Crash! Landen’s Best 10 Movies of 1992

1992 was an outstanding year in movies. There were a number of  interesting movies and was a breakout year for a number of artists in front of the camera or behind it. This was the year that Robert Rodriguez broke out with El Mariarchi, a really astounding movie/story (sitting at #11 on My list). Quentin Tarantino had his assured directorial debut with Reservoir Dogs…. Love that word ‘assured’…

Some of the others that didn’t make my list: School Ties (and like A Midnight Clear, had a cast of  actors on their way up.)… Radio Flyer… The Last of the Mohicans… 1492: Conquest of Paradise (one of Ridley Scott’s worst, but still far superior to most everything else out there.)… the flawed ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’… And Mike Myers and Dana Carvey (and maybe even Tia Carrere) ruled the Earth with Wayne’s World….

On to the Top 10:

(Bumped) The Waterdance (Probably little seen or heard of, but that doesn’t make it any less good. Eric Stoltz costars with Wesley Snipes and William Forsythe, who are all dealing with  paralysis in their own way. This was back when Wesley Snipes hadn’t become a full fledged ‘action star’ and was still ‘acting’. The ‘ego-race’ sticks out in my mind about this film. You’ll have to see it, to understand that one. It’s serious, but it’s funny, too. It’s one of the better roles for all involved.

(Bumped) A Midnight Clear (A somewhat small movie set during World War II.  I think this was my introduction to Gary Sinise among a cast of young up and comers…

10 Reservoir Dogs (Obviously, the movie that put Tarantino on the map. A heist movie without the heist.)

9 Patriot Games (It was utterly surprising that Alec Baldwin was better in the Jack Ryan role than Harrison Ford was. I think Baldwin made a grievous error in not coming back for the ‘sequels’, and Tom Clancy almost severed all ties with Hollywood after the director didn’t stick to Clancy’s meticulously researched details; but this was still a pretty good effort. Much better than the next installment of the Jack Ryan series.)

8 A River Runs Through It ( I might have put this at this spot on the list based entirely on the final line of the film. It’s worth watching the entire film just for that one line. Not kidding.)

7 Damage (One of those very intelligently made British films. Revolves around a self destructive member of English Parliament that becomes involved with his son’s fiancee. Parts of the movie are predictable, but it’s fun watching the downward spiral, especially when juliet Binoche is the son’s fiancee. Probably not for everyone, but a great film nonetheless.)

6 Glengarry Glen Ross  (Seven great acting performances… Truly an ensemble cast with Baldwin, Spacey, Pacino, Lemon, Arkin, Harris and Pryce… Always be closing!)

5 The Player (One of Robert Altman’s best. Not as good as Gosford Park, but it’s right up there.)

4 Howard’s End (I saw this recently and it knocked me over. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson work very well together. It’s ending is an honest one. Stay away from it if you don’t feel comfortable watching something intelligent.)

3 One False Move (Usually when Billy Bob plays a dumb guy, the movie’s really good. This one  is very under-rated. It’s very intelligently written and acted with a lot of subtlety and mannrisms.. For me one of Bill Paxton’s best roles. Michael Beach is also really good as Pluto, one of the bad guys. But everyone involved did a terrific job. I almost want to move this up a notch.)

2 Malcolm X (This was a HUGE surprise for me. It wasn’t what I expected it to be and for me is STILL Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s best movie. It’s a CRIME that Al Pacino beat out Washington for Best Actor at the Oscars that year. A CRIME.  Maybe Washington getting Best Actor for a mediocre movie /performance in Training Day was Hollywood’s way of apologizing. The movie has some flaws at least according to my own personal tastes. I never cared for the cinematography. The soundtrack was spotty also. Maybe I should correct myself and say the film’s score was a bit spotty. Those are just picking nits, though. Malcolm X is an epic film.)

1 Unforgiven (Maybe my favorite western. I might have to flip a coin between this and a few other Eastwood westerns. All of my absolute favorites star Eastwood  anyway. Well deserving of Best Picture and all of that. Great story. Great actors. Great script. Funny. Serious. Poetic. Violent. Poignant. Layered. Just a brilliant work. Great movie!)

Any thoughts? Thoughts welcome…

Crash! Landen’s Worst 10 Movies of 1992

Almost to the end of the 90s… I guess I wasn’t as selective way back when and there was a smorgasbord of cheaply made cheap looking cheap thrill cheap crap movies to choose from. I’m probably going to barf when I look back at the movies I’ve seen from the 80s.

Here are the standard flicks that ‘missed the cut’. Split Second.  Single White Female. The Lawnmower Man. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Stay Tuned. Bob Roberts. Innocent Blood! Beethoven! Rock-a-Doodle! Rock-a-Doodle!!! They go on and on in 1992. Maybe I just had no taste, but in my own defense, most of these were not MY choice. Sometimes you have to do what you gotta’ do. There might even be a watchable movie or 2 on my list, but I would never own up to it. Moving right along…

UPDATE: I recently saw the Clive Barker stinkfest that is Candyman. At first I thought I was going to insert it into 1992′s Top 10, but after looking throught the list…. Candyman’s a stinker, but nowhere close to the disasters and borefests below. So I’ll just mention Candyman so that you won’t end up a victim like me….

Here are 1992′s bottom of the barrel.

10 Poison Ivy

9 Pet Sematary Two

8 Cool World

7 The Cutting Edge

6 Braindead

5 Sleepwalkers

4 Mo’ Money

3 Three Ninjas

2 Dr. Giggles

1 Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

Crash! Landen’s Best 10 Movies of 1993

1993 was a good year to be a fan of the big screen. Most of these films that make up my ‘Best Of’ list could go right on to my ‘Favorites’ list and even though I haven’t made my ‘Best Of The 90s’ list yet, I’m sure all of these will make my Top 100.

There were some interesting movies in 1993. One of the first ‘indie’ movies that I saw was a really small movie called ‘Clean, Shaven’, the story of a schizophrenic man trying to re-establish a relationship with his daughter that starred Peter Greene (who is mostly known as the ‘cop’ in Pulp Fiction). This was also the year of the third ‘Evil Dead’ film ‘Army of Darkness’ (still waiting for that fourth installment… Sam? Bruce? C’mon!!!)…. Other flicks that didn’t quite make my Top 10: The third installment of the ‘Colors’ trilogy ‘Blue’. Clint Eastwood’s ‘A Perfect World’ was a pretty good one, too.

UPDATE: Just saw a really good movie that I had never even heard of until recently. Starred Nic Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper, Dwight Yoakam and the late great JT Walsh. I had no idea where the movie was going. Lots of twists and turns. Best to watch it without reading anything about it. I highly recommend it. It’s also going to bump Dragon from my list…. Sorry Bruce.

I also have to mention What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? I think it’s a great film, too which I have been debating whether or not it should go on the list. ‘Yes’ was my answer and I’m bumping The Secret Garden to add it at #10.

On to the Top 10:

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Bumped….)

The Secret Garden (Bumped).

10 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape ( I think this film is very flawed, but its strengths outshine the weaknesses…)

9 The Firm

8 Rudy

7 The Remains of the Day

6 Dave

5 The Fugitive

4 Red Rock West

3 Groundhog Day

2 Jurassic Park

1 Schindler’s List

Crash! Landen’s Worst 10 Movies of 1993

The further I go back the more movies I find that I liked, but are still uncompromisingly bad. There are a few in this 10 that are personal guilty pleasures, but I won’t say which. Like in any other year there may be MANY movies that deserve to be on a worst list more than some of these, but these are from my own pool of viewed movies.

Movies that didn’t quite make the list… The wretchedly bad ‘My Life’ that maybe deserves to make the Top (or Bottom) 10… The awful sequel ‘Look Who’s Talking Now’… The brain-dead ‘Ghost In The Machine’… There are others…. Happy to say this is another year where a ‘true’ horror movie didn’t make my Worst 10.(Bumped) Sliver

(Bumped… But it’s still TERRIBLE.) Super Mario Bros.

10 The Crush

9 The Vanishing

8 Weekend at Bernie’s II

7 Time Runner (How did Mark Hamill go from Star Wars to this?)

6 Mr. Nanny

5 The Meteor Man

4 Leprechaun

3 Cop and a Half (One of Roger Ebert’s worst calls…)

2 Robocop 3 (Maybe the worst third film of any film trilogy. I’m including the true crap, too, like  Jaws 3, Howling II:The Marsupials, Ghoulies III:Ghoulies Go To College, and The Godfather 3. It makes Terminator III look like a Best Film contender.)

1 Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (A feminist monstrosity.)

Thoughts?

Crash! Landen’s Best 10 Movies of 1994

Getting right to business… Movies that didn’t quite make my list: Star Trek Generations, The Professional (Léon), The Hudsucker Proxy, The War, Some Folks Call It A Slingblade (later remade as Sling blade)…

I also have to add Jackie Chan’s Jui kuen II (Legend Of Drunken Master) which for me has at least 2 of the best martial arts action sequences ever put to film. The story and acting are terrible, but you kind of expect that in a Jackie Chan movie. The action scenes are well worth it. The sequence where Chan reluctantly fights a foe beneath a train is a joy to watch. Then, there is a sequence where Chan and an ally take on what seems to be an ENTIRE freaking town. For me, this is Chan’s best movie. Sure, he’s been in a movie or 2 with a better story. The ‘Shanghai’ movies… The Forbidden Kingdom was fun.. But LODM features Chan at his most inventive. Great stuff…

So, anyway,  here are my Top 10….

UPDATED

Maverick  (Bumped by King George)

(Bumped) The Crow

(Bumped)  The River Wild

10 Four Weddings and a Funeral

8 Death And The MAiden

8 The Madness Of King George

7 Heavenly Creatures

6 True Lies

5 Pulp Fiction

4 Hoop Dreams

3 Quiz Show

2 Forrest Gump

1 The Shawshank Redemption

Thoughts?

Crash! Landen’s Worst Movies of 1994

This is a truly horrible list and by horrible I mean I think it’s a good list of awful movies that were released in 1994. I’m very happy to say that there are no horror movies on one of my Worst lists for once… That’s unless you count any movie with Rosie O’Donnell in it a horror movie… Okay, so this has one horror movie. The others on the list… Well, I can’t believe I actually watched some of these. One of these was a fairly large hit (Stargate) and another was embraced by critics (The Last Seduction). Not for me, though.

Others that didn’t quite make the list: One of the most hyped crapfests of the 90s…Blankman (the Wayans Brothers are relentlessly terrible at the movies), Richie Rich, City Slickers II, The Scout (where Brendan Fraser plays a MLB pitching prospect… trouble is Fraser looks like he’s never even heard of this ‘baseball’ thing. The ONLY less believable pitcher in Film History was Tim Robbins in Bull Durham)…Reality Bites (where the girl ends up with the WRONG guy… watch that movie and try to tell me I’m wrong). There are a mass of other ‘winners’ from 1994 (Surviving the Game!), but I’ll get on with things.

Here’s my 10 Worst from 1994:

10 Stargate

9 When a Man Loves a Woman

8 The Specialist

7 Milk Money

6 Disclosure

5 Serial Mom

4 Clean Slate

3 The Last Seduction

2 The Flintstones

1 Exit to Eden

Thoughts?

10 Days Gone…

Just realized I haven’t posted in over a week.  Here’s a toon girl that was part of a design with many other toon folks. Maybe I’ll post it later.

Or maybe not….

The revamped script is almost done , so I guess I’ll be posting pages soon anyway. And I’ll continue posting the movie lists, too, whether anyone wants me to or not.

Back to it.

Crash! Landen’s Top 10 Films of 1995

I’m halfway through the good ones. 1995 was top heavy it seems. Once I got past my first 10 there seemed to be a dramatic drop in quality. Sure there were a few good ones, but overall, it was a lackluster year for Hollywood. Here’s a few good ones that I liked, but didn’t make the list: ‘Dolores Claiborne’, which was a pretty good Stephen King movie… I loved the first movie that I saw Kate Beckinsale act in: ‘Haunted’, which had a very similar story and twist-ending to the Sixth Sense. But this one was first. And no, I didn’t just give the movie away. It’s not what you think… The Hitchcock homage ‘Nick of Time’ with Johnny Depp  wasn’t well-received but I liked it. Walken was great in it… ‘Strange Days’ was a good try. ‘Bang ‘ was a very interesting little indie movie that had a bit part by a then somewhat unknown Lucy Liu…. Nope. No ‘The Usual Suspects’. I’ve always seen that one as HIGHLY over-rated. I was biased by the trailer before seeing this, though. The trailer that they were showing before this came out actually revealed a MAJOR plot point, so I have to wonder if I would have liked it more if I had not seen that trailer.

There were a few other pretty good movies like the kids’ movie ‘A Little Princess’ which was made by the same company that had made a few live-action kid s’ classics like ‘the Secret Garden’ (if I remember right). Sam Raimi’s ‘The Quick and The Dead’. The Lovecraftian ‘In The Mouth of Madness’ by John Carpenter… ‘Welcome to The Dollhouse’ was a pretty good try, but kind of mean-spirited… And I think this was the first time a Jackie Chan film got a wide release in America (Rumble In The Bronx). Terrible story as always, but the Jackie Chan action sequences more than make up for that…

Maybe 1995 wasn’t so bad once I got past the first 10… Anyway, here’s the list with little to no comment:

(Bumped)  Jumanji (A very entertaining movie… And I think the first Robin Williams movie not to make one of my ‘Worst’ lists. One of the better early CGI movies)

10 Lord of Illusions (I’m really happy to put a horror movie in my Top 10)

9 Before Sunrise (Only recently got around to this one… Not nearly as pretentious as I thought it would be.)

8 Casino (Not one of my Top 5 Scorcese movies, but still really good…)

7 Circle of Friends

6 Die Hard with a Vengeance

5 Apollo 13

4 Babe

3 Toy Story

2 Se7en (A movie that has spawned a host of imitators that didn’t get the fact that the worst parts of this movie happen in your mind and not onscreen. It’s interesting to watch this and then one of Fincher’s later movies on the same subject: Zodiac… This was Kevin Spacey’s year, also.)

1 Braveheart  (I had heard that this was a truly epic film. That Mel Gibson was an even better director than he was an actor. That the period war scenes put anything else to shame outside of Spartacus and Ran. That it was the best film of the year…. On and on… So I had raised expectations for this one and it STILL exceeded them. Just a great movie.)

Thoughts?

Crash! Landen’s 10 Worst Films of 1995

So we’re at the midway point of the 90s. As always, movies that didn’t make the list: the watchable depiction of regrettably mandated high school AP English reading material ‘The Scarlet Letter’, the somewhat interesting ‘ The Last Supper’, the preachy crapfest that was ‘Powder’,  the pretentiously elitist ‘Kicking and Screaming’ and ‘Hackers’ that featured Angelina Jolie in maybe her smokin’-est role ever. Too bad the movie stunk like dung-balls.

Nope. No Waterworld. Sure it sucked, but it wasn’t even CLOSE to making my list. Not even with the ‘theme-park’ style actiuon sequences. This wasn’t the worst year in movies ever, but it had its share of mediocre snoozers. Here’s my list with little to no comment:

(Bumped) Fair Game (Wasn’t terrible. Got bad reviews before anyone ever actually saw it. Kind of like Showgirls.)

10 The Crossing Guard

9 Virtuosity (I think this is the only Crowe movie that I’ve seen that I didn’t like.)

8 Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

7 Bad Boys

6 Showgirls

5 The Walking Dead (Long before that zombie comic… there was this ridiculous movie. Zombies would’ve helped it… A lot…. It was SO bad that I can’t even find a decent sized pic of the movie poster on the net)

4 Vampire in Brooklyn

3 Tank Girl

2 Judge Dredd (One of my most disappointing theater experiences, I think).

1 The Stendhal Syndrome (Argento has exploited his daughter quite often but this might be his slimiest use of her. Just a hackneyed, braindead assault of a film.)

Crash! Landen’s Best 10 Movies of 1996

(UPDATED)

The Academy Awards choice for Best Picture that year was The English Patient (I believe). While it was a good film and had a really hard-core moment or 2 (one involved Willem Defoe’s thumbs), but it was unforgiveably BORING. This, coming from a guy that can sit through the slower stuff with the best of them. So that one probably wouldn’t even make my Top 25 for 1996. Some others that are worth seeing but didn’t quite make my list: Kingpin (yes, the Farrelly Brothers movie), The Phantom (which is a great movie. I don’t care what anyone says), Scream, Tin Cup, Michael Collins, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, Spike Lee’s Get On The Bus, the Rock, James And The Giant Peach (a great stop motion kids’ movie), and Swingers. You might argue that Swingers should be in the Top 10, but for me, it was good, but a bit over-rated.

Had to bump another one after watching the French film ‘Ridicule’…. And added Swingers… Forgot how good it was…..

That Thing You Do! (A great cast/fun movie… Spartacus!… But bumped from my list.))

Extreme Measures (Bumped. Sorry, Gene.)

(Bumped) The Cable Guy (One of Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey’s best. Great satire of pop culture/society which is what Stiller’s best at, Under-rated, IMHO. Not appreciated by the general public.)

10 The Arrival (Well done lower end sci-fi flick…)

9 Two Days in the Valley (one of the first ‘Pulp Fiction’ imitators, but a well done one).

8 Swingers (An oversight I needed to correct…)

7 When We Were Kings (Documentary of the Rumble In The Jungle… A pretty good detailing of what surrounded one of the more memorable  fights ever….)

6 Ridicule (Pretty twisted for one of ‘these types of movies’. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, if you’re not a fan of thinking.)

5 Shine

4 Fargo

3 Trainspotting (As funny as drug addiction gets… And Kelly McDonald’s in it. What more can you ask for?)

2 12 Monkeys (One of Gilliam’s best. )

1 Sling Blade

Thoughts?