Movie Review: Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex * ½
Directed by: Jimmy Hayward.
Written By: Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor & William Farmer based on the DC Comic by John Albano & Tony Dezuniga.
Starring: Josh Brolin (Jonah Hex), John Malkovich (Quentin Turnbull), Megan Fox (Lilah), Michael Fassbender (Burke), Will Arnett (Lieutenant Grass), Tom Wopat (Colonel Slocum), Michael Shannon (Doc Cross Williams), Wes Bentley (Adleman Lusk), Aidan Quinn (President Grant), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Jeb Turnbull).

I have always liked Westerns. They don’t make very many anymore – in fact you are lucky if you get 4 or 5 great Westerns in a given decade nowadays, instead of 4 or 5 a year back in their heyday of the 1940s and 50s. But whenever a Western comes out – even a supernatural one based on a comic book like Jonah Hex was – I have to go and see it and hope that the filmmakers live up to the best of the genre. In this case, they failed miserably. What makes that even more disappointing that it already would be is that in terms of casting, they could not have asked for a much better, better suited cast. And yes, even if this Western has a supernatural twist, it should have provided fans of the genre a good time at the movies. Unfortunately it seems like no one involved in the film really cared about the quality of the finished product – if they did, they would have demanded a rewrite.

Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) was a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, but he betrayed his platoon (with good reason mind you), leading to all of them being killed. This angers Quentin Turnball (John Malkovich) to no end, because his son was among those who got killed. He shows up at Hex’s house with his henchmen, and forces him to watch as they burn it down – killing Hex’s wife and son, before branding his face, leaving him forever scarred. Hex somehow survives, and wants vengeance. But his near death experience has given him the ability to bring people back from the dead – at least temporarily. He’s kind of like the Pie Man in the short lived, but wonderful, TV series Pushing Daisies.

In the years following his family’s murder, Hex has become a violent bounty hunter – one that will just as soon kill you as arrest you. What he is most bitter about is that Turnball was apparently killed. But when the government approaches him, and tells him that not only is Turnball not dead, but he maybe assembling some sort of doomsday device, and they need his help, he immediately jumps at the chance to bring down his rival.

All of this probably sounds like goofy entertainment – and had it been handled properly, it probably would have been. Josh Brolin is pretty much perfectly cast as Hex – the problem is that the movie doesn’t really give him anything interesting to do or say – and he pretty much delivers his dialogue like a warmed over Clint Eastwood. Malkovich can usually be counted on to be a great villain – but he’s sleepwalking through his role here. He knows what the movie is, and is content to cash his paycheck and move on. The best one in the movie is actually his British henchman played by the great Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Inglorious Basterds, Fish Tank). He goes wildly over the top, but at least he injects some life into the proceedings. I’m sure most critics will be harsh on Megan Fox – they always are – but it’s not really her fault that the prostitute she plays is rather lifeless. The movie gives her NOTHING to do, and very little reason for her character to actually be in the movie. They wanted a hot girl, wearing an old fashioned prostitute getup, including a corset to emphasize her breasts, and that is exactly what they got. Nothing more, nothing less.

The director of the film is Jimmy Hayward, working from a screenplay co-written by the horrible team of Neveldine and Taylor – the writer/directors responsible for both Crank movies, and the horrible Gamer with Gerald Butler. Hayward, whose only previous director credit was Horton Hears a Who, is not nearly as hyperactive as Neveldine and Taylor behind the camera – but he still seems to have graduated from the Michael Bay school of filmmaking. The action sequences are so quickly edited, that it is hard to tell what the hell is going on. He slows down for the dialogue driven sequences, but it doesn’t help. The movie is barely 80 minutes long, but feels much longer.

Jonah Hex is a movie that doesn’t work simply because no one really took time to make it work. I have never read the comic this film is based on, but watching the movie I was struck that a movie with similar story elements could work as B-grade fun – even if they kept the entire cast they had. What they needed though was a coherent, interesting screenplay – something to make these characters feel real, instead of like a bunch of actors playing dress up. Since the movie bombed opening weekend, we will likely never see another Jonah Hex movie – which if they kept the same creative team behind this one is most likely a blessing. But I couldn’t but thinking that the film is a wasted opportunity. Given to a better team behind the camera, this could have been great fun. It isn’t, and that’s a shame.

Movie Review: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 ****
Directed by: Lee Unkrich.
Written By: Michael Arndt & John Lasseter & Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich.
Starring: Tom Hanks (Woody), Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear), Joan Cusack (Jessie), Ned Beatty (Lotso), Don Rickles (Mr. Potato Head), Michael Keaton (Ken), Wallace Shawn (Rex), John Ratzenberger (Hamm), Estelle Harris (Mrs. Potato Head), John Morris (Andy), Jodi Benson (Barbie), Emily Hahn (Bonnie), Laurie Metcalf (Andy's Mom), Blake Clark (Slinky Dog), Javier Fernandez Pena (Spanish Buzz), Timothy Dalton (Mr. Pricklepants), Jeff Garlin (Buttercup), Bonnie Hunt (Dolly), Jeff Pidgeon (Aliens), Whoopi Goldberg (Stretch), Richard Kind (Bookworm).

I think the reason why most sequels fail to live up to the movies that came before them is that most filmmakers are lazy. They do not try anything new in the sequels – they simply recycle what worked in the first movie, add a new character or two, and throw the result onto the screen. Iron Man 2 is a perfect example of this. Yes, it is a fine movie and an entertaining one, but it lacks the freshness of the first movie – we are no longer surprised by how good Robert Downey Jr. is as Tony Stark, and as such the movie has a slightly warmed over feel to it. The best sequels in history – like The Godfather Part II – takes characters that we know and love, but push them farther into unknown territory. The Godfather Part II would not be as good as it is if Michael had simply become a clone of his father – something most filmmaker would have done. Because Coppola and company pushed his story further, into unchartered territory, the movie is a masterpiece.

The same thing can be said about Pixar’s Toy Story 3. This is not a lazy sequel that simply repeats what happened in the first two installments. This is a film that moves the characters we have grown to love in the past 15 years, and pushes them forward, into much darker terrain. As a result, Toy Story 3 immediately joins the ranks of the best sequels ever made – and perhaps the best final installment of a trilogy I have ever seen. If that sounds like hyperbole, think back to all the third installments in a series’ history and tell me if any of them can match this one. I don’t think there is one.

In this film, Andy is about to head off to college at the end of the week. His once beloved toys are stuck in a toy box in his room that he never goes into. They haven’t been played with in years – and their numbers are dwindling thanks to various yard sales in the intervening years. His little sister, who has also outgrown toys for the most part, will be moving into his room and his mom tells him that he has to either pack everything for college, put them in boxes in the attic, or thrown them out altogether. He decides to put the few toys he has left up in the attic – with the exception of Woody, his beloved cowboy action figure given to him by his father. He will go to college with Andy, most likely to sit on a shelf and be ignored. The toys aren’t happy about going to the attic, but they have resigned themselves to the inevitability that it will happen. And perhaps one day, Andy will have kids and they’ll be played with again.

But then things go wrong, and instead of the attic, the toys end up being donated to a daycare – with Woody in tow as well. When they arrive, they are greeted by a big, purple teddy bear named Lotso Hugs (voice of Ned Beatty), who tells them that they will love it there. They get played with all day every day – everything a toy could want. And best of all, when these kids grow up and move on, another group takes their place. Woody wants to head back to Andy’s, but the rest of the toys don’t relish the idea of going to the attic and staying there for years on end, and decide to stay. Woody gets out, but ends up somewhere else with another group of toys – toys who know the truth about the daycare center, and just how much danger Woody’s friends are in.

I won’t reveal more of the plot, except to say that Lotso is perhaps the most evil teddy bear in history, and that as the film moves along, it actually takes on some rather serious issues. The toys are in essence a family, and at first they have to deal with being abandoned by a loved one, and eventually they even have to face death head on. While I don’t agree with the critic who thought the entire movie was an allegory about the Holocaust, I at least understand why they thought so. The film gets dark and intense in its final act – much darker than either of the two previous stories, and perhaps darker than any previous Pixar entry. Based on the cheers of joy coming from all the kids in the theater when I saw it however, I don’t think kids, except for the smallest ones, are going to be that effected by the movie’s serious themes though – to them it will be another exciting adventure with their favorite toys. Their parents however maybe surprised by how much they care for these toys. For the third summer in a row – following Wall-E in 2008 and Up in 2009, Pixar has succeeded is making me cry at a movie aimed at children.

Please don’t make the mistake in thinking that Pixar has somehow gone completely dark in this third installment. This one is still just as funny and charming as the original two movies were. Tom Hanks is still perfect as Woody – in fact, I would say that Woody has become perhaps the best role of Hanks’ career – Tim Allen is still gloriously clueless as Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the series regular lovabale characters – mu favorites always being Wallace Shawn’s insecure T-Rex, and John Ratzenberger’s cynical piggy bank Hamm – are still a joy. The new characters are all a welcome addition. I quite enjoyed Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants, a stuffed porcupine that is what I would call a “Method Toy”, who takes his job as seriously as Robert DeNiro. Michael Keaton is easily the most fun of the new characters as Ken, who takes an immediate shine to Barbie, and is glad that finally someone at the daycare cares about fashion. But far and away the best is Ned Beatty as Lotso. Beatty has quite a range in his voice, coming across at first like a genial old grandfather type – kind and thoughtful. But when you cross him, he gets an edge in his voice and he becomes downright scary. As good as the villains in the first two movies were – especially Kelsey Grammar as Prospector Pete in the second movie – Beatty outdoes them both and becomes the series’ best villain.

I have to admit that when I heard that Pixar was making Toy Story 3 this year, I was a little disappointed (especially because next year’s Pixar movies is Cars 2). They have hit at a consistently high level almost all decade – the lone exception being Cars, which would be a triumph for any other animation studio, but for Pixar was a little disappointing. After the triumphs of originality that were Wall-E and Up in the past two years, I wanted them to continue to push forward with new movies, and new characters. But I should have known better than to doubt them. Pixar has been the most consistent creative force in American movies for the past 15 years. The key to their success is that they spend as much as time writing their stories as they do at making the movies themselves. The films still look better than any other animation studio in the world – and that is true in 3-D this time, which for my money is the best use of 3-D in an animated film since Coraline – but what makes them special is how seriously they take their movies, how much trust they put into children to follow them to darker, more troubling places that most studios wouldn’t dream of pushing them into. Toy Story 3 is a sequel, but it is just as original as anything Pixar has done in the few years – and just as brilliant. This is quite simply one of the best films of the year.

Year in Review: 1958

1958 contains two of the very best films ever made. In any other year, either of my top two films would have been the clear and easy choice for best. But things work out like that. Some years don’t have a clear best picture, and other years have two or more that could easily fit the bill. The rest of the films on this list are worthy, but none can hold a candle to the top two.

10. The Magician (Ingmar Bergman)
The year after Bergman made what many consider to be his masterpieces – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries – in made this film, which is virtually ignored by many people. While it’s true that The Magician is not the film that either of those films were, it is still a marvelous film by a wonderful director. The film is about a magician (Max von Sydow) who comes to a small town, and whose townspeople are weary of him. They want him to give a certain group of influential people a taste of his act, before they allow him to perform publicly. The scientifically minded crowd then tries to disprove all of von Sydow’s tricks – but he is just a little smarter than they give him credit for. To some, The Magician is a lesser Bergman because it is somewhat more accessible – his points about magic and masks are easier to decipher than some of his more complex films – and while I agree that the film is easier to understand, I don’t agree that this makes the film worthless. In fact, I would argue that perhaps The Magician would be the perfect place for many to start with their Bergman education. A masterpiece it may not be, but a wonderful film by a great director it certainly is.

9. The Big Country (William Wyler)
William Wyler’s epic The Big Country is a movie about a pointless feud between two cattle ranchers that ends in death and destruction. Gregory Peck has the lead role as a man, just out of the army, who comes to the wealthy ranch of his future father-in-law (Charles Bickford), and discovers that Bickford is feuding with a less prosperous rancher (Burl Ives, in his Oscar winning role). Everyone assumes that Peck is a coward, because he refuses to be goaded into a fight either by Ives son (Chuck Connors) or Bickford’s head rancher (Charlton Heston) – this disgusts his fiancée (Carrol Baker) who breaks off their engagement. But Peck isn’t going anywhere – he buys the land owned by Jean Simmons which lies between the two ranchers, and has caused most the problems. The Big Country is appropriately named – the film is epic in scope and running time, and the cinematography is magnificent, capturing the huge spaces of the ranches, and the wilderness around them. If the film has a flaw, it’s that neither of the romantic leads – Peck or Simmonds – are anywhere near as interesting as the characters that surround them. The real stars of the movie are Ives, Bickford, Connors and Heston. But that’s a small complaint about this big entertainment.

8. The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer)
Many of the films by director Stanley Kramer have aged badly in the years since they were released. Once looked on as progressive, and in some cases daring, they now seem rather quaint and antiquated. But this is not the case with The Defiant Ones, which is still an exacting movie. Two chain gang prisoners – Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis – escape, but have to rely on each other to survive as they are chained together. Initially they hate each other – mainly because of the overt racism of the Curtis character – but gradually they come to like and respect each other. The transformation is so complete that both will eventually sacrifice a chance for themselves to escape in order to save the other one. Yes, to a certain extent The Defiant Ones still offers a rather simplistic view of race relations in America. But it a tremendously well acted film by Poitier and Curtis – not to mention Cara Williams, Theodore Bickel and Lon Chaney Jr. in supporting roles – and is also an exciting prison escape movie. It took guts to make this movie in 1958 – and all these years later, it holds up as a well made, well acted and exciting movie – perhaps Kramer’s best film.

7. The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa)
Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress is probably best remembered for being the film that inspired George Lucas’ Star Wars. It is amusing to see the two peasants in this film that were the inspirational for C3P0 and R2D2 bicker and complain to each other, but this Samurai film works as a film its own right, not just as a curiosity item. The film is about those two peasants who end up meeting a samurai (Toshiro Mifune of course), who is transporting a Princess (who is like Leia in many respects) through enemy territory with what remains of her treasure in the hopes that they can use it to rebuild her army, and take back the land that is rightfully hers. The film is exciting, and makes wonderful use of the widescreen format Tohoscope (this was the first time Kurosawa used it – and he would continue for the next decade). The film is exciting, but it built on the foundation of its characters, all of whom are interesting. This does not, for me anyway, rank among the best films of Kurosawa’s career – but it is masterful nonetheless.

6. Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
All but ignored at the time of its release, Anthony Mann’s Man of the West has now become a staple of the genre – and I would argue this film starring Gary Cooper is better even than his more famous Western, High Noon. Cooper gives a great performance as a reformed criminal, who is supposed to travel by train with his small town’s saving in the hopes of hiring a school teacher. But when things go wrong, and the money winds up in the hands of Cooper’s uncle (Lee J. Cobb), who taught Cooper to be a criminal in the first place, Cooper has to revert to his old ways in order to save the town’s money, and get his new life back. The film is a forerunner to films like Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, and is a tough violent Western. Like many of Mann’s Westerns (and he was a master of the genre, although he doesn’t quite get the credit of someone like Ford), this is a movie where the good guy has a bad past, and the bad guys are trying to hold onto the past. The film is tough, and unsentimental – much darker and more violent and disturbing than many 1950s Westerns, but holds us in its grip for the entire movie. A great performance by Cooper anchors the film, and Lee J. Cobb is terrific (as always) as the bad guy. Probably the best Western of Mann’s career – and he made a lot of great ones.

5. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks)
Although some think that Richard Brooks’ adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had to be too toned down for the screen, I have to say I disagree with that reading. The play never made Brick’s homosexual feelings explicit, and neither does the movie, but it is certainly more than possible to know that is what the movie is about – and why Brick has not gotten his beautiful wife Maggie pregnant yet. The film is still about the decaying values of the South – everyone lies nearly constantly in the film in order to get more of Big Daddy’s money when he dies – which the family now knows will be soon. Brick’s homosexuality is alluded to, and played brilliantly off his image of the high school athletic star, clashing with the idea of masculinity put forth in the South. As Brick, Paul Newman gives one of his best performances – drunken, stumbling around on a crutch, yelling at his wife, refusing to suck up to his father, Newman is wonderful in the role. Elizabeth Taylor is even better as Maggie, his wife, you wants to be pregnant – because she knows that Big Daddy loves her best, and if she had a child, they’d get more money. Burl Ives was also brilliant as Big Daddy – he won the Oscar that year for The Big Country, but he is just as good, if not better, here. The film is a wonderful examination of a culture in decline, and one greedy, deceitful family.

4. Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati)
Jacques Tati’s delightful Mr. Hulot returns in this film – which in my mind is even better than his original outing in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday. This time Hulot is at his small apartment, and goes out to see his beloved nephew. His sister and brother in law live in a ultra-modern house filled with automatically gadgets that Hulot finds perplexing – particularly a wonderful fountain shaped like a fish that is only turned on for company. Tati is a master silent comedian in the vein of Chaplin or Keaton, and the film is full of his wonderful sight gags, which are hilarious. The film is also a marvel of production design, and Tati’s camera is wonderful at capturing all the hilarious goings on – it rarely moves, but there is so much going on in every inch of the frame that calls our attention. Ultimately, I find Hulot to be one of the endearing creations in cinema history – he is a man who simple goes along with whatever comes before him, takes no offense to what happens, and tries to remain cheerful and upbeat. Mon Oncle is a celebration of this character, and a marvelous example of Tati’s masterful filmmaking.

3. Some Came Running (Vincente Minelli)
Adapating James Jones’ 1,200 page epic novel to the screen – that was about everything for alcoholism, to prostitution to gambling – but mainly about the poisoned, hypocritical lives of small town America had to be a daunting task for director Vincente Minelli. But somehow, he pulled it off, and created one of his greatest movies. Frank Sintra is excellent as a writer, just out of the army in 1948 America, who winds up back in his small, hometown with a Chicago callgirl (Shirley Maclaine) in tow much to his chagrin. He meets up with his brother (Arthur Kennedy), who he hates. Kennedy tries to get Sinatra to return to the fold of small town life, but his hypocrisy sickens Sinatra – who only cares for his niece. Sinatra falls in with a gambler in town (Dean Martin), and continues to string Maclaine along, even while he falls in love with a English teacher (Martha Hyer) who loves his work. All the performances in the film are wonderful – especially Maclaine – but Minelli is the real star of the movie, shooting in bold, bright Technicolor. The film shifts our allegiances to characters, exposing the darker sides of the seemingly good guy Kennedy, and even the fun love Martin. The finale is one of the greatest set pieces of the 1950s. The film is more incisive in its depiction of post-war America than almost any other film of the era. In a lesser year, this could have easier been the best film released.

2. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil is the master filmmaker best film other than Citizen Kane. Set in a small, border town the film is about a Mexican cop (Charlton Heston) who starts to suspect that the Sheriff (Orson Welles) is corrupt, and has been fabricating evidence for years. Welles, angered that Heston is looking into his activities, tries to frame Heston’s new, American wife (Janet Leigh) for murder, but he cannot stop Heston from coming after him. The film is a visual marvel – the opening 3 and half minutes are one continuous shot that follows a bomb being planted on its journey through the small town, and the finale, which involves Heston following Welles and an associate under a bridge in order to get him on tape is equally dazzling. Heston is fine in the lead role, but it is a rather thankless one. Leigh is better as his terrified wife, and the rest of the supporting cast – Akim Tamiroff and Joseph Calleia in particular are also great. But the best role goes to Welles himself, who is larger than life as the corrupt Sheriff Hank Quinlan. Rather than make him into a purely evil character, Welles creates a fascinating, complex character out of him – one that allows us to see past his racism to the person underneath. As a writer, director and actor Orson Welles has created one of the best films ever made in Touch of Evil – a film that would have been the best film of almost any other year in history.

1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Vertigo is the best film that Alfred Hitchcock ever made. It is a thriller that remains fascinating even after you know all the films secrets – because it is not really about the thriller elements of the plot, but rather the deep, psychological damage of its main character. Casting Jimmy Stewart in the lead role was a stroke of genius by Hitchcock. Stewart was the all American “nice guy” – he’s George Bailey and Mr. Smith for God’s sake! And yet in Vertigo, he plays a former cop, tormented by his fear of heights, who is hired to follow the wife (Kim Novak) of a rich man. Instead of investigating her, he falls in love with her, and her death – apparently by suicide from jumping for a bell tower (where he is unable to follow because of his fear) tears him apart. When he meets a woman who looks very much like her again, years later, he becomes obsessed with turning her into the woman he loved – not knowing that she is in fact the same woman. Stewart’s nice guy persona hides the characters darker nature – he essentially wants to perform necrophilia, and this knowledge disturbs him. With another actor in the role, the audience may not want to take the dark journey, but because it’s Stewart, we follow him down his dark path. The film is a visual marvel from start to finish, containing some of the most iconic shots in cinema history (the vertigo effect is the most famous example, but also the wonderful moment when Novak comes out transformed into her old self) – and Bernard Hermann’s score could be the best of his career. Sadly, Vertigo did not get the recognition it deserved when it was made – but has since become known as one of the greatest of all films – a distinction it certainly earns.

Just Missed The Top 10: I Want to Live (Robert Wise), The Long Hot Summer (Martin Ritt), Nazarin (Luis Bunuel), The Old Man and the Sea (John Sturges), Separate Tables (Delbert Mann).

Notable Films Missed: Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda), Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli), Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray), The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk), The Tiger of Eschnapur (Fritz Lang), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: Gigi (Vincente Minnelli)
Vincente Minnelli did in fact make a masterpiece in 1958 – but it was Some Came Running, not this sexist drivel of a movie musical. The film is essentially about a man (Louis Jourdan) of an upper class, who falls in love with a beautiful, poor girl (Leslie Caron), and plans on keeping her as his own personal concubine, as he goes out and finds a suitable wife. The happy ending of the movie is when this sexist pig decides not to do that, and do the girl the honor of marrying her. What crap! And an very old Maurice Chevlier singing Thank Heaven for Little Girls is one of the more disturbing moments in any best picture winner ever. I love Vincente Minnelli as a filmmaker – but good God do I ever hate Gigi – one of the worst films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar. Since the Academy didn’t recognize the brilliance of Vertigo or Touch of Evil – and didn’t deign Minelli’s actual masterpiece worthy of Best Picture nomination, this probably should have gone to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – but strangely that films sexuality made it too controversial to win the Big Award. Strangely, that film looks downright modern in its depiction of adult sexuality, while this film is sexist trash.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: David Niven, Separate Tables
David Niven is quite good in Separate Tables as the seemingly upstanding Major, who has more secrets than we would like to admit. Oddly though, the movie isn’t really about Niven – but about Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth. Niven is also hampered by the fact that Deborah Kerr plays opposite to him in several scenes – and despite the fact she got an Oscar nomination, it is a bad performance by the great actress. But Niven is strong a British sort of way – keeping his chin up throughout, and he is touching in his final scene. I probably would say that all of his fellow nominees – Newman, Poitier, Curtis and Spencer Tracy for The Old Man and the Sea – not to mention James Stewart’s absolutely brilliant performance in Vertigo – were all better, but Niven is pretty good as well.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Susan Hayward, I Want to Live
Hayward is certainly the reason to see this Robert Wise drama about a woman sentenced to death for a murder she did not commit – but because of her questionable morals, and criminal history, no one believes her. This was her fifth, and final, nomination so a certain amount of “its her time” thinking went into her win as well. However, considering that the two best performances nominated – Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Shirley Maclaine in Some Came Running, were by younger actress, pushing the boundaries of acceptable sexuality, her win is not that surprising. Kim Novak should have at least been nominated however – especially since they found room for Deborah Kerr.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Burl Ives, The Big Country
Burl Ives gave not one, but two, great supporting performances this year – in this film, as well as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Personally, I prefer his work as Big Daddy in the later, as opposed to his vengeful rancher in The Big Country – but that’s just a matter of taste. Ives, best known as the singing Snowman in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, could really act when given the right role – and he was given two this year, so I guess he earned his Oscar – even if Orson Welles should have had this easily, and of the nominees, I may have given it to Arthur Kennedy.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables
Wendy Hiller delivers what in my mind is the best performance in Separate Tables as the hotel owner who is engaged to Burt Lancaster, before Rita Hayworth, his old love, reenters his life. Hiller was a great actress – who was nominated for two other Oscars in her career – and she delivers a full blooded performance in Separate Tables, which makes her stand out from the rest of the cast who at times were a bit too theatrical. It is saying something that although her movie is not, in my mind anyway, in the same league as fellow nominees Martha Hyer or Cara Williams, that her performance certainly is.

Year in Review: 1953

1953 is one of the best years I can recall in movie history. Each of the 10 films on my list are masterful, and there are a number of runners-up that I cannot believe didn’t make the cut – and I still have a number of highly regarded films that I missed. Quite simply a stunning year.

10. Sawdust and Tinsel (Ingmar Bergman)
Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel is one of the best films of his early years. The film is an unflinching examination of the lives and humiliation of a group of circus performers – most notably Frost (Anders Ek) the clown. In the film’s most famous sequence, we see how Frost’s wife humiliated him by swimming nude in front of a cheering group of soldiers. As Frost goes to get her – in full clown makeup – and carries her past the jeering soldiers, your heart breaks a little for him. Meanwhile, the head of the circus Albert (Ake Gronberg) goes to see his wife, who is angry with him that he has made no money, and his mistress (Harriet Anderson) is furious with him that he even went to see his wife, and retaliates by having a fling with an actor, that she immediately feels ashamed of. Sawdust and Tinsel is a penetrating examination of these characters, which endure these humiliations, and somehow find the will to continue on. Bergman made a lot of great films in the 1950s – but none of them are better than this one.

9. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati)
Mr. Hulot is one of the most lovable film characters in history. Played by director Jacques Tati, Mr. Hulot fits into the grand tradition of Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. This is his first of four appearances in Tati’s films, and is perhaps the most endearing (although not the best). Hulot goes to the seaside for a vacation and finds no end of trouble. He mingles with the families, the old couples, the widows and pretty young girls at the resort – none of them seem to notice him unless he is doing something embarrassing – which is often. What makes Hulot so lovable is just how kind, sympathetic and trusting he is – no matter what happens, he takes it in stride, picks himself up and continues on his merry way. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday is a comedy, but not a laugh out loud one – it is a masterwork of elaborately conceived gags that must have been nearly impossible to stage properly, but Tati somehow manages to pull them off and make them look effortless. Unlike the later Hulot films, there doesn’t seem to be any greater meaning to Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – it is a film that captures the feeling of being on vacation, and introduces us to one of the great characters in screen history – and that is more than enough to make it a great movie.

8. I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock)
Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess is one of his more underrated masterworks. Montgomery Clift gives an excellent performance as a priest who is accused of murder, but cannot reveal the identity of the real killer – because he confessed to him through the sanctuary of confession. Not only that, but he has to try and protect his former lover (Anne Baxter) who he was in love with before the war who is now providing him with an alibi, but may have an ulterior motive. Hitchcock weaves together the fabric of the story – including a memorable flashback (that had to be tamed down because of censorship), and delivers a masterful film. Shot on location in Montreal, Hitchcock’s film makes the most of this historic city, particularly in the climax of the movie. Hitchcock and Clift clashed repeatedly during the filming – he was a method actor who always wanted to know his motivation, where he just wanted to get the shot he already had planned done – but the result is one Hitchcock’s best films of the 1950s – which could in fact be his greatest decade as a filmmaker.

7. Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street is one of the great film noirs of its time – a brutal and unrelentingly grim movie about a pickpocket (Richard Widmark) who steals the wallet of a beautiful young woman (Jean Peters), not realizing that it contains a top secret microfilm that the government must have at all costs. The film is violent from beginning to end – with everyone at one point or another get beat up, frisk, shot or killed. Widmark is great in the lead role – a cynical, unpatriotic criminal willing to do anything if it means furthering his own self. Peters is excellent as the woman who had the microfilm – and Thelma Ritter is brilliant as the stool pigeon who “gets what’s coming to her”. Fuller’s brilliant cinematography – the longer, tracking shots, the dark visuals – are on full display here and the film is dark and rotten to its core – just like it should be. A great film by a great director.

6. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
The Big Heat is one of the most violent film noirs of its time. Glenn Ford is very good as a relentless cop, driven by his friend’s apparent suicide and his wife’s murder to bring down a gangster ring that is protected on high by the others in the police force. But it is the supporting players that really make this movie as good as it is – Gloria Grahame as a gangster’s girlfriend who turns to Ford for protection, and Lee Marvin in one of his best, most heartless roles as the gangster who first burns Grahame with a cigarette, and then throws boiling coffee on her face, permanently disfiguring her. The film is dark and insidious in its intentions though – portraying Ford as a straight arrow hero, when in reality he is the cause of so much death all around him, as women who trust him end up dead because he will not let go on the case. He is right of course – Lee Marvin is as evil as they come in this film, but because of his obsession a whole lot of innocent people wind up dead, who wouldn’t have if he just like it go. Sometimes being a hero doesn’t pay.

5. The Earrings of Madame De… (Max Ophuls)
Max Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame De… is one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. Opuls penchant for brilliant, long, fluid tracking shots is on full display in this movie that weaves an hypnotic spell over the audience. We are so focused on the visuals that we barely realize that the film is actually involving us in a wonderful story as well – one that builds to a wonderful climax. Madame De (Danielle Darrieux) is married to a wealthy man (Charles Boyer) – but it is a marriage of convienence more than anything – both carry on affairs with the full knowledge of the other partner and don’t care. That is until Madame falls in love with a foreign general (Vittorio DeSica), and their shallow lives come crashing down all around them. The title refers to a pair of earrings that Boyer gave Darrieux as a wedding present. She needs money so she sells them. The jeweler approaches Boyer about buying them back, and he does, but then gives them as a going away present to his mistress, who ends up pawning them to pay gambling debts, where DeSica buys them and gives them back to Darrieux, who now has to explain to her husband where the earrings she told him she lost came from – unaware that he knows what is going on. The movie sounds like a melodrama, because that is precisely what it is. And yet, we are unprepared by how much we come to care about these characters. The visuals are stunning (particularly in the lengthy ballroom sequence that recounts the DeSica and Darrieux’s courtship over a matter of months is in particular brilliant), but are only part of the pleasure of this masterful film.

4. The Wages of Fear (Henri Georges Clouzot)
The Wages of Fear is one of the most intense movies of all time. Four European men, down on their luck and trapped in a dead end South American town are hired by an oil company to transport nitroglycerin to a far off outpost to try and stop a catastrophic fire. The men are split into pairs, each given a truck and told to drive the 300 miles across rough terrain – anything too rough will cause the nitro to explode. We encounter sequence after sequence of nerve fraying intensity – having to cross a bumpy stretch of road where if their speed drops will cause the nitro to explode, a road construction site that takes the trucks perilously close the edge of falling down a cliff, a giant rock that needs to be exploded to get it off the road, an oil spill that they have to drive through rapidly because if they get stuck, they will never get out again. The film is brilliantly structured by Clouzut, who plays with our expectations. Since there are two trucks, we know one will undoubtedly explode, but when it comes, it does so at an unexpected moment. The film is not really about acting, but the performances have a raw, lived in feel to them – these are men defined by their masculinity, who hate to have it questioned. The ending of the film is fittingly ironic and sad. The Wages of Fear is that rare movie that grips you from beginning to end.

3. I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)
Out of all of Fellini’s wonderful 1950s output – where he seemed to be in line with his neo-realist precursors, I think I Vitelloni is his best. A semi-autobiographical movie about five friends, now well into their 20s, who still act as if they were teenagers. Notorious ladies man Fausto (Franco Fabrizi) has had to get married to the girl he knocked up – but even this isn’t enough to get him to stop chasing women, or settle down and get a job. His four friends are all daydreamers of one kind or another – the moderately talented singer who thinks he is going to make it big, the aspiring playwright who never actually finishes anything, the guy with big plans who relies on his mother and sister to support him – and finally the youngest one – representative of Fellini himself – who finally realizes that his friends are sleeping their lives away, and decides to head out of their small town to try and make his own way. Fellini’s film is one of the best films ever made about male friendship, as well as the dawning realization that sometimes you have to leave your friends behind and follow your own way. Fellini’s film is masterfully written and directed, and is one of his most influential – you see echoes of it in films like Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Fellini would go on in the 1960s to be one of the cinema’s most visually imaginative, and fantastic poets – but this realist drama remains one of his very best.

2. Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu is about two brothers who are destroyed by their obsessions. One is a potter, who dreams of making lots of gold for his simple pots – and when it seems like it is all within his grasp, he loses it because he is seduced by a rich woman, who turns out to be a ghost. The other brothers dreams of being a samurai, finds a way to become one, but is heartbroken to discover that after he abandoned his wife to follow his dream, he had to become a geisha to support herself. Mizoguchi’s style is the real attraction here – his flowing camera shots that create a dreamlike atmosphere, the magnificent sequence when the brothers cross the river shrouded in fog, the introduction of the ghost story elements which are not meant to titillate, but rather simply exist and draw us, along with the greedy potter, towards her. The film is a masterwork of style – it tells a story that seems ancient, and yet remains relevant. Mizoguchi ranks right alongside Kurosawa and Ozu as the best directors Japan has ever produced.

1. Tokyo Story (Yashujiro Ozu)
Yashujiro Ozu directed a number of great films in his career, but Tokyo Story is his masterpiece – the one that he will always be remembered for. The movie, inspired by Leo McCarey’s great Make Way for Tomorrow, is about two elderly parents who travel to Tokyo and Osaka to see their grown children. Although the children love them, they do not have time for them, and what was supposed to be a wonderful trip soon becomes depressing for them. Only their widowed daughter in law tries to entertain her in laws – the rest are too busy with their lives to care. Tokyo Story is a slow, calm movie – one that paints a picture of Japan after the war as caught between its traditions and the oncoming modernity of the country. While the movie sounds sentimental, it doesn’t exploit, it doesn’t try to wring tears from our eyes – although it does – instead it simply quietly observes this old couple as they try and have a happy trip, and have nothing turn out the way it is supposed to. This is one of the saddest movies ever made – and also one of the very best.

Just Missed The Top 10: The Band Wagon (Vincente Minelli), Beat the Devil (John Huston), From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinneman), Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Roman Holiday (William Wyler), Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder).

Notable Films Missed: Anatahan (Josef von Sternberg), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks), The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir), Indiscretion of an American Housewife (Vittorio DeSica), The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann), The Robe (Henry Koster), The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford), Voyage in Italy (Robert Rosselini), The War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin).

Oscar Winner – Picture & Director: From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinneman)
From Here to Eternity is a wonderful wartime romance – a film that in many other years in the 1950s would have easily made my top ten list. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are excellent as lovers – she the wife of his commanding officer, but I have always felt that the best performance in the film belongs to Montgomery Clift, who refuses to box despite his reputation. However both Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed – in their Oscar winning performances – are excellent as well. No, it didn’t make my top 10 list (which this year is dominated by foreign films) – but out of the nominees, it is a solid choice (even though mine would have been Julius Caesar.)

Oscar Winner – Actor: William Holden, Stalag 17
William Holden was excellent as the soldier who everyone thinks is the rat in this POW movie. He is mainly surrounded by character actors, and perhaps the best thing you can say about him is how effortlessly he blends in with them – yes he is the films central character, and the most important one, but he fits in with everyone else. This was a year where I honestly have to say was not the strongest for this category. Alongside Holden, the Academy recognized the work of Lancaster and Clift in From Here to Eternity, Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar (despite the obvious fact that he has only one major scene, and that James Mason’s Brutus is far and away the best performance in the film), and Richard Burton, unseen by me, in The Robe. But despite the fact that none of those films made my top 10 list, I cannot think of many performances in films that did that were better. Most years, the best actor category is the most competitive – not this one.

Oscar Winner – Actress: Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
This was Audrey Hepburn’s breakthrough role – and she immediately defined her screen persona and got audiences to fall in love with her. Roman Holiday is a joyous little film about a spoiled princess who gets to see how everyone else lives for a little while, before going back to her charmed life. And yet, despite the fact that may sound annoying, it really isn’t – it’s delightful. I do think that several of the foreign women who are so often overlooked by the Academy out did Hepburn this year, but of the nominees it is a fine choice. And you really cannot say that her career didn’t deserve an Oscar, so I won’t complain about this one.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actor: Frank Sinatra, From Here to Eternity
Sinatra longed to be taken seriously as an actor, but it wasn’t until this film when he truly was. Sinantra is great in a supporting role as Clift’s only ally, who has a running feud with the bigoted Ernest Borgnine. His tragic death sequence probably clinched him this award, but his whole performance is excellent. Out of the nominees, he was clearly the best – but that isn’t saying much as two of the nominees come from George Stevens’ Shane, a film I have never liked, and the other two were I thought rather minor performances. The clear best choice this year was Lee Marvin in The Big Heat, but it would take the Academy another decade to recognize his brilliance – and for a bad role at that.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actress: Donna Reed, From Here to Eternity
Donna Reed is very good in her role as Clift’s girlfriend in From Here to Eternity. She also fit the mold that the Academy likes to use for this award – young, pretty and in a Best Picture winner. This is probably the weakest award that From Here to Eternity won on Oscar night – especially when you consider just how great Thelma Ritter (who never won!) was in Pickup on South Street – but given the brutality of that movie, I guess we should count ourselves lucky that they even nominated her, which is more than we can say for the other great performance in this category this year – Gloria Grahme in The Big Heat.

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.