"Three Kings," one "Witch" and a "Princess" | page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Andrew O'Hehir
My primary gig at Salon is to cover major commercial films and, as advertised, this has been an exceptionally good year for Hollywood. So why are two of the first three movies on my list foreign? On the one hand, I could hold forth about the ways that American filmmakers are still not free from the pernicious influence of Alfred Hitchcock: They confuse action with emotion, see appearance as reality and understand storytelling mainly as a trick played on the audience. On the other hand, when I look at my list such protestations ring hollow. One of my highly rated foreign films is a cartoon and the other is a knockabout farce with considerably more action and slapstick humor than, say, "Being John Malkovich." So let's can the theories and get on with it.
Full disclosure: No critic sees everything, and there are several movies I haven't gotten to that might have cracked this list, most notably "Dogma" and "All About My Mother."
1) "Black Cat, White Cat"
The world shifted its attention away from the Balkans in 1999, but Bosnian filmmaker Emir Kusturica ("Underground," "When Father Was Away on Business") abandoned the serious tone of his earlier work for this defiantly ribald, allegorical farce that laughs in the face of death. Here, love is triumphant, the wicked are punished and death itself is revealed to be a temporary inconvenience. There's more appreciation for life and the possibilities of cinema in "Black Cat, White Cat" than in any other 10 movies made this year.
2) "American Beauty"
I still have misgivings about this bittersweet suburban satire, but it has grown on me since its release, and I'll take a flawed masterpiece over finely crafted crap any day of the week. Kevin Spacey is of course magnificent in the role of his career as Lester Burnham, facing the mother of all midlife crises, and if his final scene with would-be nymphet Mena Suvari doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you may not have a heart. If the film's pseudo-Buddhist spirituality is murky and its "issues" with homosexuality seem unresolved, it's nonetheless a lovely, haunting and deeply serious exploration of ordinary American life.
3) "Princess Mononoke"
A sweeping, heart-rending epic about the conflict between nature and technology from legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, this mythic yarn full of gods and demons, tyrants and rebels blows George Lucas off the map. But despite an exemplary English-language dub featuring the voices of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Billy Bob Thornton, box-office returns were modest. Maybe moviegoers couldn't figure out if "Princess Mononoke" was for kids or adults. It's really one of those rare and powerful animated films that works on different levels for different audiences.
4) "The Insider"
Yes, viewers stayed away in droves. Who wants to see a movie about "60 Minutes" and the tobacco industry? For me (and, I suspect, director Michael Mann), the heart of "The Insider" lies in Russell Crowe's portrayal of whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand as a conflicted and uncertain hero who never fully understands his own motivations. Wigand is a lonely man in a lonely country, a crumpled, middle-aged Hamlet who sees something rotten in the state of America. Always a first-rate visual stylist, Mann captures Crowe's furrowed visage throughout the film in a series of striking, almost surreal tableaux that will stick with you long after Al Pacino's method ranting has melted away.
5) "The Matrix"
Joseph Campbell, Philip K. Dick and John Woo are loaded for bear in this implausible pastiche that rips off every sci-fi actioner of the last two decades but manages enough wit and originality to be utterly distinctive. Sci-fi geeks spent months parsing the complex narrative, which for once respected the audience's intelligence and halfway hung together. For the rest of us, it was about Keanu Reeves' bod, Laurence Fishburne's unflappable cool and the mind-bending action scenes cooked up by the writer-director team of Andy and Larry Wachowski. Furthermore, "The Matrix" was the first movie of '99 to tap into the deepening unease surrounding the info-consumption economy. Its vision of the human race as isolated prisoners being force-fed an electronic false reality is, after all, pretty much true.
6) "Three Kings"
At heart, "Three Kings" is a Vietnam movie, right down to the psilocybin visuals and retro soundtrack (yes, letter-writers, I know when and where it's set). In fact, as I wrote earlier this year, it's probably the best Vietnam movie since "Apocalypse Now." George Clooney, Ice Cube and (especially) Mark Wahlberg are outstanding as American soldiers adrift amid the chaos of post-war Iraq who must choose between greed and conscience. We never have much doubt where it's going, but "Three Kings" is still a memorable adventure loaded with wit, a healthy sense of irony (that's not the same as cynicism) and spectacular imagery.
7) "The Straight Story"
David Lynch's minimalist Midwestern meditation on old age and mortality is elegant and bracing, even beautiful, but it didn't rock me emotionally the way it did some viewers. Maybe that's my problem: I can't help feeling that Lynch remains cold to the fate of his characters, even in a movie where nobody winds up in a ditch with their eyes gouged out. On the other hand, he gets a wonderful performance from Richard Farnsworth as the ailing, quixotic Alvin Straight, who rides a lawnmower 300 miles to visit his estranged brother, along with a too-brief supporting role from Sissy Spacek. Veteran English cinematographer Freddie Francis supplies the lovely, leisurely images, and only Lynch could make a G-rated Disney film feel this sad and strange.
8) "Summer of Sam"
Spike Lee's first non-black-centric film seemed to confuse audiences of all races and did poorly at the box office, but I'm not sure that's Lee's problem. Some conservative pundits actually claimed that its focus on a Bronx Italian-American neighborhood over the long, hot summer of 1977 was further proof of Lee's anti-white racism. (How that's supposed to work I have no idea.) In retrospect, this ambitious, explosive, frenetically alive film -- which tries to bring together the Son of Sam killings, the Reggie Jackson-era Yankees and the birth of punk rock -- may seem like Lee's "Manhattan," his effort to distill the essence of the city that fuels his art. OK, so his ambition exceeds his grasp, but this is still Lee's only film of the '90s good enough or big enough to rival "Do the Right Thing."
9) "Office Space"
Right around here any Top 10 list becomes almost totally arbitrary, so let's throw in a wild card. "Beavis and Butt-head" creator Mike Judge's first live-action feature was doomed by an idiotic marketing campaign that bore no relationship to the movie, a sharp, true and very funny corporate satire set in nowheresville Texas suburbia. Ron Livingston turns in a subtle performance as the affectless software engineer who stages a coup against the long hours, anonymous drudgery and atmosphere of phony equality typical of the '90s business world. Jennifer Aniston is the stir-crazy mall-restaurant waitress who catches his eye, partly for her refusal to wear "flair" on her uniform (see the movie and you'll understand).
10) "Three Seasons"
Half neorealism and half romantic fantasy, this debut feature by Vietnamese-American director Tony Bui, almost overcrowded with memorably lovely images, is the first American film to be made in Vietnam. If it wasn't for Harvey Keitel's forced and awkward presence as a former G.I. back in Saigon to search for the child he abandoned many years earlier, "Three Seasons" would rate much higher. Its other interlocking Saigon stories -- about a cyclo driver in love with a beautiful prostitute, a flower-seller from the countryside who gets to know a dying poet and a street urchin facing total destitution -- are handled with impressive maturity and compassion.
Honorable mention: "American Movie," "Being John Malkovich," "The Green Mile," "Jeanne and the Perfect Guy," "West Beirut."
salon.com | Dec. 17, 1999
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Get a printer-friendly version
E-mail a friend about this article
Backflip this article to find it again
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Search Salon
Arts & Entertainment
