash comedy, with Joe Pesci as the Brooklyn ambulance chaser trying to get his cousin and friend off capital murder charges on his very first court trial. Pesci is flamboyant but crucially competent and observant (though mostly only when it's convenient for the plot) and the film finally perks up once he is able to start utilizing his nascent skills in the courtroom. Of course one cannot talk about this film without mentioning its notoriety re: Marisa Tomei's win for Best Supporting Actress AKA the biggest upset in Oscar history, a win so surprising that many are still convinced she could not possibly have won it on legit terms. I suspect these conspiratorial whiners have not seen the film, as Tomei plays a likable supporting character graced with an audience-pleasing showstopper in the finale that is exactly the kind of thing the Academy loves. Though the film has its share of problems (it could stand to be funnier, for starters), it is a film worth defending on the grounds that it presents all of its central characters on both sides of the court battle as ultimately competent and skilled in their arenas, and there's something to be said about a movie that doesn't make anyone of significance a yokel or a big city idiot but instead finds humanity and use in all. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, apparently the film is quite a hit with real-life lawyers, which makes me smile.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994): Having not seen any of Hal Hartley's work since 1997's Henry Fool, I thought that it would be fitting to fill in some of my gaps with the king of decade's US indie scene. Starting with 1994's Amateur, arguably his most famous feature, I was immediately reminded of how stilted and unnatural his dialogue is. Everyone talks like everyone else in the film, and nobody sounds like a real person. Hartley's hardly the only screenwriter guilty of this sin, and when the film has enough going for it otherwise it's only a venial offense. Fortunately, I found the story interesting enough to overlook the script's imperfections. Here Martin Donovan stars as an unnamed amnesiac taken in by Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert). The two soon find that their fates are connected in ways that stretches the limits of credulity, leading the pair into the grip of a European gangster. It's far from a great film, but there's barely enough there for a mild endorsement.

American Job (Chris Smith, 1996): And now we have another American indie, but one that I can't endorse. Here co-writer Randy Russell plays an aimless shlub that meanders from one dead end job to another. Really, nothing else happens here. He takes one job, then leaves it. He begins another one, then gets fired. Wash, rinse, repeat. Chris Smith would go on to make one of the great documentaries of the decade with his next project, but none of that promises shows in this outing. I failed to connect with this protagonist in any way, and there's just not anything about this story that I found remotely interesting.

The Famine Within (Katherine Gilday, 1990): Gilday's documentary, a mainstay of sociology and women's studies courses throughout the decade, examines the insanity behind the unrealistic body expectations that we place on women. While the image of the slender frame with a large bust is the dominant one in the media (with the "big booty" phenomena now regrettably gaining momentum), this ideal is enjoyed by only a fraction of a fraction of women. However, with this being nearly the only shape celebrated in film, television, magazines, etc., many women compulsively have felt the need to do whatever it takes to achieve this form, including literally dying. Perhaps the most eye-opening point comes from model Christine Alt, who discussed her jealousy of Karen Carpenter for being so skinny when she died. Some of the medical information in here is out of date (not surprising since the film is a quarter of a century old), and the aesthetic is limited mostly to talking heads and television clips, but the message is still as timely as ever and the point passionately made. My one criticism of the film comes with it's downplaying the health risks associated with obesity in women. They briefly mention that "some" doctors think that being overweight is a health risk, while they maintain that other, unnamed ones, do not. Make no mistake about it, obesity is a killer in both men and women.

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998): Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey play Bill and Marcella Willis, a couple of American ex-pats living in France. While the story of his writing career could have potentially made for an interesting focus, the film instead centers on the experiences of their children, America-born Charlotte, and French adoptee, Benoit (later Billy). The choice pays off, as the story of the two growing up in the French countryside (at an American school), and later as teenagers (played by Leelee Sobieski and Jesse Bradford) adjusting to the culture shock of living in small town Texas in the 70s proves to be far more interesting than my meager description can do justice. Although I'm typically on board with the forum's consensus of James Ivory films (with a few exceptions), this has to rank as both one of his least ambitious and best films. While that may sound like an odd form of praise, it proves true here as he focuses less attention to his meticulously crafted, but staid Merchant-Ivory aesthetic, and instead allows his story to unravel in a perfectly naturalistic manner.

Vive L'Amour (Ming-liang Tsai, 1994): In this, the first of several Tsai films that I plan on watching for the project, a trio of individuals, real estate agent May-Lin (Kuei-Mei Yang), her one night stand Ah-Jung (Chao-jung Chen), and suicidal squatter Hsiao-Kang (Kang-sheng Lee) all take turns (sometime simultaneously) surreptitiously staying in an unrented Taipei apartment. There's really not anything more not the plot than this, but as Tsai has demonstrated time and time again, he can craft a masterpiece out of a minimalistic molehill. While perhaps not a masterpiece (but very good nonetheless), the film crafts amusing and sometimes amazing situations from the highly mundane lives of these three squatters. This one is not to be missed.

[PillowRock]

Home Alone (Chris Columbus 1990) It's easy to see the appeal for a kid, but a little harder to explain the absurd popularity of this film-- I was shocked to discover it played in first run theaters for at least seven months and spent twelve straight weeks at number one

That was explained by Salma Hayek's muse character in Dogma.

[TMDaines]

The first post confirms that Riget is considered a mini-series and so is eligible for votes. I presume a vote for Riget is a vote solely for that single series. Riget II is not mentioned but I presume by extension that it is also eligible as a separate mini-series? I haven't seen either yet but plan to watch both if this is the case.

[Michael Kerpan]

Hated Home Alone and Home Alone 2 -- and have pretty much boycotted Mr. Columbus ever since. If I had to pick a "least favorite director", he'd probably get my vote.

[swo17]

The first post confirms that Riget is considered a mini-series and so is eligible for votes. I presume a vote for Riget is a vote solely for that single series. Riget II is not mentioned but I presume by extension that it is also eligible as a separate mini-series? I haven't seen either yet but plan to watch both if this is the case.

You can vote for the entirety of Riget (i.e. both I & II together) as a single "film."

[TMDaines]

Thanks, I did do a search but was still (evidently) unclear on how it was agreed before. I'll plan to get started on the first part then.

[knives]

Irma Vep
This is easily the best thing I have seen from Assayas. A warm satire that never breaks down its characters even as it breaks down the comfort of their realities. Even Leaud's has been director character seems too utterly human to feel only one emotion toward. The film seems entirely unable to love its contents even as it can't take them seriously. Even little side events such as the clip of the experimental film in the apartment witness this so perfectly. It's obviously a parody of such things with the end quote bordering on meaningless faux philosophy, but yet the film shows a little pride on it as if saying silliness allows for seriousness. The most telling thing though is how it utilizes Cheung's inability to speak French. There are a few jokes thrown in, but they're soft and very realistic to the situation shown. Rather Assayas uses this element of separation to build a great relationship, and I'm not just talking the obvious one, strengthening the connections between everyone. This also puts for me into greater relief the mediocrity of Lost in Translation which covers much of the same ground.

The Devil's Own
Last film for both Willis and Pakula. What a misfortune on one level since this is nobody's best work, but okay on another as the film is at its worst enjoyable pap. The movie is absolutely sanitized of any commentary regarding Pitt's character and the movie would probably be better if it just stuck with Ford's loser cop. Likewise the intersection between the two characters with Ford housing Pitt is pretty dumb though novel enough that it doesn't hurt. This is a rote and mechanical take, but the film is like that in a lot of ways too especially as it stumbles to a nonsensical ending.

Heat
I think I enjoyed this so much in part because of seeing LA Takedown some months ago. Though even without that fascinating exercise in storytelling by medium this is good enough a film to make me like Mann again after the tremendous failure of The Insider. The tone is the biggest benefit. Mann does pretty overplayed storytelling so his tendency toward verisimilitude falls to pieces when the actors react in like. Despite three well known hams in the leads the acting on display here is fortunately small with even Pacino's great big ass working well as a stripped away version a similar explosion would have in another movie. The only real negative is that the film feels like reheated Jean Pierre Melville, but I'd take even that over the shaken mess of The Insider.

Presumed Innocent
This is the dictionary definition of rising above the material which is woeful, smutty, Matlock type stuff. The direction and performances are for a film a million times the base quality and often tricked me into thinking it might be great which is probably the best show of talent from everyone here except maybe Raul Julia who definitely was in far worse films while being equally wonderful. Though I'd have to say that Paul Winfield's sarcastic judge is the highlight of the film and probably the most successful variation of this type of character since Young Mr. Lincoln.

Stone Cold
This is honestly one of the dumbest most nonsensical films I have ever seen. It exists in a world where social reasoning and the laws of physics have been replaced by masculinity. This is a movie where mobsters blow up a person with a grenade just because they saw him on the street. The person does not die.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Quick update:

Really loved the black humour and Brechtian sets of Michael Verhoeven's The Nasty Girl, as well as the spunky performance of Lena Stolze, as a teenage girl and later adult student investigating her town's murky past during the Third Reich.

Also too was really impressed by Bertrand Tavernier's It All Starts Today, which shows the struggles of a school in a small mining town facing economic and bureaucratic problems.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Flowers of Shanghai (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1998): Hou's film tells the story of the goings on at a late 19th century Chinese brothel, a place where patrons don't just have sex, but also gather to feast, play, and generally indulge in whatever sybaritic pleasure is available. Plot wise there is very little going on, just random vignettes of the behind the scenes machinations of the women who work there and the men who patronize the business. The film is visually gorgeous, but it ultimately strikes me as a minor entry into Hou's cannon. Lacking in focus, it just never connected for me.

Heat Wave (Hideo Gosha, 1991): Dear God, I love Gosha more with every one of his films that I encounter. This time the story focuses on Rin (Kanako Higuchi), a woman whose biological father was murdered by a Yakuza member after being caught cheating gambling. Having witnessed this as a young girl, Rin finds herself adopted by a middle class family that operates a restaurant. As an adult Rin takes up the same underworld gambling habit that got her father killed in a last ditch attempt to save her adopted parent's business, where she unexpectedly encounters Tsunejiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), the man who callously murdered her father years earlier. Instead of turning into a rote revenge story, the film takes an unexpected turn when Rin and Tsunejiro begin a passionate affair with bloody consequences. Gosha films are pure fun, filled with with over the top violence and sex, but also a panache that makes them indispensable. This is not to be missed.

Nowhere (Gregg Araki, 1997): I've yet to see a good film from Gregg Araki aside from Mysterious Skin. For whatever reason this entry from him came highly recommended. Don't be fooled. It's a largely unwatchable fairy tale of the last days on Earth before an apocalyptic alien lizard invasion is set to turn everyone into giant bugs. The main character, played by James Duval, is an unlikable moron, and Araki's "vision" is nothing short of a hyper kinetic mess.

Olivier, Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, 1992): Agnieszka Holland's Olivier, Olivier is a tale of loss and desperation. Olivier is a young boy who lives outside of Paris with his family. One day his parents send him to take a meal to his ill grandmother, but he never makes it there. His family is understandably devastated, with mother Elisabeth (played at first confidently by Brigitte Roüan, but switching to a broken woman after her son vanishes) buying new clothes for him every year that he's gone. The officer assigned to the case, l'inspecteur Druot (Jean-François Stévenin), vows to return Olivier safely, but without any leads the case soon falls apart. Years later a young street hustler (Grégoire Colin) shows up in Druot's office. The officer sees the possibility that this teenager may be a runaway Olivier. He asks the boy a few questions, and seems to get the right answers. Olivier's parents, desperate for their son's return, uncritically accept this youth as their missing son. The only one to raise doubts is Olivier's older sister Nadine (Marina Golovine). Also destroyed by the boy's disappearance, Nadine hurts herself until as a teenager, the girl...um...

Spoiler

develops telekinesis

So, okay, that part didn't work too well or even seem to fit in with the overall tone, but almost everything else in the film is great. Perhaps its because I am the father of a boy who is only slightly younger that Olivier was at the time of his disappearance, but so much of the film felt like a punch in the gut. Yes, that is a very strong recommendation.

Simple Men (Hal Hartley, 1992): Another Harlty vehicle, but one that I enjoyed a little less than the previously discussed Amateur. This time we find brothers Bill and Dennis McCabe searching for their radical fugitive father who has been on the run first over twenty year since being accused of bombing a government building. Neither man knows the father, but they go on the quest for different reasons. Bill (Robert John Burke) is himself a fugitive trying to lay low after a robbery. Dennis (Bill Sage), the younger of the two, is a naive idealist searching for the man both for answers and because he sees it as the right thing to do. Well, folks, this film is quirky as Hell (see the reoccurring joke of the traveling Mary medallion, or don't. It doesn't really matter). The dialogue is still clunky all around. I'm not sure if there's been an auteur as tone deaf at capturing the way that people speak since George Lucas. There are some entertaining moments, but, no, I can't recommend it.

La voce della luna (Federico Fellini, 1990): Speaking of failures, Fellini's final film might also be his biggest mess. Actually, it's less of a film than it is an ejaculation of tropes from Fellini's id onto celluloid. Large-breasted, middle-aged, obese women in barely there lingerie? Check. Toothless grinning country folk? Check. A nebbish buffoon who stumbles from one ludicrous situation to the next? Check, check, and check, as Roberto Benigni flails around from one damn scene to another. Is this piece of shit really by the same guy that made 8 1/2? It's hard to believe, but, yes.