Damn it, and I can't seem to find the movie poster for "Suck My Balls! You're Just Dead Fucking Wrong!"

Much better than Titanic. Good call.

That film was a long 194 minutes.

As it's Labo(u)r Day I'll treat you all by getting to 161 today.

Scrap that, I've not got the spreadsheet here. Whoops. Resumes tomorrow early my time.

We've got controversy!

The real question is, just how much did Tony pay Held?

Titanic suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

Any good director could have cut an hour out of that film without a problem. Only reason Cameron didn't is because he had to justify his bloated budget.

And DiCaprio's performance in this is way overrated.

Not to mention that crappy Celine Dion song that is almost as long as the freaking movie.

If I were lining up James Cameron's movies, Titanic would be the last one I'd want to watch again.

How afraid of his own shadow is Cameron? Dude hasn't put out a non-documentary film since Titanic.

I'll keep it short and sweet...it's epic filmmaking that nobody makes anymore. What's so wrong about that? Not something you'd watch on a lark, but worthy. (Oh yes, the theme song does suck, but all epic film theme songs suck).

Oh shit! This boat's goin down
faster than a pound of ground round that Bhickman found
chillin in the back of the fridge
this movie's got more haters than Tom Ridge
backlash still comin on strong
ten long years, still no love for that Celine Dion song
Leonardo's turnin white
whitest boy alive getting frozen like Ryan White
on the cold table after he died of AIDS
but this movie blew up huge like World Trade
#1 box office smash
Kate Winslet stripped down to her bare ass
but you know Leo no I mean Jack was lookin at her boobs
some people say the internet is a series of tubes
some people also say the Titanic was a distaster in waiting
man's hubris, icebergs be hating
the tore that ship a new asshole
now those boat designers be on tha dole
how can you raise a boat from the bottom of the sea?
or get back those pearls, not even Britney's got 'em, see?
the most deadly tragedy in the Atlantic ocean
brought housewives into some heavy emotions
James Cameron called for a moment of silence
but no one called him out for his exploitation of tragic violence
it's time to make him pay for his sins
but let's remember the victims, so pour out the juice and gin

#175 Da hong deng long gao gao gua (Raise The Red Lantern) (1997)
Yimou Zhang
Running time -125 mins
Country of origin China / Hong Kong / Taiwan
Genre Drama
Original language Mandarin

Writing credits
Su Tong, Ni Zhen

Cast
Li Gong ... Songlian
Caifei He ... Meishan (Third Wife)
Cuifen Cao ... Zhuoyan (Second Wife)
Jingwu Ma ... The Master
Qi Zhao ... Housekeeper

Academy Awards
Nominated Best Foreign Language Film

Other Awards
Won BAFTA Film Award - Best Film not in the English Language Venice Film Festival - Silver Lion

BY ROGER EBERT / April 17, 2003

The Chinese film "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991), like the Japanese film "Woman in the Dunes" (1960), is about sexual enslavement. In both films, the protagonist enters a closed system from which there is no escape, and life is ruled by long-established "customs." In the Japanese film, a woman captures a man, who spends the night in her home at the bottom of a hole in the desert and finds in the morning that the escape ladder has been removed. In the Chinese film, a 19-year-old college student drops out of school after her father dies; when her stepmother is unwilling to support her, she agrees to become the concubine of a rich man--his "Fourth Mistress." All four concubines live in a house they are not allowed to leave.

It's difficult to say how realistic either film is intended to be.

I have always read "Woman in the Dunes" as a parable, although evidence exists that people do, or did, live in such desert shelters. Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern" is set in China in 1920, when concubines were commonplace, but I suspect the conditions of this particular house, long the residence of the wealthy Chen family, are unique.

The film stars Gong Li, who after attention-getting performances in Zhang Yimou's more realistic and earthy "Ju Dou" and "To Live," became China's leading star with this film. She is beautiful, and her beauty is one of the subjects of the film, which the director photographs voluptuously. The film takes place within the gray stone and tile walls of the Chen complex, where the master lives in the central house and each of the four mistresses has a house of her own opening onto a central courtyard. The house is the neutral backdrop, sometimes seen covered with rain or snow, but the interiors of the four apartments are seen in rich colors, bright red predominant, so that to enter one of these domains is to be in a space visually marked out for passion.

Although there are many shots of the house's architecture, it is curiously difficult to get a good idea of its extent and layout. Like Gormenghast, it seems to extend in all directions indefinitely, as if expanding in the direction of our gaze. Much of the action takes place on the rooftops, which link in a labyrinth of passageways and stairs, and include an ominous little house where, it is said, women have died--but in the past, of course.

Gong Li's character, named Songlian, immediately gets off on the wrong foot with the maid Yan'er (Kong Lin), who is a favorite of the master and has ambitions to become a mistress someday herself. The household's major-domo takes Songlian to meet the other women: First Mistress (Jin Shuyuan), older and in charge; Second Mistress (Cao Quifen), who seems plain and pleasant and is described as having a Buddha's face, and Third Mistress (He Caifei), a onetime opera singer, still young and beautiful--and jealous.

Much is made of the family's customs. Things have always been done in such a way, and always will be, and of course the servants are more respectful of these customs than the master. The master for that matter is rarely seen; the household operates as such an extension of his will that he seems to be present even when absent. So elusive is he that several reviews of the film actually say he is never seen, although he is onscreen in several long shots, or from behind, or obscured behind hanging veils; in one scene, we can actually see his face, indistinctly, in medium shot. He is not made into an individual, however, and perhaps the point is that his patriarchal dominance is so complete that he functions in this household less as a person than as an officeholder.

The first three mistresses live in uneasy balance when Songlian arrives, and she becomes a catalyst for trouble. She learns that when the master selects the mistress he will favor for the night, a red lantern is placed outside her house. (The man who has the duty of announcing the nightly position of the lantern is puffed up with drama and importance.) The lucky mistress then receives a foot massage and is allowed to determine the menu for the next day. There is great competition to be selected, and Songlian eventually discovers intrigues within intrigues--even learning that she cannot trust those she thinks are her friends.

Strange, how these women bow so completely to their situation, the will of the master, and to the "customs" of the family, and make one another their enemies. There may be a feminist message here, but it is concealed well within the surface drama of the story. Zhang Yimou begins with a deliberately limited world (based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong), and enlarges it by deepening it through our increasing knowledge of the personalities of the woman, and the way that their situation has twisted and shaped them.

Despite the sensual use of color and female beauty, the film has no sex in any conventional sense. No nudity, no nuzzling, almost no touching. (Incredibly, this subject is handled in a movie that was rated PG!) One or two brief bed scenes are obscured behind gauzy curtains.

We know that rape is a crime of violence, not sex, and "Raise the Red Lantern" illustrates that, because these women are all essentially being raped as an effect of their position in a male-dominated society that holds them as economic captives. So the movie wisely focuses not on the sex itself, but on the situation that regulates and values it. There is even the sense that the master visits his concubines not so much for pleasure as to keep them all in their places and remind them of their duties. (One, of course, is to produce male children.)

The movie is divided into a prologue and five segments, all but one ending with a closeup of Songlian. This is her experience, and we watch as she fights for her place among the mistresses, discovers plots against her, makes a wounding charge against one of the other mistresses, and rails against the system. That the movie is lush and beautiful, rather than stark and barren--that its story involves luxury rather than the vile brothels of the time--suggests, I believe, that men are wrong to excuse wrong treatment of women on the grounds of "how well they are treated."

I am not a radical feminist and do not believe, as I have heard it argued, that all sex is rape and all men are rapists. I mentioned "Woman in the Dunes" because it provides an intriguing counterargument, in which the man is entrapped because his work is needed to support the woman and the economic system she belongs to. In both cases, one involving a rich man and the other a poor woman, money is the inspiration for dominance.

Zhang Yimou (born 1951) is a member of the "Fifth Generation" of Chinese filmmakers, those who began working after the Cultural Revolution and dealt with Chinese society in a more open and artistic away than was permitted at the height of Maoism. Not all of the generation's films were approved by Chinese authorities for wide domestic release, but they were a valuable source of foreign exchange and found world audiences; "Raise the Red Lantern" tied for the Silver Lion at Venice and was nominated for an Oscar. He followed it with "To Live" (1994), also starring Gong Li, in the story of an obsessive gambler who loses everything and then makes an extraordinary wartime comeback. After the success of "Qui Ju," "Ju Dou," "To Live" and this film, all with Zhang Yimou, Gong Li worked for Chen Kaige, another Fifth Generation member, in the extraordinary "Farewell My Concubine" (1993). Few actresses have such an artistic accomplishment in such a short time.

If the directors and actors of that burst of creativity have never quite equaled it since, perhaps it is because they were originally inspired by the long frustration they experienced before China's arts began to open up. "Raise the Red Lantern" is told so directly and beautifully, with such confidence, with so little evidence of compromise. It is the product of a time when the new Chinese film industry could support such work, but had not yet learned to meddle with it.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.9/10 (6,952 votes)
SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Arbortion Angel

yeah, where's my payday? Mitchell's just making a funny....I think.

I have nothing more to add about 'Titanic' that I haven't said before and the quicker we drop it the more likely we can spend time discussing something better which really means-anything else!

#174 Four Weddings and A Funeral (1994)
Mike Newell
Running time -117 mins
Country of origin UK
Genre Comedy / Romance / Drama
Original language English

Writing credits
Richard Curtis

Cast
Hugh Grant ... Charles
Simon Callow ... Gareth
John Hannah ... Matthew
Kristin Scott Thomas ... Fiona
Andie MacDowell ... Carrie

Academy Awards
Nominated Best Picture, Best Writing - Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Other Awards
Won BAFTA Film Award - Best Actor (Hugh Grant), Best Actress in a Supporting Role
(Kristin Scott Thomas), Best Film, David Lean Award for Direction. Golden Globes Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical - (Hugh Grant )
Nominated BAFTA Film Award - Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Simon Callow), Best Actor in a Supporting Role
(John Hannah), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Charlotte Coleman), Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Screenplay - Original. Golden Globes Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical (Andie MacDowell), Best Screenplay - Motion Picture


BY ROGER EBERT / March 18, 1994

Four Weddings and a Funeral," delightful and sly, is a comedy about people who seem to live out their lives in public, attending weddings. No doubt they have everyday lives as well, but the film doesn't supply them. Even in the case of the central character, a likable, shy, perennial best man named Charles (Hugh Grant), we're never told what he does for a living. Of course the film is British, and in Britain it is considered bad form to ask anyone what they do, so perhaps the film simply doesn't know.

The movie is about an extended group of friends. Some of them probably met at school, and others have married into their various families, and they all know each other, more or less.

Occasionally a new face pops up: Carrie, for example, the sparkling American girl who is a guest at the first wedding, turns up again at the second, and is scheduled to be married at the third.

Carrie, played by Andie MacDowell, is one of those women who is not quite as confident as she seems. She's smart and beautiful, but she is engaged to marry an older man named Hamish (Corin Redgrave) who is so thick, confident and overbearing that you figure no one would marry him who didn't need to. Sure, she says she loves him. But she is clearly falling for Charles, and he for her.

Their flirtation begins at the first ceremony, and their romance is consummated during the celebration following the second.

She does most of the aggressing, because Charles is too reticent to ever come right out and say what he really feels - not even if the happiness of a lifetime depends on it.

While Charles and Carrie fall in love, the movie introduces us in a haphazard way to a lot of the other members ofthe crowd. It's like being at a wedding. We glimpse people across a room, we meet them, we forget their names, we are reminded, and then we make a connection and figure outwho they're with - or not with, as the case may be. Among the regulars at all of the weddings, we grow especially fond of Gareth (Simon Callow), who eats too much and drinks too much, whose vest is too tight and manner too jolly, but who is, we can see, true blue. Eventually we catch on that he is gay, although in this as in most other personal matters the movie is subtle enough that we have to read social clues, just as we would at a wedding.

Other regulars at the ceremonies include Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas), who used to date Charles and now would plainly like to start dating him again. Charles is doubly afflicted: He cannot tell a woman he likes her, and he also cannot tell her he dislikes her. He ends up back in Fiona's arms through a combination of loneliness, absent-mindedess and alcohol, and is engaged to her basically because he lacks the strength to make up his mind.

"Four Weddings and a Funeral" has been directed by Mike Newell, with the same kind of light-hearted enchantment that made his "Enchanted April" (1991) and last year's "Into the West" so seductive. Here, with his large cast, he moves nimbly through the crowd, making introductions with his camera. Luckily many of the scenes are set in large houses with room for the characters to creep away and engage in private drama.

Hugh Grant, the star of the film, has been in a lot of movies, but this may be the one that makes him finally familiar to American audiences. He has a self-deprecating manner, a kind of endearing awkwardness, that makes you understand why a woman might like him - and why he might drive her mad while tap-dancing around his real feelings. MacDowell is much more open and direct ("more American," the movie must feel), and so it's intriguing to realize that while she is in love with a man she can say anything to, she's engaged to a man she basically has to lie to all the time.

Like Kenneth Branagh's "Peter's Friends," this film forms a community that eventually envelops us. Also like that film, it's about how a homosexual character becomes a focus for much of what is best among the other characters, who are mostly straight; the gay man in both films is a center of good feeling, and helps create a sense of family. By the end of the movie, you find yourself reacting to the weddings, and the funeral, almost as you do at real events involving people you didn't know very well, but liked, and wanted to know better.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (26,394 votes)
SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Tracy Jacks (#9)

Yeah, that's just me being dense again.

I hate Andie McDowell with a fiery intensity - I think it's her voice. I can't watch anything if she a large role in it.

All she seems to do nowadays is cosmetics commercials.

Quick Edit: Hard to believe this director later did Harry Potter 4.

#173 Space Jam (1996)
Joe Pytka
Running time -87 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Animation / Adventure / Comedy / Family / Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Sport
Original language English

Writing credits
Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, Herschel Weingrod

Cast
Michael Jordan ... Himself
Wayne Knight ... Stan Podolak
Billy West ... Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd (voice)
Dee Bradley Baker ... Daffy Duck/Tazmanian Devil/Bull (voice)
Theresa Randle ... Juanita Jordan
Danny DeVito ... Mr. Swackhammer (voice)


BY ROGER EBERT / November 15, 1996

``Space Jam'' is a happy marriage of good ideas--three films for the price of one, giving us a comic treatment of the career adventures of Michael Jordan, crossed with a Looney Tunes cartoon and some showbiz warfare. It entertains kids at one level while giving their parents a lot to smile at, too. It's an inspired way to use, and kid, Jordan's image while at the same time updating Bugs Bunny & Company to doing battle in the multizillion-dollar animation sweepstakes.

The story begins with young Michael Jordan shooting baskets with his father in the backyard of their home and dreaming of his path to happiness: North Carolina . . . the NBA . . . and finally the ultimate goal, pro baseball. Then we flash forward to very funny sequences showing Jordan in the midst of his baseball career.

He's not a very good baseball player (a TV newscast is frank about that), but everyone around him is starstruck by his sports stardom, anyway. (``He looks good in a uniform,'' one player enthuses. ``You can't teach that.'') An opposing catcher is such a fan that he tells Michael what pitches to expect, and Jordan is having a great time realizing his childhood dream when suddenly he finds himself yanked down a hole on the golf course, and into Looney Tunes-land.

A parallel story has filled us in on the situation in an alternate cartoon universe, where an amusement park in outer space has desperate need for new attractions. To bolster ticket sales, the alien Nerdlucks, who run the park, kidnap the Looney Tunes stars (the stellar roster includes Bugs, Daffy, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, the Tazmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and the sexy newcomer Lola Bunny). The desperate Bugs and friends have cut a deal: They'll get their freedom if they can defeat the Nerdluck ``Monstars'' in a basketball game. But the Monstars suck up the basketball talent of such stars as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing (leaving them unable to even catch a ball, and telling it all to therapists). In desperation, the Looneys kidnap Michael as their secret weapon.

``I'm a baseball player now,'' Jordan protests.

``Right!'' says Bugs. ``And I'm a Shakespearean actor!'' Rising to the occasion, Jordan coaches the Looney Tunes squad in a series of high-energy games and action sequences that combine his live scenes with state-of-the-art animation. The cartoon sequences employ traditional animation techniques and newer approaches, such as the three-dimensional computer animation used in ``Toy Story.'' You can watch the movie on the sports and cartoon levels, and also appreciate the corporate strategy that's involved. A successful feature-length animated family film can roll up astronomical grosses (more than $1 billion from all sources for ``The Lion King''). But the problem for the rest of Hollywood is, only Disney seems to have the key and the cachet to make those films. Animated movies from other sources tend to do disappointingly at the box office.

Warner Bros. has historically been a studio with a rich legacy in animation; such great cartoon directors as Chuck Jones helped fashion their stable of stars. But six-minute cartoons are a neglected art form, and ``Space Jam'' looks like a Warners vehicle to catapult their Looney Tunes characters into the feature-length arena to do battle with Disney.

There are hints of the rivalry all through the film. The outer space amusement park is named ``Moron Mountain,'' perhaps a tribute to Space Mountain at Walt Disney World. And when a professional hockey team is mentioned, Daffy sputters, ``The Ducks? What kind of a Mickey Mouse organization would name their team the Ducks?'' Will the Warners strategy work? It will if they can keep co-stars like Michael Jordan on board. It is difficult for an actor to work in movies that combine live action with animation, because much of the time he cannot see the other characters in a scene with him. But Jordan has a natural ease and humor, an unforced charisma, that makes a good fit with the cartoon universe. By not forcing himself, by never seeming to try too hard to be funny or urgent, Jordan keeps a certain dignity; he never acts as if he thinks he's a cartoon, too, and that's why he has good chemistry with the Tunes. He's a visitor to Looney-land, not a resident.

There are other funny live action scenes involving Jordan and Hollywood's favorite unbilled guest star, Bill Murray, and scenes, too, with Wayne Knight, as a baseball publicist who comes along as an adviser and confidant. The film was produced by Ivan Reitman (``Ghostbusters'') and directed by Joe Pytka, who has directed Jordan in a lot of his best TV commercials; their work was blended with the animation of a team headed by Ron Tippe, and the result is delightful, a family movie in the best sense (which means the adults will enjoy it, too).

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 5.2/10 (14,845 votes)
SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Pinkerton (#8)

oopsie!

#172 The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Michael Mann
Running time -112 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Adventure / Romance / War
Original language Mohawk / French / English

Writing credits
James Fenimore Cooper, John L. Balderston, Paul Perez, Daniel Moore, Philip Dunne, Michael Mann, Christopher Crowe

Cast
Daniel Day-Lewis ... Hawkeye (Nathaniel Poe)
Madeleine Stowe ... Cora Munro
Russell Means ... Chingachgook
Eric Schweig ... Uncas
Jodhi May ... Alice Munro

Academy Awards
Won Best Sound

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Awards Best Cinematography, Best Make Up Artist
Nominated BAFTA Film Awards Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Costume Design, Best Original Film Score,
Best Production Design, Best Sound. Golden Globes Best Original Score - Motion Picture

BY ROGER EBERT / September 23, 1992

Much has been made about how authentic "The Last of the Mohicans" is, about how the cast learned wilderness survival skills and how every bow, arrow, canoe and moccasin was constructed according to the ancient ways. That's the kind of publicity Cecil B.

DeMille used to churn out, as if he had created a brand new world from scratch, like God.

I am the first to confess I know little about how people really lived in the first decades of the European settlement of North America, but while I was watching "The Last of the Mohicans," I was haunted by memories of another movie - "Black Robe" (1991), set in the earliest days of the French settlement of Quebec. This was a long and depressing film by Bruce Beresford, who went to great pains to recreate the actual living conditions in North America at the time of his story: the architectural details of the Indian dwellings, their methods of hunting and food procurement, the way they used absolute cooperation and trust of each other as a weapon against the deadly climate.

"Black Robe" did not involve me in its story, but its visual picture of life in those days has stayed with me. Watching "The Last of the Mohicans," I could not get it out of my mind. As the handsome frontiersman Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) decides whether to join the troops being raised by the British to fight the French, as he falls in love with the daughter of a British officer (Madeleine Stowe in a fetching performance), as he sides with the Mohicans who have adopted him and they face the threat of the Huron tribe which opposes them, I was acutely conscious of the Saturday matinee traditions being exploited.

I was also aware that I was enjoying the movie more than the "Black Robe." Michael Mann, who directed "The Last of the Mohicans," says that his first conscious movie memory was of the 1936 film version of the same story, starring Randolph Scott, and indeed Philip Dunne's screenplay for that movie is cited as a source for this one.

It is also inspired, of course, by the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, whose frontier fantasies were completely demolished in an hilarious essay by Mark Twain, who noted that whenever the plot required a twig to be stepped on, a Cooper character was able to find a twig and step on it, no matter what the difficulty.

Mann's film is quite an improvement on Cooper's all but unreadable book, and a worthy successor to the Randolph Scott version. In Daniel Day-Lewis he has found the right actor to play Hawkeye, even though no other role ever played by Day-Lewis ("My Left Foot," "A Room With a View," "My Beautiful Launderette") would remotely suggest that. There are just enough historical and political details; the movie touches quickly on the fine points of British-French-Indian-settler conflicts, so that they can get on to the story we're really interested in, about the hero who wins the heart of the girl.

"The Last of the Mohicans" is not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be - more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit - but it is probably more entertaining as a result.

The scenes of forest-fighting follow all the usual Hollywood rules: the hero rarely misses, and the villains rarely hit anyone needed later in the story. Remembering the sickening thuds of weapon against bone in "Black Robe," I realized I was looking at a sanitized entertainment, but I didn't care.

I was also not much disturbed by the movie's pre-digested history (how many people, even after seeing this movie, could correctly report that the French and Indian Wars were not between the French and the Indians?). We live in an age of pop images, in which these are the parts that get remembered: Hawkeye, a white man, adopted by Indians, standing between the two civilizations at a time when the Indians were richer and more powerful than the settlers; his decision to escort the British officer's daughter and her sister to the fort where their father awaits them; their adventures along the way, leading to death, bloodshed, and a stirring final shot of the couple gazing out toward the horizon - toward all those millions of unspoiled square miles to be turned into shopping malls by the issue of their loins.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (26,252 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 223

Ranked highest by Kmac (#3)

Just curious if anyone else thought this was a perfectly acceptable comedy that was merely ruined by utterance of the above quote?

#171 Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) (1991)
Leos Carax
Running time -125 mins
Country of origin France
Genre Drama / Romance
Original language French

Writing credits
Leos Carax

Cast
Juliette Binoche ... Michèle Stalens
Denis Lavant ... Alex
Klaus-Michael Grüber ... Hans
Edith Scob ... La femme en voiture
Georges Aperghis ... L'homme en voiture


Other Awards
NominationsBAFTA Film Award Best Film not in the English Language

BY ROGER EBERT / November 3, 1999

Leos Carax's "The Lovers on the Bridge" arrives trailing clouds of faded glory. It was already one of the most infamous productions in French history when it premiered at Cannes in 1992, where some were stunned by its greatness and more were simply stunned. Its American release was delayed, according to Carax, because its distributor vindictively jacked up the film's asking price. Now it has arrived at last, a film both glorious and goofy, inspiring affection and exasperation in nearly equal measure.

The story could have been told in a silent melodrama, or on the other half of a double bill with Jean Vigo's great "L'Atalante" (1934), which was Carax's inspiration. Carax's film begins on the ancient Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, where two vagrants discover each other. One is Michele (Juliette Binoche), an artist who is going blind. The other is Alex (Denis Lavant), a drunk and druggie who supports himself by fire-breathing. The bridge has been closed for a year for repairs, bags of cement and paving blocks are tossed about, and they make it their home for the summer. Their landlord, so to speak, is a crusty old bum named Hans (Klaus-Michael Gruber).

This three-hander could have made a nice little film in other hands, but Carax's production costs became legendary. His permission to shoot on the Pont-Neuf ran out while delays stalled his production; Lavant broke his leg, which held up the film a year, according to some sources, although since he uses a crutch and wears a cast in the film, one wonders why. (The broken leg is simply explained: Alex passes out in the middle of a boulevard late one night.) Thrown off the real bridge, Carax moved his entire production to the South of France and built a giant set of the Pont-Neuf, including the facades of three buildings of the famous Samaritaine department store. This was not cheap.

The lovers are both reckless and secretive. Michele, who wears a dressing over one eye, doesn't reveal for a long time that she is going blind. Alex loves her and yet would rather read her mail and break into her former home than ask her flat-out about herself. Hans keeps trying to evict her from the bridge ("It's all right for Alex, but not for a young girl like you"), but when he finally shares his own story, it opens the floodgates for all three.

There is much here that is cheerfully reckless, as when Alex does cartwheels on the bridge parapet above the Seine (did no authorities see him?). Or when the two of them steal a police speedboat so she can water-ski past the fireworks display on the night of the French bicentennial. Alex raises money by his fire-eating, his sweaty torso dancing in the middle of smoke and flames, and she pours drugs into the drinks of tourists to steal their money.

All well and good in a different kind of film. But other scenes break with the gritty reality and go for Chaplinesque bathos. Missing-person posters of Michele go up all over Paris-- all over, on every Metro wall and construction site--and Alex sets them afire (why is there no one else in the Metro?). Then he torches the van of the man who is hanging the posters, and the man burns alive. This melodramatic excess leads, after a time, to a romantic conclusion that seems to dare us to laugh; Carax piles one development on top of another until it's not a story, it's an exercise in absurdity.

All of this is not without charm. Juliette Binoche, from "The English Patient," Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue" and Louis Malle's "Damage," dares to play her character with the kind of broad strokes you'd find in a silent film, and old Klaus-Michael Gruber has a touching moment of confession as Hans. Denis Lavant is not a likable Alex, but then how could he be? His approach to romance is simple: He makes his most dramatic demonstration of love in her absence, by burning the posters so she will not leave him; when she's there, he's likely to be sullen, petulant or drunk. For two strong young people to embrace their lifestyle is itself an exercise in stylish defeatism; they have to choose to be miserable, and they do, wearing it well.

I felt a certain affection for "The Lovers on the Bridge." It is not the masterpiece its defenders claim, nor is it the completely self-indulgent folly described by its critics. It has grand gestures and touching moments of truth, perched precariously on a foundation of horsefeathers.

So troubled was its distribution history that Carax waited seven years to make another film, which confirmed his unshakably goofy world view. That was "Pola X," which opened the 1999 Cannes festival, and was a modern telling of Melville's 19th century novel Pierre, about a young man's idyllic relationship with his mother and his happy plans for marriage, all destroyed by the appearance of a strange dark woman who claims to be his father's secret daughter. The movie "exists outside the categories of good and bad," I wrote from Cannes; "it is a magnificent folly." "The Lovers on the Bridge," on the other hand, exists just inside the category of good. I am not sure, thinking about the two films, that I don't prefer "Pola X." If you have little taste or discipline as a filmmaker but great style and heedlessness, it may be more entertaining to go for broke than to fake a control you don't possess.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (2,482 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #432

Ranked highest by Held (#2)

Yeah, one of the most cringe worthy lines I've ever heard. Mercury's are on now so that's it for tonight.

Am I the sole person to vote for this? I'm under that impression at the moment.

never saw that movie, but you, held, ranking it that high makes me definitely wanna see it sometime. i'm righting the title down for the future. that's the first film from the countdown so far that got me interested.

Space Jam?

Why?

#170 Billy Madison (1995)
Tamra Davis
Running time - 89 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Adventure
Original language English / French / Spanish

Writing credits
Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler

Cast
Adam Sandler ... Billy Madison
Darren McGavin ... Brian Madison
Bridgette Wilson ... Veronica Vaughn
Bradley Whitford ... Eric Gordon
Josh Mostel ... Principal Max Anderson

BY PETER RAINER, LOS ANGLES TIMES STAFF WRITER / February 11, 1995

"Billy Madison" looks as if it were made to fill the void left by Pee-wee Herman. We never needed Pee-wee more.
Adam Sandler plays Billy Madison, a spoiled rich nudnik who stands to inherit the family business from his hotel tycoon father (Darren McGavin)--except Madison Sr. seems to think his jerky scion isn't up to it. For one thing, the only reason he graduated public school is because his father paid off the teachers. So, unless Billy can repeat grades 1 through 12 in 24 weeks, the business will revert to the business' scuzzball vice president (Brad Whitford).
Repeating public school as an adult is a well-worn movie fantasy and "Billy Madison" rings no new changes. Director Tamra Davis and screenwriters Sandler and Tim Herlihy scatter the bad jokes like fertilizer. Nothing sprouts. As a comic actor, Sandler has a bad habit of thinking he's funnier than we do--although he's not aiming very high here. He's trying to be the King of the Peepee and Doodoo jokes. Worse, he isn't.
Actors such as Chris Farley, Steve Buscemi, Norm MacDonald and Josh Mostel takes turns trying to blow up this bladder but a whoopee cushion without air can't make a funny sound.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.1/10 (21,747 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Slackmo

#169 Flirting (1991)
John Duigan
Running time - 99mins
Country of origin Australia
Genre Drama
Original language English

Writing credits
John Duigan

Cast
Noah Taylor ... Danny Embling
Thandie Newton ... Thandiwe Adjewa
Nicole Kidman ... Nicola
Bartholomew Rose ... 'Gilby' Fryer
Felix Nobis ... Jock Blair

BY ROGER EBERT / November 20, 1992

"Flirting" is one of those rare movies with characters I cared about intensely. I didn't simply observe them on the screen, I got involved in their decisions and hoped they made the right ones. The movie is about two teenagers at private schools in Australia in the 1960s, a white boy and an African girl, who fall in love and do a little growing up at the same time.

The boy is Danny (Noah Taylor), awkward, a stutterer, the target of jokes from some of his classmates. He has a fine offbeat mind, which questions authority and doubts conventional wisdom. He is gawky in that way teenage boys can be before the parts grow into harmony with the whole. The girl is Thandiwe (Thandie Newton), very pretty, very smart, attracted to Danny because alone of the boys in her world he possesses a sense of humor and rebellion. She first sees him during a get-together between their twin schools, which are on either side of a lake, and looks at him boldly until he meets her gaze. Not long after, they are on opposing debate teams, and carry on a subtle little flirtation by disagreeing with the arguments of their own sides.

The girl's mother was British; her stepmother is African, like her father, who is a diplomat. Uganda is newly independent and is approaching the agony of the Idi Amin years. Events far away in Africa will decide whether the boy and girl will be able to carry on a normal teenage flirtation, or whether she will be swept away by the tide of history. Meanwhile, their eyes wide open, with joy and solemnity, they try to honor their love.

The movie is not about "movie teenagers," those unhappy creatures whose interests are limited and whose values are piggish.

Most movies have no idea how thoughtful and responsible many teenagers are - how seriously they take their lives, how carefully they agonize over personal decisions. Only a few recent films, like "Say Anything" and "Man in the Moon," have given their characters the freedom that "Flirting" grants - for kids to grow up by trying to make the right choices.

In "Flirting," every scene serves a purpose. We go to classrooms and dormitories, to Parents' Day and sporting events, and we see the wit and daring with which Thandiwe and Danny arrange to meet under the eyes of their teachers. We also get a sense of the schools; the boys' school, where one of the teachers is too fond of caning, and another too fond of building model airplanes, and the girls' academy, where one of the older girls (Nicole Kidman) is responsible for Thandiwe, but secretly admires her willingness to break the rules.

Scene after scene is written with delicacy and wit - for example, a scene in which the young lovers' parents meet. Neither set of parents knows their child is dating at all; the way they all behave in this social setting, in a time and place where interracial dating raises eyebrows, is written with subtlety and tact. The adult actors bring a kind of awkward grace to the scene that is somehow very moving. The little non-conversation between Danny's parents, after they are alone again, is priceless.

Race itself is not the issue in "Flirting," however; the movie is a coming-of-age drama (and comedy) about the ways in which these two young people balance lust with mutual respect, and how the girl, who is wiser and more mature, is also enormously tactful in guiding and protecting the boy she loves. There is a scene in which they explore one another sexually, but it is not a "sex scene" in any conventional sense of the term, and the way it is handled is a rebuke to the way so many movies cheapen physical love.

"Flirting" came to me out of the blue, without advance notice, and I was deeply affected by it. Then I discovered it is a sequel to an earlier Australian film, "The Day My Voice Broke," unseen by me, and that Danny will be seen again in a third film still to be made by the writer-director, John Duigan. I have gone searching for the first film, which I remember having heard good things about, but I know from experience that it is possible to see "Flirting" all by itself.

So often we settle for noise and movement from the movie screen, for stupid people indulging unworthy fantasies. Only rare movies like "Flirting" remind us that the movies are capable of providing us with the touch of other lives, that when all the conditions are right we can grow a little and learn a little, just like the people on the screen. This movie is joyous, wise and life-affirming, and certainly one of the year's best films.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.0/10 (2,141 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #350

Ranked highest by Elemeno P.T. (#3)

Whew--that was close. I think PT would've blown a gasket if Flirting hadn't beat Billy Madison.

#168 Pump Up The Volume (1990)
Allan Moyle
Running time - 105 mins
Country of origin Canada / USA
Genre Drama / Comedy
Original language English

Writing credits
Allan Moyle

Cast
Anthony Lucero ... Malcolm Kaiser
Andy Romano ... Murdock
Samantha Mathis ... Nora Diniro
Keith Stuart Thayer ... Luis Chavez
Christian Slater ... Mark Hunter (Hard Harry)

BY Ryan Cracknell - Movie News

One of the beauties of film is that as a medium for communication it has the potential to both entertain and make a powerful statement. Rarely do they succeed in both departments. While most movies have themes, they're more concerned with entertaining. And that's great because entertainment is first in my books too. But when I see a film like Allan Moyle's Pump Up the Volume, I am reminded just how affective this platform can be.

Hubert Humphrey High is your average high school, complete with its cliques that separate everyone into groups of clichés and stereotypes. Cool kids, jocks, burn outs, pimply sophomores and everything in between. It's the kind of place where if you choose to blend in, nobody will know that you exist. But every night there is a single event that brings them all together - Happy Harry Hard-on's pirate radio show. Harry tells it like it is, straight shooting it to the kids letting them know that the teenage years are meant to be awkward and that the goal is simply survival. Starting out as some small, the radio show blossoms amongst the school's populace as friends tell friends and word of mouth gets around. Soon it's a sensation and most everyone over the age of 25 wants Harry shut down. Except nobody knows who this Harry guy is.

Mark (Christian Slater) is the average kid in school. He eats lunch alone on the steps with a book or a pair of watchful eyes. Mark's the invisible average kid that people don't bother to get to sign their yearbook. At the ten-year reunion, people would either be avoiding him or squinting at his name tag to figure out who he is. But Mark has a secret Clark Kent complex. Behind his glasses lies the school's hero. By night Mark rules to local radio waves because he is none other than Happy Harry.

The teenage years are tumultuous ones. I remember thinking I was always being told what I should be doing rather than going out and experiencing life for myself. Sure, there's mess-ups and mistakes, but that's all part of growing up. That's how you learn. Hubert Humphrey High is the same. Outdoor signs tell students what they should be doing, parents doing the same. And like all good little teenagers with enough confusion in they're life already, they simply give in. What this does is reinforce the cliques and stereotypes of the jocks, cool kids, nerds and such. None of HHH's students are given the chance to form their own identity. B.H. (Before Harry), that is.

When the Harry Show takes off, the students begin to shed their zombie-like facades. They start to think for themselves. It's near anarchy. Of course, there's only more confusion and questions. But there's also freedom. The parents and adults start to worry. They're lab experiments are going to hell.

Writer-director Allan Moyle works hard to reassure his target audience that things will work out in the end. It's a powerful and honest film that doesn't give the easy answers. He leaves much to be figured out too. The story that lies within this theme isn't deep but it is adequate. Moyle ran the risk of making Pump Up the Volume preachy but instead he realizes a balance between entertainment and message. The film is also a reminder of Slater's promise he showed as a young actor. He's an irresistible combination of charisma and sensitivity as the modern-day Superman.

Pump Up the Volume is the kind of movie that hits home. It touches on real emotions and is a reminder of just how darn awkward it is to be a young adult. Now if only we would stop to listen more often.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.8/10 (8,440 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Saskadelphia (#12)

They were level on points, only PT's higher highest vote made the difference

Yes you were, and I didn't scan the old list for it's alternate title. Whoopsie me.

#167 Total Recall (1990)
Paul Verhoeven
Running time -113 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi / Thriller / Horror
Original language English

Writing credits
Philip K. Dick, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill, Gary Goldman

Cast
Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Douglas Quaid/Hauser
Sharon Stone ... Lori
Rachel Ticotin ... Melina
Ronny Cox ... Vilos Cohaagen
Michael Ironside ... Richter

Academy Awards
Nominated Best Effects -Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound

Other awards
Nominated BAFTA Film Awards Best Special Visual Effects

BY ROGER EBERT / June 1, 1990

There may be people who overlook the Arnold Schwarzenegger performance in "Total Recall" - who think he isn't really acting. But the performance is one of the reasons the movie works so well. He isn't a superman this time, although he fights like one. He's a confused and frightened innocent, a man betrayed by the structure of reality itself. And in his vulnerability, he opens the way for "Total Recall" to be more than simply an action, violence and special effects extravaganza.

There is a lot of action and violence in the movie, and almost every shot seems to embody some sort of special effect. This is one of the most complex and visually interesting science fiction movies in a long time. But the plot, based on a story by the great science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick, centers on an intriguing idea: What would happen if you could be supplied with memories? If your entire "past," right up until this moment, could be plugged into your brain, replacing the experiences you had really lived through? That's what seems to happen to Quaid, the Schwarzenegger character in "Total Recall," although at times neither he nor we can be quite sure. We meet him in a future world where he lives in a comfortable apartment with his loving blond wife, and goes off to work every day at a construction job. He life seems idyllic, but he keeps having these dreams about Mars - dreams that finally inspire him to sign up with a strange kind of travel agency that provides you with the memory of a vacation instead of a real one.

What they do is, they strap you into a machine and beam the memories into your mind, so that it seems utterly convincing to you that you've been to Mars and done some dangerous spying there, and fallen in love with the brunet of your specifications (Quaid specifies she be "athletic, sleazy and demure"). Before long, sure enough, Quaid seems to be on Mars, involved in some secret-spy stuff, and in the arms of his custom-ordered brunet (Rachel Ticotin).

But is this a packaged memory, or a real experience? The movie toys tantalizingly with the possibilities, especially in a scene where a convincing doctor and Quaid's own wife (Sharon Stone) "appear" in his dream to try to talk him down from it. Meanwhile, the plot - dream or not - unfolds. Mars is in the midst of a revolutionary war between the forces of Cohaagen, a mercenary captain of industry (Ronny Cox), and a small band of rebels. There is a mystery involving a gigantic reactor that was apparently built by aliens on Mars a million years ago, and has been uncovered during mining operations. And can the brunet trust Quaid - even though he doesn't remember that they were once lovers? "Total Recall" moves back and forth between various versions and levels of reality, while at the same time filling its screen with a future world rich with details. The red planet Mars is created in glorious visual splendor, and the inside of the Mars station looks like a cross between Times Square and a submarine. Strange creatures pop up, including mutants, weird three-breasted strippers, and a team of hitmen led by Richter (Michael Ironside), Cohaagen's most vicious lieutenant.

The movie is wall-to-wall with violence, much of it augmented by special effects. Even in this future world, people haven't been able to improve on the machine gun as a weapon of murder, even though you'd imagine that firearms of all kinds would be outlawed inside an airtight dome. There are indeed several sequences in which characters are sucked outside when the air seal if broken, but that doesn't stop the movie's villains from demonstrating the one inevitable fact of movie marksmanship: Bad guys never hit their target, and good guys never miss.

Not that it makes the slightest difference, but the science in this movie is laughable throughout. Much is made, for example, of a scene where characters finds themselves outside on Mars, and immediately begin to expand, their eyes popping and their faces swelling. As Arthur C. Clarke has written in an essay about his 2001, a man would not explode even in the total vacuum of deep space.

(What's even more unlikely is that after the alien reactors are started and quickly provide Mars with an atmosphere, the endangered characters are spared from explosion.) Such quibbles - and pages could be filled with them - are largely irrelevant to "Total Recall," which is a marriage between swashbuckling space opera and the ideas of the original Phillip Dick story. The movie was directed by Paul Verhoeven, whose credits range from "The Fourth Man" to "RoboCop," and he is skilled at creating sympathy for characters even within the overwhelming hardware of a story like this. That's where Schwarzenegger is such a help. He could have stalked and glowered through this movie and become a figure of fun, but instead, by allowing himself to seem confused and vulnerable, he provides a sympathetic center for all of the high-tech spectacle.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (42,334 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by CerebralCaustic (#4)

#166 Donnie Brasco (1997)
Mike Newell
Running time - 127 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language English

Writing credits
Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley, Paul Attanasio

Cast
Al Pacino ... Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero
Johnny Depp ... Donnie Brasco/Joseph D. 'Joe' Pistone
Michael Madsen ... Sonny Black
Bruno Kirby ... Nicky
James Russo ... Paulie

Academy Awards
Nominated Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

BY ROGER EBERT / February 27, 1997

Norman Mailer told us tough guys don't dance, but in the movies, it's mostly tough guys who do dance. We're so leery of close emotional bonds between men that the movies are only comfortable showing them if the guys are cops, jocks, soldiers or mobsters. Beneath everything else, ``Donnie Brasco'' is the story of two men who grow to love each other, within the framework of a teacher-student relationship. It's not about sex. It's about need.

The movie opens in a New York coffee shop that's a hangout for the mob. A young guy named Donnie (Johnny Depp) comes in and talks disrespectfully to an older guy named Lefty (Al Pacino). Lefty can't believe his ears: ``You're calling me a dumbski? You know who you're talkin' to? Lefty from Mulberry Street!'' As if that means anything.

Actually, though, it means a lot to Donnie Brasco, whose real name is Joe Pistone, and who is an undercover agent for the FBI. He gradually wins Lefty's trust, and it becomes clear that Lefty badly needs someone to trust; he has cancer, his son is a junkie, and his mob career is going nowhere. Donnie is a good-looking kid who listens well, and Lefty desperately needs to be a mentor. In another world, he would have been your favorite high school teacher.

``If I say you're a friend of mine, that means you're connected,'' Lefty explains to Donnie. ``If I say you're a friend of ours, that means you're a made guy. If I introduce you, I'm responsible for you. Anything wrong with you, I go down.'' The movie is based on a 1978 book inspired by the real ``Donnie Brasco'' case (its author is still living in the government witness protection program). The story plays like a companion to ``GoodFellas,'' with the same lore, the same fierce Mafia code, the same alternation between sudden violence and weird comedy. (At one point, Lefty is summoned to a meeting with his boss and expects to be killed. Instead he's given a present--a lion, because he likes to watch wild animals on videos.) The British director Mike Newell, whose biggest hit was ``Four Weddings and a Funeral,'' might seem like a strange choice for this material, but he's the right one, because the movie is not really about violence or action, it's about friendship. We can see immediately why Lefty is drawn to Donnie, but it takes a little longer to see why Donnie begins to like Lefty. After all, a guy risks his life because he trusts you; you can't help feeling like a rat if you're double-crossing him.

Michael Madsen plays the boss Lefty reports to. He's tall, tough, relentless--and scared, too, because when he gets bumped up a notch, the job includes a $50,000 monthly payment to the guy above him. A lot of the time these guys spend hanging around their social club, playing cards and complaining that business is bad. In this movie, Mafia guys don't get away with anything: With them, it's work, work, work, just like with everybody else.

Donnie has some ideas for them, including a club in Florida that he thinks might make them some money. But opening night goes wrong, and although they suspect a stoolie in their midst, what they do not suspect is that a rival mob faction was responsible. Every time I see a Mafia movie, I wonder how any Mafiosi can still be alive, given the rate of sudden, violent attrition and the willingness to shoot first and find out the rest of the facts later.

The Florida project and the other jobs are a backdrop for the relationship between Donnie and Lefty, which is complicated because the FBI agent has a wife and kids squirreled away in the suburbs, who go for weeks at a time without hearing from him. He can't even tell them what he does (nor would they believe him). ``I pretend I'm a widow,'' his wife tells him.

Eventually all of the threads, personal and criminal, come down to one moment when Lefty either will or will not act on what he knows, or thinks he knows. As the two men face their moment of truth, we are reminded what fine acting the movie contains. We expect it from Pacino, who is on ground he knows well, and is poignant and gentle as a man who is ``just a spoke in the wheel,'' a loyal soldier who lives and dies by the rules. For Johnny Depp, ``Donnie Brasco'' breaks new ground; he seems a little older here, a little wearier, and he makes the transition from stoolie to friend one subtle step at a time.

The violence in this movie is gruesome (a scene involving the disposal of bodies is particularly graphic). But the movie has many human qualities and contains what will be remembered as one of Pacino's finest scenes. At an important moment in his life, he puts some things in a drawer. He starts to leave, then thinks again, turns back and leaves the drawer ajar. What this implies and how it plays creates the perfect ending for the film, which fades to black--only to start up again with unnecessary footnotes. No matter; I'll remember that scene.
Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.6/10 (37,381 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #375

Ranked highest by Capt. Midnight (#16)

Weird, I just looked up the Cohagen line this afternoon.

LOL at Last of the Mohicans. Not because it's a bad movie, but because I went to see it with a group of friends one night.

I had been working at a childrens' home, and had pulled two consecutive all nighters with kids on suicide watch. I had gotten about four hours sleep over a three day stretch.

Lights went down, I recall seeing the North Carolina mountains in the background...and the next thing I knew the credits were rolling.

Best 2 1/2 hour nap of my life.

Edited to note also that Pump Up the Volume is highly underrated, and the soundtrack is even more so.

Brasco's fucking awesome. It is besmirched by its company in this part of the list.

I had to go with that after seeing Knocked Up.

True, though "you gotta go find that fucking puppy" is as good as anything in Flirting.

At the time this was the most expensive film ever made in France (until Claude Berri's 'Germinal' anyways) where they literally made a complete duplicate of the Pont-Neuf over a lake to film the movie.

Unfortunately its a much smaller pool of folks who are familiar with Carax and I saw this at a time when it wasn't even being released in the states because it cost too much and nobody thought it would be worth it.

I'm even more surprised if anyone would mention Bela Tarr.

#165 The Game (1997)
David Fincher
Running time - 128 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Adventure / Mystery / Thriller
Original language Cantonese / English / German

Writing credits
John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris

Cast
Michael Douglas ... Nicholas Van Orton
Sean Penn ... Conrad Van Orton
Deborah Kara Unger ... Christine
James Rebhorn ... Jim Feingold
Peter Donat ... Samuel Sutherland


BY ROGER EBERT / September 19, 1997

The opening scenes of ``The Game'' show Michael Douglas as a rich man in obsessive control of his life. The movie seems to be about how he is reduced to humility and humanity--or maybe that's just a trick on him. The movie is like a control freak's worst nightmare. The Douglas character, named Nicholas Van Orton, is surrounded by employees who are almost paralyzed by his rigid demands on them. ``I have an Elizabeth on line three,'' says one secretary, and then a second later adds, ``Your wife, sir.'' ``I know,'' he says coldly. We have the feeling that if the second secretary had not spoken, he would have replied, ``Elizabeth who?'' His underlings are in no-win situations. It is, in fact, his ex-wife; at age 48, Van Orton lives alone in the vast mansion where his father committed suicide at the same age. His birthday evening consists of eating a cheeseburger served on a silver tray and watching CNN.

Van Orton's younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) visits him and announces a birthday present: ``The Game,'' which is ``sort of an experiential Book of the Month Club.'' Operated by a shadowy outfit named Consumer Recreation Services, the Game never quite declares its rules or objectives, but soon Van Orton finds himself in its grasp, and his orderly life has become unmanageable. ``It will make your life fun again,'' he is promised, but that's not quite how he sees it, as a functionary (James Rebhorn) leads him through the signup process.

Soon everything starts to fall apart. His pen leaks. His briefcase won't open. Wine is spilled on him in a restaurant. He is trapped in an elevator. The level of chaos rises. He finds himself blackmailed, his bank accounts are emptied, he wanders like a homeless man, he is trapped inside a cab sinking in a bay, he is left for dead in Mexico.

Of course many of the physical details of what happens to him are implausible or even impossible, but so what? The events are believable in the sense that events can be believed in a nightmare: You can hardly worry about how a horror has been engineered when you're trapped inside it.

The mounting campaign of conspiratorial persecution is greeted by Van Orton with his usual style of cold contempt and detachment: He knows all the angles, he thinks, and has foreseen all the pitfalls, and can predict all the permutations. But he finds he is totally wrong. Even those few people he thinks he can trust (including a waitress played by Deborah Kara Unger--or is she a waitress?) may be double agents. There is even the possibility that the Game is a front for a well-planned conspiracy to steal his millions. Michael Douglas, who is superb at playing men of power (remember his Oscar-winning turn as Gordon Gekko in ``Wall Street'') is reduced to a stumbling, desperate man on the run (remember his unemployed engineer in ``Falling Down'').

``The Game,'' written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is David Fincher's first film since ``Seven,'' and projects the same sense of events being controlled by invisible manipulation. This time, though, there's an additional element: Van Orton is being broken down and reassembled like the victim of some cosmic EST program. And it is unclear, to him and to us, whether the Game is on the level of a fraud, or perhaps spinning out of control.

The movie's thriller elements are given an additional gloss by the skill of the technical credits, and the wicked wit of the dialogue. When Van Orton's brother asks, ``Don't you think of me anymore?'' he shoots back, ``Not since family week at rehab.'' And when his ex-wife asks if he had a nice birthday, he answers, ``Does Rose Kennedy have a black dress?'' The film's dark look, its preference for shadows, recalls ``Seven'' and also Fincher's ``Alien 3.'' The big screen reveals secrets and details in dark corners; on video, they may disappear into the murk. Like ``Seven,'' the plotting is ingenious and intelligent, and although we think we know the arc of the film (egotist is reduced to greater humility and understanding of himself), it doesn't progress in a docile, predictable way; for one thing, there is the real possibility that the Game is not an ego-reduction program, but a death plot.

Douglas is the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change. Indeed, one of the refreshing things about the film is that it stays true to its paranoid vision right up until what seems like the very end--and then beyond it, so that by the time the real ending arrives, it's not the payoff and release as much as a final macabre twist of the knife.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.6/10 (44,850 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Velocity

#164طعم گيلاس / Ta'm-e gīlās (Taste of Cherry) (1997)
Abbas Kiarostami
Running time - 95 mins
Country of origin France / Iran
Genre Drama
Original language Persian

Writing credits
Abbas Kiarostami

Cast
Homayon Ershadi ... Mr. Badii
Abdolrahman Bagheri ... Mr. Bagheri
Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari ... Soldier
Safar Ali Moradi ... The soldier
Mir Hossein Noori ... The seminarian


Other awards
Won: - Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm (tied)

BY ROGER EBERT / February 27, 1998

There was great drama at Cannes last year when the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami was allowed, at the last moment, to leave his country and attend the festival premiere of his new film, ``Taste of Cherry.'' He received a standing ovation as he entered the theater, and another at the end of his film (although this time mixed with boos), and the jury eventually made the film co-winner of the Palme d'Or.

Back at the Hotel Splendid, standing in the lobby, I found myself in lively disagreement with two critics I respect, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader and Dave Kehr of the New York Daily News. Both believed they had seen a masterpiece. I thought I had seen an emperor without any clothes.

A case can be made for the movie, but it would involve transforming the experience of viewing the film (which is excruciatingly boring) into something more interesting, a fable about life and death. Just as a bad novel can be made into a good movie, so can a boring movie be made into a fascinating movie review.

The story: A man in a Range Rover drives through the wastelands outside Tehran, crisscrossing a barren industrial landscape of construction sites and shanty towns, populated by young men looking for work. The driver picks up a young serviceman, asking him, at length, if he's looking for work: ``If you've got money problems, I can help.'' Is this a homosexual pickup? Kiarostami deliberately allows us to draw that inference for a time, before gradually revealing the true nature of the job.

The man, Mr. Badii (Homayon Ershadi) wants to commit suicide. He has dug a hole in the ground. He plans to climb into it and take pills. He wants to pay the other man to come around at 6 a.m. and call down to him. ``If I answer, pull me out. If I don't, throw in 20 shovels of earth to bury me.'' The serviceman runs away. Badhi resumes his employment quest, first asking a seminarian, who turns him down because suicide is forbidden by the Koran, and then an elderly taxidermist. The older man agrees because he needs money to help his son, but argues against suicide. He makes a speech on Mother Earth and her provisions, and asks Badhi, ``Can you do without the taste of cherries?'' That, is essentially, the story. (I will not reveal if Badhi gets his wish.) Kiarostami tells it in a monotone. Conversations are very long, elusive and enigmatic. Intentions are misunderstood. The car is seen driving for long periods in the wasteland, or parked overlooking desolation, while Badhi smokes a cigarette. Any two characters are rarely seen in the same shot, reportedly because Kiarostami shot the movie himself, first sitting in the driver's seat, then in the passenger's seat.

Defenders of the film, and there are many, speak of Kiarostami's willingness to accept silence, passivity, a slow pace, deliberation, inactivity. Viewers who have short attention spans will grow restless, we learn, but if we allow ourselves to accept Kiarostami's time sense, if we open ourselves to the existential dilemma of the main character, then we will sense the film's greatness.

But will we? I have abundant patience with long, slow films, if they engage me. I fondly recall ``Taiga,'' the eight-hour documentary about the yurt-dwelling nomads of Outer Mongolia. I understand intellectually what Kiarostami is doing. I am not impatiently asking for action or incident. What I do feel, however, is that Kiarostami's style here is an affectation; the subject matter does not make it necessary, and is not benefited by it.

If we're to feel sympathy for Badhi, wouldn't it help to know more about him? To know, in fact, anything at all about him? What purpose does it serve to suggest at first he may be a homosexual? (Not what purpose for the audience--what purpose for Badhi himself? Surely he must be aware his intentions are being misinterpreted.) And why must we see Kiarostami's camera crew--a tiresome distancing strategy to remind us we are seeing a movie? If there is one thing ``Taste of Cherry'' does not need, it is such a reminder: The film is such a lifeless drone that we experience it only as a movie.

Yes, there is a humanistic feeling underlying the action. Yes, an Iranian director making a film on the forbidden subject of suicide must have courage. Yes, we applaud the stirrings of artistic independence in the strict Islamic republic. But is ``Taste of Cherry'' a worthwhile viewing experience? I say it is not.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (2,416 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by 54Cermak (#4)



Link to a non-scathing review

#163 Desperado (1995)
Robert Rodriguez
Running time - 106 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Crime / Thriller
Original language English

Writing credits
Robert Rodriguez

Cast
Antonio Banderas ... El Mariachi
Salma Hayek ... Carolina
Joaquim de Almeida ... Bucho
Cheech Marin ... Short Bartender
Steve Buscemi ... Buscemi

BY ROGER EBERT / August 25, 1995

He proved it on "El Mariachi" on a budget of around $7,000, and now, in "Desperado," with a budget many times that size, Robert Rodriguez proves it again: He has a gift for visuals that can make scenes dance on the screen. Like Sergio Leone, who lifted those early Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns out of their genre and made them something special, Rodriguez knows how to handle atmosphere and sudden explosions of violence.

Unfortunately, what he hasn't learned is how to structure a story so that we care about the violence on more than a technical level. Watching "Desperado," I was pleased again and again by set-ups, camera angles, lighting effects, editing rhythms and the fanciful staging of action scenes. But I never for a moment cared about the characters, and the plot was all too conveniently structured - just a guideline to the action. In the first film, El Mariachi was fighting desperately for his life against unknown odds.

Here, he's basically back for a curtain call.

"Desperado" takes place in the same small Mexican town as "El Mariachi" (1992), and loosely continues the same story, although with a different actor.

This time El Mariachi is played by Antonio Banderas, the Spanish star now working in Hollywood, whose cocky attitude, glistening black hair and two-day beard make him into a macho icon. The first time we see him, he's being described by a barroom storyteller as "always with his face in shadow; when he walks into a light, it's like it clicks off, and all you can see are his eyes." The storyteller, played by Steve Buscemi, figures in an inspired pre-title sequence that's the best thing in the film: He's describing this stranger in an attempt to smoke out Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), the Mariachi's arch-enemy. And soon, in a flashback, we're reminded of how this evil drug kingpin killed the Mariachi's girl and put a bullet through his hand, making it impossible to play the guitar, although his gunslinging is unimpaired.

Bucho is not the kind of man to inspire joy among his employees. He shoots them casually, just to set an example, and is forever losing his cool over details ("What's the number to the phone in my car"). His real function in the movie is to supply many victims for El Mariachi, who at one point is able to fall backwards off a roof while still murdering two Bucho henchmen and protecting the girl.

She is Carolina (Salma Hayek), the sultry-eyed owner of the local bookstore, which is also a drug drop. She's taking money from Bucho, but soon she's in El Mariachi's arms, in a steal from the hero's relationship with the sexy bartender in the first film. She's just what a boy's looking for in a movie like this: sexy, quickly seduced, and able to jump off roofs, shoot people and toss her hair passionately. Women like this exist only in the movies, and, believe me, it's just as well.

The movie has some familiar faces in supporting roles.

Cheech Marin is a bartender, doing amazing things with a toothpick, and Quentin Tarantino, patron saint of the violent indies, stops by to bless the film with a cameo. But most of the screen time involves violence, by knife, gun and explosive, and eventually we realize that this isn't a story, it's a video game: As in "Mortal Kombat," targets jump up simply to be shot down.

"Desperado" is, however, a lot better-looking than "Mortal Kombat," a movie that looks like it was skimping on electricity.

Rodriguez has a lively color sense, a good feel for composition and a willingness to put the camera anywhere it can possibly go. What happens looks terrific. Now if he can harness that technical facility to a screenplay that's more story than setup, he might really have something.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.9/10 (30,564 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 295

Ranked highest by Agrimorfee (#8)

Finding foreign fonts is another reason why you are so cool, Mitchell!

That became all too apparent with "Once Upon A Time in Mexico", a Rodriguez movie that I have no absolutely no desire in viewing again (I'll even take "Shark Boy & Lava Girl" over it).

<I honestly wasn't just listening to England India at this point.>

#162 When We Were Kings (1996)
Leon Gast
Running time - 106 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Documentary / History / Sport
Original language English


Cast
Muhammad Ali ... Himself
George Foreman ... Himself
Don King ... Himself
James Brown ... Himself
B.B. King ... Himself
Mobutu Sese Seko ... Himself

Academy Awards
Won: Best Documentary, Features

Other awards
Won Sundance Film Festival - Special Recognition Leon Gast (director)
Nominated Sundance Film Festival - Grand Jury Prize Documentary

BY ROGER EBERT / February 27, 1997

The heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire on Oct. 30, 1974--``The Rumble in the Jungle''--is enshrined as one of the great sports events of the century. It was also a cultural and political happening.

Into the capital of Kinshasa flew planeloads of performers for an ``African Woodstock,'' TV crews, Howard Cosell at the head of an international contingent of sports journalists, celebrity fight groupies like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, and of course the two principals: Ali, then still controversial because of his decision to be a conscientious objector, and Foreman, now huggable and lovable in TV commercials but then seen as fearsome and forbidding.

``I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm strong, and I can't be beat,'' Ali told the press. They didn't believe him. Foreman had destroyed George Frazier, who had defeated Ali. Foreman was younger, bigger and stronger, with a punch so powerful, Mailer recalled, ``that after he was finished with a heavy punching bag, it had a depression pounded into it.'' Ali was 33 and thought to be over the hill. The odds were 7-1 against him.

The Zaire that they arrived in was a country much in need of foreign currency and image refurbishment. Under the leadership of Mobutu Sese Seko (``the archetype of a closet sadist,'' said Mailer), the former Belgian Congo had became a paranoid police state; the new stadium built to showcase the fight was rumored to hold 1,000 political prisoners in cells in its catacombs.

Don King, then at the dawn of his career as a fight promoter, had sold Mobutu on the fight and raised $5 million for each fighter. The ``African Woodstock,'' featuring such stars as B.B. King, James Brown and Miriam Makeba, was supposed to pay for part of that. For Ali, the fight in Africa was payback time for the hammering he'd taken in the American press for his refusal to fight in Vietnam. For Foreman, it was more complicated. So great was the pro-Ali frenzy, Foreman observed, that when he got off the plane the crowds were surprised to find that he was also a black man. ``Why do they hate me so much?'' he wondered.

Leon Gast's ``When We Were Kings,'' which just received an Oscar nomination, is like a time capsule; the original footage has waited all these years to be assembled into a film because of legal and financial difficulties. It is a new documentary of a past event, recapturing the electricity generated by Muhammad Ali in his prime. Spike Lee, who with Mailer and Plimpton provides modern commentary on the 1974 footage, says young people today do not know how famous and important Ali was. He is right. ``When I fly on an airplane,'' Ali once told me, ``I look out of the window and I think, I am the only person that *everyone* down there knows about.'' It is not bragging if you are only telling the truth.

The original film apparently started as a concert documentary. Then the fight was delayed because of a cut to Foreman's eye. The concert went ahead as scheduled, and then the fighters, their entourages and the press settled down to wait for the main event. No one really thought Ali had a chance--perhaps not even Ali, who seems reflective and withdrawn in a few private moments, although in public he predicted victory.

How could he have a chance, really? Hadn't he lost his prime years as a fighter after he refused to fight in Vietnam? (``I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong,'' he explained.) Wasn't Foreman bigger, faster, stronger, younger? History records Ali's famous strategy, the ``Rope-a-Dope'' defense, in which he simply outwaited Foreman, absorbing incalculable punishment until, in the eighth round, Foreman was exhausted and Ali exploded with a series of rights to the head, finishing him.

Was this, however, really a strategy at all? ``When We Were Kings'' gives the impression that Ali got nowhere in the first round and adopted the Rope-a-Dope almost by default. Perhaps he knew, or hoped, that he was in better condition than Foreman, and could outlast him if he simply stayed on his feet. It is certain that hardly anyone in Zaire that night, not even his steadfast supporter Cosell, thought that Ali could win; the upset became an enduring part of his myth.

``When We Were Kings'' captures Ali's public persona and private resolve. As heavyweight champion during the Vietnam War, he could easily have arrived at an accommodation with the military, touring bases in lieu of combat duty.

Although he was called a coward and a draft dodger, surely it took more courage to follow the path he chose. And yet it is remarkable how ebullient, how joyful, he remained even after the price he paid; how he is willing to be a clown and a poet as well as a fighter and an activist.

Seeing the film today inspires poignant feelings; we contrast younger Ali with the ailing and aging legend, and reflect that this fight must have contributed to the damage that slowed him down. It is also fascinating to contrast the young Foreman with today's much-loved figure; he, too, has grown and mellowed. When the movie was made all of those developments were still ahead; there is a palpable tension, as the two men step into the ring, that is not lessened because we know the outcome.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (4,536 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Citizen

Mitchell, come to your senses.

#161 Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) (1999)
Pedro Almodóvar
Running time - 101 mins
Country of origin Spain / France
Genre Drama
Original language Spanish / Catalan / English

Writing Credits:
Pedro Almodóvar

Cast
Cecilia Roth ... Manuela
Marisa Paredes ... Huma Rojo
Candela Peña ... Nina
Antonia San Juan ... Agrado
Penélope Cruz ... Sister María Rosa Sanz



Academy Awards
Won: Best Foreign Language Film

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Award - Best Film not in the English Language, David Lean Award for Direction Cannes Film Festival - Best Director, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury Golden Globe - Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated BAFTA Film Award - Best Screenplay - Original Cannes Film Festival - Golden Palm

BY ROGER EBERT / December 22, 1999

Pedro Almodovar's films are a struggle between real and fake heartbreak--between tragedy and soap opera. They're usually funny, too, which increases the tension. You don't know where to position yourself while you're watching a film like ``All About My Mother,'' and that's part of the appeal: Do you take it seriously, like the characters do, or do you notice the bright colors and flashy art decoration, the cheerful homages to Tennessee Williams and ``All About Eve,'' and see it as a parody? Even Almodovar's camera sometimes doesn't know where to stand: When the heroine's son writes in his journal, the camera looks at his pen from the point of view of the paper.

``All About My Mother'' is one of the best films of the Spanish director, whose films present a Tennessee Williams sensibility in the visual style of a 1950s Universal-International tearjerker. Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone never seem very far offscreen. Bette Davis isn't offscreen at all: Almodovar's heroines seem to be playing her. Self-parody is part of Almodovar's approach, but ``All About My Mother'' is also sincere and heartfelt; though two of its characters are transvestite hookers, one is a pregnant nun and two more are battling lesbians, this is a film that paradoxically expresses family values.

The movie opens in Madrid with a medical worker named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) and her teenage son Esteban (Eloy Azorin). They've gone to see a performance of ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' and now wait across the street from the stage door so Esteban can get an autograph from the famous actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes). She jumps into a taxi (intercut with shots from ``All About Eve'' of Bette Davis eluding an autograph hound), and Esteban runs after her and is struck dead in the street. That sets up the story, as Manuela journeys to Barcelona to inform Esteban's father of the son's death.

There is irony as the film folds back on itself, because its opening scenes show Manuela, now a transplant coordinator but once an actress, performing in a video intended to promote organ transplants. In the film, grieving relatives are asked to allow the organs of their loved ones to be used; later Manuela plays the same scene for real, as she's asked to donate her own son's heart.

The Barcelona scenes reflect Almodovar's long-standing interest in characters who cross the gender divide. Esteban's father is now a transvestite prostitute. In a scene worthy of Fellini, we visit a field in Barcelona where cars circle a lineup of flamboyant hookers of all sexes, and where Manuela, seeking her former lover, finds an old friend named Agrado (Antonia San Juan). The name means ``agreeable,'' we're told, and Agrado is a person with endless troubles of her own who nevertheless enters every scene looking for the laugh. In one scene, she dresses in a Chanel knockoff and is asked if it is real. As a street hooker, she couldn't afford Chanel, but her answer is unexpected: ``How could I buy a real Chanel with all the hunger in the world?'' There are unexpected connections between the characters, even between Esteban's father and Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a nun who works in a shelter for battered prostitutes. And new connections are forged. We meet the actress Huma Rojo once again, and her girlfriend and co-star Nina (Candela Pena): ``She's hooked on junk and I'm hooked on her.'' When Nina flakes out, Manuela is actually able to understudy her role, having played it years ago. And Agrado finds a job as Huma's personal assistant. Meanwhile, the search goes on for the missing lover.

Manuela is the heroine of the film and its center, but Agrado is the source of life. There's an extraordinary scene in which she takes an empty stage against a hostile audience and tries to improvise a one-woman show around the story of her life. Finally she starts an inventory of the plastic surgeries that assisted her in the journey from male to female, describing the pain, procedure and cost of each, as if saying, ``I've paid my dues to be who I am today. Have you?'' Almodovar's earlier films sometimes seemed to be manipulating the characters as an exercise. Here the plot does handstands in its eagerness to use coincidence, surprise and melodrama. But the characters have a weight and reality, as if Almodovar has finally taken pity on them--has seen that although their plights may seem ludicrous, they're real enough to hurt. These are people who stand outside conventional life and its rules, and yet affirm them. Families are where you find them and how you make them, and home, it's said, is the place where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.8/10 (21,480 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Helmet52

A suitable place to stop.

oh, man i think i didn't voted for "all about my mother". i saw it after i submitted my list, i believe. should've been at least in the top 50.

Ali Boom-bah-yeh