Gary's Movie Reviews - Thumbs Up for the Surprising and Interesting Documentary "Craiglist Joe": Celebrating Differences

I've actually been watching quite a few movies lately, and will probably spend the next few weekends trying to catch up on some of my movie reviews from April alone.  This time:  It seems I had rather a lot to say about this documentary my brother and his wife shared with me from Netflix, a film about a guy who tries to go across country and back using only Craigslist:

Craigslist Joe (see the trailer linked here)

I’m not really into the beat poets, the literary arm of the hippie movement with the likes of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs.  As I understand it, Kerouac’s most famous novel, On the Road, is rather semi-autobiographical, telling the story of a group of friends traveling across country, embroiled in jazz, poetry, sex, and drugs, much as Kerouac himself was. Even though I’m still rather curious about some of this writing, I’ve never read the beat stuff.  I consider it to be out of my personal style, and if it’s anything at all like the stuff Hunter S. Thompson has been publishing, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, perhaps I shouldn’t.  They recently made a French-Belgian film of On the Road that I wasn’t all that interested in seeing.

     This film, I suspect, has those same sensibilities.  This is a documentary made by a guy named Joseph Garner, a young twenty something who thought it might be interesting to see if he could survive going across country and back again for 30 days without a credit card or cash, and only using Craigslist to procure shelter, food, money, travel, and occasionally companionship and entertainment.  (I later found out, while looking for pictures to include here, that he actually produced the Hangover movie series and the movie Due Date, among others.)  I will admit that it made for an interesting documentary since it seems Craigslist users, at least the ones dealing with Joe, don’t seem to come from the upper crust of society, but are mostly the poor, the downtrodden, the occasional compassionate person, or in some cases, the weird.  He made friends with a lot of people I would classify as modern day beat poet types, who have probably read and identify with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.  Others are even more offbeat, such as the woman who offers Joe a place to sleep, but first chants while he holds a couple of crystals, or the former actress Fran McGee who was most known for playing a hooker that propositions young Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2, and now lives in total obscurity in a tiny little apartment, suffering from obsessive-compulsive hoarding and sounding quite insane at times.  Joe doesn’t throw anything out, and organizes one little room enough so that the frazzled woman could finally sit down.

Another woman he stayed with seemed much more normal, until she revealed she made her money as a dominatrix, claiming she wasn’t really all that interested in it beyond the money, yet some of the video footage of her plying her trade on her customers was quite disturbing!
  He also stayed with a Muslim family, who talked about their persecution after 9/11, both here and back in the Middle East, and he made friends with some warm Jewish people and served food at a soup kitchen.  One night, he couldn’t procure lodging, and resigned himself to sleeping in a doorway when a young black woman felt sorry for him and offered him her floor.

In the end, Joe broke down crying for the experiences he had that will stay with him for the rest of his life, but I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t want to actually live like that for the rest of his life.  I’ll have to admit it was an interesting film to watch, and my brother and sister-in-law liked it well enough to watch it over again just so Mom and I could see it, and Mom thoroughly enjoyed it as well.  We talked about it a bit in the car on the way home, agreeing, for the most part, that this sort of endeavor could be very dangerous, overcome with how many friendly people there were to lend Joe a hand through Craigslist alone, and how one must still be extremely cautious.  

Perhaps there are more good people out there than bad, but all it takes is one, and I think Joe should consider himself lucky.  Maybe he didn’t run across too much crime simply by the fact that he was making a documentary with a cameraman along for the ride.  I have a feeling that if he continued this kind of existence, especially without a cameraman, that sooner or later, his head would wind up in someone’s refrigerator.  That’s rather gruesome of me to say, but one must be aware of such things and wise to the dangers of the world if one is to survive for very long amongst the human race, which does this sort of thing way too often.

     I may feel I am one step removed from these kinds of people, but in reality, I’m just one small step away.  Lose another job for long enough and I could wind up just like some of them!  Another thing I pointed out to Mom was that if Jesus came now instead of back in the days of the Gospels, that it would be these kinds of people he would be making friends with and teaching, and not my ilk.  His disciples would most likely be made up of the types of people Joe traveled with in this documentary, and that, as Mom said, is certainly food for thought!

The Best and Worst Movies of 1995

And so it's back to movies, as I rate the year 1995 and present my list of the best and worst from this year, and compare them to what the audiences and the critics seemed to love.  Notice how my movie reviews are getting just a little bit longer?

My Top Ten Favorites of 1995:

Babe

A mere 7 years after Bob Hoskins and Joanna Cassidy shared the screen with cartoons for the entire length of a movie, the technology had improved enough to make a film about talking animals seem believable, and this film actually opened the door for much more of this type, from Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web to films like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful, and even the tiger and other zoo animals in Life of Pi.  Babe is a charming tale about a pig who develops a special relationship with a dog named Fly and is able to keep himself off the dinner table by learning to herd sheep.  Along with the special effects, the writing is good, and James Cromwell did a wonderful job as Farmer Hoggett.  Magda Szubanski wasn't as good as his wife, who took over as the main human co-star in the disappointing sequel three years later

Batman Forever

Or maybe not forever!  In fact, this was actually the beginning of the end as director Joel Schumacher started to take the caped crusader into the world of the silly.  However, this film is still vastly superior to the one with Clooney and Schwarzenegger.  Val Kilmer brings some brooding to the role, Nicole Kidman was well cast as love interest Dr. Chase Meridian ("and what a chase"), and Chris O'Donnell's Robin was introduced, and though his introduction was a bit on the long side, it was still rather emotional.  Of the villains  Tommy Lee Jones wasn't as good or memorable as Jim Carry as The Riddler.  It takes a bit of time to get Edward Nigma ("E. Nigma") into those green tights, and his story is a bit silly until then, but once he dons them, everyone else has a difficult time keeping up.

The Brady Bunch Movie

Being a fan of the original show, this movie version was a nearly perfect way to introduce the Brady's to a whole new audience while keeping the fans of the old show highly entertained.  With elements of the old plots sewn in, the Bradys are presented as a family stuck in the 70's and clueless about the real life of the 90's, and the comparisons between the two time periods are a lot of fun, as is this entire cast of groovy and wholesome kids, centered by speech-making Mike and Shelly Long as Carol, often repeating that old catchphrase "Oh, Mike" over the Bradys little problems.  The sequel didn't have quite the same magic.

Dead Man Walking

This film took me surprise.  Being a conservative Christian, I'm not the biggest fan of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, or Sean Penn, particularly of their rude politics.  That's why this film is such a surprise.  Oliver Stone also managed to be rather fair and polite when he took on George W. Bush in the movie W., and likewise, Robbins steadies his hand and is rather fair with Christian concepts in this tale of a nun who comforts a murderer on death row and the family of the victims he massacred.  As Christians, our attitudes should follow suit.  St. Paul talks about Faith, Hope, and Love, and how the greatest of these is love, and Jesus himself directed us to serve and to help, along with specifically mentioning how we are to visit the broken and the fallen in prison. 

Desperado
Cool, slow motion action scenes abound as the characters shoot at each other and blow things up, and look cool doing it.  The plot is happenstance, and takes a back seat to the well-shot action scenes, including the one that features a wise-cracking Quentin Tarantino.

Dolores Claiborne
It had been five years since Kathy Bates had won an Oscar for playing a strong-willed woman in a Stephen King thriller.  Could she strike gold twice by doing it again in another Stephen King movie?  Although the character of Annie Wilkes, and the movie Misery, were more memorable, this one comes in as a close second.  The cinematographer had a real nice handle on how to shoot the past and the present.  Christopher Plummer plays subdued villainy so well, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Parfitt, and David Strathairn do some great work with some strong material as well.  Dolores Claiborne had already been accused of murder once.  Has she killed again?  Finding out the truth about both murders and her past is an intriguing experience.

GoldenEye
Brosnan.  Peirce Brosnan.  Welcome to the world of Bond... finally!  You didn't disappoint, and brought a suave bravado back to the character.  They also rolled out the red carpet to Judi Dench, who makes a great addition as James Bond's boss M, and switching the character from male to female.  In the villain department, Sean Bean was pretty good as former Bond colleague Alec Trevelyan, and though he was a better villain than Robbie Coltrane's Zukovsky, he also wasn't quite as colorful as Alan Cumming as Boris Grishenko.  Meanwhile, Bond girl Izabella Scorupco was cute as Natalya Simonova, a computer scientist in way over her head, but the best addition was the combo Bond girl/villain Xenia Onatopp ("she likes it onatopp") well played by Famke Janssen.

Tommy Boy
Comedies can so often be stupid, but when they work, they really work.  This road movie about a snarky company man babysitting the boss' dimwitted son on a sales trip across country is loaded with enough great gags for two movies, and though David Spade is great as the "babysitter", it is Chris Farley's movie all the way!  Classic bits include "fat guy in a little coat", "holy schnike", and several hilarious mishaps with the car, including the door falling off, M&M's melting into the vent, the hood flying up unexpectedly, and a dead deer in the backseat suddenly coming back to life and destroying the car.  Perhaps this is the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles actually wanted to be!

Toy Story
Though the market is now flooded with them, the first full-fledged computer animated film is still one of the best, and unlike the Shrek movies, they haven't made a bad one of these Toy Story movies yet!  The story of toys that come to life when nobody is looking was the perfect idea for the first full CGI animated film, and as good as this early CGI work was, it's actually the story, the comedy, and the emotion that made it an instant classic.

A Walk in the Clouds
I'm not the biggest fan of romance movies.  I actually think this type of movie is very difficult to pull off and make it seem real, or truly romantic.  This film, however, really works, and the location in Napa Valley in Sacramento, California is the perfect backdrop for this story of a simple chocolate salesman who meets a single, unwed pregnant woman on the bus and agrees to pretend to be her husband during her visit with her traditional, authoritarian Mexican-American father at his winery.  As the charade continues, the two begin to really fall in love with each other, but what will it mean if the family finds out he is not really the baby's father?  The romantic atmosphere in this film is just right.  

The Best of the Rest:

Apollo 13

Braveheart

Copycat

Crimson Tide

A Little Princess

Mr. Holland’s Opus

The Quick and the Dead

Se7en

Twelve Monkeys

The Usual Suspects

Thrillers abound on this list of ten other good films from the year, from the psychological mind-games of Copycat and Se7en to the hunt for the mysterious and possibly fictional Keyser Söse in The Usual Suspects to the dangers of being stuck inside a claustrophobic tin can in both Apollo 13 (spaceship) and Crimson Tide (submarine).  Meanwhile, elements of the thriller genre can also be found in the Sam Raimi western shoot-em-up The Quick and the Dead, the intriguing Bruce Willis time-travel yarn Twelve Monkeys, and even in the remake of an old Shirley Temple movie, A Little Princess, which also includes some colorful fantasy sequences.  Finally, both Richard Dreyfuss and Mel Gibson make labors of love, with Dreyfuss playing a favored High School music teacher and Mel Gibson directing and starring in the true story of 13th century Scottish rebel William Wallace.    

The Worst:

Billy Madison

Casino

Demon Knight

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Johnny Mnemonic

Judge Dredd

Leaving Las Vegas

Mad Love

Tank Girl

Waterworld

Only two horror movies this time, the rest of them run the gamut from dark and morose (the critically acclaimed Leaving Las Vegas and the kooky Mad Love) to dumb, grade Z sci fi (Johnny Mnemonic, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, and the expensive Kevin Costner flick Waterworld) to brain dead comedy (Billy Madison) and an unnecessary gangster film (I remember David Spade on Saturday Night Live saying he liked the movie Casino the first time he saw it, when it was called Goodfellas!)

With each of these yearly lists, I like to compare my choices with the biggest hits at the Box Office and the Oscars.  Of these films, I never saw Il Postino or Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, and I didn't care much for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Bruce Willis' next Die Hard film, or Disney's animated Pocahontas, which wasn't as good or memorable as the other films Disney had been making as of late.  Other kids films I didn't care much for included the big screen version of Casper and Robin Williams starring in Jumanji, a disappointing film that really needed better effects.  For all the advances Babe made in the realm of real looking animals who could talk, Jumanji was a step backwards.  None of the animals seemed particularly real.

Notable Oscar Films                                         Biggest Box Office Hits

Braveheart                                                          Die Hard: With a Vengeance

Apollo 13                                                            Toy Story

Babe                                                                    Apollo 13

Il Postino                                                            GoldenEye

Sense and Sensibility                                          Pocahontas

Leaving Las Vegas                                             Batman Forever

Dead Man Walking                                            Se7en

The Usual Suspects                                            Casper

Mighty Aphrodite                                               Waterworld

Pocahontas                                                        Jumanji 

How a Bomb at the Boston Marathon and the Trial of a Sadistic Abortionist Not Covered by the MSM Have My Head Reeling

I sometimes love to write about what’s going on with the family, or the happenings at work, and I love to write about TV shows and music, and I LOVE to write about movies, and occasionally, something interesting will slip in there if I happen to be writing about something that carries real weight or happens to have an impact on me.  When I talk about books or role models, my writing is usually a little more serious, but not always, since I have a penchant for the goofy.  My journal sections and blogs dealing with my walk with God are probably the most serious stuff I end up writing, and there is a lot of good stuff in there.  I don’t always pay a lot of attention to the news, but I should, because when I do, there is a lot there to talk about and derive meaning from, though in the end, I’m just another voice among thousands.  If you look it that way, however, it can also mean that my voice can resonate just as much as anyone else’s, and after all, although I love movies and love to write about them and share pictures and such, that is far from the only thing I write about.  When the spirit moves me, I have another voice, like one of those “crying out in the wilderness”.  Christians should understand that reference.

     A lot has already been said about the Boston Marathon terrorist attack.  I will say this:  I love seeing these stories of perseverance, of people running toward the tragedy to lend a helping hand, of people struggling through the pain and heartache of having to carry on with lost limbs, or even the death of loved ones, including poor little 8 year old Martin Richard, in love with little league, his family now having to carry on without him, his mother with a severe head injury, his surviving sister losing her leg.  

     It makes me cry, but you can’t let that get you down.  Costco worker Jeff Bauman had both his legs blown off, but tells reporters days later how he saw one of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev skulking around among the crowd, and after this terrorist’s death at the hands of law enforcement, said, “He’s dead, and I’m still here,” and then he pointed out, “I’m pissed, obviously, but it’s in the past, you know.  You only look forward.”  Ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet has been on the news a lot, and vows to dance again, despite not having her left foot anymore.  She will be a featured guest on an upcoming episode of Dancing with the Stars.  You see, the terrorists won’t win if we don’t let them win.  As long as we have courage to get up and face what lies ahead after their devastating attacks, we will survive, and be all the more determined and united.

     Zubeidat Tsarnaev, the mother of the two terrorists Tamerlan and Dzhokhor, spoke with CNN, saying she believed it was staged, and that the blood didn’t look real, suspecting it was paint.  She later went on a tirade, saying her sons were framed, murdered by the police, with pictures of them doctored.  She said her oldest son was killed, her younger son could be killed, and even if she were to be killed, she would say “Allahu Akbar!”  This statement is translated as “God is great”, and is often used in Muslim prayer.  It was also the phrase Major Nidal Malik Hasan was shouting before opening fire at the Fort Hood army base in Texas in 2009, taking the lives of 13 people.  I guess it all comes down to who you choose to believe.  I was going to say it also all comes down to politics and intelligence as to who you are going to believe, and that if you believe Zubeidat, you are either a far left liberal, choosing to give her credence despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, or an extremely devout Muslim bordering on extremism and not caring if she’s telling the truth or lying, as long as it furthers the Muslim cause, or you’re a complete idiot, easily snowed by an angry, hate-filled woman in a burka.  I was going to say this, but after doing a little digging, it now seems like there are quite a few voices on the internet questioning whether there might not be at least some truth to what Zubeidat has claimed, and some of them are not on the left, or Muslim, or idiots.  Keep reading...

     News reports since the bombings reveal how the Russians tried to warn Homeland Security about these two boys, and reports have surfaced of YouTube videos featuring these boys going on anti-American rants, and that they AND their mother had been on a “terrorist watch list”.  I’m sure the mother would say how it is all fabricated, and how they were framed, and I’m sure some people even believe her.  After all, government conspiracies aren’t unheard of, even in this case.

     I had this to say about it, which I already posted on Facebook:

This is a song from the musical South Pacific, and the lyrics don't just apply to white people:

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught

This mother did a wonderful job using the concepts of this song upon her children, and just look at the results!

     And here’s one of the main reasons I don’t like politics or digging deep into some of these stories.  There are no easy answers.  The X-Files started out with the catchphrase "The Truth is Out There", but as you keep digging, it gets more convoluted, and then some of the other X-Files catchphrases come to mind, such as "Trust No One", "Deny Everything", "Believe the Lie", "All Lies Lead to the Truth", and "They're Watching".  There is always evidence that there is more here than meets the eye, and it all starts to really sound like the wild conspiracy theories of this classic science fiction show, until you just don't know what to believe.  Several people have come forward with video “evidence” of the Boston Marathon of mysterious snipers on buildings, FBI or government agents hanging around the event, speaking into walkie-talkies with each other and listening through CIA-like earbuds, moving away from the blast zone just before the bomb exploded, and then conferring with paramedics and first responders afterwards.  The video link here is only one of dozens of videos claiming the Boston Marathon Bombing was faked.  If you check out the link, look the left on YouTube and you'll see a bunch more.  Someone has claimed there is video footage of the terrorist who was killed surfacing showing he was actually still alive and in custody after he was supposedly dead.  All of this has been given a certain amount of credence by Glenn Beck and his show The Blaze (linked here), if you choose to believe him.  

     You know, if any of that is true, God help us all, because there is really NO way of knowing what is really going on with any kind of certainty at all, and then you run the risk of being a conspiracy theory nut.  Why, after speaking with a friend, I learned that the government knew Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, but let it happen, and at church, the pastor talked about the version of the Gospels that Thomas Jefferson created by removing all the portions of Jesus doing miracles or saying things that were politically incorrect.  You start digging deep, and then you realize that it's just like everything else; the more you know, the more you really don't know anything at all.  All I will say is with politics and government, I suppose anything is possible, and that makes me want to cling to my faith and to God all the more.  That’s not a sure thing either, as evidenced by doubting Thomas Jefferson's practical and naturalistic editing of the Gospels, and like everyone, I’ve had times where I’ve struggled with it.  God designed it so that it was not something that could be proven.  But if I have to choose to believe in anything, that’s it!

     Whenever I DO really pay attention, and write about this kind of stuff in my journal, I always seem to uncover all this crap that makes it hard to sift through and find the real truth.  And I hate to even say it, but digging deep like this just makes me want to run screaming from it all the more, and then I feel justified barricading myself in a world of TV and movies.  I mean, just what is truth here?  I need to take the time to decide for myself what to believe.  The only thing I know for absolute certainty is that a bomb went off at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring dozens of others, but who was behind it, and why, is still a mystery, and if you think the MSM is going to be able to tell you all the facts surrounding it, you better think again.  They have their agendas just like everyone else. 

     Although the news media has been all over this story these days, my siblings, my Mom, and I have certainly noticed how the Gosnell trial is not being covered by the mainstream media!  My sister has been keeping me up-to-date on the trial of this murderous doctor Kermit Gosnell, and before going to church one Sunday in mid-April, I tried to share one story she posted on Facebook with my Mom in which a witness who worked for Dr. Death testified about a live baby thrown into a toilet and “swimming… trying to get out”.  I couldn’t get through five sentences before bawling to a point of not being able to talk anymore.  Those poor babies can’t talk anymore either.

     You want the whole truth about what separates a liberal and a conservative?  The reaction of a conservative who hears this story, and the fact it isn’t being covered by the MSM, is one of outrage and profound sadness, to the point of crying.  The reaction of a liberal to this story, and the fact is isn’t being covered by the MSM, is one of indifference, and no apology for the people doing it or the journalists not reporting it.  They even have outright elation, as I’ve seen from a few ghoulish democrats and liberal reporters.  I won’t apologize for being a conservative here and stepping on a few liberal toes.  I’m afraid it just goes with the territory.  If you don’t agree, that’s your right too.  But it doesn’t mean you’re right.

The Best and Worst Movies of 1994

Once again, I step back into the past to review the movies from the 90's, this time concentrating on the year 1994.  As with 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993 (linked to the actual post by the year), I will talk a little bit about my favorites, a few honorable mentions, the worst of the year, and for comparison, a list of the biggest hits at the box office and the Oscars.

My Top Ten Favorites of 1994:

Bullets Over Broadway
"Don't speak!  No, no, DON'T SPEAK!"
I'm not really the biggest fan of Woody Allen.  I usually find his films too self-indulgent, mindlessly philosophical, and overbearingly pretentious, and this film has some of those elements, particularly with the characters played by Rob Reiner and Mary-Louise Parker.  However, the material really works for everybody else, and the characters and situations are hilarious.  I thoroughly enjoyed the characters played by John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly, Tracy Ullman, and Jim Broadbent.  The story is very funny and inspired.

Ed Wood
This was a quirky choice that I already talked about in this blog (linked here).  Everything clicked for this well directed Tim Burton film about Ed Wood, who was the worst director of all time, but he never let that stop him from trying.  The script is first rate, and the performances, particularly Johnny Depp as the obliviously happy Ed Wood and Martin Landau portraying horror film legend Bela Lugosi during his sad last days, were all quite good.  Look for a great cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio as film impresario Orson Welles, who compares notes with Wood about their difficulties with the Hollywood system!

Forrest Gump
This film is actually better than it's often repeated catchphrases about boxes of chocolates and the many uses of shrimp.  This story of a simple man who lives an extraordinary life really captured the nation's attention and turned Tom Hanks from a star into a legend, with comparisons to Jimmy Stewart starting to take on more and more credence.  The costars Sally Field, Gary Sinise, Robin Wright Penn, Mykelti Williamson, and even the kids playing younger versions of Forrest and his girlfriend Jenny, Michael Conner Humphreys and Hannah Hall, also do some great work here.  The story takes Forrest all over the place, throughout the 50's, 60's, 70's, and on into the 80's, and in less experienced hands, it could be quite disjointed.  But here, under the accomplished direction of Robert Zemekis, it all clicked in a way I hadn't really seen since Little Big Man.

Interview with the Vampire
As a fan of the novel, I was quite curious what Neil Jordan might do with this tale of all-too-human vampires, especially when Tom Cruise was announced to play the flamboyantly evil vampire Lestat, the one pulling all the strings.  Like the author Ann Rice, I cringed at the thought, and then wound up supporting the choice after seeing the film.  More so than Cruise, however, or Antonio Bandaras' ancient vampire Armand, the best part of this story centers around Louis, the vampire being interviewed (it is his story, after all) and the tragic yet vicious little vampire girl Claudia, both well played by Brad Pitt and a young Kirsten Dundst.

The Lion King
As if the successful run of the animated The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin weren't enough, Disney continued their winning streak with this more original piece heavily based on Shakespeare's Hamlet about a lion cub named Simba who is caught in a deadly battle between his jovial and noble father Mufasa and his evil, conniving Uncle Scar.  Expertly weaving in elements of light comedy with heavy Shakespearean tragedy, sometimes both at the same time, this is probably my favorite of this late eighties/early nineties instant Disney classics.

The Mask
This was the year of Jim Carrey!  Fresh off his 5 year stint on the Wayans family variety comedy sketch show In Living Color, he had not one, not two, but three movie hits this year, with Ace Venture: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber, both on my "Best of the Rest" list, but my personal favorite of them all was this live action cartoon of sorts, about a timid teller in love with old Looney Tunes cartoons who comes across a magical mask that reveals a person's true inner self.  Carrey fit the over-the-top story and silly effects perfectly, and Cameron Diaz wasn't too bad either!

The Shawshank Redemption
Don't get me wrong.  I loved Forrest Gump.  It's on this list of ten favorites too, after all!  But the fact that this film didn't win the Oscar for Best Picture, or didn't wind up as one of the ten biggest box office hits of the year is a crying shame.  Despite writing mostly about demons, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night, some of Stephen King's strongest work when adapted to the big screen are his non-horror dramas.  This is one of the best, and both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman give Oscar worthy performances.  If you haven't seen this film, do yourself a favor and see it.  It will become a favorite of yours too.

Speed
Possibly easy to forget because it's just another action picture, this one had something a little bit more.  I don't know if it was Keanu Reeves as the hero, or Sandra Bullock as the feisty heroine, or Dennis Hopper as the bad guy, or the thrilling story about a killer who rigs a city bus to blow up if it goes under 55 mph, or perhaps it was a combination of all these things, but I was hooked from the first scene where a  crowded elevator is rigged to blow to the finale on a runaway subway car!  This film was every bit as thrilling as the first Die Hard!

True Lies
Everybody is kicking around Arnold Schwarzenegger these days (and he really didn't help himself too much by starring as the world's first pregnant man in the comedy Junior, released this same year), but once upon a time, he was the man to go to if you were making an extravagant action film, which James Cameron was at the time.  The action sequences here are great, as is the constant tip of the hat to James Bond, and Jaime Lee Curtis is also great as the mousy wife who is clueless that her husband is a super-spy, letting her hair down and getting into the action with him by the end.  This was another fun thrill ride!

Wes Craven's New Nightmare
I wrote about this film before too, linked here.  I couldn't believe it!  I never thought I'd even like another slasher film, even from the inspired Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, after all those Halloween and Friday the 13th films and their ilk on an endless cycle of increasingly stupid and forgettable sequels.  The Elm Street films were pretty much destroyed and run into the ground with those last two films, parts 5 and 6, and truthfully, I was set to wash my hands of it all.  Then they released this extremely clever 7th Nightmare film that was all about the making of one more Nightmare movie, with Heather Langencamp, the victim Nancy from the first film, playing "Heather Langencamp", and the director Wes Craven showing up as himself, and Robert Englund doing double duty as both the razor-fingered dream boogyman Freddy Krueger and his real-life doppelganger.  It's all about how they begin the process of making a new Freddy film when suddenly, whatever evil force was dreamed up by Craven originally starts to come out of the film world and into ours.  That's pretty darned clever for the seventh in a tired old horror movie franchise!

The Best of the Rest:

Ace Venture: Pet Detective
The Client
Dumb and Dumber
The Flintstones
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Maverick
The River Wild
The Santa Clause
The Stand
Wolf

If I had more room, I'd really consider adding a few family films such as the remake of Miracle on 34th Street or revisiting The Little Rascals, but this list will have to do!  At the top of the list are the two Jim Carey movies I talked about before.  Then we have another John Grisham film full of southern lawyers and clients, new big screen versions of the Flintstones, Frankenstein, and Maverick, a semi-literate, semi-werewolf movie starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer (you can howl appropriately here), Tim Allen turns into Santa Claus in the first and by far the best of those movies, Meryl Streep rides the rapids with armed, murderous thugs, and over on TV was a pretty good, yet looooooong mini-series based on one of Stephen King's looooooooooooong novels.

The Worst:

Four Weddings and a Funeral
The Hudsucker Proxy
Muriel's Wedding
Natural Born Killers
Nobody's Fool
On Deadly Ground
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
The Shadow
Street Fighter
Swimming with Sharks

I don't know if I'm just getting smarter and watching less horror, but this year's stinkers list has only the third Phantasm film to kick around.  I'm sure there were more, but I was too smart to watch them!  That's okay though, because stinkers come in all genres, and I was nice enough not to include the audience and critic favorite Pulp Fiction, a film I just never really cared for.  Instead, I've got a lot of smaller independent films that were too dull or decadent, like Swimming with Sharks, Muriel's Wedding, The Hudsucker Proxy, Nobody's Fool, and even the big hit Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was in the top ten box office for the year.  Meanwhile, some of the action films starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal were starting to become a dime a dozen, Alec Baldwin should have left The Shadow on old time radio as it did NOT transfer well to the big screen, and my pic for the worst movie of the year was one that actually had nearly 50% of critics give it a favorable review, including both Siskel and Ebert:  the stomach churning Natural Born Killers.  Don't tell me all the people who gave it an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes liked it for it's message about too much violence, rather than the depraved violence itself!

For the big films at the Oscars and the box office I haven't mentioned already, which are Robert Redford's Quiz Show, Blue Sky starring Jessica Lange, and Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger, based on the Tom Clancy novel.  I actually found them rather pedestrian and boring, and definitely not in the same league as films like The Shawshank Redemption, The Lion King, and Speed.

Notable Oscar Films                                         Biggest Box Office Hits

Forrest Gump                                                    The Lion King

Four Weddings and a Funeral                           Forrest Gump

Pulp Fiction                                                       True Lies

Quiz Show                                                          The Mask

The Shawshank Redemption                              Speed

Blue Sky                                                             The Flintstones

Ed Wood                                                            Dumb & Dumber

Bullets Over Broadway                                      Four Weddings and a Funeral

The Lion King                                                    Interview With the Vampire

Speed                                                                  Clear and Present Danger

Gary's Movie Reviews: "Les Misérables" & "Seven Days in Utopia"

I've been working on something interesting for this blog, but I'm not ready to post it yet.  In the meantime, here's a couple of recent movie reviews (the titles link to the trailers):

Les Misérables

I’ve wanted to see this movie for quite some time, but it’s so long, we can’t watch it on a normal weekend movie night.  But then we had a night that worked out, and we were able to go over to my brother's house earlier than usual.  I’m glad I finally got to see it, and despite its length, it didn’t disappoint.  It’s one of those rare long movies that doesn’t seem so long because you are thoroughly entertained for over 2 ½ hours!

     The actors did a marvelous job.  It’s hard enough to sing and stay in tune.  Add to that the fact they had to really act while they were singing, and then, as I understand it, they tried to do as little ADR (dubbing) as possible, meaning that for most of the movie, when you see the actors singing on camera, the voice you hear is probably their real recorded voice at the time the scene was shot, not overdubbed by the same actor later in the recording studio as with Madonna and Antonio Bandaras for Evita.  That takes some rather intricate planning and some real skill, and I’m still not sure how they managed to pull it off so well!

     Going in, I knew Hugh Jackman was good, and I had seen a bit of Anne Hathaway singing “I Dreamed a Dream” to know that she was very good too, but all of them - from stars like Russell Crowe to Amanda Seyfried, to the villainously comedic turns by Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen, to people I had not seen before, like Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, and Aaron Tveit, to the “extras” – they all did an amazing job with this musical.

     Like some of the best movies, however, it wasn’t just all about the music.  The actors sang with heavy emotion, which is what the story really called for, from the classic novel by Victor Hugo to the stage musical from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg.  The story follows a criminal, Jean Valjean, who is released from prison after 19 grueling years after stealing a loaf of bread.  When he breaks his parole, Inspector Javert makes it his life’s goal to bring Valjean back to justice, and Valjean even starts down that road again when he steals silver items from a convent.  But when the Bishop tells the authorities the silver was given as a gift, he manages to change Valjean’s heart, and from then on, he sets out to live a righteous life.  He becomes a man of some importance, and when one of his workers, a girl named Fantine, is mistreated by his foreman, and winds up selling her hair, some of her teeth, and finally her body to pay for the care of her daughter Cosette, Valjean feels it is his fault, and feels he must intercede, even though Inspector Javert is still hot on his trail.  In the end, will Valjean be able to convince Javert that he is a changed man, and if so, will it make any difference?  These are pretty heavy themes for a musical, but as with musicals like Evita and West Side Story, some of these heavier themes makes these musicals all the better!

     Did I mention I was impressed?

     One interesting note for Star Trek fans:  Check out the Deep Space Nine episode "For the Uniform" - if you have Hulu, you can watch the entire episode linked here, or if you have VUDU, you can watch the entire episode linked here.  Starfleet traitor Michael Eddington's favorite book is Les Misérables  and when he sends Commander Sisko a copy of the book, Sisko realizes Eddington sees himself as Valjean, and Sisko as Javert.  In order to finally catch him, Sisko plays the part of Javert, knowing that Eddington will eventually do what Valjean would have done, and give himself up to satisfy Sisko/Javert's obsession with him.  Clever writing!  See the scene where Sisko takes the part of Javert to extremes, causing Eddington to give himself up, linked here.  When Eddington gives himself up, he even calls Sisko "Javert".

Seven Days in Utopia

I’ve always liked Robert Duvall and Lucas Black.  Robert Duvall, of course, is probably most known for the Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”), but in his later years, as what happens with very few people in Hollywood (Charlton Heston,  Jon Voigt, and Chuck Norris come most readily to mind, but there’s also the likes of Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr., and Rachel Welch), Duvall turned out to be one of those people on the Christian Conservative side of things.  Over the years, he has, at times, picked films that are of this conservative Christian bent, such as Tender Mercies, The Apostle, and Secondhand Lions.  That’s not to say his characters have all been angelic.  His characters, such as Gus in the Lonesome Dove series or Vince Vaughn’s dad Hal in the comedy Four Christmases, are men who live hard and therefore play hard as well, and they’re often quite rough around the edges.  Performances of his I particularly liked over the years included Officer Hodges in Colors and Boss Spearman in Open Range.  With a filmography of well over 100 appearances on film (including an uncredited “Priest on Swing” from Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it’s hard to remember them all.

     Lucas Black was the kid with the heavy southern accent from Swing Blade, and he was really good in that film, though imdb says he’s most known for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (which I only saw parts of), as well as Jarhead, Legion, and Friday Night Lights (which I haven’t seen).  But it didn’t escape my attention that Robert Duvall had a cameo appearance in Sling Blade as Billy Bob Thorton’s good-for-nothing Dad, and that Lucas Black had a rather substantial role in one of Duvall’s latest films, Get Low, which was another film on this Christian bent, yet I was rather disappointed by it.  Duvall must like this kid, and considering the projects they’ve been picking lately, perhaps Black is yet another Hollywood enigma:  an actor who believes in the Christian God.  His appearance in these three films with Duvall would seem to indicate a curve in that direction.

     This film is the story of Luke Chisholm, an up and coming golf great who chokes and loses his temper on the 18^th hole of a very important game, and he gets stranded in the middle of nowhere, which is actually a tiny little southern town named Utopia.  There, he happens across an old golf pro Johnny Crawford, who decides to take Luke under his wing and teach him everything he’s doing wrong in the game of golf, but even more importantly, in the game of life.  It allows Robert Duvall to take on the clichéd Yoda role of the wise old sage who teaches the young hero, and this movie comes awfully close to paralleling Daniel and Mr. Miyagi’s relationship in The Karate Kid.  There’s even the romance with the young girl and the rivalry with the flippant young stud of the little town.  In a way, these sports movies have much in common, and films I’ve praised this year so far, including Trouble with the Curve and Here Comes the Boom, don’t add a lot of new angles.

     But sometimes, you just have to go with it, and I find myself saying “Who cares if it’s clichéd?  Does it work?”  An even better question is “Where are we going to find some good, wholesome, family films in today’s Hollywood landscape of sex, drugs, profanity, and violence?”  The critics certainly aren’t going to like anything wholesome!  I can hear them now:  “You want wholesome?  Go watch old reruns of The Brady Bunch.”

     Well, I just might do that!

     Jesus once said in the Bible, “Oh Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike.”  (Matthew 11:25, NLT)  If the critics can easily dismiss your movie because it’s passé and unoriginal, yet it’s wholesome, and normal people can find God there, then you have pretty much modeled this bible verse. 

     It may be derivative.  It may be hackneyed.  We may have seen it done a hundred times before.  Why just a few years ago, I listed a bunch of golf movies I loved, including The Greatest Game Ever Played, Tin Cup, and Happy Gilmore, and just this year, I’ve seen similar plots of the underdog overcoming the odds and winning (and it’s only April).  But none of that matters if your movie is still GOOD.  How many times have I seen a plot like Avatar in episodes of Star Trek or other science fiction stories?  There will probably be thousands more after this one.  But that doesn’t have to negate the story.  Everything’s derivative if you really think about it, including the ones nominated or winning Best Picture at the Oscars.  I can compare them all to other similar films.  So what?

     In fact, one of the greatest things about this film was the way they ended it.  [SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING!]  Rather than telling whether or not the main character won the game in the end, the narrator, Robert Duvall, basically said it didn’t matter; that in the grand scheme of things, it was just a golf game.  What was important was what he learned that would take him far beyond this simple little game, and winning or losing that last shot was ultimately of very little consequence.

     That’s a bold way to end the picture, but I liked it, and it makes it just a little bit different from all the others; especially when you consider that what ultimately changed him wasn’t so much Duvall’s character of Johnny Crawford, but God.  That’s something that we can know through this story, for it isn’t just possible for this fictional character of Luke.  It is possible for us too!

The Best and Worst Movies of 1993

These are all movies from exactly 20 years ago, and I can't believe some of them are already that old!  After delving into my favorite and least favorite movies from 1990, 1991, and 1992, these films from 1993 are my picks for favorite movies, the best of the rest, the worst, and a comparison to the biggest box office hits and Oscar winners and Best Picture nominees:

My Top Ten Favorites of 1993:

The Fugitive
Taking the old sixties series and turning it into a movie wasn't necessarily a stroke of genius.  Getting Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones to play the leads, falsely accused Dr. Richard Kimble and U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard hot on his trail, was.  Beware the one armed man!

Grumpy Old Men
"Moron"
"Putz"
"Do me a favor.  Put your lip over your head... and swallow."
Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as two arguing, insulting old men was their best screen pairing since The Odd Couple 25 years before this, and better than Grumpier Old Men that would be released 5 years down the line.  Ann Margaret and Burgess Meredith each add something special to the proceedings, but in completely different ways.

Jurassic Park
You WILL believe that dinosaurs have really been remade from the DNA of blood found in ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber for over 65 million years!  Even after 20 years, these dinosaurs are still quite impressive, and it's why the film has just been re-released in theaters with the new 3D technology.

A Nightmare Before Christmas
I actually have a love/hate relationship with this film.  It is not actually a delight all the way through, but I've seen it enough to recognize and appreciate the work that went into it and some of its better moments, and even though all the songs are not all great, a few of them - "This is Halloween", "What's This", "Kidnap the Sandy Claws", and "Oogie Boogie's Song" - are real stand outs.

Rudy
I can't speak for the real Rudy Ruettiger, but the character played by Sean Astin of a smallish guy who dreams of playing football for Notre Dame despite his size, and manages to make his dream come true, is one of the best inspirational sports movies of the time.

Schindler's List
Steven Spielberg was on a role!  Not only did he give audiences the big box office hit of the year with Jurassic Park, but then made this heavy biopic about a war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who is conflicted by what he sees occurring with his Jewish work force, and tries to do something about it.  This is one of the best American films to document the travesties that befell the Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

Shadowlands
Having read several books by C.S. Lewis, I'd have to say he was admirable on many levels; intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  That he was a Christian, converted through his own intellectual study, is even better.  This movie was the touching story of his later years romance with the American woman Joy Gresham.  Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, as Lewis and Gresham, are a "joy" to watch, and Joseph Mazzello, who was also the little boy in Jurassic Park, did some great acting here as well as Joy's son Douglas.

Tombstone
Much better, and faster paced, than the dreary drama Wyatt Earp starring Kevin Costner that would come out the next year, this one wisely jettisons much of the historical weight that made the Costner version too serious and overlong.  Filmed as a fun shoot-em-up, they manage real emotion as well when Earp's older brother loses an arm, and his younger brother is killed.  Kurt Russell is perfect is Wyatt, and Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as his brothers are all really good too, but the movie is almost stolen by a wise cracking Val Kilmer as the perpetually ill Doc Holiday.  "I'm your Huckleberry."

True Romance
I'm not the biggest fan of Quentin Tarantino's love affair with cool dialogue and ultra-violence, but a film like True Romance, written by Tarantino and directed Tony Scott, sure makes me understand its appeal a whole lot more.  You can't really go wrong with any film that casts Gary Oldman as a dred-locked pimp and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis!  Starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, the film boasts some great actors in some well written scenes, among them Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, Michael Rapaport, Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, Chris Penn, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Wayne's World 2
This film is not so much beyond a mere continuation of the first film, but as such, it was also an enjoyable romp through the mind of Mike Meyers, in the same year he also had a hit with So I Married an Axe Murderer.  Unlike some of the films he's making these days, these early films were actually quite funny, and once again, Dana Carvey is hilarious as his goofy sidekick Garth.

The Best of the Rest

Addams Family Values
Dave
The Good Son
Heart and Souls
Matinee
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Piano
So I Married and Axe Murderer
This Boy's Life
The Three Musketeers

Any of these lists can be rather subjective, and it would have been just as easy for me to include on this list films like Free Willy, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, Judgment Night, The Man Without a Face, Much Ado About Nothing, The Sandlot, Searching for Bobby Fisher, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and even some of the parody movies such as Fatal Instinct and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1.  Of the films I DID choose, Gomez and Morticia dance up a storm and Wednesday learns to smile in the return of the Addams Family; Kevin Kline is a look-alike for the president in a charming romantic comedy; Macaulay Culkin becomes a wicked little psycho brat in a delicious little thriller; Robert Downey Jr. discovers four lost souls who used to be his guardian angels from childhood in a charming romantic comedy; Joe Dante explores his own past and love of cheesy sci fi in an endearing coming of age dramedy; Robin Williams clowns it up in drag in a box office smash comedy; Holly Hunter gives a stunning mute performance in a seering Jane Campion drama; Mike Meyers follows up his one two punch of back-to-back Wayne's World films with a really funny romantic comedy; Leonardo DiCaprio suffers under the abuse of Robert DeNiro in the same year he wowed audiences and critics as a mentally challenged youth, and finally, Disney does Dumas with a crowd pleasing version of his classic swashbuckler.

The Worst

Demolition Man
Flesh & Bone
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Leprechaun
Man's Best Friend
My Boyfriend's Back
Return of the Living Dead III
Son of the Pink Panther
The Vanishing
Wilder Napalm

Once again, half the stinkers list is filled with horror movies or horror movie parodies, and not even Jennifer Aniston can liven them up (she starred in the wretched Leprechaun).  The other choices run the gamut from dreary and slow (Flesh & Bone and The Vanishing) to bizarre (Demolition Man and Wilder Napalm) to "I can't believe they went THERE" (such as another Pink Panther movie without Peter Sellers).

For comparison once again, here were the biggest hits of the Oscars and the Box Office.  I thought The Remains of the Day, The Firm, Indecent Proposal, Sleepless in Seattle, and The Pelican Brief were okay; they just weren't my favorite movies of the year.  Cliffhanger was also quite good, but couldn't compare to other crowd pleasers like Jurassic Park and The Fugitive.  I even liked Philadelphia.  But I never saw In the Name of the Father, Age of Innocence, or Belle Epoque.

Notable Oscar Films                                         Biggest Box Office Hits

Schlindler’s List                                                  Jurassic Park

In the Name of the Father                                  Mrs. Doubtfire

The Fugitive                                                       The Fugitive

The Piano                                                           Schinlder's List

The Remains of the Day                                     The Firm

Philadelphia                                                       Indecent Proposal

Jurassic Park                                                     Cliffhanger

Mrs. Doubtfire                                                   Sleepless in Seattle

The Age of Innocence                                        Philadelphia

Belle Epoque                                                      The Pelican Brief