#142 Rounders (1998)
John Dahl
Running time - 121 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama
Original language English / Russian / Hebrew

Writing Credits:
David Levien, Brian Koppelman

Cast
Matt Damon ... Mike McDermott
Edward Norton ... Lester 'Worm' Murphy
Paul Cicero ... Russian Thug
John Turturro ... Joey Knish
Ray Iannicelli ... Kenny


Other awards
Nominated Venice Film Festival - Golden Lion

BY ROGER EBERT / September 11, 1998

``Rounders'' cheerfully buys into compulsive gambling. The hero gambles away his tuition money, his girlfriend, his law degree and nearly his life, and at the end he's still a happy gambler. If this movie were about alcoholism, the hero would regain consciousness after the DTs and order another double. Most gambling movies are dire warnings; this one is a recruiting poster.

I think that's because the movie would rather recycle the ``Rocky'' genre than end on a sour note. It stars Matt Damon as a New York law student who is a truly gifted poker player, and since the movie ends with a big game you somehow kinda know he's not going to lose it. Since the genre insists on a victory at the end, the movie has to be in favor of poker; you don't see Rocky deciding to retire because of brain damage.

As a poker movie, it's knowledgeable and entertaining. And as a mediocre player who hits the poker room at the Mirage a couple of times a year and has read a fair share of books about the World Series of Poker, I enjoyed it. It takes place within the pro poker underground of New York and Atlantic City, where everybody knows the big games and the key players. And it shows brash, clean-cut young Mike McDermott (Damon) venturing into the world of cutthroats like Teddy KGB (John Malkovich), the poker genius of the Russian-American mob.

Mike is a law student, living with fellow student Jo (Gretchen Mol). As the movie opens, he gathers his entire stake of $30,000 and loses it to Teddy KGB. Jo has been trying to talk him into quitting poker, and he promises to reform. But the next day his best friend Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison, and of course he has to meet him at the prison gates, and of course that leads to a poker game that night, and to an escalating and dangerous series of problems.

Worm owes a lot of money to bad people. Mike unwisely becomes his co-guarantor. It becomes necessary for them to win a lot of money in a short period of time or be hurt very badly, and the movie is about the places they go and the weird people they encounter in the process. Although it's not necessary to play poker to understand the movie, the screenwriters (David Levien and Brian Koppelman) have done their homework, and approvingly quote truisms such as, ``If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, you are the sucker.'' The movie buys into the seedy glamor of poker, romanticizing a game that essentially consists of exhausted technicians living off brief bursts of adrenaline generated by risking everything they own or can borrow. All gambling comes down to that--the queasy combination of thrill and fear as you win or lose--and real gambling ideally involves more of your money than it reasonably should.

Mike is established as a brilliant poker player in a scene where he walks into a game between some judges and tells every player what's in his hand. The movie doesn't have him in the room long enough to be able to do that, but never mind: The point is made, and one of the players is his mentor, Professor Petrovsky (Martin Landau), who tells him, ``Our destiny chooses us.'' Sounds like Mike's destiny is not the law but poker, although I am not sure I follow the Professor's reasoning when he lends his student $10,000 and calls it a mitzvah. (The professor remembers someone who helped him when he decided to become a lawyer instead of a rabbi, but that's not quite the same thing as deciding to become a gambler instead of a lawyer.) The best scenes contrast the personalities of Mike and Worm. Mike wants to win by playing well. Worm wants to hustle. He's a card mechanic who takes outrageous chances, and his intoxication with danger leads them both into trouble--not least when they find themselves in a high-stakes game in a roomful of state troopers. Not for Worm is the cautious lifestyle of Joey Knish (John Turturro), who has ground out a living for 15 years by folding, folding, folding, until he draws a good hand.

There's humor in the film, especially when a lot of professional players find themselves at the same table in Atlantic City, and Mike's droll voice-over narration describes the unsuspecting suckers who sit down at the table. (``We weren't working with one another, but we weren't working against one another, either. It's like the Nature Channel; you don't see piranhas eating each other.'') The movie was directed by John Dahl, whose ``Red Rock West'' and ``The Last Seduction'' are inspired neo-noirs. ``Rounders'' sometimes has a noir look but it never has a noir feel, because it's not about losers (or at least it doesn't admit it is). It's essentially a sports picture, in which the talented hero wins, loses, faces disaster, and then is paired off one last time against the champ. For a grimmer and more realistic look at this world, no modern movie has surpassed Karel Reisz's ``The Gambler'' (1974), starring James Caan in a screenplay by self-described degenerate gambler James Toback. Compared to that, ``Rounders'' sees compulsive gambling as a lark--as long as it's not your money.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.2/10 (25,925 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 168

Ranked highest by Slackmo (#6)

#141 Night On Earth (1991)
Jim Jarmusch
Running time - 129 mins
Country of origin France / UK / Germany / USA / Japan
Genre Comedy / Drama
Original language English / French / Finnish / Italian / German

Writing Credits:
Jim Jarmusch

Cast
Gena Rowlands ... Victoria Snelling
Winona Ryder ... Corky
Armin Mueller-Stahl ... Helmut Grokenberger
Giancarlo Esposito ... YoYo
Rosie Perez ... Angela

BY ROGER EBERT / May 8, 1992

Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth" assembles five moments in time, in taxicabs, in the middle of the night, in five of the world's cities. At the end, we have learned no great lessons and arrived at no thrilling conclusions, but we have shared the community of the night, when people are unbuttoned and vulnerable - more ready to speak about what's really on their minds.

In Los Angeles, a casting agent tries to convince a tough young female cabbie that she might have a career in the movies. In New York, a black passenger becomes convinced that his driver, from Germany, will never make it to Brooklyn without help. In Paris, a taxi driver from the Ivory Coast throws out some tipsy African diplomats and picks up a harsh, wounded blind girl. In Rome, a cabbie insists on describing his sexual peculiarities to the priest who is having a heart attack in the back seat. And in Helsinki, on the edge of a cold winter dawn, it's a toss-up whether the passengers or the drivers have a more tragic story to tell.

Jarmusch is a poet of the night. Much of "Night on Earth" creates the same kind of lonely, elegaic, romantic mood as "Mystery Train," his film about wanderers in nighttime Memphis. Tom Waits' music helps to establish this mood of cities that have been emptied of the waking. It's as if the minds of these night people are affected by all of the dreams and nightmares that surround them.

Jarmusch is not interested in making each segment into a short story with an obvious construction. There are no zingers at the end. He's more concerned with character; with the relationship that forms, for example, between a tattooed, gum-chewing, chain-smoking young cabdriver (Winona Ryder) and the elegant executive (Gena Rowlands) who wants to cast her for a movie. "I've got my life all mapped out," says the Ryder character, who hopes to work her way up to mechanic. "There must be lotsa girls who want to be in the movies.

Not me." The movie doesn't insist that the cabbie is right or wrong; it simply reports her opinion.

As the film moves on from Los Angeles, Jarmusch creates a worldwide feeling of kinship; we will hear Spanish, German, French, Italian, Finnish and even a little Latin. Only the venue remains the same: the inside of a taxi in the middle of the night. Many questions are not answered. What about the young blind woman in Paris, for example? Where is she coming from? Where is she going? Why does she want to walk alone on the edge of a canal? How was she so deeply wounded? Her cabdriver, an African, asks her shyly what sex is like for her - what it's like to make love with someone she can't see. He asks her what she thinks about colors. She is abrupt in her answers.

She knows more about colors, and sex, than he ever will. Her entire organism is involved. "I can do everything you can do," she says.

"Can you drive?" he asks. "Can you?" she shoots back.

The New York segment is the funniest. Armin Mueller-Stahl plays the German, Giancarlo Esposito is the passenger who insists on driving himself, Rosie Perez (from "White Men Can't Jump") is the shrill counterpoint voice from the back seat, and each man (named Helmut and Yo-Yo) thinks the other has a ludicrous name.

The segment in Rome is the least successful, although Robert Benigni, a favorite of Jarmusch, has fun with his zany monologue as he races through the empty streets before picking up the priest. The segment in Helsinki is the saddest, almost unbearably sad, as the driver hears what a bad day one of his passengers has had, and then tops him.

Jarmusch essentially empties the streets for his night riders. The cities are lonely and look cold; even in L.A., "it gets dark early in the winter." His characters seem divorced from the ordinary society of their cities; they're loners and floaters. We sense they have more in common with one another than with the daytime inhabitants of their cities. And their cabs, hurtling through the deserted streets, are like couriers on a mission to nowhere.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.5/10 (8,767 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Agriformee (#3)

Crappy, watered-down retread of Mystery Train.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I've heard this from you already...
(Havne't seen Mystery Train, so I can't rejoinder that...)

Two movies called The Piano?

Good spot. Fixed.

Slacker this low? Graggrhgh. Saw it after I made my list, would've been top 10.

Rounders was okay, but I have no idea how the winner of the big card game won it. Poker confuses me.

Damon flopped a straight (three consecutive cards on the table, the remaining two in his hand--I think the board showed 5-6-7 and Damon had 8-9). Because there were both no pairs and no suits that three or more cards shared on the table, and there were no possibilities for higher straights, Damon had what's called the nuts, meaning he had the best possible hand, and therefore he could afford to slow play (i.e. not bet or re-raise) the hand against the over-representing Malkovich, who either had a lower straight, trips, two pair, or was just bluffing out the ass. Unless that's not the hand you were talking about, dunno.

Rounders outside the 100 is slightly shameful, but at least it beat motherfucking Secrets & Lies and The Piano.

Thanks for clarifying. It's admirable that the movie doesn't spell it in really obvious ways, but still, all that drama was lost on me during that last bit. I liked the story...I just don't like cards, I guess.

Just watched this again recently. They use a LOT of poker terminology that I did not get the first time around. If this only came out 5 years after its release, it probably would have been much bigger.

yeah, the first time I saw it I was definitely "uhhh yeahhh sure," but watching it again after actually playing is sorta revelatory

my one main problem with the movie? That scene where Damon perfectly reads the exact hand that everyone at that table of judges has. Sorry, but not even a Hellmuth-Lederer-Negreanu think tank could've done that.

Hoping to be down to #101 by Wednesday, it'll be as and when though not streams of posts in a row.

#140 Funny Game (1997)
Michael Haneke
Running time - 108 mins
Country of origin Austria
Genre Horror / Drama / Thriller
Original language German / French / Italian

Writing Credits:
Michael Haneke

Cast
Susanne Lothar ... Anna
Ulrich Mühe ... Georg
Arno Frisch ... Paul
Frank Giering ... Peter
Stefan Clapczynski ... Schorschi


Other awards
Nominated Cannes Film Festival - Golden Palm

By Lisa Alspector - Chicago Reader


Among the movies showing in town that can be broadly categorized as thrillers, two represent murder and mayhem with particular enthusiasm: the neatly constructed FunnyGames, a home-invasion fable playing at Facets Multi media Center for one week, and the erratic effects vehicle The Beyond, a supernatural horror rerelease screening midnight Friday and Saturday at the Music Box. Both movies--one perhaps more intentionally than the other--encourage viewers to examine their responses to, as well as to enjoy, the essential elements of exploitation filmmaking.

In Funny Games a family of three arrive at their vacation home and are rudely, then violently accosted by two young men who have so terrorized the resort community that the neighbors don't dare warn the new arrivals. When I saw the movie at the Chicago International Film Festival last year, the audience was small and some people walked out. Maybe they were anticipating another kind of movie, maybe they'd seen enough movies in which cruel people torture innocent but stupid ones. But the thing abo ut this double-edged killer thriller is that it can alienate not only viewers with more delicate tastes but habitual consumers of spectacles of fictional violence. Funny Games accuses its audience of complicity in the crimes it depicts simply becau se we're watching it--an accusation that's implicit in almost every violent narrative, though many try to discourage viewers from remembering this. But this movie goes even further--insisting that our very expectations make us culpable. Because we think w e know how the crimes depicted in the story will go down--we've seen it all before--we become a part of the machinery that victimizes the characters. It's as if we're helping to orchestrate their suffering instead of just anticipating it.

Writer-director Michael Haneke (The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance) communicates this thesis very clearly, mostly through one of the two killers, Paul (who refers to himself and the other k iller as Paul and Peter, or Tom and Jerry, or Beavis and Butt-head). Paul addresses the camera on several occasions, making reference to the structure of the story and to the expectations of the audience. Haneke also builds other antinarrative elements in to the narrative without noticeably interrupting its flow.

But for this movie to simultaneously fulfill genre conventions and analyze them, the filmmaker must be a willing opportunist as well as a social critic--and Haneke's movie is certainly sadistic as well as self-reflexive. Though Haneke parodies many of the conventions of psychodrama (including the psychoanalyzing of killers, when Paul facetiously tells several tales about Peter's childhood), the victims are well-rounded characters fighting for their lives and dignity. Georg, the father, is the first to be seriously injured, and after that he does very little to protest the treatment of his wife, Anna, and son, Georgie. Whether Georg will be able to live with himself should he survive this ordeal is a prospect perhaps as daunting as any of the monstrous challenges the killers contrive during a night's worth of events guaranteed to end in one grim way or another.

Yet because each scene is so conscientiously constructed to make plain the family's dynamics--Georg's frustration and fear, Anna's fortitude, Georgie's confusion and determination--it becomes almost impossible for the movie to do what it so clearly wan ts to: undercut its own compelling realist fiction. In one scene Paul insists that Georg decide whether Anna will strip--and possibly be raped--or Georgie will be beaten. Like every other demand Paul makes, this one seems to contain the element of choice. But the knowledge that Paul and Peter might do anything to any member of the family at any time makes the idea that Georg could exercise control by making a decision an ironic, sadistic joke. Yet if the point is that as viewers we are like Georg--passive ly choosing to view one sort of suffering over another as we consume our fiction seemingly free of consequences--the psychodrama remains poignant. The emotions of the victims are clear and complex--their conflicts dominate our experience of the narrative as powerfully as all the devices telling us to look elsewhere for the movie's themes.

In an interview in Sight and Sound it was suggested to Haneke that a viewer who wouldn't want to watch or participate in a real act of violence would just walk out of this movie. He agreed, adding, "Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does." In a statement included in the movie's publicity materials he describes the complicated relationship between representations of violence in both documentaries and fiction and our perceptions of the reality of v iolence, then spells out his intentions for Funny Games: "How can I restore to my representation the value of reality which it has lost?...How do I show the viewer his own position in relation to violence and its portrayal?" Funny Game s does function, at least in part, as he seems to have intended. Yet I'm not sure this isn't the result of context as much as content. If the movie were programmed at multiplexes, would viewers react any differently than they might to the Scream movies? These movies seem to insist that they're doing something other than simply representing a highly codified genre--the old-hat self-reflexive terror movie--when in fact that's all they do.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (6,187 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Nic (#2)

#139 L.A. Story (1991)
Mick Jackson
Running time - 95 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Drama / Fantasy / Romance
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Steve Martin

Cast
Steve Martin ... Harris K. Telemacher
Victoria Tennant ... Sara McDowel
Richard E. Grant ... Roland Mackey
Marilu Henner ... Trudi
Sarah Jessica Parker ... SanDeE*

BY ROGER EBERT / February 8, 1991

But there is also a bewitching Los Angeles, a city I glimpsed on my first visit there many years ago, where after my team won in the Rose Bowl I was driven up to Mulholland Drive, and the whole city lay glittering beneath. For a kid from Downstate Illinois, there was something enchanting going on down there - there was the promise of not merely success and the fulfillment of lust, but even of happiness and the fulfillment of dreams.

None of that has much to do with the reality of the city, I am aware, and sometimes the dreams seem buried by car washes and mini-malls, smog and traffic and urban wretchedness. But "L.A. Story" is a light-hearted fantasy that asks us to accept one small possibility, and promises us we may find contentment if we keep an open mind. That possibility is that a giant electrical traffic warning billboard might one day start sending personal messages to a TV weatherman, suggesting how he can make improvements in his life.

The weatherman is named Harris K. Telemacher (Martin), and he specializes in goofy weather reports that have little connection with actual climatic conditions. He makes enough money to move in an affluent circle of beautiful people who seem prepared to sit in the sunshine ordering cappuccino for the rest of their lives. Then Telemacher is fired, and discovers that his girlfriend (Marilu Henner) is having an affair, and with relief and a certain feeling of freedom he walks out of the relationship and takes stock of his life, inspired by the sentient highway sign. (He is not without his own difficulties in believing that the sign is on the level; the first time it talks to him, he looks around in paranoid despair, convinced he's on "Candid Camera.") The sign urges him to telephone a number that's been given to him by a friendly Valley Girl in a clothing store, and before long he finds himself in an energetic relationship with SanDeE(STAR) (Sarah Jessica Parker), who like many Southern Californians spells her name as if it were an explosion at the type foundry.

SanDeE(STAR) has a carefree and liberating air, but eventually Telemacher has to admit that the woman he's really attracted to is Sara (Victoria Tennant), a British journalist in town to do a story on L.A. lifestyles.

These stories of love provide the fragile narrative thread on which Martin (who wrote) and Mick Jackson (who directed) weave their spell. There are scenes that in other hands might have seemed obvious (for example, the daily routine of shooting at other drivers while racing down the freeway), but somehow there is a fanciful edge in the way they do it, a way they define all of their material with a certain whimsical tone.

The film is astonishing in the amount of material it contains. Martin has said he worked on the screenplay, on and off, for seven years, and you can sense that as the film unfolds. It isn't thin or superficial; there is an abundance of observation and invention here, and perhaps because the filmmakers know they have so much good material, there's never the feeling that anything is being punched up, or made to carry more than its share. I was reminded of the films of Jacques Tati, in which, calmly, serenely, an endless series of comic invention unfolds.

Steve Martin shows again in this film that he has found the right comic presence for the movies; the lack of subtlety in early films like "The Jerk" has now been replaced by a smoothness and unforced intelligence. The other cast members are basically in support of that character, although Sarah Jessica Parker has figured out a Valley Girl airhead right down to the ground. What you feel here, as you feel in the work of Tati and some of the comedians of the silent era, is that the whole film is the work of comedy - that it isn't about jokes, or a funny individual, but about creating a fictional world that is funny on its own terms

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.6/10 (10,403 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Asher Ford (#3)

#138 Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Todd Solondz
Running time - 88 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Todd Solondz

Cast
Heather Matarazzo ... Dawn Wiener
Victoria Davis ... Lolita
Christina Brucato ... Cookie
Christina Vidal ... Cynthia
Siri Howard ... Chrissy

Other awards
Won Sundance Film Festival - Grand Jury Prize

BY ROGER EBERT / June 14, 1996


``Welcome to the Dollhouse'' remembers with brutal andunforgiving accuracy the hell of junior high school. Many moviesreconstruct those years as a sort of adolescent paradise; it's a shock,watching this film, to remember how cruel kids can be to one another,and how deeply the wounds cut.

I can recall today with perfect accuracy the names and faces of11-year-olds who made my life miserable. If I met them today, so manyyears later, would I forgive and forget? Not a chance. I still hatethem. Was I also cruel? Did I have my own victims? Strange, but I can'tremember...

``Welcome to the Dollhouse'' stars Heather Matarazzo in a dead-onperformance as Dawn Wiener, an unpopular seventh-grader whose glassesare wrong, whose hair is wrong, whose complexion is wrong, whose clothesare wrong, and who is as gawky and geeky as it is humanly possible tobe. The first time we see her, she's performing one of the most painfulrituals in life: walking through the school cafeteria with a loadedtray, trying to choose a table. Her objective is to sit with students asfar up the school social scale as she dares, without being rejected.

``Can I sit here?'' she asks, regarding an empty space. ``Someone barfedthere third period,'' she's informed.

Because Dawn's family name is Wiener, she is inevitably known as``Wiener Dog'' in school (I was ``Eggbert''). She is also known as``Lesbo'' and ``Stupid,'' and when she asks a classmate why she hatesher, she gets a refreshingly direct answer: ``You're ugly.'' She isn'tugly, simply unformed in that in-between way, but she projects the vibesof a potential victim, and there are always going to be sadists whoseantennae lead them straight to their targets. Inevitably, her onlyfriend in school is a boy much smaller than she is, who is regularlybeaten up and called a ``faggot.'' Do the lesbo and faggot words indicate homophobia? Notnecessarily. Kids that age are fascinated by sex and terrified by theirown ignorance, so they attack others to assert self-confidence. Anydifference at all, real or imaginary, makes someone a target. Whatqualifies as a difference? Anything you are that I am not, or that Ifear becoming.

But I'm making ``Welcome to the Dollhouse'' sound like some sortof grim sociological study, and in fact it's a funny, intenselyentertaining film: intense, because it focuses so mercilessly on thebehavior of its characters that we are forced to confront both thecomedy and the pain.

Dawn lives in a split-level house with an older brother who is anerd, and a younger sister who is a ballerina. Her parents claim theylove all of their children equally. They are lying. Her brother Mark(Matthew Faber) is focused on getting into a good college, andeverything he does is planned to enrich his application. He starts agarage band, and recruits a popular student named Steve (Eric Mabius) ashis lead singer. Steve is a mature, handsome hunk, and Dawn getsweak-kneed just looking at him. He's the kind of guy who will break awoman's heart just for the pleasure of hearing it snap, but of courseDawn's heart is far beneath his attention. Nor is he much interested inthe band (``That doesn't sound much like `Satisfaction,''' he notes,after a clarinet passage by Mark.) Dawn is very badly informed about sex, but willing to learn. Shewill essentially do anything for Steve, who can't be bothered; there isa well-written scene in which she has him alone at home and plies himwith junk food.

Meanwhile, she's tormented by Brandon (Brendan Sexton Jr.), whomakes her life miserable. Dawn is smart enough to sense or guess thatboys Brandon's age often express affection through hostility, and sheputs up with him because he's essentially the only game in school. Inone of the movie's best scenes (which works only because it is perfectlywritten, acted and understood), Brandon actually makes a date with herto ``rape'' her, and she turns up for it. Of course nothing resemblingrape takes place, although I'm not sure whether Brandon knows that.

Scene after scene, ``Welcome to the Dollhouse'' piles on itsdetails, re-creating the acute daily misery of being an unpopularadolescent and remembering, too, how resilient a girl like Dawn canbe--how self-absorbed, how hopeful, how philosophical, how enduring.

Dawn's revenge, we hope, is that someday she will be rich, famous andadmired, while the snotty little cheerleaders who persecuted her willhave been sucked into the primeval slime of the miserable lives theydeserve.

``Welcome to the Dollhouse,'' which won the grand prize at the1996 Sundance Film Festival, is a first film for its writer-director,Todd Solondz. He shows the kind of unrelenting attention to detail thatis the key to satire. It isn't the big picture that matters to a girllike Dawn, but the details: how she looks_today_in themirror, and how_this_dress looks, and what small hopefulsigns might have been sighted, or imagined, on the far emotionalhorizon. If you can see this movie without making a mental hit list ofthe kids who made your 11th year a torment, then you are kinder, orluckier, than me.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (9,037 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 405

Ranked highest by Girlwithasprin

#137 Aladdin (1992)
Ron Clements + John Musker
Running time - 90 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Animation / Adventure / Comedy / Family / Fantasy / Musical
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Roger Allers, Ron Clements, Ted Elliott, James Fujii, Francis Glebas, Kirk Hanson, Kevin Harkey, Daan Jippes, Larry Leker , Kevin Lima, Burny Mattinson, John Musker, Sue Nichols, Brian Pimental, Rebecca Rees, Darrell Rooney, Terry Rossio, Chris Sanders, David S. Smith, Patrick A. Ventura

Cast
Scott Weinger ... Aladdin 'Al'/Prince Ali Ababwa (voice)
Robin Williams ... Genie (voice)
Linda Larkin ... Princess Jasmine (voice)
Jonathan Freeman ... Grand Vizier Jafar (voice)
Frank Welker ... Abu the Monkey (voice)
Gilbert Gottfried ... Iago the Parrot (voice)

Academy Awards
Won: - Best Music - Original Score, Best Music - Original Song ("A Whole New World")
Nominated : - Best Effects - Sound Effects Editing, Best Music - Original Song ("Friend Like Me"), Best Sound

Other awards
Won: Golden Globe - Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Best Original Song - Motion Picture ("A Whole New World") Special Award - Robin Williams (For his vocal work.)
Nominated BAFTA Film Award - Best Score, Best Special Effects Golden Globe - Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, Best Original Song - Motion Picture ("Prince Ali"), Best Original Song - Motion Picture ("Friend Like Me")

BY ROGER EBERT / November 25, 1992

Robin Williams and animation were born for one another, and in "Aladdin" they finally meet. Williams' speed of comic invention has always been too fast for flesh and blood; the way he flashes in and out of characters can be dizzying. In Disney's new animated film "Aladdin," he's liberated at last, playing a genie who has complete freedom over his form - who can instantly be anybody or anything.

The genie is the best thing in the movie, which is good fun but not on a par with "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," the two films with which Disney essentially gave rebirth to featurelength animation. The weakness of the film is in its leads, a street urchin named Aladdin and a sultan's daughter, Jasmine. As a romantic couple, they're pale and routine, especially compared to the chemistry between beast and the beauty. They look unformed, as if even the filmmakers didn't see them as real individuals.

All of the film's best moments come from the genie and the other supporting characters, which include a plump little sultan, his scheming vizier, an angry parrot named Iago, a chattering monkey, a friendly flying carpet, and even a magic cave that turns into a fearsome face so that Aladdin has to venture down its throat.

Ever since Jiminy Cricket first danced onto the screen, Disney animators have created entertaining supporting casts, and the magic carpet is one of the most ingenious: with only tassels and body language to work with, it somehow possesses a complete personality, whisking Aladdin and Abu, his monkey, on terrifying swoops around the kingdom.

But it's the genie who stops the show, and I would like to know which came first, the pictures or the words, because Williams sounds like he's improvising as he careens from one character to another: from Ed Sullivan to Elvis to Arsenio Hall to a tailor to a Scottish terrier. There is genuine exhilaration in these passages.

The plot is basic fairy tale. The sultan informs his daughter that she has three days in which to get married (fathers are always providing fearsome deadlines to their daughters in these stories). Distraught, she flees from the palace and encounters Aladdin, who knows his way around the streets and alleys of the city, and enchants her with his cheerful ways.

Meanwhile, the evil adviser schemes to marry the princess and become the sultan - not difficult, since the sultan falls under his spell and doesn't seem too alert at the best of times. Meanwhile, Aladdin explores the magic cave, finds a lantern, rubs it and unleashes the Robin Williams scenes, which are so captivating we almost forget about the rest.

One distraction during the film was its odd use of ethnic stereo types. Most of the Arab characters have exaggerated facial characteristics - hooked noses, glowering brows, thick lips - but Aladdin and the princess look like white American teenagers. Wouldn't it be reasonable that if all the char acters in this movie come from the same genetic stock, they should resemble one another? Original music was one of the key qualities of both "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," and the composers of those films, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, collaborated on three songs for this one before Ashman's death last year (their work includes Williams' showstopper, "Friend Like Me"). Menken then collaborated with Tim Rice on three more songs, but some ineffable quality seems missing; the music isn't as magical as in the two previous films. The bottom line is that "Aladdin" is good but not great, with the exception of the Robin Williams sequences, which have a life and energy all their own.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (39,648 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Agrimorfee (#9)

never the biggest fan of this movie, but this summation always struck me as hilarious.

#136 The Wedding Singer (1998)
Frank Coraci
Running time - 95 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Romance / Music
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Tim Herlihy

Cast
Adam Sandler ... Robbie
Drew Barrymore ... Julia
Christine Taylor ... Holly
Allen Covert ... Sammy
Steve Buscemi ... David 'Dave' Veltri


BY ROGER EBERT / February 13, 1998

``The Wedding Singer'' tells the story of, yes, a wedding singer from New Jersey, who is cloyingly sweet at some times and a cruel monster at others. The filmmakers are obviously unaware of his split personality; the screenplay reads like a collaboration between Jekyll and Hyde. Did anybody, at any stage, gave the story the slightest thought? The plot is so familiar the end credits should have issued a blanket thank-you to a century of Hollywood lovecoms. Through a torturous series of contrived misunderstandings, the boy and girl avoid happiness for most of the movie, although not as successfully as we do. It's your basic off-the-shelf formula in which two people fall in love, but are kept apart because (i) they're engaged to creeps; (ii) they say the wrong things at the wrong times, and (iii) they get bad information. It's exhausting, seeing the characters work so hard at avoiding the obvious.

Of course there's the obligatory scene where the good girl goes to the good boy's house to say she loves him, but the bad girl answers the door and lies to her. I spent the weekend looking at old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, which basically had the same plot: She thinks he's a married man, and almost gets married to the slimy bandleader before he finally figures everything out and declares his love at the 11th hour.

The big differences between Astaire and Rogers in ``Swing Time'' and Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in ``The Wedding Singer'' is are that (1) in 1936 they were more sophisticated than we are now, and knew the plot was inane, and had fun with that fact, and (2) they could dance. One of the sad byproducts of the dumbing-down of America is that we're now forced to witness the goofy plots of the 1930s played sincerely, as if they were really deep.

Sandler is the wedding singer. He's engaged to a slut who stands him up at the altar because, sob, ``the man I fell in love with six years ago was a rock singer who licked the microphone like David Lee Roth--and now you're only a . . . a . . . wedding singer!'' Barrymore, meanwhile, is engaged to a macho monster who brags about how he's cheating on her. Sandler and Barrymore meet because she's a waitress at the weddings where he sings. We know immediately they are meant for each other. Why do we know this? Because we are conscious and sentient. It takes them a lot longer.

The basic miscalculation in Adam Sandler's career plan is to ever play the lead. He is not a lead. He is the best friend, or the creep, or the loser boyfriend. He doesn't have the voice to play a lead: Even at his most sincere, he sounds like he's doing standup--like he's mocking a character in a movie he saw last night. Barrymore, however, has the stuff to play a lead (I commend you once again to the underrated ``Mad Love''). But what is she doing in this one--in a plot her grandfather would have found old-fashioned? At least when she gets a good line (she tries out the married name ``Mrs. Julia Gulia''), she knows how to handle it.

The best laughs in the film come right at the top, in an unbilled cameo by the invaluable Steve Buscemi, as a drunken best man who makes a shambles of a wedding toast. He has the timing, the presence and the intelligence to go right to the edge. Sandler, however, always keeps something in reserve--his talent. It's like he's afraid of committing; he holds back so he can use the ``only kidding'' defense.

I could bore you with more plot details. About why he thinks she's happy and she thinks he's happy and they're both wrong and she flies to Vegas to marry the stinker, and he . . . but why bother? And why even mention that the movie is set in the mid-1980s and makes a lot of mid-1980s references that are supposed to be funny but sound exactly like lame dialogue? And what about the curious cameos by faded stars and inexplicably cast character actors? And why do they write the role of a Boy George clone for Alexis Arquette and then do nothing with the character except let him hang there on screen? And why does the tourist section of the plane have fewer seats than first class? And, and, and. . . .

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.8/10 (31,225 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Undercooked Sausage (#4)

here's the preview for the remake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec-70W_K77U (release date now Feb 15)
compare it to the original's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzpzpe_8gHQ (the guy at the door looks like the lead singer of Peter Bjorn & John)

The Warner marketing department sure is setting the wrong expectation, but that's to be expected to pull in the masses for this great unsettling movie.

The Wedding Singer sucks.

It has some Cure music in it and a bunch of funny one-liners, and that's all. As a romantic comedy, it's trite and insincere and the characters are not just fake but also unlikable. All the 80's sight-gags are insultingly obvious and obnoxious.

#135 What About Bob? (1991)
Frank Oz
Running time - 99 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Alvin Sargent, Laura Ziskin, Tom Schulman

Cast
Bill Murray ... Bob 'Bobby' Wiley
Richard Dreyfuss ... Dr. Leo Marvin
Julie Hagerty ... Fay Marvin
Charlie Korsmo ... Sigmund 'Siggy' Marvin
Kathryn Erbe ... Anna Marvin

By Chris Hicks
Deseret News movie critic

"What About Bob?" is rather thin comedy material, and it's not particularly original — everything from "The Dream Team" to "The Great Outdoors" came to mind while watching it.

But there's no question that the engaging performances of Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss manage to breathe a great deal of life into the proceedings, and before it starts to run out of steam toward the end, the film provides an awful lot of laughs.

Murray plays a pesky psychiatric patient, a man with more phobias than "Sybil" had personalities, who tends to latch on to his therapist. This has driven his psychiatrist out of the business, but not before he dumps off Murray on a colleague — a best-selling author played by Dreyfuss.

Murray is afraid of everything, from everyday germs to elevators, and though he recognizes his illness he can't seem to do anything about it. Dreyfuss prides himself on being Mr. Cool. "I don't get angry," he says at one point, but he also doesn't know how to be warm and tender with his family.

During Murray's introductory session with him, Dreyfuss announces he's going away for a month's vacation, and Murray is already so attached to him that he's devastated. Of course, it isn't long before he tracks down Dreyfuss at his New Hampshire summer home and begins endearing himself to the family and just about everyone else in the small vacation town — everyone except Dreyfuss, that is.

You can probably predict the rest — as Murray drives Dreyfuss crazy he also gives his family members the kind of nuturing Dreyfuss is unable to provide, while the tension between them escalates.

The main thing that makes this work is Murray being obnoxious without losing his charm. This is Bill Murray at his most affable, and despite the things he does, the audience never loses its connection with him. At the same time, Dreyfuss manages to react wildly to Murray without ever carrying it too far. Though his character is by far the least sympathetic in the film, Dreyfuss manages to make us care about him and understand why Murray is getting under his skin.

There are some good supporting players here, including Julie Hagerty ("Airplane!") as Dreyfuss' wife and Charlie Korsmo ("Dick Tracy") as their young son.

It's unfortunate that all of this doesn't quite hold up to the finale, and the ending feels flat and rushed. But this is farce, after all, and it's the laugh quotient that counts most.

"What About Bob?" is funny enough to get away with being imperfect.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.6/10 (14,496 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Pavement Ist Rad (#5)

#134 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Jim Jarmusch
Running time - 108 mins
Country of origin English / French
Genre Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language France / Germany / USA / Japan

Writing Credits:
Jim Jarmusch

Cast
Forest Whitaker ... Ghost Dog
John Tormey ... Louie
Cliff Gorman ... Sonny Valerio
Dennis Liu ... Chinese Restaurant Owner
Frank Minucci ... Big Angie

Other awards
Nominated Cannes Film Festival - Golden Palm

BY ROGER EBERT / March 17, 2000

It helps to understand that the hero of "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" is crazy. Well, of course he is. He lives in a shack on a rooftop with his pigeons. He dresses like a homeless man. "He has no friends and never talks to anybody," according to the mother of the little girl in the movie. Actually, he does talk: to the little girl and to a Haitian ice cream man. The Haitian speaks no English and Ghost Dog speaks no French, so they simply speak in their own languages and are satisfied with that. What's your diagnosis? Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is a killer for the mob. He got into this business because one day a mobster saved his life--and so, since he follows The Way of the Samurai , he must dedicate his life to his master. The mobster is named Louie (John Tormey). He orders hits by sending Ghost Dog messages by carrier pigeon. Ghost Dog insists on being paid once a year, on the first day of autumn. When the mob bosses want Ghost Dog rubbed out, they're startled to discover that Louie doesn't know his name or where he lives; their only contact is the pigeons.

It seems strange that a black man would devote his life to doing hired killing for a group of Italian-American gangsters after having met only one of them. But then it's strange, too, that Ghost Dog lives like a medieval Japanese samurai. The whole story is so strange, indeed, that I've read some of the other reviews in disbelief. Are movie critics so hammered by absurd plots that they can't see how truly, profoundly weird "Ghost Dog" is? The reviews treat it matter of factly: Yeah, here's this hit man, he lives like a samurai, he gets his instructions by pigeon, blah . . . blah . . . and then they start talking about the performances and how the director, Jim Jarmusch, is paying homage to Kurosawa and "High Noon." But the man is insane! In a quiet, sweet way, he is totally unhinged and has lost all touch with reality. His profound sadness, which permeates the touching Whitaker performance, comes from his alienation from human society, his loneliness, his attempt to justify inhuman behavior (murder) with a belief system (the samurai code) that has no connection with his life or his world. Despite the years he's spent studying The Way of the Samurai , he doesn't even reflect that since his master doesn't subscribe to it, their relationship is meaningless.

I make this argument because I've seen "Ghost Dog" twice, and admired it more after I focused on the hero's insanity. The first time I saw it, at Cannes, I thought it was a little too precious, an exercise in ironic style, not substance. But look more deeply, and you see the self-destructive impulse that guides Ghost Dog in the closing scenes, as he sadly marches forth to practice his code in the face of people who only want to kill him (whether he survives is not the point).

Jarmusch is mixing styles here almost recklessly and I like the chances he takes. The gangsters (played by colorful character actors like Henry Silva, Richard Portnow, Cliff Gorman and Victor Argo) sit in their clubhouse doing sub-Scorsese while the Louie character tries to explain to them how he uses an invisible hit man. Ghost Dog, meanwhile, mopes sadly around the neighborhood, solemnly recommending Rashomon to a little girl ("you may want to wait and read it when you're a little older") and miscommunicating with the ice cream man. By the end, Whitaker's character has generated true poignance.

If the mobsters are on one level of reality and Ghost Dog on another, then how do we interpret some of the Dog's killings, particularly the one where he shoots a man by sneaking under his house and firing up through the lavatory pipe while the guy is shaving? This is a murder that demands Inspector Clouseau as its investigator. Jarmusch seems to have directed with his tongue in his cheek, his hand over his heart, and his head in the clouds. The result is weirdly intriguing.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.4/10 (22,755 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 359

Ranked highest by The Good Dr. Bill (#9)

Edit: Also, Ghost Dog is pretty awesome. Good pick @ #9, GDB.

#133 Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Adrian Lyne
Running time - 115 mins
Country of origin English
Genre Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Thriller
Original language USA
Writing Credits:
Bruce Joel Rubin

Cast
Tim Robbins ... Jacob Singer
Elizabeth Peña ... Jezebel
Danny Aiello ... Louis
Matt Craven ... Michael
Pruitt Taylor Vince ... Paul


BY ROGER EBERT / November 2, 1990

This movie left me reeling with turmoil and confusion, with feelings of sadness and despair. Those are the notes it strives for.

"Jacob's Ladder" enters into the hallucinations of a desperate mind, and lives there. It evokes a paranoid-schizophrenic state as effectively as any film I have ever seen. Despite an ending that is intended as victorious, the movie is a thoroughly painful and depressing experience - but, it must be said, one that has been powerfully written, directed and acted.

The story stars Tim Robbins, previously the pleasant young hero of such films as "Bull Durham," as an American soldier in Vietnam who undergoes a shocking battle experience. The actual nature of the experience is withheld until the end of the film - and even then, we cannot be completely sure we know the truth - but it appears to send him back into civilian life as a psychological time bomb.

Years pass. He gains a doctoral degree, but does not use it.

Instead, after a first marriage fails and a young son is killed in an accident, he goes to work for the U.S. Postal Service, and starts to live with a woman he meets there. Then terrible things begin to happen to him. He is nearly run down by a subway train. Almost run over in the streets. Faceless demons pursue him. His doctor is killed in an automobile explosion. So is a friend.

He begins to suspect that he and his Vietnam friends were victims of some kind of misbegotten Army experiment. That day of their bloody battlefield experience, they all grew dizzy and their heads began to spin, and then he cannot remember what happened next. He was wounded, yes, and airlifted to a hospital - and what then? Flashbacks throughout the film follow his emergency treatment. But what is the secret of what happened? He gathers a group of fellow veterans, and they talk to a lawyer about representing them, but then the veterans and the lawyer back out.

I ordinarily am more than a little impatient with movies that deal with hallucinations, with dream states and delusions, because I feel artificially manipulated; the filmmakers are jerking my chain, and often it's a lazy substitute for the bother of constructing an intelligent screenplay. "Jacob's Ladder" is so well made, however, that I didn't feel impatient this time, because I didn't have the opportunity. The movie lives right on the raw edge of insanity, and carries us along with it.

Coming out of the film, riding down in the elevator with some fellow critics, I got involved in a conversation about the underlying reality of the film. Was it all a flashback - or a flashforward? What was real, and what was only in the hero's mind? Are even the apparently "real" sequences the product of his imagination? More than this I should not say, because the film should have the opportunity to toy with you as it toyed with us.

Making a chart of the real and the imagined is not the point of "Jacob's Ladder," anyway. This movie is the portrait of a mental state, as Orson Welles' "The Trial" and Ken Russell's "Altered States" were. The screenplay is by Bruce Joel Rubin, who also wrote the completely different "Ghost," and I've read an essay by him in which he talks about his original ideas for the film, and the way they were translated into visuals by the director, Adrian Lyne.

Judging by the essay, Lyne has done a good job of determining what could be translated, and what could be safely left behind. Rubin's original material, with its visions of demons and heaven and hell, has been replaced by the more frightening notion that paradise and the inferno are all about us here on Earth, and that we participate in one or the other almost by choice.

The key performances in the film are by Robbins and Elizabeth Pena, who plays the woman he lives with. It's difficult to evaluate their work because the movie sets them the task of behaving in an utterly realistic, slice-of-life manner in many scenes (even some which are later revealed as hallucinations), and then coasting away into fearsome fantasy in other scenes. Pena achieves the difficult task here of creating a believable and even sympathetic woman while at the same time suggesting dimensions that the hero can only guess at.

Most films tell stories. "Jacob's Ladder" undoubtedly contains a story, which can be extracted with a certain amount of thought.

(Since the ending can be read in two different ways, however, the extraction process could result in two different stories). That isn't the point. What "Jacob's Ladder" really wants to do is to evoke the feeling of a psychological state in the audience. We are intended to feel what the hero feels.

A lesser film would have ended with some dumb denouement in a courtroom, or some shootout with government security guys. This is a film about no less than life and death, and Jacob seems to stand at the midpoint of a ladder that reaches in two directions. Up to heaven, like the ladder that God put down for the Biblical Jacob in Genesis. Or down to hell, in drug-induced hallucinations. This movie was not a pleasant experience, but it was exhilarating in the sense that I was able to observe filmmakers working at the edge of their abilities and inspirations. Not every movie has to be fun.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.4/10 (16,095 votes)
SOMB 499 rank - 329

Ranked highest by CerebralCaustic (#2)

^ Way too low, obvs. The creepy feeling throughout that something is just not quite right is done perfectly. There really aren't any movies quite like it, aside from maybe its predecessor Carnival of Souls.

Pleasantly surprsed that anyone else voted for this movie.
Whoever they are, they are my new best friend(s)

#132 A Perfect World (1993)
Clint Eastwood
Running time - 138 mins
Country of origin English
Genre Drama / Crime / Thriller
Original language USA

Writing Credits:
John Lee Hancock

Cast
Kevin Costner ... Robert 'Butch' Haynes
Clint Eastwood ... Chief Red Garnett
Laura Dern ... Sally Gerber
T.J. Lowther ... Phillip 'Buzz' Perry
Keith Szarabajka ... Terry Pugh


BY ROGER EBERT / November 24, 1993

"A Perfect World" contains a prison break, the taking of a hostage, a chase across Texas, two murders, various robberies, and a final confrontation between a fugitive and a lawman. It is not really about any of those things, however. It's deeper and more interesting than that. It's about the true nature of violence and about how the child is father to the man.

The film brings together the leading icons of two generations of strong, silent American leading men: Kevin Costner, as a fugitive who takes a boy as a hostage, and Clint Eastwood, as the Texas Ranger who leads the pursuit. But the Costner character doesn't seem really focused on his escape, and the Eastwood character seems somewhat removed from the chase. These two men first met long ago, and they both know this isn't about a chase. It's about old, deep wounds.

This is a movie that surprises you. The setup is such familiar material that you think the story is going to be flat and fast. But the screenplay by John Lee Hancock goes deep. And the direction by Clint Eastwood finds strange, quiet moments of perfect truth in the story.

Both Costner and Eastwood are fresh from triumphs at the Academy Awards, but in neither "Dances With Wolves" nor "Unforgiven" will you find the subtlety and the sadness they discover here. Eastwood has directed 17 films, but his direction is sometimes taken less seriously because he's a movie star. "A Perfect World" is a film any director alive might be proud to sign.

Costner's character, Butch Haynes, is a young man who drifted into trouble and was sentenced unfairly, to get him out of the way. The Eastwood character, Red Garnett, had something to do with that and has never felt quite right about it. Escaping from prison, Haynes and another convict break in on a mother and her children at dawn. Soon they're on the road with a hostage, Phillip (T.J. Lowther), 9 or 10 years old.

Before long the other con is gone from the scene and the man and the boy are cutting across the back roads of Texas. In pursuit is Red Garnett, riding in a newfangled Airglide trailer that's a "mobile command headquarters." Garnett is saddled with a talky criminologist (Laura Dern) and various other types, including a sinister federal agent who is an expert marksman. The general view is that Haynes is a desperate kidnapper. Both Eastwood and Dern think, for different reasons, it isn't that simple.

And it's not. The heart of the movie is the relationship that develops between the outlaw and the kid. You can look very hard, but you won't be able to guess where this relationship is going. It doesn't fall into any of the conventional movie patterns. Butch isn't a terrifically nice guy, and Phillip isn't a cute movie kid who makes and then loses a friend.

It's not that simple. Butch, we learn, was treated badly as a boy. His father was absent, his mother was a prostitute, the men in her life didn't like him much. Butch talks vaguely about going to Alaska. But as the man and boy drive through the dusty 1963 Texas landscape, it's more like they're going in circles, while the man looks hard at the boy and tries to see what it means to be a boy, what is the right way and the wrong way to talk to one. He's trying to see himself in the kid.

There are some murders in the film, all of them off-camera.

One body is found in an auto trunk, the other in a cornfield. We don't see either killing; Eastwood stays away from the cliche of a gun firing, a body falling, and it's not until late in the film that someone is shot onscreen, and then in very particular circumstances.

But there is violence in the movie. In the film's key sequence, Butch and Phillip are given shelter for the night by a friendly black farmer (George Haynes). The next morning, Butch watches as the farmer treats his son roughly, slapping him when he doesn't behave. It's the wrong way to treat a kid, but Butch's reaction is so angry that we realize a nerve has been touched. And as a complex series of events unfolds, we discover the real subject of the movie: Treat kids right, and you won't have to put them in jail later on. The crucial violence, from which later violence springs, is when a child is treated with cruelty.

Eastwood tells the story in unexpected ways. The way Butch starts right out, for example, letting Phillip hold a gun. (But not to shoot someone with it; his reasons for doing this, in fact, are so deep that you have to think long about them.) And scenes of quirky humor involving runaway trailers, Halloween masks, barbecued steaks and other details that break the tension with a certain craziness.

(There is, for example, a scene in a roadside diner named "Dottie's Squat and Gobble," which is the best restaurant name I have ever seen in a movie.) "A Perfect World" has the elements of a crime genre picture, but the depth of thought and the freedom of movement of an art film.

You may be reminded of "Bonnie and Clyde," "Badlands" or an unsung masterpiece from earlier in 1993, "Kalifornia." Not because they all tell the same story, but because they all try to get beneath the things we see in a lot of crime movies and find out what they really mean.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (14,029 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 367

Ranked highest by Velocity

#131 Mallrats (1995)
Kevin Smith
Running time - 94 mins
Country of origin English
Genre Comedy / Romance
Original language USA

Writing Credits:
Kevin Smith

Cast
Shannen Doherty ... Rene Mosier
Jeremy London ... T.S. Quint
Jason Lee ... Brodie Bruce
Claire Forlani ... Brandi Svenning
Ben Affleck ... Shannon Hamilton


BY ROGER EBERT / October 20, 1995

I don't have any idea what went on during the preparation of "Mallrats," Kevin Smith's new film, but that won't stop me from speculating. Smith is the young filmmaker who made "Clerks," the story of a long, strange day in a convenience store, for $25,000.

Now, with a budget at least 100 times as large, he has moved upscale from a shopping strip to a real mall for a glossier examination of some of the same material.

He stays with roughly the same demographic group - the young, the goofs and the randy - and the same time scheme, one long day. And he paints a world in which teenagers have no real concerns apart from hanging out, talking, scheming, fighting boredom and dealing with the demands of girlfriends. It's the kind of world where conversations stray from the subject: "I was going to propose to her." "Where?" "The Universal tour." "You're kidding! What part?" One of the charms of "Clerks" was that it captured the aimlessness and ennui of its world with deadpan humor. There wasn't a plot, just slowly developing themes, such as the return of old girlfriends and the problems of weird customers. We sensed that this was close to life (Smith, like Quentin Tarantino, once clerked in a video store), and it was funny the way the character seized on every small development as a break in the wall of inactivity.

Now comes "Mallrats," which is essentially the same world and the same characters, plus plot and more conventional relationships. It's as if Smith was advised to add more structure.

The fatal flaw in plotting the material is that we don't care. The movie is about two teenagers who are having girlfriend problems, and the problems, unfortunately, would be more entertaining if absolutely nothing was done to resolve them.

"Mallrats" (which opens with dazzling titles based on comic art) stars Jeremy London as T.S., who is planning a Fort Lauderdale vacation with his girlfriend Brandi (Claire Forlani). But she can't go: Her father (Michael Rooker) produces a game show called "Truth or Date," and she's needed as an emergency guest. It's all T.S.' fault.

Her friend Julie was scheduled to do the show, but T.S. told her she was fat, and that so disturbed her, she died of an embolism.

T.S.' best friend is Brodie (Jason Lee), a kid so addicted to video games that he hardly notices his girlfriend, Rene (Shannen Doherty). Both guys fall out with their girls and escape to the mall, which is populated by a predictable population of nerdy clerks and incompetent security guards. One nice touch is a friend of theirs who stands for hours in front of one of those Magic Eye posters, trying desperately to see the 3-D image.

The story then involves Rooker's attempts to stage a taping of the game show in the mall, while T.S. and Brodie meanwhile try either to patch things up with their girlfriends or to make new ones.

The day involves encounters with the Easter Bunny and a topless fortune teller with three nipples, and there is a moment of truth when T.S. meets Stan Lee, legendary creator of many Marvel Comics heroes, and learns that even the great Stan was a teenager once, and drew his superheroes as a way of forgetting his first girlfriend.

Smith tries to escalate the tempo as the game show grows closer; he intercuts a plan to sabotage the show with the efforts of security guards to thwart it. But this has all been seen many times before, and it's sad, really, to see the iconoclastic characters of "Clerks" trapped inside such a conventional assembly of cliches.

"Clerks" spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker.

In "Mallrats" the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types.

The year that "Clerks" played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers.

Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (35,986 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Kmac (#8)

Bleh. But not as bad as Clerks II.

I accept your friendship, even though it was #78.

I just haven't seen it in ages, but I remember I loved it at the time.

Nonsense. It's his best work. Not to mention a big predecessor to the Superbads and Knocked Ups that are so beloved today.

Mallrats

Brodie: Tell me, did you ever fart in front of her?
T.S. Quint: No, why do you ask?
Brodie: I never farted in front of Renee. Last week, I let one slip and today she dumps me.
T.S. Quint: Renee's not the shallow type. You're not insinuating...
Brodie: She was going down on me at the time.
T.S. Quint: [Retches]
Brodie: What can I say, I was feeling relaxed, when I feel relaxed I squirt.
T.S. Quint: If all she did was dump you, you got off light.

Ghost Dog is Jarmuschs best shit. Why is it so low? What the fuck? The friendship between him and the ice cream dude is one of the most endearing things in film.

definitely his best, probably one of the ten coolest movies ever made, everyone should see it always

and Mallrats kind of sucks

Shall We Dance is a classic if for no other reason than to provide a pleasant break from whatever anime gets brought in on a weekly basis by dragon shirt wearing kidz in high school Japanese class

137-134 is the best stretch of the list so far and they should all be in the top 10 no wait top 5!

also awesome to see ranked highest by sausage/paves/good dr bill all in a fucking row

nice work gentleman

I'd say Dead Man is better, but it's pretty close. Fact remains that Ghost Dog is too low.

The order of Kevin Smith films:

1. Chasing Amy
2. Clerks
3. Dogma
4. Jersey Girl
5. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
6. Mallrats
7. Clerks II

At least you're honing your comedic delivery.

boob

#130 What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
Lasse Hallström
Running time - 118 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Drama / Romance
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Peter Hedges

Cast
Johnny Depp ... Gilbert Grape
Leonardo DiCaprio ... Arnie Grape
Juliette Lewis ... Becky
Mary Steenburgen ... Betty Carver
Darlene Cates ... Bonnie Grape

Academy Awards
Nominated : - Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Leonardo DiCaprio)

Other awards
Nominated Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Leonardo DiCaprio)

BY ROGER EBERT / March 4, 1994

In the small but eventful world of Gilbert Grape, emergencies are a natural state. His younger brother, Arnie, has a way of climbing the town water tower and forgetting how to get back down.

His mother, who weighs 500 pounds, spends days at a time just sitting on the sofa. His best friend, Bobby, is an apprentice at his dad's funeral parlor and loves to talk about the tricks of the trade. His boss, who runs the local grocery store, is under threat from the big new supermarket on the edge of town, which has live lobsters in a tank - something the folks in Endora, Iowa (Pop. 1,091) can't stop talking about.

Gilbert Grape is more or less equal to these challenges, but life is not easy for him. What helps is the small town itself. In a big city, we sense, the Grape family would be isolated and dysfunctional, but in Endora, where everybody knows everybody and Gilbert fits right in, life is more possible, and the family is at least quasifunctional.

"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" makes of these materials one of the most enchanting movies of the year, a story of people who aren't misfits only because they don't see themselves that way. Nor does the film take them with tragic seriousness; it is a problem, yes, to have a retarded younger brother.

And it is a problem to have a mother so fat she never leaves the house. But when kids from the neighborhood sneak around to peek at the fat lady in the living room, Gilbert sometimes gives them a boost up to the window. What the hell.

The movie, written by Peter Hedges and based on his novel, has been directed by a Scandinavian, Lasse Hallstrom, for whom families seem to exert a special pull. His credits include "My Life as a Dog" (1985), about a young boy's coming of age amid eccentric Swedish rural people and first love; and the underrated 1991 film "Once Around," in which Richard Dreyfuss married into a family that was appalled by his abrasiveness.

The special quality of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is not its oddness, however, but its warmth. Johnny Depp, as Gilbert, has specialized in playing outsiders ("Edward Scissorhands," "Benny and Joon"), and here he brings a quiet, gentle sweetness that suffuses the whole film. Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Arnie, the retarded kid brother, has been nominated for an Academy Award, and deserves it.

His performance succeeds in being both convincing the likable. We can see both why he's almost impossible to life with, and why Gilbert and the rest of the Grapes choose to, with love.

For all of their resiliency, however, the Grapes seem stuck in a rut in Endora. Gilbert, who appears to be around 21 years old, hangs out with other guys his age, drinking coffee and making small talk and quizzing Bobby about the undertaking business. On his delivery rounds for the grocery store, he makes frequent stops at the home of Mrs. Carver (Mary Steenburgen), a lonely housewife who is always much less lonely after Gilbert's visits. At home, Gilbert oversees his two younger sisters; the household runs according to rituals, and for some time the kitchen table, with dinner on it, has been brought to Momma (Darlene Cates) so that she won't have to go to it.

Then a young woman named Becky (Juliette Lewis) arrives in town, in an RV driven by her grandmother (Penelope Branning). They're on vacation, traveling from nowhere to nowhere, and they pause in Endora long enough for Becky and Gilbert to begin a romance. And love, as it often does, acts as a catalyst for the Grapes, breaking the patterns that might have held them for a lifetime. When Gilbert brings Becky to meet Momma, we sense a tension and an excitement that is breaking the pattern of years.

One of the movie's best qualities is its way of looking at the fat mother and the retarded brother with sympathy, not pity.

Darlene Cates, making her movie debut, has an extraordinary presence on the screen. We see that she is fat, but we see many other things, too, including the losses and disappointments in her life, and the ability she finds to take a grip and make a new start. And DiCaprio, as Bobby, somehow finds a way to be difficult and invaluable at the same time.

Movies like "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" are not easily summarized; they don't have that slick "high concept" one-sentence peg that makes them easy to sell. Maybe all I've said still leaves you wondering what the movie is about. But some of the best movies are like this: They show everyday life, carefully observed, and as we grow to know the people in the film, maybe we find out something about ourselves. The fact that Hallstrom is able to combine these qualities with comedy, romance and even melodrama make the movie very rare.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (29,354 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - 219

Ranked highest by Citizen (#10)

#129 Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
Errol Morris
Running time - 80 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Documentary
Original language English

Cast
Dave Hoover ... Himself (Wild Animal Trainer)
George Mendonça ... Himself (Topiary Gardener)
Raymond A. Mendez ... Himself (Mole-Rat Specialist)
Rodney Brooks ... Himself (Robot Scientist)


BY ROGER EBERT / November 14, 1997

Life is a little like lion taming, wouldn't you say? There we are in the cage of life, armed only with a chair and a whip, trying to outsmart the teeth and the claws. If we are smart enough or know the right lore, sometimes we survive, and are applauded.

Errol Morris' magical film ``Fast, Cheap & Out of Control'' is about four people who are playing the game more strangely than the rest of us. They have the same goal: to control the world in a way that makes them happy. There is a lion tamer, a man who designs robots, a gardener who trims shrubs so they look like animals and a man who is an expert on the private life of the naked mole rat.

Morris weaves their dreams together with music and images, into a meditation. To watch the movie is to reflect that no matter how hard we work, our lives are but a passing show. Maybe Rodney Brooks, the robot scientist from MIT, has the right idea: We should develop intelligent robots that can repair themselves and send them out into the universe as our proxies. Instead of a few incredibly expensive manned space missions, why not send up thousands of robots that are fast, cheap and out of control--and trust that some of them will work? Consider the life work of George Mendonca, who is a topiary gardener, and must sometimes reflect that he has spent 50 years or more practicing an art that most people cannot even name. What is a topiary? A shrub that has been trained, clipped and trimmed in such a way that it looks like a giraffe, or a bear or a geometric shape. That is not in the nature of shrubs, and Mendonca, who is in his 70s, reflects that a good storm could blow his garden away, and that the moment he stops clipping, nature will go to work undoing his art. There is a beautiful slow-motion shot of him in the rain, at night, walking past his creations as if he, too, were a topiary waiting to be overcome by nature.

And consider Ray Mendez. Here is a happy man. When he learned of the discovery of the naked mole rat, he felt the joy of a lottery winner. There are not supposed to be mammals like this. They have no hair and no sweat glands because they live always in a controlled environment--their tunnels beneath the African savanna, where they organize themselves like insects. Mendez lives with mole rats in his office and creates museum environments for them. That means he has to ask himself a question no scientist before him has ever asked: What makes a mole rat happy? So that they can tell the members of one colony from another, they roll cheerfully in their communal feces--but where do they like to do that? In a room at the end of as tunnel system, or in the middle? Like the architect of a luxury hotel, Mendez wants his guests to feel comfortable.

Dave Hoover is a lion tamer. He goes into a cage with animals whose nature it is to eat him. He outsmarts them. He explains why animal trainers use chairs: not to hold off a savage beast, but to confuse it. ``Lions are very single-minded,'' he says. ``When you point the four legs of a chair at them, they get confused. They don't know where to look, and they lose their train of thought.'' Hoover has lived his life in the shadow of a man he readily acknowledges as his superior: Clyde Beatty, the famous animal trainer who also starred in movie serials and radio programs. ``There will never be another Clyde Beatty,'' he says, as we watch images from ``Darkest Africa,'' a serial in which Beatty and a little fat kid in a loincloth do battle in a hidden city with soldiers who wear large cardboard wings. It is clear that Beatty captured Hoover's imagination at an early age--that Hoover is a lion tamer because Beatty was, so that, in a way, Hoover is carrying out Beatty's programming just as Rodney Brooks' robots are following instructions, and the mole rats are crapping where Ray Mendez wants them to.

Morris' film assembles these images not so much as a documentary might, but according to musical principles: Caleb Sampson's score creates a haunting, otherworldly, elegiac mood that makes all of the characters seem noble and a little sad. The photography uses a lot of styles and textures, from 35-mm. to Super 8, from film to the hand-held feel of home video. The cinematographer is Robert Richardson, who achieved a similar effect for Oliver Stone in ``JFK'' and ``Natural Born Killers.'' (Morris adds the year's most memorable end credit: ``Mole Photography Sewercam by Roto Rooter.'') Errol Morris has long since moved out of the field of traditional documentary. Like his subjects, he is arranging the materials of life according to his own notions. They control shrubs, lions, robots and rats, and he controls them. ``Fast, Cheap & Out of Control'' doesn't fade from the mind the way so many assembly line thrillers do. Its images lodge in the memory. To paraphrase the old British beer ad, Errol Morris refreshes the parts the others do not reach.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (1,396 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Helmet52 (#2)

Wow, haven'et seen this film, what an OTM statement. (you can tell what my life was like:()

Whah? More like #50.

I saw it recently, and it was alright, but the psychological revelations that came late in the picture didn't wow me as much as "A Brilliant Mind" did. Maybe because I've seen these types of movies too often nowadays?

ACTUAL true order of Kevin Smith films:

-100,000. Chasing Amy
100,000. Clerks
-100,001. Dogma
-100,002. Jersey Girl
-100,003. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
-100,004. Mallrats
-100,005. Clerks II

Clerks was the only one of his films that was above the useless dreck of the rest of his maligned and repetitive material. Like a shitty comedian using the same lame act again and again. I tire of watching his dull attempts at film. Kevin himself is a very witty fellow but I've never been sucked into his lame if not less than inspiring shots at making anything other than sophomoric hyginks.

That's my take on the path of Mr Smith.