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A Good Year for Formula PicturesFeb 05 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line 'Twas a good year, but not a great year. A year of movies that involved us without stunning us. After 1998 and 1999, a nice respite, but let's move on. Note: The following is written in two parts. The first section highlights the changes that my 1999 list suffered upon my having seen the rest of the movies released that year. For those who don't care about my 1999 picks, move forward to the 2000 list, which will be denoted by a title. Section One: Addendum to 1999 It's always interesting to look back upon the lists from years past, both those that are my own as well as those written by "professional" film critics. Which movies, a year or ten later, that seemed so important then have faded now? Dances With Wolves won the 1990 Best Picture, but was it really so superior to Goodfellas? Forrest Gump was a popular choice in 1994, but six years later we credit several other pictures, such as Hoop Dreams, Quiz Show, and especially the immortal Pulp Fiction as being far superior to that "Best Picture". And as for Four Weddings and a Funeral... Well, let's just leave it at that. For me, the films that end up at the top of my list are the ones that stay with me, that influence my thoughts and deeds for the weeks and months (even years) after I have seen them. Hence, it's difficult to make up a list immediately at the end of the year; I need some time to stew. Last year, I had not yet seen several films that I later deemed to be very important to the future of cinema, and would like to toss off a couple of movies to make room for those better ones. Three Kings, with its remarkable story of the fallacy of the Gulf War and remarkable performances from its actors, deserves a place on my list, as does Boys Don't Cry, a film that won Hillary Swank her Oscar and which I didn't think I'd like, until I was swept up in the story. I'd also like to place Bringing Out the Dead, the Scorsese picture about EMTs in New York City, onto the main list for 1999 (when I wrote the list I included it in the Honorable Mention but not in the top ten). Hence, with slight re-arrangement, my new 1999 list (without further commentary) goes: 10. Office Space 9. Boys Don't Cry 8. Eyes Wide Shut 7. Bringing Out the Dead 6. Being John Malkovich 5. Three Kings 4. The Iron Giant 3. Dogma 2. American Beauty 1. Magnolia Those who are familiar with my previous 1999 list will notice that missing from the current list are South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, October Sky, and Star Wars: Episode One. Let it be known that it is not that I currently fail to appreciate these films, but that on any list there must be some left off, and that while I still love these three (particularly South Park's satire and hilarious musical numbers), I feel that the others are more worthy of recognition. All right. Enough with 1999; let's see what we can do for 2000. Section Two: Top Ten for 2000 (and comments on each) Before I get into this list, let me first rant a bit about local cinema chains in my area. Thanks to short-sighted theatre owners, I have yet to see The Big Kahuna, Dancer in the Dark, You Can Count on Me, Quills, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bamboozled, State and Main, Shadow of the Vampire and Requiem for a Dream. Though I know Big Kahuna is out on video, I have still yet to see it; I will very soon. The others will probably end up in a Best of 2000 retrospective in my Best of 2001 list. It can't really be helped. In any case, that leaves us with something of a drab year. 1998 and --especially-- 1999 were years of bold invention in filmmaking, when the best artists we had seemed to be putting it all on the line in the name of cinematic innovation. Even the big studio pictures (like Star Wars and What Dreams May Come) had that spark of creativity and sheer brass in many sequences. This year, even the year's best films (except for one or two) were mired in formula; the films seemed to be well-executed genre pieces rather than experimental joys. There are some, I suppose, who prefer things that way; for my money, the best films are those that test boundaries and push limits of audience expectations. Just look at Citizen Kane, Brazil, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, and even Magnolia. On the other hand, this year was a time of very solid genre pictures, of conventions being played to very nicely. There were more decent comedies this year than in the last few, and there were only a couple of truly bad films that couldn't be seen as such from a mile off. All of which is my roundabout and long-winded way of saying that if this list is a bit populist for you, or if you think I'm playing to the lowest common denominator, it's not my fault. Here goes: 10. The Original Kings of Comedy. (Spike Lee) I've always --since childhood-- been a big fan of stand-up comedy, and this concert film shows one of our best directors taking a simple concert venue and turning it into an artistic statement. There's always a bit of resentment when one includes a concert film on a "Best of..." list, but pound for pound there was very little with more entertainment value this year. 9. Shanghai Noon. (Tom Dey) I love Jackie Chan. In the tradition of Chaplin and Keaton, he's one of the most nimble performers around. Owen Wilson proves himself as someone to watch very closely in the next few years; the first major director to find a great role for this guy has a star on their hands. 8. Meet the Parents. (Jay Roach) A great cast, a great director, a very funny movie. Jay Roach needs to let up on the Austin Powers thing and just make little comedies of manners like this one. DeNiro is getting funnier and funnier as time goes by, and Stiller proves himself once again as one of our great comedic actors. Again, Owen Wilson is here (although in a small role), and again he delivers spot-on. And Teri Polo is an inspiration to the teenage male in us all. (Well, all the men, anyway.) And how can you possibly dislike a movie with a cat like that one? 7. Unbreakable. (M. Night Shamalyan) I wasn't sure if I was going to include this one, for it hasn't stuck with me the way some of the others on this list have. But as much as I didn't care for the way The Sixth Sense manipulated its audience, I enjoyed the growing realization that the Bruce Willis character goes through here. Is this a perfect movie? No, but it's damn fine entertainment, and if the direction is stilted at times and if Samuel L. Jackson seems to be coasting, it's still a good ride while it lasts. (Note: It's even better if you already know the "secret" going into the film; I did and didn't feel nearly as cheated as I might have.) 6. Wonder Boys. (Curtis Hanson) A perfectly-measured little movie about a couple of writers. Not a film for the adrenaline seekers, but it's a great movie that contains one of the great performances of Michael Douglas's career, and Tobey Maguire proves himself once again as a young actor to watch as he matures. A prediction: Tobey Maguire will win an Oscar in the next ten years. 5. Almost Famous. (Cameron Crowe) Not quite the movie it could have been, but this ode to rock-and-roll managed to entertain this critic and has provided hours of speculation as to the value of entertainment criticism on any level. Who are we (critics), as a culture, to feed off of creative artists the way we do? And where do our loyalties lie? Interesting stuff, with some disquieting answers. Furthermore, Patrick Fugit is perfect as William Miller, Frances McDormand deserves an Oscar nod as his mother, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman impresses with his near-infinite range as veteran rock critic Lester Bangs. Someone please get this guy into a starring role; I'll buy five tickets. 4. High Fidelity. (Steven Frears) Yep, it made it into my top five, all right. Just a little story about a record store owner named Rob Gordon and his failing relationships. Sometimes a movie gets its characters so right it seems more like a perfectly-filmed documentary than a work of fiction, and that's definetly the case here. I'd like to work alongside these guys for a couple of months, just to gain the knowledge that they have and I don't. Besides, how else to learn what not to do in a relationship? 3. Traffic. (Steven Soderbergh) The "War on Drugs" is a complete and total disaster, and this film tells it as well as it can be told. The film lacks some of the dramatic sweep of other ensemble pieces like Altman's Short Cuts or Magnolia, and the handheld camera get a little old, but the sheer power of the story (stories) is totally involving up until the last, truly evocative shot. Soderbergh doesn't pretend to know how to solve this country's drug problem, but he makes a powerful case that it has to start at home, with compassion and with caring, rather than with prisons and tougher sentencing. I can only hope Washington takes heed. 2. The Legend of Drunken Master. (Jackie Chan) This is almost certainly the greatest Jackie Chan film ever made, that will ever be made. Pure joy divided into twenty-four frames per second. Is it cheating, since this film was made originally in 1994 (and is still better than the aforementioned Forrest Gump, BTW) and was retitled and re-released over here to gain acceptance to American audiences? Maybe, but this was the second-best time I had in a movie this year, and if it's wrong, I don't want to be right. 1. Chicken Run. (Nick Park and Peter Lord) I'm an appreciator, if not a great lover, of the Wallace and Gromit shorts done by Aardman animation, but with this film Nick Park has shown himself to be one of the all-time great animators. I'm convinced that this film (thank God it made money) will end up being one of the turning points in future animation history, and will hopefully be the setting stone for a future animation empire to rival Disney. If this is Park's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, I can't wait for his Pinocchio, let alone his Fantasia. This was the best movie I saw this year. Honorable Mention Of course, this was a year of really solid comedies and genre pictures that just didn't quite make my list. O Brother, Where Art Thou was one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, if a bit incoherent, and movies like The Emperor's New Groove and The Road to El Dorado reminded me of the beautiful silliness possible with simple animation. A high-tech animation triumph was Titan A.E., although I wanted a bit more depth than it was willing to provide, and a completely separate technical achievement was apparent in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps as Eddie Murphy played a half-dozen perfectly-realized comic creations while enveloped in that evocative Rick Baker makeup. In genre pictures, I was heartily impressed by Shaft 2000, which was an intelligent retread of the original that managed to not make the mistake of going too far and being too stupid for an audience. And Samuel L. Jackson is the man. Also supercool was Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt in John Woo's Mission Impossible 2, which succeeded in being one of the best 80's-style action flicks I've seen in a long time. And if the plot wasn't so great on that last one, well, what'd you expect, Hitchcock's Notorious? Coming soon, my Worst of 2000 list. And this one's gonna be even easier...  |
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by cdm72 by Stephen_Murray
