The MoFos Top 100 of the 90s Countdown - Redux

Also, *ding, ding, ding* for Miyazaki being the third director with multiple entries on the countdown.

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Incorrect. You extrapolated wrongly from my post where I said the dialogue in Glengarry Glen Ross was fakey. Non-ergo that fakey dialogue translates to me wanting all movie dialogue to sound like natural speech. If I did I wouldn't be such a fan of old early mid 20th century movies. Glengarry Glen Ross is overcooked. To bad Roger Corman didn't make it back in the 1980s then it might have had a b-cult movie coolness to it. As it is, it's a poser.

This keeps coming up: Comments about how something seems written or make itself obvious it is written etc.

This reminds me of a time I was sitting at the local lunch counter chatting about books with a fella. I commented that I had just read Look Homeward, Angel and this mug screwed up his face and said "Meh, I don't like Wolfe, his writing is too purple." I thought about that for a minute and then I hauled off and just punched this two-bit bozo in the nose as hard as I could, you get me? I says to this clown, I says "Now what's purple, Mr. Smart Guy!?"

Not really, but that would have been kinda funny in a film. I think he meant that his prose was too flowery, and it drew attention to the writing and not the content. This may be so, but it never really bothered me, and in fact, it had me rereading several sections due to just how completely stunning this guy's use of the English language was. My story about probably seems written, too.

They just don't write em' like they used to, eh?

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I have watched Princess Mononoke a couple of times and I appreciate the animation and parts of the story but the story and characters don't grab me overall. I always feel like I should like it more than I do.

Sweet.

We're back to the Aaron Sorkin thing? David Mamet's dialogue is indeed highly stylized and artificial and it all sounds the same. By design. For those who grove to it is is indeed comical - intentionally so - and a heck of a lot of fun. If you don't groove to it, you don't groove to it.

Mamet's play debuted in 1983, starring one of his regulars Joe Mantegna as Ricky Roma (Pacino's character in the film). In addition to winning Tony, Drama Desk, and New York Drama Critics' Circle awards, Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Seven of the nine Pulitzer Prize winners from the 1980s have been turned into films: Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart (1981) became Bruce Beresford's 1986 film starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek, Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play (1982) became Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story (1984) starring Howard E. Rollins Jr., Adolph Caesar, and Denzel Washington, Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother (1983) which was made into the 1986 film by Tom Moore starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft, August Wilson's Fences (1987) which took a while to make it to the big screen directed by and starring Denzel Washington in 2016 co-starring Viola Davis, Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy (1988) was immediately turned into Bruce Beresford's 1989 Best Picture Oscar winner with Morgan Freeman reprising his role while Jessica Tandy took over for Judith Ivey, and Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (1989) was adapted into a 1995 made-for-TV movie directed by Paul Bogart starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Hulce.

It's not unusual for award winning plays to be adapted into films, but seven of the Pulitzers from a single decade hadn't happened since the 1950s when eight of the nine winners became movies (South Pacific, The Shrike, Picnic, The Teahouse of the August Moon, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Diary of Anne Frank, Long Day's Journey into Night, and "Look Homeward, Angel").




That original Chicago and then Broadway cast of Glengarry Glen Ross was killer. Mantegna's Roma beat out Robert Prosky's Shelly "The Machine" Levene for Best Actor at the Tonys, but the rest of the cast was James Tolkan (Back to the Future, Top Gun) as Moss (the Ed Harris film role), the late, great J.T. Walsh as Williamson (Spacey's film role), Mike Nussbaum (House of Games, Men in Black) as Aaronow (Alan Arkin's film role), and William Petersen (To Live and Die in L.A., Manhunter, "C.S.I.") as Jame Lyngk (Jonathan Pryce's film role) in Chicago then Lane Smith (My Cousin Vinny, "Lois & Clark") on Broadway.

There continue to be major revivals, including Broadway in 2005 with Alan Alda as Shelly Levene, a 2007 West End production with Jonathan Pryce moving to Shelly Levene, a 2012 Broadway production where Pacino tried his hand at playing Shelly Levene (Bobby Cannavale was Roma), and a current Broadway production with Bob Odenkirk as Shelly, Kieran Culkin as Roma, Michael McKean as Aaronow, and Bill Burr making his stage debut as Moss.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Posing to be what? A David Mamet production? Like any great writer, Mamet has a specific style which is beholden only to itself. The dialogue isn't simply constructed to draw attention to its writerly qualities, but to externalize the interior worlds of its characters. The closest example I can think of this off the top of my head is Tennessee Williams, where everything is exaggerated intentionally to give us an understanding of the little insular world his characters live in, all their weird idioms and turns of phrase and way of relating to eachother. It's also given all this extra flavour in order to be comical. And in the case of GGR, it's all fitting being that these are all salesmen, all men who have been hired to sell lies. They are fictional characters in their own lives, by design, by necessity.



It may not be your thing, just like Whit Stillman isn't my thing for similar reasons. But it isn't posing. It knows exactly what it is, and it's not trying to be anything else.

I like animation, all forms of it - I was into comics, I was into art, especially the surrealists, and other strange and imaginative ones. I drew, went to college for commercial arts, my mother painted (mostly pretty landscapes), my drummer GF painted (mostly dark stuff that could hang in the Night Gallery). So, art in film, that's a draw for sure.

Going down memory lane - in 1994 Siskel & Ebert are making their video picks of the week, and My Neighbor Totoro was Roger's selection - the clip left an impression, so one weekend we walked to the 7-11 that was a couple blocks from our apt and boy howdie, there it was on the shelves - and that's where it all began. Slurpee's and a cat bus and me and my best gal digging the hell out of this new discovery we made. (After this we found Kiki - then visits to the theater became a must for any new Miyazaki release).

Funny, I thought it (Totoro) was one of the trippiest things I’d ever viewed, little did I know that by comparison, it would wind up one of the most sedate and straight forward films from the master (but still trippy).

I remember how Mononoke got under my skin - i was in awe of everything presented there on the screen. I wasn't versed in Japanese folklore at the time, so it was all so strange and new and absorbing.

Totoro will always be my #2 for it being the first, Mononoke my #1 for sending me on this mind-blowing journey - Spirited Away is #3, Castle in the Sky #4 and Porco Rosso #5



Oh, and I found the Siskel & Ebert episode, in addition to Totoro, that was the one where they hated, hated North, but gave 2 thumbs up to Whit Stillman's Barcelona (which was a movie I eventually saw and loved)

Not to go to far off topic in this light heartened thread, but if a movie knows what it wants to be (figuratively of course) then that's the same thing as my staunch belief that everyone's opinion is correct onto itself, as it's their own opinion (as long as they are being honest with their feelings of course). I remember you diametrically (thanks spelling check!) opposed that idea. Buy hey, I can go for the notion that Glengarry Glen Ross is doing exactly what it wants to do...but it ain't what I want it to do.

You can have the finally word, I'm not into typing and debating while the sun is shining.

Princess Mononoke....what the heck is this? It looks like TV cartoon.
I would expect something as niche as this to be a one-pointer in this countdown - but at #65??

I've also never seen Glengarry Glen Ross therefore I watched some clips on youtube. It looks like The Office but with lots of grandstanding and without humour. Quite dull, actually.

On the upside, these two entries have pushed my 23 favourites closer to the top 25. All's well that ends well

You must love those "live-action" remakes that Disney's been churning out recently then

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Princess Mononoke is my my #14 on my ballot. I remember watching it on dvd after its theatrical run and becoming enthralled with it. Was hoping it would have improved its position, not drop.

GlenGary Glen Ross is another one of those films I’ve known for about 30 years or so and just haven’t gotten around to watching it despite having it on my watchlist. Maybe someday soon.

Those are all incredible upgrades, the greatest decision in film history was for the studio to remake their classics. I'll go even further and suggest that Disney burn all the animated originals and make the 'live action' the standard, after all, human models were used in the animations, some used some type of rotoscoping, so same diff, right?

That's a good point tbh.
Snow White was essentially mo-cap.

Apollo 13 is very good, but I haven't seen it in forever.

Three Colors: Blue is also great, but it didn't make my ballot either.

I went to check my ballot and neither Princess Mononoke nor Glengarry Glen Ross made my ballot. In retrospect, I kind of regret leaving them off. Oh well...

Glengarry Glen Ross: Not on my ballot, but easily top 50. When I was part of a high tech marketing operations team, doing systems training for novice sales reps, my ice-breaker intro often included replaying the first part of Alec Baldwin's famous "coffee is for closers" speech, up through the part where he says these are the A leads, and you don't get them, and he passes them over his shoulder to Kevin Spacey. Before the profanity started. (As the recruits got older and culture changed, I had to ask the manager for permission to show it, as most had never heard of it.) Well acted. Jack Lemmon ... such a believable sad sack in this one. Yup, very stagey dialog. Me likey.

Princess Mononoke: Caught up with this within the last year. Not the top tier Miyazaki for me. Something about it made me a bit edgy. Hard to describe. Still, no argument with it being here.

Seen: 24/36
Ballot: 2/25

My predictions of how my picks will place:

Good Chance: 0/12
Fair Chance: 2/10
Sleepless in Seattle: #91 / My #3
Office Space: #95 / My #23
No Chance: 0/3

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

Princess Mononoke is the only Miyazaki movie that didn't work for me. It's just a bit too depressing, combined with protagonists I didn't like. It's a beautiful film, very well made, but not for me


Glengarry Glenn Ross is a showcase of terrible people, in an environment where the most terrible people thrive the most. And the least terrible among them has the worst fate. Not in my list, but a good movie.


Seen: 26/36
List: 3

Princess Mononoke is my eight & my favourite Miyazaki film.
I find it utterly captivating.
Quite surprised it has featured so low, but at least glad it has featured on the list.

Posing as what?

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“Except for markf, you’re all a disgrace to cinema.”