#110 Army of Darkness (Evil Dead III / Captain Supermarket ) (1992)
Sam Raimi
Running time - 81 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Adventure / Comedy / Fantasy / Horror
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi

Cast
Bruce Campbell ... Ash
Embeth Davidtz ... Sheila
Marcus Gilbert ... Lord Arthur
Ian Abercrombie ... Wiseman
Richard Grove ... Duke Henry the Red


BY ROGER EBERT / February 19, 1993

Sam Raimi's "Army of Darkness" is a goofy, hyperventilated send-up of horror films and medieval warfare, so action-packed it sometimes seems less like a movie than like a cardiovascular workout for its stars. It makes the dubious claim of being a sequel to Raimi's "Evil Dead II" (1987), on the basis of a tenuous link: A cursed Book of the Dead found by the hero in that movie has sent him hurtling back through time to the Middle Ages, where this movie takes place. Uh-huh.

"Army of Darkness" stars Bruce Campbell, who also starred in the first two "Evil Dead" movies, and who looks like a square-jawed, muscular comic book hero. The movie itself looks storyboarded; one action sequence flows into another with only the briefest of pauses for elementary plot details.

Campbell plays Ash, who in real life works in a discount supermarket, but finds himself and his car deposited on a medieval battlefield, where before long Ash assumes leadership and leads his knights in warfare against an army of the dead. (There are more animated skeletons here than in any film since "Jason and the Argonauts.") The method of the film is simple. As many action and horror cliches as possible are trashed; the film does for medieval mythology and horror what "The Naked Gun" did for cops. Ash, you will recall, lost his left forearm in an earlier film, and has had the stump modified to act as a mounting for a chainsaw. He fires a shotgun with his right hand, and in case you're wondering how anyone could load a shotgun with a chainsaw, the answer is: It's not necessary, because the shotgun never needs loading.

Heads spin, body parts fly through the arm, geysers of blood shoot into the heavens, and Ash uses his old Chemistry 101 textbook to learn how to manufacture gunpowder, which is catapulted into the midst of the skeleton soldiers. Meanwhile, the beautiful Sheila (Embeth Davidtz) falls in love with Ash, during those interludes when she has not been magically transformed into a murderous harpy.

The special effects in "Army of Darkness" are ingenious and a lot of fun. The makeup is state of the art. So are the severed limbs, geysers of blood, etc. The movie isn't as funny or entertaining as "Evil Dead II," however, maybe because the comic approach seems recycled. Then again, the movie seems aimed at an audience of 14-year olds, who would have been 8 when "Evil Dead II" came out, so maybe this will all seem breathtakingly original.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.5/10 (36,336 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #308

Ranked highest by STPhone (#11)

#109 The Fugitive (1993)
Andrew Davis
Running time - 130 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language English / Polish / Spanish

Writing Credits:
Roy Huggins, David Twohy, Jeb Stuart

Cast
Harrison Ford ... Dr. Richard Kimble
Tommy Lee Jones ... Marshal Samuel Gerard
Sela Ward ... Helen Kimble
Julianne Moore ... Dr. Anne Eastman
Joe Pantoliano ... Deputy Marshal Cosmo Renfro

Academy awards
Won: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones)
Nominated : Best Cinematography, Best Effects - Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Music - Original Score, Best Picture, Best Sound

Other awards
Won: BAFTA Film Award Best Sound Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Tommy Lee Jones)
Nominated : BAFTA Film Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Editing, Best Special Effects Golden Globe Best Director - Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Harrison Ford )

BY ROGER EBERT / August 6, 1993

Andrew Davis' "The Fugitive" is one of the best entertainments of the year, a tense, taut and expert thriller that becomes something more than that, an allegory about an innocent man in a world prepared to crush him.

Like the cult television series that inspired it, the film has a Kafkaesque view of the world. But it is larger and more encompassing than the series: Davis paints with bold visual strokes so that the movie rises above its action-film origins and becomes operatic.

The story involves a cat-and-mouse game between a man unjustly accused of having murdered his wife, and a law officer who tracks him with cunning ferocity. This was, of course, Hitchcock's favorite theme, touching on the universal dread of the innocent man wrongly accused. The man is Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), a respected Chicago surgeon, who returns home one night to find his wife fatally beaten by a one-armed man who flees after a struggle. All of the evidence points to Kimble's guilt, and his story of the intruder is brushed away in a courtroom scene of such haste and finality that, like a lot of the film, it only looks realistic while actually functioning on the level of a nightmare.

Kimble is sentenced to death, but escapes during a collision between his prison bus and a train. The crash sequence is as ambitious and electric as any I have seen, with Kimble fleeing for his life while a locomotive bears down on him (the echo here is of Ford's famous sequence in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in which he is nearly crushed by a giant stone ball).

Free for the time being, but isolated in a cold winter landscape of hostile stones, icy water and barren trees, Kimble is pursued in a manhunt directed by a deputy U.S. marshal (Tommy Lee Jones). It seems incredible that he could remain free, and even pursue attempts to prove his innocence, but he does, in a film that never relaxes its tension, even for an instant. This is pure filmmaking on a master scale.

Jones has become one of the great craggy presences of the screen, often cast as a villain, but with a half-masked amusement that borders on contempt for lesser beings: He has the charm of a hangman promising to make things as comfortable as possible. In "The Fugitive," his role is more complex than at first it seems. As the chase continues, he gradually becomes convinced of the innocence of his prey, but this conviction is wisely never spelled out in dialogue, and remains ambivalent, expressed in the look in his eyes, or his pauses between words.

Ford is once again the great modern movie everyman: dogged, determined, brave and not not demonstrative. As an actor, nothing he does seems merely for show, and in the face of this melodramatic material he deliberately plays down, lays low, gets on with business instead of trying to exploit the drama in meaningless acting flourishes.

Davis, the director, has come up through a series of superior action films. His gift was apparent in one of his earlier features, the Chuck Norris thriller "Code of Silence," which remains Norris' best film and one of the best, most atmo spheric uses of Chicago locations ever achieved. Davis' good films continued with the Steven Seagal thriller "Above the Law," "The Package" with Gene Hackman, and last year's superb "Under Siege." Here he transcends genre and shows an ability to marry action and artistry that deserves comparison with Hitchcock, yes, and also with David Lean and Carol Reed.

The device of the film is to keep Kimble only a few steps ahead of his pursuers. It is a dangerous strategy, and could lead to laughable close calls and near-misses, but Davis tells the story of the pursuit so clearly on the tactical level that we can always understand why Kimble is only so far ahead, and no further. As always, Davis uses locations not simply as the place where action occurs, but as part of the reason for the action. Consider his virtuoso opening chase sequence, which after the train crash leads to a series of drainage tunnels (echoes here of "The Third Man") and finally to a spectacular dam, where Kimble risks death for a chance at freedom, and dives into the cascading waters in a moment that can only be called Wagnerian.

Jones' "Deputy," as he likes to be called, has much more dialogue than Kimble, and in the screenplay by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy it always serves an intelligent purpose. You never have the feeling the characters are saying things simply to give us information; instead, a little at a time, they reveal the way they are thinking. Jones is surrounded by good character actors, who for once sound like Chicago cops in their words and inflections, instead of like transplants from a TV police drama.

Strangely, although the film is relentlessly manipulative, it plays like real events. Nothing can really be believed in retrospect, but Davis and his actors ground all the action and dialogue in reality, so we don't consider the artifice while it's happening.

Thrillers are a much-debased genre these days, depending on special effects and formula for much of their content. "The Fugitive" has the standards of an earlier, more classic time, when acting, character and dialogue were meant to stand on their own, and where characters continued to change and develop right up until the last frame. Here is one of the year's best films.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.8/10 (67,736 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by CerebalCaustic

#108 American History X (1998)
Tony Kaye (Humpty Dumpty)
Running time - 119 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits:
David McKenna

Cast
Edward Norton ... Derek Vinyard
Edward Furlong ... Danny Vinyard
Beverly D'Angelo ... Doris Vinyard
Avery Brooks ... Dr. Bob Sweeney
Fairuza Balk ... Stacey
Elliott Gould ... Murray

Academy awards
Nominated : Best Actor in a Leading Role (Edward Norton)

BY ROGER EBERT / October 30, 1998

``American History X'' shows how two Los Angeles brothers are drawn into a neo-Nazi skinhead gang, and why one decides to free himself. In telling their stories, the film employs the language of racism--the gutter variety and more sophisticated variations. The film is always interesting and sometimes compelling, and it contains more actual provocative thought than any American film on race since ``Do the Right Thing.'' But in trying to resolve the events of four years in one day, it leaves its shortcuts showing.

The film stars Edward Norton as Derek, a bright kid who has become the leader of a skinhead pack in Venice Beach, Calif.; he's the lieutenant of a shadowy adult neo-Nazi (Stacy Keach). One night two black kids attempt to steal Derek's car, as the result of a playground feud, and he shoots them dead. He's convicted of murder and sent to prison for three years.

His kid brother Danny (Edward Furlong) idolizes him, and to some degree steps into his shoes--although he lacks Derek's intelligence and gift for rabble-rousing rhetoric. Then Derek gets out of prison and tries to find a new direction for himself and Danny. Their backdrop is a family that consists of a chronically sick mother (Beverly D'Angelo) and two sisters. Their father, a fireman, was shot and killed by black addicts while fighting a fire in a crack house in a black neighborhood.

On a TV news show, the grief-stricken Derek blames his father's death on a laundry list of far-right targets. Later we learn it wasn't just his father's death that shaped him, but his father's dinner table conversation; his father tutors him in racism, but the scene feels like tacked-on motivation, and the movie never convincingly charts Derek's path to race hatred.

The scariest and most convincing scenes are the ones in which we see the skinheads bonding. They're led by Derek's brilliant speechmaking and fueled by drugs, beer, tattoos, heavy metal and the need all insecure people feel to belong to a movement greater than themselves. It is assumed in their world (the beaches and playgrounds of the Venice area of L.A.) that all races stick together and are at undeclared war with all others.

Indeed the race hatred of the skinheads is mirrored (with different words and haircuts) by the other local ethnic groups. Hostile tribalism is an epidemic here.

The film, written by David McKenna and directed by Tony Kaye, uses black and white to show the recent past, and color to show the 24-hour period after Derek is released from prison. In prison, we learn, Derek underwent a slow transition from a white zealot to a loner--a brutal rape helped speed the process. Meanwhile, young Danny and his friends (including a massive guy named Seth, played by Ethan Suplee) wreck a grocery run by immigrants. At school, Danny is a good student, as Derek was before him; both are taught by a black history teacher named Sweeney (Avery Brooks), who supplies the moral center of the film.

In the immediacy of its moments, in the photography (by Kaye) that makes Venice look like a training ground for the apocalypse, and in the strength of the performances, ``American History X'' is a well-made film. I kept hoping it would be more--that it would lift off and fly, as it might have with a director like Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee. But it never quite does. Its underlying structure is too apparent, and there are scenes where we sense the movie hurrying to touch its bases.

One crucially underdeveloped area is Derek's prison experience. With a swastika tattooed on his chest, he fits in at first with the white power faction, but is disillusioned to find that all the major groups in prison (black, Hispanics, white) have a working agreement; that's too much cooperation for him. Fine, but is it that, or a crucial basketball game, that gets him into trouble? Not clear.

He's assigned to the laundry, where his black co-worker (Guy Torry, in a wonderful performance) gradually--well, begins to seem human to him. But there's a strange imbalance in the conversion process. The movie's right-wing ideas are clearly articulated by Derek in forceful rhetoric, but are never answered except in weak liberal mumbles (by a Jewish teacher played by Elliott Gould, among others). And then the black laundry worker's big speech is not about ideas and feelings, but about sex and how much he misses it. There is no effective spokesman for what we might still hopefully describe as American ideals. Well, maybe Derek wouldn't find one in his circles.

What we get, finally, is a series of well-drawn sketches and powerful scenes, in search of an organizing principle. The movie needs sweep where it only has plot. And Norton, effective as he is, comes across more as a bright kid with bad ideas than as a racist burning with hate. (I am reminded of Tim Roth's truly satanic skinhead in ``Made in Britain,'' a 1982 film by Alan Clarke.) Kaye wanted to have his name removed as the film's director, arguing that the film needed more work and that Norton re-edited some sequences. We will probably never know the truth behind the controversy. My guess is that the post-production repairs were inspired by a screenplay that attempted to cover too much ground in too little time and yet hastens to a conventional conclusion.

Still, I must be clear: This is a good and powerful film. If I am dissatisfied, it is because it contains the promise of being more than it is.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.5/10 (120,943 votes) Top 250: #41

SOMB 499 rank - #292

Ranked highest by Hero

Really?!? Where did I have it ranked? I wouldn't have thought higher than 30 or so, if that. If this is true, this has to be some kind of SOMB record for placement due solely to a shit-ton of low votes.

EDIT: Yeah, here we are. I smell a boo-boo.

No that's right. It got five votes between 40 and your vote.

So seriously: Lowest top vote ever?

Most appropriate top vote ever.

#107 Go (1999)
Doug Liman
Running time - 103 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Crime / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
John August

Cast
Katie Holmes ... Claire Montgomery
Sarah Polley ... Ronna Martin
Suzanne Krull ... Stringy Haired Woman
Desmond Askew ... Simon Baines
Nathan Bexton ... Mannie

BY ROGER EBERT / April 9, 1999

Sooner or later the statute of limitations has to run out on comparisons between new movies and ``Pulp Fiction.'' Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film mesmerized the Sundance generation, who have been doing riffs ever since on its interlocking timelines, its quirky sex and violence, its pop culture expertise, its familiarity with drugs, its squirmy comedy, its black-white friendships, its ironic profundity, and its revelations in all-night diners. Those who haven't seen it must wonder why it's cited in so many movie reviews; has no other movie been made in the interim? Well, no, not one that staked out the territory so firmly. Consider, for example, Doug Limon's ``Go.'' This is an entertaining, clever black comedy that takes place entirely in Tarantino-land. Limon is a talented director who works as his own cinematographer and finds a nice off-center humor. His ``Swingers'' (1996) was an accomplished debut film, and here, with a screenplay by John August, he does more, and better, and yet the shadow of Q.T. falls on many scenes.

When his characters deliberately create a flesh wound with a gunshot, for example, the setup and payoff remind us of the needle plunging into the heart in ``Pulp Fiction'' (and of the deliberate blade wound in ``GRIDlock'd''). And when two of his characters sit in a diner and have a conversation about the comic strip ``Family Circus,'' we think of the Uma Thurman and John Travolta sharing pop lore over their milkshakes in ``P.F.'' We're also reminded of ``Pulp'' in scenes involving a laconic drug dealer, a crisis involving body disposal, an unintended drug overdose, in the way its story lines branch off and then join up again, and even in an unusual character name, Zack.

Tarantino has created a generation of footnoters and cross-referencers. I'm not saying ``Go'' couldn't have been made without the example of ``Pulp Fiction,'' but it can't be seen without thinking of it. What it adds is a grittier feel; Limon's characters are closer to ground level.

The story begins in a supermarket, where Ronna the checkout girl (Sarah Polley) takes a shift for her friend Simon (Desmond Askew), a part-time drug dealer who wants to go to Vegas. She needs rent money. When two customers named Adam and Zack (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr) want to score some ecstasy, she goes to Simon's usual dealer (Timothy Olyphant) to get 20 hits. Olyphant, lounging bare-chested in his apartment hideaway, stroking his girlfriend and his cat, working the phone, supplies the legal expertise such stories always require: ``Twenty hits! The magic number where intent to sell becomes trafficking ...'' Without revealing too much of the plot, which depends on surprises and connections, I can say that the other main stories involve (1) Simon's adventures in Las Vegas, where he and his black friend Marcus (Taye Diggs) get into big trouble with the owners of a topless bar, and (2) the relationship between Adam, Zack and a cop named Burke (William Fichtner), who invites the two men over to Christmas dinner with his wife (Jane Krakowski). This couple is extremely open to sexual adventures with strangers, but turns out to have another even stronger obsession; there is nothing like a pyramid scheme to bring out fanaticism.

Trouble in Vegas leads to more trouble in Los Angeles, where the stories of the checkout clerk and the two young men also meet again, unexpectedly. The plot of course is a complete contrivance, but Limon and August have a lot of fun with the details, including a ``Macarena'' dance in an unlikely setting, a telepathic cat, and a scene with echoes of ``Blood Simple,'' in which some characters try to leave a hotel room while others are trying to break in.

``Go'' has energy and wit, and the performances are right for the material--especially Sarah Polley, who thinks fast and survives harrowing experiences, and Fichtner, the cop who is so remarkably open to new experiences. The movie is ruthless in its attitude toward the apparently dead or dying, but then grisly indifference is central to the self-centered values without which these characters would have no values at all. Limon shows here, as he did in ``Swingers,'' that he has a good eye and can create screwy characters. Can he break out of Q.T. Land?


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (28,910 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #362

Ranked highest by GirlWithAsprin (#6)

Welcome To The Dollhouse was a #33.

#106 A Simple Plan (1998)
Sam Raimi
Running time - 103 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Scott B. Smith

Cast
Bill Paxton ... Hank Mitchell
Bridget Fonda ... Sarah Mitchell
Billy Bob Thornton ... Jacob Mitchell
Brent Briscoe ... Lou Chambers
Jack Walsh ... Tom Butler

Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Billy Bob Thornton), Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

Other awards
Nominated : Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Billy Bob Thornton)

BY ROGER EBERT / December 11, 1998

"You work for the American Dream--you don't steal it." So says a Minnesota family man early in "A Simple Plan," but he is only repeating an untested theory. Confronted with the actual presence of $4 million in cash, he finds his values bending, and eventually he's trapped in a horror story of greed, guilt and murder.

The materials of Sam Raimi's "A Simple Plan" are not unfamiliar, but rarely is a film this skillful at drawing us, step by step, into the consequences of criminal action. The central character is Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), who in a narration at the beginning gives us his father's formula for happiness: "A wife he loves. A decent job. Friends and neighbors that like and respect him." His older brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), trapped in a lifetime of dim loneliness, would like to go out with a girl who really liked him, and someday farm the place they grew up on. Jacob's best friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) basically wants to get by, get drunk and hang out. Hank's pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) would like enough money so she could plan the week's dinners without checking the coupons in the grocery ads.

All of these dreams seem within reach when the three men stumble across an airplane that has crashed in a nature preserve. On board they find the body of the pilot and a cache of $4 million in bills. "You want to keep it?" Hank asks incredulously. The others do. Soon he does, too. It should be a simple plan to hide the money, wait until spring and divide it among themselves. It's probably drug money, anyway, they tell themselves. Who will know? Who can complain? Hank is the smartest of the three, a college graduate. Jacob, buck-toothed and nearsighted, has never been very bright. Lou is a loose cannon. Can Hank keep them all under control? Some of the most harrowing moments in "A Simple Plan" show Hank watching in agonized frustration as the others make big, dumb blunders. Right after they find the money, for example, a law officer happens by, and what does Jacob do but blurt out to Hank, "Did you tell him about the plane? It sure sounded like a plane." At home, Hank's wife Sarah at first agrees it would be wrong to keep the money, but she turns that moral judgment around in a snap and is soon making smart suggestions: "You have to return some of the money, so it looks like no one has been there." All three men begin to dream of what they could do with the money. Then circumstances inspire one impulsive, reckless act after another--acts I will not reveal, because the strength of this film is in the way it leads its characters into doing things they could never have contemplated.

"A Simple Plan" is one of the year's best films for a lot of reasons, including its ability to involve the audience almost breathlessly in a story of mounting tragedy. Like the reprehensible "Very Bad Things," it is about friends stumbling into crime and then stumbling into bigger crimes in an attempt to conceal their guilt. One difference between the two films is that "A Simple Plan" faces its moral implications, instead of mocking them. We are not allowed to stand outside the story and feel superior to it; we are drawn along, step by step, as the characters make compromises that lead to unimaginable consequences.

The performances can be described only as flawless: I could not see a single error of tone or feeling. Paxton, Thornton, Fonda and Briscoe don't reach, don't strain and don't signal. They simply embody their characters, in performances based on a clear emotional logic that carries us along from the beginning to the end. Like Richard Brooks' "In Cold Blood" (1968), this is a film about ordinary people capable of monstrous deeds.

Thornton and Fonda have big scenes that, in other hands, might have led to grandstanding. They perform them so directly and simply that we are moved almost to tears--we identify with their feelings even while shuddering at their deeds.

Thornton's character, Jacob, has watched as Hank went to college and achieved what passes for success. At a crucial moment, when his brotherhood is appealed to, he looks at his friend Lou and his brother Hank and says, "We don't have one thing in common, me and him, except maybe our last name." He has another heartbreaking scene, as they talk about women. Hank remembers the name of a girl Jacob dated years ago, in high school. Jacob revealed that the girl's friends bet her $100 she wouldn't go steady with him for a month. As for Fonda, her best moment is a speech about facing a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet.

The characters are rich, full and plausible. Raimi's direction and the screenplay by Scott B. Smith are meticulous in forming and building the characters, and placing them within a film that also functions as a thriller. There is the danger that the theft will be discovered. The deepening hole of crime they dig for themselves. Suspense over the source of the money. Mystery over the true identity of some characters. And two confrontations in the woods--one suspenseful, one heartbreaking.

All of this is seen against a backdrop of Minnesota in the winter (Raimi's friends, the Coen brothers, who made "Fargo," gave advice him about shooting and lighting in the snow). The blanket of snow muffles voices, gives a soft edge to things, underlines the way the characters are isolated indoors, each in his own warm refuge.

Outdoors, in the woods, foxes kill chickens and men kill each other. Angry black birds scramble to eat dead bodies. "Those things are always waiting for something to die so they can eat it," Jacob says. "What a weird job."


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (28,910 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #333

Ranked highest by GirlWithAsprin {#12}

Down to #101 tomorrow and then the pace will get picked up.

probably woulda voted for that if I'd seen it in time.

I'm surprised I had it lower than 12. Maybe I just insinuated I did.

#19

I had it at 12. You must have forgotten that you're not me again.

And what a fabulous fucking film Go is, yeah. Best movie ever featuring Jay Mohr? Besides Mafia! and Jerry Maguire? Is such a fact even worth thinking about for any length of time whatsoever? Eh...

And who did Breckin Meyer blow to get in that ?

Army Of Darkness and The Fugitive both kick ass. Still need to see Go.

Go still holds up well, I watched it for the first time in ages not too long ago. Very fun movie.

WTF is really wrong about Fear & Loathing?

[/quote]#110 Army of Darkness (Evil Dead III / Captain Supermarket ) (1992)
Sam Raimi
The special effects in "Army of Darkness" are ingenious and a lot of fun....the movie seems aimed at an audience of 14-year olds, who would have been 8 when "Evil Dead II" came out, so maybe this will all seem breathtakingly original [/quote]

Then CGI came along. Betcha Sam Raimi wants to re-do this one in the worst way.

Army Of Darkness outranked by Raimi's Simple Plan, which is like apples to oranges...weird.

GREAT book, which the movie almost matched. Even managed to use the absolutely bland Bill Paxton effectively.

You've been watching too much Titanic. Or Apollo 13, I guess.

Dude's a lot of things, but bland isn't usually one of them.

CHET and HUDSON are bland? That wack job he played in Frailty? Or in Near Dark?

try 'One False Move' ten times better per the Paxton/Thorton combo vs the lame duck that was 'simple plan'

#105 Pleasantville (1998)
Gary Ross
Running time - 124 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Fantasy / Comedy / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Gary Ross

Cast
Tobey Maguire ... David
Reese Witherspoon ... Jennifer
William H. Macy ... George Parker
Joan Allen ... Betty Parker
Jeff Daniels ... Bill Johnson

Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Music - Original Dramatic Score

BY ROGER EBERT / October 1, 1998

In the twilight of the 20th century, here is a comedy to reassure us that there is hope--that the world we see around us represents progress, not decay. ``Pleasantville,'' which is one of the year's best and most original films, sneaks up on us. It begins by kidding those old black-and-white sitcoms like ``Father Knows Best,'' it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising power.

The movie opens in today's America, which we have been taught to think of as rude, decadent and dangerous. A teenager named David languishes in front of the tube, watching a rerun of a 1950s sitcom named ``Pleasantville,'' in which everybody is always wholesome and happy. Meanwhile, his mother squabbles with her ex-husband and his sister Jennifer prepares for a hot date.

Having heard a whisper or two about the plot, we know that the brother and sister will be magically transported into that 1950s sitcom world. And we're expecting maybe something like ``The Brady Bunch Movie,'' in reverse. We are correct: While David and Jennifer are fighting over the remote control, there's a knock at the door and a friendly TV repairman (Don Knotts) offers them a device ``with more oomphs.'' They click it, and they're both in Pleasantville.

The movie has been written and directed by Gary Ross, who wrote ``Big,'' the 1988 movie where Tom Hanks was a kid trapped in an adult body. Here the characters are trapped in a whole world. He evokes the black-and-white 1950s sitcom world of picket fences and bobby sox, where everybody is white and middle class, has a job, sleeps in twin beds, never uses the toilet and follows the same cheerful script.

Luckily, this is a world that David (Tobey Maguire) knows well; he's a TV trivia expert. It's a mystery to his sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), so he briefs her: Their names are now Bud and Mary Sue, and their parents are Betty and George Parker (Joan Allen and William H. Macy). ``We're, like, stuck in Nerdville!'' Jennifer complains.

They are. Geography lessons at the local high school are limited to subjects like ``Main Street'' and ``Elm Street'' because the world literally ends at the city limits. Space twists back upon itself in Pleasantville, and ``the end of Main Street is just the beginning again.'' Life always goes according to plan, and during basketball practice every shot goes in. After one player experiences sex, he is capable of actually missing a shot; a dead silence falls as the ball rolls away. "Stand back, boys!" warns the coach. "Don't touch it!" ``Pleasantville'' has fun during these middle sequences, as ``Bud and Mary Sue'' hang out at the malt shop where Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels) works and park on Lover's Lane (just to hold hands). Then sparks from the emerging future begin to land here and there in the blandness. Mary Sue shares information about masturbation with her mother, who of course has never dreamed of such a pastime (as a perfect housewife, she has never done anything just for herself). As her mother relaxes in her bath, a tree outside their house breaks into flames--in full color! Ross and his cinematographer, John Lindley, work with special effects to show a black-and-white world in which some things and a few people begin switching to color. Is there a system? ``Why aren't I in color?'' Mary Sue asks Bud. ``I dunno,'' he says. ``Maybe it's not just the sex.'' It isn't. It's the change.

The kids at school are the first to start appearing in colors. They're curious and ready to change. They pepper Bud with questions. ``What's outside of Pleasantville?'' they ask. ``There are places,'' he says, ``where the roads don't go in a circle. They just keep going.'' Dave Brubeck's ``Take Five'' subtly appears on the soundtrack.

Bud shows Mr. Johnson a book of color art reproductions, and the soda jerk is thunderstruck by the beauty of Turner and Van Gogh. He starts painting. Soon he and Betty Parker have discovered they're kindred spirits. (After Betty turns up in color, she's afraid to show herself, and in a scene of surprising tenderness, her son helps her put on gray makeup.) George Parker, meanwhile, waits disconsolately at home for his routine to continue, and the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce (J.T. Walsh, in his last performance) notes ominously, ``Something is happening in our town.'' Yes, something, in a town where nothing ever did. The film observes that sometimes pleasant people are pleasant simply because they have never, ever been challenged. That it's scary and dangerous to learn new ways. The movie is like the defeat of the body snatchers: The people in color are like former pod people now freed to move on into the future. We observe that nothing creates fascists like the threat of freedom.

``Pleasantville'' is the kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent. Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom. I grew up in the '50s. It was a lot more like the world of ``Pleasantville'' than you might imagine. Yes, my house had a picket fence, and dinner was always on the table at a quarter to six, but things were wrong that I didn't even know the words for. There is a scene in this movie where it rains for the first time. Of course it never rained in 1950s sitcoms. Pleasantville's people in color go outside and just stand in it.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.5/10 (34,830 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #397

Ranked highest by SNC (#10)

#104 Singles (1992)
Cameron Crowe
Running time - 124 mins
Country of origin USA
Genre Fantasy / Comedy / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Gary Ross

Cast
Bridget Fonda ... Janet Livermore
Campbell Scott ... Steve Dunne
Kyra Sedgwick ... Linda Powell
Matt Dillon ... Cliff Poncier
Bill Pullman ... Dr. Jeffrey Jamison


BY ROGER EBERT / September 18, 1992

`Singles" tells the story of a loosely knit band of friends and neighbors who live in an apartment building in Seattle, and dream of love. They are all in their 20s, and reasonably attractive, and not particularly desperate, but they share a plight every one can identify with: The difficulty of finding a match between someone you like, and someone who likes you. It always seems work out that if one half of the equation is right, the other is wrong.

One couple in the movie (Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick) seem to be more or less right for one another, but they play a dangerous game of one-upmanship, based on pride. Which one will telephone the other? How long should the other wait before calling back? They're thinking about each other so incessantly, they almost lose touch, because there is always a point at which a non-returned call stops being intriguing and becomes a rejection.

Another would-be couple (Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon) seems completely wrong. He is a drummer in a rock band, and cultivates a deliberately laid-back indifference to women in general and Fonda in particular. She of course assumes the fault is all her own. Visiting his apartment, she finds pinups of busty women. Is that what he likes? She visits a plastic surgeon, and in the movie's funniest scene fights a duel with him over the image of her hypothetical new body on his computer screen.

"Singles" was written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who has explored this territory before. He wrote the screenplay for "Fast Times at Ridgmont High," not my favorite movie, and then wrote and directed "Say Anything" (1989), which was one of the wisest and most touching movies about teenagers I have seen. Now, moving on to the twentysomethings, he has adopted a casual sketch style, where scenes are separated by blackouts and the point of each episode is to show some facet of human nature, usually one that makes us squirm.

The movie will challenge some audiences simply because it is not a 1-2-3 progression of character and plot. There is no problem at the beginning and no solution at the end; the film is about a life process that is, by its very nature, inconclusive - the search for happiness. Crowe's insights into the material include one particular perception: In your 20s, you tend to spend more time putting yourself on the map than worrying about anyone else's happiness. Look at the earnestness with which the Scott character promotes his idea for a Seattle rapid-transit system. Does he believe in trains? Only to a degree. What he really believes in are HIS trains.

The Bridget Fonda character, on the other hand, doesn't value herself highly enough. You can see that when she considers plastic surgery to please a guy who doesn't even like her in the first place.

She wants to be an architect, but for the moment is working as a waitress. A wise man once said: "What you do instead of your real work . . . is your real work." Some of Crowe's sketches are pokes at easy targets, including those videotape dating services in which people advertise for partners. Sheila Kelley plays a young woman who is consciously shopping for an eligible man; she knows where they can be found, just as a hunter knows which watering holes attract the lions. There's a funny sequence where she goes to a videographer ("Batman" director Tim Burton) who will direct her in the kind of video that would probably attract only the kind of man she should stay far away from.

"Singles" is not a great cutting-edge movie, and parts of it may be too whimsical and disorganized for audiences raised on cause-and-effect plots. But I found myself smiling a lot during the movie, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with recognition. It's easy to like these characters, and care about them.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.4/10 (8,898 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #200

Ranked highest by Velocity and Pavement Ist Rad (#6)

I am very, very, very, very lonely.

really that high, huh guys?

it's definitely good. but i had no idea it was pavements sixth

I can't believe anyone actually ranked Singles higher than I did, much less two people. Awesome.

"....sometimes?"

"'Debbie Country.'

That's funny."

"A compliment for us...is a compliment for you!"

That's a very nice hat you're wearing. And I don't mean that in an Eddie Haskell kind of way.

#103 Zero Effect (1998)
Jake Kasdan
Running time - 116 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Thriller / Mystery
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Jake Kasdan

Cast
Bill Pullman ... Daryl Zero
Ben Stiller ... Steve Arlo
Ryan O'Neal ... Gregory Stark
Kim Dickens ... Gloria Sullivan
Angela Featherstone ... Jess


BY ROGER EBERT / January 30, 1998

``Zero Effect'' opens with the key character offscreen. His name is Daryl Zero, he's the best private detective in the world, and he's a recluse who prefers to be represented in public by a hireling. Sounds like the setup for a comedy, but this is one of those movies that creeps up on you, insidiously gathering power. By the end, I was surprised how much I was involved.

The hireling, named Steve Arlo, is played by Ben Stiller as a dry, detached functionary. He represents Zero at a meeting with a millionaire named Stark (Ryan O'Neal), who wants to find some lost keys--one of them to a safe deposit box. Stark is being blackmailed by someone who may have access to the secret of dark deeds in the past.

Arlo enjoys spinning amazing tales about Zero. He's the kind of guy who feels personally enhanced by his boss' qualities. ``He has a deeply nuanced understanding of human nature,'' Arlo says of Zero, but when we see Zero, he looks more like a case for treatment. He lives behind a steel door with six locks on it. He eats little except tuna fish from a can. And he likes to bounce on the bed while singing very bad folk songs of his own composition.

Yet this man is indeed an investigative genius, and soon he's meeting a young woman named Gloria (Kim Dickens) and using his sense of smell to tell her she's a paramedic. Zero is strangely split: He's hopelessly incompetent in his personal life, but when he goes into P.I. mode he's cool, competent, suave and self-confident. Using Arlo as his assistant, he begins to unravel a murder that took place more than two decades ago and leads to a trail of hidden identities.

To describe the details of the case would be wrong. They lead to surprises and reversals that are among the movie's pleasures (the last scenes force us to rearrange almost everything we thought we knew about the plot). The movie was written and directed by Jake Kasdan, son of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, and it's an exercise in devious construction--like one of those Ross Macdonald novels in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.

If the plot is ingenious, it's the personal stuff that makes the movie increasingly delightful. Daryl Zero is baffled and challenged by Gloria, who is one of the few people he's ever met whose mind he can't more or less read. She fools him. She's shielded. She intuitively understands him the way he understands other people. When he claims to be in town at an accountant's convention, she finds a way to check that: She asks him to do her income tax.

Midway through the movie, I was being nudged by echoes of another story, and I realized that ``Zero Effect'' was probably inspired by the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and the faithful Watson--Holmes, who could sit in his study and use pure deduction to solve a crime. When Zero described his methods, he sounds Holmesian: ``Objectivity ... and observation. The two ob's.'' If Zero is like Holmes, Gloria is certainly like Irene Adler, from ``A Scandal in Bohemia.'' She was the one woman for Holmes, the one who got under his skin and into his mind. As Gloria begins to have that effect on Zero, a softening and humanizing takes place: He becomes less weird, less insistent on his peculiar rituals, more like a guy.

``Zero Effect'' begins, as I said, like a comedy--one not a million miles away from the kind of private eye parody David Spade or Mike Myers might make. The first time we see him, Zero (Bill Pullman) seems like a goofy, off-the-shelf weirdo. But Pullman, from ``While You Were Sleeping'' and ``Independence Day,'' can drop the facade and let you see the complications inside. He also co-starred in ``Sleepless in Seattle,'' and it's uncanny, by the end of ``Zero Effect,'' how much this private eye caper starts to touch some of the same notes.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.8/10 (6,505 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Pavement Ist Rad (#2)

Now, a few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you're only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of them.

A few words here about following people. People know they're being followed when they turn around and see someone following them. They can't tell they're being followed if you get there first.

Words to live by.

Keep moving every few months. Stay out of Westernized countries for a while. Don't carry too much cash on your body. Give incorrect information everywhere, and never use your real name.

You're watching whales? Fuck the whales.

I'm telling you he never even leaves the house, okay. I mean he's like some sort of recluse. A complete freak. No social life. In fact, no social skills. It's a strange fucking thing. When he's working, the smoothest operator you've ever seen. Brave, slick, cunning, he can do anything. Soon as he gets off work, it's all gone. Afraid to go to the dry cleaners. Literally. Too uncomfortable in his own skin to go out and eat. Tactless and inept. Rude too. Just an asshole.

I did find one other thing of interest, though.
Holy shit, those are the keys. You found the gold Swiss Army knife.
I know.
And this is the safe deposit box key. Where'd you find them?
They were in the sofa, under the cushion.
What?
They were stuck in the couch in his office.
Was he hiding them there? Is that possible?
Not possible. That's where they fell out of his pocket, over a year ago.
So... what do you make of this?
I think that just as I feared, Ms. Sullivan doesn't know a thing about these keys.
Wait--the keys are a coincidence?
Yes.
That's--confusing.
Yep.
Doesn't seem like a good thing.
Sure it is. It's good because the man has been looking for his keys for a *year*. And I've found them.

#102 Gattaca (1997)
Andrew Niccol
Running time - 101 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Original language English / Esperanto

Writing Credits:
Andrew Niccol

Cast
Ethan Hawke ... Vincent Freeman
Uma Thurman ... Irene Cassini
Gore Vidal ... Director Josef
Xander Berkeley ... Dr. Lamar
Jayne Brook ... Marie Freeman

Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration

Other awards
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Original Score - Motion Picture

BY ROGER EBERT / October 24, 1997

What is genetic engineering, after all, but preemptive plastic surgery? Make the child perfect in the test tube, and save money later. Throw in perfect health, a high IQ and a long life-span, and you have the brave new world of ``Gattaca,'' in which the bioformed have inherited the earth, and babies who are born naturally get to be menial laborers.

This is one of the smartest and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas. Its hero is a man who challenges the system. Vincent (Ethan Hawke) was born in the old-fashioned way, and his genetic tests show he has bad eyesight, heart problems and a life expectancy of about 30 years. He is an ``In-Valid,'' and works as a cleaner in a space center.

Vincent does not accept his fate. He never has. As a child, he had swimming contests with his brother Anton (Loren Dean), who has all the right scores but needs to be saved from drowning. Now Vincent dreams of becoming a crew member on an expedition to one of the moons of Saturn. Using an illegal DNA broker, he makes a deal with a man named Jerome (Jude Law), who has the right genes but was paralyzed in an accident. Jerome will provide him with blood, urine samples and an identity. In a sense, they'll both go into space. ``Gattaca'' is the remarkable debut of a writer-director from New Zealand, Andrew Niccol, whose film is intelligent and thrilling--a tricky combination--and also visually exciting. His most important set is a vast office where genetically superior computer programmers come to work every day, filing into their long rows of desks like the office slaves in King Vidor's ``The Crowd'' and Orson Welles' ``The Trial.'' (Why are ``perfect'' human societies so often depicted by ranks of automatons? Is it because human nature resides in our flaws?) Vincent, as ``Jerome,'' gets a job as a programmer, supplies false genetic samples and becomes a finalist for the space shot.

The tension comes in two ways. First, there's the danger that Vincent will be detected; the area is swept daily, and even an eyelash can betray him. Second, there's a murder; a director of the center, who questions the wisdom of the upcoming shot, is found dead, and a detective (Alan Arkin) starts combing the personnel for suspects. Will a computer search sooner or later put together Vincent, the former janitor, with ``Jerome,'' the new programmer? Vincent becomes friendly with Irene (Uma Thurman), who works in the center but has been passed over for a space shot because of low scores in some areas. They are attracted to one another, but romance in this world can be dangerous; after kissing a man, a woman is likely to have his saliva swabbed from her mouth so she can test his prospects. Other supporting characters include Gore Vidal, as a mission supervisor, and Tony Shalhoub as the broker (``You could go anywhere with this guy's helix under your arm'').

Hawke is a good choice for the lead, combining the restless dreams of a ``Godchild'' with the plausible exterior of a lab baby. The best scenes involve his relationship with the real Jerome, played by Law as smart, bitter, and delighted to be sticking it to the system that has grounded him. (He may be paralyzed from the waist down, but after all, as the movie observes, you don't need to walk in space.) His drama parallels Vincent's, because if either one is caught they'll both go down together.

Science fiction in the movies has recently specialized in alien invasions, but the best of the genre deals with ideas. At a time when we read about cloned sheep and tomatoes crossed with fish, the science in ``Gattaca'' is theoretically possible. When parents can order ``perfect'' babies, will they? Would you take your chances on a throw of the genetic dice, or order up the make and model you wanted? How many people are prepared to buy a car at random from the universe of all available cars? That's how many, I suspect, would opt to have natural children.

Everybody will live longer, look better and be healthier in the Gattacan world. But will it be as much fun? Will parents order children who are rebellious, ungainly, eccentric, creative, or a lot smarter than their parents are? There's a concert pianist in ``Gattaca'' who has 12 fingers. Don't you sometimes have the feeling you were born just in time?


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (43,458 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by Worrywort (#13)

He can tell you where you were born, how old your mother was at the time, and what you had for breakfast, all within 30 seconds of meeting you.

best lesbian sex scene EVER

not really...maybe if the flirtation scene in Vi's apartment had led to the sex scene in Corky's. As is, too disjointed to really stack up against, say, Mulholland Drive or Wild Things.

Good to see Gattaca almost in the top 100. And it sounds like I should see this Zero Effect movie.

#101 Dark City (1998)
Alex Proyas
Running time - 100 min
Country of origin Australia / USA
Genre Mystery / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer

Cast
Rufus Sewell ... John Murdoch
William Hurt ... Inspector Frank Bumstead
Kiefer Sutherland ... Dr. Daniel P. Schreber
Jennifer Connelly ... Emma Murdoch / Anna
Richard O'Brien ... Mr. Hand


BY ROGER EBERT / November 6, 2005

"Dark City" by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor "Metropolis" in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Both are parables in which a dangerous weapon attacks the order of things: a free human who can see what really is, and question it. "Dark City" contains a threat more terrible than any of the horrors in "Metropolis," because the rulers of the city can control the memories of its citizens; if we are the sum of all that has happened to us, then what are we when nothing has happened to us?

In "Dark City" (1998), all of the human memories are newly fabricated when the hands of the clock reach 12. This is defined as "midnight," but the term is deceptive, because there is no noon. "First came darkness, then came the Strangers," we are told in the opening narration. In the beginning, there was no light. John Murdoch, the hero, asks Bumstead, the police detective: "When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?" Bumstead is surprised by the question. "You know something?" Murdoch asks him. "I don't think the sun even exists in this place. I've been up for hours and hours, and the night never ends here."

The narration explains that the Strangers came from another galaxy and collected a group of humans to study them. Their civilization is dying. They seek to find the secret of the human heart, or soul, or whatever it is that falls outside their compass. They create a vast artificial city, which can be fabricated, or "tuned," whenever they want to run another experiment.

We see the tuning taking place. All humans lose consciousness. All machinery stops. Changes are made in the city. Skyscrapers are extruded from the primordial materials of the underworld, architecture is devised, rooms are prepared for their inhabitants, props are set in place. Aided by a human scientist, the Strangers inject memories into the foreheads of their test subjects. When humans awaken, they have no memory of the day before; everything they remember has been injected from a communal memory bank. If a man commits murder one day and then is given a new identity, is he still capable of committing murder? Are men inherently good or evil, or is it a matter of how they think of themselves? The Strangers need to know.

Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) has developed an immunity to the devices of the Strangers. His latest memory injection was incomplete. It was administered by Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), a scientist who works for the Strangers but has no love for them. Murdoch wakes in a hotel room with the corpse of a dead woman; the script for the day has made him a serial killer of prostitutes. Schreber warns him he is the subject of an experiment but has proven resistant to it. The Strangers are coming for him, and he must flee.

That sets the story into motion: Murdoch wanders through the city, trying to discover its underlying nature; Detective Bumstead (William Hurt) tries to capture him, but will gradually be won over by Murdoch's questions (he is programmed as a cop, but not a very good one; he keeps complaining, "no one ever listens to me"). Then there is the torch singer, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), who remembers that she is John's wife and loves him, and that they met at Shell Beach. Everyone says they know how to go to Shell Beach. But no one seems able to say exactly where it is.

The Strangers occupy the bodies of human cadavers. Most of them are tall; one is in a child's body but is no child. The alien beings themselves, living inside the corpses, look like spiders made of frightened noodles. They can levitate, they can change the matter of the city at will, they have a hive insect organization, they gather in a subterranean cavern to collectively retune the city. This cavern has visuals reminding us of two Fritz Lang films: the underworld mechanisms in "Metropolis" (1927) and his "M" (1931), with the pale faces of criminals rising row above row into the gloom.

In October, I went through "Dark City" a shot at a time for four days at the Hawaii Film festival, with moviegoers who were as curious as I was. We froze frames, we dissected special effects, we debated the meaning of the film, and our numbers even included a psychiatrist who told us of the original Daniel Schreber, a schizophrenic whose book on his condition influenced Freud and Jung.

Sometimes during the shot-by-shot analysis, we simply froze a frame and regarded it. Some of the street scenes echo paintings by Edward Hopper or Jack Vettriano. This is not only a beautiful film but a generous one, which supplies rich depth and imagination and many more details than are really necessary to tell the story. Small wonder that the name Bumstead appears, perhaps in honor of Henry Bumstead, one of the greatest Hollywood art directors. The world created by the Strangers seems borrowed from 1940s film noir; we see fedoras, cigarettes, neon signs, automats, older cars (and some newer ones -- the world is not consistent). Proyas wrote the screenplay with David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs; the screenplays Dobbs wrote for "Kafka" and Goyer wrote for "Batman Begins" contain some of the same notes sounded here.

Proyas likes deep-focus compositions. Many interior spaces are long and narrow. Exteriors look down one street to the vanishing point, and then the camera pans to look down another street, equally long. The lighting is low-key and moody. The color scheme depends on blacks, browns, shadows and the pallor of the Strangers; warmer colors exist in human faces, in neon signs and on the billboard for Shell Beach. "I am simply grateful for this shot," I said in Hawaii more than once. "It is as well-done as it can possibly be." Many other great films give you the same feeling -- that their makers were carried far beyond the actual requirements of their work into the passion of creating something wonderful.

I believe more than ever that "Dark City" is one of the great modern films. It preceded "The Matrix" by a year (both films used a few of the same sets in Australia), and on a smaller budget, with special effects that owe as much to imagination as to technology, did what "The Matrix" wanted to do, earlier and with more feeling.

The poignancy of "Dark City" emerges in its love stories. At a crucial point, John Murdoch tells Emma, "Everything you remember, and everything I'm supposed to remember, never really happened." Emma doesn't think that can be true. "I so vividly remember meeting you," she says. "I remember falling in love with you." Yes, she remembers. But this is the first time they have met. "I love you, John," she says. "You can't fake something like that." And Murdoch says, "No, you can't." You can inform someone who they love, and that is what the Strangers have done with their memory injection. But what she feels cannot be injected. That is the part the strangers do not understand. Emma has a small role but it is at the heart of the movie, because she truly knows love; John has still to discover it -- to learn about it from her.

The Strangers are not evil. They simply proceed from alien assumptions. They are not even omnipotent, which is why Murdoch, Bumstead and Schreber have relative freedom to move about the city. At the end, we feel a little sorry for them. They will die surrounded by happy beings whose secrets they could not discover.

Notice an opening shot that approaches the hotel window behind which we meet Murdoch. The window is a circular dome in a rectangular frame. As clearly as possible, it looks like the "face" of Hal 9000 in "2001." Hal was a computer that understood everything, except what it was to be human and have emotions. "Dark City" considers the same theme in a film that creates a completely artificial world in which humans teach themselves to be themselves.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (37,968 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #440

Ranked highest by ElemenoPT (#10)

Bill, I specifically remember you making some idiotic remark about how "only Pavement Ist Rad would single out Spaceballs as the highlight of Bill Pullman's career," suggesting that Independence Day was somehow superior to said film, followed by me bringing up Zero Effect, and then you describing it as "pretty great" or some descriptor of that nature.

nothing about that statement is true, except for maybe the first part. I've definitely never seen Zero Effect, and everyone knows that Lost Highway is the pinaccle of Bill Pullman's career in all ways.

I totally should've made a list. Dark City is way too low.

Fuck these other movies, more A to Z:

Why are we talking on the phone?
I told you. We can't be too careful. Two guys in an airport... talking? It's a little fishy.

Dark City is a stone cold classic. Gattaca is pretty worthwhile too.

You had to be there. Plus it's got Soundgarden & AiC (and PJ when they were still good).