A lot of the recent years I've written about have contained some sort of volatility in where I lived or what I was doing. Nineteen ninety-seven sort of breaks that trend. I lived in Providence, Rhode Island the entire year, where I served as the reporter for the Barrington Times, a weekly newspaper in an affluent community about 15 minutes from Providence. Even as I type this now, though, I realized there was sort of a big change mid-way through the year, when I was the interim editor of the newspaper for about three months, the summer months, while they sought a new permanent editor. For a while I thought that might be me, but let's be honest -- at age 23 going on 24, I didn't have the experience. Nor am I sure I really wanted the weight of an entire community newspaper on my shoulders, and all the Sisyphean tasks that involves. And the guy they brought in had been in newspapers for like 30 years. I ended up really liking him. (R.I.P.)
As for my former editor who left for greener pastures, well, I still send her Christmas cards to this day.
The year 1997 did contain another momentous occasion, though: That January, I made my first year-end movie list. It's the 25 years since January 1997 that I started celebrating at the beginning of this year, though of course now it's closer to 26 years ago. For those first few years, I hacked out the whole list at the end of the year, after I'd reached my cutoff date -- I can't remember if it was the date of the Oscar nominations at that point, in which case, it may have been early February. By the time I lived in New York I was definitely composing the list as I went, but at this point, I took all the films I had seen -- a relatively small number, as you will see in a minute -- and shaped them into one definitive ranking in one session of organizing. I prefer my current method obviously -- it works much better when you have more than 150 films -- but there was something pure about not thinking about it all year and then reaching definitive conclusions within a couple hours. Of course, "not thinking about it all year" became the problem and quickly put an end to this practice.
As for Titanic, well, watching it for the first time in theaters was one of the great moviegoing experiences of my entire life. Instead of rehashing that experience, I'll just refer you to when I wrote about it back in 2010. After that dizzying evening, no other movie had any hope.
Here are my favorite to least favorite films of 1997, as I ranked them in early 1998:
1. Titanic
2. Contact
3. Face/Off
4. Starship Troopers
5. Waiting for Guffman
6. Liar Liar
7. Donnie Brasco
8. Boogie Nights
9. The Full Monty
10. Private Parts
11. U-Turn
12. L.A. Confidential
13. Hercules
14. Men in Black
15. Breakdown
16. In the Company of Men
17. The Wings of the Dove
18. Wag the Dog
19. Air Force One
20. One Night Stand
21. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
22. Scream 2
23. Amistad
24. Fierce Creatures
25. Anaconda
26. subUrbia
27. Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion
28. Chasing Amy
29. I Know What You Did Last Summer
30. The Devil's Advocate
31. Night Falls on Manhattan
32. Volcano
33. Grosse Point Blank
34. She's So Lovely
35. In and Out
36. The Fifth Element
37. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
38. Addicted to Love
39. Speed 2: Cruise Control
And here is the order in which those movies rank out of 6145 movies currently on my Flickchart. Following the ranking is the percentage of the ranking out of 6145 and the number of slots they rose or fell on my Flickchart compared to the other movies from that year that I ranked at the time. A positive number indicates a comparative rise of that many slots, a negative number a fall.
1. Starship Troopers (46, 99%) 3
2. Titanic (61, 99%) -1
3. Boogie Nights (107, 98%) 5
4. Contact (190, 97%) -2
5. Breakdown (305, 95%) 10
6. Face/Off (369, 94%) -3
7. Men in Black (413, 93%) 7
8. L.A. Confidential (452, 93%) 4
9. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (498, 92%) 12
10. Liar Liar (504, 92%) -4
11. The Full Monty (555, 91%) -2
12. Donnie Brasco (600, 90%) -5
13. Waiting for Guffman (688, 89%) -8
14. Hercules (1114, 82%) -1
15. The Wings of the Dove (1171, 81%) 2
16. Private Parts (1301, 79%) -6
17. In the Company of Men (1635, 73%) -1
18. U-Turn (1937, 68%) -7
19. Fierce Creatures (2077, 66%) 5
20. Air Force One (2243, 63%) -1
21. One Night Stand (2592, 58%) -1
22. Amistad (2638, 57%) 1
23. Anaconda (3196, 48%) 2
24. Chasing Amy (3207, 48%) 4
25. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (3286, 47%) 2
26. Scream 2 (3410, 45%) -4
27. Night Falls on Manhattan (3980, 35%) 4
28. Suburbia (4118, 33%) -2
29. Wag the Dog (4230, 31%) -11
30. The Devil's Advocate (4255, 31%) 0
31. Grosse Point Blank (4872, 21%) 2
32. In & Out (4970, 19%) 3
33. The Fifth Element (5036, 18%) 3
34. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (5061, 18%) 3
35. I Know What You Did Last Summer (5317, 13%) -6
36. Volcano (5406, 12%) -4
37. Addicted to Love (5415, 12%) 1
38. Speed 2: Cruise Control (5794, 6%) 1
39. She's So Lovely (5837, 5%) -5
Five best movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Cube, The Ice Storm, The Sweet Hereafter, Taste of Cherry, Ulee's Gold
Five worst movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, B.A.P.S., Batman & Robin, Booty Call, Jungle 2 Jungle
Biggest risers: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (+12), Breakdown (+10), Men in Black (+7)
Biggest fallers: Wag the Dog (-11), Waiting for Guffman (-8), U-Turn (-7)
Stayed the same: The Devil's Advocate (30th)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 58.72% (2 of 11 so far)
I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about my lowest ranked film of the year, which deserves an asterisk. I've written about this before as well, but it's worth giving it a second explanation here, rather than just a link. I "watched" Speed 2 on a plane trip to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding. These were the days when there was only one movie playing on a communal screen, and you had to pay for the headphones. I didn't pay for the headphones but watched most of the movie without sound. That I could a) actually say I saw it, and b) decide that it was the worst movie I "saw," now both seem extremely short-sighted. Nonetheless, I cannot go back and correct the record, I can only present it with this asterisk. (I have since officially watched the movie and I found it merely mediocre. It hasn't risen that much on Flickchart yet but at least it is no longer in the bottom slot for this year.)
It's also interesting to note that Starship Troopers seems like a bit of an odd #1 for the year, even though I know I love it and even though I know that in the past ten years, that love has increased significantly from an already high level. I think in a straight duel between Titanic and Starship Troopers I might pick Titanic, but then again I might not. It might depend on the day.
Overall I was surprised that this was my #2 year overall, behind only 1999, in terms of the strength of these films on Flickchart, with that very high average of 58.72%. I always think of 1999 as an incredibly strong year, but rarely think of 1997 as such. Given that my highest two years so far are pre-2000, I'm wondering if it gives credence to a couple notions, namely that the older a film is, the rosier it is in my eyes, or maybe just that these older films have had the time to settle in as undisputed classics, where the more recent years wouldn't have had the same amount of time. Those two things may sort of be the same thing.
In terms of risers, I think it wasn't possible in 1997 to know how much the first Austin Powers movie, and to a lesser extent Men in Black, would endure in the culture, and in my own affections. (I don't mean that Men in Black has endured less, just that it was more obvious at the time that it would probably endure.) I was actually surprised to see them as low as they were. The other biggest riser is Breakdown, the great and under-discussed Kurt Russell trucker thriller, which I know can go a lot higher than #305 on my chart if it gets the right duels.
In terms of fallers, I was surprised that Wag the Dog had this far to fall considering that I think of myself as always disliking it -- or more to the point, always finding it very self-congratulatory. I wouldn't have guessed that it was in the upper half of my list in 1997, ahead of such films as the aforementioned Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. I still think of myself as cherishing Waiting for Guffman, but given my increasing disappointment with Christopher Guest's films after this, it has likely suffered in retrospect. U-Turn was always a film I liked more than other people did, and I think over time I have internalized the other perspectives on it. (I did rewatch it and I still liked it pretty well, but realized my own initial assessment of it was inflated.)
Okay I've only got one more of these to go! I wrap with 1996 in December.
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