Cinematic Throwbacks: December 1974/1994/2004

2004: (cause I want this one on top)

The 2nd of Natalie Portman's pantheon films of 2004, Closer brought her her 1st Oscar nomination. 

The trailer for this hit right around the time Garden State came out, and I was blown away by how she looked in this and her acting. The brief shot of her as a stripper was stunning. 

In one of those crazy coincidences that I may have once thought meant more, the film opened ten years to the day of the first time I saw The Professional. 

The film is directed by Mike Nichols, who worked with Natalie on stage a few years earlier, and is based on a play. It's maybe my favorite film based on a play. It's really just 4 actors with speaking roles. Natalie, Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen.

Closer is like the worst date movie of all time. Most of the film is structured around showing relationships ending. Often in brutal fashion. The 4 characters meet, get together, cheat, and break up. 

The film has one of the great opening shots, with Natalie walking in slo mo with The Blower's Daughter playing. I was kind of obsessed with that song back then. 

She meets Jude Law. Then he meets Julia Roberts. Then she meets Clive Owen. Then he meets Natalie. 

The whole film is dialogue driven, and it is some fantastic dialogue. I can't believe this screenplay didn't get Oscar nominated. 

Who did get Oscar nominated? Anybody here could have been worthy. Roberts was pretty ballsy to take on this role when she was still near the peak of her movie stardom. Owen got nominated for his super charismatic work. 

And then there is Natalie. She was nominated. She won the Golden Globe, which was easily the most excited I ever got from anybody winning a Golden Globe. And she got her 1st Oscar nod. I was massively disappointed when she didn't win that one, but even the lead-up was cool. I even live blogged the ceremony. 

The performance will forever be one of her best. It was like nothing she had done before. In a film where everyone is an asshole she plays the most sympathetic character. She doesn't actually cheat. She doesn't steal anyone's man. She does lie, but, you know, she's a woman. 😉

Had never seen her be this fucking sexy either. I mean, look, in 2004 I still did kind of see Natalie as this innocent girl. To see her do and say some of the things she did in this movie were really jarring. That strip club scene with Owen was one of the most mindblowing things I had ever seen. I mean, I do kinda wish the obviously more explicit version had seen the light of day, but iirc Natalie asked after the fact to take out the nudity. But I would have been putty in her hands in that scene too.

That part obviously drew the attention, but her best scenes are the breakups with Law, one in the middle of the film and the other at the very end. Natalie has always been an elite crier. 

And the film closes as it opened, with Natalie looking unfathomably hot and walking in slo mo. So I guess it has the greatest closing shot in film history. 

1974:

Any time the subject of the greatest film sequels of all time comes up, The Godfather Part 2 comes up. The original film was and is one of the most famous films of all time, being showered with awards and making Al Pacino a star.

Sequels in those days were certainly not awards caliber. They were almost always cash grabs, and also almost always genre films, not prestige dramas. But this sequel raked in the accolades just the same.

I suppose I am in the minority in thinking that Godfather 2 is markedly inferior to 1. Oh, it's certainly very well made and filled with a superb cast giving great performances. But this one splits the narrative into the present, following Al Pacino's Michael Corleone and his further descent, and also flashing back to Vito Corleone's story of escaping to America and beginning to build his empire. 

Young Vito is played by Robert Deniro, and he's great. He won the Oscar. But I find the flashbacks to be a lot less compelling than the fall of Michael. That's the stuff that really interests me.

1994:

Jim Carrey's breakthrough year of 1994 reached its peak with his 3rd of 3 big hits, and also launched a couple of filmmakers who would have big careers.

The 90s were really big for having a pair of very dumb characters lead your movie or show. Few were dumber than the pair of Lloyd and Harry, played by Carrey and Jeff Daniels. These guys go on an adventure to Aspen and get mixed up with a whole kidnapping plot that barely holds the film together as a film.

This has stood the test of time as one of the purely funniest comedies of the 90s. And it's because it's not really the least bit mean about it (the sequel kind of missed that). Lloyd and Harry never stop being complete idiots, but it's always done in a cheerful, silly way.

In the theater, this was definitely peak comedy. The big scenes all killed. And yeah, some of it is toilet humor, which even as an immature teenager I wasn't into, which works in this case cause of the build-up. The diarrhea scene works because of how it keeps building. 

But the movie is also full of some pretty inspired dialogue. It's a smartly written movie about stupid people. 

Carrey and Daniels dive into this material without the slightest bit of shame. Carrey, sure, but Daniels was and is known more as a serious actor. He was in Speed the same year. 

The movie was made by the Farrelly Brothers, who were unknowns going in and would spend the next decade as some of the premier comedy filmmakers in the game. And they would have even bigger hits than this, but this remains their funniest movie.

This was a big movie for those of us who were high school boys in the mid-90s. 

Back to 2004:

Blade 1 and 2 are 2 of the best comic book movies of all time still to this day. So how did the 3rd movie stumble?

I don't think Blade: Trinity is bad. It just had a ton to live up to and fell short. 

This time David Goyer, writer on the first 2, was directing. And that can always be a risk to hand a big project to a 1st time director. The film also suffered from being overstuffed.

It's a movie about Blade being framed as a murderer of humans. But it's also about Blade going up against Dracula. But it's also about Blade teaming up with the vampire fighting team The Nightstalkers.

The Nightstalkers part was being set up to be a spinoff. That obviously never came to be, but they were pretty prescient to cast Ryan Reynolds long before he became even the bad original version of Deadpool. He's constantly making jokes here too, just typically not very funny. Snipes didn't like Reynolds, a behind the scenes fact that sets up a fun joke in the latest Deadpool. Better is Jessica Biel, in her mid-2000s prime, being the perfect badass female action star. 

The villains aren't good in this movie. Dracula barely even feels like a threat, and Dominic Purcell is a really odd casting choice. And don't get me started on the vampire played by Parker Posey. Horrible.

It's not a bad movie, promise. The action is still really good, and Snipes is great. Again, it's more just that the original two set such a high standard. 

Either way, the franchise ended here. Fingers crossed that Snipes still gets another true Blade film again. There's only gonna ever be one Blade 

The second of the two Zhang Yimou martial arts epics to hit screens in America in 2004, after Hero. Both were outstanding. Both made my original top 10 from that year. 

I kind of preferred House of Flying Daggers. This one really leans into being a big, sweeping romantic epic about forbidden love and honor and all that. 

Each film had Zhang Ziyi, but HoFD was the one where she had the starring role. In the early 2000s, man, there weren't many actresses more exciting than Ziyi. She is one of the most stunningly beautiful women I've ever seen, but she was also a great dramatic actress who was great at action. Her American crossover career kind of petered out soon after this, but she stayed a big deal in China. 

The film has sumptuous visuals throughout, wonderfully choreographed action, and a finale set in a snowy field that is breathtaking. 

Other non-deep dive flicks....

1974:

-The Towering Inferno: One of the templates for thestar-studded disaster film. I watched this on TV a lot back in the day. 

-Young Frankenstein: One of Mel Brooks most beloved films. Tbh I never quite got this one. 

-The Man With The Golden Gun: Bond movie with Christopher Lee as the bad guy.

1984:

-Beverly Hills Cop: The mega hit that made Eddie Murphy the biggest star on the planet. 

-Dune: The original movie attempt by David Lynch. My Lynch obsessed friend in high school made me watch this and I found it absolutely impenetrable. 

-Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo: It gave us the greatest sequel title ever. 

1994:

-Cobb: I.woild have thought a Ron Shelton film about Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones) would be better than this. 

-Street Fighter: I saw this in theaters. It's considered one of those infamous flops, but it had Ming-Na Wen as Chun Li so it wasn't all bad. 

-Legends of the Fall: Dull movie but it was a hit cause Brad Pitt was in it and becoming a big deal. 

-Disclosure: Demi Moore sexually harassing Michael Douglas. Haven't seen it in years but I'm guessing it hasn't aged the best. 

-Richie Rich: We were getting to the end of Macaulay Culkin here. 

-Speechless: Romcom about a couple of political speech writers (Michael Keaton, Geena Davis). I saw this in theaters and liked it. 

-Drop Zone: Weirdly, they had 2 skydiving based action movies that fall. This one starred Wesley Snipes and was the better one, iirc. 

2004:

-Spanglish: Adam Sandler in a James Brooks dramedy would have seemed a sure thing. But this film, while charming at times, and featuring a wonderful Paz Vega, is a real mess. 

-Ocean's Twelve: A cash grab sequel. The only part of this I remember is when Julia Roberts' character pretends to be Julia Roberts. 

-Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: Jim Carrey starred in this. I don't think I ever saw it. 

-Hotel Rwanda: Don Cheadle got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for this. 

-The Aviator: Leonardo DiCaprio starring as Howard Hughes in a Martin Scorsese film should have been amazing, but it was just okay. Cate Blanchett stole Natalie's Oscar with her showy role as Katherine Hepburn.

-Meet The Fockers: Another cash grab sequel. This one brought in Ben Stiller's parents. 

-The Life Aquatic: Easily my least favorite Wes Anderson film. 

2014:

-Wild: Reese Witherspoon de-glammed to play a woman on a long hike. Tbh, it's more than a little pretentious, but Reese was excellent. 

-Inherent Vice: Paul Thomas Anderson's detective movie starring Joaquin Phoenix at his shaggiest. The plot is so impossible to follow that it was hard to get into the film. 

-Top Five: Probably the best film Chris Rock has ever been the lead of. And Rosario Dawson is her usual excellence. 

-The Interview: Remember when people actually believed this Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy was going to start a war, and then they wouldn't release this in theaters? 

-Selma: Not so much a Martin Luther King biopic as just a story centering him. David Oyelowo was wonderful in the role. 

-Exodus: Gods and Kings: A very big disappointment from Ridley Scott.

-The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: The end of the mostly unmemorable Hobbit trilogy. 

-American Sniper: Chris Kyle was a horrible piece of shit and I'm glad he is dead. The very worst people embraced this film. But yet, as a film, Clint Eastwood did a decent job on a craft level. 

-Annie: Unnecessary remake that I think was the last time Cameron Diaz starred in anything. 

-Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb: The last film of the trilogy, and also one of Robin Williams' final roles. 

-Big Eyes: Tim Burton tried to do a more straightforward drama here, with Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz, but it didn't work. 

-Into The Woods: Decent musical adaptation. It's at least as good as Wicked. 

-Unbroken: Incredible true story about a man who was an Olympian, fought in WW2, and spent time in a Japanese POW camp. 

Coming in January...

Mercifully very little to do. Tbh these blogs are becoming a time-consuming burden, and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to continue doing them in this format into the new year.