Pearl Harbor (2001)

 

Pearl Harbor attempts to use the formula that made Titanic successful: use a romantic story as a means to depict a major historical event. Or perhaps it’s using a major historical event to depict a romantic story? Ben Affleck and Josh Harnett play childhood friends who both become pilots in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that precipitated the formal entry of the United States into World War II. Affleck’s Rafe McCawley (as Hollywood a name as Tab Hunter or Rock Hudson) falls in love with a nurse during his induction process, and their romance seems ideal (to the point of being almost hopelessly chaste) until he gets the chance to go to England to fight against the Germans as part of the Royal Air Force. When he’s lost and believed killed in action, Kate Beckinsale’s Evelyn Johnson grieves until she and Hartnett’s Danny Walker (even his name lacks the zing of his good friend’s) start to fall in love with each other. They’ve wound up in Hawaii together, and their friends encourage the romance as a way to begin healing after Rafe’s supposed death. Of course, there’s only one problem: Rafe isn’t dead. (Don’t worry; this isn’t the worst of spoilers, and it seems pretty obvious what’s going to happen when Rafe is sent away to England in the first place.) When he surprises Evelyn and Danny by his arrival in Pearl Harbor, all of the cliched emotions are on display. The romantic triangle plot, frankly, is a bit of a bore, and nothing particularly surprising happens as a result of Rafe’s return. Rafe and Danny fight—a lot—and might have started to sort out what to do but… the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor the next morning after Rafe’s return. They have to put their personal struggles aside in order to begin a counterattack because, you know, priorities…. The battle sequence begins about halfway through the film, which is a butt-numbing three hours long, and the war imagery really changes the tenor of the action. Director Michael Bay is justifiably famous for his emphasis on a fast pace and quick editing, and Pearl Harbor is no exception. It can be tough to keep track of who’s who at times, given that there are so many supporting characters who are fellow pilots and/or nurses and/or hangers-on. Bay does provide a few odd cinematic flourishes, such as when the image goes out of focus in an attempt to replicate how disoriented the characters are immediately after an air attack. However, he does the unthinkable by having his actors express “deep” emotions in slow motion. You know, like when Olivia de Havilland yells out “Nooooooo” in slow motion while turning away from seeing children attacked by killer bees in The Swarm (1978). Pearl Harbor doesn’t make effective use of some of the actors playing real people. For example, Cuba Gooding Jr. in the role of Dorie Miller gets only brief moments to show what’s behind the person who was one of the great heroes of the attack on Pearl Harbor, stationing himself behind an anti-aircraft gun and firing on the Japanese. And Alec Baldwin plays Col. Jimmy Doolittle, another true war hero, with an sardonic bit of sarcasm. The less said about Jon Voight’s FDR, the better. The ending is a truly Hollywood copout with its “resolution” of the love triangle. And the film doesn’t fully address that Affleck’s Rafe seems to love Hartnett’s Danny as much as he loves Kate’s Evelyn. Watch Affleck and Hartnett’s final scene together, and then try to convince any reasonable viewer that the two men aren’t in love. There’s more than a touch of the homoerotic among their group of pilots, too. One more thought about Pearl Harbor, one that I’ve stated elsewhere about other movies: Don’t count on a fiction film to be historically accurate. This movie got a lot of criticism for playing a bit fast and loose with historical details; there are websites devoted to such stuff. If you want a history lesson, read a book or watch a documentary.

Oscar Win: Best Sound Editing

Other Nominations: Best Original Song (“There You’ll Be”), Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects

102 Dalmatians (2000)

 

The makers of 102 Dalmatians tread some familiar territory in this sequel to the 1996 live-action version of the 1961 animated Disney classic. A young man with a Dalmatian, the now-grown Dipstick, and a young woman with a female Dalmatian named Dottie meet cute and decide to marry and start a family—of Dalmatian puppies. The humans are expecting too, of course, but the focus is on the dogs here, and even nanny Joan Plowright knows better that she is more of a dog wrangler. Enter the depraved force-of-nature that is Cruella de Vil, who has been in jail since the events of the 1996 film undergoing behavioral modification therapy under the guidance of Dr. Pavlov. (Yes, someone was having a little bit of fun.) Cruella no longer hates dogs and no longer wants to turn them into a coat…until the chimes of Big Ben bring her back to her previous mentality (cue implied Pavlovian joke here…). She enlists the aid of a French fashion designer, Le Pelt (Gerard Depardieu in a fully ridiculous performance that is upstaged by the nonsensical clothing he wears), to help her, and they and their henchmen (Hugh Laurie!) start rounding up enough Dalmatian puppies to make Cruella’s horrific vision a reality. There are outrageous action sequences where the animals trick the humans, just like in the two previous films, and Close is even more over-the-top in this version of Cruella. She’s in full diva/drag queen mode and, to be honest, is the most compelling part of the film. It’s tough to keep your eyes off her, and when almost anyone else is on the screen, you miss the high level of tension and energy she brings to the role. The costumes she gets to wear are worthy of attention as well and the only source of Oscar attention. Almost all of them are black and white with some red accents thrown in here and there. One of the biggest weaknesses of the film is its reliance on odd circumstances. For example, Dottie’s owner, Chloe (the rather colorless Alice Evans), is Cruella’s parole officer, putting the crazy fur obsessive in the direct path of three puppies to get her murderous intentions underway. And Chloe’s husband, Kevin Shepherd (Ioan Gruffudd), owns the only dog shelter in Westminster, and if Cruella violates the terms of her parole, her entire fortune gets divided up among the Westminster dog shelters. (The costume designer should also receive kudos for keeping Gruffudd in shorts for most of the film.) Once you get past those strange coincidences, though, 102 Dalmatians is rather entertaining, perhaps even more so than 101 Dalmatians from four years earlier since it doesn’t have to hew as closely to the more familiar plot of the 1961 classic.

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

12 Monkeys (1995)

 

The plot of 12 Monkeys seems to be designed intentionally to confuse viewers. It’s a puzzle to be solved, but the film includes a lot of misleading details that lead us down wrong pathways of thinking about what’s happening (or, to be more precise, what’s happened). There’s even a dream (memory?) that recurs through the story that seems to change with each appearance. Bruce Willis’s James Cole is a prisoner in the year 2035 who “volunteers” to go outside to a post-apocalyptic world and retrieve specimens and information. Most of the earth’s humans have died from a virus outbreak in 1996, and the remaining inhabitants are far underground. On the surface, animals now roam freely, and Cole encounters a bear, a lion, and of course, cockroaches when he’s above ground, proving that the old adage about how cockroaches can survive even cataclysmic events. Cole is “chosen” by a group of scientists to go back in time to find the virus in the lab where it was created and retrieve its code before it mutates and is then released. Even his travels to the past have false or misdirected starts; he winds up in 1990 rather than 1996, and on another occasion, he goes all the way back to World War I. Given his ramblings about how he’s from the future and that everyone is going to die, it’s unsurprising that he winds up in a mental hospital where he meets Madeline Stowe’s psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and fellow patient Jeffrey Goines (played with uncharacteristic wildness by Brad Pitt). Each of them contributes to Cole’s attempts to discover the location of the virus’s creation. Cole kidnaps Dr. Railly, and against all logic, she slowly beings to accept his story of why and how he’s travelled back to 1990 and then 1996. There’s even a hint of a romantic connection between the two, which raises the question of why films mistreat women in roles like this. Stowe is playing a talented psychiatrist, yet she is abducted, assaulted, and almost raped. Why does all of this have to happen to her, and how does these actions truly further the plot? She isn’t even respected by the men with whom she works; Frank Gorshin’s Dr. Fletcher accuses her—without merit—of being “defensive” when she tries to explain why she initially attempted to treat Cole in the way that she did. (That’s right, the Riddler from the Batman TV show plays a misogynist psychiatrist in this film; that’s how bizarre it is as times. The movie also features a young and quite beautiful Chris Meloni as a police lieutenant.) Pitt’s character also misleads the viewer, making us think that his self-styled “Army of 12 Monkeys” might have been involved in the mutation and/or dissemination of the fatal virus. Pitt was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, but his performance fits into the Hollywood stereotypes of mental illness and even the stereotypes of fanatical activists. What’s even more puzzling is why 12 Monkeys was nominated for Best Costume Design when it’s most intriguing outfit is sort of a cross between a protective plastic bubble and a Michelin Man costume; everything else is pretty much lab coats and pajamas and contemporary garb. Even the futuristic costumes are just layers of dark clothes, nothing especially insightful. 12 Monkeys could have been easily nominated for its production design instead. The room where Willis’s Cole is interrogated—with is elevated chair and floating interrogation machine and overstuffed barrier separating the scientists from their subjects—is masterfully done. The film also features some dazzling camera work at times and sharp editing; the images of the zoo animals running wild through the streets of Philadelphia are among my favorites. And, even though it does feature some moments of great tension and suspense, at least this film wasn’t nominated for best screenplay.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Brad Pitt) and Best Costume Design

Die Hard (1988)

Die Hard is one of the wildest Christmas movies ever made. New York City police officer John McClane (Bruce Willis in what has become his most iconic role, making fine use of his sarcastic edge) arrives in Los Angeles during the holiday season to attempt a reconciliation with his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia, perfectly cast for her quick thinking and placid demeanor). He arrives at Nakatomi Tower in Century City where his wife works as an executive for a Japanese corporation. Unfortunately, John isn’t the only person to arrive at the tower that evening. A group of terrorists, led by the West German Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, marvelously chewing all the scenery within his range and exhibiting such a sense of glee at playing a villain who is so evil), attack the tower at the same time. Gruber and his cohorts take control of the tower and hold everyone inside hostage except for John, who was changing clothes when the attack began, and the ones they kill to make a point to the rest. John only has contact with one person outside the tower, LAPD Sgt. Al Powell (the great Reggie VelJohnson, getting to have a range of reactions to what he’s hearing and seeing). Gruber claims that he and his cohorts want the release of prisoners from around the world, but that’s a cover for the real plan: they are after millions of dollars in bonds and artwork in the building. Much of the plot of the film is a series of successful steps by McClane to thwart Gruber’s men followed almost immediately by setbacks in foiling their plans. It’s truly an action-oriented film, with scenes involving elevator shafts and unfinished floors in the tower. McClane has to outsmart them, and it’s really you-win-some, you-lose-some for much of the movie. Well, that and explosions. Die Hard is a very special effects-heavy film, and the explosion of a helicopter is especially spectacular, which is saying quite a lot considering how much time was spent to make the effects so effective. It’s also a lot of fun, featuring moments of great comedy, such as the two FBI agents named Big Johnson and Little Johnson, and McClane’s tendency to swear in increasing inventive ways (“yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” is justifiably famous). And, of course, McClane resorts to throwing one of the bodies of the dead villains out of a window onto Al’s car in order to get the policeman’s attention. It works, by the way. By the time Willis is barefoot and wearing just a soiled tank top and pants, you’ll also think Die Hard deserved a nod for its costume design. When Gruber learns (via the reporting of a particularly unctuous TV personality played by William Atherton) that Holly is McClane’s wife, the tension becomes even greater. At more than two hours in length, the film never loses the viewer’s interest, and it has rightly become one of the most loved and most popular action movies of the 1980s.

Oscar Nominations: Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Visual Effects

Top Gun (1986)

Top Gun may have a little bit of romance incorporated into its plot, but the filmmakers’ true sentiment lies with the male Navy pilots. There are so many shots of fighter planes that it’s little surprise that this film became a powerful recruitment tool for the Navy after its release. It stars Tom Cruise as Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, and you just know he’s a rebel from his first appearance on the screen. He doesn’t care for following rules and obeying orders. When he’s not wearing the various uniforms, he’s in jeans and a leather jacket, sporting those aviator sunglasses everyone wanted in the 1980s and riding his motorcycle. In case the visual cues aren’t enough, the other characters describe him as “reckless” and “dangerous” and even “too aggressive.” He and his Radio Intercept Officer (a sort of a co-pilot), Goose (played with a bit of wry charm by Anthony Edwards) are assigned to the Fighter Weapons School, also known as Top Gun, in Miramar, California, to undergo the highest level of pilot training. Within moments of their arrival, you know that Maverick is going to clash with the commander, Viper (William Skerritt), a pilot who flew with his father. (Yes, of course, Maverick has “daddy issues” that must be—and will be—resolved before the film’s end.) Maverick and Goose will also face tough competition from rivals Iceman (a smug Val Kilmer) and Slider (Rick Rossovich) for the Top Gun trophy awarded at the end of the training. To make the plot even more complex, Maverick acquires a love interest in Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), who is a civilian contractor with a Ph.D. in astrophysics and who serves as an advisor for the pilot training. It’s more than halfway through the film before they kiss or have sex for the first time, and the sex scene is very stylized and rather short and not especially explicit. Part of that might be due to the fact that the homoerotic undertones to the film negate the attempts at heterosexual display. Actually, can you call them undertones when they are this obvious? Putting aside McGillis’s character’s masculinized name of Charlie, there are several moments that do very little to the further the narrative and instead seem designed to display the sexual appeal of the beautiful young actors. The infamous volleyball match, for example, only serves as an excuse for Maverick to be late to his first date with Charlie. It’s set to the tune of “Playing with the Boys” by Kenny Loggins, and they’re all shirtless and sweaty and quite sexy. I never did think Cruise had a great body, but the rest of the guys certainly do, particularly Rossovich, who flexes between serves just in case you missed the point of the scene. Another moment involves the men in white towels and white briefs (not your standard Navy issue, I think) standing around the locker room. Again, there’s no particular reason for this moment to occur where it does other than to provide an opportunity to display the beauty of the male form in this scene. (Rossovich tries to hide the bulge in his briefs with a towel, but he’s still a pretty spectacular sight.) Quentin Tarentino famously discussed the homoerotics of Top Gun in the film Sleep with Me (1994), but even if you remain skeptical, you’d have to admit that the film raises some interesting questions about masculinity. Goose’s death later in the film due to the loss of both plane engines, for example, sends Maverick into an emotional downward spiral. He mourns his friend by taking tokens of affection—pictures of them together, Goose’s dog tags, etc.—due to his guilt over his role in Goose’s death. He’s just not the same afterward, and his performance as a pilot suffers. He’s unable to complete his missions successfully; make of that what you will. Of course, this being a Cruise movie, he has to overcome his failures and behave heroically by film’s end. It’s up to him to rescue Iceman and Slider and a couple of other teams who are fighting Russian MiGs over the Indian Ocean. In other words, he has to bond with his former rivals and prove that he is as much of a man as they are. Given all of this masculine posturing, is it any wonder that Wolfman (Barry Tubb—whatever happened to him?) says early in the film, “This gives me a hard on”? To which his pilot, Hollywood (the stunningly handsome Whip Hubley), replies, “Don’t tease me.” This film is noteworthy beyond its proficiency in getting young men excited about joining the Navy and giving some of the most explicit homoerotic imagery in a mainstream film marketed to the male audience during the decade of the 1980s. It features early screen appearances by Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins, and McGillis’s performance is quite good, very understated compared to her co-star’s guileless charm. And there’s the music. Aside from the aforementioned “Playing with the Boys,” Loggins had another big hit with “Danger Zone” and Berlin got the song that would win the Oscar, “Take My Breath Away,” which underscores the film beautifully at various moments.

Oscar Win: Best Original Song for “Take My Breath Away”

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Effects Editing

An American Tail (1986)

 

An American Tail manages to take a dark episode in world history, the fleeing of the Russian Jews from the pogroms of the late 19^th century, and turn it into a strangely educational and even somewhat entertaining animated film aimed. It manages to do this by focusing not on actual humans, but instead emphasizing a family of Russian-Jewish mice, the Mousekewitzes, who live with the human family of Moskowitzes and experience an attack by cats while the humans have their lives endangered by Cossacks. Everyone, humans and mice alike, boards a ship for America, a land that has been the subject of a lot of tales over the years, including the of-repeated myth that there are no cats in America. In fact, there’s even an entire song sung by the mice on the ship about the viciousness of the different cats in different countries which expresses how happy they will be that they will no longer face that kind of threat in America. The little mouse who is the central character of the film, Fievel (voiced by Phillip Glasser), gets swept out to sea because he’s rather naïve and constantly exploring when he should be minding his parents. Believing Fievel has died, his family members continue its journey on the ship. However, Fievel still makes his way to America, specifically New York City, in a bottle. They all arrive at about the same time as the construction of the Statue of Liberty, and the statue plays a prominent role in a couple of lovely if overly sentimental sequences. Its unfinished nature meshes nicely with the idea that America had (has?) yet to grapple fully with all the promises that it holds for immigrants. During his search for his family, Fievel befriends a couple of mice, one of them an Irish anti-cat activist whose speeches give a nice sense of the rhetoric associated with reform movements common at the time. He also encounters Warren T. Rat, a con man who runs a gang of cats who wreak havoc on the mice community. There’s a rather silly subplot involving the mice trying to figure out how to rid the city of the cats by using an old folk tale of the Giant Mouse of Minsk, but really, most of the events in the second half (or so) of the film seem designed to bring Fievel and his family into proximity only to have them miss seeing each other. This being a children’s film, there’s no surprise when the happy ending occurs. Before the Academy established the Animated Feature Film category, most such films were relegated to nominations in so-called minor categories involving sound and/or music. An American Tail received one nomination for “Somewhere Out There,” which became a huge pop music hit for Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram. In the film, it’s rather surprising that the duet is between Fievel and his sister Tanya. Certainly, that song is beautiful, but my favorite is “A Duo,” a duet (what else) between Fievel and the cat who is supposed to guard him while the young mouse is under Warren T. Rat’s control, Tiger (voiced by the great Dom DeLuise), about all the things that they have in common. Ultimately, the blending of Russian, Italian, French, Irish, and other nationalities, of pigeons and mice, of so many disparate combinations, speaks to the ways that immigrants became Americans—at least, in part, through their contact with other people. It’s a nice lesson for younger viewers. The Bluth Studios, which released An American Tail, typically used a darker palette than Disney did at the time. The use of very rich colors in the film and the striking combination of those colors make for a series of beautiful images. And the animators were very clever at times, such as when they made the storm aboard the ship resemble Neptune (or maybe Poseidon). Really, though, it’s the empathy you feel for the lost child that determines whether or not you think the film is successful.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Somewhere Out There”)

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

 

Rambo: First Blood Part II is, essentially, an orgy of military-style violence disguised as a sequel to the much-tamer-by-comparison First Blood (1982). Set three years after the action of the original film, Part II finds former soldier John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, fully pumped and all veiny in anticipation of this “acting” challenge) in prison for the destruction and death he caused in the initial chapter of what is now a five-part franchise. For some reason which escapes logical explanation and the tenets of common sense, the Army wants to send the impulsive, destructive Rambo, of all people, back to Vietnam to investigate reports of a group of POWs still being held captive. It’s supposed to be a solo mission, and he’s only supposed to take photographs, not try to rescue any POWs he finds or fight the Vietnamese or really engage in any military-style action. Apparently, Major Marshall John T. Murdock, the idiot who decides to send Rambo’s former commander, Richard Crenna’s Col. Sam Trautman, to fetch Rambo from jail, doesn’t think Rambo is going to find anything when he gets to Vietnam. Viewers, of course, know better; they’ve likely seen the earlier film and know that Rambo will undoubtedly mete out some justice no matter what he encounters. He just needs to encounter some new villains. The Soviets are training the Vietnamese now, so he will get to kill countless Soviets and Vietnamese (all those despicable Communists and anti-Americans, naturally), and he does. The body count is obscene, but it’s what takes the place of a plot, honestly. There’s lots of guns, lots of bullets, lots of shooting and killing. Rambo even uses a rocket launcher at one point to dispatch the nastiest of the Soviets. The sequel sets up what will become a template for other kinds of action films, especially this series: the lead gets captured (a couple of times, actually) by the bad guys, he will escape and wreak havoc through the use of some powerful weaponry, and he will get back at the people in charge who underestimated him and, by extension, all of the soldiers he represents who went to Vietnam and came back disillusioned by their government and ignored by their country. When Rambo asks, “Do we get to win this time?” he’s really speaking on behalf of thousands of other veterans. I don’t want to downplay the powerful message this film presents in terms of the worth of the veterans, but so much of the film is really about finding new ways to show off how to kill one’s enemies that the pro-vet messages keep getting lost, messages which were a bit more obvious or dominant in the comparatively more subtle First Blood. The film’s sole Oscar nomination was for Sound Effects Editing, and I suppose that’s due in part to the loudness of all the firepower on display throughout the film.

Oscar Nomination: Best Sound Effects Editing