Patri's Favorite Movies

Note: While these opinions don't really have spoilers, they make reference to some plot elements. If you prefer to go into movies without having heard anything, go back from whence you came before letting your eye wander any further. Like to here. Or here. I warned you, you should be going back now. OK, you deserve it - at the end, it turns out that she's his half-sister (making their sexual relationship incestuous), the two main characters are actually just halves of a split personality, and they both drive over a cliff at the end and die, which doesn't really matter cuz he'd been dead since the end of the first scene.

• My Favorite Movie: Dangerous Liaisons: Pretty costumes, wicked seducers and seductresses, John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Michelle Pfeiffer, wanton young women, senseless tragedy, love/hate relationships, manipulation and deep psychology, womanizers falling in love with their victims, and, in the end, redemption through love.
• Pick for best movie of the 90's: The Shawshank Redemption. Cinematography, acting, imagery, symbolism, this movie had it all. Wow.
• Best Movie I Saw in 2000: Scent Of A Woman. Yes, I know it came out years ago.
• Favorites of 1999:
  • American Beauty: This was a wacked out piece of social commentary, and I happened to agree with most of what it said, so naturally I loved it. It was pro on exercise, marijuana, and finding satisfaction in your career, and anti the suburban america SUV consumerist culture of emptiness.
  • Sixth Sense: A brilliant concept executed flawlessly. Not particularly deep or meaningful, but fluff just doesn't get any closer to perfection.
  • South Park: This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.
  • Being John Malkovich: I didn't merely like it because was an absurdly original and very odd film. I see lots of original, odd films. It was the strange type of sexual deviancy that I really loved.
• Of 1998:
  • Pleasantville: My artistic soul was delighted by a film that united its visual imagery, characterization, and plot development with such a brilliant device. My political side was fascinated by the allegorical portrayal of our cultures movement from the 50's to the 60's. My love for the surreal adored the pocket universe concept. My idealism and sense of justice were manipulated superbly.
  • Bulworth: My favorite political movie. Those who are unable to suspend disbelief will probably hate it.
• Of 1997: Devil's Advocate: Delightfully slow development.
• Musical Movie Experience: Fantasia / Fantasia 2000 . I love seeing well-done combinations of music and visuals (which music videos rarely are), and this is the towering giant of the genre. A great combination of actual stories and abstract pretty things, plus wonderful music. If only more people were doing this kind of work.
• To get drunk and cry while watching: Leaving Las Vegas: A touching portrait of a relationship between two needy people that is doomed from the start. Hey look, Elizabeth Shue can act (when she isn't cast as a ditz)! My favorite line is "I don't remember whether my wife left me because I started drinking, or whether I started drinking because my wife left me", because he isn't joking. The music is lovely (that crooning lounge-singer in "Angel Eyes", etc. is actually Sting), as is the cinematography. This is a depressing, tragic movie, but it is done exquisitely. Unfortunately, the author of the book & screenplay (John O' Brien) was too intimately acquainted with his subject matter - he was an alcoholic who committed suicide before filming began. If you enjoy his work, I recommend The Assault on Tony's but not Stripper Lessons.
  Obligatory Pet Peeve Rant: Nicolas Cage is a really good actor. He is not an action star. This movie showed that he is a great actor. Then he did The Rock , where his character is a nerd who gets caught up in an action movie and manages a little bit of cool action stuff. Suddenly he became the action darling of hollywood, and made shitty movies like Snake Eyes , Con Air, and 8MM. Ok, I'll grant him Face/Off - it was a superb action movie, and he did a fine job, but it was also a concept that required some great acting. And Nic is an actor, not a hunk of beefcake whose only talents are looking ominous and delivering pithy one-liners. Thank goodness for Bringing Out the Dead - I hope the trend continues.
• Action/Arnold Movie: True Lies: A movie that simultaneously makes fun of its genre while being a good representative of it - not an easy job, but when done succesfully, makes for quite an enjoyable film.
• 80's teen flick that actually turns out to be a good movie when watched as an adult: The Breakfast Club.
• 80's teen movie: Once Bitten: Starring Jim Carrey before he become famous and egotistical, this eighties vampire flick has a great dance scene that encapsulates the entire plot within its choreography. The method which finally rescues the protaganist is a rather amusing twist. It is still 80's trash, but I liked it anyway.
• Some other random favorites that I don't feel like reviewing: Geek Movies (Real Genius, Sneakers), Highlander, LA Story, Pulp Fiction (at this point, I've seen it so many times and its sunk so far into our culture that its become cliche, but still, what a great movie), The Usual Suspects, The Player.
• Modern Shakespeare Adaptation: The Baz Luhrman version of Romeo & Juliet. Neat cinematography and an imaginative setting, plus Leonardo DiCaprio at his sexiest. I love the Priest (Peter Posthelwaite)'s tattoo - if they only lasted 10 years, I'd get one. This film also slips in a rather extraordinary implication about the neurochemical basis for the love-at-first sight (spoiler-ish explanation/essay here).
• Some movies I hated, just so you know what moves me the other way: Godzilla, Mission Impossible, Blair Witch Project, Star Wars Episode I-The Phantom Menace, Dragonheart, Citizen Kane, 2001.
• Movies my friends liked and I tried hard to but just didn't: Dogma, The City of Lost Children.
• Movie that I liked a lot but my friends didn't: Natural Born Killers. I thought this was a really good movie. My take is that it is a version of the Macbeth story - what happens when people become violent but cannot quite handle it. Except unlike Macbeth, they have love ("only love can conquer the demon" ), hence their redemption. The standard take is that its about the media, and that was a theme, certainly, but its not like it showed anyone changing or developing because of the media, whereas it did show people changing and developing because of violence. A great soundtrack (and music going almost constantly, unlike most movies), neat cinematography, and good acting. Its too bad Oliver Stone mostly makes movies about things I am uninterested in (JFK, football), he seems to be a pretty good director.
• My two favorite cinematic sex scenes occur in obscure-ish movies:
  • The Tall Guy (Jeff Goldblum as an actor, very funny).
  • Delicatessen (Weird surreal french film)
• The most brilliant & badass thing anyone has ever done while dying in a movie happened in: L.A. Confidential.
• The worst adaptation of a book into a movie: Are you kidding? I'm not even going to try and begin listing these. Just picture here whichever one pissed you off the most, since it probably pissed me off too.
• Wait! I changed my mind. The one that pissed me off the most was Disney's The Secret of NIMH. Read the spoiler-explanation here:
• Movies that were a lot better than I expected:
  • Urban Legend - I adored the cheesy concept (pyscho uses methods from urban legends to murder victims), and horror movies don't need to be sublime to be great.
  • Small Soldiers - surprisingly amusing parody.
  • Cool as Ice - neat modern art.
  • 10 Things I Hate About You - this modern re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew was not half bad.
  • The first two-thirds of They Live! (everything before the silly fight over the sunglasses). After that point the movie devolves, but beforehand I think its really well done. The pacing is very slow, the setting is sort of abstract and generic, and its pretty interesting (good job, John Carpenter!). The sunglasses fight is a piece of cinematic absurdity that is amusing for its stupidity but still totally breaks the mood, which is never succesfully re-established.

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Last Modified: 6/2001