1997
One More Goddam Motion
Picture Awards Ceremony
Silliest
Prosthetic
Mark Wahlberg
Boogie
Nights
1970s porn star John
Holmes was hung like a donkey. But "Marky" Mark Wahlberg — who
did an swell job of playing a character loosely based on Holmes — fell
short in that barnyard respect. Not to worry. In keeping with Hollywood’s
tradition of respecting historical fact (yeah, right), special effects teams
duplicated the Holmes legend and attached it to Mr. Wahlberg. Now the former
leader of The
Funky Bunch could whip it out with confidence for the film's grand finale.
Unfortunately, the member in question was unnecessarily thin and long (like
the movie).
Best
Hat
Kundun
In his film about the Dalai Lama, Director Martin Scorcese impressed us more
with exotic headgear than with ancient philosophies. What, in Buddah's name,
were those zany Tibetan monks wearing on their heads? Yellow canoes? We'll
take a dozen.
Best
Female Entrance
Judy Davis
Children of the Revolution
It was a politically elevating experience — one that we felt in our
hip pocket — when voluptuous comrade Judy Davis strutted her Soviet
stuff in a red evening dress for Joseph Stalin.
Best
Male Entrance
Robert Blake
Lost Highway
In a scene crowded with trendy partygoers, Blake put a spell on us as the
ultra-sinister "Mystery Man" in this mind-boggling David Lynch
film. "I don't go anywhere I'm not invited," the Mystery Man said.
A great mystery seduces us to embrace evil against our better judgment. Blake
walked in and charmed us like the devil.
Most
Boring Film About Sex
Crash
Creating a world of ennui may have been Steven Cronenberg's intention when
he directed this J.G. Ballard auto-erotic novel. But, what can you say about
a movie where Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette are about to bump fish tacos
in the backseat of a car and you're too indifferent to watch?
Line
Worthy of South Park
John Travolta
She’s So Lovely
Not for the general movie going public (but promoted like it was) She's So
Lovely was an exercise in human reflex, not motivation. John Travolta kicked-off
the kinetics when he turned to his 9-year old daughter and said "Shut
up and drink your beer." She did.
Role
That Reminded Us Most of a Young
Congressman Chris Cox
In the Company of Men
Aaron Eckhart had the unctuous grin of a fraternity prick, smirking at what
he's going to do next for his own good. As with Congressman
Cox, were both disgusted and attracted.
Best
Urbane Performance
Mike Nichols
The Designated Mourner
In Nichols, playwright Wallace Shawn has found the consummate sardonic wit
to deliver his weary-of-life lines. "If God didn't like assholes," said
Nichols with the cadence of social grace and proper breeding "he wouldn't
have made so many of them."
Movie
That Made Us Wonder Aloud
" What the Hell We’re the Producers Thinking When They Saw This Crap
in the Screening Room?"
Keys
to Tulsa
How could any studio executive release this unadulterated celluloid neo-film
noire swill? Bad acting. Bad directing. Bad script. Bad editing. Bad. Bad.
Bad. Without question the worst bad movie of the year.
Recognition
We’d Thought We’d Never
Give Out For a Fine Acting Performance
Tori Spelling
House of Yes
We expected Co-ed Call Girl and Beverly Hills 90210. Surely, Mr. Aaron Spelling
greased beau coups de palms to land his daughter a role in this sweet movie.
But so what. Tori was brilliant anyway. Who would have guessed that the actress
who owns Donna Martin's half-assed pout could produce this well-rounded and
sympathetic character?
The
Obscurity Doesn’t Always Equal Art Award
End
of Violence
Director Wim Wenders gave pretension a bad name with this moronically solemn
piece of ego-trash. Wender's best days were with the straight-talking Peter
Falk in Wings of Desire. Now
Wim's gone artsy-stupid.
The
Art Doesn't Always Equal Obscurity Award
The Pillow
Book
An in-your face gorgeous play of light from Peter Greenaway — a director
with such a startling sense of image that, through his lens, skinning a human
corpse becomes sublime.
Most
Disappointing Follow-up To A Great Movie
A Life
Less Ordinary
Directed by Danny Boyle, Trainspotting was a hard-on, heroin-laced
nightmare of a groovy film — one of the best of 1996. So what does
Boyle do for a follow-up? A Life Less Ordinary--one screwed-up, unfocused,
listless angel movie. We wish Doyle had warned us he wasn't up to the task
by condensing the title. How about A Lifeless Ordinary?
Funkiest
Date
Hazelle Goodman
Deconstructing Harry
You may know her as gangsta Georgia Rae Mahoney in NBC's Homicide, but
she's all that and fries. If we were invited to accept an honorary degree
at a stuffy private college and arrived with a dead body and a kidnapped
daughter — like Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry — whore-gear
Hazelle in hot pink hot pants would most assuredly be our escort of choice.
The
Barney Award
As Good
As it Gets
If you believe that serious mental diseases can be cured instantaneously
by puppies, than chances are you're inspired by earnest purple bags pretending
to be a friendly dinosaurs and overpaid actors pretending to be real people.
For lovers of prozac As Good As It Gets must be as good as it gets.
Best
Pixie Dust
Ma Vie
en Rose
My Life in Pink's fantasy scenes in the enchanted realm of Le Monde de Pam
are radiantly Barbielike — green sponge trees shaped by pinking shears,
boudoirs so colorized they oxidize the screen, X chromosomes bouncing off
chimney top's, and of course, Pam's pixie dust transforming the day to gold.
Movie
That Previewed Like a Parody
Buddy
Was this actually a movie? The trailer to this ape morality play looked so
astoundingly awful, we thought someone was pulling our leg. We still do.
Best
Biblical Reference
Sick: The
Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
Orange County boy, cystic fibrosis poster child and performance artist Bob
Flanagan is our hero. He jokes. He sings. He has a huge metal egg coaxed
up his ass by his dominatrix lover. He drowns in mucus. He embraces life.
He dies poetically. In this documentary's [instead of Sick's} most reverent
moment, Flanagan’s shorn crotch fills the screen. Above his cock is
tattooed a crown of thorns. He drives a nail through the head of his penis
into a two by four and centuries of crucifixes are transformed into what
we really worship.
Sexiest
Looking Asian Vampire in a French Film
Maggie Cheung
Irma Vep
Elle est belle et son prénom c'est Maggie.
Carlos
Castaneda Award for Mystic Nonsense
U
Turn
This film Oliver Stone film answers the proverbial question: What happens
when you watch too much Quentin Tarantino and graze on Jimson weed? Nothing
much except Tonto-esque platitudes, disconnected violence and footage of
crows flying over your movie set.
Biggest
Insult to Stage Hands and Technicians
Wag
the Dog
Halfway through this dopey film, the action is on a soundstage. There, an
actress asks a White House operative (played by Robert De Niro) if she can
take credit for her role in staging phony terrorist news footage. "Someone
will come to your house and kill you," if one word gets out about the
bogus news clip, she's told. But no one seems to notice the dozens of stagehands
and technicians we see involved in the same production? Aren't they security
risks too? In the mind of this wildly overrated movie, they don't exist.
They're not people. They're only props. Or worse yet, Key Grips
Best
Novel Within A Movie
The Daytrippers
Liev Schreiber's account of his character's novel--about a visionary leader
with the head of a dog--cemented this superb little film.
Most
Redundant Redundant Soundtrack
Philip Glass
Kundun
Glass has made a career creating somnolent music with an attitude. In the
1970s, his opera, Einstein on the Beach, broke new trance music
ground and inspired a generation of minimalists. Now, he keeps upchucking
the same arpeggio. But who can blame him. The LA Film Critics Society gave
this recycled tape-loop a best Soundtrack award. Our guess is that Zen Master
Glass will keep repeating and repeating and repeating until someone wakes
up.
Best
Mind Fuck
Lost Highway
Like Los Angeles itself (where the movie was set) Lost Highway is
inexplicably twisted and astonishing. Particularly when actor Robert Loggia
(who should have been Hollywood's B-movie Oscar discovery — not Robert
Forster) recites traffic fatality figures while beating the living shit sticks
out of a tailgater. The last time we saw Lost Highway was at a midnight
showing on Sunset Boulevard to the catcalls of overtly-hip self-deluded Angelenos.
Soundtrack
Best Suited for Mystery Science Theater 3000
Donnie
Brasco
After a nightclub vice-squad bust that could have been edited from old Mannix
outtakes, the con men huddle in a back room. "How do these cops know
so much," second-rate gangster Al Pacino says. "There's gotta be
a snitch here." Then out of the soundtrack comes a 1930s dramatic music
cue so melodramatic and thick with consequence even Robot T. Crow would involuntarily
gasp.
Best
Con Man
Mathieu Kassovitz
Self Made Hero
Unlike the dull-as-deadhead con men in Donnie
Brasco, Kassovitz gives us Albert Dehouse, an everyman who works
his way to the top with spirited deceit. It is the kind of acting that makes
our own lies and inventions transparent.
Beginning
That Hit Us Like 10 Pounds of Movie
in a Five Pound Bag
This
World, Then the Fireworks
The set-up to this film had us pegged with three Gs. If the closing credits
had rolled after the first 3 minutes, This World... would have been the Best
Short Film of the Year.
Best
Sex Scene With Normal Bodied People
David Suchet and Lisa Harrow
Sunday
There was no box-office reason to show these actors naked. Big boned, feastively
plump, stocky love makers. Beefy Boppers. But people often take their clothes
off for more than money. Now that's sexy.
Best
Disaster Movie
The Sweet
Hereafter
Nothing, not intergalactic warfare, not an overpriced ocean liner sinking,
not a global epidemic, was more cinematically cataclysmal (or like life)
than this schoolbus full of kids spinning out-of-control on thin ice.
Movie
That Confirms Why The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences Should be Renamed "The Academy of Box Office
Receipts"
Titanic
Arts and Sciences? Who's fooling who? Oscar, that gilded movie scamp, is
about money. And the initial outlay for a Best Picture Academy Award these
days may have just increased to $200 million.
— Nathan
Callahan, March 6, 1998
