The Usual Choices
The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon)
Rushmore (Wes Anderson)
Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
Shakespeare in Love (John Madden)
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
But how about...
Primary Colours (Mike Nichols)
Are you 100% sick-to-death of politicians? Yeah, me too. Lying, out of touch, generously stocked with perks, hellbent on bringing the other side down rather than helping us, riding their egos all the way to retirement or scandal. So why do I find films about their shenanigans so interesting? Combining the warmth and humour of The American President and Dave, with the cynical dirt of Advise & Consent and The Best Man, Primary Colours (sorry about the included 'u'...I am a retired Australian school teacher) is one of the most purely entertaining USA politics films ever made. With a husband & wife campaign-team who look remarkably like Bill & Hillary (and played superbly by John Travolta and Emma Thompson), this looks at a front-runner for the job of POTUS and how his little peccadillos (like not being able to keep his pecker in his pocket) impact upon his chances. A movie that shows how politicians are often nice people but not always decent people, and that politics is idealism shackled to ruthlessness. But we already knew that, right?
...and what about...
Bulworth (Warren Beatty)
Twenty years have gone by since the release of this political satire, and its message still rings true: Everything is Rigged (or, to put it another way, "ain't no difference 'tween the Left and Right"). Warren plays a senator on the re-election trail who has a complete mental breakdown (the cause: even he couldn't listen to any more of his bullshit). He orders his own assassination (but has second thoughts about that decision), and openly & honestly raps on about rich vs poor / race relations / urban disintegration / corporate evil / deliberately-staged unemployment / police brutality (what? no digs at the NRA?...for shame). The film's greatest achievement is how it directly preaches these Leftisms with humorous asides which are actually funny, backdropped by a punchy soundtrack (if you like hip hop) which gives it a pleasure boost. This is an only-slightly exaggerated exhibition of what our (because it certainly isn't just the American) political scene has become.
...not to mention...
The General (John Boorman)
I am not usually an admirer of movies which portray violent criminals as heroes of the downtrodden, no matter how much they claim the antecedent of Robin Hood. However, if the thuggish lifestyle with all its pitfalls and pain is accurately depicted, I'm sometimes in. In this true gangster story set in the 1980's, Brendan Gleeson is Martin Cahill, Dublin crime boss and very clever man who just loves to stick it up the law (how Irish can you get?). As the heists go on, each more audacious than the last, the police (captained by Jon Voight, doing a mighty job as a frustrated Irish copper) resort to increasingly desperate tactics to nail their man. When the story switches from laugh-with-the-crims-as-they-make-fun-of-the-stupid-cops to watch-the-crims-fall-apart-under-the-endless-pressure, the film powers up. While the assassination of the boss is inevitable (and that is not a spoiler...the film opens with it), it's his descent into physical & mental illness which is the most appropriate comeuppance. Occupational stress, I guess.
...and one personal unmentionable...
The Newton Boys (Richard Linklater)
Set in a late Western / early gangster era, this is another one of those bank-robbers-as-lovable rogues movies. However, the problem is that none of these thieves are particularly lovable...there are no charmers like Butch Cassidy or Moses Pray here. Instead, it's all fun and games (nitro to blow safes; smalltown hicks talking with funny accents; honkytonk jazz) until someone gets shot in the face. Can't people who are being robbed act so unreasonably? There is nothing new in this telling and, while it is based on the true story of the 1920's Newton Gang, their exploits are gangster-movie cliches (hell, there's even a woman who stands by her man). No actor in the cast makes much of an impression (although Vincent D'Onofrio can twitch well), and when the brothers eventually luck out, it feels like somebody should be shouting out "whaddya expect, ya dumb bastards?" Crime is not supposed to be worth the consequences & morons with guns kill the innocent...why don't filmmakers ever make charming films out of that?
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| "My fellow Americans, If you elect me as your president, I promise to burn every copy of Battlefield Earth." |
My Top 10 Films of 1998
#01 A Primary Colours (Nichols)
#02 A- The Big Lebowski (Coen)
#03 A- Bulworth (Beatty)
#04 A- Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg)
#05 A- The General (Boorman)
#06 A- Elizabeth (Kapur)
#07 B+ Following (Nolan)
#08 B+ Rushmore (Anderson)
#09 B+ Dancing at Lughnasa (O'Connor)
#10 B+ A Simple Plan (Raimi)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ American History X (Kaye)
#12 B+ Waking Ned Devine (Jones)
#13 B+ Gods and Monsters (Condon)
#14 B+ The Thin Red Line (Malick)
#15 B+ The Truman Show (Weir)
#16 B+ Pleasantville (Ross)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Star Trek: Insurrection [the lame comedy and sappy romances are a burden on the impressive core story]
> B Out of Sight [gangster movie / rom-com hybrid that's well made, but is more sheen than pleasure]
> B Shakespeare in Love [more lushness than substance; more Love than Shakespeare]
> B Happiness [for those who think that pedophilia and rape are merely indicators that our species is pathetic]
> B The Opposite of Sex [a sex-sex-sex comedy with dramatic inserts of varying quality]
> B Babe: Pig in the City [darker, more adult, more challenging and simply not as wonderful as #1]
> B High Art [superbly acted heroin-chic brimming with pretentious, vapid arty-types who give me a pain]
> B- Twilight [bland P.I. mystery with impressive acting muscle: Newman! Sarandon! Hackman! Witherspoon?]
> B- Apt Pupil [appropriately-unpleasant film about an old Nazi and the making of a new monster]
> B- There's Something About Mary [Grandma says: rude + gross + funny does not equal wit]
> B- Ronin [contains a fantastic car chase but still isn't terribly exciting]
> C Blues Brothers 2000 [the kid is great but everybody else is either overweight & old or just wrong]
> C The Newton Boys [A Personal Unmentionable]
> C Small Soldiers [a movie for people who think it is perfectly acceptable for children to play with toy guns]
> D Hope Floats [you'll laugh; you'll cry; your stomach will runneth over]
> D Celebrity [featuring Woody Allen excruciatingly impersonated By Kenneth Branagh]
> E Lost in Space [Danger, Will Robinson! Hey...wait a dang minute...you're not even slightly Will Robinson...]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1998 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (Williams), Among Giants (Miller); Another Day in Paradise (Clark); The Book of Life (Hartley); The Boys (Woods); Broken Vessels (Ziehl); Buffalo ’66 (Gallo); A Civil Action (Zaillian); The City (Riker); Claire Dolan (Kerrigan); The Commissioner (Sluizer); Dance Me to My Song (de Heer); Dark City (Proyas); Deep Impact (Leder); Divorcing Jack (Caffrey); Ever After (Tennant); The Faculty (Rodriguez); Fallen (Hoblit); The Hi-Lo Country (Frears); Hideous Kinky (MacKinnon); Hilary and Jackie (Tucker); The Interview (Monahan); Jerry and Tom (Rubinek); Last Night (McKellar); The Legend of 1900 (Tomatore); Little Voice (Herman); Love is the Devil (Maybury); Madeline (von Scherler Mayer); The Mask of Zorro (Campbell); My Name is Joe (Loach); One True Thing (Franklin); Orphans (Mullan); A Perfect Murder (Davis); Permanent Midnight (Veloz); Pi (Aronofsky); Praise (Curran); The Replacement Killers (Fuqua); Savior (Antonijevic); Simon Birch (Johnson); Slam (Levin); SLC Punk! (Merendino); Sliding Doors (Howitt); A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (Ivory); Still Crazy (Gibson); Strike! / All I Wanna Do (Kernochan); Velvet Goldmine (Haynes); Wild Things (McNaughton); Zero Effect (Kasdan)
Best Performances of 1998
Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth
Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski
Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love
Ed Harris in The Truman Show
Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters
Edward Norton in American History X
Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love
Lynn Redgrave in Gods and Monsters
But how about...
Radha Mitchell in High Art
While all of the critical attention went to Ally Sheedy (troubled urban artist-photographer) and Patricia Clarkson (heroin-addicted German actress with a sense of humour), Radha's Alice-in-Wonderland turn in the independent flick High Art was largely overlooked. Er...why? Of course, the other two actresses gave impressive performances in character parts that couldn't help but be grabby, but Radha had the trickier challenge: the innocent who opens a door and enters a world that is both seductive and scary. Drugs (heroin), alcohol (the usual, straight from the bottle), sex (first-time lesbian), art (where you must be blase about success) and self-discovery (always scary). Radha takes us along with her, stepping over the hangers-on and the empties, never letting go our hand. Our sympathy stays with her, even when she begins to question herself, and even when tragedy inevitably arrives. We both end up learning a lot.
...and what about...
Geoffrey Rush in Elizabeth
While his largely-comedic performance in Shakespeare in Love garnered most of the 1998 applause from critics, this is the one which impresses. Playing a royal adviser to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, he is the man who lurks about in the shadows, spinning webs and whispering to the easily-manipulated. Soft-talking in a two-packs-a-day baritone, the actor keeps his usual propensity for largeness in check, holding stares for just a few seconds longer, walking in slowstep and making it seriously-clear that he is capable of the most dire deeds just to get the better of all the other lurkers. On paper, this is not much more than a minor supporting role; in a master character actor's hands, this rivals Cate Blanchett's titanic performance in the title role and overpowers everybody else. For pure impact, it's an outshining of Shine.
...not to mention...
The ensemble cast of Happiness
While I admittedly have issues with the film (and with pedophilia, rape, sexual desperation, sexual disinterest, compulsive masturbation, bloody murder and body disposal all bundled together with deadpan humour, I surely wouldn't be the only one), the cast members impressively deliver what is asked of them. Most critics pointed-out Jane Adams (as one of God's chew toys) and Dylan Baker (no comment), but all the actors, from 12YO Rufus Read to oldhand Ben Gazzara, lacing their largely-pathetic (and in a few cases, rather extreme) characters with that most difficult of shared traits: we empathise with them. Take Philip Seymour Hoffman for example: his sexlife is a wasteland, and the lack of rumpy-pumpy has made him ill to the point of making obscene phonecalls which are aggressively descriptive. And man, does the guy sweat. But he never completely comes across as a sleazy lowlife...just a sad, defeated person who can't help himself. And so, to varying degrees, are they all. Are we all.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis in Celebrity
A frantic, irritating mistake which, if it wasn't for the trademark B&W opening credits, you would have problems identifying it as a Woody Allen film...more a horny film student's homage to Woody which was graded with a D by a fan of Manhattan. Nothing much in this "O! The Travails of the Heart" story works, but worst of all is the double casting clanger: Kenneth Branagh is a substitute Woody-nerd and gives an excruciating impersonation (all stammer and interjecting white noise), and Judy Davis gives us an overripe reboot of her previously-wonderful emotional-klutz persona in Husbands and Wives and Deconstructing Harry. These two are so front & centre in the story's sexual meanderings, that no other actor (not Joe Mantegna nor Charlize Theron nor Leonardo DiCaprio nor Winona Ryder) makes any impression...they appear, then go away. The movie's message of "We get the celebrities we deserve" is rammed home via a meaningful-after-the-fact cameo by Donald Trump...the sole laugh. How crummy is that?
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1998
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| "Well...I'll burn every copy of Ishtar AND scratch out my appearances in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis!" |
#02 Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski
#03 John Travolta in Primary Colours
#04 Edward Norton in American History X
#05 The ensemble cast of Happiness
#06 Geoffrey Rush in Elizabeth
#07 Radha Mitchell in High Art
#08 J. Evan Bonifant in Blues Brothers 2000
#09 Billy Bob Thornton in A Simple Plan
#10 Brendan Gleeson in The General
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Kathy Bates in Primary Colours
#12 The ensemble cast of Dancing at Lughnasa
#13 John Goodman in The Big Lebowski
#14 Christina Ricci in The Opposite of Sex
#15 Tom Wilkinson in Shakespeare in Love
#16 Ally Sheedy in High Art
#17 Emma Thompson in Primary Colours
#18 Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters
#19 Ian Bannen & David Kelly in Waking Ned Devine
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love [perfectly acceptable...but that's all...she's done better]
> Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love [I blinked]
> Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love [if the character is too eccentric or too large, Geoff is usually too much]
> Jim Carrey in The Truman Show [it's Jim Carrey]
> Bill Murray in Rushmore [overdoes the underplaying]
> Ed Harris in The Truman Show [Ed is only at his best if he gets angry]
> Lynn Redgrave in Gods and Monsters [comes across as a fake Frau from the 'Allo 'Allo! cast]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1998 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Primary Colours (Mike Nichols)
SILVER: The Big Lebowski (Ethan & Joel Coen)
BRONZE: Bulworth (Warren Beatty)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)
SILVER: John Travolta (Primary Colours)
BRONZE: Edward Norton (American History X)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth)
SILVER: Radha Mitchell (High Art)
BRONZE: Christina Ricci (The Opposite of Sex)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Geoffrey Rush (Elizabeth)
SILVER: Billy Bob Thornton (A Simple Plan)
BRONZE: John Goodman (The Big Lebowski)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Kathy Bates (Primary Colours)
SILVER: Emma Thompson (Primary Colours)
BRONZE: Lisa Kudrow (The Opposite of Sex)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jane Adams & Dylan Baker & Lara Flynn Boyle & Louise Lasser & Ben Gazzara & Jared Harris & Philip Seymour Hoffman & Camryn Manheim & Rufus Read & Cynthia Stevenson (Happiness)
SILVER: Meryl Streep & Kathy Burke & Catherine McCormack & Sophie Thompson & Brid Brennan (Dancing at Lughnasa)
BRONZE: Ian Bannen & David Kelly (Waking Ned Devine)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: J. Evan Bonifant (Blues Brothers 2000)
SILVER: Brad Renfro (Apt Pupil)
BRONZE: Mae Whitman & Cameron Finley (Hope Floats)
The Alternate Razzies for 1998 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Lost in Space (Stephen Hopkins)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Kenneth Branagh (Celebrity)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Judy Davis (Celebrity)
