1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[swo17]

Anyone want to argue for giving Kundun a shot?

I don't believe it features "Gimme Shelter"?

[knives]

Instead you have 100 minutes of Phillip Glass.

[domino harvey]

Going back to Reese Witherspoon for a moment, I hope everyone is planning on voting for / has seen Freeway, Matthew Bright's gloriously tasteless work of trash as high art that features a fearless central performance from Witherspoon as the white trash heroine who is caught in an outrageously violent and crude retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. The only other film I can think of that comes close to Freeway's tone and lack of boundaries is Killer Joe, and it would make a good double bill with that recent board favorite. Freeway is a true classic of its kind.

[domino harvey]

Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven 1992) The psychiatry scare films of the 40s found new life in the 90s and this is one of its most notable (and financially successful / culturally relevant) examples. Joe Eszterhas comes again with another overpriced script that is pretty much just awful in terms of plotting, characterization, and especially dialogue. But it's "kinky" and "sexy" so the studios went into a bidding war. Any spark the film has is thanks to Verhoeven's cartoonish direction and Sharon Stone's histrionics in her iconic role as the question mark murderess. This film is a mess and hardly anything makes narrative sense, as exemplified by the infamous interrogation scene where all the sweaty professional interrogators are stopped cold (or hot) by the penny-ante antics of a sex bomb who-- shock-- doesn't wear underwear. It's supposed to upend the power structure and present Stone as a sexual threat and invite feminist readings, but really it's so silly that the response is second-hand embarrassment. There's a lot of that to be had here, actually. Verhoeven knows he's working with trash and his angle of attack seems to be to embrace the outlandish nature of it. I can respect the attempt, but he doesn't end up helping matters any. This is just a jumbled mess of extended sex scenes (including a really awful borderline rape as eroticism moment between Michael Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn), none any sexier or more interesting than what came on Cinemax on Saturday nights in the 90s, and some contradictory twists that leave everything with a "Lady or the Tiger" ending hellbent on frustrating anyone attempting to give the film more thought than those who made it.

Best Laid Plans (Mike Barker 1999) The initial premise of this film is strong and compelling: Two college buddies (Alessandro Novola and Josh Brolin) reunite after several years. One goes home with a girl (Reese Witherspoon) who afterwards claims rape on her way out the door and the accused's immediate response is to not let her leave to go to the cops. So now she's handcuffed to a pool table in the basement and he calls his old pal to come help him figure out what to do. It's an intense predicament, and one the film quickly reveals it is not actually interested in exploring. No, the film we get is one of those super-twisty affairs where everything we know is upended and then upended again, and so forth. And while it's nowhere in the neighborhood of the worst such films can offer (That'd be the textbook absurdity of Reindeer Games), it is impressive how every twist actually renders the film more benign and harmless instead of increasing the dramatic stakes in any meaningful way. It's never a good idea to keep changing your movie into a less and less interesting narrative. Had the film actually been what it appeared to be at the outset, it might have been something, but alas the title is all too apt.

Spoiler

I will say this, though: Looking back on it, the film's twists do at least for once offer a retroactive explanation for that post-Tarantino standby of the overly articulate criminal thug!

[zedz]

Anyone want to argue for giving Kundun a shot?

It's Scorsese's Little Buddha take of that what you will.

Oh, it's not that bad.

[Dr Amicus]

Anyone want to argue for giving Kundun a shot?

It's Scorsese's Little Buddha take of that what you will.

Oh, it's not that bad.

Admittedly I haven't seen it since its initial release, but no Scorsese since has matched it for me based on first viewings (the only Scorsese I have managed to see twice since then is The Aviator). When someone gets round to a decent Blu, I'll be anxious to revisit.

As for Basic Instinct, I found it a great, pulpy treat and must have seen it a couple of times at the cinema - and it always seemed to me that Douglas's character is just as dangerous as the killer. I know it got some real attacks for perceived homophobia, but I thought it was far more concerned with the whole obsession (primarily heterosexual) angle. For more on its reception, especially in the UK, I'd recommend Thomas Austin's Hollywood, hype and audiences: selling and watching popular film in the 1990s , which has an interesting chapter on it amongst several others. [Disclaimer - In my teaching days I used to work with him]
Scary trivia titbit - one of my friends admitted that he had an almost permanent erection during the film...

[flyonthewall2983]

I think for some, to look at a film like Basic Instinct now is also to look at the baggage of terrible movie and TV tropes it inspired in it's wake. While it was at best a good thriller, it does get bogged down a little by it's legacy. In comparison it's more understandable that there were so many people aping Tarantino after he became a household name.

[knives]

Anyone want to argue for giving Kundun a shot?

It's Scorsese's Little Buddha take of that what you will.

Oh, it's not that bad.

Fair enough, though just enough so to have me totally forget I even watched Kundun for a short while.

[colinr0380]

I agree with both domino and Dr Amicus - I can't disagree that Basic Instinct is a film that is in an almost permanent state of sexual anxiety about women - they're either icily cold robotic humpers (anticipating Showgirls there!), or even worse they show no sexual interest in anyone except other women, or even, even worse they're your boss! Of course (spoilers) the latter two feminine types have to die.

The Jeanne Tripplehorn character is the most put upon character in the film - introduced in a masculine dominant position she almost immediately compromises herself by going all googily-eyed for Michael Douglas, being unable to separate work and relationships, then we get the pretty difficult to take frustrated revenge-rape section (which is really what campaigners should have been protesting about, though I kind of like the way that it takes place almost in full view of a party going on in the apartment opposite, lending a kind of date-rape atmosphere to it. Or an idea of people having fun whilst a really messed up relationship is occurring mere feet away, as Beth seems to take this encounter as some kind of rekindling of a spark rather than the immediate end of any interaction with Nick), and then we get the final section as Douglas's character spirals into manic paranoia with multiple relevations about Beth's sexual identities and past. Does she have to die because she once had lesbian tendencies or because Nick is upset that she also got to have sex with Catherine Tramell?

No wonder this was a star-making part for Sharon Stone though. This is a film whose whole premise relies on the complete willingness not just of Michael Douglas as the audience substitute, but the audience themselves to become so obsessed with and enamoured by Stone's beauty that we'll continually make excuses for her, even when she is doing everything short of shaking Douglas roughly by the shoulders and shouting "I'm the killer, dummy!" into his face. But it is perhaps more than just Sharon Stone herself - it is also her privileged lifestye with multiple homes, Ferraris, oodles of leisure time in which to pursue interests, access to sex and drugs with all ages and genders, no parental figures around, and so on. Catherine Trammell is kind of a fantastical siren figure for a whole host of desires in the film, not just the obvious ones. She can even change herself into more of a 'feminine' figure, all bouncy excitement and softer clothes in the later sections of the film, as she becomes something less immediately threatening to Nick, all the better to deflect his attention onto the tougher but more obviously 'damaged' Beth.

Yet I agree with Dr Amicus too - while this all sounds horribly misogynist this is a Paul Verhoeven film, so its more wryly misanthropic instead, amused by the ludicrous nature of all the humping going on. Which makes the way that it set off a whole trend of erotic thrillers amusing in itself! All the men in the film are just as horrifically portrayed as being led around by their penises, sweating profusely, objectifying every woman and generally behaving like complete idiots throughout. This is perhaps George Dzundza's greatest role as Douglas's partner - all leering and lechery, making Douglas's Nick look better just by comparison. Although as Dr Amicus says, it really becomes apparent that Nick is perhaps even more damaged than the supporting characters whose often repulsive emotions are on the surface, which makes his relationship with the similarly shadowed Catherine about a kind of mutual fascination. That's why we get the ending: not so as to show us 'whodunnit', as if we didn't know from the first scenes, but to show that now they have finally got to a spot where they can settle down as a couple after all of the trials and tribulations, that is the end of their relationship. Nick is happy to set up a home, his dangerous sex days hopefully out of his system now, and presumably he thinks that he has 'changed' Catherine and converted her to the joys of his new lifestyle, but Catherine is the thrill-seeker through and through. I get the impression that the ice pick, lying under the bed like a discarded marital aid, might not be used straight away, but it will be around just in case the whim takes her!

Anyway that's my take on the film and it is the kind of discussion that I wished I'd found from Camille Paglia's commentary track over the film. Despite a couple of interesting passages, usually when Paglia goes into the depictions of the female figure in mythology, I was just left with the staggering revelations from that track that "the ice pick is like a penis", "the red racing car...is like a penis", and so on. Oh, and also that Sharon Stone is stunningly beautiful, but then I'd also kind of figured that out too.

Scary trivia titbit - one of my friends admitted that he had an almost permanent erection during the film...

I guess Michael Douglas's bare ass can do that to anyone!

By the way, I recently watched Wakefield Poole's hardcore gay cinema epic Bijou that was released by Vingear Syndrome and was interested to find out from the commentary track that Bill Cable, the one straight actor in Bijou playing with a whip and looking on with a pained expression at the orgy taking place in front of him, actually plays Johnny Boz, the rockstar killed in the opening scene of Basic Instinct!

[domino harvey]

Great post Colin!

Scary trivia titbit - one of my friends admitted that he had an almost permanent erection during the film...

I guess Michael Douglas's bare ass can do that to anyone!

If you haven't seen it already, National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 does a great parody of this (NSFW)

[Feego]

Joe Eszterhas comes again

You're never gonna get over that, are you?

The only Verhoeven movie I've seen from the 90s is Showgirls, and I think your comment about the spark in Basic Instinct being attributed to Verhoeven's cartoonish direction and Stone's histrionics can apply to this film as well (although I would include both Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon). I don't know what kind of movie Berkley thought she was making, but her Jessie Spano-on-caffeine-pills performance is what flavors the entire film. Her acting is technically bad but somehow perfect for her seemingly bipolar character who sees the trashy glitz of Las Vegas as the height of cultural sophistication (Berkley too probably thought this would vault her to the A-list). Gershon's pussy-cat star who later becomes the mouse oozes cartoon sex appeal like Jessica Rabbit made flesh. Many champions of the film like to mention its similarities to/send-ups of films like 42nd Street and All About Eve, but I think its true antecedents are Russ Meyer's sexploitation fantasies, which are characterized by strong, often violent, and highly sexual women and the neutered men who fear them. And like Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Showgirls is set in a purely mythologized version of a real city where every rotten stereotype is present. I'm actually surprised Roger Ebert didn't appreciate it on this level. If only Eszterhas had Meyer's ear for melodically cornball dialogue. As it stands, I refuse to see the film as "so bad it's hilarious" because I can't imagine Verhoeven not knowing what he was doing, no matter how serious he says it was supposed to be. Nobody shoots a swimming pool sex scene like that and expects viewers to find it erotic. Showgirls is neither a disaster nor a misunderstood masterpiece. It's just a delirious piece of trash cinema for people who like trash.

[barryconvex]

The New Age (Michael Tolkin 1994) I like to think that nobody had as great a run in the 90s as Judy Davis. Not even the great Jennifer Jason Leigh discussed previously on this thread. This film along with her masterful performances in the equally brilliant Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink and to a somewhat lesser extent Naked Lunch-also starring Weller- would form the core of my argument. God, i love Peter Weller-here the wolf in garish 90s sheep's clothing who's favorite question of a would be conquest is "how are your morals?" almost as much as Judy Davis-presented here as a ghostly pale sylph of a woman. A vampiress in blood red lipstick and black couture. They play the suitably mismatched materialists wallowing in meaningless sex, unearned money and Enya CDs. They have fancy parties in their nouveau riche L.A. mansion in which various people filter through-including the ballsy but appropriate casting choice of Adam West as PW's father. Affairs are wrangled whenever possible, and much leisure time is devoted to the spending of money until an economic downturn causes them both to lose their sources of income. They turn to a new age guru for advice and after a brainstorming session decide to open an upscale clothing store called "Hipocracy" where they'll decide for the customers what they should really be wearing. Apropos since the only things they consider themselves good at is shopping for clothes and talking. After a brief glimpse of success the store and their lives rapidly go down a hill that seemingly has no bottom.

Tolkin is merciless in his observations of this viperish high end set and includes two of the most uncomfortable scenes between two "friends" i can recall:

Spoiler

Patricia Heaton's character buying the $400 belt at the store's grand opening and the meeting between JD's character and Heaton's character in front of the same clothing store. The scene where PW tries to borrow money from his father is also fairly wince inducing.

But he saves his most biting commentary for Weller's character who:

Spoiler

after the mid six figure salaries, expense accounts and Ed Ruscha paintings finally discovers at last...that his true calling is actually in the tele-marketing industry

It would be easy for many directors to roll over and piss on all of the self servicing going on here (which is a problem i thought Altman had with the unnecessarily nasty The Player. Directed from Tolkin's screenplay ironically enough) but i never felt Tolkin took any cheap shots at these people or their culture. The movie respects its two gurus/leaders played by Patrick Bauchau and Rachel Rosenthal and the love between the main characters is real, if perhaps only in a way that they could understand. Inasmuch as a story like this could allow, JD's character even comes out of it all something of a hero-at least she's still got her pride. Samuel L. Jackson also turns in another great extended cameo (after a similarly small but important role in Fresh released the same year) as the real guru of 1994 L.A.

The New Age would make a nice flip side companion piece to Lost In America i think, another tale of a young couple leaving the Los Angeles yuppie nest for the great unknown but for much different reasons. On a surface level both films deal with the ups and downs in a long term relationship but TNA has a blacker heart in its dealings with its supporting cast of characters as well as a completely different set of morals the leads possess. However, beyond their obvious differences both films share leading characters coveting the same capitalistic ideals.

Prior to this Tolkin made another of my 90s favorites-the much more (in)famous The Rapture which also dealt with a person trying to understand all the ramifications of the lifestyle she leads and then making a radical change. I hope to spotlight it at some point as well. Both are definitely on my final list and it's an absolute crime TNA has never been released on DVD...

[Cold Bishop]

You didn't even mention my favorite Michael Tolkin project of the decade, the one that is going to be my Spotlight title. Possibly tonight, if I can squeeze in a re-watch.

[domino harvey]

Drop Dead Gorgeous (Michael Patrick Jann 1999) A good satire requires a fearlessness and a relentlessness in going after its target. On those grounds, Drop Dead Gorgeous is a success-- the mockumentary of a small Minnesota town's beauty pagent does not pull punches, and the film constantly finds amazing new lows to plumb as it scrounges up more infantile ways to provoke incredulous responses from an audience. This is a tremendously tasteless film, one which would never in a million years even survive a pitch session given today's internet offense brigade. And the film has a great cast, including Kirsten Dunst (as our heroine, the trailer trash part-time mortician), Denise Richards (who expertly captures the dead inside smiling teen princess thing), and a young Amy Adams (as the one-note slut). Director Jann is best known for his work with the State and Thomas Lennon from the troupe cameos as the voice of the central documentarian. There is only one thing missing from all of these key ingredients: everyone involved forgot to make the movie funny. And boy is it aggressively unfunny. Like, the kind of unfunny that inspires jaw-agog stupor at how spectacularly any semblance of comic timing or good jokes or even amiable smile-ready humor has been studiously avoided in the process of making the film. It is kind of impressive, actually. But not the good kind of impressive.

the Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen 1994) Watching this again, I can see why I was taken with it as a child, where I saw it in its original theatrical run (though as to what appealed to me about it as an eleven year old kid enough to convince an adult to take me I have no remembrance). The film has a stylistic buffoonery, a slick cartoon character aspect to its set design, performances, and extras that inadvertently makes it a great kids film despite the actual plot. Try it with your youngsters and test my theory. As an adult watching it now though, boy, I sure hated this. I could never figure out why the Coens spent so much time and energy mashing together different Hollywood pastiches with no rhyme or reason-- why is this set in the late 50s when the art design, JJL's performance, and the overall screwball atmosphere are clearly products of the 30s? The film's period detail is confused at best, a hodgepodge of 50s cultural references and the aforementioned 30s formal aspects, shot with huge sets reminiscent of the early 30s films and with affectated dialogue from the late 30s, and then smelted together with a Brazil-ish skyscraper world two steps away from the world's most boring steampunk fantasy. I didn't find the movie funny in the slightest. Even the thing I remembered enjoying best, JJL's performance, eventually mellows as the film loses interest in her hyperness. I did like the film's use of the Khachaturian ballet for its musical motif, and it's about the only thing in the film that didn't end up annoying me. I was surprised at how much I remembered about this movie despite not having seen it in years, and was even more surprised at how little patience I had with it now regardless.

[swo17]

Last time I said I was going to vote for three Coen brothers films, you said that all three of them would need to be The Hudsucker Proxy. So, uh, what am I supposed to do now?

And incidentally, where do you stand on Miller's Crossing? Because it is the(ir) best film.

[anvilscepe]

Going back to Reese Witherspoon for a moment, I hope everyone is planning on voting for / has seen Freeway, Matthew Bright's gloriously tasteless work of trash as high art that features a fearless central performance from Witherspoon as the white trash heroine who is caught in an outrageously violent and crude retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Couldn't agree more Domino. Reese is so beautifully unhinged in this film. I'll also take this moment to highlight Amanda Plummer. It always felt to me that her character in Freeway was an extension of Honey Bunny from Pulp Ficition. Too bad that Matthew Bright faded away though, Freeway II: Confessions of a Trick Baby was a huge letdown for me.

[domino harvey]

swo: I saw Miller's Crossing fairly recently and thought it was mediocre (which is pretty good when it comes to the Coens and me, actually). Maybe once I finally watch Intolerable Cruelty (my only remaining unseen Coens flick) it'll be the one for me (though I somehow suspect not)

anvilscape: If you want another Matthew Bright fix, I'll put in a marginal good word for Modern Vampires, which I wrote up here

And speaking of Freeway and casting, I was amused when I revisited it and realized that the scummy stepfather hitting on Witherspoon was Jarod from the Pretender. I only know that character's name because my family would refer to the show as "Jarod," as in "We're gonna watch Jarod" or "Did you see Jarod last night?" I have no idea if anyone currently living on Earth remembers that show though

[swo17]

Being that both Freeway and Bound were Republic titles, I wonder why Olive hasn't put it out/if Arrow might do so.

Fun fact: Freeway was probably one of the first five DVDs I ever owned.

[Gropius]

Showgirls is neither a disaster nor a misunderstood masterpiece.

That Showgirls is a misunderstood masterpiece is one of those 'daring' opinions that seems to have hardened into orthodoxy amongst a certain cinephile faction (see Adam Nayman's recent monograph, for instance). This strikes me as one of the problems with so-called 'vulgar auteurism': in challenging the canon, it seems to be striving to produce its own equally rigid counter-canon. (See also the defences of Tony Scott, raptures over Paul W.S. Anderson [anyone planning to vote for Mortal Kombat?], etc.)

As for Showgirls, I need to rewatch it to see where I stand, but this was definitely a great decade for Verhoeven: Total Recall and Starship Troopers are two of the best mainstream SF films ever made, both likely to make my list (albeit both below eXistenZ, in some ways Cronenberg's magnum opus). The former works as both an Arnie actioner and an unusually intelligent Dick adaptation, while the latter satirises Heinlein's ludicrous tough-guy militarism while gleefully indulging in it as spectacle, perhaps making Haneke's points about viewer complicity in violence rather less earnestly than the same year's Funny Games.

[knives]

Last time I said I was going to vote for three Coen brothers films, you said that all three of them would need to be The Hudsucker Proxy. So, uh, what am I supposed to do now?

And incidentally, where do you stand on Miller's Crossing? Because it is the(ir) best film.

I thought that was Barton Fink?

[barryconvex]

You didn't even mention my favorite Michael Tolkin project of the decade, the one that is going to be my Spotlight title. Possibly tonight, if I can squeeze in a re-watch.

Hmmmm....would that be Deep Impact? if it is i second your recommendation...

[domino harvey]

I'm certain he's talking about Deep Cover

[barryconvex]

i can't really say anything because i haven't seen it...but Gold-Fish united at last? How can you go wrong...

[domino harvey]

Lethal Weapon 3 (Richard Donner 1992) / Lethal Weapon 4 (Richard Donner 1998) Well, I didn't enjoy the first two installments but I'd already bought the four-pack, so here we are for round two to finish out the series. And Lethal Weapon 3 quickly proves to be the worst of the bad bunch with the pattered dialog and interplay now played for maximum grating annoyance and thrown at the audience in giant stupefying handfuls. The film also suffers from a completely anonymous villain and several pointless action scenes that come out of nowhere and proceed to go nowhere (and since the last quarter of the movie is essentially one giant two-part sustained action sequence far more effective than anything else in the film, I'm not sure why they couldn't have forgone the other examples). By contrast I found myself liking Lethal Weapon 4 the "best" (relative to the others in the series only), as the over-stuffed plot softens some of the more annoying tics of the returning characters in favor of shoehorning in new annoying tics from Chris Rock, and at least it's something else. And the fourth film does feature a spectacularly stupid action sequence (and I say that as a compliment) involving a highway chase that ends with the high speed pursuit somehow being followed through an entire floor of an office building-- entered through about the fifteen floor. It's some Live Free or Die Hard physics, but I could care less about plausibility in a movie like this-- novelty over plausibility in action sequences, always.

Seeing two of these films together does highlighting their worst flaws. Chief among these has to be how obnoxious Mel Gibson's character is to everyone he allegedly cares about. It made sense in the first installment for him to be suicidal, but his actions in the third film are downright homicidal, and frankly, as cheesy as it was, I was glad for his little moment at the cemetery with Joe Pesci in the final film because I was sick of seeing Gibson and Glover piss all over the guy for no reason for three movies. An even worse trend present in all of these films is the introduction of a stock "sympathetic" character who shares some kind of fleeting personal relationship to one of the two detectives and who's presence in the film extends solely to being murdered by the bad guys. It's an insulting plot device, and one so transparently mean-spirited-- couldn't the same vengeance be enacted on behalf of a loved friend, colleague, or romantic partner recovering from non-fatal injuries in a hospital? And that, despite the phony "We're family" ending of the fourth film, is my overall takeaway from these films: they're just nasty, mean movies, and without anything else of interest that would excuse, forgive, or comment on that tone.

(I was periodically trying to think of good action movies from the decade while waiting for Mel Gibson to shut up. There's the Die Hards, of course, and Speed, and the Long Kiss Goodnight, and then a whole bunch I don't ever need to see or think of again (the Last Boy Scout et al). Am I forgetting any essential 90s action films in the first category?)

SFW (Jefery Levy 1995) I was not surprised to learn the source novel for this film was written by a seventeen year old. That's about the level the "insights" gleaned here are pitched at. Picking the world's easiest target, the film allegedly lampoons popular culture's desperate desire for guidance and distraction as found in our transitory media icons. A great film could be made about this (and was almost forty years before this, A Face in the Crowd). Even a problematic approach to this same idea in Natural Born Killers at least added a myriad of colorful elements into play with the overarching "satire" to make it an interesting failure. SFW, by contrast, is a film I can't describe as one of the worst I've ever seen because I keep watching too many bad movies and needing to adjust the scale. But it's in the (lock-your-doors) neighborhood. The film hangs on an utterly charmless central perf from Stephen Dorff (I always value the input of Colin and John Cope because they come to films from such a distinct perspective, but I just as often look at their posts as though their utterly baffling conclusions and predilictions were reached via divination) as one of the victims of a hostage crisis broadcast nationwide who becomes famous for more or less existing, his every empty phrase (including the titular "So fucking what") becoming a mantra. It's an idea you "get" within a minute or two, but the film just keeps hammering away at this one nail for the entire running time. It does not help anything that the script for this film is burdened with a litany of swears so prevalent and unnecessary and inarticulately placed within the dialog that the film becomes an even bigger juvenile put-on. It is fucking exasperating to watch something this fucking artlessly constructed and shit. SFW's about as fucking deep as, like, you know, something not fucking deep.

[flyonthewall2983]

I was periodically trying to think of good action movies from the decade while waiting for Mel Gibson to shut up. There's the Die Hards, of course, and Speed, and the Long Kiss Goodnight, and then a whole bunch I don't ever need to see or think of again (the Last Boy Scout et al). Am I forgetting any essential 90s action films in the first category?

Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be the big one in my mind. Other than that, I'd say Crimson Tide, The Rock (both of those probably the best movies Bruckheimer has ever put his name to, and the latter being Bay's best work hands-down) and Clear And Present Danger.

But there is an even bigger suggestion, and probably quite obvious coming from me, but I know you hate the director's work so I won't bother suggesting it.