Thirteen films here, all released between September 26 and November 7, 1997, as late Summer turns to early Autumn.
The Edge
release: September 26
dir: Lee Tamahori
pr: Art Linson
scr: David Mamet
cin: Donald McAlpine
A rewatch for me, my high school film teacher Ms. Durkacs had us watch it...I forget what we were learning from it, maybe screenwriting? Tension through editing? Crafting a two-hander? Well, maybe not the latter; while Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins are up against the wilderness for 80% (I'm guessing) of the film, the opening act builds the tension to come through its ensemble, with L.Q. Jones, Harold Perrineau, and Elle MacPherson setting the table expertly. Nothing but good things to say.
The Ice Storm
release: September 26
dir: Ang Lee
pr: Ted Hope / Ang Lee / James Schamus
scr: James Schamus
cin: Frederick Elmes
My roommate walked in at one point and said, "Oh, Sigourney's a hot mom!" And she sure is! It's a movie about the early-70s and a Connecticut family navigating the new mores. Everyone's good, though Joan Allen doesn't really get much to play beyond frustrated housewife in the first half. The period details aren't overstated, from the hair to the clothes to the carpets. I can see how it'd be alienating: the coldness is right there in the title and the subplots tracking each member of our principal family - Allen, Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire - are not equally interesting. Though I guess that's life, isn't it: you're figuring out how to get high on valium respectfully while your parents are at a key party, not everyone's epiphanies can be so gravity-absent. Unfortunately, there's a discovery Kline's character makes on the icy roads that just...it just doesn't fit. It's supposed to convey something, but its execution - actually, really, the strength of the film before it - makes it not just superfluous, but a sign of nervousness. "We didn't do enough to make our point." Yes, you did!
U Turn
release: October 3
dir: Oliver Stone
pr: Dan Halsted / Clayton Townsend
scr: John Ridley
cin: Robert Richardson
A hilarious neo-noir about a small-time gangster who winds up stranded in a desert town, roped into competing schemes by a married couple, each wanting to murder the other. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Jennifer Lopez: what a combo. Penn is in incredible form here, just hating everything and everyone around him. Nolte is wild, unhinged, goofy as hell. I understand why it hasn't really stood the test of time, but it's fun.
Boogie Nights
release: October 10
nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Burt Reynolds), Best Supporting Actress (Julianne Moore), Best Original Screenplay
dir/scr: Paul Thomas Anderson
pr: Paul Thomas Anderson / Lloyd Levin / John S. Lyons / Joanne Sellar
cin: Robert Elswit
A rewatch for me, I have seen it several times over the years, my first being in high school when I marathoned Paul Thomas Anderson's movies. Funny that it's the movie Mark Wahlberg most regrets, it's quite possibly his best performance in the best film he's been in (and I think he's quite talented and has been in a good many great flicks!). This is a perfect movie from beginning to end, an expert balance of comedy and tragedy. There is a general naivete about these porn stars that I've seen characterized as condescending, but I think most anyone who's taken a "temporary" gig, only to have that experience constantly thrown in their face as evidence that they can't do more (or even just different) with their lives should be able to identify with Buck Swope or Amber Waves. And anyone who believes not just in doing their job, but making sure it's the best damn job anyone is capable of, especially if it's in a field they love, can identify with Jack Horner. This movie's magic, man, tempting us to giggle at the self-seriousness of porn stars, leaving us with the knowledge that (this is so trite, but here we go) everyone is human. Well, I told you, it's perfect.
Happy Together
release: October 10
dir/scr: Wong Kar-wai
pr: Chan Ye-cheng / Wong Kar-wai
cin: Christopher Doyle
This is only my second Wong Kar-wai film (I saw Chungking Express, oh, 13 years ago?). It's a quietly funny, sexy romantic drama about a couple from Hong Kong staying in Buenos Aires, finding themselves stranded, breaking up and getting back together and trying to get enough money to go back home. Tony Leung is the lead, trying his best; Leslie Cheung is the chaos twink/succubus; Chang Chen is Leung's co-worker who he clicks with, a nicer, less chaotic guy. Beautiful cinematography.
The House of Yes
release: October 10
dir/scr: Mark Waters
pr: Beau Flynn / Stefan Simchowitz
cin: Michael Spiller
Southern gothic dark comedy gives Parker Posey the starring role, a mentally unstable woman obsessed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the JFK assassination. Bizarre, its origins as a stage play - a fringe, very not mainstream stage play - evident in the, hm, unusual rhythm and structure of the language. But that's part of its charm, too, part of what convincingly sells this unusual family as one that has lived isolated for too long. Quirky ensemble (Tori Spelling! Freddie Prinze, Jr.! Genevieve Bujold!). And, of course, incest, but campy. Not for everyone, but I dug it.
Washington Square
release: October 10
dir: Agnieszka Holland
pr: Julie Bergman Sender / Roger Birnbaum
scr: Carol Doyle
cin: Jerzy Zielinski
A widower believes the man his daughter loves has ulterior motives, believing her to be too dull and plain to attract such a handsome guy. This is the same source material from which 1949's The Heiress was adapted. Always wonder how actresses like Jennifer Jason Leigh and Olivia de Havilland feel about getting cast as "plain girl" but once you realize it's mostly projection on the part of a father still reeling from the death of his wife in childbirth, you see the possibilities: for performance, for story, for an effective look at the limitations imposed upon women. Maggie Smith's the standout as the aunt living vicariously through her niece.
Bean
release: October 17
dir: Mel Smith
pr: Peter Bennett-Jones / Tim Bevan / Eric Fellner
scr: Richard Curtis & Robin Driscoll
cin: Francis Kenny
A rewatch for me, I rented it a few times from Hollywood Video back in the day. Silly, stupid movie, intentionally so, so it's good! Honestly, it feels a little forced for much of the runtime - this is, after all, based on a television series that worked more or less like old shorts from the 1910s and '20s, with Mr. Bean just put in whatever situation to create havoc; making a full motion picture narrative with an arc is a lot to ask! Once Mr. Bean has his way with Whistler's Mother and Peter MacNicol starts to lose his mind, oh ho ho, now we're talking!
I Know What You Did Last Summer
release: October 17
dir: Jim Gillespie
pr: Stokely Chaffin / Erik Feig / Neal H. Moritz
scr: Kevin Williamson
cin: Denis Crossan
A rewatch for me, one of several snappily-written slashers that came in the wake of Scream's success (this one by the same writer!). First thing worth mentioning: Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance as a teen beauty queen whose future prospects are undone by guilt, her former confidence eroded into shaking fear. A star! An actress! Everyone else is fine, too, and the premise of supposedly good teens committing and covering up a murder just so it doesn't fuck with college is...well, I believe it.
Gummo
release: October 17
dir/scr: Harmony Korine
pr: Cary Woods
cin: Jean-Yves Escoffier
I'm not sure why Korine chose to set this film in the ruins of an Ohio town hit by a tornado in the 70s, the accents and setting are clearly the modern impoverished American South. Whatever: the film itself is impossible to look away from. This is the document of aimless 90s youth caught in an apocalyptic wasteland. Cats are butchered, roaches swarm over the walls, slurs are spouted like commas, vandals and violence runs amok! An uncomfortable must-watch.
Gattaca
release: October 24
nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Jan Reolfs / Nancy Nye)
dir/scr: Andrew Niccol
pr: Danny DeVito / Michael Shamberg / Stacey Sher
cin: Slawomir Idziak
A rewatch for me. In the future, the buildings are sleek, the people are hot, and Gore Vidal is in charge. Glummer than it should be, but not uninteresting: looks great and has a great score by Michael Nyman!
Eve's Bayou
release: November 7
dir/scr: Kasi Lemmons
pr: Caldecot Chubb / Samuel L. Jackson
cin: Amy Vincent
"The summer I killed my father I was ten years old." That's how this movie opens. The ten-year-old we meet is Jurnee Smollett as Eve, who catches her father doing something, she doesn't understand what, with a neighbor woman one evening, discombobulating the rest of the summer. Her gift of Sight is also beginning to bloom, and she finds herself between two others with different understandings and executions of the gift: her aunt Mozell and a local witch. There's also a narrative turn that deals with some tough subject matter in a complex, original way, and those who've seen the film likely know what I'm referring to. The experience of watching the movie was kind of lazy, I suppose, an afternoon watch that didn't knock my socks off but which I liked enough; it's gotten under my skin, though, more so than many of the other 76 I've watched for this - something I should have foreseen, given the narrator's bookends about unreliable memory and perceptions of truth. Some movies are powerful like that.
Starship Troopers
release: November 7
nominations: Best Visual Effects (Phil Tippett / Scott E. Anderson / Alec Gillis / John Richardson)
dir: Paul Verhoeven
pr: Jon Davison / Alan Marshall
scr: Edward Neumeier
cin: Jost Vacano
I've only seen six Verhoeven films (and Showgirls is not one of them); this is the best of those six, without a doubt. It is no mere anti-war film, but, more specifically, an anti-propaganda film, and is so by playing itself as the ultimate propaganda film, a story of a beautiful, perfect specimen of a man who, against his parents' wishes, chooses to do his duty and join in the war effort against a race of bug-like creatures who won't just let us advanced humans expand our territories onto their planet! Beautiful men and women shower together without tension: their bodies are instruments of war, not pleasure (as our hero learns when he finally lays with a woman who is later brutally destroyed by the bugs). The cheers that signal a happy ending come when an enemy combatant is described as being full of fear - nothing says Defenders of Peace and Freedom like other races being terrified of what we'll do to them! Over the top, hilarious, gross, and relevant.
Tomorrow, a look at another Best Picture nominee, as 1997's Awards Season starts in earnest...
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