I cannot, and I repeat this, CANNOT watch the last ten minutes or so of this movie. It is so great until the moment where love saves Neo and causes him to keep fighting and then everything from there is just kind of a pure shithole which led to the other 2 not being as good as the first one.

Terrible fucking ending to what could've been a classic movie.

Also, I forgot Peter Krause was in 'The Truman Show'. What a phonomenal actor.

I've never watched the 3rd one, and only watched the 2nd one once. But that first one--despite its last 10 minutes--is a classic. Such a captivating premise, executed perfectly. All the more shame that Fear Factory didn't have any songs on the soundtrack.

#030 Chung Hing sam lam (Chungking Express) (1994) 12 Votes, 3544 points
Kar Wai Wong
Running time - 102 min
Country of origin Hong Kong
Genre Comedy / Drama / Mystery / Romance
Original language Japanese / Mandarin / Cantonese / English

Writing Credits
Kar Wai Wong

Cast
Brigitte Lin ... Woman in blonde wig
Tony Leung Chiu Wai ... Cop 663
Faye Wong ... Faye
Takeshi Kaneshiro ... He Zhiwu, Cop 223
Valerie Chow ... Air Hostess

BY ROGER EBERT / March 15, 1996

At UCLA last summer, Quentin Tarantino introduced a screening of "ChungkingExpress'' and confessed that while watching it on video, "I just startedcrying.'' He cried not because the movie was sad, he said, but because "I'mjust so happy to love a movie this much.'' I didn't have to take out my handkerchief a single time during the film, and I didn't love it nearly as much as he did, but I know what he meant: This is the kind of movie you'll relate to if you love film itself, rather than its surface aspects such as story and stars. It's not a movie for casual audiences, and it may not reveal all its secrets the first time through, but it announces Wong Kar-Wai, its Hong Kong-based director, as a filmmaker in the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard.

He is concerned more with the materials of a story than with the story itself, and he demonstrates that by telling two stories, somewhat similar, that have no obvious connection. He sets the stories in the Hong Kong world off ast-food restaurants, shopping malls, nightclubs, concrete plazas and pop culture (one of his heroines wears a blond wig and dark glasses, and the other seems addicted to "California Dream?in''' by the Mamas and the Papas). His visuals rhythmically switch between ordinary film, video and pixilated images,often in slow motion, as if the very lives of his characters threaten to disintegrate into the raw materials of media.

If you are attentive to the style, if you think about what Wong is doing,"Chungking Express'' works. If you're trying to follow the plot, you may feel frustrated. As the film opens, we meet a policeman named He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who wanders the nighttime city, lonely and depressed, pining after a girl who has left him. He gives himself 30 days to find another girl, and uses the expiration dates on cans of pineapple as a way of doing a countdown. A new woman walks into his life: the woman in the wig (Brigitte Chin-Hsia Lin), who is involved in drug deals.

We expect their relationship to develop in conventional crime movie ways, but instead, the film switches stories, introducing a new couple. The first cop hangs out at a fast-food bar, where he notices an attractive waitress (FayeWang), but she has eyes only for another cop who frequents the same restaurant (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung). He scarcely notices her, but she gets the keys to his apartment, and moves in when he isn't there -- cleaning, redecorating, even changing the labels on his canned food.

Both of these stories, about disconnections, loneliness and being alone in the vast city, are photographed in the style of a music video, crossed with a little Godard (signs, slogans, pop music) and some Cassavetes (improvised dialogue and situations). What happens to the character is not really the point; the movie is about their journeys, not their destinations. There is the possibility that they have all been driven to desperation, if not the edge of madness, by the artificial lives they lead, in which all authentic experience seems at one remove.

Tarantino loved this movie so much, indeed, that he signed a deal with Miramax to start his own releasing company, and his first two pick-up deals are "Chungking Express'' and another Wong Kar-Wai film. There's a lot of interesting Hong Kong films right now, but it centers more on commercially oriented figures like John Woo and Jackie Chan. Wong is more of an art director, playing with the medium itself, taking fractured elements of criss-crossing stories and running them through the blender of pop culture.

When Godard was hot, in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was an audience for this style, but in those days, there were still film societies and repertory theaters to build and nourish such audiences. Many of today's younger filmgoers, fed only by the narrow selections at video stores, are not as curious or knowledgeable and may simply be puzzled by "Chungking Express'' instead of challenged. It needs to be said, in any event, that a film like this is largely a cerebral experience: You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life.

In any case, Tarantino may weep again when he sees the box-office figures.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.0/10 (9,452 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #454

Ranked highest by Caley (#1)

#029 Election (1999) 19 Votes, 3571 points
Alexander Payne
Running time - 103 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Comedy
Original language English / Spanish

Writing Credits
Tom Perrotta, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor

Cast
Matthew Broderick ... Jim McAllister
Reese Witherspoon ... Tracy Flick
Chris Klein ... Paul Metzler
Jessica Campbell ... Tammy Metzler
Phil Reeves ... Walt Hendricks

Academy Awards:
Nominated: Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

Other awards
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical (Reese Witherspoon)

BY ROGER EBERT / April 30, 1999

I remember students like Tracy Flick, the know-it-all who always has her hand in the air, while the teacher desperately looks for someone else to call on. In fact, I was a student like Tracy Flick. "A legend in his own mind," they wrote under my photo in the Urbana High School yearbook. I remember informing an English teacher that I didn't know why we were wasting time on the short stories of Eudora Welty when I could write better ones myself.

Tracy is smarter than that, and would never occupy such an exposed position. She's the subject of Alexander Payne's "Election," a wicked satire about an election for student government president, a post Tracy wants to win to go along with her collection of every other prize in school. What sets this film aside from all the other recent high school movies is that it doesn't limit itself to the world view of teenagers, but sees Tracy mostly through the eyes of a teacher who has had more than enough of her.

Tracy is embodied by Reese Witherspoon, an actress I've admired since she had her first kiss in "Man in the Moon" (1991), and who moved up to adult roles in "Freeway" (1997), a harrowing retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" with Kiefer Sutherland as the wolf. She was a virginal headmaster's daughter in "Cruel Intentions," which opened last month but she hits her full stride in "Election" as an aggressive, manipulative vixen who informs a teacher she hopes they can work together "harmoniously" in the coming school year.

The teacher is Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), the kind of man who turns up for an adulterous liaison and succeeds only in getting a bee sting on his eyelid. He thinks he knows what she means about "harmoniously," since last year she seduced a faculty member who was one of his best friends. Much as McAllister detests her, he also lusts after her; talking another student into running against her is his version of a cold shower. His recruit is a slow-witted jock named Paul (Chris Klein), and the race gets complicated when Paul's lesbian sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell), jumps into the race on a platform of dismantling the student government "so we'll never have to sit through one of these stupid elections again." "Election" is not really about high school, but about personality types. If the John Travolta character in "Primary Colors" reminded me of Bill Clinton, Tracy Flick puts me in mind of Elizabeth Dole: a person who always seems to be presenting you with a logical puzzle for which she is the answer. What is Tracy Flick's platform? That she should win simply because she is the school's (self)-designated winner. When a candidate turns up on election day having baked 480 customized cupcakes for the voters, doesn't she seem kind of inevitable? For Jim McAllister, the Tracy Flicks have to be stopped before they do damage to themselves and others. She is always perfectly dressed and groomed, and is usually able to conceal her hot temper behind a facade of maddening cheerfulness. But she is ruthless. She reminds me of a saying attributed to David Merrick: "It is not enough for me to win. My enemies must lose." The story, based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, shows McAllister as a dedicated teacher who is simply steamrollered by Tracy Flick. He narrates the film in a tone balanced between wonder and horror, and Broderick's performance does a good job of keeping that balance. Whatever else, he is fascinated by the phenomenon of Tracy Flick. We're inevitably reminded of Sammy Glick, the hero of Budd Schulberg's Hollywood classic What Makes Sammy Run? , who had his eye on the prize and his feet on the shoulders of the little people he climbed over on his way to the top. "Election" makes the useful observation that although troublemakers cause problems for teachers, it's the compulsive overachievers who can drive them mad.

Alexander Payne is a director whose satire is omnidirectional. He doesn't choose an easy target and march on it. He stands in the middle of his story and attacks on all directions. His first film was "Citizen Ruth" (1996), starring Laura Dern as a pregnant, glue-sniffing young woman who was a moronic loser, but became the focus of a court battle between pro-choice and anti-abortion forces. What was astonishing about his film (and probably damaged it at the box office) was that he didn't choose sides, but satirized both sides with cheerful open-mindedness.

Now here is a movie that is not simply about an obnoxious student, but also about an imperfect teacher, a lockstep administration, and a student body that is mostly just marking time until it can go out into the world and occupy valuable space. The movie is not mean-spirited about any of its characters; I kind of liked Tracy Flick some of the time, and even felt a little sorry for her. Payne doesn't enjoy easy targets and cheap shots. What he's aiming for, I think, is a parable for elections in general--in which the voters have to choose from among the kinds of people who have been running for office ever since high school.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.4/10 (27,102 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #371

Ranked highest by Johnny Bravo (#4)

I loved this film so much, even though I fell asleep during it the first time I watched it. I was getting all into it, feel asleep and woke up in time for the ending. I knew I'd missed something great and went back in rewatched it. And rewatched it. Sometimes I think I might like other movies more, but then I revisit it and love it even more.


As soon as I finished the movie, completely breathless and blown away, I looked up Ebert's review and was baffled. What was most baffling is that I knew nothing of film when I watched it (I still don't really) and enjoyed it; not because of anything cerebral, but because of it's emotional hook.

Seriously, what.

#028 The Silence of The Lambs (1991) 17 Votes, 3574 points
Jonathon Demme
Running time - 118 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits
Tom Perrotta, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor

Cast
Matthew Broderick ... Jim McAllister
Reese Witherspoon ... Tracy Flick
Chris Klein ... Paul Metzler
Jessica Campbell ... Tammy Metzler
Phil Reeves ... Walt Hendricks

Academy Awards:
Won Best Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Jodie Foster), Best Director, Best Picture, Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Nominated: Best Film Editing, Best Sound

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Award Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster). Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (Jodie Foster)
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Film, Best Original Film Score, Best Screenplay - Adapted, Best Sound. Golden Globe Best Director - Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Anthony Hopkins), Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

Roger Ebert / February 18, 2001

A fundamental difference between "The Silence of the Lambs" and its sequel, "Hannibal," is that the former is frightening, involving and disturbing, while the latter is merely disturbing. It is easy enough to construct a geek show if you start with a cannibal. The secret of "Silence" is that it doesn't start with the cannibal--it arrives at him, through the eyes and minds of a young woman. "Silence of the Lambs" is the story of Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster, and the story follows her without substantial interruption. Dr. Hannibal Lecter lurks at the heart of the story, a malevolent but somehow likable presence--likable because he likes Clarice, and helps her. But Lecter, as played by Anthony Hopkins, is the sideshow, and Clarice is in the center ring.

The popularity of Jonathan Demme's movie is likely to last as long as there is a market for being scared. Like "Nosferatu," "Psycho" and "Halloween," it illustrates that the best thrillers don't age. Fear is a universal emotion and a timeless one. But "Silence of the Lambs" is not merely a thrill show. It is also about two of the most memorable characters in movie history, Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, and their strange, strained relationship ("people will say we're in love," Lecter cackles).

They share so much. Both are ostracized by the worlds they want to inhabit--Lecter, by the human race because he is a serial killer and a cannibal, and Clarice, by the law enforcement profession because she is a woman. Both feel powerless--Lecter because he is locked in a maximum security prison (and bound and gagged like King Kong when he is moved), and Clarice because she is surrounded by men who tower over her and fondle her with their eyes. Both use their powers of persuasion to escape from their traps--Lecter is able to rid himself of the pest in the next cell by talking him into choking on his own tongue, and Clarice is able to persuade Lecter to aid her in the search for the serial killer named Buffalo Bill. And both share similar childhood wounds. Lecter is touched when he learns that Clarice lost both her parents at an early age, was shipped off to relatives, was essentially an unloved orphan. And Lecter himself was a victim of child abuse (on the DVD commentary track, Demme says he regrets not underlining this more).

These parallel themes are mirrored by patterns in the visual strategy. Note that both Lecter in his prison cell and Buffalo Bill in his basement are arrived at by Starling after descending several flights of stairs and passing through several doors; they live in underworlds. Note the way the movie always seems to be looking at Clarice: The point-of-view camera takes the place of the scrutinizing men in her life, and when she enters dangerous spaces, it is there waiting for her instead of following her in. Note the consistent use of red, white and blue: not only in the FBI scenes, but also in the flag draped over the car in the storage shed, other flags in Bill's lair and even the graduation cake at the end (where the U.S. eagle in the frosting is a ghastly reminder of the way Lecter pinned a security guard spread-eagled to the walls of his cage).

The movie's soundtrack also carries themes all the way through. There are exhalations and sighs at many points, as when the cocoon of the gypsy moth is taken from the throat of Bill's first victim. Much heavy breathing. There are subterranean rumblings and faraway cries and laments, almost too low to be heard, at critical points. There is the sound of a heart monitor. Howard Shore's mournful music sets a funereal tone. When the soundtrack wants to create terror, as when Clarice is in Bill's basement, it mixes her frightened panting with the sound of Bill's heavy breathing and the screams of the captive girl--and then adds the dog's frenzied barking, which psychologically works at a deeper level than everything else. Then it adds those green goggles so he can see her in the dark.

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins won Oscars for best actress and actor (the movie also won for best picture, for Demme's direction and Ted Talley's screenplay, and was nominated for editing and sound). It is remarkable that the Academy would remember, let alone single out, a film released 13 months before the Oscarcast; it usually votes for films that are still in theaters, or new on video. But "Silence" was so clearly one of a kind that it could not be ignored.

Hopkins' performance has much less screen time than Foster's, but made an indelible impression on audiences. His "entrance" is unforgettable. After Clarice descends those stairs and passes through those doors and gates (which all squeak), the camera shows her POV as she first sees Lecter in his cell. He is so . . . still. Standing erect, at relaxed attention, in his prison jump suit, he looks like a waxwork of himself. On her next visit, he is erect, and then very slightly recoils, and then opens his mouth, and I at least was made to think of a cobra. His approach to Lecter's personality (Hopkins says on his commentary track) was inspired by HAL 9000 in "2001": He is a dispassionate, brilliant machine, superb at logic, deficient in emotions.

Foster's Clarice is not only an orphan but a disadvantaged backwoods girl who has worked hard to get where she is, and has less self-confidence than she pretends. Noticing the nail polish on one of Bills' victims, she guesses that the girl is from "town," a word used only by someone who is not. Her bravest moment may come when she orders the gawking sheriff's deputies out of the room at the funeral home ("Listen here now!").

One key to the film's appeal is that audiences like Hannibal Lecter. That's partly because he likes Starling, and we sense he would not hurt her. It's also because he is helping her search for Buffalo Bill, and save the imprisoned girl. But it may also be because Hopkins, in a still, sly way, brings such wit and style to the character. He may be a cannibal, but as a dinner party guest he would give value for money (if he didn't eat you). He does not bore, he likes to amuse, he has his standards, and he is the smartest person in the movie.

He bears comparison, indeed, with such other movie monsters as Nosferatu, Frankenstein (especially in "Bride of Frankenstein"), King Kong and Norman Bates. They have two things in common: They behave according to their natures, and they are misunderstood. Nothing that these monsters do is "evil" in any conventional moral sense, because they lack any moral sense. They are hard-wired to do what they do. They have no choice. In the areas where they do have choice, they try to do the right thing (Nosferatu is the exception in that he never has a choice). Kong wants to rescue Fay Wray, Norman Bates wants to make pleasant chit-chat and do his mother's bidding, and Dr. Lecter helps Clarice because she does not insult his intelligence, and she arouses his affection.

All of these qualities might not be enough to assure the longevity of "Silence" if it were not also truly frightening ("Hannibal" is not frightening, and for all of its box-office success it will have a limited shelf life). "Silence" is frightening first in the buildup and introduction of Hannibal Lecter. Second in the discovery and extraction of the cocoon in the throat. Third in the scene where the cops await the arrival of the elevator from the upper floors. Fourth in the intercutting between the exteriors of the wrong house in Calumet City and the interiors of the right one in Belvedere, Ohio. Fifth in the extended sequence inside Buffalo Bill's house, where Ted Levine creates a genuinely loathsome psychopath (notice the timing as Starling sizes him up and reads the situation before she shouts "Freeze!"). We are frightened both because of the film's clever manipulation of story and image, and for better reasons--we like Clarice, identify with her and fear for her. Just like Lecter.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.6/10 (153,737 votes) Top 250: #24

SOMB 499 rank - #174

Ranked highest by MitchellStirling (#2)

#027 Toy Story (1995) 16 Votes, 3625 points
John Lasseter
Running time - 81 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Animation / Adventure / Comedy / Family / Fantasy
Original language English

Writing Credits
John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft, Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow

Cast
Tom Hanks ... Woody (voice)
Tim Allen ... Buzz Lightyear (voice)
Don Rickles ... Mr. Potato Head (voice)
Jim Varney ... Slinky Dog (voice)
Wallace Shawn ... Rex (voice)

Academy Awards:
Nominated: Best Music - Original Musical or Comedy Score, Best Music - Original Song (For the song "You've Got a Friend"), Best Writing - Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Special Achievement Award

Other awards
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects Golden Globe Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, Best Music - Original Song (For the song "You've Got a Friend")

BY ROGER EBERT / November 22, 1995

"Toy Story" creates a universe out of a couple of kid's bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway. Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations. And the result is an visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.

For the kids in the audience, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Older viewers may be even more absorbed, because "Toy Story," the first feature made entirely by computer, achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it.

Imagine the spectacular animation of the ballroom sequence in "Beauty and the Beast" at feature length and you'll get the idea. The movie doesn't simply animate characters in front of painted backdrops; it fully animates the characters and the space they occupy, and allows its point of view to move freely around them. Computer animation has grown so skillful that sometimes you don't even notice it (the launching in "Apollo 13" took place largely within a computer). Here, you do notice it, because you're careening through space with a new sense of freedom.

Consider for example a scene where Buzz Lightyear, the new space toy, jumps off a bed, bounces off a ball, careens off of the ceiling, spins around on a hanging toy helicopter and zooms into a series of loop-the-loops on a model car race track. Watch Buzz, the background, and the perspective -- which stretches and contracts to manipulate the sense of speed. It's an amazing ride.

I learn from the current Wired magazine that the movie occupied the attention of a bank of 300 powerful Sun microprocessors, the fastest models around, which took about 800,000 hours of computing time to achieve this and other scenes -- at 2 to 15 hours per frame. Each frame required as much as 300 MBs of information, which means that on my one-gigabyte hard disk, I have room for about three frames, or an eighth of a second. Of course computers are as dumb as a box of bricks if they're not well-programmed, and director John Lasseter, a pioneer in computer animation, has used offbeat imagination and high energy to program his.

But enough of this propeller-head stuff. Let's talk about the movie. Lasseter and his team open the film in a kid's bedroom, where the toys come to life when their owner is absent. Undisputed king of the toys is Woody, a cowboy with a voice by Tom Hanks. His friends include Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky Dog (Jim Varney), Hamm the Pig (John Ratzenberger) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts). The playroom ingeniously features famous toys from real life toys (which may be product placement, but who cares), including a spelling slate that does a running commentary on key developments (when Mr. Potato Head finally achieves his dream of Mrs. Potato Head, the message is "Hubba! Hubba!).

One day there's a big shakeup in this little world. The toy owner, named Andy, has a birthday. Woody dispatches all of the troops in a Bucket of Soldiers to spy on developments downstairs, and they use a Playskool walkie-talkie to broadcast developments. The most alarming: The arrival on the scene of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), a space ranger.

Buzz is the most endearing toy in the movie, because he's not in on the joke. He thinks he's a real space ranger, temporarily marooned during a crucial mission, and he goes desperately to work trying to repair his space ship -- the cardboard box he came in. There's real poignancy later in the film when he sees a TV commercial for himself, and realizes he's only a toy.

The plot heats up when the human family decides to move, and Woody and Buzz find themselves marooned in a gas station with no idea how to get home. (It puts a whole new spin on the situation when a toy itself says, "I'm a lost toy!") And later there's a terrifying interlude in the bedroom of Sid, the dreadful boy next door, who takes his toys apart and reassembles them like creatures from a nightmare. (His long suffering sister is forced to hold a tea party for headless dolls.)

Seeing "Toy Story," I felt some of the same exhilaration I felt during "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals, and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way. "Toy Story" is not as inventive in its plotting or as clever in its wit as "Rabbit" or such Disney animated films as "Beauty and the Beast"; it's pretty much a buddy movie transplanted to new terrain. Its best pleasures are for the eyes. But what pleasures they are! Watching the film, I felt I was in at the dawn of a new era of movie animation, which draws on the best of cartoons and reality, creating a world somewhere in between, where space not only bends but snaps, crackles and pops.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.0/10 (80,982 votes) Top 250: #186

SOMB 499 rank - #481

Ranked highest by Asher Ford (#1)

cool to see Election so high (Before Sunrise and D&C's placement were also nice), though getting beaten by SOTL and Toy Story is predictably ridiculous.

This quote from Ebert made me laugh a bit.

#026 The Usual Suspects (1995) 16 Votes, 3660 points
Bryan Singer
Running time - 118 min
Country of origin USA / Germany
Genre Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Original language English / Hungarian / Spanish / French

Writing Credits
Bryan Singer

Cast
Stephen Baldwin ... Michael McManus
Gabriel Byrne ... Dean Keaton
Benicio Del Toro ... Fred Fenster
Kevin Pollak ... Todd Hockney
Kevin Spacey ... Roger 'Verbal' Kint
Chazz Palminteri ... Dave Kujan, US Customs
Pete Postlethwaite ... Kobayashi

Academy Awards:
Won Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Kevin Spacey), Best Writing - Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Award Best Editing, Best Film, Best Screenplay - Original
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Kevin Spacey

BY ROGER EBERT / August 18, 1995

The first time I saw "The Usual Suspects" was in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, and when I began to lose track of the plot, I thought it was maybe because I'd seen too many movies that day. Some of the other members of the audience liked it, and so when I went to see it again in July, I came armed with a notepad and a determination not to let crucial plot points slip by me. Once again, my comprehension began to slip, and finally I wrote down: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care." It was, however, somewhat reassuring at the end of the movie to discover that I had, after all, understood everything I was intended to understand. It was just that there was less to understand than the movie at first suggests.

The story builds up to a blinding revelation, which shifts the nature of all that has gone before, and the surprise filled me not with delight but with the feeling that the writer, Christopher McQuarrie, and the director, Bryan Singer, would have been better off unraveling their carefully knit sleeve of fiction and just telling us a story about their characters - those that are real, in any event. I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation.

The movie begins "last night" in San Pedro, Calif., where an enormous explosion rips apart a ship. Who set the explosion? Why? A cop named Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) wants to know. He has one witness to question: a shifty-eyed, club-footed criminal named Verbal, played by Kevin Spacey with the wounded innocence of a kid who ate all the cookies. Kujan and Verbal are closeted much of the time in the cop's cluttered office, where Verbal lives up to his name by telling a story so complicated that I finally gave up trying to keep track of it, and just filed further information under "More Complications." The story is told in flashback. We learn about a truck hijacking some weeks earlier, and the five suspects who were picked up by the police. They're a mixed bag of low-life characters, played by Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro and Kevin Pollak, in addition to Spacey. I'm not sure if they were all involved in the hijacking, but the way Verbal tells it, in jail they began to plot a much larger crime, involving millions of dollars of cocaine.

This is no ordinary heist, because the dope belongs to a mysterious figure named Keyser Soze (sounds like "so-zay"), a Hungarian mobster so fearsome that when some bad guys threaten his family to get to him, he kills his family himself, just to make it clear how determined he is. This Soze is like the hero of a children's horror story; the very mention of his name curdles the blood of even these tough guys. But no one has ever seen him, or knows what he looks like. And then there is Mr. Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), Soze's right-hand man, who is himself so sinister that we begin to wonder if perhaps Kobayashi himself is Soze.

The interrogation between the cop and the suspect falls into a monotonous pattern: friendliness, testiness, hostility, a big blow-up, threats, reconciliations and then full circle again. We hear amazing stories about Soze (one survivor of the boat explosion, with burns over most of his body, drifts in and out of a coma but can talk of no one else). As Verbal talks, we see what he describes, and his story takes on an objective quality in our minds - we forget we're only getting his version.

To the degree that you will want to see this movie, it will be because of the surprise, and so I will say no more, except to say that the "solution," when it comes, solves little - unless there is really little to solve, which is also a possibility.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.7/10 (173,450 votes) Top 250: #20

SOMB 499 rank - #26

Ranked highest by Kmac (#5)

I think I had the same reaction to this movie. Yeah, there's the twist, but everything before it bored the hell out of me. (i.e. I wish Keyser made up something a lot more interesting.)

And man, what's with the Sub-Mariner-like hairline on Spacey?

Hey, I like to point out coincidences.

#025 Se7en (1995) 22 Votes, 3820 points
David Fincher
Running time - 127 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Mystery / Thriller
Original language English / Portuguese

Writing Credits
Andrew Kevin Walker

Cast
Brad Pitt ... Detective David Mills
Morgan Freeman ... Detective Lt. William Somerset
Gwyneth Paltrow ... Tracy Mills
R. Lee Ermey ... Police Captain
Kevin Spacey ... John Doe

Academy Awards:
Nominated Best Film Editing

Other awards
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Screenplay - Original

BY ROGER EBERT / September 22, 1995

`Seven," a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order. It tells the story of two detectives - one ready to retire, the other at the start of his career - and their attempts to capture a perverted serial killer who is using the Seven Deadly Sins as his scenario.

As the movie opens, we meet Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a meticulous veteran cop who lives a lonely bachelor's life in what looks like a furnished room. Then he meets Mills (Brad Pitt), an impulsive young cop who actually asked to be transferred into Somerset's district. The two men investigate a particularly gruesome murder, in which a fat man was tied hand and feet and forced to eat himself to death.

His crime was the crime of Gluttony. Soon Somerset and Mills are investigating equally inventive murders involving Greed, Sloth, Lust and the other deadly sins. In each case, the murder method is appropriate, and disgusting (one victim is forced to cut off a pound of his own flesh; another is tied to a bed for a year; a third, too proud of her beauty, is disfigured and then offered the choice of a call for help or sleeping pills). Somerset concludes that the killer, "John Doe," is using his crimes to preach a sermon.

The look of "Seven" is crucial to its effect. This is a very dark film, the gloom often penetrated only by the flashlights of the detectives. Even when all the lights are turned on in the apartments of the victims, they cast only wan, hopeless pools of light.

Although the time of the story is the present, the set design suggests the 1940s; Gary Wissner, the art director, goes for dark blacks and browns, deep shadows, lights of deep yellow, and a lot of dark wood furniture. It rains almost all the time.

In this jungle of gloom, Somerset and Mills tread with growing alarm. Somerset intuits that the killer is using books as the inspiration for his crimes, and studies Dante, Milton and Chaucer for hints. Mills settles for the Cliff Notes versions. A break in the case comes with Somerset's sudden hunch that the killer might have a library card. But the corpses pile up, in cold fleshy detail, as disturbingly graphic as I've seen in a commercial film. The only glimmers of life and hope come from Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), Mills' wife.

A movie like this is all style. The material by itself could have been handled in many ways, but the director, David Fincher ("Alien 3"), goes for evocative atmosphere, and the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker, writes dialogue that for Morgan Freeman, in particular, is wise, informed and poetic. ("Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me," he says, "finds me disagreeable.") Eventually, it becomes clear that the killer's sermon is being preached directly to the two policemen, and that in order to understand it, they may have to risk their lives and souls.

"Seven" is unique in one detail of its construction; it brings the killer onscreen with half an hour to go, and gives him a speaking role. Instead of being simply the quarry in a chase, he is revealed as a twisted but articulate antagonist, who has devised a horrible plan for concluding his sermon. (The actor playing the killer is not identified by name in the ads or opening credits, and so I will leave his identity as another of his surprises.) "Seven" is well-made in its details, and uncompromising in the way it presents the disturbing details of the crimes. It is certainly not for the young or the sensitive. Good as it is, it misses greatness by not quite finding the right way to end. All of the pieces are in place, all of the characters are in position, and then - I think the way the story ends is too easy. Satisfying, perhaps. But not worthy of what has gone before.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.5/10 (163,704 votes) Top 250: #34

SOMB 499 rank - #65

Ranked highest by Kmac (#9)

#024 Jackie Brown (1995) 24 Votes, 3902 points
Quentin Tarantino
Running time - 154 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Drama / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits
Elmore Leonard, Quentin Tarantino

Cast
Pam Grier ... Jackie Brown
Samuel L. Jackson ... Ordell Robbie
Robert Forster ... Max Cherry
Bridget Fonda ... Melanie Ralston
Michael Keaton ... Ray Nicolette
Robert De Niro ... Louis Gara

Academy Awards:
Nominated Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert Forster)

Other awards
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical (Samuel L. Jackson),
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical (Pam Grier)

BY ROGER EBERT / December 24, 1997

I like the moment when the veins pop out on Ordell's forehead. It's a quiet moment in the front seat of a van, he's sitting there next to Louis, he's just heard that he's lost his retirement fund of $500,000, and he's thinking hard. Quentin Tarantino lets him think. Just holds the shot, nothing happening. Then Ordell looks up and says, ``It's Jackie Brown.'' He's absolutely right. She's stolen his money. In the movies people like him hardly ever need to think. The director has done all their thinking for them. One of the pleasures of ``Jackie Brown,'' Tarantino's new film, based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, is that everybody in the movie is smart. Whoever is smartest will live.

Jackie (Pam Grier) knows she needs to pull off a flawless scam, or she'll be dead. Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson) will pop her, just like that guy they found in the trunk of a car. So she thinks hard, and so do a bail bondsman (Robert Forster) and an ATF agent (Michael Keaton). Everyone has a pretty good idea of exactly what's happening: They just can't figure it out fast enough to stay ahead of Jackie. The final scenes unfold in a cloud of delight, as the audience watches all of the threads come together.

This is the movie that proves Tarantino is the real thing, and not just a two-film wonder boy. It's not a retread of ``Reservoir Dogs'' or ``Pulp Fiction,'' but a new film in a new style, and it evokes the particular magic of Elmore Leonard--who elevates the crime novel to a form of sociological comedy. There is a scene here that involves the ex-con Louis (Robert De Niro) and Ordell's druggie mistress (Bridget Fonda) discussing a photograph pinned to the wall, and it's so perfectly written, timed and played that I applauded it.

Tarantino has a lot of good scenes in this movie. The scene where one character lures another to his death by tempting him with chicken and waffles. The scene where a nagging woman makes one suggestion too many. The scene where a man comes around in the morning to get back the gun a woman borrowed the night before. The moment when Jackie Brown uses one line of dialogue, perfectly timed, to solve all of her problems.

This movie is about texture, not plot. It has a plot, all right, but not as the whole purpose of the film. Jackie Brown, 44 years old, is an attendant on the worst airline in North America, and supplements her meager salary by smuggling cash from Mexico to Los Angeles for Ordell, who is a gun dealer. Beaumont (Chris Tucker), one of Ordell's hirelings, gets busted by an ATF agent (Keaton) and a local cop (Michael Bowen). So they know Jackie is coming in with $500,000 of Ordell's money, and bust her.

Ordell has Jackie bailed out by Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a bondsman who falls in love the moment he sees her, but keeps that knowledge to himself. Jackie knows Ordell will kill her before she can cut a deal with the law. Maybe she could kill Ordell first, but she's not a killer, and besides, she has a better idea. The unfolding of this idea, which involves a lot of improvisation, occupies the rest of the movie.

At the heart of the story is the affection that grows between Jackie and Max. In a lesser thriller, there would be a sex scene. Tarantino reasonably believes that during a period when everyone's in danger and no one's leveling about their real motives, such an episode would be unlikely. Max silently guesses part of what Jackie is up to and provides a little crucial help. Jackie takes the help without quite acknowledging it. And their attraction stays on an unspoken level, which makes it all the more intriguing.

In ``Jackie Brown,'' as in ``Pulp Fiction,'' we get the sense that the characters live in spacious worlds and know a lot of people (in most thrillers the characters only know one another). Ordell has women stashed all over Southern California, including a dim runaway from the South who he keeps in Glenwood, which he has told her is Hollywood. Max Cherry has a partner (Tommy ``Tiny'' Lister Jr.) who is referred to long before he goes into action. The sides of the film's canvas are free to expand when it's necessary.

If Tarantino's strengths are dialogue and plotting, his gift is casting. Pam Grier, the goddess of 1970s tough-girl pictures, here finds just the right note for Jackie Brown; she's tired and desperate. Robert Forster has the role of a career as the bail bondsman, matter of fact about his job and the law; he's a plausible professional, not a plot stooge. Jackson, as Ordell, does a harder, colder version of his hit man in ``Pulp Fiction,'' and once again uses the N-word like an obsession or a mantra (that gets a little old). De Niro, still in a longtime convict's prison trance, plays Louis as ingratiatingly stupid. Bridget Fonda's performance is so good, it's almost invisible; her character's lassitude and contempt coexist with the need to be high all the time.

A lot of crime films play like they were written by crossword puzzle fans who fill in the easy words and then call the hot line for the solution. (The solution is always: Abandon the characters and end with a chase and a shootout.) Tarantino leaves the hardest questions for last, hides his moves, conceals his strategies in plain view, and gives his characters dialogue that is alive, authentic and spontaneous.

You savor every moment of ``Jackie Brown.'' Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.5/10 (52,527 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #82

Ranked highest by Johnny Bravo (#10)

#023 Trainspotting (1996) 19 Votes, 3959 points
Danny Boyle
Running time - 94 min
Country of origin UK
Genre Comedy / Crime / Drama
Original language 'English'

Writing Credits
Irvine Welsh, John Hodge

Cast
Ewan McGregor ... Renton
Ewen Bremner ... Spud
Jonny Lee Miller ... Sick Boy
Kevin McKidd ... Tommy
Robert Carlyle ... Begbie
Kelly Macdonald ... Diane

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

Other awards
Won BAFTA Film Award Best Screenplay - Adapted
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film

BY ROGER EBERT / July 26, 1996

Those who have ventured into the darker corners of addiction know that one of its few consolations, once the fun has worn off, is the camaraderie with fellow practitioners. Substance abuse sets the user apart from the daily lives of ordinary people. No matter how well the addict may seem to be functioning, there is always the secret agenda, the knowledge that the drug of choice is more important than the mundane business at hand, such as friends, family, jobs, play and sex.

Because no one can really understand that urgency as well as another addict, there is a shared humor, desperation and understanding among users. There is even a relief: Lies and evasions are unnecessary among friends who share the same needs. ``Trainspotting'' knows that truth in its very bones. The movie has been attacked as pro-drug and defended as anti-drug, but actually it is simply pragmatic. It knows that addiction leads to an unmanageable, exhausting, intensely uncomfortable daily routine, and it knows that only two things make it bearable: a supply of the drug of choice, and the understanding of fellow addicts.

Former alcoholics and drug abusers often report that they don't miss the substances nearly as much as the conditions under which they were used--the camaraderie of the true drinkers' bar, for example, where the standing joke is that the straight world just doesn't get it, doesn't understand that the disease is life and the treatment is another drink. The reason there is a fierce joy in ``Trainspotting,'' despite the appalling things that happen in it, is that it's basically about friends in need.

The movie, based on a popular novel by Irvine Welsh, is about a crowd of heroin addicts who run together in Edinburgh. The story is narrated by Renton (Ewan McGregor), who will, and does, dive into ``the filthiest toilet in Scotland'' in search of mislaid drugs. He introduces us to his friends, including Spud (Ewen Bremner), who confronts a job interview panel with a selection of their worst nightmares; Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), whose theories about Sean Connery do not seem to flow from ever having seen his movies sober; Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who returns to drugs one time too many, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who brags about not using drugs but is a psychotic who throws beer mugs at bar patrons. What a lad, that Begbie.

These friends sleep where they can--in bars, in squats, in the beds of girls they meet at dance clubs. They have assorted girlfriends, and there is even a baby in the movie, but they are not settled in any way, and no place is home. Near the beginning of the film, Renton decides to clean up, and nails himself into a room with soup, ice cream, milk of magnesia, Valium, water, a TV set, and buckets for urine, feces, and vomit. Soon the nails have been ripped from the door jambs, but eventually Renton does detox (``I don't feel the sickness yet but it's in the mail, that's for sure''), and he even goes straight for a while, taking a job in London as a rental agent.

But his friends find him, a promising drug deal comes along, and in one of the most disturbing images in the movie, Renton throws away his hard-earned sobriety by testing the drug, and declaring it... wonderful. No doubt about it, drugs do make him feel good. It's just that they make him feel bad all the rest of the time. ``What do drugs make you feel like?'' George Carlin asked. ``They make you feel like more drugs.'' The characters in ``Trainspotting'' are violent (they attack a tourist on the street) and carelessly amoral (no one, no matter how desperate, should regard a baby the way they seem to). The legends they rehearse about each other are all based on screwing up, causing pain, and taking outrageous steps to find or avoid drugs. One day they try to take a walk in the countryside, but such an ordinary action is far beyond their ability to perform.

Strange, the cult following ``Trainspotting'' has generated in the UK, as a book, a play and a movie. It uses a colorful vocabulary, it contains a lot of energy, it elevates its miserable heroes to the status of icons (in their own eyes, that is), and it does evoke the Edinburgh drug landscape with a conviction that seems born of close observation. But what else does it do? Does it lead anywhere? Say anything? Not really. That's the whole point. Drug use is not linear but circular. You never get anywhere unless you keep returning to the starting point. But you make fierce friends along the way. Too bad if they die.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.1/10 (91,820 votes) Top 250: #178

SOMB 499 rank - #19

Ranked highest by Velocity (#4)

#022 Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) 19 Votes, 3986 points
James Foley
Running time - 94 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits
David Mamet

Cast
Al Pacino ... Ricky Roma
Jack Lemmon ... Shelley Levene
Alec Baldwin ... Blake
Alan Arkin ... George Aaronow
Ed Harris ... Dave Moss
Kevin Spacey ... John Williamson

Academy Awards:
Nominated Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Al Pacino)

Other awards
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Al Pacino

BY ROGER EBERT / October 2, 1992

The shabby real estate office in "Glengarry Glen Ross" seems likely to become one of the movie places we will remember, like the war room in "Dr. Strangelove" or Hannibal Lecter's cell. It is divided into two parts: a glassed-in area where the office manager lives, along with his precious "leads" - cards with the names of people who might want to buy real estate - and the rest of the office, given over to the desks of the salesmen, who try to sound rich and confident over the phone, but whose eyes are haunted with despair.

Hour after hour, they make calls to sell real estate that no one wants to buy. They are making no money. It is worse than that.

They are about to lose their jobs. Blake (Alec Baldwin), the slick hotshot from downtown, arrives to give them a chalk-talk and a warning. There is a new sales contest. First prize is a Cadillac.

Second prize, a set of steak knives. Third prize is, you're fired: "Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going OUT!" The movie is based on a play by David Mamet, who once briefly worked in such a boiler room. He knows the way these people talk, and turns their jargon into a version of his own personal language, in which the routine obscenities and despair of everyday speech are transcribed into a sad music. Their struggle takes on a kind of nobility.

Look at Shelley (the Machine) Levene, for example. Played by Jack Lemmon, he was once a hotshot salesman, winning the office sweepstakes month after month. Now he is making no sales at all, and his wife is in the hospital, and it's heartbreaking to hear his lies, about how he would feel wrong, not sharing this "marvelous opportunity." Lemmon has a scene in this movie that represents the best work he has ever done. He makes a house call on a man who does not want to buy real estate. The man knows it, we know it, Lemmon knows it - but Lemmon keeps trying, not registering the man's growing impatience to have him out of his house. There is a fine line in this scene between deception and breakdown, between Lemmon's false jolity and the possibility that he may collapse right on the man's rug, surrendering all hope.

The other salesmen are assembled in a well-balanced cast that rehearsed Mamet's dialogue for weeks, getting to know the music of the words while working on the characters. Kevin Spacey is the office manager, unblinking and cold, playing by the rules. The salesmen are played by Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Lemmon. They are all in various stages of breakdown. There is a duet between Harris and Arkin that is one of the best things Mamet has written. They speculate about the near-legendary "good leads" that Spacey allegedly has locked in his office. What if someone broke into the office and stole the leads? Harris and Arkin discuss it, neither one quite saying out loud what's on his mind.

There are other duets. Lemmon and Spacey have a scene in a car, in the rain, where Lemmon tries to buy the leads from Spacey.

And Pacino and Jonathan Pryce, who plays a possible customer, have a masterful scene in a restaurant booth, in which Pacino subtly tries to seduce Pryce into buying, by playing on what he senses is latent homosexuality.

In "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller made the salesman into a symbol for the failure of the American dream. In Miller's play, Willy Loman was out there all alone, on a smile and a shoeshine. "Glengarry Glen Ross" is a version for modern times.

Produced onstage in the good times of the 1980s, filmed in the hard times of the 1990s, it shows the new kind of American salesmanship, which is organized around offices and corporations. No longer is a salesman self-employed, going door-to-door. Now individual effort has been replaced by teamwork. The shabby Chicago real estate office, huddled under the L tracks, could be any white-collar organization in which middle-aged men find themselves faced with sudden and possibly permanent unemployment.

Having said that, I must not forget to mention the humor in the film. Mamet's dialogue has a kind of logic, a cadence, that allows people to arrive in triumph at the ends of sentences we could not possibly have imagined. There is great energy in it. You can see the joy with which these actors get their teeth into these great lines, after living through movies in which flat dialogue serves only to advance the story. The film was directed by James Foley ("At Close Range"), whose timing and camera help underline the humor; a line of dialogue will end with a reaction shot that mirrors our own reaction - surprised, blind-sided, maybe a little stunned, but entertained by the zing of anger and ego in the words. While meanwhile nobody is buying any real estate, and it is raining, and the L thunders by like a mystery train to hell.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.8/10 (20,143 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #64

Ranked highest by FallingandLaughing (#5)

#021 Three Kings (1999) 22 Votes, 4193 points
David O. Russell
Running time - 114 min
Country of origin USA / Australia
Genre Action / Adventure / Comedy / Drama / War
Original language English / Arabic

Writing Credits
John Ridley, David O. Russell

Cast
George Clooney ... Maj. Archie Gates
Mark Wahlberg ... Sfc. Troy Barlow
Ice Cube ... SSgt. Chief Elgin
Spike Jonze ... Pfc. Conrad Vig
Cliff Curtis ... Amir Abdullah


BY ROGER EBERT / October 4, 1999

"Three Kings" is some kind of weird masterpiece, a screw-loose war picture that sends action and humor crashing head-on into each other and spinning off into political anger. It has the freedom and recklessness of Oliver Stone or Robert Altman in their mad-dog days, and a visual style that hungers for impact. A lot of movies show bodies being hit by bullets. This one sends the camera inside to show a bullet cavity filling up with bile.

David O. Russell, who wrote and directed, announces his arrival as a major player. Like the best films of Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Robert Altman and Quentin Tarantino, this one sings with the exhilaration of pure filmmaking and embodies ideas in its action and characters. Most movies doze in a haze of calculation and formula; "Three Kings" is awake and hyper.

The movie takes place at the end of the Gulf War of 1991 ("Operation Desert Storm," the Pentagon publicists called it). The first words set the tone: "Are we shooting?" The truce is so new that soldiers are not sure, and a guy waving a white flag gets his head shot off in a misunderstanding. Shame. Three U.S. soldiers find an Iraqi with a piece of paper stuck where the sun don't shine. An officer issues a rubber glove and tells a private to pull if out. The guy wants two gloves, but he'll do it with one, he's told: "That's how the chain of command works." The map shows the location of gold bullion looted from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's troops and buried in secret bunkers. ("Bullion? Is that a little cube you put in hot water?") The three soldiers are Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze). They attract the attention of Sgt. Maj. Archie Gates (George Clooney), a Special Forces veteran who decides on the spot to lead them on an unauthorized mission to steal the treasure. This involves dumping the cable news reporter he's been assigned to escort. She's Adriana Cruz, played by Nora Dunn as a Christiane Amanpour clone so driven by journalistic zeal that she is heedless of her own safety or anything else but a story. The gold, of course, would be a story.

The movie unreels with breakneck energy; it's one of those experiences like "Natural Born Killers," where death and violence are a drumbeat in the background of every plot point. Russell's screenplay illustrates the difference between a great action picture and the others: The action grows out of the story, instead of the story being about the action. The Clooney character commandeers a Humvee and leads his men on a loony ride through the desert, where their target practice with footballs somehow reminded me of the water-skiing sequence in "Apocalypse Now." A political undercurrent bubbles all through the film. A truce has been declared, and Hussein's men have stopped shooting at Americans and fallen back to the secondary assignment of taming unhappy Iraqis who were expecting him to be overthrown. ("Bush told the people to rise up against Saddam. They thought they'd have our support. They didn't. Now they're being slaughtered.") Strange, the irony in Iraqis killing Iraqis while American gold thieves benefit from the confusion.

Most Hollywood movies stereotype their Arab characters. "Three Kings" is startling in the way it shows how the world is shrinking and cultures are mixing and sharing values. Clooney and his men see a woman shot dead by Hussein's men, and later meet her husband and children. Is this man a tearful, anonymous desert simpleton, grateful to his brave saviors? Not at all. "I'm a B-school graduate from Bowling Green," he tells them. "Your planes blew up all my cafes." It's a small world, made smaller by the culture of war. The TV journalist stands calmly in the middle of danger, accepted by both sides because they think it's natural they should be on television. When the Mark Wahlberg character is captured and locked in a room, he finds it filled with the loot of war, including a lot of cell phones. When he tries to call his wife in America to give her the coordinates of his position, he has to deal with obtuse telephone operators.

"Three Kings" has plot structure as traditional as anything in "Gunga Din" or an Indiana Jones picture, and links it to a fierce political viewpoint, intelligent characters and sudden bursts of comedy. It renews cliches. We've seen the wounded buddy who has to be dragged along through the action. But we haven't seen one with a lung wound, and a valve hammered into his chest to relieve the built-up air pressure. We've seen desert warfare before, but usually it looks scenic. Russell's cameraman, Newton Thomas Sigel, uses a grainy, bleached style that makes the movie look like it was left out in a sandstorm.

Like many natural action stars, Clooney can do what needs to be done with absolute conviction; we believe him as a leader. Wahlberg and Ice Cube seem caught up in the action, Wahlberg as a natural target, Cube as a former baggage handler who believes he stands inside a ring of Jesus' grace. Spike Jonze, himself a director ("Being John Malkovich"), is the obligatory hillbilly, needed for the ethnic mix we always get in war movies. It's interesting how Nora Dunn's cable journalist isn't turned into a cheap parody of Amanpour, but focuses on the obsessiveness that possesses any good war correspondent.

This is David O. Russell's third picture, after "Spanking the Monkey" (1994; liked by many, unseen by me) and the inventive, unhinged comedy "Flirting With Disaster" (1996). Like that one, "Three Kings" bounces lots of distinct characters against one another and isn't afraid to punctuate the laughs with moments of true observation and emotion. This is his first movie with a studio budget, and it shows not only enthusiasm, but also the control to aim that enthusiasm where he wants it to go. "Three Kings" is one of the best movies of the year, even if I kept wondering why it wasn't named "Four Kings."

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.3/10 (48,688 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #139

Ranked highest by Undo (#3)

Great to see Three Kings so high.

Best ever use of a Lite F.M. song in a film....If you leave me now...

The Usual Suspects is the most overrated film of my generation.

#020 Jumaji (1995) 20 Votes, 4203 points
Joe Johnston


BY ROGER EBERT / December 15, 1995

`Jumanji" is being promoted as a jolly holiday season entertainment, with ads that show Robin Williams with a twinkle in his eye. The movie itself is likely to send younger children fleeing from the theater, or hiding in their parents' arms. Those who do sit all the way through it are likely to toss and turn with nightmares inspired by its frightening images.

Whoever thought this was a family movie (the MPAA rates it PG - not even PG-13!) must think kids are made of stern stuff. The film is a gloomy special-effects extravaganza filled with grotesque images, generating fear and despair. Even for older audiences, there are few redeeming factors, because what little story there is serves as a coathook for the f/x sequences, which come out of nowhere and evaporate into the same place.

The film opens in 1869, as a sturdy chest is buried in the woods. "What if someone digs this up?" a shadowy worker asks. "God help them!" he's told.

We flash forward to 1969, as a little boy named Alan finds the chest in a construction site and opens it to discover a board game named "Jumanji." He rolls the dice and is instantly fascinated with the game's supernatural powers. The pieces on the board move themselves. The game communicates with ghostly messages that float into focus in a cloudy lens. And Alan is attacked by a cloud of bats.

Another flash-forward, this time to the present, as two other kids find the game in an old mansion that has been abandoned for years. This is none other than Alan's childhood home, and when the kids begin playing the game, Alan materializes. He has been in limbo all of this time, growing to manhood, and is now played by Robin Williams. His first words: "Where's my mom and dad?" Ah, but there's no time for sentimentality now. He makes friends with the children, Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce), and together they begin to explore the world of Jumanji, which contains jungle terrors. They will be attacked by lions, monkeys, rhinos, elephants, giant insects, poison darts, plants that strangle them and other plants that eat things, snakes, birds, mosquitoes, thunder and lightning, and (it goes without saying) spiders. They will wrestle with a crocodile and Alan will almost be gobbled up by a pool of quicksand that appears in the middle of the mansion's floor.

Other characters make their appearances. There's Van Pelt (Jonathan Hyde), a big-game hunter who has also been captured by the game; Aunt Nora (Bebe Neuwirth), who has adopted little Judy and Peter (somehow it is inevitable that they are orphans), and Sarah (Bonnie Hunt), who was the little girl who played Jumanji with young Alan on that fateful day in 1969, and now has grown up to become a reclusive fortune-teller. The town shunned her because she insisted on telling the truth about her experience with the board game.

The basic notion of the film (two kids have lots of scary adventures with Robin Williams) must have sounded good on paper. But the technicians have filled the screen with special effects, both conventional and animated, in such a way that the movie is now about as appropriate for smaller children as, say, "Jaws." It's not bad enough that the film's young heroes have to endure an unremitting series of terrifying dangers; at one point, little Peter gets converted into a monkey that looks like a Wolf Man, and goes through the film like a miniature Lon Chaney, with a hairy snout and wicked jaws. This image alone is likely to be disturbing to small children. To me, it looked like gratuitous cruelty on the part of the filmmakers toward the harmless young character.

The underlying structure of the film seems inspired by - or limited by - interactive video games. There is little attempt to construct a coherent story. Instead, the characters face one threat after another, as new and grotesque dangers jump at them. It's like those video games where you achieve one level after another by killing and not getting killed. The ultimate level for young viewers will be being able to sit all the way through the movie.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 6.2/10 (29,599 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - unranked

Ranked highest by complain (#7)

that would be an american tragedy, indeed.


well done.

should be higher, IMO

#020 Magnolia (1999) 18 Votes, 4443 points
Paul Thomas Anderson
Running time - 188 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama
Original language German / English / French

Writing Credits
Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast
Julianne Moore ... Linda Partridge
William H. Macy ... Donnie Smith
John C. Reilly ... Jim Kurring
Tom Cruise ... Frank T.J. Mackey
Philip Baker Hall ... Jimmy Gator
Philip Seymour Hoffman ... Phil Parma

Academy Awards:
Nominated Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tom Cruise), Best Music - Original Song (For the song "Save Me".), Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Other awards
Won: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Tom Cruise)
Nominated: Golden Globe Best Music - Original Song (For the song "Save Me".)

BY ROGER EBERT / January 7, 2000

"Magnolia" is operatic in its ambition, a great, joyous leap into melodrama and coincidence, with ragged emotions, crimes and punishments, deathbed scenes, romantic dreams, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music. It is not a timid film. Paul Thomas Anderson here joins Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich"), David O. Russell ("Three Kings") and their master, Martin Scorsese ("Bringing Out the Dead"), in championing an extroverted self-confidence that rejects the timid post-modernism of the 1990s. These are not movies that apologize for their exuberance, or shield themselves with irony against suspicions of sincerity.

The movie is an interlocking series of episodes that take place during one day in Los Angeles, sometimes even at the same moment. Its characters are linked by blood, coincidence and by the way their lives seem parallel. Themes emerge: the deaths of fathers, the resentments of children, the failure of early promise, the way all plans and ambitions can be undermined by sudden and astonishing events. Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" was also a group of interlinked Los Angeles stories, and both films illustrate former district attorney Vincent Bugliosi's observation in Till Death Do Us Part that personal connections in L.A. have a way of snaking around barriers of class, wealth and geography.

The actors here are all swinging for the fences, heedless of image or self-protective restraint. Here are Tom Cruise as a loathsome stud, Jason Robards looking barely alive, William H. Macy as a pathetic loser, Melora Walters as a despairing daughter, Julianne Moore as an unloving wife, Michael Bowen as a browbeating father. Some of these people are melting down because of drugs or other reasons; a few, like a cop played by John C. Reilly and a nurse played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, are caregivers.

The film's opening sequence, narrated by an uncredited Ricky Jay, tells stories of incredible coincidences. One has become a legend of forensic lore; it's about the man who leaps off a roof and is struck by a fatal shotgun blast as he falls past a window before landing in a net that would have saved his life. The gun was fired by his mother, aiming at his father and missing. She didn't know the shotgun was loaded; the son had loaded it some weeks earlier, hoping that eventually one of his parents would shoot the other. All allegedly true.

This sequence suggests a Ricky Jay TV special, illustrating weird coincidences. But it is more than simply amusing. It sets up the theme of the film, which shows people earnestly and single-mindedly immersed in their lives, hopes and values, as if their best-laid plans were not vulnerable to the chaotic interruptions of the universe. It's humbling to learn that existence doesn't revolve around us; worse to learn it revolves around nothing.

Many of the characters are involved in television, and their lives reflect on one another. Robards plays a dying tycoon who produces many shows. Philip Baker Hall, also dying, is a game show host. Cruise is Robards' son, Frank "T.J." Mackey, the star of infomercials about how to seduce women; his macho hotel ballroom seminars could have been scripted by Andrew Dice Clay. Walters is Hall's daughter, who doesn't believe anything he says. Melinda Dillon is Hall's wife, who might have been happier without his compulsion for confession. Macy plays "former quiz kid Donnie Smith," now a drunk with a bad job in sales who dreams that orthodontics could make him attractive to a burly bartender. Jeremy Blackman plays a bright young quiz kid on Hall's program. Bowen plays his father, a tyrant who drives him to excel.

The connections are like a game of psychological pickup sticks. Robards alienated Cruise; Hall alienated Dillon, Bowen is alienating Blackman. The power of TV has not spared Robards or Hall from death. Childhood success left Macy unprepared for life and may be doing the same thing for Blackman. Both Hall and Robards have employees (a producer, a nurse) who love them more than their families do. Both Robards and Hall cheated on their wives. And around and around.

And there are other stories with their own connections. The cop, played by Reilly, is like a fireman rushing to scenes of emotional turmoil. His need to help is so great that he falls instantly in love with the pathetic drug user played by Walters; her need is more visible to him than her crime. Later, he encounters Macy in the middle of a ridiculous criminal situation brought about to finance braces for his teeth.

There are big scenes here for the actors. One comes as Cruise's cocky TV stud disintegrates in the face of cross-examination from a TV reporter (April Grace). He has another big scene at Robards' deathbed. Hall (a favorite actor of Anderson's since "Hard Eight") also disintegrates on TV; he's unable to ask, instead of answer, questions. Moore's breakdown in a pharmacy is parallel to Walters' nervousness with the cops: Both women are trying to appear functional while their systems scream because of drugs.

All of these threads converge, in one way or another, upon an event there is no way for the audience to anticipate. This event is not "cheating," as some critics have argued, because the prologue fully prepares the way for it, as do some subtle references to Exodus. It works like the hand of God, reminding us of the absurdity of daring to plan. And yet plan we must, because we are human, and because sometimes our plans work out.

"Magnolia" is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy. At three hours it is even operatic in length, as its themes unfold, its characters strive against the dying of the light, and the great wheel of chance rolls on toward them.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.0/10 (78,948 votes) Top 250: #216

SOMB 499 rank - #84

Ranked highest by Suckered You and Derry Dukes (#2)

#019 Hoop Dreams (1994) 17 Votes, 4481 points One #1 vote
Steve James
Running time - 170 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Documentary / Sport
Original language English

Writing Credits
Steve James, Frederick Marx

Cast
William Gates ... Himself
Arthur Agee ... Himself
Emma Gates ... Herself (William's mother)
Curtis Gates ... Himself (William's brother)
Sheila Agee ... Herself (Arthur's mother)
Arthur 'Bo' Agee ... Himself (Arthur's father)
Earl Smith ... Himself (Talent scout)

Academy Awards:
Nominated Best Film Editing

Other awards
Won: Sundance Film Festival Audience Award Documentary
Nominated: Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Documentary

Roger Ebert / July 8, 2001

There is a point in ''Hoop Dreams'' where the story, about two inner-city kids who dream of playing pro basketball, comes to a standstill while the mother of one of them addresses herself directly to the camera.

''Do you all wonder sometime how I am living?'' asks Sheila Agee. ''How my children survive, and how they're living? It's enough to really make people want to go out there and just lash out and hurt somebody.''

Yes, we have wondered. Her family is living on $268 a month in aid; when her son Arthur turned 18, his $100 payment was cut off, although he was still in high school. Their gas and electricity have been turned off in the winter. The family uses a camp lantern for light.

Arthur cannot graduate from Marshall, his Chicago high school, without transfer credits from St. Joseph's in suburban Westchester--the suburban school that recruited him, dropped him, and won't release the transcripts until $1,300 in back tuition is paid. Since this debt would not exist if scouts had not found Arthur on a playground and offered him a scholarship, there is irony there. The rich school reaches into the city, not to help worthy students, but to find good basketball players. If they don't make the grade, they're thrown back in the pond. But then it's payback time. Arthur becomes a star at Marshall and helps them finish third in the state. St. Joseph's is eliminated earlier in the playoffs. And William Gates, the other kid who, as an eighth-grader, was recruited by the school, has missed months of playing time because of injuries. When Arthur plays in the state semifinals at the University of Illinois, both Gates and his coach, Gene Pingatore, have to sit in the crowd.

No screenwriter would dare write this story; it is drama and melodrama, packaged with outrage and moments that make you want to cry. ''Hoop Dreams'' (1994) has the form of a sports documentary, but along the way it becomes a revealing and heartbreaking story about life in America. When the filmmakers began, they planned to make a 30-minute film about eighth-graders being recruited from inner-city playgrounds to play for suburban schools. Their film eventually encompassed six years, involved 250 hours of footage, and found a reversal of fortunes they could not possibly have anticipated.

Early in the film, we see the young men get up at 5:30 a.m. for the 90-minute commute to the suburbs. One of them talks about St. Joseph's with its ''carpets and flowers.'' From the beginning, William Gates is more naturally gifted than Arthur Agee. He stars on the varsity as a freshman, while Arthur plays for the freshman team. William is quick, brilliant, confident; Pingatore compares him with his great discovery Isiah Thomas, the NBA star who was also recruited by St. Joseph's. Both students arrive at the school reading at a fourth-grade level, but Gates quickly makes up the lost time, suggesting that his neighborhood schools were to blame. Arthur makes slower progress, in classrooms and on the court. ''Coach keeps asking me, 'When you gonna grow?' '' he smiles. He is eventually dropped from the squad, loses his scholarship, and after two months out of school enrolls at Marshall.

Gates seems headed for stardom, but injuries strike him. A ligament is repaired in his junior year. Torn cartilage is removed. Maybe he returns to the court too soon. He injures himself again. He loses confidence. Meanwhile, at Marshall, Arthur grows into his game and leads the team to a brilliant season. But the spotlight is still on Gates. He attends the Nike All-American Summer Camp at Princeton, where promising prep stars are scrutinized by famous coaches (Joey Meyer, Bobby Knight) and lectured by Dick Vitale (a showboat) and Spike Lee (a harsh realist). Arthur spends that summer working at Pizza Hut at $3.35 an hour. Then comes the senior year where Arthur leads his team to the state finals.

Both young men are recruited by colleges. Gates, despite his injuries, gets an offer from Marquette that promises him a four-year scholarship even if he can never play. He takes it. Agee, whose grades are marginal, ends up at Mineral Area Junior College in Missouri. There are eight black students on the campus. Seven of them are basketball players, and live in the same house. If his grades are good enough, he can use this as a springboard to a four-year school (and he does).

The sports stories develop headlong suspense, but the real heart of the film involves the scenes filmed in homes, playgrounds and churches in the inner city. There are parallel dramas involving fathers: Arthur's leaves the family after 20 years, gets involved with drugs, spends time in jail, returns, testifies in song at a Sunday service, but does not quite regain his son's trust. William's father has been out of the picture for years; he runs an auto garage, is friendly when he sees his son occasionally. The mothers are the key players in both families--and we also glimpse an extended family network that lends encouragement and support.

Every time I see ''Hoop Dreams,'' I end up thinking of Arthur's mother Sheila as the film's heroine. During the course of the film her husband leaves and gets into trouble, she suffers chronic back pain, she loses a job and goes on welfare, Arthur is dropped by St. Joseph's--and then, in the film's most astonishing revelation, we discover she has graduated as a nurse's assistant, with the top grades in her class.

There are moments in the film where the camera simply watches, impassively, as we arrive at our own conclusions. One is when Arthur and his parents visit St. Joseph's to get his transcripts, and are told they need to come up with a payment plan. ''Tuition provides 90 percent of our income,'' a school official says. Yes, but the school was not looking for tuition when it recruited Arthur; it was looking for a basketball player, and when it didn't get the player it expected, it should have had the grace to forgive him his debts.

Coach Pingatore and the school were parties to a suit to prevent the film from being released theatrically. The school comes off looking pragmatic and cold, but then ''Hoop Dreams'' reflects a reality that is true all over America, and not just at St. Joseph's. As for Pingatore, I think he comes across pretty well. He has his dream, too, of finding another Isiah Thomas. He wants to win. His record shows he is a good coach. He gives William sound advice, although perhaps he's too eager to see him return after his injury. William tells the filmmakers that the coach thinks sports are all-important, but I covered high school sports for two years and never met a coach who didn't. After saying farewell to William, Pingatore observes ''One goes out the door, and another one comes in the door. That's what it's all about.'' There is sad poetry there.

The movie was produced by the team of director Steve James, cinematographer Peter Gilbert and editor Frederick Marx. They benefitted from a remarkable intersection of opportunity and luck. They could not have known when they started how perfectly the experiences of Agee and Gates would generate the story they ended up telling. Over the years, there have been updates on their progress. William played for Marquette for four years and graduated; he did social work while supporting his wife's college education, then planned to return to law school. Arthur got into Arkansas State, played two years, has done some movie acting, has formed a foundation to help inner city kids get to college. Neither one played for the NBA. (Of the 500,000 kids playing high school basketball in any given year, only 25 do.) But their hoop dreams did come true.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 7.9/10 (6,974 votes)

SOMB 499 rank - #302

Ranked highest by Johnny Bravo (#1)

Why are there 2 #20s?

#018 American Beauty (1999) 17 Votes, 4457 points
Sam Mendes
Running time - 122 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits
Alan Ball

Cast
Kevin Spacey ... Lester Burnham
Annette Bening ... Carolyn Burnham
Thora Birch ... Jane Burnham
Wes Bentley ... Ricky Fitts
Mena Suvari ... Angela Hayes
Chris Cooper ... Col. Frank Fitts, USMC

Academy Awards:
Won Best Actor in a Leading Role (Kevin Spacey), Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Writing - Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Nominated Best Actress in a Leading Role (Annette Bening), Best Editing, Best Music - Original Score

Other awards
Won: BAFTA Film Award Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Film, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Kevin Spacey), Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Annette Bening). Golden Globe Best Director - Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Make Up/Hair, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Wes Bentley), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Thora Birch, Mena Suvari), Best Production Design, Best Screenplay - Original, Best Sound, David Lean Award for Direction. Golden Globe Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Kevin Spacey), Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (Annette Bening)

BY ROGER EBERT / September 24, 1999

"American Beauty" is a comedy because we laugh at the absurdity of the hero's problems. And a tragedy because we can identify with his failure--not the specific details, but the general outline.

The movie is about a man who fears growing older, losing the hope of true love and not being respected by those who know him best. If you never experience those feelings, take out a classified ad. People want to take lessons from you.

Lester Burnham, the hero of "American Beauty," is played by Kevin Spacey as a man who is unloved by his daughter, ignored by his wife and unnecessary at work. "I'll be dead in a year," he tells us in almost the first words of the movie. "In a way, I'm dead already." The movie is the story of his rebellion.

We meet his wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), so perfect her garden shears are coordinated with her footwear. We meet his daughter Jane (Thora Birch), who is saving up for breast implants even though augmentation is clearly unnecessary; perhaps her motivation is not to become more desirable to men, but to make them miserable about what they can't have.

"Both my wife and daughter think I'm this chronic loser," Lester complains. He is right. But they are not without their reasons. At an agonizing family dinner, Carolyn plays Mantovanian music that mocks every mouthful; the music is lush and reassuring, and the family is angry and silent. When Lester criticizes his daughter's attitude, she points out correctly that he has hardly spoken to her in months.

Everything changes for Lester the night he is dragged along by his wife to see their daughter perform as a cheerleader. There on the floor, engrossed in a sub-Fosse pompon routine, he sees his angel: Angela (Mena Suvari), his daughter's high-school classmate. Is it wrong for a man in his 40s to lust after a teenage girl? Any honest man understands what a complicated question this is. Wrong morally, certainly, and legally. But as every woman knows, men are born with wiring that goes directly from their eyes to their genitals, bypassing the higher centers of thought. They can disapprove of their thoughts, but they cannot stop themselves from having them.

"American Beauty" is not about a Lolita relationship, anyway. It's about yearning after youth, respect, power and, of course, beauty. The moment a man stops dreaming is the moment he petrifies inside and starts writing snarfy letters disapproving of paragraphs like the one above. Lester's thoughts about Angela are impure, but not perverted; he wants to do what men are programmed to do, with the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

Angela is not Lester's highway to bliss, but she is at least a catalyst for his freedom. His thoughts, and the discontent they engender, blast him free from years of emotional paralysis, and soon he makes a cheerful announcement at the funereal dinner table: "I quit my job, told my boss to - - - - himself and blackmailed him for $60,000." Has he lost his mind? Not at all. The first thing he spends money on is perfectly reasonable: a bright red 1970 Pontiac Firebird.

Carolyn and Jane are going through their own romantic troubles. Lester finds out Carolyn is cheating when he sees her with her lover in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant (where he has a job he likes). Jane is being videotaped by Ricky (Wes Bentley), the boy next door, who has a strange light in his eyes. Ricky's dad (Chris Cooper) is a former Marine who tests him for drugs, taking a urine sample every six months; Ricky plays along to keep the peace until he can leave home.

All of these emotional threads come together during one dark and stormy night, when there is a series of misunderstandings so bizarre they belong in a screwball comedy. And at the end, somehow, improbably, the film snatches victory from the jaws of defeat for Lester, its hero. Not the kind of victory you'd get in a feel-good movie, but the kind where you prove something important, if only to yourself.

"American Beauty" is not as dark or twisted as "Happiness," last year's attempt to shine a light under the rock of American society. It's more about sadness and loneliness than about cruelty or inhumanity. Nobody is really bad in this movie, just shaped by society in such a way they can't be themselves, or feel joy.

The performances all walk the line between parody and simple realism; Thora Birch and Wes Bentley are the most grounded, talking in the tense, flat voices of kids who can't wait to escape their homes. Bening's character, a real estate agent who chants self-help mantras, confuses happiness with success--bad enough if you're successful, depressing if you're not.

And Spacey, an actor who embodies intelligence in his eyes and voice, is the right choice for Lester Burnham. He does reckless and foolish things in this movie, but he doesn't deceive himself; he knows he's running wild--and chooses to, burning up the future years of an empty lifetime for a few flashes of freedom. He may have lost everything by the end of the film, but he's no longer a loser.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.5/10 (187,024 votes) Top 250: #35

SOMB 499 rank - #34

Ranked highest by Pinkerton and Capt. Midnight (#2)

the way this thing is going, Kevin Spacey must be the SOMBs all time fav actor, of the 90s

Where did it all go wrong? K-Pax?

#017 L.A. Confidential (1997) 18 Votes, 4638 points
Curtis Hanson
Running time - 138 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Crime / Mystery / Thriller
Original language English

Writing Credits
James Ellroy, Brian Helgeland, Curtis Hanson

Cast
Kevin Spacey ... Det. Sgt. Jack Vincennes
Russell Crowe ... Officer Wendell 'Bud' White
Guy Pearce ... Det .Lt. Edmund Jennings 'Ed' Exley
James Cromwell ... Capt. Dudley Liam Smith
Kim Basinger ... Lynn Bracken
David Strathairn ... Pierce Morehouse Patchett
Danny DeVito ... Sid Hudgens

Academy Awards:
Won Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Kim Basinger), Best Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Nominated Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music - Original Dramatic Score, Best Picture, Best Sound

Other awards
Won: BAFTA Film Award Best Editing, Best Sound Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Kim Basinger)
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film, Best Make Up/Hair, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Kevin Spacey), Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Kim Basinger), Best Production Design, Best Screenplay - Adapted, David Lean Award for Direction, Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm Golden Globe Best Director - Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Original Score - Motion Picture, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

BY ROGER EBERT / September 19, 1997

Confidential was a key magazine of the 1950s, a monthly that sold millions of copies with its seamy exposes of celebrity drugs and sex. I found it on my dad's night table and read it breathlessly, the stories of reefer parties, multiple divorces, wife-swapping and ``leading men'' who liked to wear frilly undergarments. The magazine sank in a sea of lawsuits, but it created a genre; the trash tabloids are its direct descendants.

Watching ``L.A. Confidential,'' I felt some of the same insider thrill that ``Confidential'' provided: The movie, like the magazine, is based on the belief that there are a million stories in the city, and all of them will raise your eyebrows and curl your hair. The opening is breathlessly narrated by a character named Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), who publishes Hush-Hush magazine and bribes a cop named Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) to set up celebrity arrests; Jack is photographed with his luckless victims, and is famous as the guy who caught Robert Mitchum smoking marijuana.

It's Christmas Eve, 1953, and Bing Crosby is crooning on the radio as cops pick up cartons of free booze to fuel their holiday parties. Back at the precinct headquarters, we meet three officers who, in their way, represent the choices ahead for the LAPD. Vincennes, star-struck, lives for his job as technical adviser to ``Badge of Honor,'' a ``Dragnet''-style television show. Bud White (Russell Crowe) is an aggressive young cop who is willing to accommodate the department's relaxed ethics. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a straight arrow, his rimless glasses making him look a little like a tough accountant--one who works for the FBI, maybe.

Ed is an ambitious careerist who wants to do everything by the book. His captain, Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), kindly explains that an officer must be prepared to lie, cheat and steal--all in the name, of course, of being sure the guilty go to jail. Capt. Smith likes to call his men ``good lads,'' and seems so wise we can almost believe him as he administers little quizzes and explains that advancement depends on being prepared to give the ``right answers.'' ``L.A. Confidential'' is immersed in the atmosphere and lore of film noir, but it doesn't seem like a period picture--it believes its noir values and isn't just using them for decoration. It's based on a novel by James Ellroy, that lanky, sardonic poet of Los Angeles sleaze. Its director, Curtis Hanson (``Bad Influence,'' ``The Hand That Rocks the Cradle''), weaves a labyrinthine plot, but the twists are always clear because the characters are so sharply drawn; we don't know who's guilty or innocent, but we know who should be.

The plot involves a series of crimes that take place in the early days of the new year. Associates of Mickey Cohen, the L.A. mob boss, become victims of gangland-style executions. There's a massacre at an all-night coffee shop; one of the victims is a crooked cop, and three black youths are immediately collared as suspects, although there's suspicion that someone else is behind the crime.

We meet a millionaire pornographer named Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn). He runs a high-class call girl operation in which aspiring young actresses are given plastic surgery to make them resemble movie stars; one of them is Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), who, it is said, has been ``cut'' to look like Veronica Lake. Bud White, the Crowe character, tracks her down, thinking she'll have info about the coffee-shop massacre. (``You're the first man in months who hasn't told me I look just like Veronica Lake.'') At this point, perhaps an hour into the movie, I felt inside a Raymond Chandler novel: not only because of the atmosphere and the dialogue, but also because there seemed to be no way all of these characters and events could be drawn together into a plot that made sense. Not that I would have cared; I enjoy film noir for the journey as much as the destination.

But Hanson and his co-writer, Brian Helgeland, do pull the strands together, and along the way there's an unlikely alliance between two cops who begin as enemies. The film's assumption is that although there's small harm in free booze and a little graft, there are some things a police officer simply cannot do and look himself in the mirror in the morning.

The film is steeped in L.A. lore; Ellroy is a student of the city's mean streets. It captures the town just at that postwar moment when it was beginning to become self-conscious about its myth. Joseph Wambaugh writes in one of his books that he is constantly amazed by the hidden threads that connect the high to the low, the royalty to the vermin, in Los Angeles--where a hooker is only a role from stardom, and vice, as they say, versa.

One of the best scenes takes place in the Formosa Cafe, a restaurant much frequented in the 1940s by unlikely boothfellows. Cops turn up to question Johnny Stompanato, a hood who may know something about the Cohen killings. His date gives them some lip. ``A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker,'' Exley tells her, but Jack Vincennes knows better: ``She is Lana Turner,'' he says with vast amusement.

One of the reasons ``L.A. Confidential'' is so good, why is deserves to be mentioned with ``Chinatown,'' is that it's not just plot and atmosphere. There are convincing characters here, not least Kim Basinger's hooker, whose quiet line, ``I thought I was helping you,'' is one of the movie's most revealing moments. Russell Crowe (``Virtuosity'' and ``Romper Stomper'') and Guy Pearce (``The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'') are two Australian actors who here move convincingly into starmaking roles, and Kevin Spacey uses perfect timing to suggest his character's ability to move between two worlds while betraying both (he has a wonderful scene where he refuses to cooperate with a department investigation--until they threaten his job on the TV show).

Behind everything, setting the moral tone and pulling a lot of the plot threads, is the angular captain, seemingly so helpful. James Cromwell, who was the kindly farmer in ``Babe,'' has the same benevolent smile in this role, but the eyes are cold, and in his values can be seen, perhaps, the road ahead to Rodney King. ``L.A. Confidential'' is seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted, and one of the best films of the year.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.4/10 (111,265 votes) Top 250: #55

SOMB 499 rank - #40

Ranked highest by Kmac (#1)

#016 Ed Wood (1994) 22 Votes, 4804 points
Tim Burton
Running time - 127 min
Country of origin USA
Genre Biography / Comedy / Drama
Original language English

Writing Credits
Rudolph Grey, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski

Cast
Johnny Depp ... Ed Wood
Martin Landau ... Bela Lugosi
Sarah Jessica Parker ... Dolores Fuller
Patricia Arquette ... Kathy O'Hara
Vincent D'Onofrio ... Orson Welles
Bill Murray ... Bunny Breckinridge

Academy Awards:
Won Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Martin Landau), Best Makeup

Other awards
Won: Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Martin Landau)
Nominated: BAFTA Film Award Best Make Up/Hair, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Martin Landau) Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm Golden Globe Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical (Johnny Depp)

BY ROGER EBERT / October 7, 1994

Edward D. Wood Jr. must have been the Will Rogers of filmmaking: He never directed a shot he didn't like. It takes a special weird genius to be voted the Worst Director of All Time, a title that Wood has earned by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame of every scene of every film he shot that he was blind to hilarious blunders, stumbling ineptitude, and acting so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would not have been enough to make him a legend; it was his love of film, sneaking through, that pushes him over the top.

Wood's most famous films are "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (during which his star, Bela Lugosi, died and was replaced by a double with a cloak pulled over his face), and "Glen or Glenda," in which Wood himself played the transvestite title roles. It was widely known even at the time that Wood himself was an enthusiastic transvestite, and when Tim Burton, director of the "Batman" movies, announced a project named "Ed Wood," I assumed it would be some kind of a camp sendup, maybe a cross between "Rocky Horror" and "Sunset Boulevard." I assumed wrong. What Burton has made is a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films - in which a great title, a has-been star and a lurid ad campaign were enough to get bookings for some of the oddest films ever made. It was a decade when there were still lots of drive-in movie theaters, cut-price fleapits and small-town bijous that thrived on grade Z double features.

The people who made many of those films may have been hucksters and conmen, but they were not devoid of a sense of humor, and often their movies had more life and energy than their betters. America's theaters hadn't been centralized and computerized, and you couldn't book 2,000 screens with a single keystroke, and Ed Woods could thrive.

Burton's career has always shown a fondness for touching outsiders, like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Jack Skellington (the lonely star of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). In "Ed Wood," he gives us a hero who is not merely an outsider, but one who attracts even more desperate cases to himself. Played with warmth and enthusiasm by Johnny Depp, Wood is a guy who simply must make movies - and who is so bedazzled by Hollywood legend that he mistakes poor Bela Lugosi, long past his prime and mired in drug addiction, as a star.

There are others who fall into his orbit: Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray), a camp queen who would have stood out like a sore thumb in anyone else's pictures, but fit right into Wood's. And the amazing Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), amazing primarily for being able to find employment for no apparent talent. And Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele), physically inept but gifted in Wood's eyes. And Vampira (Lisa Marie), the midnight movie hostess whose cleavage always looked clammy. And then Lugosi (a brilliant performance by Martin Landau), as a man who was half Wood's headliner, half his patient. When Wood assembled his casts, they looked like a cartoon portrait from Mad magazine.

In Burton's version, Wood is a man who not only accepts reality, but celebrates it. Far from being secretive about his love of dressing in women's clothes, he treats it as the most natural thing in the world, putting on an angora sweater, skirt and high heels to help himself relax while directing a scene. "Are you a homosexual?" he's asked. "No!" he replies cheerfully. "I'm a transvestite!" Depp plays Wood as a man deliriously happy to be making movies. He rarely makes two takes of the same shot because the first one always looks great to him. (In one take Tor Johnson misses the door and walks into a wall, shaking the set, but when the cameraman in amazement asks Wood if he doesn't want another shot, he replies thoughtfully, "You know, in actuality Lobo would have to struggle with that problem every day").

Wood's partner in his uncertain career is his long-suffering fiancee Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), whose misfortune is to view his situation clearly ("I see the usual gang of misfits and dope addicts are here"). She bravely tries to deal with his cross-dressing, however, and pitches in to act along with the usual gang (Wood's salaries were so low and infrequent that his actors bordered on volunteers).

I am uncertain how much of the movie is based on actual fact, and how much has been invented by Burton and his writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. But I relished the process by which Wood's project "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" became "Plan 9 from Outer Space" after he raised the money from a church group which objected to grave-robbing, in the title, anyway.

There is a wonderful scene where Wood grows angered when the church leaders try to meddle with his vision, and stomps into Musso and Frank's legendary grill room on Hollywood Boulevard, wearing women's clothes and a wig. he spots Orson Welles (Vincent D'Onofrio) alone at a booth, turns to him for encouragement, and gets it - along with the movie's funniest line of dialogue.

The movie's black and white photography convincingly recaptures the look and feel of 1950s sleaze, including some of the least convincing special effects in movie history. There are also running gags involving Wood's ability to write almost any piece of stock footage into almost any script.

At the heart of the movie is Wood's friendship with Lugosi, a man he truly adores, and who comes to depend on him. We see Lugosi alone and lonely in a flimsy little tract house, inhabiting the deepening gloom of his obscurity and addiction (his first scene in the movie shows him trying on a coffin for size), and Wood is able to lift the gloom, if only briefly, in a final series of roles which gave him double immortality: As the star of some of the best horror movies ever made, and then of some of the worst.

Amazon.com link
IMDB link - 8.0/10 (43,844 votes) Top 250: #195

SOMB 499 rank - #108

Ranked highest by RSC (#2)

One actor has five films left.

Buscemi?

Oui.

Five more tonight hopefully.

Beat me to it....so Ghost World is yet to come?!?!

The numbering is still off.

Mink, Mr. Pink, Buddy Holly, Carl, Shut the Fuck Up Donny

no it isn't.

Movie Poll parody entries are almost as annoying as parody threads.

Also in Desperado earlier. Does that beat Spacey?

Look again.

Its still showing up that way, even after I refreshed the page.

Also The Wedding Singer, The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink.

Which one looks like it got #20.

It should be
20 Jumanji
19 Magnolia
18 Hoop Dreams
etc.

I give up, someone explain.

I mean Jumanji, the top 20 films of the decade, Jumanji.