Best Movie Year Ever?

                                                                           1983

Another year with more than its share of winners is the fairly recent (to me) 1983. Let’s take a look.

  Tender Mercies features Robert Duvall at his absolute best (and that's saying a lot) as a broken down country singer trying to rebuild a life on the wreckage of too much liquor and too many honky tonks.  Duvall wrote the songs in this movie.  Betty Buckley, seen briefly as another singer, is now the star of Sunset Boulevard on Broadway.

The Year of Living Dangerously is one of the best political thrillers ever made.  Sigourney Weaver is just fine as the attache who knows more than she wants to.   Helen Hunt won an Oscar for her role as a local who knows too much, but why they picked her to play a man baffles me. Since she won an Oscar, what do I know?  Mel Gibson proves here he really can act. 

Terms of Endearment features Jack Nicholson as an aging ex-astronaut with problems connecting emotionally and Shirley MacLaine as the unsainted mother of the fetchingly terminally ill Debra Winger.  An excellent screenplay by first-time director James L. Brooks from a Larry McMurtry novel keeps you interested and off balance.

The Right Stuff was the best movie about the space program until Apollo 13 came along.  Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Sam Sheppard and Ed Harris play the early astronauts broadly as true American heroes.  Never boring, even though it's over three hours long, and technically stunning, it does not hook you emotionally.

Educating Rita is an absolute little gem of a film. Michael Caine is a world-weary college professor and Julie Walters (in her film debut) is the hairdresser who wants to better herself.  This is the best feminist movie ever made, but don't let that stop you from watching it.  

El Norte, about illegal immigrants, is alternately harrowing and humorous.  Featuring all unknowns, it is riveting from beginning to end.  You'll never think the same way about Latinos again.

Testament is a good end-of-the-world movie, far superior to the much-ballyhooed The Day After (made this same year).  Jane Alexander leads a stellar cast. It isn't the desperation that gets you, its the low key matter-of-factness.

Return of the Jedi was the second of the Star Wars trilogy, and, while not as dazzling as the first and third, the story is first-rate and the lovable Yoda is one of the best characters in the set.

Fanny and Alexander is one of the great Ingmar Bergman's most accessible films, and easily the most charming. One of his few color ventures, it is the story of a brother and sister whose dream lives intertwine with reality.

Ed Harris, Gene Hackman and Nick Nolte are certainly a dream team in Under Fire, a political thriller set in Latin America in which the journalists telling the story somehow become the story. The most violent scene is so offhand you're not sure you saw it at first.

Zelig is considered one of Woody Allen's lesser films, but those tend to be the ones I like the best.  This one foreshadows the neat special effects in Forest Gump  by showing Zelig on screen with long-dead celebrities. Mia Farrow is in this one, too; this was before you-know-what.

                                                   Best Movie Year Ever? 

                                                               1939

Yep, I was born in 1939. You can do the math.  Anyway it so happens that this was a great year for movies.

Many movie fans would pick 1939 as the best year in the history of motion pictures, primarily because two of the most popular movies ever made were both released in that year.  The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind are each shown on TV at least once a year and most everyone has seen and liked both.  The Wizard of Oz has been on TV so much it has been referred to as The Oz Bowl Game, but who wouldn't like Judy and Ray and Bert cavorting along the yellow brick road. (The fourth actor, the guy who played the tin man and the one nobody can ever remember, was Jack Haley).  The truth is, it holds up very well indeed and is that rare film that appeals equally to kids and grown-ups.  And, it spawned the hugely successful prequel Wicked, which is still kicking.

Gone With The Wind  is epic in sweep and the story is a winner. Never mind that it is really just an overblown soap opera and Vivien Leigh is simply dreadful.   (Do you know anyone who talks like that?)  But Gable is excellent, the photography and music are great, and it's just so darn big you have to at least be awed by it.  The Technicolor in both of these movies is just amazing, and no, they don't make them like that anymore.

Well, there aren't a whole lot of years that produce two absolute legends, and 1939 also produced the definitive Hunchback of Notre Dame, the one with Charles Laughton.  Laughton has been constantly downgraded since he died, and this is a mistake.  The man could play absolutely anything and this film proves it.  Forget all those dreary remakes and catch this one.  Director William Dieterle pulls one of the neatest tricks in Hunchback: when Quasimodo swings from a rope to rescue Desdemona, Dieterle suddenly cuts all sound: no dialogue, no crowd noise, no music. It is an unforgettable moment.

Of Mice and Men also first came out in 1939.  Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr., give career performances in the Steinbeck story of the feeble-minded Lenny and his pal and mentor Curly, who desperately want a place of their own.  (Steinbeck characters always want a place of their own and have not a prayer of ever having it.   They just don't know it.) 

Jimmy Stewart's first Everyman role appears in 1939, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The faintly socialistic, do-good Smith would get booed off the screen by today's me-first crowd, but it's a darn good performance. Stewart also found time that same year to star in Destry Rides Again, along with the legendary Marlene Dietrich.  Destry was the philosophical godfather of Maverick, for those of you keeping score. He would rather joke than fight. 

Hollywood hadn't been quite able to decide what to do with Big John Wayne until 1939.  When Stagecoach came out, he became The American Cowboy Hero, and he always will be. This also happens to be a good western that holds up quite well.

 

                                                                Rabbits

I enjoy watching the rabbits in our urban back yard. They seem to require a column about their tribe. Well, why not? Turns out the problem is picking the best, not lack of subjects. Of course Mr. Movie can do that so here goes.

I’ll start with my personal favorite, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). In a world where cartoon characters (toons) and real people exist side by side, Roger Rabbit is accused of murder. Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) reluctantly agrees to defend Roger. The terrible Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) is out to see that Roger is convicted. The toons cannot be killed by the usual means, they have to be destroyed by a caustic chemical combination .It’s complicated, but things work out. The film also has the sexiest rabbit ever, Jessica Rabbit (voiced without credit by Kathleen Turner and Amy Irving).

Up high on everyone’s list of classics is the endearing Harvey (1950) with James Stewart as the charming but wacky Elwood Dowd, who is dear friends with a puka (legendary Celtic rabbit) named Harvey. However, no one but Elwood can see Harvey, including the two female relatives with whom he lives. Several attempts are made to have Elwood committed but he keeps escaping and finding his way to his favorite bars with his favorite friend. Elwood gives us Harvey’s best quote: “Harvey not only understands time and space, but any objection”.

Zootopia (2016) is a fun animated film that features a wily rabbit, Judy Hopps, as the local police officer. She is conned, but then befriended by an even wilier fox, Nick Wilde. They become quite a good team and eventually ZPD (Zoo Police Department) colleagues. The movie provides the funniest sloth in the world: Flash Slothmore, the fastest clerk at the Zoo DMV. He is worth the trip!

Song of the South (1948) is, okay, unabashedly racist, so much so that for many years it was banned everywhere and you couldn’t see it. I say get beyond that pigeon hole and enjoy the story of a lonely little boy enchanted by the stories of Uncle Remus, a kind elderly black man. One of his favorite characters is the sharp-witted Brer Rabbit, who enjoys taunting and escaping from the clutches of the dense and slow Brer Bear. 

Any version of Lewis Carroll’s delightful Alice in Wonderland features the frantic White Rabbit, who is scurrying because he is always late. Alice follows him “down the rabbit hole” and has many wonderful (pun intended) adventures. For my money, the 1950 animated version is superior to the one from 2010 with live characters. 

And any version of Winnie The Pooh brings us another frantic Rabbit, who talks too fast and overruns his plans. The 2011 version is good enough, though none of the films come close to the magic of the books. Anyway, Rabbit leaves a note for Pooh:”I am scerching for owl a new house. So had you. Rabbit”. And of course Rabbit is trying to help the professorial Owl, who could spell his own name: Wol. 

There’s even a movie featuring killer rabbits- Night of the Lepus (1972). The killer bunnies gather at an abandoned gas station. Good grief!