The year letdowns flowered and scenes were planted for future letdowns. 1999 Letdowns:

The Biggest Letdown Ever!

A Reclusive Genius Returns … for a Letdown!

The Internet Helps a Micro-Budget Movie Score Big and Unless You Saw It Early…It Was a Letdown!

They Finally Made “Friday Night Lights” Into a Movie — Oh, Wait, No They Didn’t – What a Letdown!

Seeds for Future Letdowns:

Brothers Reinvent Sci-Fi!

What a Great Twist!

The nominees:

“American Beauty” – As pretentious at it is at times, I like the movie. I remember an argument with a conservative friend who hated the Chris Cooper storyline — abusive military type who’s secretly gay. Thing is, I had a guy a lot like the Chris Cooper character in my neighborhood growing up. Only his kid wasn’t the brooding poet Wes Bentley was in the movie. I also remember a liberal feminist friend of mine arguing that the movie was misogynist. Personally, I’m inclined to like a movie that gets people from all sides of the socio-political spectrum in a tizzy.

(more…)

While Kevin Spacey’s TV work in the late 1980’s was certainly impressive, in movies he never seemed to connect with audiences. That is until 1992, when he began gathering steam with a great turn in James Foley’s screen adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” In a movie filled with strong performances, Spacey takes on a role that is arguably the toughest and least showy. In a movie filled with great lines, his exasperated plea to one of the salesmen, “Will you go to lunch? GO to lunch. WILL YOU? Go to LUNCH!”, is a great example of an actor being in perfect sync with every nuance of the  material.

In 1994, the greatest year ever, he appeared in three films, whose grosses range from $377K to $21M. I didn’t see the highest grosser of the bunch, “Iron Will,” but the other two, “Swimming With Sharks*” and “The Ref,” signaled Spacey’s impending arrival as a star.

Ted Demme’s “The Ref,” is a small studio movie about a cat burglar (Denis Leary in full MTV sarcastic rant mode) who takes an unhappy couple (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) hostage on Christmas Eve, and finds himself having to referee their vitriolic shouting matches. As Spacey was not yet a star, the movie’s hook was Denis Leary, who was also not a star, but one gets the feeling it was supposed to be his “48 Hrs.” (more…)

A great performance sticks with you long after you’ve scraped the theater floor-gum off your Keds.  But too often, professional drama geeks and mainstream media critics will bestow their blessing on freaky, idiosyncratic performances that hew to the party line *(cough) Heath Ledger (cough) Brokeback Mountain (cough)*, leaving the rest of us to scratch our collective heads.  If that was good, we wonder, how bad do you have to be to be bad?

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously.  (more…)

[Part one of this two-part series can be found here.]

Sixteen of the top 20 box office earners have either a G or PG rating which should be a clue that R rated films ( “Titanic” being the exception) don’t do as well yet studios continue to add gratuitous irrelevant sex scenes that ruin the film. Why? It certainly can’t be artistic license because the principal reaction to them is usually-‘Ew!!! Why did they do that?” 

Movie-going statistics have dropped significantly among older adults and that’s understandable since most fare today cater to hormonal adolescents without a clue as to the true appeal of sensual art. Yet senior citizens today are former film buffs who would relish worthy theatrical offerings but their treks back to the wide screen lonely leave them disappointed. 

A few years ago I went with an elderly friend to see, “Love Actually,” because we’re both great fans of Alan Rickman. The film has various vignettes of romantic couples and their curious experiences pursuing the love game. One of these couples happens to be two individuals acting in a porn movie and although the intent was to inject irony in the sex scenes showing the relative naïveté of the participants as they try to hook up, it failed miserably. My friend later said that particular graphic display spoiled the otherwise charming film which she no longer would add to her DVD collection when it came out.  (more…)

The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed.   To those outside the Corps, they talk funny.  They look funny.  They are extremely impressed with themselves – and they have every right to be. 

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies: (more…)

There has been much indignation - and rightfully so - from various parties over the fact that Hollywood is ”circling the wagons” around Roman Polanski, who was finally arrested in Switzerland after being a fugitive from justice for over 30 years for the drugging and subsequent rape and sodomy of a 13-year-old girl despite her pleas to stop – to which he pled guilty, by the way.

An excellent article, which really says it all, is by Kate Harding over at Salon.com – if you haven’t read it yet, you should. She reminds us that Roman Polanski – wait for it – raped a child. I don’t care if the victim, now 45, wants it all dropped because she’s tired of being the focal point of publicity. I don’t care it it’ll be a drain on California’s over-extended budget (how about not footing the bill for the education and medical care for illegal aliens? That’d fix things in a big hurry). I don’t care if she “looked” older than 13, or if her mother was the proverbial stage mother from hell, or if the sky was green instead of blue that day. And I certainly don’t care that Polanski is such a talented director – what WOULD we do without Hollywood to entertain us? – with a troubled past of his own. Many of us have troubled pasts. We don’t all use it as an excuse to do whatever the hell we want just because it “feels good” at the time. (more…)

Ah, Gwyneth. Obviously being fabulously rich and famous just isn’t enough for some people. A few years ago, after making the decision to make her home in London with beta male rocker Chris Martin of Coldplay, she told us how much she prefers living in Britain to her native country:

I love the English lifestyle, it’s not as capitalistic as America. People don’t talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner…I like living here because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.

When she says she doesn’t fit into the “bad side of American psychology,” she means she’s become one of the cultured elite overseas whose life mission seems to be badmouthing those mouthbreathing colonials from across the pond – although she’s happy to accept their money. (more…)

Over the weekend, I was pondering why the low budget, standard genre pic The Haunting in Connecticut (Lionsgate) has become a nifty little box office hit. The film added almost $9.5M over the weekend for a new 10-day cume of $37M, and the only conclusion I have been able to reach is that it’s all about the poster.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

(more…)

It’s revolutionary. I haven’t seen the movie yet. Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” that is. Nope. I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it can and will be called ‘revolutionary’ by somebody important who has. Nowadays, with teasers, trailers and shotgun blasts of interviews on every show that talks and the nature of marketing campaigns, one not necessarily have to sit down and watch a movie to get a pretty darn good idea of what it’s all about. Sure, you’ll miss the beauty, the brilliance, all the elements of the masterpiece, but you’ll get enough to decide if it’s worthy of your time and money. Both very important considerations, these days.

I’m a huge fan of British cinema. From early Hitchcock to David Lean to Michael Powell. One of my favorite films is Hugh Hudson’s “Chariots of Fire.” I’ve loved practically everything I’ve ever seen imported from the UK and shown on American Public Television, usually with a grant from Mobile or some other large corporation.  Mystery, Masterpiece Theater, the Quatermasses, the Doctor Whos, I’ve loved them all. But recently a new wave of British directors has been very successful in distancing themselves from anything British, instead finding wealth and material in America. (more…)