more importantly it's got two paul westerberg songs.

pearl jam were never good

OTM, both parts.

Best thing is that the two Westerberg songs are basically rewrites of one another. Yet they both completely fucking pwn.

I used to like "Waiting for Somebody" more than any Replacements song. Maybe I still do, who knows.

Pearl Jam are the fucking bee's knees. Don't be sore losers, guys.

Plus "State Of Love And Trust" > both Westerberg songs from that soundtrack.

well that's certainly not true, but it's one of the best PJ songs certainly.

And Jeff Ament in a King's X shirt.

GREAT soundtrack.

#100 Breaking the Waves (1996) 8 Votes, 1464 points
Lars von Trier
Running time - 159 min
Country of origin Denmark / Sweden / France / Netherlands / Norway / Iceland
Genre Drama / Romance
Original language English / Esperanto

Writing Credits:
Lars von Trier, Peter Asmussen, David Pirie

Cast
Emily Watson ... Bess McNeill
Stellan Skarsgård ... Jan Nyman
Katrin Cartlidge ... Dodo McNeill
Jean-Marc Barr ... Terry
Adrian Rawlins ... Dr. Richardson
Jonathan Hackett ... Priest

Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Emily Watson)

Other awards
Won: Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize of the Jury
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Emily Watson) Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm Golden Globe Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (Emily Watson)

BY ROGER EBERT / November 29, 1996

``Breaking the Waves'' is emotionally and spiritually challenging, hammering at conventional morality with the belief that God not only sees all, but understands a great deal more than we give Him credit for. It tells the story of Bess, a simple woman of childlike naivete, who sacrifices herself to sexual brutality to save the life of the man she loves. Is she a sinner? The grim bearded elders of her church think so. But Bess is the kind of person Jesus was thinking of, I believe, when he suffered the little children to come unto him.

The movie takes place in the 1970s, in a remote northern Scottish village. Bess (Emily Watson), a sweet-faced and trusting girl, is ``not quite right in the head,'' and her close-knit community is not pleased by her decision to marry Jan (Stellan Skarsgard), who works on one of the big oil rigs in the North Sea. But she loves Jan to much that when the helicopter bringing him to the wedding is delayed, she hits him in a fury. He is a tall, gentle man with a warm smile, and lets her flail away before embracing her in his big arms.

She is a virgin, but so eager to learn the secrets of marriage that she accosts her new husband in the powder room at the reception after the ceremony, telling him eagerly, ``You can love me now!'' And then, ``What do I do?'' The miracle of sexual expression transforms her, and she is grateful to God for having given her Jan and his love and his body.

Meanwhile, downstairs at the ceremony, Jan's shipmate and Bess' grandfather scowl at one another; the shipmate crushes a beer can, and the grandfather picks up a lemonade glass and breaks it in his bloody hand.

We learn a little about Bess, who had a breakdown when her brother died. Her closest friend is her sister-in-law, Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge), a nurse who stays in the remote district mostly because of her. Bess belongs to a strict sect where women do not speak in church, and the sermon over the body at a funeral might be, ``You are a sinner and will find your place in hell.'' Bess' grandfather observes sourly, ``We have no bells in our church.'' Jan is critically injured in an accident on the rig. He is paralyzed from the neck down, and the local doctor tells Bess he may never walk again. ``You don't know Jan!'' she says fiercely. One day Jan asks her to find a man and make love to him, ``for my sake. And then tell me about it.'' Bess does not like this idea, but she does what Jan asks. Dodo is enraged: ``Are you sleeping with other men to feed his sick fantasies? His head's full of scars--he's up to his eyeballs in drugs.'' It is indeed never made quite clear why Jan, a good man, has made this request of the woman he loves. That is not the point. The point is that Bess, with her fierce faith, believes that somehow her sacrifice can redeem her husband and even cure him. As his condition grows worse, her behavior grows more desperate; she has herself taken out to a big ship where even the port prostitutes refuse to go, because of the way they have been treated there.

The film contains many surprising revelations, including a cosmic one at the end, which I will leave you to discover for yourself. It has the kind of raw power, the kind of unshielded regard for the force of good and evil in the world, that we want to shy away from. It is easier sometimes to wrap ourselves in sentiment and pious platitudes, and forget that God created nature ``bloody in tooth and nail.'' Bess does not have our ability to rationalize and evade, and fearlessly offers herself to God as she understands him.

This performance by Emily Watson reminds me of what Truffaut said about James Dean, that as an actor he was more like an animal than a man, proceeding according to instinct instead of thought and calculation. It is not a grim performance and is often touched by humor and delight, which makes it all the more touching, as when Bess talks out loud in two-way conversations with God, speaking both voices--making God a stern adult and herself a trusting child. Her church banishes her, and little boys in the village throw stones at her, but she tells Dodo, ``God gives everyone something to be good at. I've always been stupid, but I'm good at this.'' ``Breaking the Waves'' was written and directed by Lars von Trier, from Denmark, who makes us wonder what kinds of operas Nietzsche might have written. He finds the straight pure line through the heart of a story, and is not concerned with what cannot be known: This movie does not explain Jan's cruel request of his wife, because Bess does not question it. It shows people who care about her, such as the sister-in-law and the local doctor, and others who do not: religious bean-counters like the bearded church elders. They understand nothing about their Christianity except for unyielding rules they have memorized, which means they do not understand Christianity at all. They talk to God as if they expect him to listen, and learn. At the end of the film they get their response in a great savage ironic peal.

Not many movies like this get made, because not many filmmakers are so bold, angry and defiant. Like many truly spiritual films, it will offend the Pharisees. Here we have a story that forces us to take sides, to ask what really is right and wrong in a universe that seems harsh and indifferent. Is religious belief only a consolation for our inescapable destination in the grave? Or can faith give the power to triumph over death and evil? Bess knows.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.7/10 (15,547 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #324

Ranked highest by Nic (#5) and BirdIsTheWord (#7)

#099 Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) 6 Votes, 1476 points
Joe Berlinger + Bruce Sinofsky
Running time - 150 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Documentary / Crime
Original language English


Cast
People as themselves

Nominated: Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Documentary

BY ROGER EBERT / September 27, 1996

On May 5, 1993, the mutilated bodies of three second-graders were found in a wooded area near West Memphis, Ark. A month later, murder charges were filed against three local teenagers, who were accused of killing the children in a satanic ritual. A police officer, asked how good the state's case was, said, ``On a scale of 1 to 10, it's an 11.'' But a hypnotic new documentary suggests that the community and the courtroom, inflamed by emotion and sensationalism, rushed to judgment.

``Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills'' is unique among courtroom documentaries in that the filmmakers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, seem to have had complete access to both sides of the trial process, including private family meetings, conferences with lawyers, even sessions in the judge's chambers. The film opens with sad police video footage from the crime scene, showing the bodies as they were first discovered, and then reports how wild rumors swept the area about satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and blood drinking.

A month after the murders, an undersized 17-year-old named Jesse Misskelly, with an IQ of 72, testified that he had been present when Damien Wayne Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16, killed and mutilated the boys. Local prosecutors brought murder charges against the boys. In the courtroom, they make a poignant trio: Jesse, small and blinking; Jason, who does not testify and indeed hardly speaks except in soft, shy generalities, and Damien, intelligent and articulate, known locally for dressing in black, listening to heavy metal music and reading books on Wicca, or ``white magic.'' There is no significant physical evidence linking them to the crime, and the crime scene itself is without clues. Although one of the victims lost five pints of blood and the others bled freely, there is no blood at the murder site. The state's case is based on Jesse's testimony and hearsay; the defense argues that the statements made by Jesse contained only facts first supplied to him by the police, and there is a fascinating cross-examination in which a police transcript shows Jesse shifting the time of the crimes from morning to noon to after school to evening (when they actually occurred) under leading suggestions by police.

Jesse, whose trial was split off from the others, was found guilty and sentenced to life plus 40 years. He was offered a reduced sentence if he would testify at the trial of the other two teenagers, but refused. His mother says she told him she would be sitting right there in the courtroom, and didn't want to hear him lie.

At the trial of Damien and Jason, evidence of the satanic orientation of the murders is supplied by a state ``expert occultist'' who turns out to have his degrees from a mail-order university that did not require any classes or schoolwork. For the defense, a pathologist testifies that it would be so difficult to carry out the precise mutilations on one of the boys that he couldn't do it himself--not without the right scalpel, and certainly not in the dark or in muddy water.

Meanwhile, we meet members of the families on both sides. Time and again, the documentary describes someone as a boyfriend, girlfriend, stepfather, stepmother, ex-wife or ex-husband; there seem to be few intact original marriages in this milieu. The parents of the murdered children are quick to believe the theories about the crime, and unforgiving. One mother says of Damien, ``He deserves to be tortured for the rest of his life.'' She curses not only the defendants, ``but the mothers that bore them.'' In one especially uncomfortable scene, relatives of two of the victims take target practice by shooting at pumpkins they have named after the defendants, aiming at parts of the ``bodies'' they have not yet hit.

One of these men is John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims, who earlier has been seen in a video at the crime scene, re-creating the crimes in grisly detail while vowing vengeance. In the movie's single most astonishing development, Byers gives the filmmakers a knife. They turn it over to the state. Crime lab reports show traces of blood that apparently came from himself and his stepson. On the witness stand, he testifies that he beat his stepson with a belt at 5:30 p.m. on the day of his death. The welts from the belt buckle previously had been linked to the ritual killing.

We would like to hear testimony from Byers about whether the other victims were then present, or if his stepson later joined them, and where they were later, and where he was. Either those questions were not asked, or the filmmakers decided not to use them. One of the frustrating things about ``Paradise Lost'' is that, for all the information it contains, key elements are missing. The three defendants, for example, all claim to have alibis for the night of the murder, but we learn little about them.

The film ends with guilty verdicts against Damien (death by injection) and Jason (life in prison). The sentences are under appeal. At the end of the film I was unconvinced of their guilt.

The film creates a vivid portrait of a subculture in which Satan is a central figure. Where did Damien, Jason and Jesse hear about satanic rituals? Mostly in church, it would appear. Some members of this community seem to require Satanism as part of their world view; they seize upon the devil to explain what dismays them. Their frequent theme is vengeance, and it is blood-curdling to hear relatives of the victims promise that if the defendants are released, they will track them down and kill them.

The only person in the film who defends a traditional Christian belief system is the grandfather of one victim, who says he believes in forgiveness, and knows he will be reunited in heaven with his loved ones. The others in the room listen without comprehension. We leave the film unsure about who committed the murders, but convinced that an obsession with Satanism extends here far beyond the circle of defendants.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.3/10 (2,150 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by GirlWithAspirin (#1)

#098 Safes (1995) 6 Votes, 1565 points
Todd Haynes
Running time - 159 min
Country of origin UK / USA
Genre Thriller / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Todd Haynes

Cast
Julianne Moore ... Carol White
Peter Friedman ... Peter Dunning
Xander Berkeley ... Greg White
Susan Norman ... Linda
Kate McGregor-Stewart ... Claire

BY ROGER EBERT / July 28, 1995

You don't always notice it, but during a lot of the scenes in "Safe" there's a low-level hum on the soundtrack. This is not an audio flaw but a subtle effect: It suggests that malevolent machinery of some sort is always at work somewhere nearby. Air conditioning, perhaps, or electrical motors, or idling engines, sending gases and waste products into the air. The effect is to make the movie's environment quietly menacing.

The movie tells the story of Carol (Julianne Moore), who may be allergic to her environment. Something is certainly getting to her. She lives in an affluent, antiseptic, luxurious Southern California home. Her only duties are to care for her health and appearance. She works out at the gym, drinks mineral water, uneasily supervises her household staff and attends "benefit luncheons." Her husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) is a distant figure, who never quite seems to see her.

One day Carol collapses. There doesn't seem to be a medical reason for this lapse, and soon she is seeing not a medical doctor but a psychiatrist, who suggests that the problem is within herself.

He isn't much help. She grows weaker, more frightened. She suffers anxiety attacks. The world seems to be closing in on her. Eventually the movie, if not her husband, concludes that the environment is making her sick. She's being attacked by plastics, ozone, chemicals, high-energy wires, pollution, additives, preservatives, hamburger gases - the whole laundry list.

Carol escapes from the poisons by going to live at a spa in the desert, with other people who are also in retreat from debilitating allergies. And it is here that the movie gets sneaky, and interesting. The spa (run by a man who lives in a mansion overlooking the more humble quarters of the customers) is a touchy-feely kind of place, where once again Carol's problems are approached with the assumption that somehow she caused them. The leader, Peter (Peter Friedman), suggests in his selfhelp exhortations that if his patients could only get in touch with themselves, go with the flow, etc., they'd improve.

Carol does not get better. Nearby trucks still seem to be spewing out exhausts. She moves into a kind of igloo that is completely sterile. Maybe she'll be safe there. And as she continues her desperate search, "Safe" reveals itself as a little more complicated than it first seemed.

The set-up scenes have all the hallmarks of a made-for-TV docudrama about the disease of the week. We settle in confidently, able to predict what will happen: Carol's problems will be diagnosed, the environment will be blamed, and there will be an 800 number at the end where we can call for more information about how to save the planet. But that isn't how "Safe" develops at all.

Instead, Todd Haynes, the writer and director, has something more insidious up his sleeve. The movie starts out dealing with one problem (environmental poisoning) and ends up attacking another (a blissed-out cult that charges big dollars to suffering people, who pay to hear the leader blame them for their troubles). And then there's another level. To some degree, "Safe" suggests that Carol may in fact be responsible for aspects of her illness. Her life and world are portrayed as so empty, so pointless, that perhaps she has grown allergic as a form of protest. In that case, the spa won't help either, because it is simply a new form of the same spoiled lifestyle.

"Safe" never declares itself for any of these possibilities.

That is another of the movie's intriguing aspects. It centers everything on Carol, who is played by Moore as the kind of woman whom you feel like assisting to a nearby chair. Carol is not very bright.

She's too dazed by her affluent lifestyle to know what, or if, she thinks about it. Maybe she is poisoning herself. And maybe the blissful group leaders at the spa are doing to her mind what pollution did to her lungs. Or maybe it's a tripleheader: Maybe the environment is poisoned, and the group is phony, and Carol is gnawing away at her own psychic health. Now there's a fine mess.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.9/10 (2,612 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - n/a

Ranked highest by GirlWithAspirin (#2)

#097 Lat sau san taam (Hard Boiled) (1992) 8 Votes, 1578 points
John Woo
Running time - 126 min
Country of origin Hong Kong
Genre Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language Cantonese / English

Writing Credits:
John Woo, Barry Wong, Gordon Chan

Cast
Yun-Fat Chow ... Insp. Yuen
Tony Leung Chiu Wai ... Tony
Teresa Mo ... Teresa Chang
Philip Chan ... Supt. Pang
John Woo ... Mr. Woo

Empire

Plot
Having gone undercover to discover his partner's killer, a cop, Yuen, manages to infiltrate a mob and meets Johnny, a hitman. Eventually they both realise the other is a cop and team up together to bring in the criminals, after discovering a supply of weaponry in the local hospital, but it proves tougher than they expected.

Review
The first feature film from critically worshipped Hong Kong director John Woo to receive more than a cursory release in the UK, this is an explosively visceral, operatic tour de force of breath-takingly choreographed violence and blistering ballistic pyrotechnics that begins over-the-top with a tea-house shoot-out that leaves at least 30 people dead, and then escalates into a succession of even more outrageous action set pieces.

In Hong Kong, on the eve of the Communist takeover and the relinquishment of British rule, police detective Yuen (Yun Fat) loses his partner in the tea-house slaughter, and against the advice of his superior, Chan, continues his own investigation into an illegal arms consortium, determined to nail those responsible for his partner's death. Following up a brutal hit, Yuen crosses paths with an undercover cop, Tony (Leung), who, posing as a hit man, has infiltrated the gun-running operation and who, unbeknown to Yuen, passes coded messages back to Chan. When Tony is forced to betray his boss and defect to a rival gang headed by sadistic young pretender Johnny, Yuen uncovers Tony's secret.

Upon learning that a city hospital is the site of Johnny's arsenal, the pair team up for a showdown that culminates in a maelstrom of bullets and delirious destruction. With a body count well into three figures, more firepower than you can shake an Uzi at, and imaginatively realised, adrenaline-pumping action sequences to turn Hollywood's action directors green, this was Woo's most outrageous two hours to date, mixing the frenzied pacing of kung fu flicks with a plethora of cinematic tricks — slow-motion, freeze-frames, wipes — Woo has elevated the action movie into the realm of art. Infinitely more exciting than a dozen Die Hards, action cinema doesn't come any better than this.

Verdict
Before John Woo went all Hollywood on our ass with the likes of Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II, he made several films in his native Hong Kong, this being arguably the pick of the bunch. Although not as slick as his later films, it's more inventive and stylised and with great early performances from Fat and Leung.


Reviewer: Mark Salisbury


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.9/10 (11,319 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #202

Ranked highest by Thermin (#4)

Fuck this. Definitive image:

Tell the baby not to look at the camera.

Aw, fuck. Hard Boiled is such a fucking jam. Every other shot is in slow motion. Stellar shit.

Gregory Stark is the son of a fat man.

Somebody please pm me with how this movie ends. Thanks.

Badly.

Good thing I dig your most recent rec (Perfume)...way off here. The end is as glorious as any movie I've ever seen.

I saw it once, is it still holding up after the initial viewing? Ebert actually does the commentary on the DVD, thought about buying it now and then.

It's Lars Von Trier...how much more can one guess?

Oh yeah. Still nothing like seeing it that first time on the big screen.

Good catch--I'd actually forgotten the ending proper. I was referring to the nihilistic misogyny and general disrepair that everything falls into in the third act. The ending-ending is actually pretty glorious.

Amen, brother.
I'm sure the atheists hated it.

Absolutely amazing actress.

The shocker to me is how the same DP (Robby Muller) did two films in the same year where I found one to be completely loathesome (this one-minus the still shot vistas circa elton johndous) versus the another to be completely gorgeous. (Jarmusch's 'Dead Man')

Von Trier might've converted to catholicism but his tangle into shakeycamland per dogma found me less impressed than the imagery and plot of zentropa (europa)..

Daddy, daddy-Look! Every time a bell rings, and angel gets his wings...

and especially after a gang bang!! -SCENE

I've never walked out of a movie theater hating a movie more. I felt abused. The ending is laughably bad, but it did improve the movie by making it easier to ridicule.

#096 Kingpin (1996) 10 Votes, 1584 points
Bobby Farrelly + Peter Farrelly
Running time - 113 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy / Sport
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Barry Fanaro, Mort Nathan

Cast
Woody Harrelson ... Roy Munson
Randy Quaid ... Ishmael Boorg
Vanessa Angel ... Claudia
Bill Murray ... Ernie McCracken
Chris Elliott ... The Gambler


BY ROGER EBERT / January 26, 1996

As ``Kingpin'' opens in 1969 in Ocelot, Iowa, a promising young man is told, ``You can apply everything about bowling to your daily life.'' Only 10 years later, that young man is the winner of the $1,000 Odor-Eaters Bowling Championship. His name is Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson), and his future lies ahead of him, as indeed everyone's does. Then he meets Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray).

McCracken is everything Munson will never be, a cocky, wise-cracking bowler who seems mighty sophisticated to a kid from Ocelot, as he calls for his favorite drink (``Tanqueray and Tab''). Ernie spots Roy's great potential, and uses him in an attempt to hustle an alley full of very tough bowlers. They spot Roy as a ringer, are enraged, and end his bowling career by amputating his hand in the ball return.

So begins a long, dark decade for Roy, who without his bowling hand finds nothing to do but drink himself into oblivion in a scummy boarding house. He fits his arm with a hook, and buys a cheap rubber hand to wear over it, to display his state championship ring. Life is bad. Then one day in an alley he meets a kid with tremendous bowling talent.

So begins the odyssey of ``Kingpin,'' a very funny movie, and sometimes even funnier than that. The film has been directed by the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, who also made the Jim Carrey movie ``Dumb and Dumber.'' I did not quite recommend ``D & D,'' but perhaps I should have, considering how loudly I laughed at the scene involving the parakeet with the Scotch tape around its neck.

In ``Kingpin,'' I laughed like that again and again. No doubt the movie is vulgar, and tries too hard for some of its laughs; I am reminded of Mel Brooks' defense of ``The Producers'' (``This movie rises below vulgarity''). Some of the gags don't work, and yet I laughed at the Farrellys' audacity in trying them. And the humor isn't just gags and punch lines, but one accomplished comic performance after another.

The leads come together with the joy and assurance of actors who know they are in material that's working. Harrelson is a hapless drunk who finally bottoms out when he finds himself in bed with his unspeakable landlady. Murray is superb as the kind of guy you know is a con man, but allow to con you anyway, simply because he so intensely desires to. Randy Quaid is the talented kid, Ishmael--an Amish farmer whose hobby is a secret from his family. And there is a beautiful girl they meet along the way, named Claudia and played by Vanessa Angel, who at first seems like decoration and then proves herself as a comic actress able to hold her own in this company.

I could steal all the movie's best punch lines and repeat them here, but that would be unfair. One of the joys of the film is that you can't see a lot of the laughs coming. There are moments, for example, involving Roy's attempt to help out on the farm by doing the milking. And a moment involving his rubber hand and a bowling ball. And the timing in a scene where a fake assailant gets hot coffee in his face--twice. And little throwaway jokes in the background, such as a performance of ``The Jeffersons on Ice.'' The plot follows the obligatory outlines of most sports movies. Roy decides to become Ishmael's manager and mastermind his victory in a $1 million Reno bowling tournament. Their paths inevitably cross Ernie's, who is still out there hustling after all these years. They encounter rich guys who like to bet on bowling. And everything leads up to the big tournament.

Murray, who has been offscreen for the middle parts of the movie, when it sags a little, returns in the big finale, sporting one of those comb-over haircuts where every surviving strand does double-duty. In the heat of competition, his comb-over flies up like a sail, and makes him look like a strange animal, an iguana maybe, as he attacks the lanes. Meanwhile, the audience and the broadcasters display an unseemly interest in Harrelson's rubber hand.

Movies like this require a kind of daring. There are jokes that must have made even the filmmakers groan (the business of removing the horse's shoes, for example). Good taste, prudence and timidity had no place on the set. The Farrellys cut no corners and took no prisoners. ``Kingpin'' provides the release of many kinds of laughter, including the most rare: disbelieving.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.6/10 (18,174 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #224

Ranked highest by Pavement Ist Rad (#5)

#095 The Grifters (1990) 11 Votes, 1586 points
Stephen Frears
Running time - 119 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Jim Thompson, Donald E. Westlake

Cast
Anjelica Huston ... Lilly Dillon
John Cusack ... Roy Dillon
Annette Bening ... Myra Langtry
Jan Munroe ... Guy at Bar
Stephen Tobolowsky ... Jeweler

Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Anjelica Huston), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Annette Bening), Best Director, Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Other awards
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Annette Bening)

BY ROGER EBERT / January 25, 1991

Con men are more appealing than run-of-the-mill villains, who want to take your money because they are stronger or more dangerous than you are. Con men want to take it because they're smarter than you are. And there is hardly ever a con man who isn't likable, because, after all, if he can't win your confidence, how can he take your money? Movies about con men are seductive because the audience is on both sides of the moral issues: We want to see justice done, of course, but at the same time we're intrigued by the audacity of this character who is trying to out-think his opposition.

You can see some of that seductiveness at work in David Mamet's "House of Games" (1987), where a woman psychologist grows fascinated by a con man and asks him to teach her some of the tricks of his trade. Does he ever. The con man is sweet and almost gentle as he devastates his victim. In a sense, he really does like her. In Stephen Frears' "The Grifters," there aren't any outsiders to be seduced, because the three central characters are all confidence tricksters. So they seduce each other.

The movie is based on a 1950s novel, but it's set in the present day. There are a few details that don't translate very well - today's con man probably wouldn't stay in a colorful fleabag hotel, but in a downtown executive suite - but the underlying story is universal. It involves the archetypal triangle of the lover, the loved one, and the authority figure who would separate them. The lover is Roy Dillon (John Cusack), a con man in his 20s, who isn't very good and pulls mostly small-time cons. The loved one is Myra Langtry (Annette Bening), who looks young and sexy but is probably older than she looks and certainly more dangerous than Roy realizes.

And the authority figure is Roy's mother, Lily (Anjelica Huston), who has been pulling cons since a very early age and considers everyone a potential victim. That list would certainly include her son.

Myra has knocked around the country a good deal, working as a sexy decoy for big-time con operators. Lily has an arrangement with a major sports gambling operation, and travels from one racetrack to another, placing large bets at the last minute to improve the odds.

Roy isn't in their league. He's still pulling nickel-and-dime stuff like walking into a bar and getting change for a $20 and then switching to a smaller bill. One day a bartender catches him at it and beats him up so badly that he almost dies.

It's in his hospital room that the two women meet, and unsheathe their claws. Roy doesn't realize it, but he's doomed right from the moment of their meeting, because for each of these women it is more important to win than to love, and poor dumb, sentimental Roy doesn't play in that league. He loves too easily, perhaps, and the movie suggests Oedipal possibilities long before the shocking final confrontation.

"The Grifters" is the first American production by Stephen Frears, one of the best new British directors. His credit list is short but distinguished: "My Beautiful Launderette," "Prick Up Your Ears," "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" and "Dangerous Liaisons." All four films deal with labyrinths of passion, with characters deceiving others about the true nature of their loves. The story of "The Grifters" comes from a pulp novel by the recently rediscovered Jim Thompson, a poet of film noir whose books exist in a world of cynicism and despair, where characters put up a big front but are being gnawed inside by fear, guilt and low self-esteem. The screenplay is by another distinguished crime novelist, Donald Westlake, and for once here is a new movie that exudes the film noir spirit from its very pores, instead of just adding a few cosmetic touches to a modern chase-and-crash story.

The performances are all insidiously powerful. Cusack provides a sympathetic center for the film, as a kid with a burning ambition to be good at the con game, but with no particular talent and without the ruthlessness he will need. Anjelica Huston is Academy Award material as his mother, who had this child when she was a teenager and who has never fully accepted the fact that he is her son. And Annette Bening has some of that same combination of sexiness, danger and vulnerability you could see in Gloria Grahame in movies such as "The Big Heat" and "In a Lonely Place." One of the strengths of "The Grifters" is how everything adds up, and it all points toward the conclusion of the film, when all secrets will be revealed and all debts collected. This is a movie of plot, not episode. It's not just a series of things that happen to the characters, but a web, a maze of consequences; by the end, when Roy and his mother are facing each other in their last desperate confrontation, the full horror of their lives is laid bare.

Why do confidence operators do what they do? Why do they need to win our love and trust, and then betray us? In "The Grifters," it's pretty clear that they're locked into an old pattern of trust and betrayal that goes back to childhood, and that they're trying to get even. Poor Roy. He thinks he wants to be a great con man, and all he really wants is to find just one person he can safely love, one person who isn't trying to con him.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.0/10 (7,841 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #n/a

Ranked highest by SuckeredYou (#13)

I'd pay extra to see this version.

#094 True Romance (1993) 10 Votes, 1611 points
Tony Scott
Running time - 120 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Action / Crime / Drama / Romance / Thriller
Original language English / Italian

Writing Credits:
Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary

Cast
Christian Slater ... Clarence Worley
Patricia Arquette ... Alabama Whitman
Val Kilmer ... Elvis, Mentor
Dennis Hopper ... Clifford Worley
Gary Oldman ... Drexl Spivey
Brad Pitt ... Floyd
Christopher Walken ... Vincenzo Coccotti
Samuel L. Jackson ... Big Don
James Gandolfini ... Virgil

BY ROGER EBERT / September 10, 1993

There are few objections to "True Romance" that I haven't thought of, and I dismiss them all with a wave of the hand. This is the kind of movie that creates its own universe, and glories in it.

The universe in question could best be located inside the in flamed fantasies of an adolescent male mind - and not any adolescent, but the kind of teenage boy who goes to martial arts movies and fantasizes about guns and girls with great big garbanzos. It is the kind of film that will make the best 10 lists of such supporters of the decline of civilization as Joe Bob Briggs.

And yet that doesn't make it bad. I've always tried to adopt a generic approach to the movies, judging each film in terms of its type and the expectations we have for it. And "True Romance," which feels at times like a fire sale down at the cliche factory, is made with such energy, such high spirits, such an enchanting goofiness, that it's impossible to resist. Check your brains at the door.

The movie's hero, Clarence, played by Christian Slater, is perhaps something like the target audience member for the movie. He works in a comic book store, spends his free time watching kung fu triple-features, and can hardly believe it when a blonde in a low-cut garbanzo-flaunter walks into his life.

Her name is Alabama (uh, huh) and she's played by Patricia Arquette. I guess it goes without saying that she's a hooker; that's the only profession available to the women in a movie like this, and is sort of convenient, because it means she doesn't have any regular hours, no parents, and is available, at least for a price. Of course such hookers, in such movies, never charge the hero anything; Clarence exudes a magnetic appeal that transcends commerce, I guess, like Billy Idol over at Heidi's house.

Alabama is actually a bit of an innocent. She's only been a hooker for four days (or four clients, I forget), but that has been long enough for her to pick up a vicious pimp (Gary Oldman), who Clarence has to deal with. Clarence is courageous and stupid, two invaluable assets in this situation, and eliminates the pimp in a prelude to a cross-country odyssey, after, in a series of tortured plot manipulations, he and Alabama have come into possession of $5 million of the mob's cocaine, which they plan to sell at a discount, before flying to Rio.

"True Romance" was directed by Tony Scott, whose movies like "Top Gun" and "Days of Thunder" show an affection for boys and their toys. But the film's real author, his stamp on every line of every scene, is Quentin Tarantino. As in "Reservoir Dogs," his 1992 directorial debut, Tarantino creates a world of tough guys, bravado, lurid melodrama, easy women, betrayal, guns and drugs. In his world, "low cut" is to "neckline" as "fast" is to "car." The movie hurtles from scene to scene, aiming for a climax which will strike "Reservoir Dogs" fans as curiously familiar. In both films, the plot ingeniously arrives at a moment where all of the warring parties are in the same room at the same time, simultaneously shooting at each other.

There isn't a moment of "True Romance" that stands up under much thought, and yet the energy and style of the movie are exhilirating. Christian Slater has the kind of cocky recklessness the movie needs, and Patricia Arquette portrays a fetching combinati on of bimbo and best pal. The supporting cast is superb, a roll call of actors at home in these violent waters: Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper and Brad Pitt, for example.

And then there is Val Kilmer, fresh from "The Doors," playing yet another dead rock hero. He lurks in the background of several scenes, as a muse who visits Christian Slater from time to time, dispensing heartfelt advice.

Would you be surprised if I revealed that this figure is, in fact, the ghost of Elvis Presley? You would not? You will find yourself right at home here.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.8/10 (45,815 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #058

Ranked highest by Slackmo (#3)

Me too, good catch.

#093 The Blair Witch Project (1999) 8 Votes, 1631 points
Daniel Myrick + Eduardo Sánchez
Running time - 86 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama / Horror / Mystery / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

Cast
Heather Donahue ... Heather Donahue
Joshua Leonard ... Joshua 'Josh' Leonard
Michael C. Williams ... Michael 'Mike' Williams

Other awards
Won Razzie Award Worst Actress (Heather Donahue)
Nominated Razzie Award Worst Picture

BY ROGER EBERT / July 16, 1999

We're instinctively afraid of natural things (snakes, barking dogs, the dark) but have to be taught to fear walking into traffic or touching an electrical wire. Horror films that tap into our hard-wired instinctive fears probe a deeper place than movies with more sophisticated threats. A villain is only an actor, but a shark is more than a shark.

"The Blair Witch Project," an extraordinarily effective horror film, knows this and uses it. It has no fancy special effects or digital monsters, but its characters get lost in the woods, hear noises in the night and find disturbing stick figures hanging from trees. One of them discovers slime on his backpack. Because their imaginations have been inflamed by talk of witches, hermits and child murderers in the forest, because their food is running out and their smokes are gone, they (and we) are a lot more scared than if they were merely being chased by some guy in a ski mask.

The movie is like a celebration of rock-bottom production values--of how it doesn't take bells and whistles to scare us. It's presented in the form of a documentary. We learn from the opening titles that in 1994 three young filmmakers went into a wooded area in search of a legendary witch: "A year later, their footage was found." The film's style and even its production strategy enhance the illusion that it's a real documentary. The characters have the same names as the actors. All of the footage in the film was shot by two cameras--a color video camcorder operated by the director, Heather (Heather Donahue), and a 16-mm. black and white camera, operated by the cameraman, Josh (Joshua Leonard). Mike (Michael Williams) does the sound. All three carry backpacks, and are prepared for two or three nights of sleeping in tents in the woods. It doesn't work out that way.

The buried structure of the film, which was written and directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, is insidious in the way it introduces information without seeming to. Heather and her crew arrive in the small town of Burkittsville ("formerly Blair") and interview locals. Many have vaguely heard of the Blair Witch and other ominous legends; one says, "I think I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel or something." We hear that children have been killed in the woods, that bodies have disappeared, that strange things happened at Coffin Rock. But the movie wisely doesn't present this information as if it can be trusted; it's gossip, legend and lore, passed along half-jokingly by local people, and Heather, Josh and Mike view it as good footage, not a warning.

Once they get into the woods, the situation gradually turns ominous. They walk in circles. Something happens to their map. Nature itself begins to seem oppressive and dead. They find ominous signs. Bundles of twigs. Unsettling stick figures. These crude objects are scarier than more elaborate effects; they look like they were created by a being who haunts the woods, not by someone playing a practical joke. Much has been said about the realistic cinematography--how every shot looks like it was taken by a hand-held camera in the woods (as it was). But the visuals are not just a technique. By shooting in a chill season, by dampening the color palette, the movie makes the woods look unfriendly and desolate; nature is seen as a hiding place for dread secrets.

As fear and desperation grow, the personalities of the characters emerge. "We agreed to a scouted-out project!" one guy complains, and the other says, "Heather, this is so not cool!" Heather keeps up an optimistic front; the woods are not large enough to get lost in, she argues, because "This is America. We've destroyed most of our national resources." Eventually her brave attitude disintegrates into a remarkable shot in which she films her own apology (I was reminded of explorer Robert Scott's notebook entries as he froze to death in Antarctica).

At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, "The Blair Witch Project" is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark. Any kid can tell you that. Not that he believes it at the time.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.0/10 (59,016 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #340

Ranked highest by GirlWithAspirin (#5)

Wow, surprised I wasn't highest on that one. Great, under-rated, film.

#092 JFK (1992) 9 Votes, 1642 points
Oliver Stone
Running time - 189 min
Country of origin USA / France
Genre Crime / Drama / History / Mystery / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Jim Marrs, Jim Garrison, Oliver Stone, Zachary Sklar

Cast
Kevin Costner ... Jim Garrison
Tommy Lee Jones ... Clay Shaw / Clay Bertrand
Kevin Bacon ... Willie O'Keefe
Gary Oldman ... Lee Harvey Oswald
Michael Rooker ... Bill Broussard

Academy Awards
Won: Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing
Nominated: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Director, Best Music - Original Score, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Award Best Editing, Best Sound. Golden Globe Best Director - Motion Picture
Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Screenplay - Adapted. Golden Globe Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Kevin Costner),
Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

BY ROGER EBERT / December 20, 1991

Oliver's Stone's "JFK" builds up an overwhelming head of urgency that all comes rushing out at the end of the film, in a tumbling, angry, almost piteous monologue - the whole obsessive weight of Jim Garrison's conviction that there was a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. With the words come images, faces, names, snatches of dialogue, flashbacks to the evidence, all marshaled to support his conclusion that the murder of JFK was not the work of one man.

Well, do you know anyone who believes Lee Harvey Oswald acted all by himself in killing Kennedy? I don't. I've been reading the books and articles for the last 25 years, and I've not found a single convincing defense of the Warren Commission report, which arrived at that reassuring conclusion. It's impossible to believe the Warren report because the physical evidence makes its key conclusion impossible: One man with one rifle could not physically have caused what happened on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. If one man could not have, then there must have been two. Therefore, there was a conspiracy.

Oliver Stone's new movie "JFK" has been attacked, in the weeks before its release, by those who believe Stone has backed the wrong horse in the Kennedy assassination sweepstakes - by those who believe the hero of this film, former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, was a loose cannon who attracted crackpot conspiracy theories the way a dog draws fleas.

The important point to make about "JFK" is that Stone does not subscribe to all of Garrison's theories, and indeed rewrites history to supply his Garrison character with material he could not have possessed at the time of these events. He uses Garrison as the symbolic center of his film because Garrison, in all the United States in all the years since 1963, is the only man who has attempted to bring anyone into court in connection with the fishiest political murder of our time.

Stone's film is hypnotically watchable. Leaving aside all of its drama and emotion, it is a masterpiece of film assembly. The writing, the editing, the music, the photography, are all used here in a film of enormous complexity, to weave a persuasive tapestry out of an overwhelming mountain of evidence and testimony. Film students will examine this film in wonder in the years to come, astonished at how much information it contains, how many characters, how many interlocking flashbacks, what skillful interweaving of documentary and fictional footage. The film hurtles for 188 minutes through a sea of information and conjecture, and never falters and never confuses us.

That is not to say that we are quite sure, when it is over and we try to reconstruct the experience in our minds, exactly what Stone's conclusions are. "JFK" does not unmask the secrets of the Kennedy assassination. Instead, it uses the Garrison character as a seeker for truth who finds that the murder could not have happened according to the official version. Could not. Those faded and trembling images we are all so familiar with, the home movie Abraham Zapruder took of the shooting of Kennedy, have made it forever clear that the Oswald theory is impossible - and that at least one of the shots must have come from in front of Kennedy, not from the Texas Schoolbook Depository behind him.

Look at me, italicizing the word "must." The film stirs up that kind of urgency and anger. The CIA and FBI reports on the Kennedy assassination are sealed until after most of us will be long dead, and for what reason? Why can't we read the information our government gathered for us on the death of our president? If Garrison's investigation was so pitiful - and indeed it was flawed, underfunded and sabotaged - then where are the better investigations by Stone's attackers? A U.S. Senate select committee found in 1979 that Kennedy's assassination was probably a conspiracy. Why, 12 years later, has the case not been reopened? Stone's film shows, through documentary footage and reconstruction, most of the key elements of those 1963 events. The shooting. The flight of Air Force One to Washington. Jack Ruby's murder of Oswald. And it shows Garrison, in New Orleans, watching the same TV reports we watched, and then stumbling, hesitantly at first, into a morass of evidence suggesting that various fringe groups in New Orleans, pro and anti-Castro, may have somehow been mixed up the with CIA and various self-appointed soldiers of fortune in a conspiracy to kill JFK.

His investigation leads him to Clay Shaw, respected businessman, who is linked by various witnesses with Lee Harvey Oswald and other possible conspirators. Some of those witnesses die suspiciously. Eventually Garrison is able to bring Shaw to trial, and although he loses his case, there is the conviction that he was onto something. He feels Shaw perjured himself, and in 1979, five years after Shaw's death and 10 years after the trial, Richard Helms of the CIA admits that Shaw, despite his sworn denials, was indeed an employee of the CIA.

Most people today, I imagine, think of Garrison as an irresponsible, publicity-seeking hothead who destroyed the reputation of an innocent man. Few know Shaw perjured himself. Stone certainly gives Garrison a greater measure of credibility than he has had for years, but the point is not whether Garrison's theories are right or wrong - what the film supports is simply his seeking for a greater truth.

As Garrison, Kevin Costner gives a measured yet passionate performance. Like a man who has hold of an idea he cannot let go, he forges ahead, insisting that there is more to the assassination than meets the eye. Stone has surrounded him with an astonishing cast, able to give us the uncanny impression that we are seeing historical figures. There is Joe Pesci, squirming and hyperkenetic as David Ferrie, the alleged getaway pilot. Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw, hiding behind an impenetrable wall of bemusement. Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald. Donald Sutherland as "X" (actually Fletcher Prouty), the high-placed Pentagon official who thinks he knows why JFK was killed. Sissy Spacek, in the somewhat thankless role of Garrison's wife, who fears for her family and marriage. And dozens of others, including Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Walter Matthau and Kevin Bacon in small, key roles, their faces vaguely familiar behind the facades of their characters.

Stone and his editors, Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia, have somehow triumphed over the tumult of material here and made it work - made it grip and disturb us. The achievement of the film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination, because it does not, or even that it vindicates Garrison, who is seen here as a man often whistling in the dark. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger which ever since 1963 has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche. John F. Kennedy was murdered. Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone. Who acted with him? Who knew?

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.9/10 (41,165 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #163

Ranked highest by ManIsMatter (#7)

#091 Trzy kolory: Bialy (Three Colors: White) (1994) 9 Votes, 1666 points
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Running time - 91 min
Country of origin France / Poland / Switzerland
Genre Comedy / Drama
Original language French / Polish

Writing Credits:
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski, Edward Klosinski, Marcin Latallo

Cast
Zbigniew Zamachowski ... Karol Karol
Julie Delpy ... Dominique
Janusz Gajos ... Mikolaj
Jerzy Stuhr ... Jurek
Aleksander Bardini ... Le notaire

BY ROGER EBERT / June 17, 1994

The hero of "White" tries to make money by performing in the Paris Metro. But he is not a musician, and his instrument - a pocket comb with a sheet of paper folded over it - doesn't inspire many donations. He's reached the bottom of the barrel, this sad sack migrant from Poland whose beautiful wife has divorced him. And he is homesick. At last inspiration strikes. A friend is flying to Poland.

Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) will ship himself home curled up inside the man's suitcase.

Is this possible? Better not to ask. The movie creates a great droll comic moment when the friend lingers at the baggage claim carousel in the Warsaw Airport until it becomes unmistakable that the luggage . . . has been lost. And then there is a scene showing that the missing suitcase, with Karol still inside, has been stolen.

Thieves open it, are bitterly disappointed to find only a man inside, and beat him. Then they cast him aside onto a rubbish heap. It is bitterly cold. Bloody but optimistic, he surveys the grim landscape and says, "Home at last." Depending on your state of mind, these events may sound funnier, or more painful, than they really are. Krzysztof Kieslowski directs "White" in a deadpan, matter-offact style that treats his strange subject matter as if it were merely factual. "White" is the middle film in his trilogy based on the colors of the French flag, coming between "Blue," which was about a woman coming to grips with the death of her husband, and the forthcoming "Red," about a woman whose accidental friendship with a judge leads to profound changes in her life. All of these films approach their subjects with such irony that we cannot take them at face value; "White" is the anti-comedy, in between the anti-tragedy and the anti-romance.

Kieslowski is Polish, now working in France, and in "White" he considers the new, post-communist Poland. His hero (whose name, Karol, is Polish for "Charlie," not a coincidence), was a hairdresser before leaving for Paris, and he discovers that his brother is still operating the family salon. He agrees to do a few heads every day, and meanwhile looks around for opportunities. One quickly comes: The friend who shipped him to Poland now knows a man who wants to pay someone to kill him. A job's a job, although this one eventually provides the most poignant moment in the movie.

A capitalist Poland provides opportunities for someone like Karol, who has soon schemed and maneuvered himself into a position of relative wealth, and begins a complicated plan to lure his former wife (Julie Delpy) back to Poland. His relationship to her is complicated; he has not been able to make love with her since their wedding day, but exactly how he feels about this, and what his plans are after her return, remain mysteries that the movie only gradually unveils.

Kieslowski allows a great deal of apparent chance in his stories. They do not move from A to B, but wander dazedly through the lives of their characters. That lends a certain suspense; since we do not know the plot, there is no way for us to anticipate what will happen next. He takes a quiet delight in producing one rabbit after another from his hat, hinting much, but revealing facts about his characters only when they must be known.

In all of his films, there are sequences that are interesting simply for their documentary content: We're not sure what they have to do with the story, if anything, but we are interested to see them unfolding for their own sake. In "Blue," the heroine's pragmatic reaction to her husband's death gave hints of greater secrets still to come. In "Red," there are two lives that never quite seem to interlock, but always seem about to. In "White," there is the marvelous indirection of Karol's comeback in Poland, the way in which he becomes successful almost by intuition.

The colors blue, white and red in the French flag stand for liberty, equality and fraternity. One of the small puzzles Kieslowski sets up is how these concepts apply to his plot. As Karol deviously sets a snare for the wife he loves and hates - as he gains control of the relationship, in a way - it is hard to see how "equality" could be involved in such a struggle for supremacy. Afterwards, thinking about the film, beginning to see what Kieslowski might have been thinking, we see even richer ironies in his story.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.6/10 (10,801 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #392

Ranked highest by Saskadelphia (#9)

I need to see the trilogy again to get those deeper meanings that Ebert alluded to.

Doubt there's a more polarizing figure in film than Von Trier.

Is that Haggis?

Yeah.

Makes sense to me. Has there ever been a less worthy best picture than Crash. (...waits for Slackmo to google said movie)

No googling involved:



Makushna, indeed.

Hey--I resemble that remark.

What do you expect from the face of Steak N' Shake?
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Never expected to see Safe that high. I've never met another person who's seen it.

Million Dollar Baby had problems, but it had its strengths. The other nominees that year weren't exactly stellar - hands down, I would've voted for Sideways, but even that had plenty of detractors.

Crash was probably my least favorite of all five nominees that year, but the Academy's done MUCH worse many times over.

#090 Duo luo tian shi (Fallen Angels) (1995) 3 Votes, 1685 points
Kar Wai Wong
Running time - 90 min
Country of origin Hong Kong
Genre Drama
Original language Cantonese

Writing Credits:
Kar Wai Wong

Cast
Leon Lai ... Wong Chi-Ming / Killer
Michelle Reis ... The Killer's Agent
Takeshi Kaneshiro ... He Zhiwu
Charlie Yeung ... Charlie / Cherry
Karen Mok ... Punkie / Blondie / Baby

BY ROGER EBERT / June 19, 1998

``Fallen Angels'' is the latest work from the Hong Kong wild man Wong Kar-Wai, whose films give the same effect as leafing through hip photo magazines very quickly. It's a riff on some of the same material as his ``Chungking Express'' (1996), about which I wrote, ``You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life.'' I felt transported back to the 1960s films of Jean-Luc Godard. I was watching a film that was not afraid of its audience. Almost all films, even the best ones, are made with a certain anxiety about what the audience will think: Will it like it? Get it? Be bored by it? Wong Kar-Wai, like Godard, is oblivious to such questions and plunges into his weird, hyper style without a moment's hesitation.

To describe the plot is to miss the point. ``Fallen Angels'' takes the materials of the plot--the characters and what they do--and assembles them like a photo montage. At the end, you have impressions, not conclusions. His influences aren't other filmmakers, but still photographers and video artists--the kinds of artists who do to images what rap artists are doing to music when they move the vinyl back and forth under the needle.

The people in his films are not characters but ingredients, or subjects. They include a hit man and his female ``manager,'' who share separate dayparts in a hotel room that seems only precariously separate from the train tracks outside. (She scrubs the place down before her shift, kneeling on the floor in her leather minidress and mesh stockings.) There is also a man who stopped speaking after eating a can of outdated pineapple slices (pineapple sell-by dates were also a theme in ``Chungking Express''). He makes a living by ``reopening'' stores that are closed for the night, and has an uncertain relationship with a young woman who acts out her emotions theatrically. There is another woman wandering about in a blond wig, for no better purpose, I suspect, than that ``Chungking Express'' also contained such a character.

Does it matter what these people do? Not much. It is the texture of their lives that Wong is interested in, not the outcome. He records the frenetic, manic pace of the city, exaggerating everything with wide-angle lenses, hand-held cameras, quick cutting, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, black and white, tilt shots, color filters, neon-sign lighting, and occasionally a camera that pauses, exhausted, and just stares.

That exhausted camera supplies the movie's best moment. The hit man (Leon Lai) has just wiped out a roomful of gamblers. He runs into the street and boards a commuter train. The man behind him is--good God!--a junior high school classmate, now an insurance salesman. The classmate chatters about insurance policies and his own impending marriage, handing the killer an invitation (``fill in your name''). The camera framing holds the killer in left foreground, his face frozen into a rictus of unease and dislike, his eyes turned away, as the classmate rattles on and on.

Finally the classmate asks for the hit man's card, which he supplies. (``Ah! You have your own business!'') Then he asks to see a photo of his wife. The hit man supplies a photo of a black woman and a child. On the soundtrack, narration tells us he paid the woman $5 to pose with him, and bought the kid an ice cream. The scene is telling us, I think, that in this society even a hit man feels obligated to be able to produce a business card and family photos on request.

A structure emerges uneasily from the film's unceasing movement. We watch the ``midnight shopper'' as he visits his old father and videotapes him cooking a steak. We see an inflatable doll being banged in a refrigerator door. We see all-night cafes and hurtling traffic and a man riding a dead pig.

It's kind of exhausting and kind of exhilarating. It will appeal to the kinds of people you see in the Japanese animation section of the video store, with their sleeves cut off so you can see their tattoos. And to those who subscribe to more than three film magazines. And to members of garage bands. And to art students. It's not for your average moviegoers--unless of course, they want to see something new.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (4,244 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #n/a

Ranked highest by Artem (#1)

#089 Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) 13 Votes, 1687 points
Jay Roach
Running time - 94 min
Country of origin USA / Germany
Genre Action / Adventure / Comedy / Crime
Original language English

Writing Credits:
Mike Myers

Cast
Mike Myers ... Austin Powers / Dr. Evil
Elizabeth Hurley ... Vanessa Kensington
Michael York ... Basil Exposition
Robert Wagner ... Number Two
Seth Green ... Scott Evil

BY ROGER EBERT / May 2, 1997

In the opening scenes of ``Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery,'' the British superagent has nearly won his war against the scheming Dr. Evil. But Evil escapes by boarding a rocket shaped like Bob's Big Boy and going into orbit around the Earth--where he will wait, cryogenically frozen, until the time is right to resume his scheme for world domination. To counter this move, Austin Powers has himself frozen, and when Evil returns in 1997, Powers is defrosted, too.

That's the simple but productive premise of ``Austin Powers,'' a funny movie that only gets funnier the more familiar you are with the James Bond movies, all the Bond clones and countless other 1960s films. The joke is that both Powers and Dr. Evil are creatures of the 1960s, and time has passed them by.

Both roles are played by Mike Myers, who has the same spirit of getting away with something that was so infectious in ``Wayne's World.'' As Powers, he's sex-mad, trying to seduce a '90s woman like agent Elizabeth Hurley with words like ``groovy,'' ``trendy'' and ``with-it.'' He's doing his own thing. In an opening tribute to the immortal ``Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,'' he throws a party and cries out, ``This is my happening, and it freaks me out!'' Dr. Evil is similarly era-challenged. With a bald head and a sneer that make him look like a prototypical Bond villain, he pushes buttons to send underlings falling into an incinerator. But he's hopelessly out of touch.

During his frozen decades, his operation has moved into legitimate businesses under the direction of No. 2 (Robert Wagner), and no longer finds international blackmail profitable. (At one point, when Dr. Evil suggests a scheme involving a million-dollar ransom demand, his board members chuckle as they explain how little a million will buy these days.) Modern times are not accommodating for these relics. Dr. Evil discovers he has a son named Scott Evil (Seth Green), who resents him for spending all that time in orbit when he should have been performing his parenting duties. They end up at a 12-step meeting for dysfunctional families.

The movie is grounded in variations of its theme: James Bond meets Political Correctness. A lot of the laughs come from Hurley, as Vanessa Kensington, liberated feminist British secret agent, who reacts to Austin's seduction techniques as if he were a bug that should be squished. One of the movie's funniest scenes takes place when Austin frolics nude in their hotel suite: Through elaborate choreography, his private parts are somehow always covered from the camera's point of view, saving the movie's PG-13 rating by a hair, while we find out that the British don't call their breakfast sausages ``bangers'' for nothing.

The movie, written by Myers and directed by Jay Roach, is smart enough to know the 1960s are funny without being exaggerated. In one sequence, a fashion photographer shoots '60s fashions, and the clothes, which look like outlandish science-fiction fantasies, are in fact identical to costumes worn during posing sessions in Antonioni's ``Blow Up'' (1967). Movie buffs will have fun cataloging all the references to other movies; I clocked ``A Hard Day's Night'' and ``Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' in addition to ``BVD'' and all the Bond, Matt Helm and ``Our Man Flint'' references. And, of course, those who remember Bond's adventures with Pussy Galore will be amused by his female antagonist this time, the sinister Alotta Fagina (Fabina Udenio).

The cast is well-chosen. Michael York is serious business as Basil Exposition, the British spymaster assigned to bring Powers up to date. Hurley again shows a nice comic flair (she regards her own sexuality with amusement).

Charles Napier, from ``BVD,'' is the hard-edged Commander Gilmore, all teeth and grim concern. And Seth Green finds the right modern note in totally dismissing everything that his father has worked so long to destroy.

What is best is the puppy-dog earnestness and enthusiasm that Myers brings to his role. He can only imagine how exciting 1997 will be. Just think: When he was frozen, the world was embracing widespread promiscuity, one-night stands, recreational drugs and mind expansion. He can only imagine what wonderful improvements have come along in the last 30 years.


Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.1/10 (51,657 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #346

Ranked highest by Tracy Jacks (#6)