Day 7 of the 90's Review: Most Tolerable Rom-Com/Love Story, Best Horror Pic, Best Western. 2 Genres I don't like that exploded in the 90's into cash cows, 1 that's almost dead that I do like.

Most Tolerable Romance/Romantic Comedy of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
French Kiss
Jerry Maguire
Shakespeare In Love
There’s Something About Mary
The Wedding Singer
WINNER: Jerry Maguire. Gosh, these movies are downright watchable. Maybe I shouldn't bag on this genre so much.

Best Horror Pic of the Decade:
The Blair Witch Project
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Scream
Sleepy Hollow
Tremors
WINNER: Scream. Sleepy Hollow isn't scary, just Tim Burton weird.

Best Western of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
City Slickers
Maverick
The Quick and the Dead
Tombstone
Unforgiven
WINNER: Tombstone. No contest. I love westerns, it's a shame there's so few good ones these days. Of these films, 2-3 are comedies. I know we're supposed to sacrifice our first born before Clint Eastwood making a western, but really, Tombstone is a much better movie, even factoring in the lame love story. Kurt Russell had a pretty solid 90's for a guy who doesn't really seem like a star.

Day 6 of the 90's Movie Review: Best Sports Movie, Best Gangster Movie, Best Social Issues Movie.

Best Sports Movie of the Decade (CRITERIA - best sports scenes, makes you love/hate/appreciate the sport):
NOMINEES:
Diggstown
Hoop Dreams
Jerry Maguire
Rudy
White Men Can’t Jump
WINNER: Rudy. Jerry Maguire is a better movie. But Rudy has those Rocky inspirational scenes and achieves the rare feat of making you like Notre Dame football for 2 hours. Jerry Maguire and Hoop Dreams are great movies for something more than the sports. White Men Can't Jump knows its role. Diggstown is one of my 90's guilty pleasures. Three underused actors (James Woods, Louis Gosset Jr., Bruce Dern) team up to make a movie about an underused sport (boxing).

Best Gangster Movie of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Goodfellas
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
Miller’s Crossing
Reservoir Dogs
The Usual Suspects
WINNER: Miller's Crossing. Lock, Stock, Reservoir Dogs, and The Usual Suspects aren't gangster movies proper - more caper pics. That leaves Goodfellas and Miller's Crossing, which came out the same year. Miller's Crossing is better acted, better written, and better directed. If you switched the names of who did it, Miller's Crossing would be Scorcese's crowning achievement and Goodfellas would be one of those 'eh' Coen brothers movies from the otts.

Best Social Issues Movie of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Courage Under Fire
Dangerous Minds
Falling Down
Forrest Gump
Philadelphia
WINNER: Philadelphia. Forrest Gump kind of wanders across issues, even if it's more enjoyable than Philadelphia. Philadelphia I like because it really went after 1-2 social issues, it did it at a time when it was relevant rather than chasing the issue down, it made the bad guys believable, but mostly because Denzel's character doesn't learn some lesson about embracing gay. Instead, he learns a more basic and bracing lesson about tolerance and humanity in living with a prejudice and respecting someone's humanity rather than changing his normative views.

90's Movie Review Day 4/5

I skipped a day so I'm doubling up. 6 categories: Best Movie About Lawyers, Best Documentary, Best War Movie, Best Animated Film, Best Parody of the Decade, Best Cult Hit of the Decade.

Best Movie About Lawyers (CRITERIA: Movie about lawyers, features court room drama, rampantly ignores due process):
NOMINEES:
A Civil Action
A Few Good Men
Liar, Liar
My Cousin Vinnie
Philadelphia
WINNER: Liar, Liar. First of all, I haven't seen A Time to Kill so I still don't know what might have become of Matthew McConaughey's shirt-wearing career. I think all of these movies are to a varying degree good. I go with Liar, Liar, despite its weakness as a court room drama, because it spends a healthy amount of time in court room nonetheless. A Few Good Men, the worst of the movies, should be credited for this being a genre. In fact, one of Liar, Liar's great services was to destroy the disturbing Clarence Darrow notion that lawyers are nothing but crusading do-gooders. Which is what ultimately puts the 'huh?' choice (A Civil Action) on this list - our hero is actually something of scumbag, but he's a scumbag in behaving like a crusading do-gooder,

Best Documentary:
NOMINEES:
Hoop Dreams
WINNER: Hoop Dreams. Sorry, I'm not taking any other applicants. Best documentary ever. Back before Michael Moore created the drive-by crusader self-promotion vehicle, people actually made gritty documentaries about things like urban dreamers. The documentary was about the subject matter, not the film maker. It was painstaking work, it was desperately honest, and it made no money. In perhaps the most ridiculous outcome of Academy Award history, this film was not nominated in the Best Documentary category because it was considered 'too good' for a documentary, but didn't make the final cut for best picture. Which it could rightfully have won.

Best War Movie:
NOMINEES:
Braveheart
Courage Under Fire
Last of the Mohicans
Saving Private Ryan
Starship Troopers
WINNER: Last of the Mohicans. Having safely covered the Vietnam topic backwards and forwards, Hollywood had a strange decade of war films. Most of them are historical in nature, so that we can attribute heroism in war to some lost era, like a costume ball or travel by sail. So we have William Wallace and the unnecessarily ahistorical rendering of blue faced scots. I must say that with most of Mel Gibson's post-lethal weapon films, I find myself wondering, "Why was this made?" even if they're pretty good. Saving Private Ryan began the 'we weren't so much heroes as just scared witless' trend which builds on a lot of social history but is sort of like making a western where people just herd cows. Courage Under Fire decided at least women could be combat heroes. Starship Troopers decided to mock the whole business with a quasi-facist, stylized send-up that featured the much under-used Dina Meyer and brought Doogie back from the dead. But all this was child's play to the classic Last of the Mohicans, a movie about one of the most obscure wars in American history which somehow eschews modern politics entirely to get the historical era right without seeming to lecture. Make sure to avoid the director's cut, which adds some preachy sections, and stick to the original theatrical version.

Best Animated Film of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Aladdin
Beauty & The Beast
The Lion King
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Toy Story
WINNER: Beauty & the Beast. Look, all of these are good movies. I'm routinely shocked at how good kids' movies are given that they're so excited to be at the theater that you could show them anything a step up from a baby giggling in the sun and they'd watch it. What's that? Tele-who-now? Huh. Anyway, special points for the inexplicable Nightmare Before Christmas for having the smallest target audience of a decent movie in cinema history - the 13 year old experimenting-with-Goth. With respect to the best, these and several more were all worthwhile animation films, but Beauty & the Beast is the only one that touches a nerve of nostalgia, even in this hard heart. Also, it has the best bad guy. So, yes, welcome Pixar, you'll have your millenium yet, but Beauty & the Beast wins this one for Disney...before they bought Pixar.

Best Parody of the Decade:
NOMINEES
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
The Freshman
Hotshots!
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Scream
WINNER: Scream. You probably looked at this category and thought 'those movies stink.' Yes, Adventure Movie stinks. But look at that list...those are a lot of good movies. Ultimately, The Freshman isn't enough of a parody, and Austin Powers just misses out for stealing the idea from Dana Carvey. Robin Hood is probably my favorite of the traditional-style parody films. But Scream, to me, distances itself by taking the parody idea and turning it into an homage to its genre, and a classic of its genre, all at the same time. Neat trick that.

Best Cult Hit of the Decade (Criteria: Came Out of Nowhere, Bizarre Loyalty and Re-Enactment Ritual, Not Popular on Initial Release, More Enjoyable with Each Re-Watching, Not Originally Marketed as a Cult Movie):
NOMINEES:
The Big Lebowski
The Blair Witch Project
Bottle Rocket
The Full Monty
Office Space
WINNER: The Big Lebowski. The Blair Witch Project was marketed as a cult movie, and it's extremely tedious on repeated watching. The Full Monty isn't so much a cult movie as much as it was just independent and British. And it's disappeared with-a-quickness. I have to acknowledge that, although i hear tell of other people liking Bottle Rocket, I notice more-and-more that almost no one else seems to like it besides me. Which leaves us with Office Space. It hits all the categories out of the park, but hasn't really drawn that Rocky Horror type following to it. It needs more printer smashing parties and Oh face contests before it can compete withe The Big Lebowski. I will always regret how few scenes we got with the oh-face guy. As for the champ, there's just no avoiding it. It resurrected the White Russian, it has an annual fest with arcane rituals, if you're in the know, you'll see plenty of achiever paraphernalia out-and-about. The last time I went, the movie started, and people on both sides of me just started talking, line-by-line, with the movie. I looked to my left and my right, and everyone just had a big smile on their face. This movie's just got it.

Day 3 of the 90's Review: Most Over-Rated Movie of the Decade, Most Important/Influential Movie of the Decade, and the 10 Best Inadvertent Porn Titles

Most Over-Rated Movie of the Decade (Criteria - Won awards it didn't deserve, doesn't stand up to repeated viewings, generally liked, considered artistic but is actually a lame mainstream Hollywood idea of what artistic should be, purports to be revolutionary but is actually quite derivative):
NOMINEES:
American Beauty
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Titanic
The Truman Show
WINNER: American Beauty. Spielberg is involved with 3 of these movies. That comes from his capacity to lend his name to something and have it taken more seriously than it deserves. All 3 of those first 3 films are above average movies which have come to be regarded as classics because of a) subject matter and b) attachment to Spielberg. American Beauty I have written on at length but suffice to say that it is Spielberg's (or Spielberg produced) movie on materialism and gayness. Two well-covered topics, getting the mainstream Hollywood treatment. Saving Private Ryan was 15 minutes of revolutionary war footage followed by 2 hours of tripe based on undergraduate social history classes and borrowed scenes from better war movies. Schindler's List was about the Holocaust. Apparently, it's impossible to make a bad Holocaust movie. By comparison, Titanic was panned by many reviewers, but the sheer weight of the directorial effort plus the huge popularity of the film mean it qualifies for this category. The Truman Show...all I can say is that we should have just given Jim Carrey the Oscar so that he could feel 'taken seriously' and go back to making us laugh. I blame his sub-par otts on this ultimately somewhat tedious 'high concept' movie being fawned over.

Most Important/Influential Movie of the Decade (Criteria - truly insightful, changed the way people think/behave, introduced new film techniques, created new genres):
NOMINEES:
Fight Club
Jurassic Park
Pulp Fiction
Scream
Toy Story
WINNER: Fight Club. Let's get the ones that weren't close out of the way first. Toy Story and Jurassic Park had a huge impact on film technique and the business of film. But they didn't have much to say, so they can't compete across the board. Scream created/revolutionized the horror genre but again, it was not socially important in any way. That leaves Pulp Fiction, which is a strong contender. Half of Hollywood wanted to be Tarantino almost overnight. He had a Nirvana-esque impact on the way scripts were written. He also has a true appreciation for the craft of film technique and many have mimicked his camera angles, etc as well. And in a sense, the elevation of style over substance, of homage over meaning, is itself socially important and relevant to a decade of irony and cynical detachment in love with self-reference. But ultimately, I think Fight Club is more important. Fight Club has had fewer copy cats...it's too unique to re-do. And it has also influenced film technique in the way it was shot and spliced. But the real key is that it hits a nerve with a broad segment. The funny thing is that reviewers don't have that nerve; they're not the audience. But to 18-to-25 year-old men of the 90's, this movie was on the tip of our tongues, this movie just gave it a name. It's American Beauty sans gay and plus balls. The fact that fight clubs sprung up all over the country is just icing on the cake. Also, this movie is just a better movie than Pulp Fiction.

Best Inadvertant Porn Title of the 90's:
I CANNOT PICK A CHAMP. YOU DECIDE:
The Bone Collector
Double Impact
Get Shorty
Free Willy
Mad Dog & Glory
Much Ado About Nothing
The Nutty Professor
Quigley Down Under
Sister Act
While You Were Sleeping
COMMENT: I have to say, I'm partial to Mad Dog & Glory, Much Ado About Nothing, and While You Were Sleeping.

Day 2 of the Round-Up: Worst Sequel of the 90's, Best Sequel of the 90's, Most 90's Movie.

Worst Sequel of the 90’s (CRITERIA - crushing lack of originality, high expectations from source movie, series/career killing):
NOMINEES:
* City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold. The legend was that more Jack Palance would make this movie better than the first...even though he died in the last movie. The reality - I crap bigger than this movie dreams.
* Honey, I Blew Up The Kids. Of course, at least there was no other direction to go. "Honey, I made the kids 2D"? Of, perhaps the more appropriate, "Honey, I made the kids morbidly obese."
* The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2. Take the first film, remove any sense of wonder, have one suspenseful scene (the car window cracking while they're over the cliff), farm the rest out to the interns. This world was best left virgin territory.
* Speed 2: Cruise Control. It's never a good sign when one of the stars won't sign on for round 2. Even Keanu was smart enough to see this coming. But then, to give it a subtitle that a) points out a gaping plot hole (why not just set it to cruise control) and b) suggests your action movie is proceeding at a leisurely pace...well, let's just hope Sandra Bullock needed the money.
* Wayne’s World 2. This was one of those 'grown up' moment movies where I realized that sometimes, it wasn't enough to just be at the theater. Maybe it's because I watched this on VCR. I literally was astounded at how un-funny this movie was. I was a pretty serious kid.
WINNER: Wayne's World 2. If I told you that Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken, and Chris Farley had top billing in a comedy with a cameo by Aerosmith and Charleton Heston, plus Tia Carrere, Heather Locklear, Kim Basinger, Drew Barrymore, and the funniest guy from Scurbs, you'd have high expectations. Wayne's World was funny. This movie was not. It's as though they forgot to film the funny scenes and just left the set-up in. This movie destroyed Dana Carvey's career and nearly ended Mike Myers' as well. Wow.

BEST SEQUEL OF THE 90's (CRITERIA - Good stand alone movie, better than the original):
NOMINEES:
Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Die Hard With A Vengeance (The Samuel L/Jeremy Irons one)
Scream 2
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Toy Story 2
WINNER: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Not a contest. I will say that I think you can argue that Toy Story 2 is better than the first, and that it's very easy to argue that Austin Powers 2 was better than the first (Mini-me). And Die Hard gets 'best series of the 90's' status by default. But Terminator 2 is the quintessential sequel. It takes everything from the first movie, turns it on its head, and makes it better. The first movie was a B-movie Iliad. This movie was an epic Cyber-Odyssey.

MOST 90'S MOVIE (CRITERIA - Reflects attitudes prevalent only in the 90's, audience would only be 90's audience, plot devices only relevant to 90's, has that 90's feel):
NOMINEES:
American Beauty - The standard 'non-standard' thought of the 90's.
Clueless - If historians called the 90's the 'Clueless Decade'...would you argue?
Dangerous Minds - Ah, the heroic teacher in the inner city epic. A generation inspired to spend 2 years in Teach for America before beating a hasty retreat to suburbia.
Space Jam - You might not know this, but Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny used to be big. Like i-phone big.
You’ve Got Mail - Perhaps never has a rom-com been so prisoner to a company and technology so swiftly irrelevant. A sad comment on the demise of AOL that the "You've Got Mail" notification's era was about as lengthy as the relatability of a film about e-mail being unfamiliar. The Coen Brothers should redo this movie as a send-up of the 90's. Then you're have something.
WINNER: Clueless. Smack dab in the middle of the decade, the film hits right at the notion that the 90's became the decade in which adolescence led the culture. Technically, we learn 'that there's more to life than clothes and popularity,'...but not much. In the end, it's better err on the side of pretty and blonde. This movie is less of an anachronism than its competitors, but it just seems more right. And, by teeny-bopper standards of our time, it's hopelessly innocent.

Rolling Out the FULL 90's REVIEW:

I've been hard at work on the full 90's review. I'll roll out a few categories every day, leading up to our actual top 25 movies of the decade.

Today: The Top 10 Bad Guys of the 90's, The Top 25 Scenes, and the award for best soundtrack of the 90's.

Top 10 Bad Guys of the 90's:
1. Hannibal Lecter – The Silence of the Lambs
2. Magua – Last of the Mohicans
3. Dr. Evil – Austin Powers/Austin Powers 2
4. The Scream Guy – Scream
5. Bob Sugar – Jerry Maguire
6. Evil T-1000 – Terminator 2
7. Lumberg – Office Space
8. The Dane – Miller’s Crossing
9. Shooter McGavin – Happy Gilmore
10. Castor Troy – Face/Off

The Top 25 Scenes of the 90's:
1. Christopher Walken vs Dennis Hopper – True Romance
2. The Hoola-Hoop – The Hudsucker Proxy
3. Look In Your Heart - Miller’s Crossing
4. Normandy – Saving Private Ryan
5. Verbal Kent = Kaiser Soze – The Usual Suspects
6. Happy Gilmore vs. Bob Barker – Happy Gilmore
7. You Can’t Handle The Truth! – A Few Good Men
8. You Had Me At Hello – Jerry Maguire
9. Pacino v. DeNiro – Heat
10. T-Rex Comes - Jurassic Park
11. Do You Like Scary Movies? – Scream
12. Are You Sure? I’m Positive – My Cousin Vinny
13. The Lobby Fight – The Matrix
14. Rudy’s Sack – Rudy
15. Doc Holliday Mocks Gun Acrobatics – Tombstone
16. Who’s Coming With Me – Jerry Maguire
17. Mercutio’s Death – Romeo + Juliet
18. Specks Kisses Wendy Peffercorn – Sandlot
19. Magua Cuts Out Greyhair’s Heart – Last of the Mohicans
20. The Final Heist – Bottle Rocket
21. JFK Assassination Explanation – JFK
22. Woody Harrelson Throws It Down – White Men Can’t Jump
23. Motorcycle Chase – Terminator 2: Judgment Day
24. I Killed My Sale – Tommy Boy
25. The Aliens Blow Up the White House – Independence Day / The Aliens Attack – Mars Attacks

The Award for Best Soundtrack (music had to be created for movie)
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Good Will Hunting
The Hudsucker Proxy
Last of the Mohicans
Rudy
THE WINNER: Last of the Mohicans

1999 In Film: A Listless Decade Waddles to a Close

Just a note, I'm taking a break, then I'll come up with my decade in review practice.

1999
TOP GROSSING
1. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
2. The Sixth Sense
3. Toy Story 2
4. The Matrix
5. Tarzan
6. The Mummy
7. Notting Hill
8. The World Is Not Enough
9. American Beauty
10. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

COMMENT: The 90’s end with George Lucas’ vigorous destruction of everyone from the 70’s childhood and a few quite good tech films like The Matrix and the Mummy. You can see where the Otts are headed.
WHAT WERE WE THINKING: The World Is Not Enough. This is the other bad Brosnan Bond movie before the last one.

ACADEMY AWARDS:
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense
Best Picture: American Beauty
Best Director: Sam Mendes - American Beauty
Best Actor: Kevin Spacey - American Beauty
Best Actress: Hilary Swank - Boys Don't Cry
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine - The Cider House Rules
Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie - Girl, Interrupted
COMMENT: Hollywood puts its foot down – political movies are the only kind of art. And Angelina gets a pre-emptive academy award.

THE REAL TOP 10:
1. Fight Club
2. Office Space
3. The Matrix
4. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
5. The Thomas Crowne Affair
6. Eyes Wide Shut
7. The Sixth Sense
8. South Park
9. The Blair Witch Project
10. Payback

MOST OVERRATED: American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Boondock Saints, Magnolia
Let me explain. I liked American Beauty the first time I saw it. I thought it was brilliant. I was 18. The girl I went with said her dad did the same thing with her friends. Anyway, I grew up. It’s not brilliant. It’s an artifact of late teenage despair. What I don’t get is why grown adults think it’s brilliant. Are they still 18 inside? Anyway, let’s not pretend this was a great film. It wears its ideas on its sleeve. The floating bag is trite, the notion that all the gay people are normal, the conservative is gay, and the straight couple is jacked up is the distilled essence of all the standard ‘non-standard’ thought of the time. It is a relic of the counter-culture-as-culture mindset. As for the others, Being John Malkovich is better on paper than in execution, like most Spike Jonze movies, overthought. Boondock Saints is one of the growing fad of ‘because its cool’ movies. I like Irish accents, but this just didn’t do it for me. Magnolia I remember being regarded as a big deal, but in retrospect, it is tedious and unwatchable.
MOST INFLUENTIAL: Fight Club
MOST 90’s: American Beauty
SHOULD HAVE SEEN: The Insider
SLEEPER/CULT HIT: Office Space
TOLERABLE ROM-COM OF THE YEAR: Notting Hill
BEST LINE (IN A BAD MOVIE): Tie.
- The Muse, “Are you a lesbian?” “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” “Oh, come on, dignify it with a no.”
- The World Is Not Enough, “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.”
BEST SCENE: Samuel L. gets eaten by a shark in the middle of his Deep Blue Sea inspirational speech.
SHAMELESS PROFITEERING: You might wonder why Analyze This and Mickey Blue Eyes both came out this year. Both of these movies are fairly funny movies about regular Joes getting mixed up with gangsters. The Sopranos started this year. For shame sirs. This makes me wonder – is Hollywood secretly sitting on all the good scripts, waiting for some reason to cheapen them by making them seem like quick profiteering schemes?
BEST SEQUEL: Austin Powers 2, Toy Story 2.
IMPLAUSIBLE PLOT TWIST IN HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE: So football players go to a strip club the night before a game, and we’re supposed to hate the coach because of their rampant irresponsibility?
TOTALLY IMPLAUSIBLE PLOT IN HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE: She’s All That. Let’s get this straight, Freddie Prinze, Jr. is well-liked…because he’s a soccer star and honors student. Because that sounds a) like America and b) likely for Freddie Prinze Jr. So then his high school girlfriend leaves him for a reality TV star she met at spring break…because a) high school girls go to spring break and b) that’s legal. So he makes some bizarre bet that anyone can be his girl friend and his best friend has to pick the least hot girl to turn into a decent girl friend. And his best friend picks the girl who, if she were to take her glasses off, is a model. Not even Paul Walker is that stupid. Everyone knows, in that situation, you pick the fatty. There’s not even a debate. The fatty. This was a Saved By the Bell episode. They picked the fatty. How else do you learn a lesson? The lesson in this movie is, "If a cute girl takes her glasses off, she's cute." The point is supposed to be to pick a physically unattractive person and teach us all about not being so shallow. Instead, Freddie Prinz Jr. teaches us, "You may not think you're hot, but you are."
HEADED THE WRONG DIRECTION: Comedy. Big Daddy begins Adam Sandler’s listless quest for mediocrity. The Man on the Moon hammers home Jim Carey’s already overlong quest for self…or an Oscar. Neither showed up.
HEADED IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS: Renee Zellweger chases Chris O’Donnell in ‘The Bachelor’. Unlikely that'll happen again.
GOING TOGETHER IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS: Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon hook up in Cruel Intentions. I could have told her then this was a bad career decision.
WE SHOULD BE DONE HERE: The Runaway Bride. Apparently people will pay 150 million dollars to relive Pretty Woman. Richard Gere should have gone away by now.
WE REALLY ARE DONE HERE: Kevin Costner - For Love of the Game, Message in a Bottle. Not even a desperate attempt to recapture Field of Dreams pays off…I guess Kevin can sympathize with being washed up and alone. The message in the bottle says, “it’s over.”
YEP, THAT WAS A BAD HALF DECADE: Arnold’s “End of Days”. A little too close to home with that title.
SHOULDN’T WE HAVE STARTED HERE: South Park creators finally make a South Park movie.
IT WAS A BAD YEAR: Matthew Broderick. The alarmingly tedious Election vies with Inspector Gadget for a career quickly slipping into ‘standing next to Sarah Jessica Parker’ status.
WHY DIDN’T THAT WORK: Wild, Wild West.
CAN WE TRADE THIS BROSNAN MOVIE FOR THAT ONE: Is there some reason The Thomas Crowne Affair wasn’t just declared The James Bond Affair, and then we could be spared 1-2 further bad Bond films. It’s light years better than The World Is Not Enough.
KILLING ALL GOOD WILL FROM THAT ONE SONG: An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster. Fivel sells out.
I HAVE TO SAY: Everytime I see the title ‘Love Stinks’ I think of the deodorant commercial. “Love Stinks, Arid Works.”
I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO SAY: Sleepy Hollow. Tim Burton does these sorts of things.
BEST INAD…WAIT, CHECK THAT, ALARMINGLY EXPLICIT TITLES: Just A Little Harmless Sex, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human,
BEST INADVERTANT PORN TITLES: Anywhere But Here, Better Than Chocolate, The Bone Collector, In Too Deep, Dick, Sweet and Low Down, Why Not Me?

1998 in Film: Another Year of a Nation Without Direction

This is about to get ugly. Those with a sense of artistic decency should avert their eyes.
TOP GROSSING
1. Armageddon – Passably fun disaster movie – in the end, things don’t go boom.
2. Saving Private Ryan – Spielberg rocks the first 20, then steals the rest from better war movies
3. Godzilla – A childhood icon gutted and turned into an overlarge iguana.
4. There’s Something About Mary – Funny movie.
5. A Bug’s Life – Ho-hum computer animation. Family attendance compulsory.
6. Deep Impact – Not so fun disaster movie – things go boom. Climax: climb a hill.
7. Mulan – Less than ho-hum old school animation. Family attendance still compulsory
8. Dr. Doolittle – Eddie Murphy’s selling out begins
9. Shakespeare in Love – No complaints
10. Lethal Weapon 4 – Jet Li was a better addition than Joe Pesci. My favorite thing about the Lethal Weapon movies, as Chris points out, is that apparently there are no black or hispanic drug dealers in Los Angeles.

Academy Awards:
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line
Best Picture: Shakespeare in Love
Best Director: Steven Spielberg - Saving Private Ryan
Best Actor: Roberto Benigni - Life Is Beautiful
Best Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow - Shakespeare in Love
Best Supporting Actor: James Coburn - Affliction
Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench - Shakespeare in Love
Best Foreign Language Film: Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), directed by Roberto Benigni, Italy
HOW BANAL CAN WE BE: Three movies about WW2, two movies about late renaissance England.

THE REAL TOP 10:
1. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
2. The Big Lebowski
3. The Wedding Singer
4. Rushmore
5. Shakespeare In Love
6. There’s Something About Mary
7. A Civil Action
8. Life Is Beautiful
9. Rounders
10. Saving Private Ryan
OVERRATED MOVIES:
- American History X. Social issues movies always age poorly.
- The Truman Show. High concept usually ages poorly as well.
- Saving Private Ryan. 20-minutes of epic footage does not a movie make.
- Out of Sight. We’re all supposed to like this movie because it’s about George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez being cool. So they are; it's still not a good movie.
UNDERRATED MOVIES:
- A Civil Action. I’m not much for crusading lawyer movies, but absent the Grisham hype, this movie quietly was much better than the bizarrely popular early-90’s adaptations that tore up the box office.
- Dead Man on Campus. After Jessica Spano pounded the stake into the heart of Saved by the Bell that had been placed there by The College Years, Zach quietly made a pretty funny movie.
- Dirty Work. I will always wish Norm McDonald had a career. Guy kills me.
CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: Jesus – The Big Lebowski. Close runner-up: Cliff – Dead Man On Campus.
TOP 10 REASONS THIS WAS A BAD YEAR FOR MOVIES:
1. Lingering 90’s detritus that refuse to go away – 1 too many sequels (at least): 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan, Major League: Back to the Minors, Dennis the Menace Strikes Again, Halloween: H20, Species II. Bride of Chucky almost seems reasonable.
2. Bad remakes and conversions: Blue Brothers 2000, The Avengers, The Mask of Zorro
3. Waste of Talent: BASEketball, Vince Vaughn in the Psycho remake
4. Bad, Purely Political Movies: Bulworth, Primary Colors.
5. Lazy Animation Cash Cows: Antz, A Bug’s Life, Mulan, The Prince of Egypt
6. Forced to Pretend Movies About Writers are Interesting: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I like Johnny Depp as much as the next guy, but come on. Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘style’ was to get drunk and high and send in his notes because he couldn’t finish. A pox on what he did to writing.
7. Ethan Hawke continues to make movies in a misguided attempt to be taken seriously as a literary figure: Great Expectations.
8. Godzilla is a rancid disappointment
9. Pretending a foreign movie is good: Run, Lola, Run.
10. Attempted RomCom Sequel : You’ve Got Mail.
MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE SEEN: A Night at the Roxbury, Apt Pupil, Enemy of the State, Half Baked, Ronin
MOVIES I WANT TO LIKE: He Got Game, Meet Joe Black
I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WORKED: After Chris Tucker ruined the Fifth Element, they give him a whole film to be annoying in (Rush Hour) and it’s actually pretty good.
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDIES: Shakespeare in Love AND The Wedding Singer AND There’s Something About Mary.
GOOD BAD GUY: Jet Li made Lethal Weapon 4.
WORST MOVIE REVIEW: The guy who wrote the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer review I read didn’t sit through the whole movie and called out a supposed plot hole, that they get the capital of Brazil wrong, which is in fact explained at the end. If your job is to review movies, don’t you think you should at least sit through the whole thing?
BEST MOVIE REVIEW: As I walked out of the dollar theater where I watched The Thin Red Line, some Sacramentan said to no one in particular, “Three hours of fruit bats. Some war flick.”
BEST TITLE: What could beat How Stella Got Her Groove Back? Simple: Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna: Warriors of the Light.
90’S-EST MOVIE: You’ve Got Mail. What’s this new fangled internet business? Woof. How’s AOL’s stock doing these days anyway? Can’t Hardly Wait – good effort, but still a little too relevant.
MOVIES THAT SEEMED IMPORTANT AT THE TIME AND INVOLVED ‘THINGS’: Wild Things, Very Bad Things
MOVIES THAT SEEMED IMPORTANT AT THE TIME NOT INVOLVING THINGS: Waterboy, X-Files
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: Deep Impact, Dirty Work, Great Expectations, He Got Game, I Got the Hook-Up, No Looking Back, Slappy and the Stinkers, The Thin Red Line, The X Files.

TOP GROSSING
1. Titanic
2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
3. Men in Black
4. Tomorrow Never Dies
5. Air Force One
6. As Good as It Gets
7. Liar Liar
8. My Best Friend’s Wedding
9. The Fifth Element
10. The Full Monty

Oscars Winners
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Titanic, As Good as It Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential
Best Picture: Titanic - 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, Paramount Pictures
Best Director: James Cameron - Titanic
Best Actor: Jack Nicholson - As Good as It Gets
Best Actress: Helen Hunt - As Good as It Gets
Best Supporting Actor: Robin Williams - Good Will Hunting
Best Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger - L.A. Confidential

TOP 10:
1. LA Confidential
2. Liar Liar
3. Donnie Brasco
4. Austin Powers
5. Good Will Hunting
6. Starship Troopers
7. Men In Black
8. The Full Monty
9. Face/Off
10. Con Air
(Honorable Mention) As Good As It Gets
COMMENT: I was tempted to put in the re-release of The Empire Strikes Back because that is not a strong top 10. True story: the guy sitting in front of me hummed the entire soundtrack and cried when Han Solo was frozen.

MOST INFLUENTIAL: None. Titanic sank everything else.
MOST OVERRATED: Titanic. Honestly, did anyone see this movie a second time? Does anyone watch the DVD version? Yes, it’s a technical achievement to rebuild the thing. No, it’s not an entertaining movie. I think this was the movie where I realized what a “Larry” was…as we were walking out, some dad said to his son, “The important thing is…he never let go.” I wonder how long it took that kid to figure out his dad was a weiner.
MOST OVERRATED (INDY VERSION): Chasing Amy. I did see this Kevin Smith movie. It’s not that good. Deal with it.
MOVIE THAT BEST TYPIFIES THE 90’S: Chasing Amy.
MOVIE THAT I WISH COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN THE 90’S: Spice World
STEVE…STEVE…PLEASE GET OVER YOURSELF: Amistad
YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO AMISTAD AND FARM YOUR MONEY MOVIE OUT TO THE INTERNS: The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
MOVIES THAT SEEMED LIKE A BIG DEAL AT THE TIME: The Saint, Rocketman, Face/Off. I loved Face/Off as a teen. I tried rewatching it recently and realized it was a B movie. Who knew?
MOVIES THAT HAVE AGED WELL: I knew Starship Troopers was a B movie at the time. If you watch it again, you find a surprisingly entertaining movie. Plus it opened the door for Neil Patrick Harris’s turn in How I Met Your Mother.
MOVIE I VAGUELY RECALL LIKING BUT CAN’T BE SURE OF: Suicide Kings
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY OF THE YEAR: As Good As It Gets
IT SEEMS LIKE WE’RE DONE HERE: Batman & Robin. Both Arnold and Batman get put on time out. Chris O’Donnell had a career by the way. You might have missed that otherwise.
YES, WE ARE DONE HERE: Kevin Costner in The Postman.
DEVASTATING CASTING: Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element. Everything up to that point was shaping up to be a great film. Then the director asked the Dumb and Dumber question, “Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” and answered with Chris Tucker’s character.
I’M JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: Grosse Pointe Blank, Gattaca
WHY DON’T YOU BE MORE FUNNY?: Beverly Hills Ninja.
WORST DECISION: Capitalizing on the popularity of South Park, Orgazmo gets made?
MOVIE YOU FORGOT HAPPENED: Tomorrow Never Dies. Between the reintroduction of Bond and the awful invisible car, they made that one with Michelle Yeow. It certainly slipped my mind.
MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE SEEN: Boogie Nights, Seven Years in Tibet, Spawn
BEST SEQUEL: Scream 2
WORST SEQUELS: Jurassic Park 2, Speed 2: Cruise Control. If Keanu Reeves won’t sign-on post A Walk in the Clouds and Johnny Mnemonic, chances are that there are script problems.
FAVORITE MOMENT: The pandas at the Fierce Creatures zoo are out of order.
FAVORITE LINE: “This is nothing,” Wag the Dog.
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: All Over Me, Double Team (Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme AND Dennis Rodman no less), Excess Baggage, In & Out, Love Jones

1996 - A New Dawn

Top Grossing
1. Independence Day
2. Twister
3. Mission: Impossible
4. Jerry Maguire
5. Ransom
6. 101 Dalmatians
7. The Rock
8. The Nutty Professor
9. The Birdcage
10. A Time to Kill

WHAT WERE WE THINKING AWARD: The Birdcage. Inexplicable.

ACADEMY AWARDS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine
Best Picture: The English Patient
Best Director: Anthony Minghella - The English Patient
Best Actor: Geoffrey Rush - Shine
Best Actress: Frances McDormand - Fargo
Best Supporting Actor: Cuba Gooding Jr. - Jerry Maguire
Best Supporting Actress: Juliette Binoche - The English Patient
WE KNOW WHAT THEY WERE THINKING BUT STILL, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING: I liken The English Patient’s victory to the Raiders’ drafting of Jamarcus Russell #1 overall. It has the tools, it just can’t play ball. Everyone knows it is going to happen, everyone knows it is a mistake, all are powerless to stop it, none can explain it afterwards. Hollywood just can’t help itself, despite the presence of two vastly superior films (Fargo, Jerry Maguire).

DISTURBING TREND: The marketing of academy awards slots comes into full view with the despicable inclusion of Secrets & Lies AND Shine. If you’re unfamiliar, academy members get copies and get told ‘this is a piece of art’.

REAL TOP 10:
1. Jerry Maguire
2. Bottle Rocket
3. Fargo
4. Happy Gilmore
5. Scream
6. Romeo + Juliet
7. Courage Under Fire
8. Independence Day
9. The Rock
10. Evita

This wasn’t a deep year, but those are some good films. A lot of new talent fills the gap – Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe, the Coens hit the big time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ewan MacGregor break through.

MOST INFLUENTIAL: Scream. Tough call, Bottle Rocket’s really come on for indy-films and introducing Wes Anderson. And Independence Day and Twister created a whole new $$ game. But Scream recreated the horror genre for the next decade.
BETTER THAN YOU THINK: The Great White Hype, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Multiplicity, Space Jam. With the 90’s falling apart, these were all good movies that deserve a second look now that we can all breathe and look at things objectively. Michael Keaton should have had a better post-Batman career. That’s right, Space Jam. What of it?
MOVIE TOTALLY OUT OF PLACE OUTSIDE THE 90’S: Space Jam. Remember Jordan pre-Wizards? He was big. Like Pepsi big.
I’M JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: Kingpin
MOVIES I THOUGHT WERE GREAT AT THE TIME: Broken Arrow
CULT HITS THAT HAVE AGED POORLY: Swingers, Trainspotting.
TITLE THAT MAKES ME WANT TO COCKPUNCH THE WRITER: Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day
WAIT, ARE WE DONE HERE?: Arnold makes Eraser…and Jingle All The Way.
PRETTY SURE WE’RE DONE HERE: Tin Cup. In Costner’s defense, this movie’s pretty good as far as Costner movies go.
MUST HAVE NEEDED THE MONEY: Marlon Brando comes out of retirement to make…The Island of Dr. Moreau?
WHY EUROPEAN DIRECTORS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MOVIES ABOUT BASEBALL: The Fan’s climactic scene takes place in a baseball game played during a driving rain storm.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT: Mars Attacks!
HOW DARE YOU SIR!: Muppet Treasure Island destroys two icons at once.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: Cable Guy was originally slated for Chris Farley and David Spade until Jim Carey expressed interest. That would have been a different (READ: Better) movie. Instead, they make the bland Black Sheep, Farley goes off the deep end, and Jim Carey begins experimenting with drama. Things fall apart.
WORST POST-COMEBACK DECISIONS: John Travolta, cool again, makes Michael AND Phenomenon. Dude.
WORST DECISION: Demi Moore, apparently jazzed by Jessica Spano’s career crippling turn in Showgirls, decides to make Striptease. Let’s face it…she was never good.
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY: Romeo + Juliet. Good Mercutio.
WORST REMAKE OF A GOOD 80’S MOVIE: Escape From L.A.
PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE WATCHED BEFORE MAKING THIS LIST: A Time to Kill, Ransom, Waiting for Guffman
PROBABLY OK THAT I MISSED: Barbed Wire, Kazaam
BEST LINE IN A MOVIE NOT DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE: “We all thought that kid had tourette’s until Mr. (Jon Lovitz) figured out that he was a foreign exchange student.” – Tia Carrere, High School High
BEST BAD GUY: Bob Sugar (Jerry Maguire), whoever Ed Harris played in The Rock, Shooter McGavin (Happy Gilmore), John Travolta (Broken Arrow – come on, Christian Slater can beat him up?), the Martians (Mars Attacks)
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: The Nutty Professor, Larger Than Life