A sad explanation for Bruce Willis' choices

Two 1990s action icons may have seen their careers end this week -- one by his own stupid actions, and one by something far less within his control. 

Bruce Willis had taken on the aspect of a laughingstock in recent years, a man so indiscriminate in his choices that he might have appeared in a teenager's first backyard movie if there were a couple thousand dollars in it for him.

But aphasia is no joke, and now we may never see Willis in a movie again. 

It was announced this week that the actor has been diagnosed with a form of brain damage that prevents its victim from being able to formulate or comprehend language. Presumably, that includes the speaking of lines of movie dialogue, and the ability to react to other people's lines of dialogue.

It means he's retiring from the business.

It's a sad day. 

Sadder: Apparently he was really being taken advantage of on set. It was clear he didn't know what was going on, couldn't remember his lines, etc. But they just kept on rolling him out there, making money off him. One might argue they did it to make Willis himself enough money so that he would be set once he could no longer work, but I'm skeptical. 

I can't remember where Willis stands in our good graces outside of the bad movies he's been appearing in, whether he's on the correct side politically (I remember some possible Republican leanings) or whether he's a good guy personally (I remember Kevin Smith hated him on Cop Out). I suspect the undeniable charm and charisma he once displayed had long since curdled into something far more toxic. I could look it up, but today is not the day to do so. 

At the height of his powers, though, what a movie star.

I won't go on at length about him as I might in an "in memoriam" piece -- he isn't dead -- but I did think it would be nice to highlight the top five times Willis' star wattage made a huge difference in a movie. That doesn't mean only that a "big name" was needed for the role, or that being a star was what made his performance in it memorable. I could have just called this "top five Bruce Willis roles" but I don't think that's exactly what I mean either. Maybe it is, you be the judge. 

Anyway, here is the list. 

5. Looper (2012) - This was sort of a comeback for Willis as it followed a long fallow period for the actor -- fallow as in not fruitful, though still as busy as ever. Especially paired with Rian Johnson's heady and intriguing concept, it reenergized our relationship with Willis, and Willis did his part to vanquish the accusations that he cared less and complained more. (I suppose he may have complained behind the scenes, but I didn't hear about it.) It's an interesting role in the sense that there is something sinister about it -- there's a moment of very poor judgment that leads to him committing a truly horrific action -- but it all comes from a place of sorrow, informed by all this foreknowledge of his preordained fate, and the loss of a loved one. Anyway, the performance really works for the film.

4. Twelve Monkeys (1996) - Willis really works well with heady subject matter involving time travel, doesn't he? He really communicates the disorientation his character finds himself in in Terry Gilliam's film, which involves trips through war zones, both actual (World War I) and metaphorical (an insane asylum). It's also a performance that eschews vanity, as he's broken and beaten up and sometimes without any clothes. Especially against a performance by Brad Pitt that's characterized by all its tics, you can appreciate how Willis underplays this material, and you really get a sense of his chemistry with Madeleine Stowe.

3. The Sixth Sense (1999) - This was not the first "unexpected" usage of Bruce Willis but it continues his ability to pair up with directors with a certain vision. Willis' work with M. Night Shyamalan was truly of the internal variety -- particularly in their follow-up collaboration, Unbreakable -- and Willis played that perfectly in setting up one of the biggest surprise twists in recent film history. (From which Shyamalan himself may have never fully recovered, artistically, as it set him off on the path that has caused us all to laugh at him so much.) This was one of the first times I remember feeling real pathos for a Willis character, which was present in other of his films but overshadowed by a more dominant tone, such as confidence or wise-cracking.

2. Pulp Fiction (1994) - Less than a decade after he even came on the radar for most of us, Willis already felt like a surprise addition to Quentin Tarantino's follow-up to Reservoir Dogs, and perhaps the first example (along with John Travolta) of Tarantino's knack for 70's style stunt casting, where a big name comes along at the end of the opening cast list to really put a spin on your expectations. Butch Coolidge is probably Willis' second most iconic role, though funnily enough, I just had to look up what his last name was. (Do they ever even say it in the movie?) This role may demonstrate more range than Willis has ever displayed in one performance, from the eternal take of Butch quietly listening to Marcellus' speech, to the anger and frustration involved with the loss of his watch, to baby talk with his girlfriend. This, here, is a star.

1. Die Hard (1988) - Number one had to be Die Hard. The best action movie of all time remains one of the all-time best breakout performances for a movie star. Willis' everyday NYC cop, unwittingly transplanted to La La Land for Christmas, is effortlessly identifiable to the audience -- not because we are police officers or would have any clue how to singlehandedly take down a building full of terrorists, but because John McClane handles every new piece of information with exactly the bemusement/frustration that we would feel, and with the ingenuity we would hope to produce. He's the ultimate aspirational character for a certain brand of audience member, who wants to brave in a time of extreme danger but also knows he or she could end up pulling broken glass fragments out of bloodied feet and praying aloud not to die. 

Honorable mention: 

The Story of Us (1999) - This is a personal favorite that I had to throw in there. It's a different sort of role for Willis, where he plays the estranged husband of Michelle Pfeiffer and the father of two kids. They have a trial separation while the two kids are off at summer camp, and the film considers the couple's present, history, and future together during the course of that summer. I suppose it has the contours of a romantic comedy -- which is actually how we first got to know Willis in Moonlighting -- but it's more poignant and contemplative than funny, and I don't think it produces any easy answers, even if it finishes in a way that feels easier than such a real world situation might be. I love this movie for its ultimate optimism, for the performances (Pfeiffer slays me in a scene near the end), and for its attention to detail, particularly a montage of moments from their history set to "Classical Gas."

All six of those movies were movies I had already tagged on my blog and written about previously. Yep, Bruce Willis has definitely been a big part of my cinematic upbringing. 

As one indication of how poor his choices had been, and how much he was being taken advantage of, he doesn't just have one or two roles in the can, as many actors who are taken from us prematurely do. No, Willis has eight movies in the can. Whether any of them will be worth a squirt of piss, or 90 to 120 minutes of our time, is another matter. 

But maybe we'll be ten percent more likely to watch those movies, and other movies he's made in the past decade, just to appreciate him -- and to see if we can see the signs of this terrible affliction. I regret any time I referred to one of his performances as "sleepwalking" through a movie. It now seems clear that giving those performances was extremely difficult for him, even if it was, at some point, the laziness and disinterest talking rather than the aphasia.

But as I said earlier, today is not the day to impugn Bruce Willis, nor to call in to question any of his past choices. Maybe even the right-wing political leanings were evidence of the aphasia. That would explain a lot.

Until they have a cure, fare thee well, Bruce.

My top 64 of the 1990s

Eight years ago I was super excited about my top 25 of the 2000s, posted on this blog about four weeks after the decade ended. (Read here if you're interested.)

I was excited enough that I wanted to go back and retroactively post my top 25 of the 1990s. But just scanning the list of my favorite titles of the decade gave me a headache. How would I ever narrow it down to just 25? The impossibility of the task put my ambitions more or less permanently on ice.

Well, maybe less permanently.

I've now got my excuse -- and also an excuse to go more than just 25 deep.

The first podcast I started listening to back in 2011, Filmspotting, is in the final four of their annual Filmspotting Madness tournament, which pits various films or film personalities in a March Madness-style tournament of 64, whittling it down to just one winner over a period of six weeks. Listeners choose a winner in all the duels by voting in polls on their website. Previous installations have focused on actors and actresses (2015), directors (2016) and last year, the films in the Filmspotting pantheon (films that have been deemed ineligible for their weekly top five lists because they're just too great and have been talked about too much).

This year is the first year in a three-year plan. In 2018 they're trying to determine the best movies of the 1990s, and they will follow that in 2019 with the best movies of the 2000s. That'll time out perfectly to be discussing the best movies of the 2010s when everyone else is talking about that in the early part of 2020.

What more excuse did I need?

Now, when I selected my top 25 films of the 2000s back in 2010, I did it completely organically. I narrowed my selections down to maybe 40 candidates, rewatched a good ten films in that January alone, and then produced the top 25 only from my own conclusions about their quality and my affection for them.

"What other way would there be to do it, Vance?"

Well I'm glad you asked. The easiest way to do it would be to just look at my Flickchart. The chart can and would tell me what my top 25 movies of the 2000s were based on the decisions I've made in various duels over time, which have led to an exact ranking for every film I've charted. If I believed it to be 100% accurate, it would arguably be the best way to go.

But I didn't necessarily believe it would be 100% accurate. Plus, making a list is a creative process. Even if my Flickhart list would be evidence of my own thought process on the topic, as recorded over a long period of time, there are enough variables in the decisions I've made that I didn't feel comfortable just having the website spit out my answers for me. I wanted to generate them on my own, if only for the aesthetic value of the exercise, of consciously considering and selecting them with only this context in mind.

And that's what I'll do in two years when it's time to choose my best of the 2010s. But the 1990s? Remember that headache I told you about that they gave me?

So I decided this time, I would just let Flickchart do its job. It'll be a lot easier on me, especially in a post I want to just crank out in a timely manner. Besides, it's a bit more honest, isn't it? I won't be selecting movies I think will gain me credibility but I don't really love, though I hope you know me well enough to know I don't do that anyway. These will be my favorites, pure and simple, a result of having selected them over time in a series of individual decisions governed by honest preferences.

I'm inclined to write a blurb about each one, but you don't need to read 64 blurbs. Twenty-five seems about right, as that's what I also did back in 2010. Twenty-five short blurbs, because many of these titles are ones you likely know, love, and know everything great about already.

So, in time for the championship game between Michigan and Villanova in college basketball's actual March Madness tournament, here's what Flickchart tells me are my top 64 films released between 1990 and 1999:

64. Short Cuts (1993)
63. Groundhog Day (1993)
62. Se7en (1995)
61. The Professional (1994)
60. Ulee's Gold (1997)
59. Smoke Signals (1998)
58. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
57. Misery (1990)
56. Trainspotting (1996)
55. Wayne's World (1992)
54. Total Recall (1990)
53. Kicking and Screaming (1995)
52. Toy Story 2 (1999)
51. Awakenings (1990)
50. A Man of No Importance (1994)
49. The Crow (1994)
48. A Simple Plan (1998)
47. Thelma & Louise (1991)
46. Speed (1994)
45. Before Sunrise (1995)
44. The Crucible (1996)
43. Swingers (1996)
42. Contact (1997)
41. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
40. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
39. Apollo 13 (1995)
38. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
37. Jacob's Ladder (1990)
36. Happiness (1998)
35. The Sixth Sense (1999)
34. Three Kings (1999)
33. My Cousin Vinny (1992)
32. Boogie Nights (1997)
31. Dave (1992)
30. Dances With Wolves (1990)
29. Philadelphia (1993)
28. Malcolm X (1992)
27. The Player (1992)
26. Starship Troopers (1997)

25. The Matrix (1999) - The two most influential films of the decade bookend my top 25, with The Matrix clocking in here. This barely made my top 25 of 1999, landing at #22 on my year-end list, but I couldn't have known at that time how it would change cinema and grow in stature. I don't just love The Matrix because of its reputation, though. I love it because it's almost perfectly realized, and is a total whiz bang of a movie.

24. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - I still remember watching this on a date in 1991 and feeling enthralled by it. And though I haven't revisited it more than twice in the ensuing years, that feeling of being enthralled has never left me. It has one of the most iconic characters/performances of all time, and it set a new standard for serial killer movies that made it almost as influential as my #25 and my #1.

23. Strange Days (1995) - Rarely is technology in a science fiction film used so successfully to find the heart of the story. This is a movie about love, loss and the loss of love in a scuzzy near future that is looking more and more like our own, in the film that showed me Ralph Fiennes could play a hero as well as a monstrous Nazi, and reminded me that Angela Bassett is just awesome.

22. 12 Monkeys (1995) - Another great head trip takes my next spot. Bruce Willis' first comeback (would that be fair to say?) has one of its true highlights in Terry Gilliam's film about a virus and time travel and, well, quite a bit else. It's Gilliam through and through and though that might disappoint us nowadays in light of his recent support of Harvey Weinstein, it was great then, and I won't deduct credit from the movie in retrospect.

21. Galaxy Quest (1999) - A comedy so good I saw it in the theater on consecutive nights. This loving Star Trek lampoon may be in my top ten comedies of all time and gave me a permanent fondness for Tim Allen (who will also appear later on this list). The cast also includes Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell and I could just go on and on in a lovefest about this movie. It's got heart, it's got great production design and it's funny as hell.

20. Titanic (1997) - My heart will go on, and so will my affection for Titanic. I just can't quit it. (Wait, now I'm crossing my movie quotes.) A theatrical viewing of this in 3D a few years ago confirmed that I still love my #1 movie of 1997 and that I'd be happy on almost any occasion to sit down and watch it for three hours and 15 minutes. Some Titanic defenders might swear their appreciation for it is purely technical, but what can I say, I love the love story too.

19. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) - The movie I would have least expected to appear on this list if you asked me after I first watched the trailer for it. "Who is this Hugh Grant character and why does he think he's so great?" Well, the answer is because he is so great, and this movie is delightful as hell -- even with Andie MacDowell in it. This is like comfort food for me. I own it and come back to it regularly.

18. Dumb and Dumber (1994) - The fact that Dumb and Dumber is only my 18th favorite film of the 1990s shows you how crazy good this decade was for me. I could watch this movie any time of the day or night. I used to say that if this came on TV I would be unable not to watch it until the end, though I'm not sure how many times that actually happened. It makes me shoot milk out of my nose. "Ah lahk it a lot."

17. Flirting With Disaster (1996) - David O. Russell was never better than in the 1990s, and this is his best of three great films from the decade. This is the very definition of the modern screwball comedy and it just flies from one great set piece to the next. I've never liked Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni or Richard Jenkins better -- though Stiller has another reason to be praised in 1996 coming up later on the list.

16. Election (1999) - It's appropriate that Alexander Payne's best film comes right after Russell's, since for a while I thought of them both as personal favorites who couldn't do wrong. For a while. They've both gone comparatively astray for me recently, but Election is prime Payne, when his wicked humor combined perfectly with structural narrative playfulness to produce something utterly rewatchable. Strangely, it's a feel good movie even though most of the characters are bad.

15. Ghost (1990) - As with Titanic, you'll never take the romantic out of me. This was Titanic before Titanic, a film to which I was slavishly devoted on first viewing with its high concept ideas and a romance that made me swoon. But guess what? This one holds up too. I watched it a few years back and I continue to think it has one of the best and tightest scripts of any film I've ever seen. If Ghost told me it loved me, I'd say "Ditto."

14. Schindler's List (1993) - I finally sat down for my second viewing of Schindler's List last year, 24 years after my first -- which confirmed it was not just hanging around the upper end of my Flickchart on reputation alone. This is still an epic accomplishment of almost unbelievable quality and importance, feeling almost like a documentary in spots, yet it's also got a truly cinematic villain that allows it to function, in some respects, like a Spielbergian popular entertainment. The ending still slays me.

13. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - I saw T2 before I saw The Terminator, so the latter never stood a chance. James Cameron's best film will always be one of my most mind-blowing exposures to special effects of all time, but it doesn't get by on the T-1000 alone. It was a brilliant decision to reclaim Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hero of this series, and a whole host of iconic imagery follows from that. It's one of my favorite action movies of all time, and that scene of nuclear apocalypse still gives me the willies.

12. Bound (1996) - Bound has spent time in my top 20 overall on Flickchart; that's how much I love it. I simply love spending time in the company of such interesting characters who make such smart decisions within the context of a tight noir gangster thriller, and the hot lesbian sex doesn't hurt either (yuk yuk). The Wachowskis' debut feature is still their best, and it gets remarkable narrative mileage from just the sets of two adjacent apartments. All scripts should be this intelligent.

11. The Iron Giant (1999) - You've cried in movies before, but how many of them still reduce you to tears after a fifth viewing? That's about how many times I've seen Brad Bird's masterpiece all the way through, and I still get that lump in the throat at the end. It's a simple and wondrous snapshot of a particular time in Cold War America with a message of friendship and non-violence that's the perfect antidote to it. Simply put, one of my favorite children's movies of all time.

10. Defending Your Life (1991) - Surely the most obscure film to place so high on my list, Albert Brooks' afterlife romantic comedy nails both the romance and the comedy. He and Meryl Streep have never been so laid back and lovely as they navigate an afterlife processing station where they must convince a judge that they deserve to move on to the next plain of existence, or be sentenced to return to Earth to give it another try. It's high concept and marvelously joyous, with a useful message about confronting fear thrown in for good measure.

9. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - The highest ranked 1990s film on my chart to just miss my top 20, though it's been as high as 12th or 13th in the past. David Mamet annoys me more often than he wins me over, but this is the massive exception to that, a foul-mouthed and dialogue-heavy look at four men trying to sell worthless investment properties in order to stay afloat. "Third place is your fired." Alec Baldwin's monologue would probably be enough, but then there's the rest of the movie. A tour de force of writing and acting.

8. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Yet another film whose backlash has never been a consideration in my affection for it. Shawshank is a masterpiece, pure and simple. It'll never be my #1 film, but I understand why it's #1 on IMDB, and I would never begrudge someone who called it their own favorite movie. It's a depressing prison movie that sings on the strength of its script, acting, and message of hope in the face of total hopelessness.

7. Unforgiven (1992) - Another exception after Glengarry. I have historically not loved the western, though I've developed an appreciation for it in recent years. Yet I've always loved Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's best film and one of the most thoughtful examinations of morality, heroism and the consequences of violence that I've ever seen. "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he has, and all he's ever gonna have." "Well I guess they had it coming." "We all got it coming, kid."

6. Goodfellas (1990) - And this is the first of the current Filmspotting final four to make my list, with two more ahead. I guess Filmspotters have good taste. What can a person say about Goodfellas other than that it is an absolute flat-out classic, as confident a display of the mastery of the cinematic medium as exists. We bow before the cinematic god that is Martin Scorsese.

5. Run Lola Run (1998) - I had a sub-par viewing of Run Lola Run a few years ago. And then a few weeks ago I saw it again and remembered why I didn't penalize it on my Flickchart for that sub-par viewing. A symphony of editing, music and cinematic derring do, Tom Tykwer's film is a singular experience that also gets you in and out in only 80 minutes. Its narrative invention is combined with a philosophical, existential approach to fate that is also thought-provoking. Dense and rich.

4. The Cable Guy (1996) - No rational argument will explain why this movie is ranked above some of the other films on this list, but I can tell you that few films that I've ever seen so largely exceeded my expectations for them. The film that made me love Jim Carrey has so much going on that I could never possibly do justice to it in five lines of text. Let's just say that this became a personal cult favorite with friends and has since become a measurable part of my identity as a cinephile. And here's that other Ben Stiller accomplishment I was telling you about. He should get more credit for it.

3. Fargo (1996) - The film up against Goodfellas in Filmspotting's final four. I may not have realized until they made a fantastic TV show version of this movie just how singular of a creation it is, using trademark Coen elements to carve out an absolute distinctive cinematic landscape that ties together comedy, tragedy and melancholy. If it weren't this funny, I probably wouldn't love it as much as I do, but the same is true if it weren't this tragic. Somehow, you aren't depressed as hapless Minnesotans leave a trail of bodies as they just try to make better lives for themselves.

2. Toy Story (1995) - And my #1 children's movie of all time is not one of the classics from Disney's mid-century height, but the first film released by Disney's subsidiary, Pixar. Pixar's first feature arrived fully formed, from the technology used to animate it to the whip-smart dialogue and script. Oh, and the heart -- the tons and tons of heart. Like with Galaxy Quest, I saw this on consecutive days in the theater, and many times since then. Pixar has never bested it.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994) - The other Filmspotting finalist (it goes up against Silence of the Lambs), Pulp Fiction is my #4 film of all time and the highest ranked film that I saw after I became a cinephile. The number four also represents the number of times I saw it in the theater, still a record. A narrative pretzel that simply blew my mind and instantly elevated any number of its scenes to all-time iconic status. This movie showed me what filmmaking could be, could do, and remains one of my most influential viewing experiences of all time. It doesn't take this top spot by accident or by default; it's fully deserved.

To show you just how much I love this decade, all 64 of these films are listed within my top 200 all time on Flickchart. Short Cuts gets in just under the wire at #199, though it's a perfect cut off because my #65 is then #208 overall. That means 32% of my top 200 are films from the 1990s, nearly a third.

Here is a breakdown by years for each:

1990 - 8
1991 - 5
1992 - 9
1993 - 4
1994 - 8
1995 - 7
1996 - 7
1997 - 5
1998 - 4
1999 - 7

I don't consciously think of 1992 as a great year for cinema, but clearly I thought it was. This was also a bit of an important in my maturation as a film fan, as 1992 straddled my freshman and sophomore years in college, when this was all start to mean so much more to me. That was also the year I had my first collegiate film class. Probably no coincidence there.

Oh, and just so they could cheat and add a few more titles, the Filmspotting guys had eight play-in games, allowing them to add eight more titles to the list. In case you're wondering, my next eight are: Truly Madly Deeply, Natural Born Killers, Looking for Richard, Bottle Rocket, Quiz Show, Close-Up, The Blair Witch Project and Carlito's Way. And yeah, I'm sure I could easily make arguments for these over some that came ahead of them. Tough decade.

I should mention that although I had a lot of the big titles in common with the Filmspotting 64, I did diverge from them in a number of other ways. Only 24 of their 64 overlapped on my list. I suppose I'm happy with that, as a cinephile gains his or her personal identity more on the basis of idiosyncratic favorites than the ways he or she conforms to conventional wisdom. Filmspotting themselves even accounted for their own preferences in making this list, as producer Sam van Halgren fought to have The Insider included even though it didn't make any of the major lists they used to figure out the most beloved films of the decade. More power to you, Sam.

I'm a bit alarmed that so few of these films are in a language other than English. As much as I love my 1990s, I know I have big blind spots in that decade, a function of what was available to me at the time I was falling in love with these movies and what I've prioritized going back to see. One of the few films that made the Filmspotting cut that I haven't seen, for example, was Chungking Express, a movie I believe I'd love if I could get my hands on it. I tried to watch it last year for Asian Audient, but could not borrow or rent it from anywhere, and didn't feel it warranted going to the lengths of purchasing it. So I've still got some work cut out for me.

But in early April of 2018, as random a time as any other, this is how I feel about that great decade, and I'm sticking to it.

Cat's Away: Closing Night

This is the final night of the personal "film festival" I orchestrated while my wife was in America. And boy, are my eyes tired.

And here we are. Closing night.

Hallelujah.

I can't even begin to tell you how long overdue a viewing of Pulp Fiction has been. This is my fourth ranked movie of all time on Flickchart, and it's a film I saw four times in the theater -- a record that has yet to be broken. And yet it has been at least 15 years since I've seen it. (Delayed fatigue from all the theater viewings, perhaps?) I can only say for sure back to 2006, which is when I started keeping track of rewatches. But I don't recall a viewing since the turn of the century. In fact, I don't recall the context for my last viewing of Pulp Fiction at all.

To put that in a little bit of a context, I've seen every other film in my top ten since 2011, some of them more than once, with the exception of #10 Do the Right Thing, whose most recent viewing was even longer ago than Pulp Fiction. Which is why I also considered that 1989 Spike Lee film for the closing night of Cat's Away, ultimately rejecting it because I wanted something that was a little bit more fun.

It hasn't been for want of trying. As you may recall from this post -- though if you did recall it, I'd probably tell you to get a life -- I had Fiction lined up as a birthday rewatch three years ago. But the DVD we brought from the U.S. did not play in our region-free DVD player, one of only two we've tried that have not worked. I think I actually suggested it again for one of the two birthdays since then, by which point it had become available on one of our streaming services, but at that point it was rejected by my viewing companion as too long. And I can't fault her for not wanting to try to take down a 155-minute movie on what was probably a Thursday night or something.

But one of the defining goals of this festival was to take advantage of her being out of town to watch things she wasn't willing or able to watch, and I told myself that a viewing of Pulp Fiction with her -- despite a professed interest in such a viewing on her part -- was not likely to be forthcoming anytime soon.

So, with one last dramatic gasp, I undertook the longest film of the festival -- and also one of my favorite of all time.

It did not disappoint. There was likely a small part of me that wondered if I would now be "too mature" for Pulp Fiction, if the movie was something that spoke particularly to impressionable twentysomethings who had underdeveloped ideas of what's considered "cool" and nascent ambitions toward cinephilia. Is this a movie I only loved because I was a young male -- just 20 years old -- when I first saw it?

Nope. This is, as you surely know, a relentlessly entertaining reimagining of the possibilities of cinema, and it still feels fresh. Even with all the imitators. Even with all the ways the movies have changed in 23 years. It's still an effort head and shoulders above the others.

It occurs to me that it reminds me, in a strange way, of another groundbreaking piece of art from 1994. Namely, my favorite album of all time, Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Every time I listen to that album it feels newly fresh, and I often think to myself that it would still seem groundbreaking if Trent Reznor released it today.

Pulp Fiction is the same. And I noticed on this viewing just how not-cool this consummately cool movie sometimes is. For all that John Travolta's Vincent Vega has become an iconic cinematic figure, in some ways a new definition of cool that Quentin Tarantino introduced to us, he's also an incredible dweeb. Twice he is found to be obliviously sitting on the toilet when an incredibly important event involving guns is unfolding just yards away from him. And as much time as he spends in that black suit with that pencil thin black tie, he spends almost as much time wearing shorts and a tee-shirt that make him look like he's going to a volleyball game, as one character observes. As another character (Tarantino himself) observes, he and Jules look like "dorks." Tarantino was both establishing what it means to be cool and completely undercutting it, all in one character.

A few other stray observations:

1) I've talked in the past, in this post about Run Lola Run, about how a movie can be so good that you feel like you want to cry, even in moments that are not overtly emotional. The one time I did that in Pulp Fiction? "Any of you fucking pricks MOVE and I'll execute every last motherfucking one of you!" Yeah, maybe that's because I knew "Misirlou" was about to kick in. But more than anything, Amanda Plummer's batshit crazy change of character was that moment that announces the movie's greatness. A greatness it never dials back down for the rest of the running time.

2) Kathy Griffin is the bystander who tells Marcellus Wallace about the guy who hit him with his car. I can't believe Kathy Griffin gets to say she was in Pulp Fiction!

3) I love that The Wolf is at some kind of black tie house party at 8:30 in the morning. Just as Brett and friends are awake eating hamburgers at 8. What kind of lives do these people live?

4) Do you think Butch saves Marcellus from Zed, Maynard and the Gimp because he just can't stand to see a man treated that way, even his sworn enemy, or because he calculates that by saving Marcellus he can remove the price from his head? Or just that he now has a taste for killing and sees another low-risk opportunity to explore that? I always assumed it was either the first or the third, or both, but for the first time this viewing I wondered about the middle option. For the record, I think I reject that idea, but it did occur to me.

5) Tarantino orchestrates chaotic conversation scenes beautifully. I marveled over the conversation between Vincent and Lance as Lance is trying to find the little black medical book. The timing in that scene is great. So much fun.

6) I appreciated on this viewing how the movie explores unspoken intimacies between men and women, after first laying out the thesis directly in the dialogue. I'd always thought that conversation about the foot massage and Tony Rocky Horror was just an exercise in linguistic flourish by QT -- a very welcome one, make no mistake, but essentially frivolous and disconnected in nature. But this time I really noticed how the movie profoundly, soulfully, explores non-sexual intimacy between men and women, first with Mia and Vincent on their date (most notably when they dance, but even when they shake hands goodbye), and then with Butch and Esmeralda Villa Lobos, who share something ephemeral but incredibly deep during their taxi ride. I even liked the paternal intimacy, another form of non-sexual intimacy, between Harvey Keitel and Julia Sweeney in that brief scene at Monster Joe's. And then in the final scene, the film explores pure and unabashed love, both between Pumpkin and Honeybunny, and between Jules and his God. At its core, Pulp Fiction is romantic, explore all varieties of love and intimacy that almost never express themselves sexually. Even the one consensual sex act in the movie, between Butch and Fabienne, is sweetly tender.

I'm sure there's plenty more to say but that's probably a good place to stop.

With this post. With this festival.

But wait! I have to do this quickly. A complete recap of the films I watched, in order:

Contact
The Tribe
Train to Busan
Kong: Skull Island
Irreversible
Hall Pass
Megamind
Pan's Labyrinth
Showgirls
Citizen Kane
A Hologram for the King
Harry and the Hendersons
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Thief
The Shining 
Room 237
Fell
Pulp Fiction

That includes:

- Ten movies that were new to me
- Eight rewatches
- Fourteen movies in English
- One movie in Spanish
- One movie in French
- One movie in Korean
- One movie in Ukrainian sign language
- Eight movies from the 2010s
- Two movies from the 2000s
- Four movies from the 1990s
- Three movies from the 1980s
- One movie from the 1940s
- Nine library rentals
- Six movies from streaming
- Two movies from my own collection
- One iTunes rental
- And a variety of different genres and styles

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Can't get enough Cat's Away? Then you really have to get a life. But you're also in luck!

My wife goes away for about the same period of time in the middle of September. So watch this space for Cat's Away 2 ... coming next month. Where I figure out everything I did wrong in this one and get it right next time.

Now, I think I will take a break from this blog for the weekend.

Pulp Fiction has-beens

Move over, Nicolas Cage. You've got company.

Once the undisputed king of random straight-to-video movies you might stumble over at the Hoyts kiosk (think Redbox for you North American readers), Cage has since ceded his throne. Or, at least, scooched over his butt cheeks to make room for a couple more pairs.

And as it happens, they both appeared in one of the greatest films ever made (so says me): Pulp Fiction.

I've been following the freefall in selectivity by Bruce Willis and John Travolta for some time now, and thought it was finally time to write about it.

The inciting incident, to use a screenwriting term, was my decision to stop at the Hoyts kiosk on Friday night.

I didn't come away with anything to rent -- two phone calls to my wife went unanswered, and I decided that either selecting something she'd like or renting something for myself to watch when I was this tired, and she and I might watch something else together anyway, were both too great of a risk. But it did give me the chance to scroll through not one, not two, but three movies apiece by Mr. Travolta and Mr. Willis that I'd never heard of. Or really, that I'd heard of only because I'd scrolled through many of these Hoyts kiosk choices on other occasions.

Look, I'm not saying Willis and Travolta should be in the primes of their careers. The former is 61, the latter 62. I am saying they should be going more gently into that cinematic night with choices that are better than these:

Most legitimate element: Director Chuck Russell also directed such comparatively respectable films as The Mask and Eraser, though he hadn't directed a feature in 14 years, since The Scorpion King in 2002.

Least legitimate element: It steals its IMDB tagline from Pulp Fiction! "I lay my vengeance upon them." If only Samuel L. could be there to deliver it.

Verdict: Terrible.

Most legitimate element: It had a plum December 18th release date, meaning its producers surely thought it had a chance to pick up some Oscars. Plus, Gina Carano can actually fight and stuff.

Least legitimate element: I think Kellan Lutz was a guy once, maybe.

Verdict: Awful.

Most legitimate element: Jackie Earle Haley (The Bad News Bears (original), A Nightmare on Elm Street (remake)) directed this. Interesting. Though Dan Stevens' decision to leave Downton Abbey early is looking worse and worse by the year.

Least legitimate element: The script was written by a guy named Robert Lowell, who died 38 years before the film was made. (Look it up! The guy linked in IMDB could be the wrong Robert Lowell, I suppose. But still.)

Verdict: Unwise.

Most legitimate element: It co-stars Dave Bautista. After Guardians of the Galaxy, its upcoming sequel and Spectre, his career has got real heat.

Least legitimate element: This was directed by the same guy who directed Extraction.

Verdict: Not good.

Most legitimate element: At least there isn't a gun in the poster.

Least legitimate element: That beard is just ridiculous.

Verdict: Ill-advised.

Most legitimate element: None.

Least legitimate element: I understand Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Claire Forlani were once people. Plus, this was written and directed by the guy who wrote Extraction. Not the guy who directed Extraction -- he directed Marauders -- but the guy who wrote it. Are we clear?

Verdict: Why??

Of note: Christopher Meloni also appears in both Marauders and I Am Wrath. Maybe Nicolas Cage needs to gives those buttocks one additional squeeze tighter.

Yes, it's really true that you can walk up to any Hoyts kiosk in Melbourne and walk away with any of these six movies. But I wouldn't recommend it.

But before I paint too dire a picture of these men's fortunes, we should pause to recognize that John Travolta just won an Emmy for his work as producer on the terrific The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and was also nominated for his acting as Robert Shapiro, which may have been my favorite performance in the whole series.

Willis?

Well, there's a rumor they're making Die Hard 6.

Meek's, cut off

Poor Meek's Cutoff.

It is officially getting the runaround from me at this point.

I've already seen this movie once, back in its original release year of 2011, but I've been eager for a revisit ever since then, as it's a film that keeps growing in my retroactive estimation. I've borrowed the movie at least three times from the library, probably more like four, which you know is a no-no if you read this post. Multiple rentals are much more likely in Australia than they were in the U.S.; there, you could borrow only three at a time, but here, your rentals are limited only by your imagination, and the likelihood that you will be able to gather them all together to return them by the due date. (The actual restriction is 50 items at once.)

Meek's Cutoff has got to have felt like its turn for a rewatch was finally due, especially given my flurry of rewatch activity lately -- in March alone, I had already watched a dozen movies that I'd already seen.

And I did indeed pop it into the DVD player yesterday afternoon. I needed something that I'd already seen, and preferably something calm and methodical, to watch in the background while I worked on my computer. (A different DVD from the library -- another recent rewatch, Night of the Living Dead -- had gotten stuck in my computer's DVD player, and I was going to need to do surgery to extract it.) Meek's fit both descriptions.

Unfortunately, when the movie started playing, Meek's Cutoff was cut off.

There were black bands on the sides of the screen. Not the tops and bottoms, but the sides.

Tops and bottoms = good. That means you are getting a widescreen presentation.

Sides = bad. That means the damn thing is a pan & scan version of the movie, and therefore, an extremely hobbled version of itself.

For those who may not know what I'm talking about, I will spare a few words of explanation. "Pan & scan" is the derisive term to describe movies that have been formatted to fit the standard 4 by 3 dimensions of an old cathode ray tube TV. Average people seemed to like that format because it meant the image filled their entire screen, but purists always hated it because they knew that the sides of the image had to be cut off to make it fit. The term "pan & scan" comes from the fact that on occasion, an actual artificial shifting of the "camera" had to be introduced into the image so that crucial information form the side of the screen was not lost. I think most notably of one of the first times I recall seeing something in pan & scan, when I watched Pulp Fiction with a friend, and noticed that the "camera" was panning from side to side of the elevator in order to capture both Vincent and Jules' faces as they went up to shake down the three low-level criminals. In the original movie, of course, that is a static shot, but the actors are far enough to the sides of the screen that you'd lose half of each guy's body if you just did a straight chopping of the sides of the image.

Now that many TVs are more rectangular than square in shape, pan & scan movies look even more egregious because you get the empty space -- the very thing studios were trying to avoid when they initially conceived of pan & scan -- on either side of the screen. So not only is the image butchered, but the butchering is no longer "seamless" to the untrained (average moviegoer) eye. For that reason, pan & scan versions are much more rare these days, and I think not seen at all on BluRays, though I may be wrong about that.

Needless to say, I resist any scenario that will involve watching something in pan & scan, especially when the movie is thoughtfully composed. If it's a dumb comedy I will probably just watch it that way, but something like Meek's Cutoff? No way.

So I cut off Meek's Cutoff after less than 30 seconds, and put in my own copy of The Shawshank Redemption instead. (Full post to follow on my experience of watching Shawshank for the first time in more than a decade.)

It's not the first time in the past six months I've been forced to abort a viewing because it was a pan & scan version. I had been determined to watch The Shining for the first time in eons around Halloween, but discovered (to my horror) that the copy we owned was indeed in this dreaded format. I blame my wife. She's a good film fan, but it's not second nature to her to check the aspect ratio when she buys a movie. And this is one she bought ages ago.

The next time I see Meek's Cutoff at the library, I'll make sure it's on BluRay.

Birthday rewatches

So birthday rewatches are officially a thing now.

It was my birthday on Monday, and I followed what I now recognize has become a new tradition: I re-watched a favorite movie.

Five of my past six birthdays have involved re-watching at least one movie I love -- I say "at least" because last year I re-watched a movie after midnight on the 19th, so it was really October 20th when I watched it, and then watched another during the regular evening viewing hours.

Probably the only reason I didn't watch a movie on October 20th of 2010 -- new or old -- was that my dad and his wife were in town to visit my then-newborn son, and we went over to a friend's house for dinner.

So I thought it was worth quickly recapping what I've chosen and why I thought my birthday was a good time to watch it.

2014

Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron)

Why now? It was meant to be Pulp Fiction, actually. I had wanted to join everybody else in reflecting on 20 years since the movie was released ... and probably nearly 15 since I had last seen it. The long running time (168 minutes) was daunting for a Monday night, but we would have pressed forward if the BluRay had worked. But Pulp Fiction became the second movie I brought from the U.S. that has not been able to play on our region-free DVD player. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was another option, but we opted for Children as the only movie under two hours. Which turned out to be key, because my wife had developed a sore throat, and was not expecting to last the length of even a 109-minute movie. That she did is a testament to just how good Children is.

Having seen Children of Men five times now, I consider it one of those movies where I start to get anxious if it's been too long since my last viewing. My previous viewing had been in early 2011, so it was definitely time.

Interestingly, this was the first time I actually watched my own DVD copy, which I have owned for at least six years now. My previous two viewings came at times when I already owned the DVD, but one was a random catch on cable where we started and couldn't stop watching, and the other was a friend's BluRay at his house on a big screen. So it was also the first time I sampled my DVD extras, specifically, the one that details what went into creating a digital baby that was so realistic-looking, I half-wondered if someone on set had actually birthed the child an hour before filming.

2013

The Social Network (2010, David Fincher) and Timecrimes (2009, Nacho Vigalondo)

Why then? The Social Network was an impulsive after-midnight watch on my computer on a night we had gone away for the weekend to celebrate my 40th. I was already half in the bag when I started watching, taking full advantage of knowing no children (only one at the time) were going to wake me up in the morning. I can't remember why I selected this over the 100+ other options in my Case Logic folder, as it was already my third time watching in barely three years since the movie had been released. I was just jonesing I guess.

As for Timecrimes, this was what we watched later that night when I got home. We had been wowed by Nacho Vigalondo's twisty little bit of low-budget time travel brilliance when we first watched it within a year or so of its release, and I'd been looking for another opportunity to see it. It was streaming on Netflix and I chose my birthday as the time to advance it forward for a second viewing.

2012

Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996, Mike Judge)

Why then? A little different story on this one. Like Social Network, this was an after-midnight viewing on Friday night/Saturday morning, another in which my wife was obviously not involved. The viewing was less about it being my birthday than it being a Friday night and me still having some energy to summon from somewhere. But I've always thought this was an underappreciated gem, having watched it twice before the year 2000 but never since. It was also streaming on Netflix so I said "What the hey?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, I did not like it quite as much this time. Still good, though.

Note: For the evening of my actual birthday, we'd had a long day out in Ventura and my wife was happy for me to just take myself to a double feature. So I saw Argo and ... (ahem) Alex Cross.

2011

Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)

Why then? Unforgiven was one of a half-dozen BluRays my wife gave me the previous Christmas to celebrate having finally purchased a BluRay player a few months earlier. Most of them, however, were movies that were either long or heavy -- The Departed and The Proposition were two others -- meaning that they almost never seemed like movies you could casually slip in after a long day of dealing with a toddler. So I decided to specifically use my undisputed right to choose the movie on my birthday as a chance to get my first rewatch of my all-time favorite western (and one of my top 20 films on Flickhart) in at least 15 years. And yep, it was just as terrific as ever.

2009

Bound (1996, Larry & Andy Wachowski)

Why then? My wife was actually out of town for a work conference for my birthday in 2009, meaning that I got to live like a bachelor for a couple days. That meant having total control of the TV and which movies got watched. I rewatched about four movies while she was gone, but specifically saved Bound -- which I had rented from my Blockbuster through-the-mail account (that really dates it) -- for my birthday because I had built up its awesomeness to nearly mythic proportions, and had gone way too long without seeing it. I've since purchased the movie (I love it so much that I went to the trouble of ordering it from Amazon, something I almost never do) and have rewatched it again. It's my #20 on Flickchart.

There now, aren't you edified?

Would still like to get in that long-overdue Pulp Fiction viewing. Speaking of where I rank things on Flickchart, Fiction's all the way up at #4, behind only Raising Arizona, Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's streaming on Netflix, so I will have my chance -- we just didn't want to have to watch something on the computer for my birthday viewing. (Our cable that connects my wife's Mac to our TV is still on the fritz.)

And how do I feel about being 41?

That one's a bit more tricky. Let me get back to you. 

A fondness for inept criminals

Each week on the Filmspotting podcast, the hosts (Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen) end the show with a top five in some category -- top five movies about redemption, top five movies set in Los Angeles, even top five movie scenes involving bicycles. The top five is usually a tie-in to the new movie they're reviewing that week.

I'm always excited for the top five, but rarely satisfied once I've listened to it. The movies I would choose rarely seem to show up on their lists. Which I don't think is any reflection of my taste in movies vs. theirs. It's just an indication of how many movies there are out there to choose from.

This past week was an exception.

I first heard about it from my friend Don, who texted me on Saturday "Listening to this week's Filmspotting as I tend to laundry, and now I know that you like movies with well-done inept criminals."

The tie-in this week was Killing Them Softly, which I was a mere half hour away from seeing at the time I received the text. As soon as I saw the movie, I'd be free to listen to the podcast, which would reveal to me Adam and Josh's top five inept movie criminals.

And Don sure was right.

For starters, they called this alternately the "H.I. McDunnough Memorial List" and the "I'll Be Taking Those Huggies and Whatever Cash You've Got Memorial List." The purpose of "naming" the list is to acknowledge the one choice they consider most obvious, which they would theoretically both pick as their #1 if they didn't exclude it from consideration. Past examples include "The Overlook Hotel Memorial List" for the top five movies about hotels.

Right off the bat I knew they had "gotten" me, since Raising Arizona is currently listed as my #3 movie on Flickchart. Even though I secretly think it may be my favorite movie of all time.

And then:

Josh's top 5:

5. Jasper and Horace, 101 Dalmatians
4. Jacob, A Simple Plan
3. Professor Marcus, The Ladykillers
2. Jerry Lundegaard, Fargo
1. Dignan, Bottle Rocket

Adam's top 5:

5. Sam and Eddie, Safe Men
4. Holland and Pendlebury, The Lavender Hill Mob
3. Virgil Starkwell, Take the Money and Run
2. Ken Pile, A Fish Called Wanda
1. Jerry Lundegaard, Fargo

Of the nine different movies mentioned here (Fargo was mentioned by both), I've seen six. Of those six, four are among my top 300 movies of all time (A Fish Called Wanda, Fargo, A Simple Plan and Bottle Rocket), three in my top 100 (Plan, Fargo and Wanda) and two (Fargo and Wanda) in my top ten.

So yeah, I'd say I was pretty satisfied by this week's top five.

But as these things do, it also got me thinking: Am I drawn to movies about inept criminals?

If you had asked me that question without providing any of the evidence why you were asking, I'd have said "No, I don't think so. No more than anyone else, that's for sure."

But I wonder. Because those aren't the only favorites of mine that feature hapless hoods.

(And watch out for spoilers. If you see a name of a movie you haven't seen in bold, skip on to the next -- I may be spoiling something about it.)

Looking only at my current Flickchart top 20, you could make arguments for the following:

Pulp Fiction (#4). The guys eating their Big Kahuna burgers are pretty inept, considering that they got caught with their pants down, gunned down while eating burgers for breakfast. But then there's also the ineptitude of Vincent Vega blowing off Marvin's head because of a pothole -- this after he and his friend Jules forgot to check the back room for a gunman who should have killed them. And never mind the singular bone-headedness of Butch, whose unusual plan to screw over and subsequently escape the mob involves returning to his house when they're looking for him.

Glengarry Glen Ross (#11). When their priggish boss denies them the new Glengarry leads, Dave and Shelly decide to knock over their own office to steal them, planning to sell them to the competition. That plan is destined to fail in numerous ways, even if you remove the last part about selling the spoils of your theft in the same small industry where you already work -- where the police are most likely to look for it. 

Goodfellas (#12). Although you can't be inept and last in the mafia very long, in the end, everyone has a slip-up that results in their eventual whacking. Particular to this movie, however, most of the crew that pulled off the Lufthansa robbery gets whacked because they can't follow the simple instruction not to spend their newfound wealthy in showy ways that will attract attention.

Run Lola Run (#16). Mani blows an otherwise smooth and simple job to transport a bag of money when he leaves it on the subway, obeying an instinctive reaction to elude a pair of cops who aren't even looking for him. Later he walks into a grocery store to rob it without wearing anything that would conceal his identity. Meanwhile, Lola tries to rob a bank by holding her own father at gunpoint.

Unforgiven (#20). An old gunslinger goes on a mission to claim a bounty on a pair of thugs who beat and cut up a couple of prostitutes, but nearly dies from the flu because he got wet in the rain (and then beaten by the sheriff, but you kind of feel like the rain is what did him in). One of the two thugs is then shot to death on the toilet, a pathetic way to go even if it might not have been helped.

You could even argue that #19 The Shawshank Redemption contains a hapless criminal, because the actual killer of Andy Dufresne's wife boastfully confesses to the crime while in prison.

I guess you could say that almost any movie that has an element of crime in it has someone who isn't that good at it. So I don't want to stretch this too far.

But I can't help but notice all the titles of movies featuring hapless criminals as you continue down my list. Time Bandits (#21) might qualify. The Bicycle Thief (#26) definitely does. Though it does drop off after that. Maybe that's because #27 is Bound, and Bound contains a group of the smartest criminal types you've ever seen in a movie.

What to make of this concentration near the top of my list of movies about backfired criminal exploits?

I don't really know. Though it could mean I have a fascination with the best laid plans gone awry. Or maybe I just like watching people who have truly made a mess, comical or otherwise, of their lives, to remind myself that I needn't get too down on myself just because I don't know where I want to be in my career in ten years.

I'll have to think on it some more.

But this realization does partly explain why I'm so in love with Killing Them Softly, a film I seem to like more than anyone else on the planet other than Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman (who also rhapsodized over it). More than the criminal ineptitude that inspired this week's top five, though, Softly really demonstrates how all crime is destined to have consequences, even if the criminals carry it off with a decent amount of panache.

That and a bunch of stuff about Obama and the financial crisis, but we won't get into that right now.