Year in Review: 1992

1992 was a great year for movies. Any number of my runners-up could have quite easily made this list in a weaker year, and there is not a spot on the top 10 list that doesn’t go to a brilliant movie. A very tough year to decide on my number 1 film as well as the top 2 are almost equally as brilliant.

10. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game became infamous because of the twist that comes about half way through the movie – and it is a shocker. Yet, the film is more than just the twist. Stephen Rea gives an excellent performance as an IRA foot soldier assigned to guard Forest Whitaker – a British soldier the group has kidnapped and threatens to kill if their demands are not met. But the two unexpectedly bond, and Rea promises to take care of Whitaker’s girlfriend (Jaye Davidson) if something bad happens to him – which of course it does. Rea goes to see Whitaker’s girlfriend, falls for her, but never guesses the secret. Meanwhile, his IRA friends, mainly Miranda Richardson, try and track him down to get him to do more for them. The Crying Game is a fascinating movie, as it starts out as a thriller, and involves us in its intricate story, only to change directions on us suddenly and unexpectedly. Yet, the twist is not a cheat – it in fact makes the film deeper than we first suspect it is. Jordan has made a lot of great films in his career – but The Crying Game will be the film he is remembered for.

9. Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley)
No one writes dialogue quite like David Mamet. His stage play Glengarry Glen Ross comes to the screen intact. The film is about the lives of a group of real estate salesman. They are selling crap and know it, but they have to do it, or else they’ll lose their jobs. Al Pacino is the hotshot salesmen who can seemingly sell anything to anyone. Jack Lemmon is the one great salesman who cannot seem to catch a break. Ed Harris is fiery and angry because he cannot close with the crap he has. Alan Arkin is more resigned to his fate as a loser. Kevin Spacey is the office manager, who can give them better leads, but won’t. And Alec Baldwin is the guy from downtown who comes in to deliver a profane “motivational speech” to the guys. This is a world still populated by men who smoke cigarettes and send time at the local bar slinging back scotch instead of going home to their wives. The dialogue is terrific, and the entire cast is tremendous – especially Jack Lemmon who gives one of the very best performances of his career. You feel sorry for these poor bastards.

8. Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara)
I bet Harvey Keitel loved his role in Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant – after years of watching DeNiro get the plum roles in the Scorsese movies, while he was relegated to the background, he finally got the play the “DeNiro” role, even if it wasn’t for Scorsese. Keitel plays a New York cop who is strung out on drugs and has completely lost his moral center. When he catches teenage girls in the city who shouldn’t be out, he verbally rapes them while masturbating next to their car. His newest case is the rape of a nun – and he is infuriated when she won’t name her attacker, although she knows who it is, because she has already forgiven him, and he has suffered enough. Keitel is brilliant in the lead role – he carries the movie and is in practically every shot. This is Ferrara’s best film – he is constantly experimenting and pushing boundaries, but this is the one film of his career when everything seemed to come together perfectly. A great film.

7. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon)
Had Quebec director Jean-Claude Lauzon not died in an accident a few years after making this, his second and final film, then he likely could have joined the ranks of Cronenberg, Egoyan, Arcand and Jutra as the best Canadian directors of all time. His Leolo is one of those rare films that doesn’t easily fit in neatly to any genre, and because he died, we cannot place it as part of a larger body of work. It is a work of singular brilliance. The film is about 12 year old boy growing up in Montreal who has to deal with his crazy family. Unlike Fellini’s Amarcord though, this is not a nostalgic look back at Lauzon’s childhood, and his family is not just lovingly eccentric – they are actually mentally unstable in differing ways, and the young boy tries valiantly to remain sane even with the insanity that surrounds him. The almost ever present narration of the film provides us an insight into the boy’s mind as he tries, and ultimately fails, to escape his fate. This is a movie seething with anger and pain, and it tells a thinly veiled version of Lauzon’s own story, although he ended up escaping, for a time anyway, his family’s pain and torment. The film is a technical marvel – recalling to some the work of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, yet for my money Lauzon’s film is better, as although Jeunet’s films share the technical brilliance, they are ultimately hollow exercises in style – while Lauzon’s work is something far greater. A masterwork by a director who sadly left us all too soon.

6. Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen)
Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives is one of his most interesting movies. He was going through his problems with his then wife Mia Farrow, and her adopted daughter, and he put all of that onscreen – although he changes the reality of the situation for the movie. The film is about two couples who are struggling with thoughts of separation and infidelity. Woody Allen and Mia Farrow play one couple, and he as he starts a flirtation with a student (Juliette Lewis), their best friends Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis, decide to separate, and almost immediately start to see other people, causing even more problems between them, and between Allen and Farrow. The film has a choppy editing style, unusual for an Allen film, but one that works brilliantly, as the film cuts from scene to scene. The four lead performances are all great – especially Davis as the frigid wife prone to fly into rages. Sometimes filmmakers need to get their own personal demons out in a film – and that seems to be what Allen has done in this film. In doing so, he has made one of the best films of his career.

5. Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
Quentin Tarantino’s debut film is not as refined as his later work – but it is just as entertaining. Opening with a now iconic scene in a diner (where the group of criminals, all dressed in black suits and ties) discuss Madonna’s Like a Virgin, and the art of tipping, gives way to the bloody aftermath of a robbery gone wrong – which we never see. One by one, the criminals arrive back at an abandoned warehouse to discuss what the hell went so horribly wrong at the robbery, eventually agreeing that there was a snitch – but no one can figure out who it is. Gradually, the film introduces flashbacks that tell us how the robbers each came to be assigned to the job. The dialogue is classic Tarantino, full of profanity and pop culture references as only he can write it (anyone who tries to copy Tarantino ends up writing crap). The performances by Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Laurence Tierny, Chris Penn – and even Steven Wright who is only heard on the radio – are spot on, as the film rushes headlong to its inevitable, violent conclusion. Tarantino would go onto make better films than Reservoir Dogs – but this is one is still wonderful.

4. One False Move (Carl Franklin)
What the hell ever happened to Carl Franklin? In this, his debut film, he shows himself to be an incredibly gifted filmmaker, crafted one of the best, most underrated crime movies of the 1990s – and yet, despite the quality of his follow-up film Devil in a Blue Dress, he has never entered the ranks of the truly great filmmakers of his generation. No matter, because One False Move is a masterful film. Three LA criminals (Billy Bob Thronton, Michael Beach and Cynda Williams) kill 6 people in a drug deal gone bad, and head to Texas to try and sell the drugs. The LAPD catches wind of the plan, and contacts small town sheriff Bill Paxton, for his help. When the LAPD arrives, Paxton is in awe of them and wonders whether or not he should go to LA to become a real cop – but is later humiliated when the cops laugh at the idea. But this is just the surface of the movie, and doesn’t begin to describe the relationships being developed between the characters, and the secrets that come out. The film is a brilliant neo-noir, and recalls the great work of Fritz Lang in 1950s film like The Big Heat. The performances are all great – especially Michael Beach as a cold hearted psychopath, Cynda Williams as a woman with secrets, and Paxton’s awe shucks country charm that turns into something more devious as the film moves along. It’s too bad Franklin didn’t make more films like One False Move – as it is a masterful film.

3. The Player (Robert Altman)
I cannot help but smile a little bit every time I think about Robert Altman’s The Player. Altman had angered Hollywood with his box office bomb Popeye in 1980 – and spent the rest of that decade pretty much making low budget, indie movies and being forgotten by the big guys. He must have smiled when he read Michael Tolkin’s screenplay about a heartless Hollywood producer (Tim Robbins) who murders a screenwriter who calls him a hack, and ends up with the writer’s wife. The Player is a merciless satire on Hollywood – the pitch meetings are hilarious, and the through line of the tough, gritty, death penalty movie to be shot in black and white with no stars where the innocent woman dies, that turns into a movie with Bruce Willis shooting out the glass of the gas chamber to save Julia Roberts from death is absolutely wonderful. The film is full of celebrity cameos, playing themselves, and almost all of them are dead on and funny as hell. The opening tracking shot, lasting nearly 8 minutes, is brilliant – paying homage to Touch of Evil and Rope (which are, of course, mentioned during the shot itself). Altman is one of the best directors in cinema history, and The Player is one of his greatest achievements.

2. Malcolm X (Spike Lee)
Spike Lee’s Malcolm X may just be the best biopic I have ever seen. Denzel Washington gives the best performance of his career as the title character, which starts out as a small time hood, and finds Islam, and the prophet Elijah Muhammad in prison, and turns his life around. Malcolm is more militant than his contemporary Martin Luther King, favoring blacks going back to Africa because America doesn’t want them, and he doesn’t want America. He becomes one of the most outspoken and controversial figures of the 1960s. Lee bravely doesn’t shy away from Malcolm’s flaws – he spends the first third of the movie on his career as a petty criminal, and then more time with him in jail. The last half of the movie details the Malcolm that everyone knows – the fiery speeches, the conflicts with others in the Nation of Islam, and how his infatuation with Elijah Muhammad leads to his disillusionment when he discovers he isn’t as perfect as he thought. Lee makes daring choices throughout the movie, showing us both the positive and negative side of Malcolm X, and the ending is a heartbreaker. It’s not so much the assassination, as the brilliant sequence right before it as Malcolm drives to what will be his final speech, set to Sam Cooke’s “A Change Gonna Come” which gets under my skin every time I see it. Lee has always been a great filmmaker – and Malcolm X is one of his masterpieces, right alongside Do the Right Thing.

1. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven is the final Western from a man whose name became entrenched with the genre. This is a film that drains the romanticism, and heroism, out of the genre and shows us a group of men who are all morally bankrupt. When people get shot in this film, it seems like it really hurts. Eastwood gives the best performance of his career as William Munny, a once notorious outlaw famed for his drinking and his cruelty. He is pulled back into a job, years after he settled down, of killing two men who raped and cut up a whore in a small town, and received no justice. He, along with Morgan Freeman, his old partner and Jaimz Woolveet, a kid putting on a tough guy act, ride into town to kill the men, and collect their bounty. But the sheriff (Gene Hackman) doesn’t want them there, and makes it clear from the start. Unforgiven is a movie without any heroes in it – everyone of its characters are bad guys, with death and murder in their past. The film is violent – but necessarily so – as it shows the causes and consequences of that violence. The final shootout is criticized by some who feel that it goes against what the rest of the film is about – namely that in allowing Eastwood to gun down all the men, it is in fact doing what it set out not to do. Yet, I disagree with that contention. The final shootout is violent, bloody and messy – it isn’t like the shootouts of old time Westerns, but a much more stark and horrific thing. As Eastwood heads out of town in the rain – with the American flag flying behind his head – the whole point of the movie hits home hard. This is Eastwood’s masterpiece.

Just Missed the Top 10: The Adjuster (Atom Egoyan), Batman Returns (Tim Burton), Benny's Video (Michael Haneke), Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky), Damage (Louis Malle), A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner), Grand Canyon (Lawrence Kasdan), The Hairdresser's Husband (Patrice Leconte), HardBoiled (John Woo), Hoffa (Danny DeVito), Howards End (James Ivory), The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann), Light Sleeper (Paul Schrader), Porco Rosso (Hayao Miyazaki).

Notable Films Missed: And Life Goes On (Abbas Kiarostami), The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies), Orlando (Sally Potter).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
The Academy certainly had more friendly films among the nominees – the feel good story of a blind man (Scent of a Woman), a wonderful, crowd pleasing courtroom drama (A Few Good Men) and a prestigious costume drama (Howard’s End) – yet they somewhat daringly went with this dark, moody, violent Western. The Western hasn’t been much celebrated by the Academy in the best picture race. Unless you count Cimarron or Dances with Wolves (neither really are classic Westerns), then this is actually the only Western to ever win the top prize. That is somewhat appropriate. There have been a handful of great Westerns since this film came out, but none have had the cultural impact of this film, which somehow feels like the final word on the genre. Good for the Academy for recognizing its greatness.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman
Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors in history – and he surely deserved an Oscar well before 1992. Just look the performances for which he got nominated – The Godfather, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice for All, Dick Tracy, and in this same year Glengarry Glen Ross. All of them (with the possible exception of And Justice for All) were however better than his performance in Scent of a Woman. Yes, he is good and charming as a hardnosed former military man, now blind, going on an adventure with Chris O’Donnell. In fact, he plays the role just like it should be played. Yet, is it a truly great performance? Is it anywhere near as good as Washington, Eastwood, Rea or Downey Jr. (for Chaplin), who were nominated alongside him? I don’t think so. This is clearly a case of the right actor winning for the wrong movie.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Emma Thompson, Howards End
Out of the nominees, Emma Thompson clearly gives the best performance. She is wonderful as E.M. Forster’s feisty feminist heroine, trying desperately to keep her life together after she marries Anthony Hopkins’ rigid man, with a horrid past, but strict moral standards that he holds everyone else but himself to. It is a largely internal performance – one that forces us to observe her and the way she reacts throughout the movie. Thompson was still young here – and she is put to a high test by Hopkins, alongside with Vanessa Redgrave who has such a great single scene that she got nominated for an Oscar for it. Thompson lives up to them both. I will probably catch hell for saying this, but personally, I would have voted for a non-nominee this year – Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns who gives the definitive Catwoman performance and is utterly brilliant in that movie.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Gene Hackman, Unforgiven
Gene Hackman is one of the best actors of his generation, and despite the fact that he had already won an Oscar (21 years prior, for The French Connection), the Academy could not overlook his great performance in Unforgiven, as a Sheriff who thinks of himself as above the criminals, when in reality he is as bad as the rest of them. Hackman is capable of fury – he does it with the best of them – and he certainly shows that off here. But the moment I will never forget is his last one, lying on the floor waiting for Eastwood to finish him off. Hackman is a great actor, and this is one of his best performances.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny
This is one of the most controversial Oscar wins of all time – so much so that you almost feel sorry for that Tomei, a great actress, who really is a hell of a lot of fun in this movie, won. I have heard different versions of the myth that has circulated, that old Jack Palance simply reread the last name of the nominees again, and the Academy was too embarrassed to correct the mistake so Tomei won when really Vanessa Redgrave should have. Or Judy Davis. Or Miranda Richardson. Strangely, I have never read a story claiming Joan Plowright was the rightful winner. But the fact that I have read stories that claim that the other three should have won, is a pretty good indication that the story is crap, and the Academy just made a strange choice this year. Not that strange though, when you consider the Academy often gives this award to gorgeous newcomers – something that really did qualify to Tomei at the time. Besides, her career since this has been so great (especially in the last few years), that she deserved at least one Oscar.

Year in Review: 1934

1934 is a mixed bag of a movie year. Like seemingly many of my recent top 10 lists, this is a year where I am torn on what the number 1 film should be. The top three films on this list are, in my mind anyway, all masterpieces, although very different ones. The rest of the list is made up of excellent films as well – but I have to admit had this been a stronger overall year a few probably would not have made it.

10. The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch)
Ernst Lubitsch was one of the best directors of comedies in cinema history, and he will always be known for his “Lubitsch touch”. The Merry Widow is somewhat different than most of his famous films, as the film is a musical – and a delightful one at that. Maurice Chevalier gives a wonderful performance as a womanizing Count order by his King to seduce and marry the wealthy widow Jeanette McDonald, before she marries a foreigner and takes most of the small kingdom’s tax dollars with her. The songs are a delight, as both Chevalier and McDonald have wonderful singing voices. While the film is mainly a musical, there are some wonderful comic moments – most provided by the wonderful Edward Everett Sloan as the ambassador. The film has a keen idea for period detail, and is a marvel of production design. All these ingredients go into making The Merry Widow a wonderful little film – not Lubitsch’s best, but great just the same.

9. The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich)
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were teamed up for the first time in supporting roles in the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio. But audiences loved them together, so the following year, they got their own movie – this delightful, funny screwball comedy/musical/dance film. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Top Hat or Swing Time, it’s marvelous entertainment just the same. Ginger Rogers come to London to have a “fake” affair in order to get a divorce from her estranged husband. Fred Astaire sees her at the airport, and falls immediately in love, and through the course of a series of hilarious misunderstandings, the pair end up falling in love. As always, Astaire and Rogers are magical together – playing off each other with such marvelous comic timing and making the dance numbers appear effortless. They are ably supporting by Edward Everett Horton and Alice Brady, providing even more comic relief. Yes, the film is meaningless, yet so delightful you don’t care in the least.

8. Our Daily Bread (King Vidor)
King Vidor was a major director in 1934 when he read an article about the back to land movement at the height of the great depression and decided he wanted to make a movie about it. The studios didn’t want to make the movie, but rather than give up, Vidor mortgaged his home and borrowed money and produced the film himself. He didn’t make a lot of money on the film, but that wasn’t his point – and besides, he didn’t lose money either. The only knock against Our Daily Bread is the acting – the cast are all no names that we wouldn’t hear from again and with good reason – they really cannot act. But this movie isn’t about acting – it’s about an idea, and Vidor was such a talented director that he pulled it off brilliantly, without the movie ever seeming like a sermon. A man and wife down on their luck is given a farm by an uncle of theirs. He doesn’t want it, and neither does the bank, so although they are city folk, they head out anyway. They meet a nice Swedish immigrant driving by – he used to have a farm in Minnesota, but the bank took it away. The city boy gets an idea – why does the Swede and his family stay with them and help them work the farm? It works out so well, that he decides to let more and more families stay. Each person contributes to the group what they can, and they share what they have. If this sounds like Communism, well it sort of is, but an idealized form of it. Besides, where else were all of these people supposed to go? The entire film is magnificently directed by Vidor, but the highlight is the now infamous irrigation sequence that ends the film, which stands as one of the best set pieces that Vidor, a master at them, has ever composed. Yes, the acting is weak. But you barely notice that in this wonderful, one of a kind film.

7. Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks)
One of the first screwball comedies is also one of the funniest. John Barrymore plays a once successful Broadway producer now in a desperate situation, and trying to convince his former star, and lover Carole Lombard, to come back to him. They are stuck on a long train ride together where he desperately tries to get her to sign a contract – trying everything imaginable to do so. The films two stars are wonderful – especially Lombard who is dynamic and hilarious in the film, but there is great supporting work by Walter Connelly, Roscoe Karns and especially Etienne Girardot as an escaped mental patient, who everyone mistakes for a rich man. Hawks was one of those studio era directors who could pretty much direct anything – and did – but for me, his screwball comedies have always been the best of his career. And Twentieth Century is one of his best.

6. It’s a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod)
W.C. Fields was ahead of his time. Although I have to admit, I may not be his biggest fan, his films are about man’s entrapment by the weight of family and kids, and he always plays a character that we know we shouldn’t like, but cannot help falling for anyway. It’s a Gift is perhaps the best film of Fields’ career – an hilarious comedy about a man who comes into some money and decides to sell the family store and move to California to start an Orange Grove – just like the one he has seen in a brochure he carries with him everywhere. Much to his chagrin, he has to bring along his nagging wife and ungrateful children. Yet the plot is secondary to all the marvelous sight gags in the movie – the sharing of the bathroom mirror, Baby Leroy trying to destroy his store and the centerpiece sequence of Fields trying to get some sleep on his front porch, away from his nagging wife. Fields and the film are a delight to behold.

5. The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is one Hitchcock’s best movies from his British period – an intricately plot spy yarn. A British couple and their daughter (Nova Pilbeam) are vacationing in Switzerland, when Pilbeam witnesses an assassination of a French spy, who then passes along vital information to her as he lies dying. In order to try and get the information, the assassins, led by an evil Peter Lorre (is there any other kind?) kidnap her, forcing her parents to give chase. The film is expertly plot and shot by Hitchcock – including a wonderful shootout climax. All the performances are fine, but Peter Lorre is the best as the spy – which is all the more impressive since he didn’t speak English at the time the film was made and had to learn his lines phonetically (Lorre was a German Jew who had just fled Nazi Germany). Forget the 1956 remake with James Stewart and Doris Day, and directed by Hitchcock himself – this is the better version of the story, and a great thriller by the master.

4. The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg)
Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress is a film almost drowning in style. The huge palaces, the massive costume designs, the brilliant dark cinematography seem a danger to drown out the story and the performances of the movie, but somehow never does. Marlene Dietrich gives one of her best performances as the daughter of a lowly German prince, brought to Russia by John Lodge, to marry the dimwitted heir to the throne Sam Jaffe. She also has to contend with his mother, Louise Dresser. Dietrich hates her husband, but finds one lover after another to meet her needs, and when he mother in law dies, she ascends to the throne, wary of her husband who now despises her. Yes, the style of the movie is great – as it always is in a von Sternberg film – but there is more here that just that style. This is a magnificent film.

3. It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
It Happened One Night is one of those happy accidents of a film. No one wanted to play the lead roles, the script was constantly rewritten and director Frank Capra was coming off a humiliation at the Academy Awards, where he thought he had won the Oscar for Best Director, only to get on stage and realize that he had lost. Yet somehow, everything worked out and It Happened One Night became one of the best comedies of the 1930s. Claudette Colbert is wonderful as spoiled heiress running away from her overbearing father to get back together with her husband who her father “saved” her from before their marriage could be consummated. On the bus to New York, she meets out of work newspaper man Clark Gable, who blackmails her into giving him an exclusive on her story. Throughout the course of the movie, through a series of hilarious mishaps, the two of course, end up falling in love. Gable was known mainly for his rugged masculinity in his performance, but here he proves he can do comedy with the best of them – and Colbert gives the best, wittiest performance of her great comedic career. Capra keeps the energy up all the way through, and the screenplay that was eventually filmed is a delight. Just pure comedic gold.

2. L’Atlante (Jean Vigo)
Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante is a beautiful, yet simple film. It is about a newly married couple, Jean Daste and Dita Parlo, who barely know each other who go straight from the church to his barge, to head up the river to Paris on a makeshift honeymoon and delivery trip for his business. On the trip, Parlo discovers that her new husband is capable of flying in jealous rages – first when he discovers her talking to his first mate, the great Michel Simon, and later when a vendor in Paris flirts with her. She gets sick of his behavior and runs off, sending him into even more of a rage. The film is beautifully shot by Vigo in his poetic realist style. While I don’t think it is quite the best film of the year, but it is surely the most influential – inspiring the French New Wave, and countless other filmmakers in the decades since its release. It is pure movie magic.

1. The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
The Thin Man is one of the most delightful, funny films that I have ever seen. William Powell and Myra Loy were perfectly cast as Nick and Nora Charles a drunken married couple who solve murders when they aren’t drinking. He is supposed to be retired, but is drawn back in when his friends disappears and is implicated in a murder. Powell and Loy are the reason to see the film – they have tremendous chemistry together, and play off each other brilliantly in this comedic film based on the Dashiell Hammett novel. The film is hilarious, with too many one liners to keep track of, and a mystery that involves you while the movie is playing, but it isn’t what you remember about the film. Miraculously, the film was shot in just 12 days, as director W.S. Van Dyke like to get everything on the first shot – this adds to the films spontaneous appeal. The Thin Man is pure cinematic joy.

Just Missed The Top 10: Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty).

Notable Films Missed: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin), Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille), Flirtation Walk (Frank Borzage), Happiness (Aleksander Madevkin), Here Comes the Navy (Lloyd Bacon), The House of Rothschild (Alfred E. Werker), Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl), One Night of Love (Victor Schertzinger), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Viva Villa! (Jack Conway).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture, Director, Actor & Actress: It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert)
The Academy so rarely gives its top awards to a comedy, and even rarer a great comedy, that even if I would have preferred them giving all these awards to another comedy this year – The Thin Man – I cannot complain about any of these awards in the least. The roots of screwball comedy – a genre that would flourish for years to come – can be found in this film, that it wonderfully directed by Capra, without ever becoming heavy handed like some of his films (although, I will admit, that I am a big fan of his work in general). Gable and Colbert are perfectly suited for their roles, and play off each other brilliantly throughout the movie. Yes, I liked The Thin Man better, but I’m not about to complain about these awards.

Year in Review: 1981

I was born in 1981, so I will always feel a certain affection for the films made then. Even saying though, I have to admit that it was not the strongest year for movies of the 1980s. I do love the films on this list – they are all deserving on high praise – and yet I would guess that if I were to make up a top 10 list for the decade, none of them would be on it. Still though, the films on this list are all great, so I shouldn’t complain too much.

10. Gallipoli (Peter Weir)
Peter Weir’s Gallipoli is one of the great WWI films, and one of the best Australian films of all time. The film stars Mark Lee as an innocent Australian soldier, and Mel Gibson as his more cynical friend, who join the Australian army during WWI. They are eventually sent to Turkey, and take part in a massive, yet futile assault. But that’s really only the final part of the film. Told in three parts, the first takes place in Australian when the two young meet and become friends and competitors – both are sprinters, and eventually they will come to see war much like their races – as a game to be won. Eventually they head off to Egypt for training, and are bored and spend more time haggling with merchants and visiting brothels than anything else. It’s only in the last third of the movie – the part set in Turkey – when the reality of the situation sets in, and the young men lose their innocence at the horrors of war. As with all Weir films, Gallipoli is brilliant well made and constructed – I could have done without the final shot which is a little too on the nose for me – but other than that Gallipoli is a wonderful film about these two young men who thought they knew a hell of a lot more than they actually do.

9. Prince of the City (Sidney Lumet)
Perhaps because Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City stars Treat Williams, and not Al Pacino, it has never quite gotten to recognition of his Serpico – although it is a film that is easily as good as that one. In this film Williams plays a cop who knows a lot of things about how corrupt other cops are. He knows how narcotics cops use the system to their advantage, and make lots of money by selling the very drugs that they take off the street. He will talk to the investigators about everyone involved – but not his partners, the guys in his own unit, who he will not rat on. He has a code and will not break it. Until, of course, he does. Williams gives the performance of his lifetime as the cop who is under constant stress to talk, to rat on his friends. Like Serpico, he is tired of the corruption he sees all around him, but unlike him, he was involved in that very corruption at a certain time as well. Prince of the City is an engrossing police movie about corruption – but it is also deeper than that. It is a movie about ethics, and how hard it can be to maintain them when you live in a world where no one else has any.

8. Blow Out (Brian DePalma)
Brian DePalma has always excelled at taking the movies by other people and coming up with a different take on them. Most of his career, he has seemed to be inspired by Hitchcock obsession with sex and death, and blondes. In Blow Out, he takes a situation similar to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, and creates a thriller that at the same time recalls that master’s work, as well as real life crimes, but seems completely new and different. John Travolta is working as a sound man on a sleazy, low budget movie when he witnesses a car crashing into the water off the bridge. He dives in and saves the girl in the car, but cannot save the man. It turns out the man is a Presidential candidate. Travolta, like everyone else, assumes it was an accident, but then when he is reviewing the audio he recorded that night he becomes convinced he heard a gunshot before the crash. He cannot leave it alone, and gradually he peels layer after layer from around the mystery. Blow Out is better than most of DePalma’s films because the characters here seem more believable than they have in the past. Travolta is great in the lead role – but it is really the supporting players – Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz and especially John Lithgow that give the movies its edge. DePalma is still playing with Hitchcock themes and images here, but he is doing so wonderfully – and has made a film that at least deserves comparison to the masters.

7. Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon takes Jim Thompson’s Southern noir book Pop. 1280 and transfers it to Africa just as the second world war is about to break out. He keeps its white trash characters, but instead makes them lazy French colonialists. He shot on location, and this gives the movie its completely authentic look and feel – it gets the smallest details right. The movie’s central character is played by Philippe Noiret – the town’s ineffectual police chief. He has lost his self respect, and is openly mocked by the pimps and scum in the town. So he decides to start killing them one by one. He spreads lies and rumors about what happened, feels no remorse and continues to do it. The brilliant thing about the movie is how it begins, then its slow progression into violence and madness. At first, we laugh alongside everyone at Noiret’s bumbling fool of a police chief, even as we feel sympathy for him. As the movie progresses and he becomes more and more violent, we become horrified that we ever identified with him in the first place. The supporting performances – particularly that of a young Isabelle Huppert – are mesmerizing. The film is darkly humorous, but is also something more than a mere genre exercise. It gets under your skin.

6. Pennies from Heaven (Herbert Ross)
Pennies from Heaven is a movie that I think many people have forgotten about. It is a musical, set to the swinging songs of the 1930s, but its story is relentlessly downbeat from beginning to end. That is the point I think. The 1930s were the darkness days that American ever saw – the depression left millions out of work and poor, and yet the music of the time is so cheerful and sunny. Pennies from Heaven is a movie that tells the story of a cruel man – played by the smiling Steve Martin which gives it all the more bite – who thinks he is really a nice guy. He isn’t. He is cruel to his wife (Jessica Harper), making her feel inadequate because she won’t give in constantly to his sexual desire, or give him the money her father left her to start to his own business because she knows it will fail. As a travelling salesman he meets Bernadette Peters, who plays an innocent school teacher, who is happy in her life. He gives her a sob story, seduces her and leaves her pregnant and doesn’t come back. When he does come back, he is even less help, and soon she too is out of a job, has had an abortion, and has started to turn tricks. Eventually, a blind girl is murdered, and even if Steve Martin is not guilty, we don’t feel bad for him. All throughout the film, the grim story is offset against the sunny, happy musical numbers – we hear the real voices, although the actors are doing their own dancing. The songs, with their beautiful melodies, have never sounded sadder. In a strange way, Pennies from Heaven was Dancer in the Dark nearly 20 years before Lars von Trier’s film reportedly broke boundaries. It is time for people to rediscover Pennies from Heaven.

5. My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle)
My Dinner with Andre is unlike any movie that I have seen either before or since. It is nothing more complicated than the great Wallace Shawn sitting down across the table for Andre Gregory and the two of them talking for the entire running time. The movie, which has the flow of real conversation, is actually tightly scripted by Shawn, and directed with precision by Louis Malle. Mainly Gregory talks about his recent trips – he has gone all over the world, and been influenced by New Age ideas and talks seemingly endlessly about them, while Shawn simply sits back and listens for much of the time – although he grows increasingly frustrated with Gregory. He wants him to wake up and live in the real world, and in a way, Gregory wants Shawn to do the same thing. There is a tension between these two men that is brilliantly played by the two actors, and directed by Malle, who catches the smallest details and facial tics pretty much perfectly. How can a movie about two men talking over a meal be cinematic? Watch the movie and discover the answer for yourself.

4. Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
Louis Malle’s Atlantic City is about an aging gangster who wants to relive his glory days – even though we have a suspicion that those days never really existed. Burt Lancaster gives a remarkable performance as Lou, who is a senior citizen and still running numbers for barely any money. He lives at a boarding house along with Anne Reid, a once beautiful woman, now overweight, who depends on Lou to do everything for her, and rewards him for services rendered. He spies on a local waitress, Susan Sarandon, also at the boarding house during her return with lemons to get the fish smell off of her every night. Things get out of control when Sarandon’s sister returns with her ex-husband and drugs – setting off a chain of events that allows Lou to be the man he always wanted to be. The moment he kills a man, he seems positively giddy with excitement. Louis Malle’s Atlantic City is a masterpiece about people who dream big, but have nothing to show for it – who have lived their entire lives in their head. Lou at least gets to act out his dreams by the end of the movie, but I wonder if anyone else in the film ever will. Lancaster is great the role – it ranks among the very best of his career – but Sarandon and Reid match him with their portrayals of the two very different women in his life. Atlantic City is a movie about drugs and crime, but Malle doesn’t seem as interested in them as he in the characters – and that’s why Atlantic City is as good as it is.

3. Reds (Warren Beatty)
Warren Beatty’s Reds seems like a movie from a different era than the 1980s – and it isn’t because it is set during the late 1910s in various Communist circles. It is the type of grand, romantic, historical epic that went out of style with the collapse of the studio era in the 1960s. It’s like David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago if that film were more politically aware. As a director, Beatty was never better than he was here, navigating the complex backgrounds of the socialist movement in America, as his hero, John Reed, tries to organize groups that seemingly hate each other. The film is also a love story between Beatty’s Reed and Diane Keaton, Louise Bryant, a somewhat naïve young woman who falls in love with him, and stays by him through everything. There are other key performances – notably by Jack Nicholson as Reed’s longtime friend, the playwright Eugene O’Neal, also in love with Bryant, and Maureen Stapleton, an old school American communist. Growing disillusioned with the American movement, Reed heads to Russia to try and help out, and ends up in the same sort of fights he had back home. Reds is a remarkable movie because it is three hours long, has virtually no action sequences, and yet remains engrossing from beginning to end. The film does romanticize the era somewhat, but it doesn’t pull its punches either – it sees Reed for all his faults, and sees the movement in both good and bad terms. This is the type of epic that Hollywood has either forgotten how to make, or else no long has the guts to even try.

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest movies of its kind ever made. It is an action film that doesn’t let up for its entire running time. It is a film that adds humor in with its intense sequences. It is a film that has one of the greatest screen heroes ever seen in Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones. The action sequences – the numerous chases, including a wonderful car chase, are all handled well. Spielberg also knows enough to provide us with a suitable villain – and the Nazis make a great villain (I know someone who said that this was really Spielberg’s anti-Nazi film, not Schindler’s List, because in this one they don’t just get hanged, they get their face melted off). What perhaps amazes me most about this film is that although Spielberg was making what was essentially merely an homage to the old fashioned movie serials of the 1940s, he ended up making something that was far greater than anything of its ilk that era produced. It isn’t just that technology had progressed to the point where things seemed more real and exciting, but because the story was better, deeper and more entertaining and the acting was more believable. Raiders of the Lost Ark is an example of what Spielberg can do better than anyone else on the planet right now – entertain and audience.

1. Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan)
Body Heat is that rarest of movies – a remake of a classic film that is just as good, if not a little better, than the original. Lawrence Kasdan takes the plot of Billy Wilder’s great noir Double Indemnity, and moves it into the present. The key to the movie is the performances. Kathleen Turner makes her remarkable debut in the femme fatale role – a gorgeous woman, with angry eyes, a deep, sexy voice and long, beautiful hair. She is able to ensnare William Hurt’s lawyer in her trap fairly easily. Hurt is just as good as Turner – lazy, yet smart, but not too smart. He thinks that he is the initiator in the murder plot to kill her husband. He is smart enough to come up with the plan, but not smart enough to see that she is really pulling the strings playing him with her sexuality. The supporting work by Mickey Rourke, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson and J.A. Preston is also good – they create the kind of standard noir supporting characters just as well as the leads do their job. But this is more than an actor’s showcase. Kasdan does a remarkable job at capturing the heat of the movie – this is a movie that will make you sweat just watching it – and is also a master class in storytelling as the noose slowly tightens around Hurt’s neck. It is one of the best examples of film noir that did not get made in the 1940s or 50s. Kasdan has made other wonderful films in his career – but none can match this, his debut feature. He got it right the first time, and made a wonderful, sexy, hot noir for the ages.

Just Missed The Top 10: Absence of Malice (Sydney Pollack), Arthur (Steve Gordon), Escape from New York (John Carpetner), The Fox and the Hound (Art Stevens & Ted Berman & Richard Rich), On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell), Ragtime (Milos Forman), Southern Comfort (Walter Hill), Superman II (Richard Lester), TAPS (Harold Becker), True Confessions (Ulu Grosbard).

Notable Films Missed: Cutter's Way (Ivan Passer), Mephisto (Istvan Szabo), Pixote (Hector Babenco), Too Early, Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet), The Woman Next Door (Francois Truffaut).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture: Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire is one of those little movies that come out of nowhere to capture the hearts of audiences around the world. Other than Vangelis, which has become perhaps the most over used score in history, it is hard for me to see why people loved this thing so much. It such a clichéd story, even if it is true, about two men competing in the Olympics in 1924 – a devout Christian who runs for God, and a Jew who runs to overcome prejudice. And that’s about all there is to the movie. There are few sports I find less observer friendly than running. Nothing really happens. And watching them train for running, even when their coach is the entertaining Ian Holm, isn’t much more exciting. I found this film to be excruciatingly dull and boring from beginning to end, and it is one of my least favorite best picture winners ever. And while we’re on the subject of Oscar wins, does anyone want to explain to me how this film won the Costume Design Oscar? After all, aren’t most of the costume in this film white T-shirts and shorts? Give me five minutes at Wal Mart, and I could do the same thing.

Oscar Winner – Best Director: Warren Beatty, Reds
It’s hard to argue with Warren Beatty’s directing Oscar for Reds. Far and away, Reds was the most ambitious movie of the year – a three hour romantic epic about communists while the Cold War was still going on, Beatty set himself up for an epic failure – not unlike Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate the same year – but miraculously pulled it off brilliantly. He was always among the most ambitious movie stars in history, and even if he never did win an acting Oscar, he should be proud of his win for this one. Yeah, I prefer Spielberg of the nominees, but he won two later on, so I have no problem with this win.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond
Henry Fonda’s win for On Golden Pond is a prime example as to why the Academy should not give so called “make up” Oscars to actors who they snubbed in the past. It isn’t so much that his performance in On Golden Pond is bad – it is actually quite good for what it is – it’s just that you know the Academy was giving this award to Henry Fonda, one of the great actors of the studio era – because they stiffed him in the past – particularly for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940, when they gave the award to Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story, which itself was a makeup award for not giving it to him the year before for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, because they gave it to Robert Donat for Goodbye Mr. Chips, to make up for stiffing him for The Citadel the previous year. It was an ugly cycle and because of it, Fonda had to wait until he was practically dead to win the Oscar he should have had 40 years earlier.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Katherine Hepburn, On Golden Pond
I can understand why the Academy felt the need to give Fonda an Oscar for this agreeable old people movie, but what the hell were they thinking in giving the Oscar to Hepburn? Yeah, she is enjoyable as the loyal old broad who sticks by Fonda’s emotionally distant husband and father, calling him an old poop, but seriously, an Oscar for this? Hepburn is one of the greatest actresses in history, and if someone deserves four acting Oscars at home, Hepburn certainly could be considered that person. It’s just too bad that they kept giving her awards for all the wrong roles!

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: John Gielgud, Arthur
The great John Gielgud is the reason to watch Arthur. Personally, I find Dudley Moore’s drunken playboy to be merely okay, and I have never been a fan of Liza Minnelli. But whenever Gielgud’s acid tongued butler is onscreen, it is impossible not to have fun and laugh out loud. He is the personification of British wit and sophistication, never seemingly impolite even as he delivers another of his pitch perfect one liners (“Usually one has to go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your caliber”).

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Maureen Stapleton, Reds
Maureen Stapleton had a long career on stage and television both before and after her win for Reds. As well, she was a well regarded actress in the movies – with Reds representing her third and final Oscar nomination, and the one that finally brought her an Oscar. Her performance as the Lithuanian anarchist Emma Goldman is a highlight of the movie – she is who she is, and she makes absolutely no apologies for it. While I think that Stapleton is a worthy winner, I do have to say that this was a weak category this year.

Movie Review: The A-Team

The A-Team **
Directed by: Joe Carnahan.
Written By: Joe Carnahan & Brian Bloom and Skip Woods based on the TV series created by Frank Lupo & Stephen J. Cannell.
Starring: Liam Neeson (Hannibal), Bradley Cooper (Lt. Templeton 'Faceman' Peck), Jessica Biel (Charisa Sosa), Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson (B.A. Baracus), Sharlto Copley (Murdock), Patrick Wilson (Lynch), Gerald McRaney (General Morrison), Henry Czerny (Director McCready), Yul Vazquez (General Javier Tuco), Brian Bloom (Pike).

The A-Team is a big, loud, stupid, lazy action movie. Most of those adjectives would probably apply to the original TV show from the 1980s, but I can’t really say. Although I know I watched it as a kid – and that’s why we had the A-Team van and some action figures for the show – other than the iconic opening song, I cannot recall anything about the original show. This unnecessary update will likely appeal to fans of the show, and undiscerning action movie fans of any strip – the ones who don’t really care about anything other than seeing stuff blow up really good. And the movie does that – a lot. At times, when I was able to completely turn off my brain, I actually kind of enjoyed the film – but you can only turn off your brain for so long before it starts telling you the movie you’re watching is just plain dumb.

Co-written and directed by Joe Carnhan, The A-Team is yet another movie about a ragtag group of military men, set up for a crime they didn’t commit and have to go on the run to try and prove their innocence. The team is led by Hannibal (Liam Neesom), a charming, grey haired man constantly chomping on his cigar. His team includes Face (Bradley Cooper), the ladies man of the group, B.A. (Quinton Jackson), an angry African American with a Mohawk and Murdock (Sharlto Copley), an insane pilot. Those bare character descriptions are about as deep as the movie gets on any of its characters.

This time, they are in Iraq just as American forces are about to pull out (making this some sort of futuristic fantasy movie) when they learn that the Iraqis are moving a series of currency plates for American money that will allow them to print billions of dollars of unsupported American currency. CIA agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson) goes to Hannibal with the assignment, and his commanding officer (Gerard “Major Dad” McCraney) agrees, even though Captain Sosa (Jessica Biel) thinks the assignment is hers. Of course, things get screwed up, McCraney is killed, the plates go missing and Hannibal and his team are court marshaled, dishonorably discharged and sent to separate maximum security prisons for 10 years each. And of course, they aren’t going to be in those prisons for very long.

The plot of The A-Team is barely worth mentioning, because it is so thin that its barely there. It doesn’t really matter what the team is chasing, just that there are chasing it, and there are people who have a vested interest in seeing that they fail. I understand that most action movies, even the good ones, get away with similar thin plots because they are not about their plots – they are about action, and the relationship between the stars. The problem with this movie is that you don’t care about the team. Neesom smirks his way through his role as Hannibal – you never really feel how committed he says he is to the rest of his team, and you never understand why his team is so willing to follow him anywhere on his insane plans. Cooper is capable of being a charming actor, and he really does try here as Face, but I had trouble believing him as an army man though – it’s like his character from The Hangover simply picked up a gun. The series most iconic character was undoubtedly Mr. T’s B.A. Baracus, but you know they didn’t know who to cast when they cast UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the role. Jackson isn’t much of an actor, but then he isn’t given much to do either. Too many “I pity to the fool” lines, and he would look ridiculous, and so the movie kind of skimps of him completely. The only one of the four I really liked was Sharlto Copley, from last year’s District 9, who has all the best lines as the insane Murdoch. No, the movie doesn’t explore his character any more than the others, but he at least seems to be having fun. The rest of the cast – from Jessica Biel to Patrick Wilson to Gerard McCraney to Brian Bloom – seem to be sleepwalking through their underwritten roles.

Joe Carnahan was at one point a promising filmmaker. After making what I thought was a horrible debut with Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane for almost no money, we went on to make the great cop drama Narc, with Jason Patric and Ray Liotta’s best roles in years, and the tremendous guilty pleasure Smokin’ Aces – which was just as big and loud as The A-Team, but was also incredibly entertaining. But with The A-Team, he has struck out. Starting a little bit in Smokin’ Aces, it seemed like Carnahan wanted to become the next Michael Bay – with the same rapid fire, yet incoherent editing style. His writing, which was clever in Smokin’ Aces compensated for that. But in The A-Team, it doesn’t simply because he doesn’t give us a single character who is interesting. The film is never boring – it is far too loud and moves way too quickly for that – but it never comes together into anything that you would actually enjoy sitting through. Carnahan needs to slow down.

Movie Review: The Karate Kid

The Karate Kid ***
Directed by: Harald Zwart.
Written By: Christopher Murphey based on the movie written by Robert Mark Kamen.
Starring: Jaden Smith (Dre Parker), Jackie Chan (Mr. Han), Taraji P. Henson (Sherry Parker), Wenwen Han (Meiying), Rongguang Yu (Master Li), Zhenwei Wang (Cheng), Shijia Lü (Liang), Yi Zhao (Zhuang), Bo Zhang (Song), Luke Carberry (Harry), Cameron Hillman (Mark), Ghye Samuel Brown (Oz), Rocky Shi (Ur Dang), Ji Wang (Mrs. Po).

The Karate Kid wasn’t really a very original idea back when the first movie was made in 1984. It was your classic underdog sports story – with a bullied kid at a new school being picked on, before an old coach, with issues of his own, takes him on and trains him to be the best at karate – culminating in an epic fight scene at a tournament where the kid goes against his most aggressive tormentor. Pretty standard stuff really, but it captured the public’s imagination enough to warrant three sequels before the formula seemed to be played out. The original is still a childhood favorite of mine, that continues to captivate me while I’m channel surfing. The new remake of the film is not as good as the original – but perhaps that’s only because now I am an adult as opposed to the kid I was when I saw the original. This is a well made movie that follows the formula of the original to be sure, but is still quite entertaining from beginning to end.

Instead of a kid from New Jersey heading out to California, this time we have a kid from Detroit who heads to China. Dre (Jaden Smith) is being forced to leave his entire world behind him because his mother (Tarij P. Hensen) has seen her job at a car company move from Detroit to China, and has decided to follow it. Given the number of white kids we see at his new school, she isn’t the only one who decided to make the move. Dre can only speak a few words of “Chinese” (the movie never points out that there is no Chinese language – it’s either Cantonese or Mandarin, and I assume that where they are, it would be Mandarin), and has no friends to fall back on. His first day in China, he runs afoul of Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) on the playground by flirting with the pretty Meiying (Wenwen Han), and gets beat up rather soundly by him and his posse. This torment continues at school, until eventually they chase Dre home and seem to have him surrounded. That is when Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the quiet handyman at the apartment where Dre and his mother live, steps in, and fights them all off – never really hitting the kids themselves, but making them hit themselves and each other. Mr. Han agrees to go to Cheng’s kung fu teacher, Master Li, and see if he can reason with him – when that proves useless, he agrees to train Dre for the upcoming Kung Fu tournament. Instead of Master Li’s philiosophy of No Weakness, No Pain, No Mercy, Mr. Han teaches Dre real Kung Fu – and how it is more about respect than violence.

The movie is well made, well acted and entertaining from start to finish. Although what Dre is learning is Kung Fu and not Karate (which means the film should be titled The Kung Fu Kid, but then they wouldn’t get the benefit of the familiar name), the movie has a little fun with this, making Dre’s mother not understand the difference, and refer to him learning Karate, despite the fact that he points out the difference. Jaden Smith, who is the son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, certainly has his father’s screen presence, charm and humor. He may not be the best child actor in the world, but for this type of role he is just about perfect – and he carries much of the film on his back. Jackie Chan has the more difficult role, as he has to fill the shoes of Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, who was so good as Mr. Miyagi that he received an Oscar nomination. But Chan wisely decides not to channel Morita, but make his Mr. Han a slightly different character – not quite as old, and perhaps not quite as kind, but just as wise and caring as Morita. The film also wisely decides not to take too many of the iconic phrases from the original film (there is no “Wax on, wax off”, which instead becomes “Jacket On, Jacket Off”, although I think the filmmakers are winking at knowing audiences when we see Chan waxing his old car several times). Hensen is good in the role of Dre’s mother, but once again, I wonder if directors just do not know how to use her properly. She is actress of skill and sex appeal that is constantly underused in mainstream films. The rest of the cast – in particular Wenwen Han who is quite good as Dre’s “girlfriend” do the jobs they were hired to do quite well.

Watching the new Karate Kid, it was impossible not to compare to the old one. But while I still prefer the old one – and probably would have no matter how good this version turned out to be – I have to say that this is a fine film in its own right. I do hope that kids how enjoy this movie seek out the original, and see just how great it really was, but even if they don’t, they will experience a fine family fine – and that’s a rare quality these days.

Year in Review: 1930

1930 was not the best year for movies - while they had pretty much perfected the silent film by 1928, in 1930, sound was in its infancy, and was still shaky at best. While there were several masterpieces made this year, and I really do think that every film of this list is deserving of praise, I have to admit that the bottom three films on this list probably would not have made it in most years. To make matters worse, I’m not sure what films from this year I missed that may make the list stronger – certainly the two “Notable Films Missed” that I have listed below, using my normal standards (a Best Picture Oscar nominee, an acting Oscar winner or a position on They Shoot Pictures Don’t They top 1,000 list) didn’t inspire me to run out an see them, as they seem to be all but forgotten for a reason. So if anyone has suggestions, please let me know so I can make this list stronger.

10. Murder (Alfred Hitchcock)
This early talkie from Alfred Hitchcock may not rank among his best films, but is a fascinating little thriller nonetheless. A woman is found standing over the body of her rival, and says she has no memory of what happened. She is put on trail, where they have to decide if she is guilty or schizophrenic. But even after the trail, one juror is unconvinced of her guilt, and decides to do some digging of her own. The movie is well made by Hitchcock, who keeps the action moving along briskly, and delves into some of his favorite themes – innocent people being accused of crimes, mental illness, etc. No, this isn’t one of the great Hitchcock films – but it is a fine little thriller.

9. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg)
After they teamed up for The Blue Angel earlier this year (keep reading to see where that one ranked), director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich made this fun little film which garnered more attention for the Academy, but hasn’t aged quite as well. Having said that, I do love Dietrich in this role as a sexy seductress who makes Gary Cooper fall in love with her. The fact that Dietrich spoke virtually no English and had to deliver her lines phonetically only adds to her mysterious charm in the film. Like all the films on von Sternberg, Morocco is visually stunning and the movie is oozing with pre-code sexuality. No, this is not one of the best teamings of von Sternberg and Dietrich, but it is a hell of an entertaining little film anyway.

8. Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko)
Alexander Dovhenko’s Earth is one of the most influential films to come out of the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The film deals with the uprising of a group of peasant farmers after their land is taken away from them by greedy Kulak landowners. The film was both praised and criticized by the Soviet government – some loving its depiction of the farmers as simple folk close to the earth, while others thought the film remained too ambigious about its intentions. This silent film is a visual marvel by Dovzhenko, who proved that while he may not be in the same league as Eisenstein, he did deserve to be compared alongside of him. One’s tolerance for the film will undoubtedly hinge on whether or not they can except the message of the movie – or at the very least, see it through the eyes it was intended to be seen with. No matter what, the historical significance of the movie cannot be overlooked.

7. The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau)
Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet is a surrealist nightmare of a film. Split into four parts, the movie is about an artist who draws a picture where the mouth starts to move. The mouth is then transferred to his hand, and then to a statue, who tells him to go through a mirror and peep at people in a hotel. The third part is about a snowball fight that ends when a boy is killed when a chunk of marble is thrown at him, and the final segment is about con man that uses the body of the dead boy in his card trick, which ends in a suicide to an applauding audience. As with many of these surrealist movies (see my number 5 on this list as well), I have no fucking idea what the hell any of this is supposed to mean. However, I think that is somewhat the point. The film uses it imagery to both shock and delight. The movie weaves it spell over you in a strange way – and it contains such brilliant imagery that it is impossible to get out of your head. The Blood of a Poet does not satisfy in a traditional way, but on a different level. Whether it works for you or not is a matter of taste. For me, I was fascinated by it.

6. Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman)
Like all of the great Marx brother’s movies, there is essentially no real plot to Animal Crackers. Yes, it is about a valuable painting that goes missing and Groucho (as Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding) in his search for it. But essentially, Animal Crackers is an excuse for the brothers to bring their own brand of hilarious slapstick humor, great one liners (this is the film that contains the famous “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know” line). The film’s comedy is not all silly and stupid fun though – there is a brilliant satire on the work of Eugene O’Neal, as well as commentary on the stock market crash the year before. Yet, Animal Cracker is essentially just more zany Marx Brothers madness – and they are at their hilarious best in the film.

5. L’Age D’Or (Luis Bunuel)
Much like the short film, Un Chien Andalou, that director Luis Bunuel made with Salvador Dali, this film is a surrealistic masterwork by the two artistic giants. The film was hugely controversial at the times of its released, effectively being banned for years everywhere. Looking back at the film now, it is no longer as “shocking” as it must have seemed back in 1930, but it still a delightful film. The movie is a series of vignettes that are interlinked – but the longest and most sustained one involves a young couple in love who want to have sex, but are thwarted at every attempt – by their families, the church, society itself. The final images appear to have Christ emerge for an orgy, and then take a young woman back inside, cutting away to a shot of women’s scalps flapping in the wind on a crucifix. Unlike Un Chien Andalou, this one apparently does have a message – sexual repression, no matter who it is performed by breed’s violence. Anyone with the slightest interest in surrealistic film needs to see this one.

4. Under the Roofs of Paris (Rene Clair)
Under the Roofs of Paris is very strange for a musical comedy, in that is quite dark – both in terms of visuals and themes. Albert is in love with Pola – but so is his best friend Louis, and the dangerous gangster Fred. Pola falls for Albert, but when he is put in jail – for a crime he didn’t commit - she turns to Louis for support, and falls for him as well. When Albert gets out of jail, all hell breaks loose. Like the twin films that Clair would make the following year – Le Million and A Nous a Libertie – Under the Roofs of Paris is wonderfully funny at times, and contains some great musical numbers. But this is the darkest of Clair’s films from the period, a movie where not everything works out, and there is a melancholy mood hanging over the entire film. It is a strange little film, but one that holds you in its great, and is quite daring for its time period. A great little film.

3. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy)
Edward G. Robinson became a star because of his wonderful performance in this gangster movie. Robinson plays Rico, a small time gangster who eventually works his way up the ranks becoming a mafia kingpin, before, like all gangsters since, it all comes crashing down around him. Robinson’s performance is larger than life, making Rico into one of the best villains in screen history, and yet oddly sympathetic at times as well. He tries desperately to hold onto his friendship with Douglas Fairbanks, but Fairbanks wants to be a dancer, and chase girls. It is Rico’s paranoia about what Fairbanks will do that is his eventual undoing. Directed with great visual flair by Mervyn LeRoy, Little Caesar is one of the first sound era gangster movies, and set the standard that everything after it was going to have to try and match.

2. The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg)
Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel is considered the first German sound film. It also brought to prominence Marlene Dietrich, and proved that unlike many silent film directors, Von Sternberg would have no problem working in the sound era. The film stars Emil Jannings in a wonderful performance as an esteemed professor who falls in love with a cabaret singer (Dietrich) – or more accurately falls in lust with her. Eventually, he is reduced to playing a clown in her show, and he is destroyed by his jealously. The Blue Angel is a brilliant film about sexual obsession, and how it can destroy you. Jannings was happy in his life – although it was rather dull – before meeting Dietrich, but he gives up everything for her, and it eventually destroys him. Von Sternberg would go onto make several films with Dietrich – all of them worthwhile – but none as good as The Blue Angel, which may just be his masterpiece.

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the all time great WWI movies ever made – and also one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made. I remember a few years ago, people remarked how daring it was for Clint Eastwood to present the Japanese in WWII as sympathetic, real people, not just the evil enemy in Letters from Iwo Jima – I guess that means that Lewis Milestone’s film was even more so. The film is about Germans in the trench during the First World War It opens with the young men being recruited right out of their high school classrooms with talk of glory and patriotism, follows them through training, and finally onto the battlefield. Lew Ayres gives a truly great performance in the lead role as a man who starts out being a true believer, but ends up becoming disillusioned and disgusted by the war itself. This is powerful filmmaking by Milestone – it has great battle sequences, but he is able to drain them of romanticism. This is a movie about the hopelessness and futility of war – and is one of the great early sound movies.

Notable Films Missed: The Big House (George W. Hill), Min and Bill (George W. Hill).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture: All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone).
The Academy clearly made the right call on this one. All Quiet on the Western front was the first great war movie of the sound era – and 80 years later, it stands the test of time and continues to be one of the all time best. In this, the third year of the Oscars, they also made the decision for the first time to give the best director award to the same film as best picture – and that was the only obvious choice, especially since for some reason the Academy did not feel the need to give the film an acting nominations, nor single out any technical awards for the film – even though it deserved them.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: George Arliss, Disraeli (actually a 1929 movie).
One of the only best actor winners not available on DVD, so unfortunately I cannot comment on Arliss’ performance in this film. However, considering they overlooked Edward G. Robinson’s great work in Little Caesar (which I believe was not eligible until the following year), and Lew Ayres work in the best picture winner, perhaps they made a mistake. Until I see this, I won’t know. I cannot even comment on whether as an actor, I think Arliss’ career deserved recognition, because out of the 25 films listed at the IMDB for him, I have not seen a single one of them. He certainly thought he was as he was claimed that he was the greatest living actor. An interesting side note, Arliss was the first actor to win an Oscar for portraying a real person – something that has happened 20 times since in the Best Actor category alone.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Norma Sherar, The Divorcee
The Divorcee is one of those pre-code era movies that tried to be risqué in its depiction of sexuality, but appears rather lame to modern audiences. Norma Shearer is fine in the roll of a wife who wants to get even after her husband has an affair, but the film is rather dull and lifeless when viewed today. Considering they did nominate Marlene Dietrich for Morocco (instead of The Blue Angel, where she is infinitely better), they did have someone oozing sex appeal in a better movie to give the award to.