First, out of the five Best Picture nominees, three made it into the list, so let me discuss the two that didn't, and those are The Accidental Tourist and Dangerous Liaisons. The former is by Lawrence Kasdan (director of Body Heat and writer of the Indiana Jones films) starring William Hurt as a travel writer who is recovering from the Death of his son and his wife (Kathleen Turner) leaving him. It's an amazingly moving performance by Hurt, but the film is honestly really boring. I never really felt it went anywhere, and the drama felt artificial, though I should note some touching supporting performances by Bill Pullman and Geena Davis (who won an Oscar for this film, but I honestly did not think she was the best). The other film, Dangerous Liaisons, is much more interesting. For those who remember the film Cruel Intentions (with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon), you should know that it was a modern re-telling of Dangerous Liaisons, which was set in 18th Century France. The Marquise de Merteuil (the outstanding-as-always Glenn Close) wants his former lover, the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) to seduce the bride of her former lover before the wedding, but Valmont is after the Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a God-fearing married woman, so the Marquise offers Valmont one last night with her if he can prove that he has seduced Madame de Tourvel. It's a dangerous game they play, with love, lust, sword fights, and public scrutiny. I remember the final scene quite vividly, with Glenn Close's face in close-up, taking off her makeup.I'll have to see it again to remember it better, but I remember what was most worth it about it was Glenn Close's performance, and the lovely production design of 18th Century France.
Die Hard: This is a film I'd heard everybody talk about, including a teacher in my Dramatic Structure class who would always talk about it in terms of structure, but I didn't see it until after the summer of my Freshmen year of college. It's an iconic film for sure, with Bruce Willis as the bad-ass John McClane, and Alan Rickman is one of my favorite go-to guys for villains (even though my favorite of his performances is Professor Snape), but the action does get a little tiring for my taste, and maybe after years of seeing films like this with a regular guy risking his life to save a lot of people from terrorists (I grew up on Speed, and loved it) it didn't feel like anything particularly mind-blowing. I did have a lot of fun with it, and I do enjoy Bruce Willis in the role, as well as his signature line. I guess I just had to be there for this particular movie.
Beetlejuice: Tim Burton is a director I always admire for making gothic and quirky films (even though he overuses Johnny Depp from time to time). This is a silly film, but it's a lot of fun. It's fun watching Geena Davis and Alec Balwin play a recently deceased couple trying to cope with the fact that they are dead, and their many attempts to get these annoying new tennants out of their house. Michael Keaton is a hoot when he arrives on screen as the title character, our resident bio-exorcist, and Winona Ryder has always been a natural at these goth teenage roles. I'd probably put this film in my list if it weren't for another wacky but more clever comedy that came out that year (I'll mention it when I get to it), but there are moments in this one I'll always treasure, like the dancing dinner scene, and the shrunken head.
Stand and Deliver: When looking through independent films, I found this classroom drama about a Latino math teacher from Bolivia and his struggles to motivate an under-achieving class in a small L.A. High School to pass one of the most difficult exams in the district. It's a classroom drama that doesn't stray too much from that formula we've all come to know with films like Freedom Writers (the most recent example to come to mind) or Dangerous Minds, but it stands out because of a powerful Oscar-nominated performance from Edward James Olmos as Jaime A. Escalante, a man who levels with his students and never lets them off the hook. He's not a particularly nice guy. He constantly teases his students and uses them to entertain everyone else, but he doesn't do it to be mean, but he does it to challenge them to be better. He sees the potential in his students, and he sees a way out of the futures they have locked themselves in, a point that is made particularly strong in a scene where he comfronts the father of one of his students at a restaurant by telling him she could be smarter than him and even run the place. The film also deals with racism and prejudice in the way that no one believes in these kids because of where they come from, and their last names. I think this film just barely edges out of my Top Ten list. Despite the formula, I was very impressed by the performances (also from Lou Diamond Phillips and Vanessa Marquez).
Now, on to the Top Ten:
#10. A Fish Called Wanda: This is a perfect caper film/ love story with first-rate performances from Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese and Kevin Kline (an unusual Oscar-winning performance, and a delightful one at that). A Fish Called Wanda is the story of two American thieves, Wanda and Otto, who travel to London to steal $20 million in diamonds, and then double-cross one of their associates to keep it to themselves, unaware that this associate moved the diamonds to another facility, so Wanda now tries to get close to his lawyer, Archie Leach (John Cleese), and a love triangle ensues sending everybody into complete turmoil. Another associate is Ken Pile (Michael Palin) the stuttering animal lover who owns a bowl full of fish, one of them named Wanda, and keeps accidentally killing her neighbor's dogs. I remember seeing this right after seeing Charlotte's Web (the Dakota Fanning version) and then hearing Wanda telling Otto "a sheep could out-smart you", because John Cleese did the voice of a sheep in Charlotte's Web (love to have that irony). It's irreverent, it's silly, and very stylish, even when you have characters run over by steam-rollers in an airport, it's all in good (if somewhat mean-spirited) fun, but there's also a very touching and sensual romance along for the ride.
#9. Working Girl: I just re-watched this film for an Advanced Screenwriting class, and I'd forgotten how funny and touching it is. Not only is Melanie Griffith perfect for the role of a naive woman trying to be taken seriously in a business world run by men, but you also have the scene-stealing Sigourney Weaver making her presence known in every scene she's in and we relish it every time she opens her mouth. Tess McGill (Griffith) has just been assigned to Katharine Parker (Weaver) the first woman she's ever worked under, and she couldn't more grateful or impressed with her, until Katherin steals one of Tess's ideas and passes it off as her own, but when Katharine breaks her leg on a ski trip, Tess takes that as an opportunity to rise in the business world beyond simply being a secretary. She has great support from players the likes of Harrison Ford, Joan Cusack (as her best friend) and Alec Baldwin (as her sleazy ex-boyfriend) in a film about finding your way in a world where the odds are stacked against you and learning to do it by simply being yourself. It's a pretty common story in screenplays, since it creates so many obstacles for characters and so much room for characters to grow and change, which is why I think I appreciate it more now that I've been in the program as long as I have. It's not a subtle film, but it allows you to care for its characters and relish in this woman's victories (or just watch it to see Sigourney Weaver pointing at her with a crutch, which is priceless on its own). This is also the film that brought us Carly Simon's Academy-Award Winning Let the River Run for the opening and closeing credits, which really has nothing to do with the film, but it's a fun little gateway into the story nontheless.
#8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Based on Milan Kundera's novel, it's the story of Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) a doctor living in Prague who is also a very active womanizer. He likes to get physically involved with women everywhere, which include the incredibly sexy Sabina (Lena Olin, my favorite performance in the film by a mile), but it all changes when he meets Tereza (the beautiful Juliette Binoche), a waitress who falls in love with him but believes in monogamy and is very shy about her body. The first line of the film is "take off your clothes", spoken several times by Tomas (and once by Sabina) and that line sets the tone for this very erotic story about a man with no commitments who enjoys a very carefree way of life, and with it, comes a woman who is afraid of her own body. The Soviet Invasion of Prague in 1968 serves as a backdrop to this story of love, lust and sacrifice of oneself, as well as what it means to be alive and to enjoy the pleasures of life. I still need to read Kundera's book which I hear is superb (some say it's even better than movie) but on its own terms, the movie is quite beautiful and it further proves why Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors working today (and I wish I could see more from Lena Olin, because I really loved her here). The film is long and a little slow at times, but it focuses on the beauty of each of its characters, even when those characters are struck with tragedy or fear, and there's a very erotic scene between Tereza and Sabina that I love, where they each take nude pictures of one another, each at their most vulnerable and most savage, they chase each other and hide from each other around the room. I particularly love how that scene reveals so much about each of these two characters.
#7. Mississippi Burning: Based on the real-life murders of two civil rights activists in 1964, this film examines a time in our history when not all men were created equal, at least not in the eyes of the people pf Mississippi. When certain men were looked down upon just because their skin was darker, and everybody turned a blind eye when people were killed. Beyond that, it's the story of two FBI agents coming into this town to investigate these murders, and they each have a different way of understanding things. Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is the younger agent who plays by the book on all matters, while Agent Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) is a former Sherriff who understands these people better and knows that he has to be a hard-ass to get anything done in this town. It's in the dynamic between these two people that the film is at its most interesting, but the best scene in the movie in my opinion is when Agent Anderson visits the Deputy's wife (a very moving Frances McDormand) and she talks about the nature of hate. Hate is taught, and depending on where it comes from, hate can become your life, and this woman lives in a town filled with hate. It continues to baffle me how people can turn so blindly hate something, especially what they don't understand. Hatred leads to violence (as depicted in this movie) and violence only leads to more violence (which I discussed when I wrote about in Munich on another note), so it becomes a neverending cycle, but in this town, it seems to be all they know. They know that whites are superior and blacks are inferior and want to keep it that way. Alan Parker pulls no punches on depicting this hatred, and some of the speeches are really haunting.
#6. Running on Empty: I rented this film on iTunes recently and watched it on my iPod on a flight back home. I didn't know what to expect out of it. All I knew about it was that River Phoenix gave a really good performance in it, which he does, and it saddens me that we never got to watch this kid grow (he died of an overdose in 1993, he was 23 years old). Even at this age, he gives a mature performance where he plays the son of two fugitives who keep moving him and his brother around and changing their names so the FBI doesn't catch up to them. They're always ready to pick up and move away, ready to assume new identities and new looks and settle down in a new town until it's no longer safe. Danny, the eldest son, has only ever been close to his family and moving away is all he knows, but now that he may have a chance at a future (one of his teachers discovers he's a gifted piano player), he has to make a choice whether he wants to pursue it or leave it behind. His parents are played by Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti. They're former activists who set a fire at a weapons lab to hinder the Vietnam War effort, and ever since then, they've had to be on the run, but now they also have to make that choice. Danny never chose this life, he was born into it, and it's not fair for Danny to have to pay for his parent's mistakes. Danny knows that, but he loves his family, and he doesn't want to leave them. His father believes that a family has to stick together and that's the way this family has lived all these years. I appreciated the unity of these characters who have nothing but each other, but more than anything, I really admire the choices written into the screenplay and these choices are up to the characters to make. They all have to search their conscience and think of the consequences of their actions. If Danny stays with his parents, he'll have to live with their burden for the rest of his life and never be able to have a life, but if he leaves them, he may never see them again since any contact could be dangerous.
#5. Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown): I've become a fan of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar in the last few years, and this is one of his earliest masterpieces. It's a screwball comedy about a group of women all caught up in the same apartment, all running away from someone, or looking for someone, and any one of them could crack at any second. Carmen Maura stars as Pepa, a dubbing-actress (someone who dubs over movies for Spanish cinema, since they dub everything there) who is having an affair with a married man, and she spends all weekend trying to track down this lover, and ends up running into his wife, his son (a young Antonio Banderas), his lawyer (who is now also his lover) and a friend of hers who nearly kills herself and has nothing to do with Pepa's lover (just the fact that she's in the apartment at the time and falls in love with Antonio Banderas in the film). The film includes a landlady who is a Jehova's Witness, and an effeminate cab driver whose cab Pepa seems to end up in every time she calls one. This is Almodovar at his wackiest, with so many amazing and memorable characters, car chases, phones, a lot of red all over the screen (which includes a spiked drink that many characters drink, called a gazpacho), and more than anything, Almodovar's keen understanding of women, an understanding I only wish I could have. It must be such a treat to live inside that head and want to tell those stories that he comes up with. If you want to take a look at this amazing director, I'd suggest you start with this film. It's so much fun (even if the beginning is slow) and it gives you a glimpse at the unique themes that Almodovar touches upon in his films. Carmen Maura is radiant in this role (for those who saw Volver, she played Penelope Cruz's mother in that movie).
#4. Big: Yes, that classic film about a boy who wishes he were bigger so he can impress a girl, and wakes up the next morning in the body of a 30-year-old man. This is a comedy that works primarily because it doesn't play itself for laughs. Tom Hanks doesn't go for cheap laughs with his character. He simply plays Josh Baskin as a regular 13-year-old boy who just happens to be in a grownup's body. It works because it's not just a goofy premise, but there's a character attached to that premise, and we as an audience become attached to that character and the many experiences he goes through. I love that the screenplay trusts its characters to bring the laughs instead of creating situation after situation (like a lot of awful comedies) just to try to make people laugh. There's one scene in particular I love to watch, and that's the scene where Josh (as played by Tom Hanks) is in a meeting where this one guy Paul (John Heard) discusses a new idea for a toy and throws so many statistics and why it works on the market, and at the end of the meeting, Josh asks what's fun about the toy. I wish more grownups could see the world that simply. Why is it fun? What do children like? It's also great watching Tom Hanks having fun with toys (yes, the keyboard scene with Robert Loggia is a classic), but there are also moments where he damn near breaks your heart. One scene that really gets me is the scene where he spends his first night alone in that horrible hotel room and listens to couples arguing next door and shootings in the street, and he crawls into his bed and starts crying. When I saw that scene, I knew it wasn't just Tom Hanks pretending to be a kid. I admit that when I first saw it, I was a bit uncomfortable with the romance with his co-worker Susan (Elizabeth Perkins) since I was constantly reminded that this is a kid, but then I started seeing what she saw and there's an irony there. He's supposed to be a child in an adult's body, but when Susan compares him to his old boyfriend (Paul), she says Josh is a grownup, and I love that irony, that a 13-year-old can be more mature than a grown man. Those are just some of many details that I love about this movie. And, one last thing, child actor Jared Rushton was quite a natural as Josh's best friend Billy.
#3. The Last Temptation of Christ: I just saw this film over the summer for the first time, but it made this much of an impression on me. I was afraid of watching the film, partly because of the fact that it's a film about Jesus Christ (a subject that has caused many to talk down to their audience) and partly because it's by Martin Scorsese, a director I have very mixed feelings about (on the one hand, I love Taxi Driver, on the other, I despise Raging Bull). I decided to give it a try because I was curious to see what Scorsese did with the story, but also the fact that it caused such a public outcry amongst Christian Fundamentalists sparked my interest, and I'm so glad I did. This is one of Scorsese's most underrated films. The first two hours tell us the story of Jesus Christ, the one we all know and have heard a million times, but in this interpretation, Jesus has all the perfections of God along with all the weaknesses of a man, which include being prone to sin and temptation (and lust, which I hear made a lot of people mad). There's a scene where Jesus is tempted by Satan in three different forms (as a snake, as a lion, and as fire) that I found to be quite exhilirating. However, the film really soars in its final 45 minutes during the controversial "last temptation". As he hangs on the cross to be crucified, a little girl who claims to be his guardian angel takes him down from the cross, and tells him that God wants him to live as a man, and we see what Jesus' life may have been if he were a man. During this entire section, I couldn't look away, and it all culminates in an impressive final shot of Jesus on the cross after he's resisted this last temptation of abandoning this crucifixion ordered by his father. I don't really believe in most of this and it continues to bother me that there are people who take the story of Jesus too much to heart that he must be portrayed perfect or else. I loved Willem Dafoe's portrayal of a man who carries a task much greater than what he can understand, but believes in nothing but love. He believes in a world where everyone uses love to co-exist and reign each other, and I agree with that, so it might be weird for me to say this, but it would be great if most people listened to what Jesus had to say, at least in the incarnation I saw in this film (because I'm not that familiar with the story of Jesus, so I'm only responding to what I saw in the film). I know I've spent a longer time on this one, but it's fresh in me and I can't recommend it enough.
#2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: I saw this film a few times when I was younger, but I didn't understand the true brilliance of the film until college when I was introduced to a genre called Film Noir. It's a tricky genre, but a fascinating one, since it deals with flawed human beings who are taken into a web of violent corruption, usually in the realm of seduction by a woman (typically called a femme fatale). This film has a lot of those elements, but mixed in with wacky cartoon characters that range from Bugs Bunny, to Mickey Mouse, to Droopy, and of course the title character Roger Rabbit, a white rabbit who is the star of a cartoon where he has to babysit a baby and everything always goes wrong. In the world of the film, people and cartoons (or toons, as they are called) co-exist in the city of Los Angeles circa 1947. Toons have their own little corner of the city called Toontown (kind of like Chinatown), but they do business with Hollywood studios all the time and act in these cartoons. Bob Hoskins stars as Eddie Valiant, a private disillusioned private investigator who is hired to take pictures of Toontown creator Marvin Acme with Roger's smoking hot wife Jessica Rabbit, but after Acme is found dead, Roger becomes the prime suspect, and he looks to Eddie to clear his name. The film is filled with such brilliant scenes and lines. One of my favorite is when Eddie takes the pictures of Acme and Jessica Rabbit, and we see the pictures, we realize they are just playing Pattycake (which for Roger Rabbit, is a form of cheating), and one of my favorite lines is late in the film, "that freeway idea could only be dreamed up by a toon". Los Angeles has become a city of freeways, so I love the irony of that line coming from Eddie Valiant (this whole plot is to destroy Toontown and build a freeway, but I won't say who the villain is. There's also the amazing Christopher Lloyd playing the sadistic Judge Doom who is after Roger Rabbit, and the sexy voice of Kathleen Turner as Jessica Rabbit, this film is also a technical achievement, fully mixing live action and animation, having characters from both worlds grab each other, and having animated characters hold live action objects (such as trays and guns and the works) and if you see the behind-the-scenes feature, you'll be amazed at how all of this was done without computers, and this is by Robert Zemeckis, a man who has worked on advancing technology in stop-motion animation lately (he directed The Polar Express and Beowulf recently).
#1. Rain Man: Sorry, I have to do this. It's not as dramatically or cinematically accomplished as some of the films I've mentioned above, but I first saw Rain Man when I was 13 years old and it has meant a lot to me ever since. It has a sentimental value that I can't deny, partly because the film introduced me to autism at a time when I thought there was something wrong with me. I had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome about a year before I saw this film (though I didn't know about it until I was 14 years old), which is a milder form of autism that makes it difficult to socialize and absorbs you into special interests (which is movies in my case, as you may have guessed). I identified with the character of Raymond Babbit, in the sense that like him, I have a pretty good memory, I'm pretty good with numbers, but I also feel uncomfortable when plans change and new things are scary for me, and I also have a tendency to be alone, so this film was a really important part of a journey to understanding myself (and it's ironic that it came out the year I was born) but even as a movie by itself, I love it. Not only is Dustin Hoffman's performance outstanding, but the story itself is quite moving. It's the story of Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) a selfish car salesman whose father just died, a father he never really got along with or even loved, and he only goes to the funeral to find out what he got from the old man, which is really just a car and some flowers (well, a classic Buick and some prize rose bushes, but that's not what Charlie was hoping for). During this ordeal, Charlie finds out that he was never an only child. He had a much older brother named Raymond who was sent to an instititution in Cincinatti and has inherited $3 million of his father's money (even though he doesn't understand the concept of money). Charlie is forced by his own selfish tendencies to build a bond with his brother when he kidnaps him and is forced to take a cross-country road trip (Raymond refuses to fly in one of the film's most devastating scenes) if he wants to get half the inheritance. The road trip is filled with some hilarious moments (such as Raymond farting in a phone booth, or writing in his "serious injury" book, or even when he tells Charlie he has no underwear on because they weren't K-Mart boxer shorts), but other scenes are very moving. My favorite is when Charlie learns the origins of his childhood friend, the Rain Man, and learns when and why Raymond was taken away. The film may annoy some people (Raymond's autistic ways can get irritating), but it's a film that holds a special place for me and I continue to find it a very moving experience (and I'm also really impressed by Tom Cruise, who brings an unexpected heart to his character).
Well, that's 1988 for me. I don't know how many of you were around when these films were just released, or remember seeing them in the last few years. I'm actually also hunting down films from way beofre I was born and looking at different styles of directing and acting, and while a lot of these films already feel dated stylistically, what I love about movies is that if the stories are strong enough, they will never be dated, and that's one thing I feel is the case with a lot of these stories. Are there any films anyone else would like to mention from 1988? Or, how about the year you were born (if it's not 1988)? How much do you know about that year?
