I was actually so excited about my title for this year that I almost wrote it in my 1983 title slot by accident. Because I was watching the winner for 82 (much-deserved unlike 83's nonsense) and one of the characters says something like, "how can a little brown man capture the hearts of so many people?" And I was like, "oh man! Just like the other iconic movie from this year about the extra terrestrial...what up!" That's probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me in weeks. Ah the life of the unemployed bachelor bum. Well thankfully, there's only one movie that's TBD for this year, because I'm still watching it. And it began with some synthetic music and what sounded like bad dubbing or bad ADR. So I figured I might have to multi-task to get through it. Before I get to that I'd like to say a word about another movie that came out this year: Blade Runner. You might be surprised, but I'm not the biggest fan. It's good and I like it, but just because it portrays the future as trashy and gross doesn't make it a great movie. Interesting, yes. Gutsy? Perhaps. One of the greatest sci-fi epics of all time? Nope. Right then, let's get on with it.
And what better place to begin than with everybody's favorite little brown guy: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Why oh why didn't it come out in 83? Then it might've had a shot, because sadly this year was pretty much a done deal before the awards were even announced (much like 84, 96, 97, and 2003. Check 'em!). I believe Spielberg called this his personal favorite of the films that he has made, and though it's obviously not his best work from a film perspective, it's certainly the most uplifting, heart-warming, and aesthetically pleasing. I'm oddly positive today...I began penning my autobiography last night so I guess that gave me a nice jolt. I'm sure I'll blather more about that later, for now let's talk about the movie. I'm ashamed to say I've only seen the 20th Anniversary Edition so I probably should've watched the original before I wrote this, just for the sake of being proper. The only main difference I remember is that they replaced the shotguns the cops are holding as E.T. makes his escape with radios. I go back and forth on whether I like that decision, because on one hand they wouldn't pull shotguns on a bunch of kids. But on the other hand, E.T. had some mojo in him and the cops didn't see the scenes with the Reese's Pieces so they might have felt threatened. Past all of that, this movie is just straight up charming. It features one of John Williams' most iconic and emotional scores, which is saying a lot considering his collected works over the years. Also, there's a stuffed animal of Yoda in the closet at one point and when he shows up, a little bit of Yoda's Theme plays. That's freaking awesome. Anyway, in case you don't know, the movie's about an adorable alien dude who is found by a lonely little kid and the kid helps him contact his home world so that he can be rescued. It has all of that potentially-cheesy plotlines about the alien helping the kid cope with his loneliness, and how all of this ties in to the kid growing up and moving on with his problems and such. This just goes to show you that the cheesiest of material can be absolutely outstanding when done correctly. The movie also features Drew Barrymore's first role, or first major role anyway. It's still her best role since she's usually just annoying now and though attractive, not attractive enough to make up for how annoying she is. I'm being a bit hard on her, I usually like her in most things. What's wrong with me today? Any more of this nonsense and I'll have to change my title to "The Understanding Critic" and that's not even alliterative! Okay, let's have a bottom line: if you haven't seen this movie there's something wrong with you. So fix that. It's wonderful. And if it had come out against anything other than a sure thing, it might've had a shot.
Now on to what was apparently a movie so controversial that it was only re-released to the public in 2006: Missing. Make no mistake, it's not that exciting. At least the first forty minutes aren't. And it wasn't controversial due to nudity or violence, so that's also boring. Because then at least you can say, "oh man! I can't believe they got away with that in 19xx!" It was controversial because it put forth some ideas about government cover-ups in the name of capitalism and yadda yadda. Boy there's an original idea. Some people who are suspicious of the government and think capitalism is bad. Man, they're so brave to be making a movie about that. Especially since there was never an entire decade of music, movies, and TV devoted to that. I'm just in awe. Well let's hit some merits before I go on a diatribe: well-written, and well-acted by Jack Lemmon. Sissy Spacek is a little annoying, but she's usually annoying to me. She does a good job too, but the accent gets me down. Anyway, the movie is about a journalist who goes missing during a right-wing regime takeover in Chile in the 70s. And the journalist's dad comes down to try to help find him. Prediction: by the end of the movie his political tune will be changing and he'll be branding a figurative peace symbol into his forehead. When the movie finishes, I'll put a sentence at the end of this paragraph confirming or denying. Let me take this opportunity to make a non-political political statement. I'd be the first one to tell you that the government is sketchy sometimes, but without every bit of information they have I can't say with absolute certainty that I wouldn't make the same decision. In addition: sometimes they don't have all the information or they have bad information, just like anybody. So I'm not sure what goes down in this movie, but it'll probably be one of those things. And who knows how many claims are legit anyway? One thing I do know is that if the government actually wanted to take over everything, who exactly would stop them? I'm thinking nobody, unless the Avengers have been biding their time and pretending to be fictional. Oh look! 24 minutes left in the movie and Jack Lemmon is starting to show signs of sounding like his son, whose politics he initially opposed. Nailed it!
Now here's a movie I thought would be silly, and it was. But I still liked it: Tootsie. It's a comedy, but I rarely laughed out loud during it. I still quite enjoyed it though, for whatever reason. Largely due to Dustin Hoffman's charming performance as Michael Dorsey: an actor who can't get a role as a man, so he dresses as a woman. The decision does seem a bit abrupt since it goes right from his agent telling him he doesn't have a hope of getting a job in that town, and the next second he's walking down the street as a girl. Although I suppose it's better to just cut to the chase instead of wasting a scene on some ridiculous scene that gives him the idea (like on House when he sees ice melting or something and thus figures out the ailment. It's only charming when it's episodic). I also kind of recognized with the guy, because he was pouring his heart and soul into every audition and everybody told him he wasn't good enough. So what did he do? He took it to the extreme, and that's what you need to do sometimes. Just like how I'd like to change my name to "Squatting Frog" so that people will think I'm Native American and I can get a job interview. Outcome 1: they're too embarrassed to ask how much of it is in my blood and I'm good to go. Outcome 2: they're not too embarrassed and I tell them I have none of the blood in me, but that I'm making a statement because I feel for the plight of the tribes of old. They'll love that. It's an ingenius plan really. Anyway, the movie takes the usual turn wherein he falls in love with his female co-worker on his soap opera but of course he can't reveal this without losing his job and so on and so forth. It's fairly predictable, but still charming. And I totally bought Hoffman as a woman, although not an attractive one. He reminded me of Alice from The Brady Bunch. So it was mildly ridiculous when several men were after her, I mean him...see even I made that mistake! When they were after him it was mildly ridiculous but at the same time I guess the men weren't too dashing themselves so it sort of makes sense. I could've done without the "Go Tootsie Go!" song that showed up at points, but that's really my only problem with the movie. It didn't reek of the decade as much as I thought it would. It even turned out to be quite touching at times, so it's a nice little movie. Not a winner, to be sure. But I suppose it's nice to see a movie of its type get some recognition every now and again anyway.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the other good movies from this year is The Verdict. Cynical Domenic loves this movie, so that's refreshing. All of this being positive and talking about charming movies almost thawed my heart of ice, that's no good! Next thing you know I'll start caring about things and it'll be like that time that the Brain could've taken over the world but decided not to because Pinky made him feel all happy inside. Ah well, perhaps it's time to leave the curmudgeon behind, it's not like it's helped me out a whole lot. So we'll give this "being nice" thing a shot for a bit anyway. But only after we talk about this movie, which is awesome. It's about an ambulance-chaser (for those of you not in the know, that means a lawyer who's only interested in making money by finding wronged clients with easy cases. AKA most lawyers). Well this particular lawyer, played by Paul Newman in a largely overlooked and still outstanding performance, is on another one of these cases. He's an alcoholic and he's pretty much got no soul at the beginning of the movie. Gradually, he begins to fight for the case for "the right reasons" instead of just his own selfish purposes. But this isn't played in quite the way you might expect. He's frightened at this prospect. After all, it's a bit of a catch-22. He only stays with the case because he cares but he might only be able to win the case if he doesn't care. If you start caring, you start screwing up. The film wisely blends elements of character study and courtroom drama to create a really well-done piece of work. And (spoiler alert!) at the end of the movie they never tell you what the verdict is, you just see the phone ringing and him picking it up. I loved that, because it really wasn't relevant. What was relevant was whether or not he was capable of redemption. And the fact that he actually cared about the verdict beyond his own payment. Or did he? And if he did, will he stay that way? Only good movies cause you to ask questions. Well, that's not true. Bad movies cause you to ask: "why did that guy do that? Why did they make this movie? Why did I get suckered into watching this nonsense?" So I'll say that only good movies make you ask good questions.
This year's well-deserving winner doesn't raise or cause many questions but it tells a great story about as well as it could've been told. The movie is Gandhi, and it's a highly impressive piece of work. It's kind of a classically done film: herds of extras, relatively simple story drawn out and done wonderfully, great music score, etc. Ben Kingsley looks freakishly like the title man, and I mean freakishly. Apparently some locals thought he was the ghost of Gandhi, walking around. When I originally watched the film I was bothered that it didn't include some of his sketchier early days, but now I just don't care and I think it would've bogged down the film. Okay seriously, is someone slipping me pills? Because we're rapidly approaching that scene where the Grinch saves Christmas and whatnot. Much like a lot of other great movies, I really don't have a lot to say about this one. Career-making performance from Kingsley that rightly got the award. Incredibly well-directed by Richard Attenborough who also rightly got the award. You know the story, a man in India used peaceful protest to gain independence from Britain for his country. Isn't that the same Britain that occasionally gets on America's case for being oppressive and sketchy? And when does this movie take place? The 20th century you say? Yeah, there are few countries on the planet that have any business telling any other countries that they're being oppressive and sketchy, and Britain has no right whatsoever. Normally, I like to look at both sides of historical things. Especially when it's in a movie. But Britain was just straight up a bunch of douches in India, and they're lucky that it took a peaceful protest to get them out of there instead of a bunch of fighting (which also took place and is portrayed well within the movie). I feel like movies of this caliber should just get a whole separate set of awards. Because nobody has a shot against them. I know it's a long movie, but more people should really take an afternoon or a Saturday morning and watch a lot of these films. Because they're often the best that filmmaking has to offer, and exemplify the very qualities of humanity and the arts that should be recorded and remembered. Running time isn't automatically good though. Pearl Harbor sucks.
Even in 1982 you can't hide from me Michael Bay. Well, I hope you enjoyed this unusually positive (by comparison) entry in the escapade. Maybe these past weeks of sitting around the house have humbled me slightly. Maybe now that I'm writing a hilarious autobiography with some sort of narrative makes me happy because it gives me a purpose. Or maybe the viewers of the Truman-esque TV show that is my life got sick of my negativity and pumped laughing gas into the house. That's probably it. Well I can't say what state my mind will be in for the next entry, but it will contain commies, old people, and FREAKING INDIANA JONES! That's right, Indiana Jones. Pretty much the last iconic and awesome hero to brave the Academy's doorstep, should be awesome.
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