MY FAVORITE MOVIES: 1970 – 1979

Sometimes referred to as the “cynical 1970s,” it still was probably the best decade ever for movies.  I’ve read movie critics referring to The Godfather, The French Connection, and Apocalypse Now as being overrated.  If this term is appropriate, I can only wonder how good those movies are that these writers did like.
 
Residue of the 1960s gave the screenwriters material.  And while many Americans were trying to crawl back into their isolation and forget about the decade that just happened, moviemakers were there to remind them that the problems had not just gone away.  Viet Nam would still go on until 1975 and political scandal would bring down almost an entire Presidential administration.  News of the killing fields (taking place in at least two continents and probably more) was spreading, though most Americans remained oblivious to it.  There was also dissent in Hollywood.  George C. Scott stayed home to watch his son’s hockey game on television rather than show up to receive the Oscar for Best Actor because he thought the award was meaningless. Marlon Brando, when he received the award two years later, sent an American Indian woman up to pick up the statue as a gesture against the mistreatment of the Native American people.  Jane Fonda attacked the Oscar committee in 1978 when The Deer Hunter won the Oscar for Best Picture over Coming Home.  Fonda felt that The Deer Hunter sought to absolve America of any wrong doing during the Viet Nam War.

The most important movie of the decade was either The Godfather or Apocalypse Now.  One was stylistically made and the other seemed to fall together only out of chaotic circumstances.   Both of these very different movies were directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
 
About any of the movies below could have been my favorite movie of the decade at one time or another.  And unfortunately, I will have neglected to mention certain movies in favor of others.  Having said that, here in order are my favorite movies of the 1970s*:
 
(1) Patton (1970): This is the most powerful biography of any character in a movie.  George C. Scott proves why he is such a tremendous actor because there is never a moment in this movie that you don’t understand exactly how he feels – whether he’s playing joy, sorrow, anger or disgust.  (Unfortunately, most people only remember Scott for this role when he did such a tremendous job in playing so many other characters.)  When watching this movie, one gets a good idea about the connection between greatness and fanaticism interposed in one single person.
 
(2) The Man Who Would Be King (1975): John Huston’s intuitive understanding of the Kipling story made this one of the most impressive adventure movies ever shown.  Michael Caine and Sean Connery are perfectly cast as the two scoundrels who also happened to be two largely courageous men.  Two English wanderers in an unexplored and mountainous land where superstition abound only add to the mystery and magic.
 
But the casting of the natives of Kafiristan (the land adjoining Afghanistan that the two leads hoped to topple) was even better.  The character of the High Priest was in real life a one hundred year old shepherd, and the bewitching Roxanne was Michael Caine’s actual wife.   
 
(3) The Last Detail (1973): The initiation into manhood of a young enlisted man by two veteran naval noncoms is poignant because the youth in question is about to spend eight years in the stockade for steeling forty dollars from a charity.  The dialogue between the three starring Jack Nicholson, Otis Young and Randy Quaid (as the soon to be prisoner) is funny and profane.  The two older men’s attempt at decency is not appreciated by the marine officer to whom they deliver the prisoner.  All the comedy makes the movie that much sadder when we see the young man delivered into his cell.  This movie has been undeservedly forgotten, which is surprising since it both stars Nicholson and Quaid in their early roles.
 
(4) The Great White Hope (1970): This is a thinly disguised biography of Heavyweight Champion, Jack Johnson.  Anyone who knows the story of Johnson also knows that he was probably the most controversial boxer to ever put on the gloves.  This movie does not give the subject matter kid treatment.  The film neither romanticizes nor downplays the qualities that made Johnson such a compelling fighter.  What white society attempts and sometimes successfully accomplishes to do to denigrate the great champion make the viewer angry.  What the champion sometimes does to himself can be even worse.  The boxing scenes in this movie are for once (and maybe the only time in any movie) realistic, and James Earl Jones does an adept job of playing the fighter.  Though racism is the theme, this movie is also about an unbroken spirit that nevertheless is wounded and in turn wounds everyone around him.
 
(5) Apocalypse Now (1979): The murkiest war movie ever made, this film tries to leave nothing unsaid about America’s involvement in Viet Nam.  More nightmare than cinematography, the strange assembly of characters on one screen would almost have been too much for any director to manage.  Coppola’s insane efforts make it possible.
 
(6) The Godfather (1972): One of the most famous epics ever filmed of a family held together by a twisted sense of honor as exemplified by Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and that eventually transforms and poisons its most decent member, Michael (Al Pacino).  The memorable characters and in particular the memorable faces of the Italian Mafioso alone make this probably the best-crafted movie ever.
 

(7) Mr. Majestyk (1974): Never highly acclaimed, this movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel is one of the most undervalued movies filmed.  Charles Bronson as Majestyk is an ex-con turned melon farmer who offends a mafia hit man (whom the melon farmer despises) played by Al Lettieri - putting Majestyk’s life in danger.  Fortunately, life circumstances have made the amiable laborer and entrepreneur tough and able to outlast his extremely heartless adversary.  Majestyk’s understanding of the surrounding country and the qualities that make a worthwhile person aid him in this endeavor.  That it is achieved with incredible understatement does not make his victory any less spectacular.
 
(8) The French Connection (1971): An NYC police detective named Popey Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner (Roy Scheider) who break up a gigantic drug ring is only a small part of this story.  This movie presents the degradation and class differences of a great city with more subtlety than can ever be noticed at a casual glance.  Doyle’s standing out in the cold and eating a cold piece of pizza while the drug kingpin is inside an expensive restaurant eating lobster and drinking expensive wine is just one example.  It’s Doyle’s resentment of what’s going on around him (shown in almost every movement and gesture of Hackman) that drives him on – almost to the point of insanity.  Obviously, this movie will always be remembered for the car chase.   
 
(9) Who’ll Stop the Rain? (1978): Graphic story of a Viet Nam vet (Nick Nolte) who gets tangled up in a drug running scheme that ends up involving heroin instead of marijuana due to the stupidity of an acquaintance (Michael Moriarty).  Only the discipline of the soldier prevents the acquaintance, the acquaintance’s wife (Tuesday Weld) and their child from being tortured and killed by some very sadistic and corrupt federal agents.  Nolte gets killed while saving them, but not without first teaching the couple a real lesson about life and true dignity.  Based on Robert Stone’s almost unreadable novel, Dog Soldiers, the movie makes the plot almost understandable because of the superb acting job of Nolte and the rest of the cast.
 
(10) (Tie) The Driver (1978): Another unappreciated movie.  Ryan O’Neal plays the getaway driver who is the very best at what he does, and Bruce Dern plays the cop who is the best at what he does as well.  The Driver’s secret to success is to only stay focused on what one actually knows and to thus not be concerned with what anybody else thinks.  The same O’Neal who played such a sap in Love Story acts out almost the opposite role here by being tightlipped, elusive and tough.  Concise storytelling, crisp dialogue and a small budget prevent this movie from becoming overlong or pretentious.
 
(10) (Tie) The Deer Hunter (1978): Michael Cimino’s stark war movie produced howls of protest from the left for its depiction of the Viet Cong.  The method in which the American soldiers are tortured is certainly unique among movie archives.  However, the director was not guilty of jingoism.  The three young steel workers from Pennsylvania, happy in their own drunken escapades, were betrayed by the nation in the entire handling of the slaughter.  Robert De Niro is the least interesting of the three friends as John Savage and especially Christopher Walken suffer in their own form of hell.
 
The honorable mentions include Chinatown, North Dallas Forty, Slap Shot, Breaker Morant, Deliverance, Dog Day Afternoon, Little Big Man, and The Godfather, Part II.   I’m undecided about A Clockwork Orange.  The movie has more energy than about any other movie I’ve ever seen, but I’ve only been able to watch the whole movie straight through once.  It’s important to note that most of these honorable mentions, regardless of how high or low the budget may have been, did actually have some success at the box office.  I’m not usually a sucker for praising only what sells.  Probably why I include most of them as honorable mentions instead of in my top ten listing is because I was too familiar with the storyline for each movie before I actually watched it.
 
As usual, my significant omissions include movies that won the Oscar for Best Picture.  However, there are not as many of this type as usual.  Outside of The Sting and Kramer vs. Kramer, the winners of the award at least held my interest.  Rocky was obviously a piece of crowd-pleasing commercialism, but at least Stallone is straight up about creating a popular hero.
 
The various political sagas that popped up in this decade (especially those starring Robert Redford) didn’t do much for me.  The problem with this kind of movie is that hindsight usually proves that the director or screenwriter did not have much vision or feel for how large or small his story happened to be.

I used to like Carnal Knowledge, but it didn’t come across to me as good on a second viewing.  Without the character played by Ann Margret, there’s not a lot to care about.  Outside of Jaws and, perhaps, The Poseidon Adventure, there was a complete overkill in the making of long and boring disaster movies.  The same is true of many of the space exploration movies.  Close Encounters of the Third Kind seems to have impressed a number of people when watching it on the big screen, but I remember it mostly for how slowly it moved.  And the success of Star Wars had a disastrous effect in bringing about many terrible imitations.

I’ve never seen Coming Home and I’m guessing that I would like the movie because of the role played by Jon Voight.  I’d also like to see The French Connection, Part II, which I’m told was more intense than the original movie.  But the movie I probably most would like to see is Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
 
* I have eleven movies listed because there was a tie for 10^th place among my favorites.  I point this out in case the reader happens to feel that I can’t count.  The Driver or The Deer Hunter would probably have made my top five for about any other decade so I couldn’t leave them as mere honorable mentions.

January 10, 2007 
© Robert S. Miller 2007

MY FAVORITE MOVIES: 1980 to 1989

According to a book I read a number of years ago, the popular movies of the 1980s (or the Reagan Era) were formulaic, conformist, and emphasized enhanced screen shots and special effects over storytelling.  Two movies the writer did enjoy from the decade were Personal Best and The Fabulous Baker Boys.  The author was mistaken, however, in believing these two movies were any less formulaic.   The movies did attract smaller audiences and contained above average characterizations, but both of these movies also were extremely introspective studies of unusual relationships that appeal to moviegoers who think they are smarter than the rest of us.  These two movies were not bad, but neither movie can be watched more than a couple of times while still retaining any kind of fascination for the viewer.  What is interesting is the implication of the author that the political mood of the country was responsible for the alleged poor quality of movies throughout the decade – thus throwing Ronald Reagan’s name into the title of the book.  Personally, I think that 1990 to 1999 was the worst decade for movies, but it would be foolish to blame President Clinton for that.  The willingness to blame our political culture for everything in any case is as naïve as suggesting that politics never plays a role in anything.  Short of being jailed or executed for taking a stand, politics should never prevent a moviemaker from saying what he wants.
 
Most critics usually say that Raging Bull was the most important movie of the decade.  Released just as the decade was beginning to open, it contains that same kind of introspection as Personal Best or The Fabulous Baker Boys.  With the possible exception of The Elephant Man (released the same year) I believe Raging Bull was the first black and white blockbuster released in almost two decades (I’m willing to be corrected on this) and this gives it the feel of watching championship fights during the forties and fifties.  Stylistically speaking (if we forget that the fight scenes are no more believable than those shown in any of the Rocky movies), it is one of the best movies ever at setting a mood.  And Robert DeNiro, Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci give their best performances.  I just can’t get over the fact that a talented director like Scorsese would create a movie about a world champion without saying one redeemable thing about the man.  There is no development of the lead character as we never get a chance to see him grow-up or regress (it would be impossible for him to get much worse) during the entire movie.
 
There of course were movies made during the 1980s that did not follow a formula.  I believe that the movies listed below are about as diverse as those for any decade since movies have been made.  So here, in order, are what my favorite movies from the 1980s were:
 
(1) The Elephant Man (1980): Sentimental and disturbing, this movie shows us the worst of about everyone (including the enlightened and educated).  The story takes place in Victorian England, but it could just as well have taken place in any country during any era.  The tormented and deformed creature at the center of this story was more human than any other character in the film.
 
(2) Roger & Me (1989): Michael Moore’s straightforward documentary about autoworkers who were laid-off at the General Motors plant in Flint.  What Moore makes clear is that neither politicians, celebrities, businessmen nor social gadflies could care less about the workers.
 
(3) The Big Red One (1980): Sam Fuller’s World War II flick about an infantry squad led by an officer played by Lee Marvin is one of the best war movies ever made.  The squad members are both believable as kids barely out of high school and as trained killers.  Stephen Spielberg later borrowed (if not stole) the manner in which the fighting at D-Day is depicted.
 
(4) Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987): The protagonist played by Ryan O’Neill, after binging on some sort of drug concoction, wakes up from his stupor only to find his girlfriend’s head setting next to him in the front seat of his car.*  He then spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out if he’s the one responsible for this.  Norman Mailer wrote the novel and directed this movie that, if anything, is wilder and stranger than Pulp Fiction.  Lawrence Tierney gives an incredible performance as the father, afflicted with cancer, who will not allow his son to become a failure as a man.  He and the son “deep six” in the ocean the decapitated heads of several victims - for which the son could be implicated on murder, and for which the son discovers he was not guilty.
 
(5) Year of the Dragon (1985): A sort of sequel to The Deer Hunter, Mickey Rourke plays the police detective who is still fighting the Viet Nam war against the Chinese Mafia in New York City.  This movie was at first dismissed by critics for the intensity of its violence, but it’s this very intensity that allows us to uncomfortably get to know a deeply conflicted character that was formerly an American soldier in Southeast Asia.
 
(6) Mona Lisa (1986): Bob Hoskins plays a tough ex-con who attempts to redeem himself so that he can once again be a father to his young daughter.  He does this by not allowing himself to be drawn back into the seediness and sickness (vividly depicted) of the London underworld.  You can tell it was filmed in England by the thick accents.
 
(7) The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) (1981): The phenomenal futuristic movie about what’s left of the world after the Nuclear Holocaust.  Some characters survive by being scavengers, and others survive by remembering their humanity.
 
(8) Runaway Train (1985): Great prison break movie with Jon Voight and Eric Roberts playing the inmates who strive for something better.  Voight’s philosophical musings in the vernacular of a felon give the viewer much to think about.
 
(9) Wall Street (1987): Oliver Stone’s best movie.  It’s all about people who make money off of other people’s money and never add one thing positive to anybody’s life.
 
(10) The Mission (1986): Two Jesuit Priests in Brazil attempt to find their own version of religious redemption among the native people.  The aristocrats among the jungle people are, of course, superior to the aristocrats from Europe who had come there to destroy them.
 
Some honorable mentions include the overly long crime story Once Upon a Time in America.  Amazingly, the actors who played the characters as children are better than the actors who played the characters as adults (which included Robert DeNiro and James Wood).  Diner and Tin Men are a couple of excellent and often sad comedies.  A Christmas Story is one of the best of all sentimental Christmas stories.   Sid and Nancy is also good, but it hardly qualifies as a sentimental Christmas story.  And 48 Hours is a great story about two police partners, Nick Nolte (who always does a good job of acting) and Eddie Murphy (who for once does a good job of acting).  There are many other movies that would take too long to mention.

There are a few notable movies I’ve left out.  Platoon was a decent attempt at a war movie, but it seems so much like an imitation of Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter that I can’t call it anything special.  And every other movie that won an Oscar for Best Picture during this decade (beginning with Ordinary People in 1980 and ending with Driving Miss Daisy in 1989) happens to be extremely average at best.  (The formula for winning the Oscar for this decade seemed to be as follows: “Let’s impress the viewer with the sheer length of the melodrama – remembering that only melodramas win best picture awards, maybe throw in a few exotic locations, and hope that they will forget how boring the movie really is.”)  Other movies like Blue Velvet and Brazil were imaginative movies that I can only enjoy if I’m in a very strange mood.  And the director of The Big Chill seemed more concerned with basing a movie upon a good sound track than creating a sound track that would fit into a good movie. 
 
Movies I would still like to see during the 1980s include Blade Runner, which for some reason I have never seen, Casualties of War and War of the Roses.  I’m sure there are many others I’d enjoy that I’ve never thought of watching.
 
* Correction: O'Neal actually finds the head in his stash of marijuana that was located close to where his car was parked.  I'm getting the book and the movie confused with each other.  However, the front seat of his car was covered with blood making it somewhat obvious that there may be a problem.

January 3, 2007
© Robert S. Miller 2007

MY FAVORITE MOVIES: 1990 to 1999

A number of unfortunate movie fads that had been around for fifteen or twenty years became commonplace by 1990.  Sequels like Rocky V, films modeled on television series like The Beverly Hillbillies, and remakes of classic movies like Psycho indicated that, besides poor judgment, what was wrong in the movie industry was a lack of originality.  Even the best of movies during the 1990s did not seem so remarkable.  Probably the most important movie of the decade was something I would almost rather have missed; Titanic was a long movie dealing with a sinking boat, a dopey romance, and class warfare that was simple mindedly portrayed.  Many other expensively made movies were also released, but the emotions elicited were cheap.  Storytelling played such a small part for each picture that one almost could become interested in the Oscar winners for cinematography, soundtracks and wardrobe.
 
Some oddities were released, however, that held my interest.  Most of these movies were stark and understated - much like the better movies of the 1930s and ‘40’s.  Except for Schindler’s List, none of the best movies could be considered epics.  The best movies of the 1990s relied on a small number of characters that had gone through personal and extreme struggles.  Most of the movies ended sadly, and few were gigantic in scope.  So here, in order, are what my favorite movies from the 1990s are:

(1) The Apostle (1997): This exceptional movie that’s directed, produced and starred in by Robert Duvall goes deep inside of the unsavory world of Evangelism.  Except this time the world of Evangelism is not painted as uncontrovertibly evil.  The character Duvall plays commits manslaughter that causes him to go into hiding.  This individual then returns to his roots in the Deep South, baptizes himself as an adult in a river, and takes on a job as a preacher in a small church that for years had been left abandoned.  The change that comes over himself and everyone around him is startling.  When the law finally catches up with him, he continues his preaching while working on a chain gang.
 
(2) Starship Troopers: Possibly my favorite science fiction movie of all time.  This movie goes so far as to even spoof the book on which it was based.  The deadpan characterization and dialogue is hilarious, and the athleticism and athletic appearance of all the characters is striking.
 
(3) Leaving Las Vegas (1995): One of the strangest love stories ever filmed.  Nicholas Cage plays an alcoholic on route to drinking himself to death, and Elisabeth Shue plays the prostitute who can’t look away as Cage, the man she loves, becomes a walking train wreck.  What usually is passed-off as Hollywood realism is generally a producer’s addled fantasy.  That’s not the case here.  This is too believable to be taken lightly.
 
(4) A Bronx Tale (1993): Robert De Niro directs and stars in this film about a boy’s torn allegiance between his upright and very tough father and his neighbor who also happens to be a mobster.  The boy eventually learns something from the both of them.  The sets look like what I’ve always imagined the Bronx to appear like in the early 1960s.
 
(5) Fight Club (1999): Probably the most unusual of "coming of age" movie for males since Deliverance.  With Edward Norton as a male ashamed of his own lack of masculinity and his alter ego (literally) played by Brad Pitt, this movie holds so many surprises that the viewer is not sure what’s up - until the whole New York financial district comes tumbling down (probably would be a little bit harder to get this script by the studios with the current state of the world).  At times the picture verges on being senseless, but the prospect of many men forced by finances and circumstances to live in frustration is equally senseless - and this frustration is colorfully brought out here.
 
(6) Dolores Claiborne (1995): The acting of Kathy Bates as an abused wife (Dolores) and David Strathairn as her drunken husband for once make a movie based on a Stephen King novel worth watching.  Incredibly sad, yet there is a sort of victory in Dolores being able to work things out despite all obstacles.
 
(7) Hoffa (1992): So many people went gaga over A Few Good Men (ignoring the fact that Tom Cruise plays the lead) that Jack Nicholson’s best role in the 1990s was almost ignored.  Nicholson comes across as just tough enough and shabby enough to make this story not seem so over the top.  This shows the good and the bad of the famed teamster who suddenly just disappeared.  (Despite rumors of being cut up and being fed to alligators or currently being buried in Giant Stadium in New York, don’t take it seriously when the movie pretends to know what happened to Hoffa in the end.)
 
(8) Fargo (1996): Sometimes funny and often unsatisfying black comedy.  The movie is saved by the acting of Frances McDormand and William H. Macy, and by the completely singular script.
 
(9) Schindler’s List (1993): Oscar Schindler was a rich playboy with close ties to the Nazi elite, and he was also a saint.  It’s difficult not to be moved by his story to save 1,200 Jews, but it was the role played by Ralph Fiennes as a sadistic Nazi Commandant that prevented this movie from becoming another dull epic movie like Gandhi. 
 
(10) Carlito’s Way (1993): Al Pacino, as a Cuban gangster who lives by a strict code of his own, and Sean Penn as his lawyer who turns bad, make this one gritty movie.  But even Carlito’s code can’t save him in the end from a violent death - because of the actions of other smalltime hoods and his lawyer that fail to share his sense of honor.
 
There are a number of honorable mentions – or in any case movies not much worse than some of the movies listed above - so I probably should give them lip service.  Pulp Fiction (1994), though much talked about is barely better than the low budget Reservoir Dogs (1992) (both movies directed by Quentin Tarantino).   Tarantino sometimes seems more intent on being cynical than good.  I’d almost rather as much see Babe (1995) or Forrest Gump (1994), with all the sentimentality, because these movies are not all about showing off their cleverness.  Pulp Fiction is able to upright itself by leaving room for redemption the character played by Bruce Willis.  Unforgiven (1992) comes close to being just another dull western*, but Eastwood aged into his role effectively and the characters of Gene Hackman and Richard Harris are unforgettable as miscreants.  And Robert Benigni’s Life is Beautiful can be forgiven for all of the sentiment because the story brought out how much a supposed buffoon had to lose while inside a Nazi concentration camp.
 
 There are a few notable movies I’ve left out.  There are some extremely violent films including GoodFellas (1990), True Romance (1993) and The Bad Lieutenant (1992) starring Harvey Keitel that are intriguing, but are greatly swallowed up by their own excesses.   And with Titanic (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and American Beauty (1999) winning Oscars for best picture towards the end of the decade, I’d have to conclude that this was the worst decade for movies ever.  Fortunately, some powerful foreign and independent films arrived in the 21^st Century and have brought the movie industry back to where movies are once again watchable.

Movies I would still like to see during the 1990s include Blood and Wine (1997) starring Michael Caine and Casino (1995), though I could well be disappointed with the both of them.  I’m also hoping that there are some movies out there that I’ve never seen that could at least change my mind about the overall quality of movies from the 1990s.
 
* A reader expressed concern that I was implying by this statement that westerns are normally dull.  I did not intend to say that.  However, I may have implied that the people who spend their times watching westerns are dull.  There's a subtle distinction.
 

November 20, 2006  
© Robert S. Miller 2006

MY FAVORITE MOVIES: 2000 to Present (2009)

Nostalgia is a disease found among those who insist on boring everyone else.  It’s common to car lovers who never learned to use a manual transmission but always wanted to own a 1955 Thunderbird, among baseball fans who disparage modern players yet never themselves could throw a ball from third to first, and among movie goers who can’t distinguish between period pieces and real history.  Most movies that we are seeing today are little better and certainly not worse than movies that have been shown in any other era.  What certainly sticks out about today’s movies are an increasingly number of popular films that were made outside of Hollywood.  The most important movie made during this decade was an independent film that depicts the crucifixion of Christ and was shunned by every Hollywood studio.  Also, a number of foreign films are finally being seen in large number of theatres instead of just the avant-garde movie houses that usually only last a few years before being run out of business.  Here, in order, are a list of my ten favorites and some honorable mentions:
 
(1) The Passion of the Christ: A movie that comes close to being upended by its violence and the demented fanaticism and monomania of its Producer and Director, Mel Gibson.  Even so, it’s beautifully filmed and contains amazing characterizations of Pontius Pilate and his wife.  It was too much religion for Hollywood to stomach.  Almost by accident, it made Gibson and the independent studio that produced it millions.  Sadly, it’s a movie that’s been used by religious nut cases for their own political purposes and criticized by people on the other side who have never seen it.  Its real appeal is for those who struggle and will continue struggling with belief rather than for those who unquestioningly accept or reject any religious teaching.
 
(2) About Schmidt: This one portrays a legitimately unhappy person.  It does so by using an almost forgotten technique called honest storytelling.
 
(3) Downfall: This German movie was criticized for making Hitler seem all too human.  It does show his human side, but it does not fail to portray him as a monster.
 
(4) Constant Gardener: This is a deeply flawed soap opera, but it is rescued in the end both by its indictment of the drug companies exploitation of African nations and by showing the amazing beauty of the African people.  It’s too bad that the heroes in these kinds of movies (including this one) are generally white Anglo-Saxons.
 
(5) Children of Heaven: This Iranian movie contains a more sympathetic look at poverty and what defines success than any recent movie made in America.  It does it without cynicism and without talking down to its audience.
 
(6) March of the Penguins: Almost too cute to be effective.  It’s still a goofy bird movie that shows the magnificence of nature and Antarctica.
 
(7) Enemy at the Gate: This movie showing the Battle of Stalingrad makes one understand why the Russians and Germans so hated each other.  The cat and mouse game played out by Jude Law and Ed Harris is the backdrop of much chaos and passion.
 
(8) King of Masks: A recent Chinese movie that would be great for children if it didn’t also include themes of cross-dressing, child slavery and the oppression of women.  It does have a happy ending.
 
(9) Munich: For once, Steven Spielberg actually goes out on a limb and makes a controversial stand.  Unfortunately, this movie almost bleeds to death in its own self-righteousness.  Coming close to being the rewriting of history, it nevertheless manages to remain one of the most thought provoking of all recent movies.
 
(10) Wallace & Grommit: Attack of the Were-Rabbit: A totally original type of movie using Claymation and containing the kind of sentimentality that ruins almost all other family movies.  At least here the sentimentality is straightforward and the humor is actually funny.
 
Some honorable mentions include the quirky Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl starring Johnny Depp; the New Zealand film, Whale Rider, that contains tremendous acting by the native people; and the sad and, unfortunately, not altogether incisive, Hotel Rwanda.  Team America, which I believe was made by the creators of South Park, has some humorous moments (including a great sequence about Kim Jong Il), but it’s extremely inconsistent.  The Incredibles is more consistent and less biting.  I’m undecided concerning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  It may be a brilliant piece of filmmaking with great action and special effects, but it’s at times pretentious.
 
Significant omissions from this list include every movie that won an Oscar for Best Picture since 2000.  I’ve never seen A Beautiful Mind, but all of the other Oscar winners were too pompous or lame to be included on any favorite movie list.  Again, movies are not in a state of decline, but winning an Oscar (especially since about 1990) is no endorsement.  What about other omitted movies?  Almost Famous is a feel good movie for rock star groupies showing the naïveté of a character played by Kate Hudson and little else.  And Mystic River has a farcical ending that destroys any sympathy that I have for the character played by Sean Penn (though the acting by Tim Robbins and Sean Penn is fantastic).
 
I’d still like to see A Beautiful Mind and hold out hope that it’s better than other recent Oscar winners.  There are also a number of foreign films I’d still like to see that do not get play here in the U.S.  I might see Super Size Me at some point, but I say that with some reservation.  The movie sounded like an interesting experiment, but the premise that a diet of fast food only is bad for you is not going to throw me into a state of panic.*  And there are probably some quality American movies I have not seen out of fear of wasting my money.
 
* Editorial Comment - I’m curious as to what industry has produced more revenue: the fast food distributors, or those companies that pander to America’s obsession with obesity by pushing diet pills, supplements, narcotics, support groups and counseling (not to mention psychiatric care for anorexia and bulimia), advice books endorsed by celebrities, plastic surgery, liposuction, stomach stapling, diet fads, exercise videos and exercise equipment specifically aimed at reducing the size of the buttocks and thighs.  Since more than half of the world is fortunate enough to be underfed and malnourished, it’s makes sense as to why Americans feel sorry for themselves for eating too much.  Thank God the media is there to deal with our confusion!  During a recent expose concerning obesity shown by either NBC or ABC television, the blame for the obesity epidemic was put squarely on the shoulders of the American Farmer.  This was a startling revelation to me since most of the farmers I know are up to their necks in hock.  It just goes to show that those dastardly farmers would even prefer going belly-up to helping our youth shed a few extra pounds.  RSM
 

November 13, 2006 
© Robert S. Miller 2006

WAG THE DOG (1997): Politics as Usual

Contrary to assertions made in the movie Wag the Dog, politicians have not been able to exploit the media to advance their own careers to the degree that is alleged here.  Probably no time in history has the general public been more convinced that all politicians are liars.  The reason why we choose one politician over the other isn’t because we are moved by their eloquence.  Rather we are convinced that one candidate is as big of a buffoon as the other, and we cast our ballots with the trepidation and the hope that the individual we vote for might only be moderately foolish.  Neither Washington nor Jefferson had a camera constantly following them around, and thus they were able to preserve their dignity.  The media was still sensitive enough at the time of Franklin Roosevelt to not dwell on the President’s inability to walk.  It still was discrete enough in 1960 to not publish all of the information it could get its hands on regarding John F. Kennedy’s infidelities.  If Abraham Lincoln had been under the extreme scrutiny that any current politician must endure, probably no biography by Carl Sandburg, which ultimately was a piece of fluff, would ever have been published about the great President.
 
“War is showbiz,” says the Robert De Niro character in Wag the Dog and he might be right.  When Henry Kissinger stated shortly before the 1972 election that “[W]e believe that peace is at hand,” the media never asked for details.  Nixon then won by a landslide, and the Viet Nam War went on for another three years.  Robert De Niro plays the spin-doctor named Conrad Brean, who is summoned because the President, eleven days prior to reelection, is caught up in a sex scandal.  De Niro needs a strategy to detract the voters’ attention away from this scandal.  He hires on Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a famous Hollywood movie producer, to film a fictional war between the United States and Albania to get the voters behind the President.  For the next eleven days, it then becomes a matter of which candidate’s committee can string out the more extravagant lie.  When the President’s opponent (Craig T. Nelson) convinces the public that the war is over, the committee to reelect the President has to come up with a new strategy.  In comes William Shuman (Woody Harrelson), who is hired on to pretend that he is a soldier who has been abducted by the Albanians.  Shuman, or the “Old Shoe,” as he is affectionately nicknamed, was allegedly left behind when the war was ended and taken prisoner.  Shuman then becomes a center of the media campaign to return him home.  However, there are a couple of problems.  Conrad had to hire Shuman from prison to avoid anyone discovering where he actually came from.  And two, Shuman was a felon who was convicted for raping a nun.  Upon his staged return to the states, Shuman once again goes crazy, tries to rape a young farm girl and gets himself shot to death by the enraged father.  So instead of a hero’s welcome, a state funeral is held.  In any case, the President’s approval rating shoots up to 89 percent, and he’s virtually assured reelection.
Now Stanley, the movie producer, who has never won an academy award, is happy with the result until he sees some movie commentators crediting the makers of the President’s political commercials for the President’s popularity.  Stanley is outraged and wants it known that he was the one primarily responsible.  Conrad, knowing that this information can never be revealed, then is forced to take actions to have the movie producer removed.  A few days later, a news story appears that this same producer has suffered a massive heart attack.  Finally, it is announced that an Albanian sponsored group has committed a terrorist attack, and therefore the war really had not ended.
 
Lest anyone watching this movie feels superior because of the insight that they have gained, it would probably be best to remind those that there is nothing new being said here.  Before Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba, newspaperman William Randolph Hearst allegedly said to artist Frederic Remington, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”  We don’t actually know if Hearst had anything more to do with the starting of the Spanish American War than did the killing of 246 marines have anything to do with the invasion of Grenada (as is asserted in Wag the Dog).*  If Wag the Dog is to be believed, real life people are actually moved to tears when watching a President give his address to the nation.  I’ve never actually seen this occur.  I have seen people moved to tears about something a politician said decades or more ago, but even in those cases the reaction would have been very different if that politician had actually appeared on television.  Wag the Dog is supposed to be about how gullible we are for taking our beliefs so seriously because our beliefs are based on little of substance.  In other words, Wag the Dog will only be entertaining for those who do not understand that the movie is a spoof, and for those audience members who do not understand that the spoof is spoofing them.  In today’s world, hopefully that audience will be small.
 
Wag the Dog, of course, borrows heavily from Stanley Kubrick’s, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.  That the excuse for going to nuclear war in Dr. Strangelove is because of the fluoridation of water (an obvious Communist plot) is about as likely as going to war with Albania because of a sex scandal.  True, when Dr. Strangelove was released in 1964, paranoia was such that we still had the existence of bomb shelters stocked full of canned food so that we could live underground for the next fifty years in the case of a nuclear attack.  Though this whole mindset may have seemed like the ultimate in naiveté, one only needs to remember that there was a very real fear that the world was going to be obliterated by two superpowers that had nuclear missiles aimed at each other.  Dr. Strangelove was not talking down to its audience.  When Wag the Dog came out in 1997, articles of impeachment had been filed against President Clinton for a sex scandal at approximately the same time that the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was being bombed.  I suppose the makers of the film were making the obvious implication that the antics of the Clinton’ administration was just one example among many how politicians fool the public.  Yet the actual war in Bosnia was in response to ethnic cleansing being performed at the behest of the Serbians, and I don’t think the atrocities were made-up to alleviate the burdens of a beleaguered President.  Allegedly, Director Barry Levinson based the film upon an unsubstantiated rumor that George Bush, Sr., engaged America in the Gulf War to boost his own popularity.  So the story goes, Levinson left out all real names and shifted the time frame to avoid the appearances of being a nutcase.  I don’t suppose Levinson or Larry Beinhart, who wrote the book American Hero upon which the film Wag the Dog is based, could actually fathom that some people might be outraged that Saddam used poison gas on the Kurdish people – since the Gulf War “obviously” was a media invention.
 
Maybe moviegoers do love watching this kind of intrigue played out on the big screen because it makes us believe that what is going on behind the scenes is more interesting than it really is.  (Start with the premise that contemporary viewers can identify, throw in some meaty consequences, and toss in a number of witty lines by the characters, and your movie will go to the top of the box offices.)  And maybe reviewers love political movies because it gives them the pretense of sounding intelligent when discussing it.  Unfortunately, we do hear a lot of things spoken by viewers and critics alike where politics is concerned that don’t need to be said.**  (For example, no one needs to be told that supporters of President Bush will fail to think highly of Fahrenheit 911 - yet I’ve been told this many times.)  It probably would be more productive if the reviewers focused on the slant that every moviemaker thwarts upon us.  Movies like All the President’s Men or JFK or Nixon or Munich were all the products of a few individuals who had their own exposé to present.  Yet very seldom are any of these movies made well enough that it actually has any long lasting impact upon the public.  For every movie like All the King’s Men starring Broderick Crawford, we have dozens of movies like Red Dawn or The Green Berets that are laughable.
 

Wag the Tail has a few lines that are amusing, but I can’t get excited with it nor offended by it overall.  I could see the same gag played out in a Saturday Night Live skit with Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, William Macy and Ann Heche making guest appearances.  Throwing it on a movie screen gives it more notice in the media and a greater appearance of relevance.  The lines spoken by the characters undoubtedly resemble the rhetoric of politicians.  We have to “go to war to preserve our way of life,” or we “don’t change horses in mid-stream” seem perfectly credible in the mouths of candidates at a Republican or Democratic National Convention.  That doesn’t mean we buy into it.
 
* Sometimes I’m guilty of overstating my argument and I ask the pardon of my reader.  Be that as it may, I’d rather be guilty of saying too much than stating too little.  Perhaps Hearst really did have something to do with starting the war.  I don’t mean to imply that the politicians have never used the media for their own purposes, or that they will not do it again sometime in the future.  However, that’s different than saying we have not progressed.  Washington and Jefferson were slave-owners.  Even after the time of Lincoln, we saw the rise of General George Armstrong Custer and his brand of genocide in the American West.  And under the administration of FDR, we still lived in a segregated society.  If we continue being guilty of electing miscreants to the office for all of the wrong reasons, as is alleged in Wag the Dog, at least we the public don’t tolerate to the same degree the kind of behavior that went on 150 years ago.
 
** If I was intelligent and rich enough, I’d move away to some place where I would never have to speak of politics again.  Nothing distresses me more than to be cornered by some maniac and asked to deliver an opinion upon some political issue that the other person hopes (and practically demands) will be in agreement with their own.  Super Bowl XXV was one of the closest championship games in NFL history.  It all came down to a last minute field goal attempt by the Buffalo Bills (which, alas, they missed).  But while I was watching the game in the fourth quarter, greatly looking forward to seeing which team would win the world championship, someone turned to me and asked what I thought of the issue of abortion.  I probably will never understand why they couldn’t have waited for a bit more opportune moment to ask about it.  I am now traumatized, and ever since that time I have become extremely thin-skinned anytime someone asks me a political question.
 
 

May 22, 2007 
© Robert S. Miller 2007