Continuing my countdown of yearly top ten lists, we now move on to 1995. If 1994 was the genesis of my deep interest in film, then 1995 was where it solidified and gained permanence. What I watched and appreciated moved a bit away from big budget action movies and broad comedies and more toward smaller movies with a bit more of an intellectual slant. I first sampled many of the new wave of directors who would become perennial favorites throughout the rest of the decade. And first saw many of the actors that would become the current crop of big dogs in Hollywood. While 1994 was a strange year of mixing casual watching of big releases with the occasional stumbled upon indie film, 1995 was the first year where I was actively seeking out new film experiences and consuming anything I could get my hands on.
10-La Haine ***
It might be hard to believe that the guy who made things like Gothika and Babylon AD in this decade had a gritty, street level, black and white film that critics adored in the mid-nineties; but it’s true, and La Haine is that film. A story about three young punks in the suburban ghettos of France getting into trouble, struggling against class issues, and running afoul with the police, La Haine has an ultra-realistic, almost documentary feel and serves as a great portrait of what life must have been like in the poor neighborhoods of France in the time period. The title translates into English as The Hate, and accurately describes the negative feelings boiling inside of its protagonists. Watching their actions and reactions to the authorities and the upper class can be painful at times, but it’s never not interesting.
9- Welcome to the Dollhouse ***
This was the big breakout film for its director Todd Solondz, and the next in the line of indie films that caught on with a large audience and started to make Hollywood feel hip again like it was in the 70s. While I don’t feel like it was perfect, it served as a preview to the depressingly bleak viewpoint on suburban malaise and the darkness of human nature that Solondz would perfect with his next film Happiness. That it made a pretty large career for its hideous looking little star Heather Matarazzo is perhaps this film’s greatest accomplishment. Mostly through the buzz she got here, many other directors found a spot for her in their works. It’s funny in places, insightful in places, has some strong performances from young actors, and is a great jumping off point for Solondz’s career to point back to. It’s rare that a filmmaker that so often goes for shocking, can most often keep his work interesting as well.
8-Leaving Las Vegas ****
Leaving Las Vegas was just the right kind of nihilist, dark story that felt really edgy and fresh to me when I was a teenager. While it looks a bit immature to me now, it’s still a well put together film that I enjoy watching. While this may have been the beginning of Cage’s performances slipping toward manically expressive insanity, it was a bit more restrained here than it has become in recent years and it worked well for the material. It was fun to see that the girlfriend from the Karate Kid was still hot and was willing to show her boobs, and its soundtrack may be the only Sting music I’ve ever heard that doesn’t make me cringe. Overall, Leaving Las Vegas is a very watchable character piece that may get a little cartoony in its subject matter, but is elevated by strong work from Cage and Elizabeth Shue, and strong direction by Mike Figgis.
7-12 Monkeys ****
12 Monkeys was the first Terry Gilliam film I’d ever seen other than his Monty Python films, but because I had no clue who the heck Terry Gilliam was until I saw 12 Monkeys, it wasn’t until much later that I learned I had seen any of his previous stuff. This one instantly caught my eye though, with it’s trademark Gilliam, surrealist production design, an unhinged, enthralling performance from Brad Pitt, who I thought was just a pretty boy at the time, and the way it played with time travel in ways more interesting than any of the big budget sci-fi films I’d seen at that point. Bruce Willis was also really solid as the lead, and this was probably just about the cutting off point for when I started losing interest in his career. Looking at it now, I see a pretty solid effort from Terry Gilliam, but at the time it came out it made a pretty strong impression on my 14 year-old brain.
6-Heavy Weights ****
I think I remember being a little disappointed that I had to see Heavyweights when it first came out. I liked The Ben Stiller Show and was kind of interested in seeing Stiller do his thing on the big screen, but not in a kiddy movie. I thought I was past watching children’s films at the time and had to go see this one because my little sister was along for the ride to the theater that weekend. My disappointment was, of course, quickly put on hold when I realized I was watching a laugh out loud comedy anchored by a hilarious performance by Stiller and elevated by some strong comedic work from most of it’s young actors. Just because it’s a sweet story about fatties getting it done aimed at children doesn’t mean it can’t be good, and I think it was with Heavyweights that I realized that I would be watching some number of “kiddy movies” for the rest of my life.
5-Die Hard: With a Vengeance ****
I came into Die Hard: With a Vengeance a huge fan of the series. I realize now that the Renny Harlin helmed second installment is a huge disappointment, but back in 1990, when it came out, I probably wasn’t capable of thinking much more than, “cool, more Die Hard”! So giving the fact that I loved the series, and Samuel L Jackson had blown me away in Pulp Fiction the year before, watching him team up with John McClane to do a trilogy seemed like a great idea to me at the time. Of course, it was, and probably what made it so was getting iconic action director John McTiernan back on board to direct. Die Hard and Predator are two of my top three action films of all time, and I think With a Vengeance works as a very worthy sequel to the original and a nice capper to McTiernan’s all too brief period of making modern classics. The action was great, McClane was drunk, Jackson made a great comedic foil. Things here just work. Plus it got in before the period of sterilized action disappointments that cause such travesties as gunshots muting the F word in McClane’s iconic catch phrase and homogenized, non-violent, CG action.
4-Heat ****
Heat is, quite simply, a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. It was billed as a huge deal because it was the first time ever that Pacino and De Niro would appear face to face on screen, but what made it a success is that it was a great script with memorable characters, and it was made using the extraordinary talent of Michael Mann. The cast is top notch from bottom to top, the photography is simply beautiful, and the shootout scene after the failed bank robbery is probably the best-constructed action sequence ever put onto film. You’ve got the sheer dickery of Tom Sizemore and Val Kilmer, the legendary weight of Pacino and De Niro, a young Natalie Portman, this is a big movie and it should probably get talked about these days more than it does. The only reason it didn’t reach five stars for me is that I feel it loses some of its momentum in the third act and is too long by about ten minutes. Mann scored again in 1999 with The Insider and looked like he would become one of the true greats, but I haven’t really liked anything he’s done since then.
3-Braveheart *****
Mel Gibson’s first time as a director was, shall we say, a huge success. I suppose you would have to go back to Citizen Kane to find a director’s first feature that’s better loved. This is one of those huge, epic stories that everybody saw and everybody loved. That it was so violent, brutal, and bloody but was still able to draw in the granny crowd is a huge achievement. Braveheart is one of those films that some part of me wants to poo-poo as mainstream and overrated, but every time I watch it I can’t help but be swept away with how much I love it. The story is huge, but it’s pacing is tight. There are tons of turns from obscure character actors who craft iconic roles. The landscape and photography are breathtakingly beautiful. The score is unforgettable and often imitated. The emotion is real. It’s a shame that the only strength Gibson’s subsequent films were able to maintain from this one is the visual style, because Braveheart had me super excited about what he might do behind the camera.
2-Se7en *****
The fact that David Fincher went from making a bunch of music videos and Alien 3 to this is crazy. Se7en is a script that would have looked like a gimmicky, forgettable thriller in anyone else’s hands, but put together by Fincher it came out looking like a masterpiece. The mood, production design, photography, and grounded performances took a real cartoony story and lent a weight to it that made it seem downright profound. Freeman took what he did in this film and ran with it to create a pretty forgettable string of imitators, but what he pulled off here was strong. Pitt was believable and affecting as the lead, and solidified himself as an actor I loved after watching his progression through the film. Kevin Spacey was mind blowingly memorable with the relatively small amount of screen time he got here, and his one two punch of John Doe and Verbal Kint may be the most memorable two roles an actor has ever had in the same year, and made a huge impression on me.
The Usual Suspects might be the perfect crime film. It’s slickly edited, beautifully shot. The story is interesting, tightly plotted. The dialogue is infinitely quotable. The performances are epic, iconic, unforgettable; there’s awesome turns from guys like Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Pollack here for God’s sake. It introduced me to Kevin Spacey who I was convinced was the best actor I’d ever seen. It introduced me to Benicio Del Toro, whose character work here made him seem more like an alien than an actor. Its ending spawned decades of annoying imitators and nearly ruined the entire thriller genre, but that couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t pulled off so well and didn’t hit you like a ton of bricks. The Usual Suspects is Bryan Singer at the absolute top of his form, and while he’s made films successful to varying degrees since, he’s never touched the work he did here. Nor have many other filmmakers ever for that matter. This is a film that I will watch over and over again for the rest of my life.
