Lola,
I saw the Royal Tannenbaums and had mixed feelings about it. There were things I liked, like the warmth the grandfather showed his grandkids and the depression that hung over Gwyneth Paltrow was funny, but there wasn't much of a story there and the pacing could have been more crisp. But I did think the movie was hyped, although not in the way, let's say Master and Commander is being hyped (It has Oscar written all over it!), but when there are trailers shown on television, that's hype.
Just doing some catching up. I, too, found Out of Africa kind of dull. But one line stays with me--when Meryl is leaving, and she asks her servant to say her name. A powerful moment.
I liked Close Enclounters. Saw it in a big theater with a gigantic screen.
I thought American Beauty was good--not great.
I recently caught up with Marvin's Room on cable. The ending made me angry. It was incredible. But the acting was first rate.
Another movie that I was cringe-worthy was As Good as It Gets. There were simply too many things in that film that didn't make sense. And once I stated thinking about them, the whole movie fell apart.
Was As Good As It Gets that thing with Jack Nicolson and Helen Hunt? I hated that movie. Why any woman would fall in love with a person as obnoxious as the Nicolson character is science fiction.
As I walked over to the library today (car in shop . . . for two weeks!!!), I realized that while Gigi seems to be some sort of landmark, well remembered picture, it's really quite stupid.
Never got the appeal of Leslie Caron. At all. French? So what?
I'll watch, and usually like anything with Gene Hackman in it. It's Ben Stiller that gives me the woolies.
Forest Gump was awful-trite-demeaning.
I agree with Dys about Forest Gump. I also resented the way it went out of its way to portray people of the left as clueless dopes or rabble rousing fiends.
Hey, wait a minute. You mean life isn't like a box of chocolates? Another bubble burst.
Roberta wrote:Another movie that I was cringe-worthy was As Good as It Gets. There were simply too many things in that film that didn't make sense. And once I stated thinking about them, the whole movie fell apart.
I felt the same way about "The Usual Suspects." The ending, in effect, cast doubt upon the entire movie. It made sense up until the end, at which point nothing made sense any more. Some may view the ending as tantalyzingly ambiguous; I just found it to be a trite, lazy way to get out of a story that had simply become too complex even for the screenwriters to figure out.
There's nothing ambiquous about the ending of "The Usual Suspects" for me. What exactly did you find ambiguous? The clues throughout the film are what is tantilizing. I thought it was the best surprize ending in a film for the past three decades.
Joe, I agree with LW. I thought that the end of the Usual Suspects was a good one. It made me want to watch the whole movie over again with the new information. I wanted to see if there were clues.
I own the film so to test its credibility, I paid close attention to how they were presenting the clues and how they were developing the relationships between the characters. It has some minor lapses that are easy to overlook (it's a fictional story, unlikely to ever happen in real life). All I can say is the script received some honors and it deserved them as one of the most meticulously crafted I've ever seen. More important is that it was a small, independent film written for actors to pull out the stops and they all performed admirably. Kevin especially deserved his Oscar -- playing it too subtely would have given it away and going over the top would have accomplished the same. Very tightly controlled but natural performance. Important to the viewer is that they have to pay close attention to when the story is being told by Spacey and what the actual events were. "Memento" reminds me of this film as reality becomes fantasy and fantasy becomes reality.
Got to side with Roberta and LW on "The Usual Suspects". I liked "Memento" too, even though that one is implausible in the extreme.
On the other hand, I think I understand "Mulholland Drive", so everything I write should be taken with a grain of salt.
Well, I'm voting with the majority on The Usual Suspects. I loved it. I think everyone can look to an experience of having been taken in by a skilled liar, like the character Kevin Spacey played. I thought the film realistic. Of course, when we are taken in, we seldom have the light dawn on our personal Marblehead as quickly as it did the detective, but, that sort of insight was shortened and therefore made more dramatic in order to make the movie more realistic.
Lightwizard, Roberta, Greyfan, plainoldme: Well, it certainly looks like I'm in the minority here.
I hesitated to elaborate on my opinion regarding TUS because giving away the ending pretty much gives everything away, but...
[WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN "THE USUAL SUSPECTS"]
Much of the story is told by means of Verbal Kint's (Kevin Spacey's) flashbacks. But the ending reveals that Kint had been lying all the time. Consequently, the only things that we know for sure actually happened are the things that aren't included in those flashbacks, and those things aren't terribly interesting. So, in effect, we are treated to a shaggy dog story, without realizing it's a shaggy dog story until the very end. That's not only unsatisfying, that's a cheap way for the screenwriters to get out of a complicated plot by cutting the Gordian Knot of plausibility in favor of some kind of closure.
Now, some might say: "ooh, I'm intrigued by the ambiguous ending -- was anything real, or was it all made-up?" Well, I find that kind of ending about as satisfying as one that says: "And it was all a dream." Geez, even the ending of "The Wizard of Oz" was far more satisfying than the con job pulled by TUS. In short, it was, as Laurence Sterne would have said, "a tale of cock and bull."
On the other hand, the cheap, lazy way the screenwriters ended the movie doesn't detract from the acting performances, which I considered to be top-rate. Not only Spacey, who richly deserved the Oscar, but everyone else (I particularly like Pete Postlethwaite) was terrific.
In short, the acting was as delicious as a doughnut, the script was as substantial as the hole.
Aha, but one can never be sure all that Verbal was telling the detective was made up -- crucial points to lead him astray to be sure. Of course it was a tale of cock and bull told by an expert who could have been writing fiction just as well as being a criminal. I can't agree with your assessment but one man's meat is another man's poison. You haven't convinced me, so "Not Guilty." (You lost your case).
Joe, I loved the doughnut/hole reference. Tres witty. But I also loved that the whole thing could have been and probably was made up. I loved that not-too-swift Verbal was brilliant and quick. And I loved the very end when he walks away from the police station and gradually stops limping. By the time he gets to the car, he skips in gracefully. From my pov, this is not a facile ending like, "Oh, it was all a dream." It was the revelation of a character--and we were all taken in.
That what made it so special to me. We were ALL taken in. You figured, in the beginning, that he had to be him since he was the last man standing but as he told his story, he absolutely convinced us that it wasn't him. It couldn't have been him. And then when that sumbitch glided away from the police station, he left everybody babbling. It was a master performance.
MORE SPOILERS AHEAD ON "THE USUAL SUSPECTS"
Not many actors could have brought it off -- a complex script with characterizations careening off one another like balls (sic) on a pool table. This wasn't just a heist thriller with ominous overtones of an uber-criminal entity like no other created before -- maybe Orson Welles in "The Third Man." It didn't have that much to do with plot although there was some potently intricate storytelling going on. I actually love the crooked cop scene in the beginning as much as the end of the film!
The writers of "The Sopranos" owe a lot to this screenplay.
There was a TV special on the making of the film and I know it is convenient to disagree with the Academy Awards when they don't coincide with one's opinion and then laud them when they do. The script won the Oscar.
Another movie that strove for a gaspy ending was The Sixth Sense. That's the one with "I see dead people," isn't it?
