The Usual Choices
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)
Four Weddings & a Funeral (Mike Newell)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Quiz Show (Robert Redford)
The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)
But how about...
Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen)
Seldom turning up when lists of Great Woody Films are compiled, this is both a homage to the classic 1930's films the man loves, and his usual travails-of-love / the-meaning-of-life combo. A playwright manages to finance a play via a local ganglord...who wants a major part for his beloved, untalented moll. As the production goes on, it becomes obvious to all that the script isn't all it's cracked up to be; it is improved courtesy of a very unlikely person. A dark comedy of course, (and in one scene, very dark indeed), with bloodshed mixing it up with amusing one-liners. While the ensemble cast uniformly impresses, there is a special nod for Chazz Palminteri's professional thug / secret Artist, Dianne Wiest's great Artiste / secret drunk and, unjustly overlooked, John Cusack as the stand-in for Woody the Wannabe Artist...nervous, horny and overly verbose as always. Sure, it doesn't hit the heights of The Purple Rose of Cairo say, but it's at least as good as Broadway Danny Rose.
...and what about...
The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen)
While the critically-agreed line for this undervalued Coen Brothers film is "It's as if Frank Capra directed Brazil", I think it's more like if Terry Gilliam had directed Meet John Doe. Frank would've focused on the story so he could get his curiously-left-wing social message across; Terry would've paid attention to the film's appearance to make sure it looked like a work of visual art...and this does look terrific...some of the best art direction / models work / cinematography / set design in 90's cinema. But what tends to get overlooked by critics is how funny & fun the film is: the exuberance, the rush of the story and (especially) the dialogue + Jennifer Jason Leigh's tribute/send-up Barbara Stanwyck impersonation + the hurry-up-to-the-next-scene montages + half-a-dozen exquisitely-edited sequences which linger (my fave: Charles Durning's flying jump) + Tim Robbins in an ideal light-comedic-goof role + Paul Newman in his first memorable non-lead/character-actor performance. This has apparently become a cult movie; I'm not even the least bit surprised.
...not to mention...
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
While I can only grudgingly accept that the fantasy sequences belong (although they are over-used), there's not much else wrong with this masterwork from New Zealand. Telling the true tale of two teenage girls in the pre-rock'n'roll 1950's (Mario Lanza is their main squeeze; Biggles is their main read), this slowburn murder story isn't horror, isn't a slasher and isn't even a thriller; it's a study of pathological obsession in kids. The faux-terribly-British city of Christchurch is shown as paradise with a drawback: it's stifling if you've got dreams. Misfit Pauline is attracted to oddball Juliet because they both want something else than what is on offer, but the relationship becomes disturbed...two souls have become one, and any attempts by parents at separation is seen as an assault...the teenagers want to determine their own futures (how rock'n'roll / James Dean is that?). Tragically, their reaction to being told no is a product of their dual-illness...uh-oh. Unsettling & sad, brilliantly acted by the two leads and a work of bleak art, this is the Shaky Isles's greatest film.
...and one personal unmentionable...
The Road to Wellville (Alan Parker)
Hard to tell exactly what the filmmakers were after with this. Maybe they were aiming for a pointed satire or an absurdist arty comedy but what they ended up with was a movie about sex and shit. And I mean real shit...an obsession with enemas and bowel movements and wet-farting that is as sniggeringly puerile as you can possibly get in a film filled with highly-regarded cinematic talent. Set in the early 1900's faddish world of health & vitality, this follows the teachings of Dr. John Kellogg (played with appropriate vigour by Anthony Hopkins, who seems to be doing quite the bully Theodore Roosevelt impersonation) and his rich sanitarium patients who want to feel better through exercise, vegetables and the denial of anything carnal. Slotted alongside are stories about copycat breakfast cereals, an oddball grown son who wants a cuddle from Dad, inconvenient deaths through quackery and personal time spent "Auditioning the Finger Puppets" / "Celebrating Palm Sunday" / "Taking the Self-Guided Tour"...aka masturbating. I could go with all of this if it was even slightly funny, but it was only dumb. It made a mess.
My Top 10 Films of 1994
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| Andie & Hugh lament their failings as Sprint Race judges. |
#02 A Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)
#03 A- Leon: The Professional (Bresson)
#04 A- Quiz Show (Redford)
#05 A- The Hudsucker Proxy (Coen)
#06 A- Nobody's Fool (Benton)
#07 A- Bullets Over Broadway (Allen)
#08 A- Four Weddings & a Funeral (Newell)
#09 A- The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliott)
#10 B+ Reality Bites (Stiller)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ Guarding Tess (Wilson)
#12 B+ Death and the Maiden (Polanski)
#13 B+ Ed Wood (Burton)
#14 B+ The Client (Schumacher)
#15 B+ A Man of No Importance (Krishnamma)
#16 B+ Little Women (Armstrong)
#17 B+ The Madness of King George (Hytner)
#18 B+ Forrest Gump (Zemeckis)
#19 B+ Speed (de Bont)
#21 B+ Muriel's Wedding (Hogan)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B River of Grass [lo-fi movie that needs zapping with a cattle prod...which the ending partially gives it]
> B Blue Sky [the military conspiracy and the marital angst don't entirely gel but at least both are crazy]
> B Priest [so, Men of God have the same physical needs that the rest of us do? um, I already figured that]
> B Once Were Warriors [confronting & important which is always code for depressing & unpleasant]
> B Serial Mom [good one-joke premise which even the excellence of Kathleen can't make stretch to 93 minutes]
> B Backbeat [more an evocation of a time than a story...but it sure was a great time]
> B War of the Buttons [the only scene anyone seems to remember is the one with all the bare bums]
> B True Lies [action & laughs & Arnie & nothing particularly fresh]
> B Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle [a film all about famous people but I hardly got to know any of them]
> B- Nell [I assumed a film about a feral person would be harder than this but she doesn't even eat slime]
> B- Little Odessa [a very tough hitman story that aims for high emotional impact but largely misses its mark]
> B- Clerks [grungy sex-obsessed cult comedy classic where I clocked up three laughs and yawned twice]
> B- The Paper [newspaper journalism as funhouse rollercoaster ride]
> B- Interview with the Vampire [I'm not sure that Tom & Brad were born to play rat-munching, blood-sucking fops]
> B- The Mask [zany, cartoonish, manic Jim Carrey]
> B- Star Trek: Generations [the torch is dropped whilst being passed...that Shat is such a fumblefingers]
> B- Natural Born Killers [I'd probably appreciate it more if it wasn't cut like a Saturday morning rock video]
> B- Legends of the Fall [old-fashioned Hollywood epic which, while it's sweeping, misses a few spots]
> B- Tom & Viv [a story of madness, anguish & guilt...so why is it so close to being boring?]
> C The River Wild [very nice scenery; shame about the yawning predictability of the story]
> C The Crow [corny pop-goth for eternally-teenage mopers]
> C Dumb and Dumber [infantile, gormless, exhausting Jim Carrey]
> C The Shawshank Redemption [many people think this is a great one; I think it treats rape dismissively]
> D The Flintstones [the idea of remaking classic animation into live-action features is stoopid...see?]
> D The Road to Wellville [A Personal Unmentionable]
> D Ace Ventura: Pet Detective [pathologically-imbecilic, human-ton-of-bricks, will-to-live-sapping Jim Carrey]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1994 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Amateur (Hartley); Andre (Miller); Black Beauty (Thompson); The Browning Version (Figgis); Clear and Present Danger (Noyce); Country Life (Blakemore); Crooklyn (Lee); Double Happiness (Shum); Exotica (Egoyan); Federal Hill (Corrente); Fresh (Yakin); The Glass Shield (Burnett); I Like It Like That (Martin); I’ll Do Anything (Brooks); In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter); Ladybird Ladybird (Loach); The Last Seduction (Dahl); The Last Supper (Roberts); Rhythm Thief (Harrison); Second Best (Menges); The Secret of Roan Inish (Sayles); Shallow Grave (Boyle); Sirens (Duigan); Sister My Sister (Meckler); Spanking the Monkey (Russell); Staggered (Clunes); The Sum of Us (Dowling; Burton); That Eye, the Sky (Ruane); Vanya on 42nd Street (Malle); The War (Avnet); Whale Music (Lewis); Widows Peak (Irvin); Witch Hunt (Schrader); Wyatt Earp (Kasdan)
Best Performances of 1994
Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption
Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump
Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George
Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction
Martin Landau in Ed Wood
Jessica Lange in Blue Sky
John Travolta in Pulp Fiction
Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway
But how about...
Albert Finney in A Man of No Importance
While Albert has had higher profile, more showy roles, none have combined humour, melancholy, warmth and good ol' British kitchen-sinkness like this one does. Set in 1963 Dublin, Albert is a bus conductor, a fan of Oscar Wilde, a wannabe drama director, a man in his 50's, a good cook, a reluctant virgin and, yes, a closeted gay man. With Catholic judgement and hypocrisy all around, he tries to live his life by substituting art for passion, but circumstances get the better of him. A determinedly quirky, little film, Albert doesn't try to swamp it by playing heavy or angsty...hell, he doesn't even try to get you to admire this unfortunate man who feels dudded by his God...Albert goes for respect & acceptance; he simply wants what he sees everybody else has. Few performers could have achieved such a lightness of touch in such a potentially pitiable, o-woe-is-me character.
...and what about...
Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom
Here's the set-up: John "Film-Someone-Eating-A-Dog-Turd" Waters has written a script about an everyday, All-American, apple-pie housewife who goes mental and slaughters anyone who pisses her off. And it'll say something about the celebrity of serial killers in modern society, and it will be gross and funny. How many big-name actresses do you think could have made that work? Up goes the hand of Kathleen Turner...the perfect choice. Finding exactly the right slant on this er, extreme character, Kathleen keeps it relatively subtle and straight...there's no wink wink to us; there's no OTT campy slapstick. The woman is a sicko/psycho murderer who takes full advantage of society's fascination with such, dispatching (mainly) boring, colourless, annoying people with pathological glee. The actress never forgets that she's playing a comic role with a serious edge: it's fun, it's breezy 'n' bloody and it's a comment on us. She gets it.
...not to mention...
Shirley MacLaine in Guarding Tess
I prefer my Shirley subtle and delightful (Ask Any Girl; The Apartment; Two for the Seesaw) rather than brash and brash (Terms of Endearment; Steel Magnolias; Sweet Charity). But I don't mind it if she gets subtle and curmudgeony, like in this role. Playing the widowed First Lady of an American president, Shirley is called upon to be strong-willed, feisty, cunning and most affectingly of all, hurting-but-I-won't-let-you-see-it-cos-I'm-too-proud. Instantly likeable and irrefutably formidable, this woman is in charge but doesn't necessarily want to be...she would gladly swap authority for companionship. The actress beautifully portrays this hard-on-the-outside / soft-in-the-middle cliche and makes it fresh-ish and, trickiest of all, natural. While the film goes off in cuddly, predictable, overly-dramatic directions (still very enjoyable though), Shirley remains true to her character's mantra: don't mess with me but please be kind. Even Nicolas Cage succumbs.
...and one personal unmentionable...
William Shatner in Star Trek: Generations
The original Star Trek was the only TV show I was allowed to watch after 7:30 during a schoolweek. I was hooked immediately, but it wasn't really the stories (I can't remember too many of them) that got me...it was the relationship between Kirk + Spock + Bones. As The Shat loosened the character up (especially in the later feature movies), the subtlety seemed to me to be gone...the three-way relationship was played for self-conscious laffs. In Generations, the triumvirate is whittled down to Kirk only...and it shows that the character is not / was never strong enough to stand on his own (imagine Moe separated from Larry & Curly). But William still plays it for winks & laffs anyway (a warm-up for Boston Legal 10 years later?) and Captain James Tiberius Kirk ends up becoming a bit of a twerp: just another hasbeen-icon, leaping and fighting and chopping wood while his girdle groans.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1994
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| As succinct a summary of the Human Condition as you're ever gonna get. |
#02 Natalie Portman in Leon: The Professional
#03 Melanie Lynskey & Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures
#04 Martin Landau in Ed Wood
#05 John Turturro in Quiz Show
#06 Shirley MacLaine in Guarding Tess
#07 Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom
#08 Albert Finney in A Man of No Importance
#09 Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites
#10 Paul Newman in Nobody's Fool
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Hugh Grant in Four Weddings & a Funeral
#12 Stephen Dorff & Sheryl Lee & Ian Hart in Backbeat
#13 John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway
#14 Ralph Fiennes in Quiz Show
#15 Janeane Garofalo in Reality Bites
#16 Claire Danes in Little Women
#17 Sigourney Weaver & Ben Kingsley in Death and the Maiden
#18 Jeanie Drynan in Muriel's Wedding
#19 Jessica Lange & Tommy Lee Jones in Blue Sky
#20 Chazz Palminteri in Bullets Over Broadway
#21 Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy
#22 Susan Sarandon in The Client
#23 James Whitmore in The Shawshank Redemption
#24 John Travolta in Pulp Fiction
#25 Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire
#26 Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Terence Stamp in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert [he can't even slightly dance]
> Meryl Streep in The River Wild [despite handling a mean paddle, this is one of her blandest performances]
> Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump [I know he's supposed to be simple, but the actor should've given us something more]
> Gary Sinise in Forrest Gump [for some reason I can't fully explain, I find him an unappealing actor]
> Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George [more comedic than what I think was intended]
> Jodie Foster in Nell [she's only very pretty]
> Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption [gets the job done but I don't believe he was once a killer]
> Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption [gets the job done but I don't believe he was regularly gang-raped]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1994 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
SILVER: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
BRONZE: Leon: The Professional (Luc Bresson)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Albert Finney (A Man of No Importance)
SILVER: Ethan Hawke (Reality Bites)
BRONZE: Paul Newman (Nobody's Fool)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Shirley MacLaine (Guarding Tess)
SILVER: Kathleen Turner (Serial Mom)
BRONZE: Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hudsucker Proxy)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
SILVER: Martin Landau (Ed Wood)
BRONZE: John Turturro (Quiz Show)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Janeane Garofalo (Reality Bites)
SILVER: Jeanie Drynan (Muriel's Wedding)
BRONZE: Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Melanie Lynskey & Kate Winslet (Heavenly Creatures)
SILVER: Stephen Dorff & Sheryl Lee & Ian Hart (Backbeat)
BRONZE: Sigourney Weaver & Ben Kingsley (Death and the Maiden)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Natalie Portman (Leon: The Professional)
SILVER: Claire Danes (Little Women)
BRONZE: Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire)
The Alternate Razzies for 1994 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
The Road to Wellville (Alan Parker)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Elizabeth Taylor (The Flintstones)
