Crash! Landen’s Top 10 Movies of 1997

The Lists of 90s movies continues… This was a great  year in movies. There were a number of movies that could’ve been in my Top 10 and deserved to be, but I could only pick 10. Movies that didn’t make the list: Absolute Power (Clint and Gene together again), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Dr. Evil!), Starship Troopers (a smarter satire than it gets credit for), Amistad (a great historical drama), Liar, Liar (another great comedy), The Fifth Element (which was cheesy but a lot of fun), Good Will Hunting, Men In Black, even some smaller movies like Smilla’s Sense Of Snow…. It was just a good year in film. Here are my 10.

Update: Okay, so I missed a REALLY good one… I’ve had to insert LA Confidential so I guess I’ll have to change my Best of the 1990s, too. So Jack falls to #11.

As Good As It Gets (Jack being Jack…Loved the dog/bacon bits…. And no longer in the Top 10.)

10 Breakdown (A very under-rated suspense movie. And it had 18 wheelers…)

9 The Sweet Hereafter (Sarah Polley was Queen Of The Indies and was in a string of good movies. This was one of them…)

8 Chinese Box (Very slow moving, but it was brilliant that the 3 main characters represented 3 countries that the movie was about. Kinda’ harkened back to Casablanca in that  regard. And this gave new meaning to ‘Bang a Gong’.)

7 Titanic (Obvious choice. Well deserved.)

6 Cop Land (Another under-rated classic. Sylvester Stallone at his best. First of 2 with Deniro. This was a great big cast of actors. I thought Annabella Sciorra did a lot with a small part, as did Michael Rapaport in maybe his best movie.)

5 Boogie Nights (Hilarious, bittersweet, sad and poignant all at the same time. Stellar cast and I love the part with Alfred Molina and Thomas Jane.)

4 LA Confidential (Never saw the entire film in one sitting until recently, so I didn’t feel I could put it on my list. That’s changed now and it’s better as a whole than seen in pieces. You may think that’s true of all movies, but it’s not.)

3 The Ice Storm (Classic drama with lots of ‘real-life’ comedy. Sort of ‘enjoyably dark’ in spots that manages to work in comic books to the narrative. Another cast with several storylines interwoven.)

2 Gattaca (One of my favorite Sci Fi movies and it, too, is under-rated. Minimalist art design but loaded with detail. And set in a clinical/sterile future society but possesses what a lot of big FX movies don’t have: real heart and a great    story. I had to really debate whether to put this one as my best of the year, but Jackie Brown finally won out. CLEARLY Ethan Hawke’s best film and one of Jude Law and Uma Thurman’s better  ones.)

1 Jackie Brown (IMHO: Quentin Tarantino’s best. Didn’t think that I was going to like it. An unlikely  lead for Hollywood in Pam Greir and a great suspenseful story filled with twists and turns. Samuel Jackson plays one of his most evil characters among an inspired cast thatconsisted of Michael Keaton, Robert DeNiro, Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister Jr., Chris Tucker, and the always lovely and talented Bridget Fonda. And I think Robert Forster steals the show. Also had the typical QT lost in the 70s  look and sound… All of that added up to a great movie. I wish he would get back to doing movies more like this one. A serious and adult movie… No Matt, ‘adult’ doesn’t mean Porn.) …. And here’s my favorite Jackie Brown poster:

Thoughts?

Banned?!

Okay,  here’s something funny. I got banned from Rob Liefeld’s site. I guess for disagreeing with him. And of all things, over Superman’s underoos. Shit you not…

Here is the actual exchange. I took out some of the other folks’ comments and you’ll probably have to zoom in. It’s just me and Rob. Obviously, I have no idea what he said after the last bit. Because, ya’ know, I’m banned.  He seemed kind of hostile at the outset calling me ‘Chumly’, but I ignored that.I don’t know, maybe I was a bit too sarcastic at the end there, but honestly all I wanted to know was why he thought what he thought, instead of: “WRONG. “

To ROB: C’mon Rob, You’re an adult, aren’t you? Surely, you can have someone disagree with you without banning them can’t you? That’s pretty childish…

I mean really… Was I being a jerk? Wasn’t meaning to be… I really don’t think I was in Yellow Hat Guy waters, there…. Anyway, getting  banned from Rob’s site won’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me. Good luck in the future, Rob.

I Got Banned From Rob Liefeld’s Message Boards And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Okay,  here’s something funny. I got banned from Rob Liefeld’s site. I guess for disagreeing with him. And of all things, over Superman’s underoos. Shit you not…

Here is the actual exchange. I took out some of the other folks’ comments and you’ll probably have to zoom in. It’s just me and Rob. Obviously, I have no idea what he said after the last bit. Because, ya’ know, I’m banned.  He seemed kind of hostile at the outset calling me ‘Chumly’, but I ignored that.I don’t know, maybe I was a bit too sarcastic at the end there, but honestly all I wanted to know was why he thought what he thought, instead of: “WRONG. ”

To ROB: C’mon Rob, You’re an adult, aren’t you? Surely, you can have someone disagree with you without banning them can’t you? That’s pretty childish…

I mean really… Was I being a jerk? Wasn’t meaning to be… I don’t think I was in Yellow Hat Guy waters, there…. Anyway, getting  banned from Rob’s site won’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me. Good luck to him.

Crash Landen’s Worst 10 Movies Of 1997

This was actually a decent year for filmgoers. It had its share of Bat-droppings but doesn’t every year.  There were some very good directors that released some of their worst  material (David Fincher’s The Game nearly made my list). Alien Resurrection was pretty to look at. Wishmaster might have been better with a bigger budget… for the script. Dante’s Peak might have been better as  a TV movie of the week. None of these made my Top 10 (or Bottom 10 as it were).

1997 might’ve had some ‘all timers’ in it.

10 Steel (Not a completely bad Shaq vehicle if you’re a kid… )

Might've sealed Jean Claude's career doom.

9 Double Team (Dennis Rodman’s movie career highpoint I think… Not Jean Claude Van Damme’s, though….)

No it won't.

8 Anaconda (Ebert gave this a ‘thumbs up’ only to help promote JLo’s career. I think this is when Ebert REALLY started letting his personal biases infect his movie reviews.

7 Flubber (Robin Williams movies are on a few of my worst lists…)

Keanu dodged this one to make an even worse movie)

6 Speed 2 Even the cast thought the movie was awful and said so while promoting it.)

5 The Devil’s Advocate (Keanu as a lawyer and Pacino in full Foghorn Leghorn mode)

A 4 star CRAPFEST!

4 An American Werewolf in Paris (Shocked that I could hate a movie with Julie Delpy in it.)

3 Kiss the Girls (Had a preposterous plot…SPOILERS: Dueling artistic serial killers!)

2 Spawn (Have never been able to get through this. The FX got  a lot of unwarranted hype. The story/dialogue was braindead… In a bad way.)

1 Batman & Robin…. When I watched this one, I felt like I was strapped to my chair with a 2400 lb. wrecking  ball bearing down on me… Utter horror and I could not bring myself to leave. I remember there were high hopes for this one going in. The previous installment (with Val Kilmer) had been proclaimed a monumental success…not by me… and everyone expected this one to be better than Joel Schumacher’s last stab at it. I never cared for the extremely garish neon colors, but apparently I was in the minority on that.  There were also the anticipation of the vast array of villains and sidekicks. Bane (who I hated), Mr Free-uhz (played by Arnie in a massive cash grab), Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone who was ‘wrong’ for the part), The Floronic Man made somewhat of a  brief appearance, Robin (who should never be in a live action movie… thankfully Christopher Nolan agreed with me), and of course Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. She was always one of my favorite Bat-villainesses seeing as how there weren’t too many villainesses in comics back then.

The nerds finally got a Bruce Wayne that they liked. Not blonde. Not an ‘everyman’. Not Bill Murray. George Clooney. He had a square enough jaw the nerds thought.He’s perfect.  Clooney has since on many occasions proclaimed that he played the gay Batman. The GAY Batman. Personally I still haven’t forgiven the people responsible for this, especially the director. It’s only saving grace was Uma Thurman dressed as Poison Ivy. I say ‘dressed as’ because it’s always cool to see comic book characters I grew up loving realized in live action. As far as her acting went, Uma Thurman was in complete hambone style and probably delivered her worst performance of the decade if not her career. All  of the blame can’t go the actors involved, though. The dialogue and story was bad even by 60s TV show Batman standards. ANd SOMEONE had to have thought that  this was a great script, or else it wouldn’t have been greenlit, right?

DC comics as usual were releasing 9 billion comics with the villains used in the film and were fully behind it as they always are until it bombs. Then when it fails they decry that  the ‘formula that worked in the comics’ wasn’t followed properly. Bullshit.

The vast number of comicbook superhero movies are ‘dumbed down’ because they think the public will accept that. Sad to say many times they do.

Thoughts?

And just to try something new, here’s one of those handy dandy polls that wordpress offers:

Crazy Heart Review

I saw this on a double bill. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. After seeing the Ghost Writer , which was a first-rate  suspense movie (just see my review: http://crashlanden.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/the-ghost-writer-review/), I tempted fate to watch the ‘Academy Award  Winning’ movie Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

There were a few reasons why I foresaw myself hating (or at least not liking) this movie. I didn’t know a whole lot about it (which can go the positive or negative route). I had raised expectations since, again, this was the ‘Academy Award  Winning’ movie Crazy Heart. It had a first time director Scott Cooper (which can go the positive or negative route). He also wrote the screenplay(which can go the positive or negative route).

AND… (and this is the big one)… It was about a country music singer. I won’t say I hate country music, because I take things on a case  by case basis,but there aren’t too many music genres that I have less of in my iTunes library. Reggae,  maybe? Pop-punk? Anway, not much of a fan of the current country scene. At least,  what I currently hear out there.

The movie started out shaky. Jeff Bridges appeared to be in ‘minimal effort’ made. The story  had all the earmarks of rehashed music films. Bridges’ agent booking him in bowling alleys. The down on his luck musician has no money, but always has an endless supply of booze and such. He’s always drunk on stage (and at any other time)… And I won’t even mention Jeff Bridges calls himself  ’Bad Blake’ in the movie. Did I just  mention that?  Sorry.

Then came the huge  surprise. It  started getting better. The plot started going into directions that I didn’t see coming. Sure, when Maggie G. pops up, it’s a given that  she’s going to be the love interest, but even that didn’t go where I thought it was going. The biggest shocker for me was the fact that I enjoyed the music. Country music. In my  defense, this wasn’t the current style of Miley Cyrus/ Alan Jackson/Toby Keith country music.  This was (extremely) old school country music. The kind my grandfather probably listened to as a kid.

The country/western soundtrack was amazing. When each new song started up, I found it difficult to keep still, which is unusual for a somewhat  introverted person like myself to be bobbing up in down in public. I was also impressed that besides doing an outstanding acting job (after the shaky start), Bridges did a helluva’ job singing. And he wasn’t the only  one.

There were a few actors that I had no idea were in the movie turned up and did solid jobs. Colin Farrell played a younger country star and I’m assuming sang his own parts, too. I’ve always thought that despite being in some movies that were so atrocious that I couldn’t sit through for more than 5 minutes (Alexander comes to mind), Farrell’s a pretty good actor and much better when he retains his own accent for some reason. It was pleasantly surprising that he got the ‘country’ accent down so well. It sounded authentic.

Robert Duvall turned up as a bartender friend of Ba—I can’t say it….A friend of the character Bridges plays. I last saw Duvall in ‘The Road’ where  he was difficult to identify. His voice is almost always immediately identifiable,but he always brings a different ‘stage presence’ to his characters. His characters never deliver their lines at the same level of authority. He covers the spectrum in that regard. This character was much different than some of his recent western characters.

The back of his head, leastways...

There were also several smaller role standouts like Ryan Bingham (of Band Of Horses fame) who portrays a member of the local band who backs Ba— Bridges character in a bowling alley concert. The appearance by Paul Dial was also enjoyable. Dial had a small, but memorable role in Sling Blade, where I think that I last saw him. I’m assuming that he, too, was playing his own music in the film. He was pretty good on the pee-yana if that was, indeed him.

Oh… and the lovely and talented Maggie Gyllenhaal was awesome as Ba— the love interest (a small town writer who interviews Ba— Bridges’ character, then begins to become romantically involved with him).

She’s been in a number of great films (Stranger Than Fiction,The Dark Knight, Adaptation: 3 of my favorites) and even though she’s become a lot more ‘mainstream’ as an acting commodity, she still has an earthiness that makes her seem more ‘real’ and believable than many of her contemporaries. There are a lot of big name actresses that I wouldn’t have bought in this role.

I have to make special note of the cinematography by Barry Markowitz. It was exceptional. Like Paul Dial, he worked on the movie Sling Blade, which had its share of beautiful imagery.

I was amazed by the contrasts in Crazy Heart; the backstage and hotel scenes where the moody, heavy blacks swallowed everything except the actors… the bowling alley concert with its neon-like lighting… the western landscapes. Those were all really extraordinary. You could really feel the heat and the stark light of the western states in the film. I’m glad I saw this at the theater instead of at home. It wouldn’t have been the same.

I can’t end without applauding director Scott Cooper, who also produced the film and wrote the screenplay from the Thomas Cobb novel of the same name. This is his only directing job, as far as I know. I’m sure he’ll get more. This was a tremendous (and assured) debut. Very impressive, but I hope he doesn’t get hit with the ‘sophomore jinx’.

Does all of this sound like I liked the movie? Of course it does. Thoroughly. All of the awards it received were well deserved, especially the Academy Awards Best Actor for Bridges. I went in with a skeptical attitude and the movie won me over.

This is what I go to movies for. 4.5 out of 5 Whatevers.

The Ghost Writer Review

Roman Polanski’s ‘The Ghost Writer’ is a well made slow but steady suspense film. It evokes Hitchcock even more so than  Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Scorsese felt that he had to keep the camera on the grotesqueries, where Polanski never panders. This is an adult movie (and no Matt, I don’t mean porn) and you’re actually required to pay attention. Like Scorsese, Polanski makes use of foreshadowing and visual imagery to allude to ‘waht comes later’. My favorite was a painting in Adam Lang’s office that was strategically placed to signal one particular character’s fate.

Ewan McGregor has often picked interesting movies and this is one of those. Here MacGregor is the ‘everyman’ who finds more trouble with every secret he uncovers doing his job. He plays a ‘ghost writer’ ( a writer brought in to write with credit being given to another) who is unnamed throughout. He is brought in to finish the biography of a British Prime Minister Adam Lang (played by Pierce Brosnan) when the previous ghost writer  turns up drowned . As is usual in most Polanski films there is something ovbviously wrong with the situation that MacGregor’s writer finds himself in. From the beginning he has a sense that something is amiss. Lang and possibly everyone around him have secrets to hide.

There’s no reason to give away any more than that. Polanski, like Scorsese knows how to make a film and doesn’t have to rely on FX or elaborately choreographed action scenes to tell a good story. With the Ghost Writer he embraces wholeheartedly the filmmaking philosophy of  Hitchcock, that is visually showing the story instead of telling the story through dialogue. The whole movie is dark and grey and wet. The visuals are moody if not somewhat downbeat.Polanski has always kind of winked at the audience with a slightly peculiar sense of humor, though and he does that here. I could see him laughing at the film’s last frame before going to black.  The soundtrack’s main theme helped to underscore the odd tone throughout. I think even a phone’s ringtone plays the same tune at one point in the film (could be wrong about that).

That painting says a lot in the film...

Polanski also gets the best out of his actors. I was actually surprised by the variety of actors and actresses that were in this film.

As said already, Brosnan plays Lang the Prime Minister, and surprising ly (to me) was as un-Pierce Brosnan-like as I’ve seen him in a film.

Olivia Williams plays Lang’s discontented wife. She always brings weight to her film roles. So does Tom Wilkinson who I doubt could give a poor acting performance.

But when Kim Catrell popped up, it took me a minute to realize who she was because of the accent. Believable, too. I’ve always seen her as an actress that played the same internally uncomplicated character. Granted I haven’t seen her in a film since Star Trek 6 (1991?), but I think this was her best film role that I’ve seen (Big Trouble In Little China would be my favorite Kim Catrell role, though).

"Hahht"... You'll have to see the movie to get that.

Jim Belushi even… wait… JIM BELUSHI WAS IN THIS!  K-9 Cop… Blues Brothers 2000, The Man With One Red Shoe… The Principal…even Red Heat… Not good films. Watchable granted, but still dumb. I don’t think he’s ever even been IN a good movie. And HE was good! He didn’t play Jim Belushi in this (and nothing wrong with Jim Belushi). He was a character I haven’t seen before. I have to think the performances were prompted by Polanski. That’s what great directors do, I guess.

I have to say that the highlight for me was an appearance by the always memorable Eli Wallach. I think the end titles  said something like ‘And  Participation By: Eli Wallach’ or some such. He’s coming up on the century mark and still a great actor. That makes me very happy.

The movie has one or 2 lapses of logic for story convenience, but I’m fine with that. It throws in a little political rhetoric, also, but I don’t think it’s really important to the point of the movie. It’s still the best 2010 release that I’ve seen. Polanski really is one of the better directors alive and without having thought about a list, I would say he would have to be in my list of  Top 10 Directors. WIth that said…

Take responsibility for your actions, Roman.

Anyway… 4 out of 5 whatevers and a good movie worth seeing.

Repo Men Short Review With No Spoilers Since Critics And The Trailer Have Already Done That (3 of 5)

Repo Man is certainly getting a bad rap , derided by ‘critics’ and getting something like 20% on a certain Tomatometer. I must state reiteratively, that this IS getting a bad rap. I appreciated the effort  made  by the film at any rate. I went into this thinking it can’t  be as bad as all the critics have said, can it? And it wasn’t. I actually had a pretty good time.

The trailer gives away a significant amount of the story, but as I always say, if you know how stories work you usually can figure out where a movie’s going anyway. There were a couple of explanations that didn’t work for me and some twists that are out of the blue, nevertheless it was still fun enough to work for me. I think the movie has confused some of the critics. This is as much a satire as Robocop was,  if not quite as good. If you expect a comedy, an action flick or something strictly sci-fi, you’re going to be disappointed. You will get elements of all 3, though.

The down side to the film is that it’s a little jumpy and has some stark contrasts from scene to scene (not nearly as much as Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones or last year’s Watchmen). That’s possibly because director Miguel Sapochnik is a bit inexperienced… Or could be the editor, who knows?…  The script had some flaws that contributed to the movie’s problems. The screenwriter team of Eric Garcia and Garrett  Lerner  provided some weak character motivations and an ending that was a bit of a Dues Ex Machina, but, overall, the movie ‘worked’ for me. The 3 main reasons (for me) were firstly: the actors.

Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and Liev Schrieber are all actors that can be put in the ‘cerebral ‘ category’.  They’re a little better than the script. Jude Law when given the chance , can carry a movie fairly easily, which he does here as one of the Repo Men who repossess bodily organs from ‘clients’ who haven’t kept up with their health care bills.

Schrieber does a solid job as (not necessarily) the happily snakey antagonist of the film. I say ‘(not necessarily)’ because I don’t think he’s the real villain of the story. I think Repo Men has some similarities in its theme to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, to give a hint to what I mean (Repo Men’s not as good as that one, either). He was better cast as this character, than as Sabretooth in the last film that I saw him in (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was a crap title, and I should know since I’m a crap title writing kind of guy).

Forest Whitaker probably had the worst written character of the 3. There is one particular ‘reveal’ in the movie concerning his character that just wasn’t thought about long enough by the writers. Not his fault.

Alice Braga holds her own as the eventual love interest. I liked her more as the movie went on. She’s not well known in the US even though she’s already been in a few ‘big’ movies. I imagine that might change after her next movie (Predators) is released.

One last thing I would like to add, there have been many critics that have talked about how ‘overly gory’ that Repo Men is, which just IS NOT TRUE.  There are only few moments in the film that I would characterize as gory, especially for a movie that revolves around the idea that this one does. Right off the bat we get a depiction of what the Repo Men actually do and surprisingly to me (after all the gore talk), it was quick (lasting only  acouple of seconds) and was as gorey as the film got. Most everything in the film was implied.  This isn’t a ‘splatter pic’. I’m not a gore-hound, but I actually think it could have used a healthy dose of Monty Python-esque bloodletting. I think the critics that have derided the film, might have been able to figure out that this was meant to be satire and not to be taken at face value.

It should have been obvious. At one point, Law’s Repo Man, while repossessing a music artist’s (RZA) body parts, allows him to record his last song. He  even assists him in giving his two cents about the song content and promises to deliver the last recording to the man’s record label. Then the man proceeds to lay down to allow him to take the part back, which doesn’t exactly work out too well.

Most of the finale  involves implied gore. I mentioned Robocop earlier and in comparison with that movie, this movie is tame. If you ARE a gorehound, you’re going to feel  like you got snowed/taken/owned/cheated/rode/duped.

3 of 5 whatevers. Could have been better (even without a large budget), but definitely too good to be ‘panned’ by the majority of critics and completely ignored by audiences. Decent action scenes especially from the middle to the end, some dark laughs and  a bunch of decent actors made for a moderately enjoyable film.

Domino (and Deadpool) In Color

‘Piddling’ until the revised script is finished…

“Just a lot of imagination, I think…”

Extra points if you know where the title of this came from… Anyway, my favorite Liefeld character was always Domino and I drew her for funsies (and to post on Rob’s message Boards. Weezie Simonson was the co-creator, I think.

I drew a rough in ink (it was REALLY rough), then drew a slightly better rough before trying to wing it… Winging doesn’t work and I ruined it at the end… Still may color her and DP, though…

March Madness 2010

@ NCAA.com, I’m watching ALL FOUR NCAA games going on right now at one time. Okay, 2 haven’t started yet, but that’s beside the point.  I COULD be watching 4…

This is so freaking awesome! If only they’ll do this for college football! It even has a ‘boss button’ which is hilarious… I picked Kansas, Duke, West Virginia and Pitt to get to the Final 4, but of course my sentimental pick is FSU in the West. No wagering, of course… I’m hopeful, but my head says they’re going out early. I guess they’ve trained me over the years…

“I know. Why aren’t you working?” To that I say ” pppbbbppptttbbbbtttppptttttt. ” That’s my raspberry.