Look into your heart!

Was 1990 really the 90s, or was it just the hangover from the 80s? While you ponder that, consider that Nirvana and Tarantino were still a year away and a little show called Seinfeld was confusing a tiny audience before supplanting Cheers as NBC’s big sitcom property. There was also the little matter of Gulf War I, which bears the same relationship to Gulf War II as Caddyshack, Airplane!, Chinatown do to their respective sequels.

So, cast your mind back 20 years – here are the Best Movies of 1990:

25. Dick Tracy

Flawed? Absolutely… but like almost everything else Warren Beatty is involved with (Town and Country notwithstanding) there are fascinating bits to be found. Part of the first wave of comic book films in the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman, Dick Tracy takes it’s color scheme straight from the comics. The set design is mesmerizing, with scenes that seem as much from the paintings of Charles Sheeler as from Chester Gould’s classic strip. Then there are the plethora of heavily made-up star cameos by the likes of Pacino and DeNiro. Madonna is heavily made-up too but unfortunately it’s no cameo and not much of a performance. Yet it’s not enough to sink a diverting film. Don’t let the atrocious trailer (below) put you off:

24. Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Not a patch on the original, this sequel has it’s own charms as a sort of Airport ‘90 on roids. Willis is back in smirking form as New York cop John McClane and this time he’s fighting terrorists in a pre-9/11 airport. One plus is a bigger role for Bonnie Bedelia as McClane’s wife Holly, and some pretty gnarly plane crashes. Director Renny Harlin rode this film to next-big-thing status despite following it up with Andrew “Dice” Clay’s debut Ford Fairlane, and went on to a brief marriage to Gena Davis. Here’s Bruce Willis fighting the dad from TV’s Good Times:

23. The Witches

Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of  Roald Dahl’s book captures the macabre grotesquerie at the heart of most of the best children’s tales from the likes of the Brothers Grimm. Anjelica Huston is majestically wicked as the head witch presiding over a witches convention at a nondescript hotel which two boys have the distinct misfortune of stumbling into.

22. Days of Being Wild

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai took viewers back thirty years to 1960 for a tumultuous film that explores the ennui of a guy named Yuddy who is too preoccupied with searching for his mother to choose between the two women in is life, one a glamourpuss and the other more shy and down to earth.

21. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Almodovar was still in his shock and awe period with this one, a film that asks the question “Who’s hotter?” Victoria Abril or Antonio Banderas? By any normal standards Banderas is a nutball stalker yet Almodovar works the audiences and Abril’s sympathy until it seems perfectly reasonable that she should fall for the man holding her captive.

20. Total Recall

Philip K. Dick likely never imagined that his highly cerebral sci-fi would  become re-purposed after his death as a slew of Hollywood action flicks but that’s exactly what happened. While this isn’t the best of the bunch it’s hardly the worst, with the mind-bending plot mostly left intact and augmented by Gov. Ah-nuld’s spectacular sparring with up-and-coming Sharon Stone.  Paul Verhoeven is in the directors chair for this one, but it’s rather tame considering what he gets away with in Robocop and Starship Troopers (not to mention Showgirls). Even so he manages to sneak in enough subversion and winks to make for an entertaining popcorn ride.

19. White Hunter, Black Heart

Typically maligned by critics, this film dates from a period in which Clint Eastwood’s directorial efforts were seen as an actor’s indulgence rather than a career in itself. What makes this so interesting is the fact that Eastwood tips his hand to a director and type of film he admired – John Huston – going so far as to play the Huston-based character. Yet as a director his one-take philosophy would seem at odds with Huston’s seeming nonchalance towards schedules and the orderly process of a shoot. Set around the filming of an African Queen-like epic Eastwood amiably chews the scenery and delivers more dialogue in each scene than in his entire spaghetti western career. This also previewed Eastwood’s coming interest in the underbelly of tough guy types like Huston, as the realities of Africa intrude on his fantasy of big game hunting. Here Clint and Lost’s Lapidus discuss the war with a not very nice lady:

18. Tremors

A superior b-movie if there ever was one, Tremors advances tongue in cheek across a desert landscape populated by tough, sometimes dim, but always determined characters who – as it turns out – may be wormfood for giant carnivorous slimies. This clever take on the cycle of life has great performances all around from Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward and Family Ties dad Michael Gross cast brilliantly against type as a survivalist. The special effects are on the right side of cheesy and assured directing by Ron Underwood keeps things tense and lively.

17. Blue Steel

Way before she became the first woman director to win an Oscar Kathryn Bigelow cut her teeth on clever thrillers like this and Near Dark. Jamie Lee Curtis has one of her best dramatic roles as a rookie cop who has to use her weapon on day one and pays a strange and twisted price for it at the hands of loony Ron Silver.

16. Wild at Heart

A letdown perhaps after Blue Velvet but Nicholas Cage’s overacting finds a willing partner in David Lynch’s embrace of the strange. Mixed in are Laura Dern and her mom, Harry Dean Stanton, Elvis, and the creepiest Willem Dafoe performance ever. And that’s saying something. Also, Jack Nance discourses on dogs.

15. Edward Scissorhands

A gothic fish out of water tale that set the “Tim Burton” tone to follow and established Johnny Depp as a rising star beyond being a 21 Jump Street pinup. A surprisingly touching story about a mechanical boy who finds himself in a plastic fantasyland suburb, taken in by a family that loves him even as they are baffled by him. The part of the film that works less well is the love subplot – Winona Ryder and Depp have good chemistry but her blond hair is a distraction, as is a newly muscled Anthony Michael Hall as her lout of a boyfriend. Still the set design and imagination is amazing and Vincent Price is magnificent in his last role as Edward’s father/inventor.

14. The Freshman

Andrew Bergman’s The Freshman is a movie-lover’s comedy, the centerpiece being Marlon Brando’s delicious send-up of his own iconic performance in the Godfather. Along for the ride are Bruno Kirby in excellent form and Matthew Broderick, before his fussy naif routine became ossified on Broadway.

13. Ghost

Is this the least likely film for one of Airplane!’s directors to have been involved with? A genuinely romantic delight, Demi Moore is at her most luminously beautiful as Patrick Swayze’s widow. Swayze makes good use of his sensitive brand of masculinity while Tony Goldwyn corners the market on best friends who bear watching. Even so the movie is nearly stolen by Whoopi Goldberg as the fake medium who discovers a very real ability to see dead folks.

12. House Party

The Hudlin brothers created a warm, funny slice of life with House Party which was a surprise Sundance discovery and box office hit.  Though it could be seen as a late entry in the 80s teen movie cycle, it also foreshadowed goofy fare like the Harold & Kumar series that sandwich a dollop of social commentary in between the good times and gags. Neither stars Kid, nor indeed Play, would find much success later on but Robin Harris, Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell and the Hudlins would all go on to bigger and better in the subsequent decade.

11. Reversal of Fortune

Not to be confused with the Bette Midler/Shelley Long epic Outrageous Fortune , this tells the true story of Klaus and Sunny Von Bulow who, if you lived in New York in the 80s like me, were all the rage. Specifically, did Klaus murder Sunny? Jeremy Irons gives a deliciously icy performance that’s expertly matched by Glenn Close and Hollywood conservative Ron Silver shows what ac-TING! is all about by playing lefty lawyer Alan Deshowitz to the hilt.

10. Cry-Baby

There is no question that John Waters began to mainstream his most outlaw ideas by the late 80s, yet his subversive kinkiness still gave a kick to more supposedly “friendly” fare like Hairspray and this film, which along with Edward Scissorhands helped to established Johnny Depp as a young actor willing to take chances. The film itself is a loving send-up of 50s rebel flicks – in some ways it’s a much more successful and less spoofy take on Top Secret! complete with great musical numbers – could a Broadway musical version be far behind?

9. Internal Affairs

Not to be confused with Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs, this too is a cop drama thriller but it features top notch performances by Andy Garcia and Richard Gere at his scuzziest. The bonus is a Baldwin brother and Roseanne’s sister in meaty supporting roles, and a top notch script aided by atmospheric direction from Mike Figgis.

8. Miami Blues

George Armitage has never attained the renown of fellow Roger Corman alums such as Jonathan Demme, but then he only has a handful of films to his credit of which this and Grosse Point Blank are easily the best. This is also one of Alec Baldwin’s best films, an underrated piece of work that harks back to 70s genre-bending pulp. Baldwin a charming violence-prone con man, Jennifer Jason Leigh is the sweet woman who loves him, and Fred Ward is the grizzled cop on his trail. Funny, fast-paced and surprising, this is an often overlooked gem.

7. King of New York

Could there be a more perfect combination of sensibilities than Abel Ferrara and Christopher Walken? This movie finds them both in peak form, with Walken playing a drug dealer just out of the pen and looking to reestablish himself. Lawrence Fishburne is terrific as his pal, and David Caruso reminds us why he was once considered an actor.

6. Pump Up the Volume

Oh Samantha Mathis, what happened? Christian Slater builds on his superior Heathers cred with the now-quaint tale of a teen with a pirate radio station. I can confirm that the soundtrack was standard equipment in many a freshman college dorm room even if the movie is a bit too much Footloose for it’s own good. Fun either way and Samantha Mathis, come back!

5. The Grifters

This is pitch black neo-noir with a great Oscar-nominated cast including Angelica Huston and Annette Benning along with John Cusack. Psychologically acute and satisfyingly twisty, this is one of Stephen Frears’ very best films and a great pulp classic. True to the feel of the Jim Thompson book on which is based, it also has a compelling sense of existing outside of time.

4. Europa Europa

A true story-based Holocaust film that is riveting and unforgettable – much more so than The Piano in my opinion. Much of this is due to a great performance by Marco Hofschneider as a young Jewish boy who so thoroughly hides his identity that he becomes a Hitler Youth member and is held up as a paragon of Aryan virtue. Julie Delpy is simply fantastic as the young woman who wants to fool around for the Fuhrer.

3. La Femme Nikita

At this point it’s hard to get past the endless strip mining of this material (a lousy American remake starring Bridget Fonda, not one but two TV shows) and director Luc Besson’s current status as the French Jerry Bruckheimer. Yet this film was a riveting blast of smart action upon release, prefiguring Tarantino’s work just a year later in it’s artfully staged violence, clever plotting, and woman as-action-hero stance.

2. Miller’s Crossing

The Coen Brothers followed the freneticism of their first two films with the more subdued but equally impressive gangster drama that is Miller’s Crossing. Stylistically audacious, this is the first cinematic taste of their thirties fetish with dialogue that crackles like His Girl Friday. Still the issues of allegiance and identity are explored through modern prisms of sexuality and creed. Gabriel Byrne is at the top of his game as a consigliere who has to think 5 steps ahead. Albert Finney and Jon Polito are evenly matched as rival gang bosses, Marcia Gay Harden is the moll who’s steppin’ out and John Turturro is her conniving weasel of a brother.

1. Goodfellas

The last out and out classic Scorsese flick? It’s beginning to seem that way. Goodfellas is in the top rank of the man’s work, a true story that is alive with vibrancy. As stylized in it’s own way as the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing buy visceral where the Coen’s go cerebral. You can smell the red sauce, the blood, the clean tablecloths. There are so many scene’s of sheer mastery from the tracking shot intro of the mobsters hanging out in the restaurant (“This is Johnny two-times ’cause he said everything two times…” ) to Pesci’s classic “Why am I funny?” to Ray Liotta getting trailed by a chopper. DeNiro does some of his most subtle work here and the control of the material, which span some 25 years, is unerring.

Ted Knight in Caddyshack

The movie industry was in transition in 1980 – away from the auteur-driven seventies golden era and towards the age of the eighties blockbuster. Ringing out the old guard were duds like Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which became shorthand for out-of-control directorial hubris and Robert Altman’s Popeye which made a better soundtrack than a film. Representing the new were high-concept low IQ sequels like the troubled Superman II and the execrable Smokey and The Bandit Part II, each of which were hits out of all proportion to their quality. Kneel before Zod indeed.

However there were plenty of fine films from all over the spectrum in 1980 and here are the 20 that I think are keepers (after the jump) :

20. Foxes

Part of a cycle of bad girl films that also included the more popular but inferior Little Darlings, Foxes is helped by having Jodie Foster in the lead and a delightfully seedy and nihilistic take worthy of L.A., not to mention co-star Cherie Currie of The Runaways. There isn’t much of a plot to speak of, just loose vignettes of drinking, doping and doing it and the parents who are too self-absorbed to care. Enlivened by an era-appropriate cheese and sleaze rock soundtrack.

19. Return of the Secaucus Seven

This is John Sayles first film and it has a warts and all quality consistent with its ultra-low budget. It’s also a charming character study ripped off thanklessly for Lawrence Kasdan’s glib The Big Chill a few years later. The premise is the same, a group of counter-culture inclined pals from the 60s reunite now in their early 30s – aimless and struggling with an adulthood they once mocked. The main cast remains pretty anonymous today but they all give solid natural performances. On the fringes are Clark Gregg as an idealistic politico and David Straithairn as a goofy townie who has more depth than first appears.

18. Caddyshack

Maybe not a great film as a whole but as a collection of riffs it’s pretty dynamite. A sort of battle of the comedy stylings you get Ted Knight doing the classic haughty slow-burn, the great Rodney Dangerfield in a star-making turn as a sort of one-man Marx brother, Chevy Chase doing his louche smug deal, and Bill Murray doing the kind of off-the-wall character work that would be emulated by the likes of Will Ferrell years down the road. And a kick-ass Kenny Loggins song.

17. The Elephant Man

The film that catapulted David Lynch into the mainstream for a brief moment. The Lynchian weirdness is there in the very subject matter and the obsession look in the eye of Anthony Hopkins, as well as the choice to film in lush black and white. Yet it also passes as costume drama of a sort if you put aside the strangely unnerving soundtrack. Produced by Mel Brooks, and not coincidentally featuring a wonderful turn by his wife, Anne Bancroft.

16. Ordinary People
Robert Redford showed his mettle as a director by taking on this tricky film which succeeds for the most part in exploring a young man’s difficulty growing up and adjusting to a terrible family tragedy that is tearing his parents apart. The acting is what puts this over the top with Timothy Hutton rightly praised for his seamless work in the lead, the lovely Elizabeth McGovern as a fellow teen, and Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore who are fantastic as the parents. Moore in particular is as far as she can get from her sunny Mary Richards character on TV – brittle, wounded and wounding it’s a great and brave performance.

15. The Stunt Man

Richard Rush is one of the great almost-was Hollywood directors – praised by Truffaut but with a maddeningly scattershot body of work. At his best though here and to a lesser extent the 1974 cop buddy movie farce Freebie and The Bean his satire was both cutting and prescient. The Stunt Man was actually made in 1978 but languished until Rush could find a studio to release it, just in time for it’s twisted view of the mashup between fiction and reality to find it’s ultimate expression in the election of a b-movie star as President. Peter O’ Toole is the film director who seems to enjoy controller and manipulating everything, including Steve Railsback as a paranoid Vietnam vet pulled into the orbit of the film and leading lady Barbara Hershey. Naturally this entertainingly Machiavellian look at film making was only able to find a cult audience but it’s a cult that endures.

14. My Bodyguard

A sweet quirky tale enlivened by fine performances and well delineated characters. I shudder to think of what someone would do with a remake today – you would lose the charm of Chris Makepeace as the bullied rich kid and the layered menace of Adam Baldwin as his bodyguard for hire. Then there’s a young greaseball named Matt Dillon who has more charisma is his slicked-back hair than Taylor Lautner can muster with his perfectly chiseled abs.

13. Stardust Memories

Considered something of a letdown after Manhattan, Stardust Memories fuses the coldly abstract European experimentation of Interiors with the warm and schticky New York relationship comedy of Annie Hall. The effect can be disorienting and self-indulgent but it’s also fascinating. Woody was accused of treating his fans like dirt for the scenes of hero worship that are clearly played for putdowns but their is as much self-loathing those moments as there is misanthropy. Consider it Woody’s White album, a meandering, frustrating, sometimes brilliant mess.

12. Melvin and Howard

Jonathan Demme broke out of the genre pic ghetto with this delightful retelling of a story that may be true or may be a tall tale. He never judges or pushes the scales on the subject of speculation, the real-life Melvin Dummar who claims to have befriended Howard Hughes when he picked him up as a hitchhiker on a Nevada highway. Paul LeMat is perfect as Dummar, a man who takes his passenger (played to the hilt by Jason Robards) to be a bum until Hughes dies and apparently leaves him $150 million. Or does he? Mary Steenburgen won an Oscar as Dummar’s wife who is desperate to win some dough given the constant financial pressure they find themselves in. A classic.

11. The Shining

After the torpid costume drama of Barry Lyndon it was unclear where Stanley Kubrick would go next – he’d done high satire with Dr. Strangelove, a war movie with Paths of Glory and sci-fi with 2001. What genres were left? Horror, naturally. While Stephen King may have lamented the changes his source material underwent this remains a classic – not least of which because of Jack Nicholson’s unhinged lead performance. Part of what some folks objected to was the hint of menace already apparent in Jack before he even hits the winding road to the Overlook Hotel with wife and son in tow. The point Kubrick was making was that the ghoulish resort was the catalyst but the rage and derangement was there to be tapped into – in everyone but especially men.

10. Breaker Morant

Not an easy film to watch but Bruce Beresford’s epic telling of a true story is riveting as a drama of miscarried justice, prejudice, and the travails of war. Set during the Boer War it concerns three Australian officers serving with British forces in South Africa in the 19th century. While acting under their understood rules of engagement they kill a group pf Boer prisoners including, it turn out, a German. When the German government protests the British government decides that the easiest remedy is to court martial and execute the three Australians. Beresford doesn’t shy away from exploring the different racial and cultural differences that come into play, from Boer collaborators to African tribesman to the very real disdain in which the British held the Australians. Bryan Brown and the late Edward Woodward are both spectacular. Their sacrifice can’t help but echo in our own time of war crimes that are condoned by the brass while only the rank-and-file are held to account.

9. Used Cars

A final kiss-off to the malaise years, this is one of the great American satires, worthy of Preston Sturges. It’s the work of Robert Zemeckis, on his way to blockbuster fare like the Back To The Future series, but before he became too besotted by CGI technology to take an interest in actual people. Of course it’s hard not to take an interest when you have Jack Warden playing a dual role as conniving twin brothers who run adjacent competing used car lots. Or Kurt Russell at his slippery best as a fast-talking salesman who stashes cash in his fridge in preparation for a run for office. The scene where a typically dour (actual!) Jimmy Carter speech is jammed to make way for a ribald guerrilla TV spot is priceless.

8. The Blues Brothers
If Used Cars was a farewell to an era of diminished expectations than The Blues Brothers was a sly, overstuffed paean to two of the biggest tropes of 70s filmmaking – the car chase and the antihero. Every great populist work of the closing decade featured one, and ideally both of these – see for instance Smokey and The Bandit, Convoy, Billy Jack, the Dirty Harry series. Director John Landis and stars Belushi and Ackroyd pump both ideas up to ridiculous abstraction. Yes the Blues Brothers are anti-authority outcasts but really, they’re on a mission from God (compare this to the conflict between “Dirty” Harry Callahan’s moral code and the letter of the law his superiors keep citing.) You thought the car chase in French Connection was cool? Try a full half-hour plus of cars backflipping, crashing, balletically colliding and converging on Chicago’s downtown en masse. Plus some fine music from Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin and Cab Calloway. And Aretha can act!

7. 9 to 5

Like The Blues Brothers this verges quite literally into cartoon territory but it’s delicious satire of gender roles in the workplace was grounded in a reality that still rings true. Granted there are more women in corporate leadership roles now than at the time of this film but the progressive solutions to making a better workplace advocated by Lily Tomlin’s Violet still are rare in most offices today – onsite day care, time sharing etc. The film’s a hoot – in addition to Tomlin there’s Jane Fonda cast against type as uptight Judy and Dolly Parton who is more than just the curvy body her co-workers and boss see her as. Dabney Coleman would make a career out of playing chauvinists like Franklin Hart, who sees each of these women as appendages to his career or his libido.

6. Airplane!

Don’t judge Airplane! by the pale, unfunny films it inspired, include it’s own sequel. Zucker Abrahams and Zucker or ZAZ as they are known to the faithful wrote and directed a deeply inspired and silly takeoff of self-serious 70s disaster flicks like Airport. The real genius is that it is nearly a scene for scene remake of straight-faced 50s disaster movie Zero Hour – even some of the dialogue is retained. Another great move was casting such icons of probity as Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges in key roles. The final coup de grace was taking an actor known for his stolid portrayal of bad guys who had never done comedy before – Leslie Neilsen – and casting him as the doctor. This one film changed his entire career and made him a bigger star than he was ever destined to be. Everyone has their favorite bit of dialogue or sight gag. Mine include telling an operator to put Hamm on the line and to hold the Mayo (clinic, natch) and a mirror that turns out to be a doorway.

5. The Empire Strikes Back

Is this the best film in the Star Wars series? It’s the one I most enjoy watching, that’s for sure. There’s something about the middle film in a trilogy – it’s the meat in the sandwich when done right. (Don’t try to tell me it’s a sextet – the latter three films that have been appended to the beginning of the story should be best forgotten.) There’s a bit of the feel of a World War II era film, something like Casablanca, where the outcome of a great struggle was less than clear and the feeling of impending doom and sacrifice give everything an extra frisson. It’s the most adult in the series with plenty of juicy conflict, genuine frights and surprises, and a gratifyingly downbeat ending.

4. The Big Red One

Sam Fuller spent years trying to get this film made, a fictionalized account of his own World War II experiences liberating Italy. Ultimately the casting of Mark Hamill hot off of Star Wars helped shale the studio funding loose that he needed to complete his masterwork. Fuller had already proved himself a master of efficient war dramas like The Steel Helmet but never had he had a scope as large as this epic work which follows an American platoon through bombed out villages. At heart it’s a piece that celebrates bravery while simultaneously mourning all the humanity that war strips away.

3. Coal Miner’s Daughter

One of the best music bios ever, Sissy Spacek does her own singing and fairly becomes country legend Loretta Lynn while Tommy Lee Jones is magnetic as her husband and manager. It’s a fascinating and moving portrait of a rise to stardom but also of the marriage that gets pushed and pulled in every direction on the way. The depiction of poverty in the Appalachians is acute and devastating and no punches are pulled when it comes to the machinations of the music biz as well.

2. Raging Bull

The apogee of the DeNiro/Scorsese collaboration, Jake LaMotta could be one of the characters inhabiting Malle’s Atlantic City by the time he’s shown here as a would-be entrepreneur ex-boxer gone to fat. Michael Chapman’s black and white cinematography give the film the feel of 40s pulp photography come to life and Scorsese’s delight and knack in the knockabout rhythms of Italian-American discourse makes every scene zing. This was the first introduction for most film buffs to  Joe Pesci, who plays LaMotta’s scrappy brother. Cathy Moriarity is also great even if her age range is less believable than her co-stars.

1. Atlantic City

Leave it to avowed Frenchman Louis Malle to tap into the psyche of an America poised to elect Ronald Reagan after a decade of disappointment and malaise. Atlantic City the setting is depicted as a past it’s prime fantasy land degenerated into drugs and sleaze. All over the signs of the old Atlantic City are being obliterated by the wrecking ball, making way for a future 80s of corporate casinos and hermetic entertainment. Burt Lancaster is the walking embodiment of this decay and by movie’s end, a renewal that might be a hollow reflection of youth. It’s easily one of his best performances. Equally good is Susan Sarandon as Sally, the younger woman who he feels compelled to protect but who herself is driven to learn from the world around her.

Children of Men

The decade that’s ending has the ignominy of following the 1990’s, an era that will be looked back on as a creative peak rivaling the 1970’s for cinema. This is not to say the 00’s sucked as there were some great films and wonderful talents that emerged all over the world.

Pixar proved that the Toy Story movies were merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to animation that was artistic and commercially successful. Judd Apatow may have faltered of late but he also found a way to freshen the comedy genre and inject a sometimes Cassavettes-like realism into broad can-you-top-this flicks. Superhero films were abundant but Sam Raimi with Spider-Man and especially Chris Nolan’s two Batman films showed a new level of complexity within an often two-dimensional genre.

Then there was the aftermath of 9/11 and the ongoing nightmare of the Bush presidency. The films that grappled with this best were the ones that did so obliquely, even sub-texturally. The Dark Knight comes to mind here as well with a Wall Street Journal editorial even claiming to see a vindication of Bush in the film’s vision of Batman as over-surveilling rule-breaking vigilante against an amoral enemy. Or consider the TV in the background of one of Sideways most discomfiting, riotous scenes as Paul Giamatti sneaks into the bedroom of an amorous, thieving couple while Donald Rumsfeld talks on the screen behind them.

While undoubtedly I missed a few trends here are the 100 films that I truly enjoyed this decade, in rough order of release. Let the arguing commence!

Aardman's Chicken Run skewered WWII escape dramas

1. Chicken Run


You Can Count on Me didn't let us down

2. You Can Count on Me


Best in Show was no dog

3. Best in Show


High Fidelity celebrated a lost world...and lists like this one

4. High Fidelity


Cameron Crowe's autobiographical Almost Famous put a band-aid on it

5. Almost Famous


Wonder Boys brilliantly adapted Chabon

6. Wonder Boys


Gladiator asked if we were not amused...

7. Gladiator


Harron's American Psycho taught us about business cards... and plastic tarp

8. American Psycho


Memento fractured and reversed narrative ... what was I saying?

9. Memento


Peter Jackson's Tolkein trilogy ruled them all, bringing the epic to new heights

10. The Lord of the Rings: Trilogy


Ghost World made the planet safe for nerd girls and the Buscemis who love them

11. Ghost World


Shrek was Eddie Murphy's best performance of the decade (yes, including Dreamgirls)

12. Shrek


The Closet was workplace farce at it's best

13. The Closet


Donnie Darko proved impossible for Richard Kelly to follow-up (though he keeps trying)

14. Donnie Darko


The Royal Tenenbaums was Wes Anderson's ode to family

15. The Royal Tenenbaums


Waking Life had us flipping light switches to make sure we were awake

16. Waking Life


Moulin Rouge mashed up styles of music and cinema into a sumptuous treat

17. Moulin Rouge


Spirited Away was a modern Through The Looking Glass

18. Spirited Away


Ripley's game suggested that Matt Damon might age to resemble John Malkovich

19. Ripley’s Game


About a Boy proved that Hugh Grant is best as a (lovable) cad

20. About a Boy


Talk To Her showed that Almodovar could combine a new maturity with a Volkswagen-sized vulva

21. Talk to Her


Adaptation had Cage's two best performances of the decade

22. Adaptation


The Kid Stays in the Picture made us feel bad for losing Ali MacGraw to that McQueen guy

23. The Kid Stays in the Picture


Spider-Man wasn't related to Morris Spiderman D.D.S.

24. Spider-Man


About Schmidt gave us a vulnerable Nicholson

25. About Schmidt


24 Hour Party People took us to Madchester with the brilliant Steve Coogan as ringmaster

26. 24 Hour Party People


The Bourne Identity proved action movies didn't have to be edited by a Benihana's chef

27. The Bourne Identity


Y Tu Mama Tambien was some sad, sexy, slyly political stuff

28. Y Tu Mama Tambien


Rivers and Tides let us into the genius of artist Andy Goldsworthy

29. Andy Goldsworthy – Rivers and Tides: Working With Time


Finding Nemo immersed us in an undersea world

30. Finding Nemo


Errol Morris' Fog of War lifted the veil on Robert McNamara

31. The Fog of War


Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation whispered in our ear and introduced us to Suntory time

32. Lost in Translation


Infernal Affairs was good enough for a Scorsese-helmed remake

33. Infernal Affairs


American Splendor bought multi-dimensional Harvey Pekars to life

34. American Splendor


The Triplets of Belleville pedalled us across the Atlantic

35. The Triplets of Belleville


My architect looked at the professional and very personal legacy of architect Louis Kahn

36. My Architect: A Son’s Journey


The Weather Underground supplied talking points for the Republican campaigns of '08

37. The Weather Underground


Whale Rider showed us how to make our warrior face

38. Whale Rider


28 Days Later showed us where monkey rage leads

39. 28 Days Later


The Kill Bill films kicked our asses in a tracksuit

40. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2


Brad Bird's The Incredibles was the American Beauty of the animated world. Think about it.

41. The Incredibles


Alexander Payne's Sideways burrowed into the heart of male middle-aged ennui

42. Sideways


End of The Century showed us the broken hearts of The Ramones and broke our hearts at the loss

43. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones


Gondry and Kauffman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind taught us the difference between Pope Alexander and Alexander Pope

44. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Vera Drake showed that bravery doesn't always announce itself

45. Vera Drake


Shaun of the Dead introduced us to pale, lumbering Brits and the zombies who want to eat them

46. Shaun of the Dead


Who better than Alfonso Cuaron to introduce hormones into the Harry Potter universe in the best film of the series so far.

47. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban


Dig made The Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Masacre actually seem like interesting bands

48. DIG!


Tom Dowd and the Language of Music allowed us to hear classic soul and rock with new ears

49. Tom Dowd and the Language of Music


Team America introduced us to full-on puppet nookie- with strings attached

50. Team America: World Police


Wallace and Gromit get a full-length film worthy of their legacy

51. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit


Good Night and Good Luck made us mourn for journalism while marveling at Straitharn's masterful performace as Murrow

52. Good Night. And, Good Luck


Grizzly Man made us hope that Werner Herzog would steer clear of narrating our life story. Oh, and avoid bears.

53. Grizzly Man


After Innocence was a devastating look at the American judicial system

54. After Innocence


Kung Fu Hustle put the slap back into slapstick, and a few kicks too

55. Kung Fu Hustle


We couldn't quit Brokeback Mountain

56. Brokeback Mountain


World, Amy Adams. Amy Adams, meet world. Now play nice...

57. Junebug


A History of Violence repped a new era for Cronenberg

58. A History of Violence


Apatow's 40-Year-Old Virgin ushered in the Apatowization of American film comedy

59. The 40-Year-Old Virgin


Batman Begins was origin story as high adventure

60. Batman Begins


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang bought us our Robert Downey Jr. back, and Shane Black's cool factor

61. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang


Walk the Line was the best in a slew of music biopics

62. Walk the Line


Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room was a preview of coming attractions for the nation's Bush-era economy

63. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room


Pan's Labyrinth made fascism really, really scary

64. Pan’s Labyrinth


Casino Royale emerged from the surf, dripping wet, as the best Bond movie since the 1960s

65. Casino Royale


The Lives of Others eavesdropped on the menaing of art and surveillance

66. The Lives of Others


A Scanner Darkly had Keanu Reeves' most animated performance in the most faithful Philip K. Dick adaptation ever

67. A Scanner Darkly


The Departed was grand guignol drama from Scorsese

68. The Departed


Children of Men took us into a bleak future

69. Children of Men


Block Party took Chapelle to my old neighborhood to put on a star-studded show

70. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party


Borat showed us that Sascha Baron Cohen may not have the balls of co-star Ken Davitian

71. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan


Greengrass staged United 93 as a straightahead pseudo-doc - and it worked

72. United 93


Little Miss Sunshine showed us the clutchless running van start

73. Little Miss Sunshine


Tristram Shandy hilariously adapted the "unadaptable" post-modern classic

74. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story


Half Nelson was all good with a great performance by Ryan Gosling

75. Half Nelson


Ratatouille made the kitchen an acceptable place for vermin

76. Ratatouille


Persepolis told Marjane Satrapi's life with indelible imagery

77. Persepolis


The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men flipped a coin to decide our fate

78. No Country for Old Men


The Bourne Ultimatum was a series best

79. The Bourne Ultimatum


Juno taught us that in China they shoot babies out of t-shirt guns

80. Juno


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly could read our blinks

81. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


There Will be Blood drank our milkshake

82. There Will Be Blood


Knocked Up suggested we consider a smashbortion

83. Knocked Up


Michael Clayton was just a janitor - a dreamy George Clooney janitor

84. Michael Clayton


Fincher's Zodiac nurtured a deep consuming obsession

85. Zodiac


3:10 To Yuma was a rare remake that bested the source

86. 3:10 to Yuma


Eastern Promises totally kicked our ass, naked

87. Eastern Promises


2 Days in Paris showed their family a compromising picture of us with a balloon

88. 2 Days In Paris


We were strung along by Man on Wire

89. Man On Wire


WALL-E was the sweetest post-apocalyptic movie ever

90. WALL-E


The Dark Knight asked why so serious?

91. The Dark Knight


Milk was here to recruit us

92. Milk


Iron Man needed a scotch

93. Iron Man


Happy-Go-Lucky taught us to drive

94. Happy-Go-Lucky


Synecdoche, New York created a smaller version of our lives in a warehouse

95. Synechdoche, New York


Inglorius Basterds demanded it's Nazi scalps!

96. Inglorious Basterds


Up broke our hearts in the first 15 minutes and named us Kevin

97. Up


In The Loop found new and creative ways to curse us out

98. In the Loop


The Hurt Locker defused our bomb

99. The Hurt Locker


Spike Jonze's adaptation of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are began the wild rumpus

100. Where The Wild Things Are

mmm-MMMM

Every year at this time, we here at Mallination try to bring you a new list of Thanksgiving Turkeys – films so bad they can only be compared to a dumb, flightless, tasty, “jive” bird.  As an added bonus I’ve invited guest blogger Sean McDonald to contribute his own list of 5 to my list of 5 , forming a combined “super-list” of 10. Please note, Sean’s opinions are entirely his own. In other words I liked Munich despite the egregious use of intercutting during the penultimate love scene.  Enjoy the bad cinema, and happy Thanksgiving!

Noah’s List:

Two Much

My wife actually saved this for me on our DVR knowing that it would be a turkey shoo-in and she was right as always. Three of the most expressive actors of a generation, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, and Daryl Hannah, team up to star in a film that starts with the premise that Banderas is going to pull off a con by pretending to be twins. The twins are thoughtfully names Art and Bart and can be distinguished by whether Banderas is wearing his hair down and has his glasses on or a ponytail and no glasses. Naturally Art is an artist (or should I say “artist”) and Bart, well, surprisingly doesn’t work for Bay Area Rapid Transit given the literal-mindedness of the rest of this would-be screwball comedy. The lowlight is  a scene in which both Bart and Art have to be in the same room at the same time. Employing a handy doorway, some pacing and a quick hand at whipping off glasses and pulling hair back Banderas plays both characters at once. It’s indeed, Two Much.

The Power

George Hamilton plays a scientist (!) in the boringest movie ever about telekinesis.  As the members of the Human Endurance Committee (of which the film’s audience should be inducted into as honorary members) gather to puzzle over vague “test” results that suggest one of them has extraordinary powers, strange murders begin popping up. While half the cast overacts their pants off, the other half attempts to compensate by woefully underacting. Even stranger are the inept attempts at Hitchcockian set pieces like an inadvertently hilarious desert sequence that finds be-suited and tanned Hamilton struggling woodenly with a large, sweaty, Jeep driver before being attacked by jets on a bombing range. While these may sound like exciting activities you may find yourself wishing for the mind control to zap director Byron Zaskin into another dimension.

Octaman

Pity beautiful Pier Angeli, the Italian actress who compounded her drug overdose at the age of 39 with the fact that this piece of cinematic effluvia stands as her last film. Monster creation legend Rick Baker also got his start in this low-budget atrocity and judging by the incredibly lame Octaman costume a career in Hollywood was less-than assured. While still not as disturbing as the real-life Octomom, Octaman concerns Mexicans (fake), scientists (woefully fake), and a mutated half-man, half-octopus creature(ridiculously fake). For some reason two of the full-grown Octaman’s tentacles are suspiciously arm-like, and his slacks are quite something. It’s also worth noting that he has compound eyes for no other reason than that was the trick lens that they rented for the shoot.

88 Minutes

The titular 88 Minutes of this crap fest reference not just the 88 Minutes Al Pacino is informed he has left to live, but the 88 minutes of the viewers life that will sadly never be returned to them by this film that would barely rate as a subpar episode of Jake and The Fatman (look it up, kids). Pacino plays your everyday, average, super wealthy forensic psychologist/teacher who keeps having his dull serial killer seminar interrupted by a rude cell phone caller. And then he goes back to teacher. Thrilling! Leelee Sobieski does what she can to make things worse and Alicia Witt should be angling to get that cell phone away from Pacino so she can call her agent.  The best thing about the film are the heights to which it has inspired reviewers – “Al Pacino’s festival of hair” from the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips is a particular favorite. Nominated for “Best Goatee”.

The Doors

Kyle Maclachlan, Meg Ryan, Kevin Dillon, and Val Kilmer combine all the worst parts of the acting styles in a film that also highlights the worst kind of glib, truthy-but-not-truthful, self-serious film making Oliver Stone is capable of.  The dialogue is actually worse than Morrison’s poetry. Kilmer gives a performance that captures all the self involved assholiness of Morrison without ever diving underneath. Ryan is woefully miscast as the love interest. Stone treats every scene with the kind of reverence usually reserved for a nativity pageant.

Sean’s List

I have a soft spot for bad movies. The kinds of movies that gleefully accept they are bad, that wink and smile through 95 minutes of glorious silliness. I think that Stephen Sommers’  Deep Rising is the Citizen Kane of great bad movies. There is another set of movies that are so easy to target (I am looking at you Paul W.S. Anderson) that wasting any more time one them is pointless. Then there is the third category of bad: Films that made me ANGRY as I watched them.

The Quest

Jean-Claude Van Damme’s directorial debut, my least favorite movie of all time and according to IMDB, Roger Moore’s least favorite of his own films. The primary problem is that this movie claims to be 95 minutes long. Let’s just say that 95 minutes has been artificially augmented. Every fight scene is soaked in unnecessary slow motion, “Scorsese stretches”, use of the same shot from multiple angles (don’t want to waste anything) and of course JCVD getting the crap kicked out of him, only to come back strong and win the fight. The clip barely does justice to what may be to worst edited film of all time. (Side Note – Did you know that James Remar has 111 acting credits? And his most memorable role was as Samantha’s boyfriend from TV’s Sex and the City?)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

This was the cinematic equivalent to the scene in Mad Men (Season 2 spoiler alert!) when Joan’s fiancé forced himself on her on the floor of Don Draper’s office. Despite her pleas to stop and attempts to restrain him, he keeps on going and she quits resisting. I stared away at he wall blankly for the first 30 minutes of this, eventually willing myself to sleep. F you Ron Howard. (Side note – did you know the little girl now plays one of the leads in Gossip Girl? No, I didn’t care either).

Strange Wilderness

Truly one of the un-funniest “comedies” I have ever sat through (it was a rental, but still). What is truly amazing is that this clip STILL makes me laugh every time  -

- but it is the ONLY funny moment in this entire misbegotten disaster. There is no story, are no funny characters and no other funny moments. I have already put more thought into this paragraph than the filmmakers did on this entire 87 minute piece of horseshit (Side Note – Did you know that horseshit is Tom Hanks favorite swear word?)

The Last Kiss

What I find the most shocking about his most is that the great Paul Haggis wrote this. This movie basically took Chris Rock’s “New P***y, Old P****y” monologue, layered on a thick measure of anxiety and slapped you in the face with this sock full of man-angst for 103 minutes. I am not sure what kind of influence Zach Braff had on this movie, but any good will he built up with Garden State got flushed away. (Side Note – Paul Haggis’s first writing credit is from the original Love Boat TV series).

Munich

Look, I love Jewish Revenge Fantasies as much as the next guy (Marathon Man and Inglorious Basterds were great), but Munich ranks at the top of my list of movies that sent me over the edge. This is a thriller that is not thrilling. A “history” movie that feels very revisionist. A lead that was the least convincing Jew of all time. The worst sex scene of all time, replacing the pool scene from Showgirls . This movie starts strong, but by the end, you feel much like the leads. Empty and unsatisfied. (Side Note – Munich star Mathieu Kassovitz is a terrific French director who made the criminally underrated Crimson Rivers).

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Winona Ryder and Christian Slater in Heathers

1989 – the year that gave us the superhero blockbuster with Tim Burton’s Batman (alas too flawed a film to quite make my final list) and a slew of Amerindie classics by future top line directors like Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant and Steven Soderberg. Here, then, are the best 15 films of 1989:

1. Say Anything

If the 80s were the golden age of the teen movie (and trust me, they were) two of the absolute genre peaks occurred in 1989 with this film and Heathers. The two are diametrically opposed – despite some very funny moments this is a film that treats three-dimensional characters with a great deal of dignity and invests depth into the classic boy meets girl formula. Heathers on the other hand disembowels the entire cycle through satire. Cameron Crowe, who wrote the outstanding Fast Times at Ridgemont High, writes and directs here and shows a sharp eye for character and detail.

John Cusack plays the sweet, straightforward guy who is animal instinct to Ione Skye’s brainy Diane, a girl who looks to have a bright future thanks in part to her loving supportive father and his desire to see her succeed. John Mahoney is excellent as well in a tricky role, allowing Diane to see that as much as he loves her, he may not always know what the right thing to do is. The supporting cast is rounded out ably by John’s sister Joan and Lili Taylor in a hilarious turn. Then there’s the iconic scene when Cusack as Lloyd tries to win Diane over with nothing but a boombox over his head and a Peter Gabriel tape.

2. Heathers

Up until the very end Heathers is a take-no-prisoners satire of Reagan/Bush I America as embodied by the John Hughes film cycle, a deranged roller coaster that is full of sardonic humor and killer riffs. Winona Ryder was the dream girlfriend in this – sarcastic, sexy, and decidedly dark-edged like a film noir femme fatale. Yet the real tempter is her new boyfriend played by Christian Slater in full Nicholson mode, eyebrows arched and face twisted into a smirk.

From the chillingly flip conversations these kids have with their parents to the false grieving for dead students who were either picked on or despised the film seemed to welcome two fresh new voices, director Michael Lehmann and writer Daniel Waters. Their follow-up teaming on Hudson Hawk pretty much sums up what happened to them afterwards, not unlike the tacked on feel-good ending of Heathers in contrast to the “prom in heaven” that was originally written.

Still, this is a brilliantly caustic film about what happens when people subsume their identity too long to run with the herd and more to the point, how the same herd will always regroup despite outside danger.

3. Henry V

It’s hard to recall now but Kenneth Branagh was hotly tipped as the next Laurence Olivier, a young British actor/director who was finding a new slant on Shakespeare onstage and then onscreen. It was Olivier’s wartime version of this same play that catapulted him to worldwide stardom in 1944, and Branagh finds a different way into the same material, appropriate for  1989. A tour de force for actors like Judi Dench, Ian Holm and real-life Branagh squeeze Emma Thompson, this Henry V is suitably cinematic yet always focused on the nuances of the acting. Less triumphal than the 1944 version, it’s imbued with the spirit of sacrifice.

4. My Left Foot

Another talented actor from across the pond made a splash with American audiences in 1989 in Jim Sheridan’s retelling of Christy Brown’s life story. Though the temptation is to chalk this up as another Oscar-bating performance as critiqued in Robert Downey Jr.’s Tropic Thunder monologue (“Never go full retard!”)  Daniel Day Lewis gives a brilliant turn as an artist with cerebral palsy who is thought at first to be simpleminded and helpless. The portrait is rounded out by his working class family who both help him and hold him back, and his own substantial ego and doubts. His family and neighbors have to then adjust him as a successful artist, which is almost more alienating than the cerebral palsy. Lewis and Sheridan never succumb to easy sentimentalizing, making the portrait that emerges that much more moving.

5. The Killer

Before bringing his talent for balletic bullet slinging and operatic plotting to America John Woo was at the vanguard of Hong Kong’s action flick renaissance, and this re-imagining of Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Le Samurai is probably the peak of Woo’s pre-American (and probably post-American career).  Woo’s favorite star, Chow Yun-Fat, anchors all the heightened tension and the relentless slo-mo acts of violence.

6. Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s masterpiece takes place on the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn. While The Cosby Show existed in one fictional universe in the same New York borough Lee’s Bed-Stuy existed in another, one where racial tensions simmering just below the surface are ready to ignite at any provocation. Lee seems to say that though the fullscale riots and radical politics of the 60s and 70s appear to be over, the underlying issues remain and fester. In fact, New York would see outbreaks like the Crown Heights riot during this time of supposed quiescence and the Rodney King beating was a few scant years away. The controversial finale steal leaves audiences talking and has the power to divide opinion, just as Lee intended. The sweltering cinematography by longtime collaborator Ernest Dickerson should also be noted.

7. Sex, Lies and Videotape

Along with Spike Lee, Steven Soderberg helped tp define the new era of indie films in the late 80s starting with this Sundance award winning debut. James Spader is at his quirkiest, Peter Gallagher shows that he and his eyebrows have range and Andie MacDowell actually comes off as a fine actress in this story of a drifter who’s interest in talking about sex rather than doing the act gets women to open up on tape about their own sex lives and fantasies. Though it sounds like the plot of a Skinemax special the finely drawn relationships, particularly between sisters Laura San Giacomo and MacDowell, elevate this to the level of fascinating viewing. Spawned a legion of bad imitations.

8 .  Parenthood

Edging ever-so-close to sitcommery but still landing right side up this was the movie that helped tame Steve Martin, for better or worse. Once audiences accepted  the wacky funnyman as a normal suburban dad roles like Cheaper By The Dozen came calling and the template was set for others like Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy to become suitably defanged for general consumption. Which isn’t to say this film isn’t charming, because it is. While today this Ron Howard directed vehicle would slot in nicely on TV next to something like Malcolm in the Middle, at the time it was a sweetly poignant take on modern American family life. A great cast goes a long way here with Dianne Wiest, Rick Moranis and Jason Robards in particular standing out.

9. Parents

The flip side of Parenthood was this similarly-titled pitch dark satire directed by actor Bob Balaban. In a stylized suburban 50s a child starts to suspect that his parents are rather monstrous, and what’s with the cuts of meat dad Randy Quaid keeps bringing home to work? It’s a wicked dissection of the horrors which lurked beneath the gleaming commercial surface of atomic-age America – a time period further sanitized and pre-packaged as happy times by the outgoing Reagan administration.

10. Crimes and Misdemeanors

One of Woody Allen’s underrated best films, this superficially bears some structural resemblance to his great 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters in it’s blending of comedy and drama and would later find it’s themes recycled in the less compelling Match Point many years later. The intertwined stories concern Martin Landau, a successful married man whose mistress begins to get out of hand. He turns to his brother, played by Jerry Ohrbach, who arranges to have her killed. But Landau is racked with guilt and suddenly begins to look for some divine presence in the Universe – in part out of fear and in part out of longing for the punishment he feels the crime warrants. This is contrasted with Allen who is hired to make a documentary on his smugly successful TV star brother in law, played by Alan Alda in one of  his best performances. Allen uses the role of filmmaker to exact a creator’s revenge on Alda, yet it’s a Pyrrhic victory. Similarly Landau begins to realize that the punishment he fears is simply never going to happen. To the contrary his life is better than ever. It’s an alternately very funny and deeply felt film.

11. When Harry Met Sally…

Little did Rob Reiner know that he would set off an entire revival of romantic comedies with this gem of a film. More to the point, very few of them hold the faintest of candles to this clever, funny, and touching film that asks the question, “Can men and women ever just be friends?” The cast is at it’s best – in fact all of the actors here have yet to surpass their warm, funny work in this film toplined by Billy Crystal and a career making performance by Meg Ryan. Ample support is given by the wonderful late Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher, both of whom transcend the dregs of the best friend roles that were cloned out in the thousands of knockoffs that followed.

12. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Steven Spielberg has some set of balls. The third Indiana Jones flick makes up for the overstuffed second film with crackerjack pacing and introducing brilliantly the father/son relationship between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. The interplay and timing between the stars gives the film an extra lift and the story a welcome level of tension that propels it neatly until a typically Spielbergian ending that’s one part mysticism to two parts sentimentality. The cojones come in with the Monty Python-esque object of pursuit, the cup of Christ, which for Spielberg is no more a real or religious relic than a spaceship or an Indian cult. It all gets subsumed as the latest magical mumbo-jumbo Indy has to come across at the adventure’s end.

13. Mystery Train

Jim Jarmusch was one of the directors that helped  nurture the American indie film movement during the 1980s with gems like Down By Law.  Mystery Train is a love letter to Memphis as seen through the eyes of characters who inhabit three separate but overlapping story arcs. As is his wont, Jarmusch peppers his cast with actors and amateurs and gets standout performances from two guys better known for the contributions to the world of music – a hilarious Screaming Jay Hawkins and The Clash’s Joe Strummer.  Don’t miss the moody evocative cinematography by Jarmusch fave Robby Muller.

14. Meet the Feebles

Before there was Avenue Q and before Peter Jackson  became the go-to director for big Hollywood epics he cut his teeth on delightfully subversive fare like this send-up of the Muppets. This could fairly be said to be the Bad Lieutenant of puppet flicks chocked as it is with sex, violence and gore galore. Darkly funny it is, but it’s also surprisingly human for a film populated by puppets.

15. Drugstore Cowboy

This may still be Gus Van Sant’s best film, despite helping to kick off the heroin chic trend that blighted early 90s pop culture. Matt Dillon showed he had star material as the head of a band of junkie thieves which included Kelly Preston and Heather Graham. Evocatively shot and imaginatively edited, you’ll never throw a hat on a bed again after seeing this.

Capaldi and Gandolfini have it out in In The Loop

There’s a scene in In The Loop in which the “crossest man in Scotland” is introduced. Up until then you can be forgiven for thinking that you have been spending most of the film with that very man, Malcolm Tucker, a fixer with a penchant for four letter words that would make Deadwood’s Al Swearingen blush. Sure enough though, the man in question is revealed and it’s one of the film’s many insights that behind every angry man is a smaller, even angrier man waiting in the wings.

In The Loop is an unsparing farce, a thinly veiled account of the run-up to the Iraq war from the vantage point of government bureaucracy’s nether regions.  The “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain is revealed to be nothing so much as that between a ‘master race of toddlers” and the frustrated parents they’ve subjugated.

Along the way there are some wonderfully visceral one-liners and plenty of inter-office blood drawn, and some outstanding performances by Peter Capaldi as the aforementioned Tucker, James Gandolfini as a cautious American General, Anna Chlumsky who may have said too much, too insightfully for her career’s own good, and Mimi Kennedy as her dentally-fixated boss.

Saying too much and to whom is a constant theme running through In The Loop, as a casual observation by Tom Hollander as a low-level cabinet minister leads to an escalating series of consequences. Hollander is excellent in showing how this man is both intelligent and naive, pumped up by the attention and fearful of the fallout.

This is a brutally funny movie that would be ridiculous were it not so sadly close to the truth. David Rasche as a State Department operative has several wonderful scenes in which he deconstructs facts to create the version of events he would like to be true, another recurring motif. It’s the kind of parsing the Bush administration dealt out as a matter of course.

In The Loop is shot in appropriate pseudo-docu style, a look that is becoming a bit clichéd but works perfectly in this context. The rapid-fire screenplay and performances make everything zing like a screwball comedy up until the inevitable end. Unlike Bringing Up Baby the uptight professor here is the British government and the nutty heiress is the United States and when they get together the consequences are very bad indeed.

This is a spinoff of a BBC series The Thick of It which I haven’t seen but will be sure to seek out solely based on sharing writer/director Armando Iannucci and the openly  festering Malcolm Tucker as a character.

Here’s the crossest man in Scotland:

Pixar's Up

The image of a squarefaced old man dragging his hovering house behind him through a dreamscape  jungle feels pulled straight out of the deepest Fruedian recesses of the unconscious. Pixar’s latest triumph, Up , is packed with such images, along with the considerable voice talent Ed Asner as the old guy, Carl Fredrickson.

One of the great things about Pixar’s best films is the sense that they are oxymorons – big-budget, auteur flicks with wide-ranging appeal. From the first moments of Up, which mimic a pre-World War II newsreel, the sense that pure imagination is at work predominates. Imagine a meeting at most major studios where the word “newsreel” is used in reference to an animated big-budget tentpole.”Kids don’t know what that is!” “We need to start with a bang!”

Up does start with a bang all right, but it’s an emotional one – a 15 minute long sequence that plays almost as a riposte to Synechedeche N.Y.’s sprawling discourse on how art can represent a human life. Up director Pete Doctor encapsulates the entire history of Carl Fredrickson and his wife Ellie, packing it with emotional resonance, all without saying one word. There was barely a dry eye in the house.

This prelude is so powerful that it threatens to unbalance the rest of the film, but it also gives an emotional weight and meaning to the house, the mailbox, a soda pop cap, that otherwise might seem forced or contrived.  This in turn leads to Fredrickson attaching the hundreds of balloons to his house that allow him to fly off, with a roly-poly kid stowaway aboard.

This sets up a secondary psychological struggle as Frederickson has to struggle with his hero worship of a long-lost explorer while also coming to grips with his life as a widower. Oh, and there are talking dogs and a magnificently plumed bird named “Kevin.”

Don’t get the wrong idea though – this isn’t heavy going. The movie is as bouyant as it’s title, helped in no small measure by it’s snappy pacing and witty screenplay.

Hoffman, Noonan and Williams

It’s hard for me to remember a film with as divergent a critical response as Synecdoche, New York which made many reviewers best and worst films of 2008 lists at the end of the year. I can sympathize with those who didn’t enjoy the film – to its credit it never even tries to meet a mainstream audience halfway. Though it’s production values are on par with the best Hollywood has to offer this bears as much relation to a Summer blockbuster as as orangutan does to an aphid.

Instead what we get is a delightfully rich, touching, funny and tragic exploration of what it means to be alive and to create. It’s a surreal and magic world of that comes from the mind of acclaimed screenwriter and first-time director Charlie Kaufman. In tone it’s a mixture of Kurt Vonnegut’s wry desperation and Thomas Pynchon’s matter-of-fact abstraction and head-case humor.

Kaufman has already shown himself to be a screenwriter with a rare vision, and the themes he explores here have their roots in his breakthrough films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, all of which asked similar questions on the very nature of why we are who we are. Not bad for a guy who started out writing episodes of the Thomas Haden Church/ Deborah Messing sitcom Ned and Stacey.

A synecdoche is a figure of speech that uses a part of something to represent a whole (ie saying “I count ten heads” rather than “ten cows”. ) It’s what Kaufman tries to do with his film, represent the whole crazy quilt of life for 2 hours onscreen. It is also, in turn, what Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to do as playwright and stage director Caden Cotard.

At first I felt dread at seeing Hoffman give a mumbly deadened portrayal of a man ground down by life – I’d seen it already in Happiness. Yet Hoffman adds layer after layer until his character becomes moving in his lostness.

“I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That’s what I want to explore. We’re all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we’re going to die, each of us secretly believing we won’t…”

This is what he becomes obsessed with, particularly after winning an unexpected MacArthur Genius Grant after his wife (played with her usual whip-smart edge by Katharine Keener) decamps with possible lover Jennifer Jason Leigh and young daughter Olive for Berlin.

He uses the grant to build yet another synecdoche, a replica of New York City inside an enormous warehouse which eventually includes another warehouse within which resides another replica and so on. He similarly populates his replica city with replicas of himself, and his would-be lover played by Samantha Morton in a breakthrough performance.

So used am I to seeing Morton’s big eyes and delicate features to project gloom in such films as Minority Report that seeing her as a flirty, implusive fun-lover comes as a revelation.

It’s important to note that the movie starts off somewhat realistically with a painfully real accounting of Hoffman and Keener’s marriage and becomes more and more unhinged in time and reality once she takes off.

17 years pass in the blink of an eye, and not even Hoffman seems to realize it. There are hints that what transpires might all be his fantasy of his life while he waits for his wife’s return – A Wizard of Oz like ascent to unreality where the needy female lead of his revival of Death of a Salesman (a tricky role effortlessly handled by Michelle Williams) becomes his second bride, and his couples therapist morphs into an oddly omniscient self-help author (Hope Davis, with a  twinkle in her eye.) There are also hints that he may even be dead already.

It can be hard to tell since all linearity is seemingly throw out the window. Scenes that play as funny and offbeat have payoffs deeper into the movie as you realize that some of the odd disconnect comes from descriptions of later events.

On the other hand, the film is entirely linear. The early scenes are poop, piss and blood obsessed, a Freudian glossary of childhood. Appropriately enough they often center around Cotard’s daughter Olive who is alternately fearful and fascinated by what goes into and comes out of the human body.

As the film progresses so does decay – Hoffman’s body, the giant sets he creates, even Morton’s house. It’s an inspired and for some, off-putting touch of surreality when she buys a new house that comes complete with fire – but not in the fireplace. It’s the kind of visual wordplay Kaufman revels in – she is something of an old flame after all. It’s also a visual link to site specific artwork like that of Andy Goldsworthy who creates things like symmetrical leaf trails knowing that they will decay and return to nature. Part of the art is the transience of it.

So rich and loaded is Synecdoche, New York with symbols and meaning that it seems churlish to try to capture it in a mere blog post, just as Cotard and no doubt Kaufman strain against the limits of their means of expression to represent the fullness of what it means to be alive. I’m painfully aware that I’ve barely hinted at the great performances within from the likes of Tom Noonan (more than 20 years after his brilliant turn in Michael Mann’s Manhunter), Diane Wiest, and Emily Watson.

Then there are the special effects that create a warehouse big enough to house a dirigible in the sky, and the breathtaking cinematography by Frederick Elmes who also shot Blue Velvet.

This is a film that may be seen as a flop and even a career killer for Kaufman, one that didn’t even make back half of it’s paltry $21 million box office. Twnety years from now however I predict it may very well be remembered as one of the best films of the century’s first decade.

Like it’s title, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford can feel like too much on the plate, let alone the movie theater marquee. Truth be told, on my first attempt to watch it the sonorous narration, beautiful photography and leisurely pacing conspired to lull me into a sound sleep. Not a good omen.

Fortified by some strong coffee however and in the right frame of mind director Andrew Dominik proves to have a bracing tale to tell indeed, if a long-winded one. The aforementioned narration is a bit of crutch, papering over some storytelling deficiencies in some places and telling us things we can intuit by watching in others but this is a forgivable flaw in a film that is capable of casting a powerful spell, one that works as both a stimulant and a narcotic depending on mood.

In essence it’s a movie about pairs, beginning with the brothers James played superbly by Brad Pitt as Jesse and Sam Shepherd as Frank. They are twinned with the Fords, good-time Charley played to squinty perfection by the always-watchable Sam Rockwell, and Robert, a singularly unlikable pasty faced fellow in a justly Oscar nominated performance by Casey Affleck.

What the Academy missed though in falling all over Benjamin Button is Brad Pitt’s best performance to date. Combining everything Pitt has learned (he’s surely grown into a fine actor rather than arriving fully formed), his Jesse James is by turns terrifying, funny, soulful, pitiable, and devious. His charisma is undeniable but then so is his unpredictability. Every other character save brother Frank is a little off-step when Pitt enters a room, constantly weighing what his reaction to what they do or say may be. It’s Pitt’s cleverness to play his character as fully aware of this affect, sometimes exploiting it and other times pretending ignorance.

Pitt in essence plays the isolated star, someone who can expect to hear a distorted version of the truth from everyone he meets. Affleck is the starfucker – wanting to both be Jesse James and to annihilate him.

Affleck bravely makes his character a mealy mouthed weasel, a creepy little sycophant and yes, a coward. He and Jesse are ultimately paired just as the sets of  brothers were, fated as fan and object of fandom to live and indeed die together. It’s a disturbing and real symbiosis that finds echoes in time with Mark David Chapman and John Lennon, John Hinckley and Jodie Foster, and the countless celebrity obsessives who never quite get to the dangerous stage but come awfully close.

The supporting performances are uniformly excellent from testy Jeremy Renner, always keeping an eye on randy ladies man Paul Schneider as the comically named Dick Liddel. The women, including the very talented pair of Mary-Louise Parker as Mrs. James and Zooey Deschanel are given short shrift and some of the stunt casting (James Carville as the Governor and Nick Cave as a wandering troubadour) threatens to distract.

The whole is set off by Roger Deakins’ masterful cinematography, with burnt umbers, ashy whites, sepia tones and mud so richly brown you can almost smell the horse dung mixed in. It’s a breathtaking film to look at, reminiscent of Terence Malick’s great 70s classics like Days of Heaven in the love of sheer poetic imagery – a little girls empty shoe in the grass for instance. The totality of the visuals conspire to feel totally authentic – so this is what it was like to live in these times.

Thankfully these reveries are the connective tissues between some fantastic scenes – a nighttime train robbery, a sequence of menacing playacting between Jesse James and Ford that find’s Pitt enjoying the taste of the words in his mouth like he’s savoring a fine whiskey, Ford re-enacting the assassination on stage for hundreds of performances with his brother made up and wooden as James’ stand-in (just as happened in real-life.)

Like many a rich meal it can be hard to finish Jesse James without falling asleep at the table, overwhelmed by the repast. In this case, it’s worth showing up hungry.

CGI vs. CGI in The Incredible Hulk

Marvel Comics has a habit of adding nifty adjectives to it’s characters names – The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, the…uh, Fantastic Four. So it should be noted that the movie The Incredible Hulk isn’t necessarily bragging about it’s own quality relative to Ang Lee’s still warm Hulk. It is the better film though, despite running out of steam and morphing like it’s titular character back into mere mortal form.

Director Louis LeTerrier, a Luc Besson protege best known for The Transporter, is certainly less the auteur than Lee but he does seem to have a firmer handle on the material. There are plenty of references to the late 70s TV show including cameos by stars Bill Bixby (on a TV set from beyond the grave) and Lou Ferrigno and a very clever reworking of the infamous “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry line.” The music even echoes the plaintive piano plinking that used to sound as Banner would hitchhike from town to town alone and destitute.

It helps that mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner is portrayed here by Edward Norton who has a deeper well of acting tricks and just plain charisma than the previous film’s Eric Bana. Thrown into the mix is William Hurt and his brush mustache which gives him the right look to play General Ross, the Hulk’s main adversary for much of the movie. Hurt dials down his recent  scenery chewing a tad which is actually a little disappointing – he’s an expert masticator in films as diverse as Mr. Brooks and A History of Violence.

Liv Tyler improbably plays Hurt’s daughter and though she ranks about a 5 on the hot scientist scale (with Elisabeth Shue in The Saint at 1 = Not at all believable and Michelle Meyrink in Real Genius at 10 = fully believable) she does bring a solid emotional intelligence to the role.

Finally, Tim Roth plays a military man who becomes fixated on beating the Hulk, partly out of pride and partly out of envy. Roth’s ferrety charms get spent fairly early in the plot and his arc is the least satisfying of the film.

Still there is a lot of welcome humor on display as well as some fine filmmaking including a comic book paced prologue and a lengthy opening sequence set in Brazil. The foreign backdrop is bracing in the same way that that the first section of Batman Begins (set in an Asian mountain range) was, announcing a corrective to audience expectations.

Indeed Peter Menzies Jr.’s cinematography is at it’s best here, lulling the viewer into a character driven film about a mysterious American on the run in the tropics. Alas, he does return and though the movie tries, it never quite recovers from the fabulous opening.

There are some well-staged action sequences, particularly a siege on a  college campus, but like Lee’s film the big green guy never seems anything less than an animated character onscreen. The CGI is about as good as it can be but the character design just can’t escape seeming like an angry Shrek.

At best they seem rubbery, and I say they because an even bigger, badder hulk shows up to tangle in New York by film’s end. At this point the film gets bogged down in the mechanics of fully-animated battle and like Spiderman 3, it suffers for it.

It was the Incredible Hulk’s curse that it is in fact quite enjoyable for most of it’s screen time but happened to be released in a summer that includes two of the best ever superhero flicks, The Dark Knight which brings delicious ambiguity to the anti-militarist themes that infuse this version of Hulk and Iron Man which takes raffish charm and humor beyond what Norton has time or inclination to do.