The difficult thing about doing “retrospectives” of Oscar years is that, the closer you get to the contemporary timelines, the more you hear, “Oh, you didn’t watch [blankety blank] you have to watch [blankety blank]!” People can forgive missing a Bacall or two because, hey, those are old; tell people you missed Bringing Down the House and you might as well say you didn’t take the project seriously.
But I swear I did! Remember, I was a moviegoer in 2003, albeit still at the mercy of friends’ and parents’ availabilities: the closest theater was miles away and besides, I wasn’t exactly driving at 13/14 years old (nor am I at 35 years old). Point being, there were “popular” movies I missed then, there are “popular” movies I miss now - there are “popular” movies you miss now, admit it!
Ach, such a defensive way to begin this retrospective! The films we look at today cover the period from January 17 to April 25. There are thirteen in all. Four of them are new to me: Bend It Like Beckham, City of God, A Mighty Wind, and Phone Booth. The rest I’d seen before, though only three of them I’ve seen more than twice: Identity, House of 1000 Corpses, and Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie.
Let’s begin:
City of God
release: January 17
nominations: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing (Daniel Rezende)
dir: Fernando Meirelles
pr: Andrea Barata Ribeiro / Mauricio Andrade Ramos
scr: Bráulio Montovani
cin: César Charlone
It's the semi-true story (there's documentary footage during the credits) of kids in the slums of Rio de Janeiro entering a life of crime, from the early 1970s through the 1980s. Editors love this movie: there was an entire day of my film school editing class devoted to the opening sequence and it was ranked among the Top 20 Best Edited Feature Films of All Time in a survey taken of the editors' guild in 2012. A deserved reputation, the energy of this movie is insane, perfectly replicating the feverish pace of impassioned remembrances, the dizziness of so much happening all at once. It’s a gangster epic that is always going, every interlude and side story vital to both the machinations of the plot and to the journey of our wannabe-photojournalist hero.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
release: February 7
dir: Donald Petrie
pr: Robert Evans / Lynda Obst / Christine Peters
scr: Kristn Buckley & Brian Regan and Burr Steers
cin: John Bailey
A magazine writer has to date and dump a guy in 10 days; her random subject turns out to be an ad exec who has to prove he can date a woman for more than 10 days so he can land a big account. Silly, but! In the hands of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, a pleasing foray into rom-com fantasyland. Villainesses Shalom Harlow and Michele Green are delicious, one is reminded of the eels in The Little Mermaid. Bebe Neuwirth makes a meal of a silly, throwaway line. A dumb concept transformed by smart writing and charismatic actors.
Daredevil
release: February 14
dir/scr: Mark Steven Johnson
pr: Avi Arad / Gary Foster / Arnon Milchan
cin: Ericson Core
I saw this in theaters, with Jen(n), Tassi, and Randi, if I remember correctly. At the time, I recall all four of us looking at each other 30 minutes in with a kind of, "Oh, brother," expression and barely holding it together through the end. It's been twenty years. Ben Affleck is a blind superhero who runs afoul of a local crimelord and is falsely implicated in the death of his love interest's father. OK, intriguing enough on paper, but in practice, it's a lot of nothing, an hour and a half of buildup and 30 minutes of “resolution”, so focused on explaining things they forget to do anything until it’s too late. Affleck's hair is atrocious, Jennifer Garner is...here. I wish I could say it got better with a revisit, but somehow it may have gotten worse. Very empty.
Bend It Like Beckham
release: March 14
dir: Gurinder Chadha
pr: Gurinder Chadha / Deepak Nayar
scr: Gurinder Chadha & Guljit Bindra & Paul Mayeda Berges
cin: Jong Lin
A British girl pursues soccer despite her traditional Indian family's reservations. In the meantime, the movie goes to great lengths to establish that athletic women are not necessarily lesbians. Also, our heroine, who appears to be a senior in high school, has a romance with her twenty-something coach, which feels, to me, icky? Overall, I guess it’s an OK movie, I guess, but you never get a feel for the team or how Parminder Magda’s relates to anyone besides Keira Knightley and even that…everything feels sketched, still in development stages. Disappointing. Just not for me, perhaps.
Willard
release: March 14
dir/scr: Glen Morgan
pr: Glen Morgan / James Wong
cin: Robert McLachlan
Remake of the 1971 “classic” about a weenie who befriends rats in his crumbling mansion and uses them to enter a life of crime. The original isn't very good, the remake is a bit better thanks to an eclectic score by Shirley Walker and a very game performance from Crispin Glover. Frankly, if there's one Willard to watch, make it this one! Director Morgan went on to do the first Black Christmas remake, which rules.
View from the Top
release: March 21
dir: Bruno Barreto
pr: Matthew Baer / Bobby Cohen / Brad Grey
scr: Eric Wald
cin: Affonso Beato
Gwyneth Paltrow is a small-town girl trying to make it big as an airplane stewardess. One of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, all the dialogue and the plot and the costumes and sets seem like a parody of a 1960s melodrama, Valley of the Dolls or The Best of Everything in the friendly skies, yet the execution - the pacing of scenes, performances, editing - go back and forth between Absolutely Sincere and Taking The Piss. It makes for a schizophrenic film.
Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie
release: March 28
dir: C.B. Harding
pr: Alan C. Blomquist / Casey La Scala / Hunt Lowry / J.P. Williams / Joseph Williams
scr: Bill Engvall / Jeff Foxworthy / Larry the Cable Guy / Ron White
cin: Bruce L. Finn
Standup comedy from Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Larry the Cable Guy, and Ron White ("I had the right to remain silent……but, I didn't have the capability”). Watched it ad infinitum as a kid, still holds up - Engvall's my favorite then and now, his delivery is the most organic, but Ron White is a close second. Interstitial sequences with David Alan Grier mostly provoke the question, "What is David Alan Grier doing here?" - though, within those, there is a moment where Larry the Cable Guy drops The Act and makes you realize just how much disdain he holds for his target audience.
Phone Booth
release: April 4
dir: Joel Schumacher
pr: Gil Netter / David Zucker
scr: Larry Cohen
cin: Matthew Libatique
A late-breaking new one for me, full of the kind of editing tricks (picture-in-picture, simultaneous display of multiple angles of a single scene) that would get you nominated for an Academy Award 30 years before (The Longest Yard, The Boston Strangler, etc.). OK, so a hotshot publicist answers a payphone and finds himself the target of a psychopath sniper's crazy moral mindgames. In less than 90 minutes, it delivers everything you would want in a motion picture, a thrill ride from beginning to end, the claustrophobia of a guilty conscience manifested. I cannot recommend this movie enough, there is nothing bad about it.
Anger Management
release: April 11
dir: Peter Segal
pr: Barry Bernardo / Jack Giarraputo
scr: David Dorfman
cin: Donald McAlpine
Mild-mannered Adam Sandler has to get his pent-up anger under control with the help of unconventional therapist Jack Nicholson. Nicholson is terrific in selling the insanity-logic of this character, he and Sandler play great off each other. Oh, I laughed. And yet. There's a certain too-clever twist that makes zero sense and, I think, undermines the narrative. It’s not angry enough.
Better Luck Tomorrow
release: April 11
dir: Justin Lin
pr: Julie Asato / Ernesto Foronda / Justin Lin
scr: Ernesto M. Foronda & Justin Lin & Fabian Marquez
cin: Patrice Lucien Cochet
Now this one is fun, Asian-American SoCal teens going from petty fraud to big-time crime just to feel something beyond academic achievement. I get it, I love it: teens always want to feel more than their prescribed roles, whether they're celebrated for their academic decathlon accomplishments or their football prowess. Here it gets way out of control as our anti-heroes go from fixing grades to, haha, I dare not spoil, but it's always handled with a blackly comic wink and a grounded style. Great flick!
House of 1000 Corpses
release: April 11
dir/scr: Rob Zombie
pr: Andy Gould
cin: Alex Poppas / Tom Richmond
In the 1970s, road-trippers find themselves prisoners of a family of occultist murderers. Gosh, I can't count how many times I've seen this film yet I've never loved it, fully: the final fifteen minutes feel like 45 minutes, its dreamy pacing becoming lethargic and repetitive. Part of that, perhaps, may be due to Universal abandoning the film after the film was completed. Studio politics aside, I do think it's a humdinger of a pastiche, a fitting valentine to Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, and 1970s grindhouse gorehound mavericks. The makeup and sets do a great job of establishing this family as out-there collectors of the grotesque. And what a great showcase for Sid Haig and Karen Black!
A Mighty Wind
release: April 16
nominations: Best Original Song ("A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow")
dir: Christopher Guest
pr: Karen Murphy
scr: Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
cin: Arlene Nelson
Various folk artists gather together for a tribute concert. I don't know how Catherine O'Hara does it, they say these films have no written dialogue, just outlines, yet here she is, giving you a full narrative of a sensitive woman who sees the possibility of rekindled romance while simultaneously replaying all the reasons that romance went south in the first place and justifying to herself behavior that could be wishful or selfish or just caught up...she does it all with a look, sometimes, or a great line reading (of dialogue she's made up herself!). And this is in the same film as a folksy Jane Lynch winking at the camera about witchcraft, Harry Shearer singing a stupid pun while discovering truths about himself, and Bob Balaban understatedly negotiating feelings and contracts to get his family and the bands back together. Not the best Guest, but satisfying.
Identity
release: April 25
dir: James Mangold
pr: Cathy Konrad
scr: Michael Cooney
cin: Phedon Papamichael
What do the random guests at a secluded motel have to do with a Florida psychopath sentenced to death for multiple murders? The answer will absolutely surprise you, but trust me when I say that you will giggle, albeit in a friendly fashion. A little Agatha Christie here, a little John D. MacDonald there, a whisper of Robert Bloch, and you have this flick, a whodunnit whose clues aren't where you think they are. Pulpy fun.
Tomorrow: Finding Nemo, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more!
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