1989

Best Movies of 1989
The Usual Choices
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford)
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)
My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan)

But how about...
Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant)
This is my favourite junkie movie (if such a thing is possible and okay to have). For once, it's more than just a harrowing tale of a downward spiral...instead, drug-taking is depicted as a lifestyle choice: a vocation that you may be suited for, if you can accept a personal income supplied by violent crime, a fly-by-night existence, sexual impotence, fatal overdosing and a never-leaving-you dread as its occupational hazards. There are other interesting deviations from the usual druggie story: subtle humour flits all about, even in the darkest of circumstances (a corpse is such a bloody nuisance); the four crew members are clearly 20-something year old children, as if frozen in time mid-puberty; and none of them are ever frantic or desperate (but not droolingly chilled-out either)...when the unexpected happens, it is simply dealt with, like a hassle at work. But most important is the universal truth it holds upfront: no kidding...what a truly shitful existence junkiedom is. 

...and what about...
Sea of Love (Harold Becker)
Al Pacino is a 20 year vet of the New York police force, divorced & work-obsessed & weary (and nobody can do weary like Al). As he grapples with a boozy midlife crisis, a murderer is on the loose: someone is shooting lonelyhearts men in the back of the head during sex (yeah, it's a tough story). Against his better judgement (and because he's lonely too), Detective Al gets very close to one suspect in particular...is she the psycho or just someone who is really hotstuff in bed? In less-able hands with fewer lighthearted touches (courtesy of John Goodman and some early comic scenes), this would have been an ugly & unpleasant murder-mystery; instead, it manages to be a manhunt story that is sad, kinky and riveting. Al, John and twisty-faced Ellen Barkin deliver high-impact performances, the ending is both a shock and, for once, logical, and the nicey-nicey postscript is a rip from Tootsie. An underrated serial killer thriller.

...not to mention...
Glory (Edward Zwick)
American Civil War movies are usually big & sweeping (Gone With the Wind; Raintree County), background scenery for another kind of story (The Beguiled; Sommersby) or just another war-action popcorner (Escape from Fort Bravo; The Horse Soldiers). Glory manages to be all three but with a prioritized attempt at historical accuracy...up to a certain degree. The battles happened and the real Colonel Robert Gould Shaw lived and died as depicted (according to Civil War historian James M. McPherson)...but the rest of the characters are dramatic inventions...which is perfectly okay by me. Exciting & emotional, romanticized & bloody, myth-making & revealing, this film tells its story with warmth and a minimum of Yankee dandifying. And, most impressively, a larger truth is aimed at: war changes men and sometimes, can even improve them (and if that's what it takes...how pathetic & doomed we are.)

...and one personal unmentionable...
The Abyss (James Cameron)
I consider The Terminator and Aliens to be two of the best (and maybe even the very best) sci-fi action films ever made. I consider Terminator 2, Titanic, Avatar and The Abyss to be four of the most overrated-but-hugely-popular-anyway films ever made. All six feature impressive (and quite cutting edge for the times) special visual effects...but to me, The Abyss (and the other three in that latter group) is all-looks and limp-story. A tale of discovering alien life in the ocean deep, The Abyss suffers from the same negatives as most underwater movies: the motion is slowed down; there are long stretches of silence or hushed, muffled talking; the colour palette is a constant blue hue; it's difficult to tell who is who when they put on their scuba gear; and somewhere, there is an ominous, echoing ping. Throw in an overused His Girl Friday male/female dynamic, an excessive run-time and an electronica soundtrack that soon becomes soothe-groove, and you've got minimal cinematic excitement...regardless of how impressive it all looks up there on the screen.

My Top 10 Films of 1989
"PANADOL!!"
#01  A   Glory (Zwick)
#02  A   Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
#03  A-  Sea of Love (Becker)
#04  A-  The Fabulous Baker Boys (Kloves)
#05  A-  Casualties of War (De Palma)
#06  A-  Say Anything (Crowe)
#07  A-  My Left Foot (Sheridan)
#08  A-  Drugstore Cowboy (Van Sant)
#09  B+ Mystery Train (Jarmusch)
#10  B+ Enemies, A Love Story (Mazursky)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11  B+ Sex, Lies & Videotape (Soderbergh)
#12  B+ Parenthood (Howard)
#13  B+ Henry V (Branagh)
#14  B+ Do the Right Thing (Lee)
#15  B+ Batman (Burton)
#16  B+ Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford)
#17  B+ Scandal (Caton-Jones)
#18  B+ Dead Calm (Noyce)
#19  B+ When Harry Met Sally (Reiner)
#20  B+ Sweetie (Campion)

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
B   Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade [his old man is fun to have around, but the villains are a dull, anonymous lot]
B   Chameleon Street [worthy indie-docudrama about race & class which veers towards being smartarse]
B   Family Business [caper story as family drama, where none of the family seem even remotely related]
B   Shirley Valentine [freshly-liberated London housewife has to go all the way to Greece just for some decent sex]
B   Blaze [Paul Newman as an old right-wing lecher holds your attention but doesn't entirely nail it to the bedpost]
B   The War of the Roses [a dark comedy about divorce that thinks there's a thick line between love and hate]
B   Parents [a horror movie for vegans which has an eeriness that the final 10 minutes ruin by being hysterical]
B   Born on the Fourth of July [it waves the protest sign more than it tells the story]
B-  Celia [curious blend of childhood, Reds paranoia, a rabbit plague and murder that stumbles in the last quarter]
B-  Uncle Buck [a typical John Hughes 1980's comedy...too broad, overly sentimental but entertainingly acted]
B-  Back to the Future Part II [the past was more inventive and enjoyable than the future...how depressing]
B-  New York Stories [#1: B+ / #2: D / #3: B = Average: B-]
B-  Honey, I Shrunk the Kids [really just another formulaic 1960's Disney movie: Son of Son of Flubber]
B-  Dead Poets Society [Education as cult; Teacher as Grand Poobah; Teenagers as worshippers]
C   Always [a romantic ghost story that's even schmaltzier than the 1943 original]
C   Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure [too-calculatingly aimed to be a cult movie for people who were 80's kids]
C   Steel Magnolias [warm and sappy...with Shirley MacLaine at her most grating]
C   Field of Dreams [warm and sappy...and I mean really, really sappy]
C   George's Island [one of those kid adventure films where the adult actors go large and ham it up]
C   Fat Man and Little Boy [the story of the most terrible scientific invention in history, made humdrum]
D   The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover [incessantly unpleasant]
D   The Abyss [A Personal Unmentionable]
E   Star Trek V: The Final Frontier [The Shat meets God...and is underwhelmed]

"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1989 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Black Rainbow (Hodges); Blind Fury (Noyce); Breaking In (Forsyth); The ‘Burbs (Dante); Bye Bye Blues (Wheeler); Cat Chaser (Ferrara); Cheetah (Blyth); Devil in the Flesh (Murray); The Dream Team (Zieff); A Dry White Season (Palcy); Eat a Bowl of Tea (Wang); 84 Charlie MoPic / 84C MoPic (Duncan); Getting It Right (Kleiser); Great Balls of Fire! (McBride); Immediate Family (Kaplan); In Country (Jewison); Kill Me Again (Dahl); Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Kaurismaki); Meet the Feebles (Jackson); The Mighty Quinn (Schenkel); Miss Firecracker (Schlamme); Music Box (Costa-Gravas); The Package (Davis); Pet Sematary (Lambert); Queen of Hearts (Amiel); Return Home (Argall); Reunion (Schatzberg); Speaking Parts (Egoyan); True Believer (Ruben); True Love (Savoca); The Unbelievable Truth (Hartley); Valmont (Forman); Venus Peter (Sellar); When the Whales Came (Rees); Wilt (Tuchner)


Best Performances of 1989
Oft-Mentioned Choices
Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July
Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot
Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy
Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot
Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys
Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy
Denzel Washington in Glory

But how about...
Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm
While our Nicole went on to become a higher-profile and formidable actress, I still think this is her best performance (#2: 1987's Vietnam TV mini-series). In the grand cinematic tradition of damsels-in-distress...from Fay Wray vs King Kong (helpless screamer who has sex appeal) to Sarah Connor vs The Terminator (the innocent target who fights back)...is this story of an innocent target who screams, has sex appeal and fights back. In full frizz 'n' freckle mode, Nicole shifts from PTSD sufferer (as outlined in a shocking early scene...horrendous) to leave-me-alone-you-evil-bastard heroine. You see her grow in strength and independence as she bit by bit wrests control, using all her wiles, both intellectual and physical, her rat-cunning and God-given charisma. After all she goes through with King Creep Billy, do you reckon she'll want to stay hitched to 20-years-older-than-her Sam (or even shorter-than-her Tom)? Nah...a great career calls instead.

...and what about...
Andie MacDowell in Sex, Lies & Videotape
Whatever happened to this woman? I don't mean the one who starred in Green Card, Four Weddings & a Funeral and Groundhog Day (as pleasant as she was in those), but this one: keen to understand herself, sexually disinterested but suspecting that's not her fault, wanting to make a good home with a good man but not be the doormat, refusing to be anything she's not, strengthening before your eyes. Y'know...an interesting individual and, as she finds out more about the people close to her, a woman who realises that she is actually not the one who has problems, regardless of what they all think. One of the most subtle performances I can recall, Andie takes a character who could have quite easily come across as rather pathetic and simple, and makes her the least vapid person in the room. Of the three components in the title, Andie puts "Lies" in the Number 1 spot...she doesn't lie and cannot fathom how anybody would or could. Quietly tough and, by the end of the film, the only grown-up out of all 'em.

...not to mention...
Hugh O'Conor in My Left Foot
While most of the critical attention & accolades were directed towards Daniel Day Lewis (and rightly so...his portrayal of the adult Christy Brown is astonishing...a showcase of physical acting), 14 YO Hugh as the child Christy is certainly no slouch. On screen for no more than 20 minutes, Hugh is a match for Daniel, in both skill (how many hours did it take to learn how to use his left foot like that...and God, how many cramps did he get practising?) and transition (the boy, although looking nothing like the adult actor, is an instantly acceptable previous incarnation of the artist). I particularly like the boy's dual-expression of effort + frustration, trapped inside a non-functioning body but refusing to let it dominate him, his face all flexed muscle. An admirable performance, regardless of age or how long he's up there on the screen.

...and one personal unmentionable...
Dwight Schultz in Fat Man and Little Boy
A case of catastrophic casting. This is the sense-defying match-up: J. Robert "I am become Death" Oppenheimer, played by H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock...or putting it another way, the main-brain of the atomic bomb portrayed by the comic relief in TV's The A Team. What was the basis for this bizarre selection?...Dwight was chosen because he was skinny? Dwight was chosen because he could chainsmoke? Dwight was chosen because...nope, can't come up with any other logical reason. While the movie fails because it is mysteriously tension-free, Dwight adds even more blandness...tofu served with whey. And so ironic: watch the creation of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombs and zone out at the same time; a peaceful nothing emerging from a destroyer of worlds.

My 10 Favourite Performances of 1989
Flaps down, spray out, push over.
Only a chosen few can pull off...The Trump.
#01  Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot
#02  Andie MacDowell in Sex, Lies & Videotape
#03  Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors
#04  Jeff Bridges & Michelle Pfeiffer & Beau Bridges in The Fabulous Baker Boys
#05  Hugh O'Conor in My Left Foot
#06  Nick Nolte in New York Stories
#07  Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm
#08  The ensemble cast of Casualties of War
#09  Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy
#10  Sean Connery in Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11  Dianne Wiest in Parenthood
#12  John Cusack in Say Anything
#13  Lena Olin in Enemies, A Love Story
#14  Ian Holm in Henry V
#15  Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot
#16  Al Pacino & Ellen Barkin & John Goodman in Sea of Love
#17  Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors
#18  Denzel Washington in Glory
#19  Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally
#20  Bryan Madorsky in Parents
#21  Kim Basinger in Batman
#22  Rebecca Smart in Celia

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
>  Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July [he serves the material but I never felt what he was feeling]
>  Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine [I don't like characters who talk to the camera like it's a confessor]
>  Jessica Tandy & Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy [a pair of fine old twinklers but not much more]
>  Kenneth Branagh in Henry V [the first of his 4 versions of Olivier roles...Lord Larry was better every time] 
>  Jack Nicholson in Batman [Heath Ledger]

And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1989 are:

FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Glory (Edward Zwick)
SILVER: Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
BRONZE: Sea of Love (Harold Becker)

LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Daniel Day Lewis (My Left Foot)
SILVER: Martin Landau (Crimes and Misdemeanors)
BRONZE: Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy)

LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Andie MacDowell (Sex, Lies & Videotape)
SILVER: Nicole Kidman (Dead Calm)
BRONZE: Meg Ryan (When Harry Met Sally)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Nick Nolte (New York Stories)
SILVER: Sean Connery (Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade)
BRONZE: Ian Holm (Henry V)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Dianne Wiest (Parenthood)
SILVER: Lena Olin (Enemies, A Love Story)
BRONZE: Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot)

ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jeff Bridges & Michelle Pfeiffer & Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys)
SILVER: Michael J. Fox & Sean Penn & Don Patrick Harvey & John C. Reilly & John Leguizamo & Thuy Thu Le (Casualties of War)
BRONZE: Al Pacino & Ellen Barkin & John Goodman (Sea of Love)

JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Hugh O'Conor (My Left Foot)
SILVER: Bryan Madorsky (Parents)
BRONZE: Rebecca Smart (Celia)

The Alternate Razzies for 1989 are:

CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (William Shatner)

CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Dwight Schultz (Fat Man and Little Boy)

CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Shirley MacLaine (Steel Magnolias)