MOVIES SEEN (Starting 1997)

Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com 

January 1997

• Michael (with John ]) -- disappointing -- the plot doesn't work; the non-conformist angel bit is great, but the plot around it goes nowhere
• **Regarding Henry

• Star Wars (again on big screen)
• Mother (awful)

• ****Sling Blade (excellent)
• ] Wedding
• Escape from LA
• The Importance of Being a Man

• *Long Kiss Goodnight
• That Thing We Do (Tom Hanks, awful)
• Comments from someone who loved it
• ****Il Postino

• Cactus Flower
• The Meaning of Life (Monty Python)
• Ransom

• Jerry Maguire
• Daylight
• The Associate (Whoopi Goldberg)
• The Arrival
• The Last Supper
• Down Periscope
• **My Best Friend's Wedding
• Mars Attacks
• Scream

• Fair Game
• **Men in Black
• ***Contact (Jodie Foster)
• Cable Guy (Jim Carey)
• The Arrival
• Virtuosity
• A Time to Kill
• Shiloh
• Star Trek First Contact
• Cobb
• The Ghost and the Darkness
• **Secrets and Lies
• Object of Beauty
• **Air Force One (Harrison Ford) -- (= Die Hard with the president as hero)

• Life Force (awful)
• Picture Perfect (Jennifer Aston) (fun -- but very strange definition of "good girl")

• Trial and Error
• Addicted to Love

• Lovers and Other Strangers
• Chasers

• Smoke (it works in it's own strange way)
• As Good as it Gets (excellent)
• Tomorrow Never Dies (good for the Bond genre)

• 12 Angry Men (classic)
• Conspiracy Theory (okay)
• Austin Powers (???)
• As Good as it Gets (excellent)
• Sensations
• Postman (excellent)
• Deconstructing Harry (typical Woodie)
• Writer's Block
• Trial and Error
• Duplicates
• For Rosanna
• Jingle All the Way

• Event Horizon
• Hercules (Disney)
• The Man Who Knew Too Little movie -- (a movie written for Steve Martin and acted by Bill Murray
• Home Alone 3
• Smilla's Sense of Snow
• Dear God

• Primary Colors (incredibly makes Bill Clinton look good -- human and basically well-meaning; bizarre editing -- looks like key scenes, toward the end must have been cut)
• City of Angels (intriguing premise, horribly botched)
• Species 2 (full of inconsistencies and not much plot, but great special scary effects -- it gives you exactly what you bargained for)

• Godzilla (predictable, familiar, but fun -- Jurassic Park meets Manhattan)
• Horse Whisperer (very disappointing, excellent start and setup; then too much time spent on horse shots; and the drama never happens; simply falls flat at the end; Redford was the wrong person for the part -- he isn't believable as the love interest; both the Redford character and the husband are too "perfect"; where's the conflict and the passion?)
• Starship Troopers (fun shoot-em-up that at the same time makes fun of shoot-em-ups; great villain bugs)
• Playing God (totally forgettable)

• Hope Floats (on a scale of 10, I'd give this a 1; awful; no script; no point; Sandra Bullock is lovely, but they kept her lovely throughout, even when she's supposed to look down-and-out; they didn't follow any of the obvious storylines that could have followed from the opening, e.g., 1) devastated wife falls apart, then puts her life back together again, and finds new love, 2) former prom queen returns in defeat to old home town and there discovers and develops her talents; all of Sandra's ex-classmates look 10-20 years older than her; she is the wrong person for the part; it would have worked much better with a Helen Hunt -- someone who can look broken and aging, but can also clean up good; it was unclear how long after high school graduation, but felt less than 10 years; it would have worked better if 20 years after; the daughter didn't look/seem like Sandra's daughter, and there were no scenes where by seeing and reacting to her daughter Sandra gained new insight into herself; what a waste)
• Truman (opposite of Chinese food -- you like it better the more you think about it afterward; an idea movie; weakness = lack of drama; complex and intriguing premise brilliantly presented, so you can believe that it's possible; but, for me, there was no emotional involvement; I was curious, but never felt that Truman was at risk, never got involved in his hopes or fears; there was no emotional charge at the end; I was just shocked that it was over, at a point where I felt it was finally about to take off, drama-wise; in terms of the ideas, that was the right place to end, but I left the theater very dissatisfied; later, in talking about it, I like it better; there are images and situations here that could become part of the English language -- this movie will be alluded to very frequently, and will be remembered for a long time.)

• Palmetto -- okay. In same vein as Usual Suspects and LA Confidential, but nowhere near as good.
• Anastasia -- pathetic. It lost me as soon as it portrayed the Russian Revolution as "caused" by Rasputin's magic.
• X files -- amusing, but at the same time disappointing, resolving none of the major puzzles from the TV show. Actually, it wasn't as good as an average one of their TV episodes (and I'm a fan).
• Armageddon -- you get what you expect, and in healthy non-stop doses. They must have fun making this.
• Kiss Me Goodbye -- mildly amusing.
• King Ralph -- clever premise, poorly executed.
• Space Troopers -- fun, creative. Lots of new and interesting ways to blow up big nasty bugs. Redeemed by the underlying humor. (Like Godzilla and Armageddon, it's part put-on -- making fun of itself -- which gives it a certain charm).
• For Richer or Poorer -- mildly amusing, but very slow.
• Blue -- Juliette Binoche is lovely and an excellent actress, but there substance at all here (that I could find). It moves extremely slowly, and the plot is ridiculously thin. No insights. No revelations. Just lots of good close-ups of her face.
• Red -- Watched the tape and kept getting distracted. There was much less to this than its sister Blue.
• Small Soldiers -- Excellent. One creative surprise after another. Keeps you going. In the same genre as Gremlins, but much better.
• Melvin and Howard -- I can't imagine why this screenplay got an Oscar.
• What Happened Was... -- Tom Noonan. Reminds me of My Dinner at Andre's, also The Glass Menagerie. It builds slowly, but it's powerful. Words, not action; but it works remarkably well.
• The Saint
• The Mask of Zorro -- Excellent. The flirtatious sword fight will undoubtedly become a movie icon -- like the dinner scenes in Tom Jones and Flashdance.
• There is Something about Mary -- Fun
• Mafia -- Absolutely awful. Pathetic.
• The Wedding Singer -- Fun fluff.

• Bird Cage -- Disappointing. Out of proportion. four-fifths were given to setting up the meeting of the future in-laws, and only one fifth to the meeting itself. And then there is no time to show or gauge the change (if any) in the senator and his wife, and Robin Willimas and his "wife." Great acting. Fertile situation. But it avoided dealing with what would have been the most interesting part of the story -- the aftermath.
• Chasing Amy -- Bizarre. Allyssa is a bit of a pioneer. She has experimented with sex every which way she could imagine. Presumably (as she reports) she did it not just for the transient sensations but because she didn't want to limit herself as a person, didn't want to cut down the odds of finding the very right person to mate with for life -- true love -- (by limiting herself to just one sex). Now it takes a bit a of courage on her part to fight the peer pressure from her lesbian friends and to be willing to be open to consider a heterosexual partner again. The movie is not very sensitively or artistically done. There's lots of exploitation of the sheer bizarreness of the situation. But despite the fluff and the loose script, we have here characters who are trying to find their moral way without the benefit of any signposts or accepted rules. And that's quite a challenge.
• Gattaca -- Almost. The basic premise is credible, almost compelling -- that the norm has become in vitro fertilization of the very best egg and very best sperm from a married couple, with all noticeable defects removed. The execution at times feels strained, because of the complexity it takes for a person born naturally to escape detection, given the absurd level of testing of biological material. (At it's worst, this feels like a drug-testing gone wild nightmare). But the stress on our credibility is somewhat relieved by Ernest Bourgnyne, the head janitor, apparently helping to cover up for his old friend; and then (nice surprise at the end), the chief tester also covering for him (having known all along). On the other hand, the suicide of the real Jerome seems totally unnecessary and contrived; the relationship with the brother doesn't work (it's ridiculous for them to go through another near-suicidal swimming contest the night before the scheduled flight to Titan; it would make much more sense for them to reconcile and for the brother to help him); and the relationship with the Uma Thurman character isn't brought to any natural conclusion (if they love one another and if he is not likely to return, might she not want to get pregnant by him, or to at least save a sample of his sperm?)
• Hotel New Hampshire -- Some classic John Irving characters and scenes. But it just doesn't hold together as a movie. What in the book feels inevitable and tightly woven (even though this is the worst of his major novels), here feels arbitrary and contrived (especially the suicide).
• Sliding Doors -- Excellent. The best portrayal of parallel worlds that I've ever seen. The interplay between the two life-lines is done very smoothly. The opening (did she or didn't she make that subway train?) seems to imply that life is random, subject to chance -- if this one little thing had or hadn't happened, everything would be different. But the unfolding of the two stories brilliantly leads to the opposite conclusion -- that, at least in matters of the heart, there's an element of destiny and inevitability.
• Wings of a Dove -- This one packed no punch for me. Yes, I came away understanding the plot line and the characters' goals; but there was no emotional involvement. The final scene should have been momentous. It wasn't.
• Planet of the Apes (again)
• Back to the Future (again)
• Back to the Future II (again)
• Back to the Future III (again)
• The Great Lebowski -- Some clever situations, but the ending was disappointing.
• Restoration -- What a waste of an excellent cast.
• Flubber (the 1998 remake) cf. the Dot and the Line -- this is an undisciplined scribble. (The original with Fred MacMurray was infinitely better).
• The Man in the Iron Mask -- A pathetic script. An action story with no action. The only sword play is good guys against good guys (the musketeers fighting fellow musketeers), where nobody really wants to hurt anybody and you can't really route for one side.
• Space Balls (again) -- It doesn't work for me. But my eight-year-old son Timmy watched it dozens of times, over and over and over...
• The Avengers -- No script at all (what a waste of fine actors and clever tricks and classic TV series nostalgia/good will)
• Wag the Dog -- The dark seriousness of the ending (people really die) bothered me. But to my son, Bob, that's what really made the film work.
• Cold Comfort Farm -- A young girl transforms the lives of an entire family, through insight, sensitivity, creativity, and love. Brilliantly done.
• Nothing in Common -- Interesting, but too loosely woven; could have been done much better in much less time.
• Salt Water Moose -- Harmless, amusing family/kid fare.

• Frantic (with Harrison Ford) -- very believable
• Three Amigos (again) -- not as funny as it should have been
• Grosse Pointe Blank -- clever, amusing twist on the profession of hit man
• The Rock (with Sean Connery) -- Same old thriller...
• The Hit List -- another hit man movie?
• Battle for the Planet of the Apes
• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
• Escape from the Planet of the Apes
• Beneath the Planet of the Apes

• Practical Magic -- how could it be so bad?
• Ant Z
• Pontiac Moon
• Our Man Flint
• In Love and War (Hemmingway)
• Vibes
• The Paper Brigade
• Striptease -- sexless
• Temptress
• Out of Sight
• The Big Hit

• Artemisia
• Rugrats Movie
• Indecent Proposal
• Clockwatchers
• Lion King 2
• Three Days and Two Nights

• Everyone Says I Love You (Woody Allen)
• Never Say Never Again
• Breaking Up
• Things to Do in Denver When you are Dead
• Event Horizon
• You've Got Mail -- great fun
• Long Kiss Goodbye (again)
• The Edge
• Stealing Beauty -- disappointing
• Girls Night Out

• Shakespeare in Love -- truly excellent

• Ned Devine -- not as good as it could have been; slow; best moment when the witch gets launched into the sea in the phone booth
• Message in a Bottle -- terrible ending, which wrecks what otherwise was a good romantic comedy; what a downer
• Force of Nature -- terrible ending, which wrecks what otherwise was a good romantic comedy; especially good at the beginning, but they kept giving Sandra Bullock more and more baggage; what a waste; what a terrible ending; what a waste of time watching it

• Payback -- fine for its action genre; a bit bizarre that the main character is not a "good guy" and does not have some socially redeeming goal; he just wants to get paid what he feels is owed him, and in the process totally lays waste the Mob; he's very clever, but mostly very lucky; the best moment is when he remotely blows up the gang leaders at the end
• Analyze This -- most amusing Mob movie I've seen in years

• The Other Sister -- builds slowly, very slowly, and packs quite a wallop; and unexpected winner of a flick
• Doug's First Movie -- terrible, far less coherence and point and structure than a weekly TV show; just rambles endlessly; after ten minutes Tim was asking if we could leave; we stuck it out, and by the end he claimed to have liked it -- I can't imagine why
• Never Been Kissed (Drew Barrymore) -- the romantic comedy I've been looking for; Drew was great, very credible and emphathetic; another Shakespeare-inspired flick
• Ten Things I Hate About You -- remake of Taming of the Shrew, well done, fun

• Matrix -- I'll never look at the Energizer Bunny the same again; amazingly creative initial premise (that people are actually batteries/power supplies for the robots that run the world and that everything we think is real is actually controlled dreams induced by the Matrix/robot/computer
• The Real Blond
• Star Wars: the Phantom Menace -- Pathetic. No clear and simple story line. No real interaction/sympathy among the characters. Much of it feels like a parody of the Star Wars series. Many scenes would make good fodder for Science Mystery Theater 3000. It's incredible that Lukas could botch it so badly.

• Frequency -- well done, a classic baseball picture in a class with Field of Dreams and The Natural; and the best treatment of time travel I've seen
• Very Bad Things -
• Erin Bokovich -- Julia Roberts makes it work
• Frozen Asets
• Return to Me
• The Very Thought of You
• Anywhere but Here -- disappointing, never got started
• Music in the Heart -- maudlin and predictable; too heavy handed; lacked the humor and light touch that could have made it great
• Dick
• Astronaut's Wife
• Ideal Husband
• Eyes Wide Shut -- Stanley Kubrick -- doesn't work; takes forever to get started, then stops just when it was getting started
• Wonder Boys -- one lesson: the importance of "choice" in fiction; the author who is the central character simply couldn't make decisions and his manuscript just kept growing and rambling
• American Beauty -- brilliant, totally unexpected
• Life is Beautiful -- incredible, simply great
• Pleasantville -- very clever premise, reasonably well executed
• Truman (again) -- it's good the second time too...
• Fifth Musketeer
• The Conversation
• Simply Irresistible
• The Water Boy
• The Story of Us
• Dogma
• Bowfinger
• The Thomas Crown Affair
• Mystic Pizza (again)
• Mickey Blue Eyes -- the wrong actor -- need someone with the range of Robin Williams or Dustin Hoffman
• Sixth Sense -- background/foreground, excellent twist, totally unexpected, love it
• Go -- loose and directionless, then gets going in a Pulp Fiction kind of way
• For the Love of the Game -- I love those baseball movies, and Kevin Costner
• Mystery Alaska -- sets out to do what it said it would; fun, entertaining, no complications
• The Story of Us -- needed a plot, needed some significant reason for her to be upset
• Mummy
• Tarzan
• General's Daughter
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights
• Saving Private Ryan -- brutal realism
• Blazing Saddles -- Mel Brooks is hit-or-miss for me; either he's riotously funny, or he's just trying too hard to be funny
• Young Frankenstein
• Wild Wild West -- terrible; to a couple of fine actors, to invest in some interesting special effects, to come up with some totally unexpected plot elements, and then to totally botch it when you put the pieces together...
• Enemy of the State
• Runaway Bride -- fun escape
• Gloria (remake)
• Blast from the Past
• Face Off -- bizarre premise, some excellent suspense, but then it goes on and on and on
• Murder of Crows
• The Family Plot
• She's All That
• Secret of Nimh II
• Great Expectations (1999 version)

• The negotiator
• Snow falling on cedars -- awful; they never developed the characters; by moving back and forth in time too much, they undermined the narrative; a great book very very poorly adapted
• Man on the Moon -- lessons, silence, keep the audience guessing
• Bugs Life

Being John Malkovich -- brilliant and bizarre
• Eye of the Beholder - disappointing
• Dinosaurs -- how could they have wasted so much money on this? Land Before Time was better for kids; and Walking with Dinosaurs was more realistic
• Mission Impossible 2 -- same old same old; pointless action can be very boring; in this case the focus was simply too narrowly on Tom Cruise; no one else can do anything; very predictable
• The Muse -- useless
• Three Kings -- slow start and fine finish
• Gladiator - made me run to the history books: Commodus didn't kill his father; Lucilla was his aunt, not sister; there was no Maximus; the senate took charge after Commodus' death and made one of them emperor (Pertinax), he was off to a good start when he was killed by the Pretorian Guard two months later; excellent story, plausibly presented
• Highlander the Movie
• Bringing out the Dead -- forgettable
• The Faculty -- strange misnomer since much of the story is about the students fighting one another; a few neat twists in a tried and true genre
• The Talented Mr. Ripley -- very credibly done (much better than the previews would have had you imagine -- previews made it look like he deliberately killed Jackie to assume his identity); but the final scene/final murder was unnecessary and undermined the rest of the story

• Love Letter
• Charlie's Angels
• Girl Interrupted
• Magnolia
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Almost Famous
• Cast Away
• Finding Forrester
• Chocolat, excellent, the movie is far far better than the book (review)
• Cider House Rules, the movie is far far worse than the book
• The Talented Mr. Ripley,
• Ninth Gate (awful adaptation of Club Dumas)
• Nurse Betty
• Me, Myself, I -- Australian, excellent, cf. Shirley Valentine and Sliding Doors 3/2001
• Get Carter -- awful 3/2001
• Return to Me
• The Very Thought of You
• Anywhere but Here
• Music in the Heart
• Play It to the Bone
• Magnolia
• Dick
• Whole Nine Yards
• Muppets in Space
• Space Cowboys (terrible)
• Network, Existenz
• Suicide Kings
• Witchblade
• Panic
• Wonder Boys (importance of "choice" in fiction)
• Fifth Musketeer,
• The Conversation
• Simply Irresistible
• Dogma
• Bowfinger
• The Thomas Crown Affair
• Mystic Pizza (again)
• Hanging Up
• High Fidelity
• Passion of Mind
• Mission to Mars (terrible)
• Digimon Movie
• Pay it Forward
• Clerks
• Bounce
• Unbreakable
• Magnolia
• E=MC2
• Bicentennial man

• What Women Want
• Miss Congeniality
• Family Man

• Bedazzled (stinky, don't watch it unless it is in mystery science theater)
• Little Nicky
• Emperor's New Groove
• Rocky and Bullwinkle
• Spy Kids

• Meet the Parents
• Bridget Jone's Diary (excellent)
• Galaxy Quest (a blast -- far better than expected)
• Princess Cariboo

Scott Ingham keeps another movie list

I did a little more browsing of your web page. It is really extensive...a lot of information.

I noticed you have a movie list to go along with your novel list. I have a movie list on my site as well, but only with the movies I liked. So far there are about 60 movies there, and my goal is to have comments or reviews on each one. You may find a few movies there you have not seen yet.

I see you have "Contact" on your list of movies. I haven't seen that one yet, but read the novel. I love the whole idea of a message inside of a message, the instructions for building the machine. I hope the movie was able to portray the relationship twists as well as the novel.

I'm a real Jodie Foster fan. If you haven't seen "Little Man Tate" there is a nice piece of work, much in the same vein as "Searching for Bobby Fischer". Intelligent, original screen play, along with excellent casting choices.

Scott Ingham http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/2540/

REPLY

I haven't been particularly good at that so far. I need to devote more time to it -- add my reactions etc.

I'll take a look at your page. Thanks for the pointer.

I agree whole-heartedly about Little Man Tate. Actually, I have a Little Man Tate poster hanging in my office and a Searching for Bobby Fisher poster in the basement. (My son Bobby was a child chess champion and rival/friend of Josh Waitzkin, the real-life hero of the

] Searching for ... movie).

Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com

REPLY TO REPLY

A pleasant surprise to hear from you. I send out a lot of emails, and if I don't hear back within a few days, I usually forget about them. Glad to see you are so diligent about follow ups. Very few people on the net go to that much trouble.

My movie list has expanded some. I split it up into two pages to keep the download reasonable, and editing is easier also. I don't have any personal commentary at this point, but like the idea of that type of input.

You are more then welcome to add any comments I make to your web site. It is a great incentive for me to get back there and give it another look.

Scott

"That Thing You Do" works

It's been a while, been preoccupied with work on other things. I did get back to see your movie list though. I just saw "As Good as it Gets" first part of the year. I thought the casting of Jack Nicholson in the lead role was quite an interesting choice, he sure did a great job with the role.

I have to take exception with you on "That Thing You Do", by Tom Hanks. I really loved it. I didn't see the full movie at first, came in just under half way. So I watched it over, and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. It was a combination of nastalgia, the music, and the behind the scenes look at the music industry. I also enjoyed the end, when they tell what happened to the characters...adds so much more to a movie.

Oh well, sometimes a movie will just hit you in a certain way, strikes a chord that really resonates.

Talk to you soon.

Scott Ingham

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