Most Annoying Performance Estelle Getty in Stop! Or my Mom will shoot! Best Comedy Performance Charles Grodin and Bonnie Hunt in Beethoven Best Ensemble Cast The Player – Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, and Lyle Lovett WTF did I just see? Bad Lieutenant Most overrated movie The Crying Game Best juvenile performance Christina Ricci – Wednesday Addams Notes from awards committee: We loved Robert Altman's The Player almost as much as Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. The two films are very different, and both are excellent, top quality films by ace directors. But the multi-layered element of American history of the 1750s in the midst of the hyper-violent French and Indian War adds enormous gravitas to our best picture: The Last of the Mohicans. This is Director Michael Mann’s best work, yet was snubbed by the academy because the film bucked the current trend to portray Native Americans as peaceful, noble wise men. Mohicans was just too realistic for the academy hipsters. The film includes scenes of extreme violence, but is tempered by the addition of a romance story. Cora, played by Madeleine Stowe with piercing eyes and flowing dark hair, is the love interest and sweeps Hawkeye off his moccasins. Best actress award goes to Ms. Stowe. The plot of The Player centers around Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a young, hot shot studio executive who hears about 125 movie pitches per day. Griffin says “No” a hellava lot more than “Yes” and that creates a problem. A. Big. Problem. He is also unlikeable without being so bad he is unbearable. Griffin is a bit of a cypher, so do not expect a drama queen as he experiences true fear for perhaps the first time in his silver spoon life. Robbins manages to strike the right balance and deliver a masterful turn. He earns a Best Actor Simpson award in a year full of great male screen performances. Fun Surprises - The Cutting Edge - is a classic sports/romance movie and one which gets better with repeat viewing. Often called Taming of the Shrew on Ice, and starring a hockey player from the wrong side of the tracks. The chemistry between ice skating princess Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) and hockey jock Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) really sells this picture, even before you see the impressive scenery and fantastic skating sequences. The script is filled with quotable gems and funny scenes. Under Siege – gets all the ingredients of the action thriller recipe just perfect including the money shot at the end. This is Steven Seagal’s best performance. He plays a Navy Seal turned galley cook – he is stoic, and lethal with a dry sense of humor. In fact the film is full of twisted humor by a trio of deliciously crazy, madmen bad guys. The lovely Erika Eleniak adds some hot spice, and every guy remembers her sexy scene with the cake. This film stands out as one of the best action thrillers of the decade. A River Runs Through It - Amazing use of the run-time to capture the 1920s and 30s era and the lives of the main character from childhood, to ultimately an elderly man. Really beautiful cinematography and story-telling inspires you to go to Montana and fly fish for trout. Single White Female – Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh give strong performances that drive this low-budget, psycho-thriller. Fonda is lovely and charismatic as Allie, and JJL, as Hedy, is a chameleon – switching smoothly from friendly to menacing. The steadily escalating tension is expertly controlled as the danger is tapped up and up. The movie also suggests that female friends are always one step away from killing each other. Still, it’s stylishly made, and features two great central performances. Christopher Columbus: The Discovery- came out seven weeks before Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise, both of which celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to the New World. Each is worth checking out and comparing if you like real-life adventure and historical drama films. However, Discovery is the better movie and has a superior cast. Scott’s film bogs down and is too long. Both films bombed at the box office. But, let's face it; by 1992 the European colonization of the Americas was no longer viewed in a positive light. The academic lynch mob of Marxists and pinko college teachers made sure of that. Ignore the PC film critics; Christopher Columbus: The Discovery is a good historical adventure. Howard’s End – If you watch only one Merchant Ivory production, make it this one. The story is set in Edwardian England with an all-star cast. Sure, it is a bit of a soap opera, but offers a penetrating look at life in pre-WWI England. Bad Lieutenant - The blunt title turns out to be an understatement: A self-destructive New York City detective, played with raw power by Harvey Keitel is a reckless gambler and a drug addict. His flagrant abuse of the public trust is almost beyond imagination. Warning: some scenes are hard to watch. Poison Ivy – Drew Barrymore, as jailbait teenager Ivy, at her most charming and wicked. Disappointments -
The Crying Game – How did this wreck get an Oscar nomination? This movie is some sort of fantasy about a deeply disturbed transvestite who just happens to be implausibly mixed up in Irish terrorism. Sure, happens all the time. Who is target audience for this? Malcolm X - is a very long biopic of the 1960’s black leader by Spike Lee. Sadly Malcolm was murdered in Harlem in 1965 by feuding members of the Nation of Islam. He was 39 years old. The movie is so full of inaccuracies and lies it’s just not worth the effort to plod through. Bruce Perry, who wrote a well- researched and scholarly biography of Malcom X Little, reviewed the film for the Washington Post and called it hugely inaccurate and fatally flawed with anti-White propaganda. Unforgiven –Two aging contract killers have heart-to-heart chats around the campfire like two normal buddies. OK western but not the Best Picture. Overlong by an hour. One False Move – belongs on the very short list of awful films about violent criminals that are too cool for school.
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