In 1996, I started keeping a record of movies I’d seen, with the first entry on November 20. I thought it might be interesting (hopefully) to look back at what I thought about the films I saw through the end of that year.

At the beginning, I wrote notes like the ones below expressing my reactions to the films, but by mid-year of 2001 I’d basically stopped doing so. Since then, I’ve continued to keep a log of everything I see by listing when and where seen, the title and director. So basically just a list. I regret not continuing these notes, which would have made for a more complete record.

Just to clarify, when I mention a Sony theater, those are now AMCs.  Tape refers to VHS video tape (yes, this was the distant analog past).  Films titles are in all-caps, as opposed to the italics I use now. Except for minor edits, I’ve left these entries as they were, though I’ve added posters for a little color.

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11/20. THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Saw this at Sony Lincoln Square. Written & directed by Anthony Minghella, whose work I don’t know. Liked it a lot. Felt very intelligent and emotional. Kristin Scott Thomas, especially, was great, a very strong presence. Juliette Binoche was good, but her character felt somewhat peripheral to the main story, which I took to be about the Ralph Fiennes character and his love affair with Thomas. Though I realize it probably parallels that story line, or counterpoints it in some way I didn’t really get it, at least not in the gut. The only time I felt it went really off track for me was when it left Fiennes and Willem Dafoe and followed Binoche and the Indian guy, Kip, for awhile. But I guess even that fits the theme, which I think was about how names, nationalities, languages, countries finally don’t matter in the face of love. Now I’ll read some of the reviews to see what those takes are like.

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11/21. Watched BAD BOYS on tape last night and today. Michael Bay went on to direct THE ROCK, which I thought was pretty good. This one is not so good, though I suppose it does what it sets out to do. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence swapping identities to fool witness Tea Leoni was lame and stupid, quite illogical. Of course, I usually find mistaken identity gambits in movies very irritating, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. But it was comic padding for this movie. Will Smith actually has a strong presence. Would like to see him do something serious. He and Lawrence play off each other okay, but I’d like to have seen it reined in some. Tea Leoni has great legs, which were constantly exposed by the very short skirts she wore. The action sequences were okay but not great, sort of second-rate John Woo. ** Watched first 10-15 minutes of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN video I bought earlier today. It’s sort of the last hurrah of Universal horror movies of the 30s & early 40s. If I remember rightly, this is the one where Larry Talbot gets cured.__________________________________________________________

11/22. Saw STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT this afternoon at Sony 84th. The Variety review led me to believe it was going to be better than it was. It was okay, very good technically, but really too fast. There was no down time, no time for reflection or much characterization. Of course, I guess by now the characters are all a given value. They played fast and loose with the time travel premise. The business of the bullets from the machine gun Picard used on the holodeck being lethal was pretty illogical, plus his one line explanation for why they worked. Alfre Woodard brought some real intensity to her role. Patrick Stewart was more physical this time around, particularly in the climactic scene when he’s wearing a sleeveless top. Alice Krige’s Borg queen was pretty intriguing. She brought a creepy sexuality to the role, though of course the make-up helped. While it was much better than the last movie, it still played more like a TV episode, particularly when compared to STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN or #4 THE VOYAGE HOME. I guess my main objection is that it moved too fast, felt rushed. It was like there was too much story for the amount of time and budget they had. Nevertheless, it was entertaining and I’m sure there’ll be another. Doubt that it’s going to bring many new Trek fans into the fold, though. ** Watched a little more of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, but didn’t have much patience with it tonight.

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11/23. THE WAR AT HOME, directed by Emilio Estevez. Saw this at Sony Lincoln Square this afternoon. From a play called Homefront, this is set in 1972, about a Vietnam vet played by Estevez and his difficulties fitting back into his family, which includes Martin Sheen as his father, Kathy Bates as his mother, and Kimberly Williams as his sister. But it’s also about the “war” that’s going on among the rest of the family members as well. Not bad, though feels like a stage play at times, which I guess reflects the source material. Interesting watching Sheen and Estevez play father & son,  since they’re father & son in real life. There are a number of scenes of real emotional intensity, when you feel like some truth is being revealed, but the whole thing doesn’t quite come together. Don’t think the hallucinatory combat flashbacks quite worked, either. Estevez pulling a gun on Sheen at the climax, and saying that he was trying to kill Sheen with every person he killed in Vietnam, also seemed like too much to me. There’s a cheat as well with the gun, because we’d earlier seen Estevez loading the pistol, but when he finally pulls the trigger on his father, it’s empty. Obviously he’d unloaded it in the interim, but it was a manipulation. Nevertheless, I liked it, though it feels a little dated. Jeez, isn’t Vietnam still a topic? ** Finished watching HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. What a hodgepodge. Still kind of fun, though.

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11/24. SHINE, directed by Scott Hicks. Australian film about real-life pianist David Helfgott, his repressive, controlling father (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his early life as a prodigy, his mental breakdown, and the start of his recovery, or resurrection. The adult Helfgott’s manerisms I found irritating, though I think I was supposed to find them eccentrically charming. I mean, I saw the damaged person, but was frequently put off, maybe frightened, by his condition and behavior. At one point I almost left, when it was obvious that he wasn’t going to stand up, on screen at least, to the emotional abusiveness of his father. Still, it’s well-acted and put together. The scene where he plays the “Rach 3” and basically has his breakdown is pretty powerful. John Guilgud is great, as usual, as his teacher at the Royal College of Music in London. I wasn’t blown away, though, by the movie overall. ** Also watched John Woo’s THE KILLER on laser disk last night. Been a while since I’d seen the entire thing. Pretty neat. ** Watched Woo’s HARD-BOILED on laser tonight. It’s funny, but while this one is more hard-core, I think THE KILLER is more emotionally involving. They make quite a pair, though. Now I have to watch them both again, this time listening to the commentary tracks. I wish Criterion would do one of these for BULLET IN THE HEAD.

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11/25. Watched HEAT on laser disk tonight. I really like this movie. The action sequences are very exciting. Mann’s use of music is really effective, that cool, ominous drone-like stuff with snakey percussion lines underneath it. I suppose on a literal level the shootout on the street after the bank job is absurd, but it’s quite amazing nonetheless, and has a very physical feel.

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11/26. Walked out of JINGLE ALL THE WAY about half-way through yesterday (11/25). Might’ve been partly my mood, which didn’t feel too humorous, but this seemed to be an incredibly badly done film, particularly for Arnold. He’s generally much sharper about the films he appears in. His performance was especially bad, very broad, exaggerated and insincere. Both he and Phil Hartman were acting as though they were in a SNL sketch. Rita Wilson’s performance was more realistically grounded. It was fun seeing the MPLS-St.Paul locations in the exteriors, but that’s about it. This film needed a much more deft touch. I knew it was off from the opening credits. Wished I’d given it a whole shot, but sitting in that cold, mostly empty theater (Coronet) watching this amazingly out of touch movie was more than I wanted to do at the moment. Maybe I’ll catch it on video someday, though I doubt that it turned around from what I’d seen up to the point I bailed out.

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11/28. Saw THE CRUCIBLE yesterday at Sony Lincoln Square. Liked it. Rob Campbell, who I’d never heard of before, was quite effective in supporting role of Rev. Hale. It builds to a quite emotional moment when Day-Lewis and the other two women are on the gallows at the end. The preceding scene, when Day-Lewis finally refuses to give a false confession in order to save himself, is also quite strong. ** Saw HYPE! again last night. David & I went. The movie didn’t impress quite as much as when I’d seen it at the Cinerock series at Walter Reade, but that may be partly due to the sound problems at the Sony State where we saw it. Also seems like there was a number missing from it this time, though have no idea what. I remember when I saw it first time there was a song played that really knocked me out, the song & performance, but wasn’t there this time. Don’t know if I’m right about this, though. ** Watched THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR on laser disk earlier tonight. Had ordered it without having seen it, which is kind of a risk, but it came highly recommended in the “Sex & Zen” book. Liked it, though I think it would be best appreciated on a big screen. Brigitte Lin is quite a presence.

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11/29. Watched John Sayles’ EIGHT MEN OUT on tape tonight. It’s a good film, but not nearly as good as I’d remembered, or thought I’d remembered. I particularly didn’t like the music score, even though it sounded like period music, still found it irritating. Found it confusing trying to follow all the ins and outs of the fix and subsequent trial. David Strathairn was great, as usual.

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11/30. MARS ATTACKS sneak preview at Sony Village 7 earlier tonight. Thought this was great. The opening scene and main title sequence was breathtaking, particularly with Danny Elfman’s music. Felt it slowed down some then, took awhile to get rolling, but the strength of the opening carried me until things took off. Nicholson’s performance as the President wasn’t as broad as I’d thought it might be, based on the trailers I’d seen. His second role as the Vegas guy didn’t work so well, not sure why they did that. Will be interesting to see how this does. Might be a little too weird for a mass audience, don’t know. It’s much better than INDEPENDENCE DAY, but I doubt the millions who saw that will carry over to this one.

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12/3. ZERO KELVIN at Film Forum. Norwegian film about a young writer in 1925 who goes to a fur trapping outpost in Greenland where he’s supposed to spend a year with two guys who have been there awhile. Interesting movie. I was tired today, so probably as alert as I’d liked to have been, but it kept my attention. Wouldn’t be a smart movie to see in the winter.

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12/6. EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU at Sony Lincoln Square. Woody Allen’s musical comedy. Pretty inventive, but not great. Didn’t like the aspect of Allen’s daughter eavesdropping on Julia Roberts’ therapy sessions and giving the information to him so he could score with Roberts. Found that kind of offensive, at least the fact that the movie just accepted that it was okay, or at least didn’t comment on that aspect of it. Maybe I’m being a little uptight about it. Also the scene where Tim Roth’s ex-con character comes to Goldie Hawn’s birthday party and is so crudely aggressive toward the women, particularly Drew Barrymore, that also made me uncomfortable. I know it was being played for laughs, but maybe that’s part of what bothered me. But there’s lots to like in the movie, especially the scene near the end with Goldie Hawn and Allen dancing by the Seine. Found the extremely affluent lifestyle of all the characters a little irritating, but maybe that’s because it’s not remotely mine. Go see it anyway. You’ll like it.

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12/7. RIDICULE at Lincoln Plaza. Directed by Patrice Laconte (MONSIEUR HIRE). Cast: Charles Berling (Ponceludon de Malavoy), Judith Godreche (Mathilde de Bellegarde), Jean Rochefort (Marquis de Bellegarde), Fanny Ardant (Madame de Blayac), Bernard Giraudeau (Abbot de Vilecourt). * I really liked this one. About life at the court of Versailles a few years before the Revolution, and how important it was to one’s survival there to possess a quick and cutting wit. The story’s about Ponceludon’s efforts to get a grant from the king to drain the swamps to save lives from mosquitos and malaria, and how he’s willing to ingratiate himself at Versailles to do this. He’s a really sharp witted guy, and Jean Rochefort takes him under his wing, plus he falls in love with Rochefort’s beautiful, willful daughter Mathilde, who spends much of her time trying to perfect a diving suit. This stuff with the diving suit is really unexpected and quite wonderful. This movie was a real pleasure to sit through. Odd thing at the beginning, before the main title credits we see this guy go into the dark room of an enfeebled aristocrat, who we learn was renowned for his cutting wit at court, piss on this old man for a remark made years before that humiliated this guy. What I found curious is that we get a close shot of the man undoing his trousers and pulling out his cock, which I suppose was a prosthetic and not his real dick, then shots from an angle showing the stream of piss. I’m wondering why they showed the cock, when the action could have been clearly conveyed without doing so. Maybe it was supposed to provide a real jolt at that point, and really break the decorum of the language being spoken, etc. Whatever. Great movie. Would like to find out if it’s based on actual characters and events.

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12/8. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN on laser disc. Was anxious to get this laser disc, since it has a bunch of supplementary materials, mainly a running commentary by Mel Brooks on one of the alternate tracks. Just watched it straight today, plus some of the supplementary stuff. Anxious now to watch it again listening to what Brooks has to say. Still think some of the pacing, mainly in terms of Gene Wilder’s reactions, is a little off, too long. These moments fall flat for me, but basically it’s a great movie.

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12/13. MARS ATTACKS again at Lincoln Square with my friend David. He didn’t like it that much, expected it to be much funnier. This time around it especially seems to take too long to get rolling after the knockout main title sequence. I still like it a lot, but it’s a pretty loose movie.

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12/14. JERRY MAGUIRE at Lincoln Square. Written & directed by Cameron Crowe. Tom Cruise (Jerry Maguire), Cuba Gooding Jr (Rod Tidwell), Renee Zellweger (Dorothy Boyd), Bonnie Hunt (Laurel Boyd), Jonathan Lipnicki (Ray Boyd). Really liked this. Feels like one of Cruise’s best performances, and it’s refreshing to see him play a character who’s not on top of everything, not so sure of himself, not so cocky. He’s a good actor who’s slowly starting to get some respect, I think, beyond just his good looks and ability to sell movies. Cuba Gooding is amazing, gives a really larger than life performance. Really liked Renee Zellweger and this kid Lipnicki, who plays her son. His character is maybe a little too good to be true, but very sweet and fresh nonetheless. Wasn’t sure why it was the Jay Mohr character (Bob Sugar) who fires Cruise, and not his boss from the agency, or someone more clearly a superior. I got really emotionally involved in Cruise’s relationship with Zellweger, which was nicely free of the more usual movie & sitcom complications, and very much wanted things to work out for them. There probably wasn’t any doubt that things would turn out okay, but the movie didn’t get there through the usual paths.

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12/20. SCREAM. Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Kevin Williamson. Neve Campbell (Sydney Prescott), Courtney Cox (Gale Weathers), Skeet Ulrich (Billy Loomis), Drew Barrymore (Casey Becker). Thought this was pretty good. Sometimes when the slasher-movie nut guys were talking about movie stuff, it wasn’t always credible they’d be talking and acting like they were, given the circumstances of the actual killings going on; then again, who knows. Also thought it was distracting having Henry Winkler turn up as the school principal, and felt it was clumsy the two times he startled himself in the mirror in his office. Nevertheless, this pretty much pulled off the trick of balancing self-referential stuff about horror movies with genuine horror movie action and tension. Plus the performances were committed enough to generate some real anxiety and emotion. The ghost mask the killer wore was just great. Thought this was better than Craven’s last film, NEW NIGHTMARE, which was also a horror movie about horror movies. This one managed to have it both ways; i.e. making fun of slasher movie conventions, while at the same time using them in a very real way. Pretty clever, but more than that. Lots of blood.

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12/20. THE GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI. Directed by Rob Reiner. Written by Lewis Colick. Alec Baldwin (Bobby DeLaughter), Whoopie Goldberg (Myrlie Evers), James Woods (Bryon De La Beckwith). Really flat, predictable, boring, and somewhat offensive. The courtroom scenes are particularly flat and tedious. Woods is great, though more effective, I think, in the scenes set in 1963, when he doesn’t have all that old age makeup to distract me. The makeup is great, but I know it’s a special effect. Baldwin is good, but his character is yet another white man who saves the day in a movie ostensibly about injustices suffered by blacks. A lot of the dialogue is really bad. Near the end of the movie, Whoopi tells Baldwin he reminds her of Medgar. I wonder how that’s going to go over? There’s a lot of “message” dialogue. One of the biggest problems for me was that the state didn’t really make it’s case against Beckwith. We see Beckwith shoot Evers at the beginning of the movie, so in terms of the movie, he did it, no question. Plus he’s obviously an unregenerate scumbag, though compared to the rest of the cast, probably the most interesting character on screen (though Craig T. Nelson & William H. Macy are really strong in their roles). But it’s interesting, and quite problematic to me, that the closing argument given by one of Beckwith’s lawyers (Bill Smitrovich) is more effective and makes more legal sense than Baldwin’s. It’s hard to get around the idea that the law has to apply to Beckwith as well as anybody else, otherwise what does it mean? It’ll be interesting to see how this movie does. What’s too bad is that it’s a powerful story, but the filmmakers really botched the telling of it.

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12/21. BEAVIS & BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA. I enjoyed this, laughed out loud several times, and was generally amused. Had doubts Mike Judge could sustain the B&B schtick for 80 minutes. It works pretty well, but you’ve got to be into it to start with. It’s extremely anally oriented. Beavis, wired and out of control on amphetamines, is pretty funny. Robert Stack was funny doing the voice of an ATF agent leading a pursuit of these clueless dolts. The thing is, it’s hard not to feel some affection for them.

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12/24. LA CEREMONIE. Directed by Claude Chabrol. Really enjoyed this. Reminded me a lot of earlier Chabrol films from the 70s, except for the level of violence that the movie ends with. The main character, a servant named Sophie, is largely an unexplained character, which makes her all the more unsettling. She seems truly deranged, but in a very private, tightly wrapped way, unlike Isabelle Huppert’s character who seems more understandable, someone strongly acting out anti-social impulses. Sophie seems more like a different species of life. There’s a lot more I could say about this movie, and maybe will later, but don’t feel like it right now.

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12/25. MESSAGE TO LOVE-ISLE OF WIGHT 1970 FESTIVAL. The music is mediocre at best, with the exception of The Who, Miles Davis, and Jimi Hendrix. The film is uninteresting visually and in its editing. The focus is on how the festival was a financial disaster, on the collision between the Sixties peace & love philosophy given lip-service by the spoiled hippies in attendance and the profit-motive realities of the music business. It’s interesting to contrast this film with WOODSTOCK, about the 1969 festival of the year before. WOODSTOCK was edited in such a way as to show all the light and beauty and positive vibes of the festival and its music and the flower children who were there, whereas this film reflects a decidedly cynical, negative view. It’s probably a little closer to the reality, but there’s still nothing objective about it.

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12/26. MICHAEL. Not so good. Of interest only for John Travolta as the literal angel of the title. The trailers had led me to expect something a little edgier. Nice to see what purported to be Iowan landscapes. Looked accurate enough. This is closer to the poor quality of Ephron’s earlier film MIXED NUTS, though not quite the disaster that one was. In any event, makes SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE seem like more of an accident than anything else. Travolta’s great, but that’s not enough.

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12/27. BEAVIS & BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA. Saw this again with David.It holds up pretty well on second viewing.

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12/27. LONE WOLF & CUB – SWORD OF VENGEANCE. Bought laser disc on spec. Turned out to be only average. Also, while the sub-titling is very good, the picture is soft. Some of the violence is good, but the guy who plays Lone Wolf doesn’t have much appeal.

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12/28. PALE RIDER on laser disc. I find this a very repeatable film. When I saw it in the theater I think I wasn’t all that impressed, but have changed my mind over the years. The plot parallels to SHANE are pretty obvious, but it’s not like it’s a rip-off. The supernatural aspects, never explained or confirmed, are quite intriguing.

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12/29. ALIENS on laser disc. Still works.

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12/30. SOME MOTHER’S SON. Saw this mainly for Helen Mirren. She’s good, as usual, but the story’s a bit predictable. Also felt a little flat in the telling. Maybe they were trying to avoid sensationalizing the material. Or maybe the fact that I’ve got a cold prevented me from giving this movie it’s due. Don’t think so, though. Not sure what I was supposed to take away from it.

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12/31. GOOD FELLAS on laser disc.

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I was obviously running out of steam near the end, as evidenced by the progressively minimal comments. What strikes me now is how few of these films had any staying power, in the sense that they’ve been basically forgotten. I suppose this is true of any year. Heat, Aliens, Young Frankenstein, and Goodfellas are still around. Bad Boys and Scream spawned numerous sequels (I’m loathe to use the term “franchise” when it comes to film series). I think The Crucible, Eight Men Out, and Ridicule are worth reviving. It would be nice to see them at a repertory house, such as Film Forum. Until then, there’s always streaming.

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See you next time. Stay tuned. — Ted Hicks

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