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A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU In which Jill and Gabriel take a stroll down memory lane and visit some of the blockbuster movies of summers past.
Gabriel: I didn't end up seeing this movie until the early 90's, actually - because I'd seen the opening sequence and was so terrified by it as a child (I was six in 1975) that I never had much interest. Still, Spielberg does a marvelous job of mythologizing the depth of water and what can lurk there Jill: I was never much for scary movies; I saw POLTERGEIST in the theatre and didn't watch TV for a month. Today, of course, the shark looks cheesy and it's not even scary at Universal Studios' theme park, but in 1975, the opening scene of this film scared the living daylights out of me. And the book was worse, though Spielberg, wisely in this case, excised the completely gratuitous sex from Peter Benchley's book.
Gabriel: My major memory: STAR WARS was my family's first film outing together, little brother (now six himself) in tow. I remember thinking that the sequence in the trash compactor was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, and wishing that Obi-Wan Kenobi were my grandfather. Jill: This will get me kicked out of the Geeks Club forever, but I didn't rush out to see Star Wars. I know I saw it, I know I thought Harrison Ford was cute, but it didn't Change My Life.
Gabriel: I was a late convert to GREASE; never a Travolta fan, I was also the Serious Kid in the high school drama club…which means I worked the Sondheim side of the street and had little time for silly, brainless musicals. But that changed during my first year of college, during a late-night study session that had devolved into a drunken party, where GREASE was playing on the late, late movie. That night, its genius revealed itself to me, and I went out and bought the soundtrack the very next day. Life doesn't get any better at the movies than Didi Conn and Frankie Avalon during "Beauty School Dropout." Jill: I always hated John Travolta. He always seemed like a stupid, coarse-featured troglodyte to me. I loved GREASE on the stage; I'd seen it on Broadway in the summer of 1972, a summer when, in a precursor of the Stage Door Manor camp in upstate NY, my local youth theatre group was presenting A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. I saw it with Barry Bostwick in the Travolta role and Alan Paul of Manhattan Transfer as Teen Angel.
Gabriel: I have been known to argue strenuously that THE MUPPET MOVIE is the most perfect journey movie of the last fifty years. Certainly it ascribes with admirable precision to the rules of the genre, with as much tenderness and wit as one could ever hope for. If your heart doesn't break during Gonzo's elegiac solo, "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday", you have no soul. Bonus points for Orson Welles spoofing his own self-importance in the final reel. Jill: Today it's common for kids' movies to have jokes only the adults can get. Jim Henson was doing it with the Muppets years before Dreamworks was a gleam in Steven Spielberg's eyes; the first to perfectly blend pathos with snarkiness.
Gabriel: The orange-crimson dreamscapes of Cloud City. The bleak iciness of Hoth. The sinewy jungles of Yoda's training ground. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK grounded its story in stunning, specific locales that put its developing stories of adolescent growth (Luke, Han, Leia) in stark relief. Its mythology grew provocatively as its cast of characters expanded (the marvelous Yoda) and deepened (who wasn't stunned by the Han/Leia kiss at first?) I think it's commonly accepted that EMPIRE is the best of the series. For me, there's no question. It's the only one I'll watch repeatedly. Jill: =Yawn=. See STAR WARS, above.
Gabriel: Another film I came late to. At first, I dismissed this romp as mere spectacle/adventure entertainment. Only later did I grow old enough to appreciate the period detailing, historical elements, and pulp-serial predecessors it operates from. Still don't love it, but I will admit that the boulder sequence still gets my heart racing. Jill: The first, and the best of the Indiana Jones movies, with a smart, capable heroine. Alas, the female roles deteriorated throughout the series.
Gabriel: E.T. has actually worked the other way for me - it's gotten worse as I've gotten older. Maybe that's because I've grown up, or perhaps it's because I find ethically questionable moments in the story now. But mostly, it's because E.T. isn't honest. It's emotional manipulation at its worst, gussied up in a science-fiction premise to cover its flaws. Yeah, I cry too at the end, but it's shameless the way it manhandles its audience. Ick. (I await the hate letters) Jill: I haven't seen E.T. since its first release; I didn't want to. In 1982 it was new and fresh and Steven's Silver Sledgehammer hadn't yet become a trademark. Now I know that Henry Thomas has grown up into a rather skeevey young man, Peter Coyote is doing car commercials, and only Drew Barrymore seems to still be as cute as she was then. After years of Spielberg smarminess, I don't think I could watch it again.
Gabriel: Those disappointed by THE PHANTOM MENACE and ATTACK OF THE CLONES really should have seen it coming. One word: Ewoks. Jill: Two words. China Bowl, which was the somewhat aged and seedy Chinese restaurant that boasted the "To Wong Foo" signed photograph of the movie of the same name. This is what I saw on my third date with my spouse, after a trip to the Bronx Zoo and dinner at the aforementioned China Bowl. That night there was a track fire and my train back to NJ was cancelled. I spent the night alone in Penn Station. In case you were wondering.
Gabriel: Remember those great period touches I referred to in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Here, they're replaced by 80's hairstyles on the women, bad special events, and a story not even Indiana himself could follow. A Wrong Step, Mssrs. Spielberg and Lucas. Jill: Kate Capshaw screaming her way through the film and some really disgusting food. Yuck on both counts. The Reagan era of misogyny in full flower.
Gabriel: I've never connected to the magic this film apparently has for many people. I don't know what my particular problem is with it. Cartoonish, but it's more than that. Maybe it's Michael J. Fox, who simply isn't leading man material in my universe. I don't know…I love the DeLorean. Jill: A fun flick, and arguably the strangest performance in recorded history by the equally strange Crispin Glover.
Gabriel: Or, as I call it, When Tom Met Val. Poor Kelly McGillis, she never had a chance. Val's just too pretty. A romantic drama for the ages. Jill: I have always avoided this film. Tom Cruise has never floated my boat, and by this point I had had quite enough with Reagan-era dick-waving.
Jill: Who cares? It must have been an awful
summer. I know I saw it, but I'll be damned if I can remember it.
Gabriel: Who didn't have their mind blown by WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? I remember it being dazzling. Strangely, I can't remember even one element of the story itself, something about the destruction of Toon Town…tellingly enough, what I remember most are the curvaceous hips of Jessica. I am SUCH a guy sometimes. Jill: As a longtime devotée of Warner Brothers classic cartoons, this is the first film I recall being truly geeked for. Given the way special effects have advanced in the intervening years, it's amazing just how good this film still looks. Today actors are required to perform against green screens opposite nonexistent characters all the time, but in 1988, it was unheard of - but Bob Hoskins managed it seamlessly
Gabriel: The first film on the list that I seriously love. What a complete reinvention of the Batman mythology - gone are the lame Adam West zingers, the day-glo villainy. In its place is a brooding tale of a man whose pain and grief have sublimated into heroism, a rebel with a cause. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Add in Jack Nicholson stealing nearly every scene, a rockin' score by Prince, and Tim Burton's phantasmagorical vision, and you've got a blockbuster to be proud of. Sometimes, America gets it right. Jill: Until my spouse introduced me to the graphic novel, I always thought comic books were, well, comic books. Frank Miller's Batman was the first time such characters seemed real to me. Dark, brooding, the father of all graphic novels since, there was only one director who could paint Batman as the tortured nut he was supposed to be; and Tim Burton captured the dark Frank Miller world perfectly.
Gabriel: Do I have to talk about this one, or can you guess what I'm going to say? There's so much to detest in this movie, I don't know where to begin. See my E.T. rant above, and add in the incoherency of Whoopi Goldberg's pseudo-lesbianic soothsayer. Bleh. Jill: "I have the perfect husband. He's kind and loving and protective and he doesn't mess up around the house. Of course he's dead, but you can't have everything." That's the message of this perfectly ghastly film. Hmmmm…sit through both Demi Moore AND Patrick Swayze in the same movie, or put a bullet in my head? Such difficult choices. . Thank God Tony Goldwyn decided to become a director after this film, or we'd never have had A Walk on the Moon and then God knows WHO Peter Jackson might have had to cast as Aragorn.. 1991: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, June 14, $165m
Gabriel: I loved the first film so much, what could Tim Burton do to impress me more in the sequel? As it turns out, a lot. The elegance and sophistication that Burton brings to the stories of The Penguin and The Catwoman exhibit his tremendous vision, brought to life in a script of sheer brilliance by Michael Lehman. It's dark, sure. But it is as good as comic-book movies get. (Oh, and did I forget to mention Michelle Pfeiffer, doing the best work of her career?). Jill: This was the one with Danny DeVito as the offensive Jewish caricature, right? And the Christopher Walken character wasn't any better. Sorry, but I couldn't get past the "evil Jew" thing.
Gabriel: It's all about the special effects. And they were amazing. Dinosaurs are scary, aren't they? Jill: Another pioneer in the evolution of special effects. Dazzling at the time, ho-hum today, so now it's just a dumb story with big fake animals.
Gabriel: The film that launched a thousand idiots. Or more like a million - I was, and still am, completely aghast at a movie that prizes and priorities stupidity and dumb luck over smarts and hard work. Without gaining me pounds of hate e-mails, I'll leave it at this: life is definitely NOT like a box of chocolates. It's far more complex, both as a metaphor and as a reality. Jill: Forrest Gump is the shot across the bow that warned just how stupid and intellectually lazy Americans were becoming. For an entire summer, Americans pondered the wisdom of an idiot….a good-hearted idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. What was more offensive, the fact that Sally Field, who had played Tom Hanks' girlfriend just a few years earlier was now playing his mother; Robin Wright's lovely, luminous death from AIDS, or the fact that Forest Gump is obviously the image George W. Bush's handlers are striving for in their more sensitive moments.
Gabriel: Tom Hanks, back on track after the dismal GUMP. A gripping story, told in marvelously restrained and moving detail. This is the movie that should have won Ron Howard the Oscar, not A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Jill: In the aftermath of the two space shuttle disasters, this film holds up even better as a reminder of a time when space travel was still news even when nothing happened. Most interesting to me is watching a bunch of guys with slide rules figuring out what to do to save these guys -- not a calculator in sight. Amazing.
Gabriel: Although INDEPENDENCE DAY is really a synthesis of the many alien-invasion stories that preceded it (Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, even the TV miniseries V), Devlin and Emmereich are able to synthesize it into a ripping yarn of human rebellion. I'm a geek, I'll admit it - I love this movie. Will Smith is good. Mary McDonnell and Bill Pullman are better than they have any right to be, considering the material. And I could watch Randy Quaid blow up the mothership a million times. Jill: I remember people applauding when the White House was blown up in this film. I wonder if they would do the same with George W. Bush in the White House? And where they would go after a "good citizen" ratted them out to John Ashcroft?
Jill: The epitome of "high concept" and one of those rare buddy pairings that actually worked. All this and Tony Shalhoub, too! Again, a lightning bug caught in a bottle that they tried to capture twice.
Gabriel: What's interesting about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is its structure: a precedent-setting opening sequence, violent and gritty and realistic and overpowering, is followed by a rather traditional, even unexceptional troops-in-wartime flick. Still, that first half-hour gives the proceedings a gravitas not usually experienced in the cinema. Tom Hanks has all the great lines, but Giovanni Ribisi and especially Jeremy Davies do all of the heavy lifting among the ensemble. Jill: Once again, Steven Spielberg ruins a perfectly good movie with his magic silver sledgehammer, this time in the form of an overly maudlin framing story. Supposedly a showcase for Tom Hanks and the then-newly-hot Matt Damon, but Barry Pepper's sniper steals the show.
Gabriel: I've watched this film now five or six times, and I must admit, I STILL don't know what the hell is going on. Note to Lucas: you do the treatment, and let a real screenwriter write the scripts. (And don't put Ewan McGregor in a mullet wig.) Jill: Somewhere along the line, probably about the time Joseph Campbell explained the mythical archetypes of Star Wars to mainstream PBS users and took Lucas' universe out of the province of fanboys, Lucas began to buy his own bullshit and lost his sense of fun. It's not easy to suck the life out of Ewan McGregor and turn Natalie Portman into a piece of wood, but Lucas managed to do it. Once Terence Stamp gets written out of the script, it's all over.
Gabriel: It's a good film. It is. But it's not THAT good. Jill: If Ron Howard should have won his Academy Award for APOLLO 13, Russell Crowe should have won his for THE INSIDER, certainly not this one. It's not a bad performance in the "Yonda lies da castle of my fadda" sense, just wooden.
Gabriel: Everyone agrees that we are entering a new Golden Age for animation; since The Little Mermaid in 1989, the string of exceptional animated films has been impressive. But things took a quantum leap in the last few years: Toy Story, Antz, A Bug's Life, Titan A.E., Princess Mononoke, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Spirited Away, Metropolis, Waking Life, Ice Age, and the heavyweight champion of the genre, SHREK. It certainly deserves its place of honor: wittily reimagining fairy tales in a pop-cultural context, it boasts four tremendous vocal performances (Meyers, Diaz, Lithgow and especially Eddie Murphy), fanciful artwork, and a tale of self-empowerment that is perfectly appropriate for kids of any age. Of the films on this list, I'm not sure how many will be remembered fifty years from now…but this one will. Jill: I disagree with my esteemed colleague. There is so much topical humor in this film I think it will become dated rather quickly. It's cute and funny and Mike Myers knows that a Scottish accent will always get a laugh, but there's a mean-spiritedness that underlies the supposed "uplifting message."
Gabriel: Even less incoherent than THE PHANTOM MENACE, AOTC is perhaps historically important…as the first film where the computer-generated landscapes were more interesting than the dialogues. Don't even get me started on Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman's wooden performances…this is a film that can even make Samuel L. Jackson boring. At least Yoda gets to kick some serious ass. Jill: After this film, I don't ever want to hear about James Cameron's bad dialogue in TITANIC ever again. Good Lord, under what rock did they find Hayden Christensen? And special thanks go to Peyton Reed for taking Ewan McGregor out of the concrete George Lucas encased him in.
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| Review text copyright © 2003 Jill Cozzi/Gabriel Shanks and Mixed Reviews. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited. | |||||||||||
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1975
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981:
Raiders of the Lost Ark, June 12, $242m
1982:
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, June 11, $431m
1983:
Return of the Jedi, May 25 $309m
1984:
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, May 23, $180m
1985:
Back to the Future, July 3, $210m
1986:
Top Gun, May 16, $177m
1987:
Beverly Hills Cop 2, May 20, $153m
1988:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, June 22, $154m
1989:
Batman, June 23, $251m
1990:
Ghost, July 13, $217m
Gabriel:If
you can get past the presence of Kevin Costner - and I readily admit
that's not an easy thing to do - this is a great, great film. The
Robin Hood myth is ripe for modern reinvention, and its tale of rebellion
(heroic AND economic) is as timeless as they get. Kevin Reynolds adds
a healthy dose of swashbuckling and a little political context, especially
in the form of Azziz, the devout Muslim whose word is truly as good
as his bond. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is the best she ever was.
But really, the reason to watch this movie is Alan Rickman, whose
Sheriff of Nottingham is sly, menacing, and hilarious. One of the
great comic performances of the 90's.
Jill:
TERMINATOR 2 should suck. But it doesn't. Sure, Arnold is awful
and here he's already running for governor of California, but this
is James Cameron in all his overblown glory -- eerie blue filters,
Robert Patrick showing just how scary cops can be, Linda Hamilton
as a seriously ferocious kick-ass dame, and a motorcycle chase that
blows THE MATRIX: RELOADED right out of the water. They should have
left well enough alone after this one.
1992:
Batman Returns, June 6, $163m
1993:
1994:
1995:
1996:
1997:
1998:
1999:
2000:
2001:
2002:
