Cinematic Throwbacks: December 2002/2012
2002:
Catch Me If You Can is directed by Steven Spielberg, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. If you put those 3 names onto any project in 2002 (or probably 2022) you're thinking this must be some highly ambitious Oscar bait picture.
Instead they teamed up for a light, breezy cat and mouse caper film that won no major awards but was one of the funnest movies of that year.
CMIYC is a con man movie. DiCaprio plays that conman, Frank Abagnale, who was a real guy and who pulled off a ton of scams while also committing a whole lot of fraud. The film is also a good guy chasing the bad guy film, as Hanks plays the lead FBI agent trying to catch Frank. And it is also a caper film, as Spielberg takes great playful fun in showing the various schemes Frank cooked up.
This is such a fun, entertaining movie. I had forgotten just how much, since I hadn't watched it for years. This was pretty much the last shot of boyish, pre-Scorsese DiCaprio and he is just pure movie star charisma. Hanks, sporting the kind of exaggerated Boston accent that had to be a purposeful joke, is also a lot of fun.
Christopher Walken is terrific as DiCaprio's dad. He got an Oscar nomination. And the cast is packed with budding stars, including a dynamite scene with Jennifer Garner and and an adorable Amy Adams. It's also one of Elizabeth Banks's early parts.
John Williams's score was also nominated. The whole movie is so confident and fun. I wish they still made them like this.
I have always felt that The Two Towers, the middle film of the Lord.Of The Rings trilogy, is the weakest film of the 3.
I still pretty much do. It's a bridge film, resolving little but setting up a lot.
This film intoduced Gollum, mo-capped by Andy Serkis, who joins in the Frodo/Sam journey. This is such an iconic character, and the best thing about this film by far. The technology has advanced since then, but it still works here because Gollum is such an interesting figure.
The film brings back Gandalf, now the white. Some of our other heroes are trying to rescue Merry and Pippin. We get introduced to the talking trees.
It all builds to the mammoth battle at Helm's Deep. I always felt this whole sequence wasn't particularly meaningful, but it's no doubt an extremely well crafted and epic battle. It's basically the whole last hour.
Chicago was the first of the 21st century musicals that I liked.
This film walked away with a bunch of Oscars, including best picture.
This is another movie I hadn't actually watched in years, but I was back into it. I had some.of the songs stuck in my head for days afterwards. The film is old fashioned song and dance showmanship. And it doesn't feel dated cause it was already set in the 1920s.
The film is led by a trio of fantastic performances. Renee Zellweger is an actress who I have grown seriously tired of, but 20 years ago she was still in her prime and she is great fun as aspiring star Roxie.
Catherine Zeta-Jones took the best supporting actress Oscar, and man did she deserve it. She too is an actress who quickly fell off but she is just a mesmerizing movie star in this.
And Richard Gere is a complete delight as the hotshot lawyer, dancing through his role with a ton of charm.
Also nominated for Oscars here were John C.Reilly as Zellweger's nice guy husband, and Queen Latifah as a sort of warden for the women's jail. At the time I was also jazzed to see Mya in a movie, although her part is very small.
The film is presented in a very straightforward way but to its benefit. It is clearly modeled after Good Will Hunting, with Washington himself in the Robin Williams role and then newcomer Derek Luke as Antwone. Luke has kept appearing in things, but I would have pegged him for major stardom after this. I mean he goes toe to toe with Denzel. I also expected big things from his love interest Joy Bryant, though she really vanished. Can't even think of the last time I saw her in anything.
The film gets pretty deep into how horrible Fisher's childhood was. He really went through it all, from being abandoned by his mom to dealing with all sorts of abuse in foster homes. It makes the uplifting ending truly moving. The film didn't end up getting any awards love but should have.
2012:
My 2nd favorite film of 2012 after The Avengers.
Quentin Tarantino's brutally violent slavery revenge western Django Unchained is a damn masterpiece. So incredibly entertaining. It's no worse than 4th on my QT rankings. And not that he was on any kind of slump, but his 3 previous films before this were Inglourious Basterds, Death Proof and Kill Bill Vol. 2, which are probably the 3 movies I would rank at the bottom. (Though to be clear he has never directed a bad film at all). So it was exhilarating to see him roar back with Django.
Jamie Foxx is Django, a slave who gets freed by a bounty hunter (the brilliant Christoph Waltz), who end up teaming up to try to free Django's wife from a particularly awful plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Famously, Foxx's role was originally targeted for Will Smith, and no doubt Smith would have been an exciting presence here, but Foxx has a darker edge to him anyway that really works here.
Waltz won his 2nd Oscar in a row for a Tarantino film. He is the standout here. I mean, Tarantino writes the hell out of this character, giving Waltz every chance to chew the scenery. It is pure pleasure just listening to him recite this dialogue.
On the villain side, DiCaprio rips into his role with relish. He never plays a bad guy and you can tell what a blast he is having, even though he says and does wretched things here. He's really evil and really funny. And Samuel L. Jackson, who only Tarantino seems interested in giving real juicy roles to anymore, is fantastic as DiCaprio's favored house slave. He's maybe even more sinister, and has become shorthand reference for all those modern day black Republicans.
Along with Waltz, Tarantino also took home his 2nd Oscar for the screenplay. Look, nobody has done this better over the last 30 years than Tarantino, and this is definitely one of his finest works. It would be the best thing ever made by most other filmmakers.
Les Mis had been done as a movie once before, years earlier with Liam Neeson, I believe. Never saw that one, but this one was a must see due to its cast.
The story is something about the French revolution. Honestly I couldn't even tell you, and that's really just the backdrop anyway on which to hang a collection of splendid musical numbers.
The film was director Tom Hooper's follow-up to the Oscar winning The King's Speech. He makes this whole movie feel very immersive and dirty. And he had the cast sing on set, rather than record after the fact.
Not everyone is as good at it as others. Russell Crowe tries, but does feel silly at times. And Amanda Seyfried really can't sing. It's just a high pitched squeal.
But Hugh Jackman is excellent, and there are a couple dandy two-handers with Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter.
For me the two standouts are Anne Hathaway and Samantha Barks. Hathaway won the supporting actress Oscar for her indelible few scenes here. If you aren't moved by her "I dreamed a dream" scene you have no soul. Once her character dies it leaves a big hole in the film, but that gets filled by Barks. I was basically in love with Samantha Barks by the end of this movie. She has her own couple of showstoppers. I left this movie convinced Barks was going to be a major star, but she's a theater actress who basically just went back to theater, with only a couple small movie credits since.
This is a top 5 movie musical for me.
People lost their minds when this movie was announced. How could Tom Cruise possibly play Jack Reacher? This is based on a book series, and in them Reacher is a tall, beefy guy. Cruise is...not.
But I always thought Cruise fit this role easily. He handles the action fine. He is extremely watchable in detective mode. And I always kind of like movies like this that just present a badass character who we know is going to.prevail and then just letting him go to work.
The plot itself isn't that memorable, but director Christopher McQuarrie keeps the proceedings flying. Cruise plays well off of Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo and others in the cast. There are a couple good fights, a good car chase.
A shame the sequel was such a dud, cause I would have loved it if Cruise kept making these in between his grander spectacles.
Knocked Up would still be my pick for Judd Apatow's best movie. It's the one where for me everything came together the best. So of course I would be up for a sequel.
Apatow's sequel idea though was to make it about two of that film's supporting characters, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (who was Katherine Heigl's sister in the earlier movie).
This is as unencumbered an Apatow film as there has ever been. What works in This Is 40 is the still strong writing. Apatow is good as anybody at mixing in humor with drama. Rudd is always an enjoyable actor to watch. There is a great Albert Brooks role here. Plenty of fun actors pop up in tiny roles.
What holds the film back is Mann, Apatow's wife. It is telling that she rarely gets cast in anything. She is not a good actress. She is not funny. Her voice is grating. And this character she plays a horrible shrew. It's puzzling how Apatow could do a movie so clearly personal and have his wife come off this way. She is a horror. I just wish Rudd character could get the hell away from her and start a new life.
The movie is certainly too long. Apatow has never known how to edit. But so much of the funniest stuff in his movies comes from those little throwaway moments that a cleaner edit might lose.
Other non-deep dive films....
1972:
-The Poseidon Adventure: I have never actually seen this movie in full, just the 2006 remake. But it was one of the prototypes for the modern disaster film.
1982:
-Airplane 2: Most people think this sequel stinks, but I always liked it. The stuff with William Shatner alone is just hysterically funny to me.
-48 Hrs: The movie that made Eddie Murphy a movie star. I only just saw it a couple years ago.
-Gandhi: The Oscar winning biopic. I watched it some years back and while the runtime makes it a grind I thought it was pretty good.
-Tootsie: Dustin Hoffman dresses like a woman. These premises used to be awards bait.
-The Toy: I watched this some way back in the day. It would be super problematic now.
1992:
-A Few Good Men: I was actually quite surprised to discover that I don't have this on DVD, hence no deep dive. This is a really great movie, with one of the best Tom Cruise performances, leading an all time great supporting cast. And of course there is the legendary courtroom battle with Jack Nicholson.
-Scent of a Woman: Al Pacino finally won an Oscar for this, and controversially.
-The Distinguished Genteleman: An Eddie Murphy political comedy that flopped, but which I watched a lot back in the day and liked
-Chaplin: Robert Downey Jr. as the screen legend.
-Toys: A rather notorious Robin Williams flop.
-Trespass: A great, nasty crime movie that I watched a bunch back in the day. Ices Cube and T share the screen.
2002:
-Gangs Of New York: Martin Scorsese chasing that then-elusive Oscar. His first collab with Leonardo DiCaprio. Daniel Day-Lewis was a fucking fantastic bad guy.
-Adaptation: Nicolas Cage playing twins in this Charlie Kaufman film that I just did not get into at all at the time. Probably worth a revisit at some point.
-Analyze That: The far less successful sequel to Analyze This.
-Equilibrium: A Matrix-y action flick with Christian Bale. It has a cult following.
-About Schmidt: One of Jack Nicholson's last juicy roles was in this Alexander Payne comedy.
-Drumline: The college marching band movie with Nick Cannon when he was really being pushed as a movie star. Early Zoe Saldana in support.
-The Hot Chick: One of the last Rob Schneider movies to make it to theaters. This one is notable as having the first big part for Rachel McAdams, who kills it.
-Two Weeks Notice: Sandra Bullock/Hugh Grant romcom that I am not sure I ever saw.
-Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: George Clooney directed this movie about a game show host working for the CIA.
-Maid In Manhattan: I loathed this terrible Jennifer Lopez/Ralph Fiennes romcom.
-Star Trek: Nemesis: The last Trek film with the Next Generation cast, and probably the most forgettable entry in the whole franchise.
-The Pianist: Adrien Brody won the Oscar...and so did Roman Polanski. Whoops.
-Sonny: Nicolas Cage directed this awful movie with a truly horrendous performance by James Franco. Early Franco was brutal to watch.
2012:
-The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The first entry in Peter Jackson's far less memorable second trilogy.
-The Guilt Trip: Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand on a road trip. I'm certain I took my mom to this.
-Parental Guidance:
Coming in January....
Most of the anniversaries are the tens and twenties.
Biggest of the former is Zero Dark Thirty. Biggest of the latter is Spike Lee's magnificent 25th Hour. I'm also glad to revisit Just Married, one of Brittany Murphy's silly peaks.
And we might reassess how I do these blogs. Tbh they have become an admittedly self-imposed grind.
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