The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen

by Richard Crouse

  When all else fails he convinces the boy to go on a bizarre father-and-son “adventure” into the wilderness of British Columbia, on the promise that the trip will help reunite the family. The deeper into the utopian backwoods they travel, the darker the story becomes. Derek slowly descends into madness, behaving recklessly, endangering himself, his son, and those around them. Will soon figures out that what he thought was a family outing is turning into a life-threatening situation. His confidence in Derek shattered, Will's reticence to accept his father's love forces Derek to face the truth about his own failures and the meltdown of his marriage. It's a family drama about a family gone wrong.

  As the deluded dad, Riley delivers a powerhouse performance, at once both pathetic and scary. Widdows also excels as Will, a young boy caught between the love of his father and the realization that the man he idolizes is seriously disturbed. Will is wise beyond his years, and Widdows strikes the perfect tone, never becoming precocious. He is simply a kid with good observational skills, who is nonetheless vulnerable to the manipulations of his parent.

  Mile Zero is strong material, crafted by a director who understands Derek's plight. “The reason I made the film is because I am a single parent,” director Andrew Curry told the Georgia Straight in 2001. “Some years ago, when I got separated, I sometimes wasn't seeing my son for four or five weeks at a time. His mum started a new relationship, which is normal and healthy and everything, but because I was so far away, it encouraged me to feel a lot of, um, irrational things about what was going on. The film is an expression of my fears, what I imagined. The idea of being replaced by another man is terrifying to anyone. I don't want to overplay what I went through. I was working at the time with Michael Melski, who had already written a short screenplay for me called Fragile X about a man who's just too fragile for this world.”

  I could have used a little less of the home movie flashback scenes, but they did reinforce the sense of loss Derek was experiencing after his wife kicked him out of the house. It's heart-rending stuff, and while you can't condone Derek's actions, Riley makes him human enough that the viewer can at least understand his behavior.

  THE MINUS MAN (1999)

  “Some people die in less than a minute, others it takes 10. I guess it's what they call metabolic. If it wasn't closed I'd go to the library and get clear on this.”

  — Vann Siegert (Owen Wilson)

  “He was such a polite guy.” “He seemed like such a nice quiet young man.” That's what Vann Siegert's neighbors would say about him. That's what the neighbors of serial killers always say after the police have taken away the suspect in chains. Vann Siegert is a mass murderer, and The Minus Man is a study of a broken psyche.

  Hampton Fancher is best known as the screenwriter of the 1982 science-fiction classic Blade Runner, but the native Los Angelian had already had a long and bizarre career before that movie was released. He quit school as a teen and moved to Spain, where he became a well-known flamenco dancer under the name Mario Montejo. Upon returning to the States he worked as an actor, playing everything from a zombie in the 1958 cult-horror flick The Brain Eaters to Adoptive Parent #3 in the 1974 TV weeper The Stranger Who Looks Like Me. Tired of being offered less-than-stellar roles, he turned to writing, penning Blade Runner and the Denzel Washington film The Mighty Quinn. The inspiration for his next script would come while reading a book review.

  Fancher was first exposed to author Lew McCreary's book The Minus Man by novelist Anne Rice's review of it in the New York Times. He thought the book sounded interesting and clipped the column. He carried it around with him for years, until one day he stumbled across a copy of the out-of-print novel in a used bookstore.

  “I read it that night,” he says, “which is unusual because I'm generally not a fast reader, but this book was a page-turner. I was so fascinated that I couldn't stop until the sun was up and the book was on the floor. I realized in the morning that this story encapsulated a theme that had always interested me — the idea of a person who is essentially very good but who does things that are very bad. I'd always wanted to do a movie about this concept.”

  The finished script was a darkly comic exploration into the mind of an unconventional serial killer — a likeable guy who is also a terrible threat to those around him.

  The film begins with Vann Siegert (Owen Wilson) offering a ride to an inebriated young woman (Sheryl Crow) he has just met in a tavern. At a rest stop he discovers her in the bathroom shooting up. He's not shocked by the drug use, and offers the woman a drink from his flask. Next we see him propping her dead body against the bathroom wall, making it look like she overdosed. Is he a guy who just doesn't want to get involved in the death of someone he just met, or is there something in that flask besides amaretto?

  Vann stops in a rural Pacific Northwest coastal town looking for a place to live. He rents a room from an older couple, Doug (Brian Cox) and Jane (Mercedes Ruehl), whose marriage is falling apart after the disappearance of their daughter. Jane is wary of Vann and wants Doug to keep his distance from the lodger. “Don't make a boarder your guest,” she warns. Of course he doesn't listen, and the two men become as tight as two peas in a pod.

  With Doug's recommendation Vann gets a job at the local post office and begins to date a fellow worker, Ferrin (Janeane Garofalo). Ferrin is a free-spirited young woman who Garofalo describes as a “townie who lives in this suburb and doesn't really have many aspirations beyond the confines of the post office.” Despite her best efforts, Ferrin can't penetrate Vann's wall of secrecy.

  Outwardly Vann appears to be the model citizen, but internal forces are eating away at him. Most nights he is visited by imaginary hard-boiled detectives Blair (Dwight Yoakam) and Graves (Dennis Haysbert) — his nightmare morality police — who carry on surreal conversations with him. “Blair and Graves are the basement of Vann Siegert's mind,” Fancher explains, “the nightmares within. There is nothing really cruel or twisted in this movie — except these two characters. They are detectives but they are also devils and angels.”

  When the locals start to mysteriously disappear, suspicions arise.

  The Minus Man is a look at what lies just beneath the surface of normality. Fancher — who wrote and directed the film — has created a striking character in Vann. He's the serial killer next door; a man so painfully normal it is almost inconceivable that he could ever have a nasty thought, let alone kill. Owen Wilson is effective because he is disarming, and his matter-of-factness about his murderous urges is chilling. “I never make a plan,” he says. “It just happens.” His easy grin and all-American-guy demeanor reveal very little about him. Almost everyone likes him because he tells people what they want to hear. He's a seductive charmer with a dangerous hidden edge.

  “I think Vann is someone who through really listening to people can become whatever they want him to be,” says Fancher. “He is the perfect confidante, the perfect reflection, the perfect love. But meanwhile he actually has this blankness inside of him. He is nothing; the man who fell to earth. Vann is so pure and kind, like a child, not murky or diluted or filled with ambiguities. You feel you can look right into him, and yet he is a stranger.”

  The supporting roles are nicely cast. Brian Cox was an ironic choice to play the disturbed Doug in a movie about a mass murderer; trivia buffs will remember Cox as the original Dr. Hannibal Lector in the 1986 film Manhunter. Cox lends heft to the picture with his portrayal of Doug as an odd, tortured man. Janeane Garofalo as Ferrin is stretching her acting wings here in a different kind of role. She nails Ferrin's naiveté in romance, letting her body language and mannerisms do the talking in a nicely understated performance.

  Fancher has made a strikingly original film that defies the usual conventions of the genre. It is a serial killer movie with virtually no violence. The killer is a likeable guy, and is never revealed to be a monster. There aren't even any Hitcockian-type thrills and chills, just a probing camera and a cerebral approach. This is Blue Velvet without the ether, a sma
rt serial killer movie that explores the mind, not the actions of a murderer. The Minus Man will leave you feeling unsettled as you slowly get into the head of a man you never thought you'd know.

  MONSOON WEDDING (2001)

  “The Rain is coming — and so is the Family.”

  — Advertising tagline for Monsoon Wedding

  In Monsoon Wedding, director Mira Nair expertly knits together a joyous, sprawling story about a wedding, an affair, and a lovesick wedding planner. Nair aims her camera at life in modern day India, but still holds onto many of the traditions of Bollywood filmmaking. “Bollywood is very interesting,” Nair told Reel to Real in 2001. “When I was growing up there was a slight snobbery about the high kitsch quality of it. No longer. Now Bollywood stuff is refined, slick, trendy, and hip. For the young Indian person it is the way to go. Monsoon Wedding is my tongue-in-cheek tribute. My family has been begging me to make Marsala Bollywood movies, and I will maybe one day, but this is sort of Bollywood on my terms, because it is all so surrealistic, but based in reality, and that allows me the fun and the high kitsch and the absolute reality of the sex appeal of the fantastic Bollywood films.”

  Monsoon Wedding is full of life — interesting characters, bright swirling colors, fabulous Indian music — and like one of Nair's previous efforts, the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay, is universal enough to break through the cultural marketplace and become a mainstream North American hit. “India is an extraordinary culture because we are truly about layering,” said Nair. “It is a multiplicity of worlds; it is a nation of coexistence between the rich and the poor. That we know. But there are also all kinds of influences that we are open to, especially in today's modern India, which is Monsoon Wedding's India. It has gone global and we have Gucci and Prada on the one hand, and traffic jams and power cuts on the other. That is just a very small part of the craziness of our existence. Monsoon Wedding attempts to show you that layering, in a very layered way itself, cinematically, with language, and with music and with the camera. That was my intention from the beginning.”

  Monsoon Wedding won numerous awards upon its release, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards.

  NIGHT TIDE (1961)

  “Sensual ecstasy becomes supernatural terror!”

  — Advertising tagline for Night Tide

  In October 2002 I asked Dennis Hopper to tell me what scared him the most. I expected the man who played Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, one of the screen's creepiest characters, to give me a deep psychological answer. Instead he said simply, “Being out of work.” This was coming from a man who is a Hollywood legend, having appeared in classics such as 1955's Rebel Without a Cause, 1969's Easy Rider, and 1979's Apocalypse Now, and continues to have a career as one of the screen's leading bad guys. Hopper is one of those Hollywood stories of great talent colliding head-on with a self-destructive streak a mile wide. His well-known drug habit earned him a reputation of being difficult, and even got him blacklisted in Hollywood for eight years. Despite his career ups and downs Hopper has made well over 100 movies, garnering two Academy Award nominations (for Easy Rider and Hoosiers) and winning a trophy case full of awards from international film festivals. He made his first film in 1954, but it wasn't until 1961 that he earned his first lead role.

  In Night Tide (based on the Edgar Allen Poe poem Annabel Lee) he plays Johnny Drake, a charming young sailor who falls in love with Mora (Linda Lawson), a beautiful and mysterious woman who portrays a mermaid in a Santa Monica sideshow. As their love affair develops, Johnny learns more about her past — how she was found on a deserted island and became a sideshow attraction. Then he discovers some unnerving news. Two of Mora's previous boyfriends had disappeared, only to be found much later washed up on shore. The deaths were investigated, but no hard evidence was uncovered against Mora. Johnny is suspicious but blinded by love. When Mora tells him that “the seawater is in my veins, the tide pulls at my heart,” he begins to believe the rumors that the mermaid routine is not just an act, that she is descended from man-killing sirens who customarily murder during the cycle of the full moon.

  Think of Night Tide as a sinister version of Splash without the laughs or the happy ending. While it wasn't a box office success upon its release, it did collect considerable critical acclaim, even making Time's Ten Best of the Year list, mostly because of director Curtis Harrington's moody handling of the material and Hopper's restrained, natural performance. In hindsight it's interesting to see a freshly scrubbed Hopper playing a nice guy after all the years he has spent playing psychos and drug-addled characters, but his performance goes beyond a mere novelty. Even though this is a genre picture with an unreal premise, Hopper plays it straight, and his enthusiasm feels very real. In one scene his gusto gets the best of him as he jumps for joy, balancing himself on a rail. It is a wonderful unforced moment that displays the childlike glee of his character. The story, strange though it may be, can't be described as a horror movie — there are no monsters or blood — but rather a psychological study that has more to do with The Twilight Zone than The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Long after the rubber-suited monsters from other films of that era have become camp nostalgia, Night Tide remains a seriously suspenseful story with lots of entertainment value.

  RICHARD'S FAVORITE LEGAL DISCLAIMERS

  1. “Any references to any religious organization is purely coincidental, and no actual Mormons were used or abused in the filming of this picture.” — Orgazmo (1997)

  2. “No real reapers were hurt during the making of this film.” — Blade II (2002)

  3. “The persons and events in this production are fictitious. No similarity to actual persons or predators, living or dead, is intended or should be inferred.” — Pitch Black (2000)

  4. “No Canadians were harmed in this production.” — Canadian Bacon (1995)

  5. “Any resemblance to persons living, dead, or reincarnated is purely coincidental.” — What Dreams May Come (1998)

  6. “No animals were injured during the making of this film, although some rabbits did have their feelings hurt.” — Happy, Texas (1999)

  7. “All characters portrayed in this film are entirely fictitious and bare no resemblance to anyone living or dead, except for one.” — Jabberwocky (1977)

  8. “The following stunts were performed by professionals, so for your safety and the protection of those around you, Paramount Pictures and mtv Films insist that neither you or your dumb little buddies attempt any of what you're about to see.” — Jackass: The Movie (2002)

  9. “Any similarity with persons living or dead is an accident. Sorry.” — Bad Taste (1987)

  10. “Beavis and Butthead are not real people, in fact they are not even human. They are cartoons. Some of the things they do can cause a person to get hurt, injured, expelled, arrested, and possibly deported. To put it in another way, don't try this at home.” — Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996)

  THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

  “Is there anything you can do doctor, I mean, seeing

  as how you've lost over 200 million patients?”

  — Lisa (Rosalind Cash) in The Omega Man

  Today I think of Charlton Heston as a gun totin' just-right-of-Attila-the-Hun caricature of the God-fearing super-patriot. But believe it or not, there was a time before he made it his crusade to put a gun in the hands of every man, woman, and child in the U.S. when he made movies. Some pretty good ones too. Perhaps you remember a little thing called The Ten Commandments. Or Ben Hur. Maybe A Touch of Evil. How about The Agony and the Ecstasy? In all he made over 120 movies, but there are three mid-career films that stand out from the pack.

  In the late '60s and early '70s Heston made a trio of science-fiction movies in which he traded his period costumes, chariots, and religious epics for thoughtful, stirring, futuristic drama. The sci-fi trifecta begins with 1968's Planet of the Apes, con
tinues with The Omega Man, and finishes with Soylent Green, a bizarre eco-cannibalism story. What sets these movies apart from modern science-fiction, or what passes for sci-fi on film, is that they are about ideas, not special effects and bombast.

  My pick of the litter, 1971's The Omega Man, combines science-fiction, dark comedy, horror, and even a little blaxploitation. The source material, Richard Matheson's novella I Am Legend, is a page-turner about a man left alone in a world of vampires. Matheson was inspired to write the story after taking in a matinee of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. “It occurred to me that if one vampire was frightening,” he said, “then a whole world of vampires really would be frightening.”

  There have been two film adaptations of I Am Legend, both of which take substantial liberties with the original text. The Last Man on Earth (1964) sees a badly miscast Vincent Price as the eponymous hero, and disappointingly, changes the novella's ending, weakening the climax of the film. There are some genuinely creepy moments in the show, and the depiction of the zombie-like creatures seems to have been a template for George Romero's Night of the Living Dead movies, but this film pales in comparison to the 1971 retelling, The Omega Man.

  In this film Charlton Heston plays Dr. Robert Neville, one of the few to survive an apocalyptic war fought with biological weapons. As a military scientist he was working on an antidote when the End came. By injecting himself with the only existing sample of the vaccine he was able to survive the bio-holocaust. The chemical combat may be over, but he is still at war. He has a new fight, a battle against a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people called The Family. They too survived the plague brought on by the chemical warfare, but just barely. Family members are sensitive to light, wear long black robes, and have an unquenchable thirst for blood.