MEET THE PARENTS (2000), TRAFFIC (2000)

2000

Meet the Parents

I will bring you down to Chinatown!

The top comedy from 2000 may have been Meet the Parents, a comedic farce about the nightmare that comes from falling in love with a woman with an overly intimidating father-in-law. The chemistry between Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro may be the best reason to see this, but let us not forget the witty script from Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg. After all, someone had to come up with the Puff the Magic Dragon thing or the wonderful pre-dinner prayer at the first meeting with the in-laws and De Niro's mother on the mantle.

I like the sequel Meet the Fockers as well, though it has a lot more detractors. The sequel to the sequel, Little Fockers, was critically panned but it found an audience, too. I guess we've met everybody at this point as there haven't been any more additional sequels.

Traffic

Steven Soderberg won a Best Director Oscar for this film that takes on many different stories about the war on drugs. It is insightful in that we see aspects of the drug trade through the big time dealers, small time dealers, law enforcement, lawyers, politicians and even the drug czar's daughter. The film also won Oscars fro Screenplay, Editing and Supporting Actor (Benico del Toro). My favorite characters in the film were the undercover cop team played by  Don Cheadle and Luis Gomez.

Should it have beaten out Gladiator for Best Picture? Maybe, but I guess the storyline may not have been to the Academy's liking for the top award.

Here are a few other films I have seen released in Y2K that didn't make the 1001 book:

Since I try to team movies up on many of these blog posts, I'll try to come up with some appropriate double features for these films that I have seen.

Best in Show
One of the best of the Christopher Guest/Eugene Levy largely improvised films of that decade.

Best in Show

What film should Best in Show go with?

How about A Dog's Life, a 1955 film from the perspective of a Bull Terrier?

It's a Dogs Life

Cast Away
Tom Hanks is stranded alone on an island after a plane crash.

Cast Away

What film should Cast Away go with?

How about Five, a 1951 film about five people stranded...on earth alone!

Five

The Cell
Jennifer Lopez movie that reminded many of Silence of the Lambs, just not as good.

The Cell

What film should The Cell go with?

Might as well watch with Silence of the Lambs with it and get it over with.

Silence of the Lambs

Chicken Run
Fun British stop motion film about a group of chickens planning an escape from their unhappy farm existence.

Chicken Run

What film should Chicken Run go with?

The Great Escape might seem like an appropriate choice, but let's go with the pro-union classic Norma Rae instead!

Norma Rae

Dr. T. and the Women
Underrated film from the Robert Altman canon.

Dr. T. and the Women

What film should Dr. T. and the Women go with?

How about another underrated Altman film, the 1988 TV movie, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial?

The Caine Mutiny Court Martial

The Emperor's New Groove
Off-beat, but funny Disney fair

The Emperor's New Groove

What film should The Emperor's New Groove go with?

I'm not sure why, but I want to team this with the 60's stop-motion monster mash, Mad Monster Party. (Mad Monster Party could also be teamed with Chicken Run).

Mad Monster Party

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Jim Carrey is the Grinch in Ron Howard's adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

What film should How the Grinch Stole Christmas go with?

How about the 1953 Dr. Seuss creative concoction The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Though by the title, you might be tempted to team this with Dr. T and the Women.)

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Miss Congeniality
Sandra Bullock goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant.

What film should Miss Congeniality go with?

How about the Michael Ritchie's vastly underrated 1975 ode to small town beauty pageants, Smile?

Smile

Pay It Forward

Depressing movie with a good heart.

Pay It Forward

What film should Pay It Forward go with?

Since you are already in a bad mood from Pay It Forward, might as well cap it off with a Bergman classic like Winter Light. Or if you want something depressing, but not in Swedish, just pop Old Yeller in the VCR.

Winter Light

Pokemon: The Movie 2000
I sure remember taking my son to see all those strange Pokemon movies at the theater.

Pokemon: The Movie 2000

What film should Pokemon: The Movie 2000?

I also remembering at the time of my viewing that Pokemon seemed as strange in it's on way as Naked Lunch. So let's team it up with that one.

Naked Lunch

The Road to El Dorado
Jaunty Elton John songs enliven this animated epic about two con men looking for the gold of El Dorado.

What film should The Road to El Dorado?

I'll go with my first instinct and team this with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, though that one features a much less lovable protagonist.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Scary Movie
The first of the Wayans Brothers horror movie satires.

Scary Movie

What film should Scary Movie be teamed with?

I seem to be in the minority of liking the 1982 horror satire Student Bodies.

Student Bodies

Shadow of the Vampire
Was Max Schreck of the silent film Nosferatu actually a vampire?

Shadow of the Vampire

What film should Shadow of the Vampire be teamed with?

Watch the original Nosferatu to see the real Max Schreck in action. Spoiler: He wasn't a real vampire.

Nosferatu

Snatch
I recently did watch this 2000 British gangster film...

Snatch

And already teamed it with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, so I see no reason to change that pairing. http://1001afilmodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/03/lock-stock-and-two-smoking-barrels-1998.html

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The Three Stooges
Not the more recent Three Stooges from 2012, but a TV movie which depicts the real life issues of the Howard, Howard and Fine comedy team.

The Three Stooges

What film should The Three Stooges be teamed with?

The 2012 Three Stooges? No, a more appropriate pairing is the 2018 film about the later days of Laurel and Hardy, Stan and Ollie.

Stan and Ollie

What Lies Beneath
Crazy supernatural underwater happenings with sexy Michelle Pfieffer.

What Lies Beneath

What film should What Lies Beneath be teamed with?

How about exciting underwater happenings with sexy Jane Russell in the 1955 Howard Hughes film, Underwater!

Underwater!

What Women Want
Women's thoughts go into the mind of male chauvinist pig Mel Gibson.

What Women Want

What film should What Women Want be teamed with?

The original women's lib movie from 1972, Stand Up and Be Counted.

Stand Up and Be Counted

X-Men
The first screen adaptation of Marvel's most popular mutant team.

X-Men

What film should X-Men be teamed with?

How about 1984's campy but fun mutant epic The Toxic Avenger?

The Toxic Avenger

SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE (1989), DRUGSTORE COWBOY (1989)

1989

Andie Macdowell bares her soul to James Spader in
sex, lies and videotape

Coming at the end of the 80's, sex, lies and videotape was the first Gen-X picture, taking shots at the predatory, suspender-wearing, Reagan-era yuppie (Peter Gallagher) in favor of James Spader's version of Steven Soderberg, a recovering liar who is witholding and impotent to boot, yet soft and sensitive, a feminized man racked by the kind of guilt that was obviously a stranger to the freewheeling Oliver North's of the decade about to be past.
-Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film 

Biskind further sees Sex, Lies and Videotape as a watershed of the independent film movement during that important year of '89. That's a lot of retrospective baggage to put on a film about a guy that likes to tape women talking about sex This was the third time I've seen this movie over the years. I wasn't all that looking forward to watching it again, but I found myself quickly sucked into the story about a guy who likes to videotape women talking about sex and his involvement with the wife of an old school friend before I knew it. Who is to say what works in a film and why? But whatever it is, I think sex, lies and videotape does work. I'm glad it found an audience and I'm glad smaller films get made, but it did leave a trail of failed smaller movies that tried to copy its success in subsequent years.

To further get into the mood of the thing, I also watched the movie on a VHS copy I taped off The Movie Channel during the early 90's...It was also the only copy I had readily available to me, but it still seemed fitting.

As luck would have it, the other movie I wanted to watch from that year was on that same old VHS tape...

Matt Dillon and William S. Burroughs in
Drugstore Cowboy

Another smaller film from 1989 was Gus Van Sandt's Drugstore Cowboy, about two couples in Portland in the early 70's who go around stealing drugs from local pharmacies to get a fix. It's a good character study and you can empathize a bit with these band of misfits...to a degree, anyway...and any film with Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs as a priest has certainly got that going for it. The film is based on a book by real life drugstore cowboy, James Fogle. Sadly, Fogle was arrested for robbing a drugstore as late as 2011, well into his 70's. He died the following year. So it goes.

----

I went through the Wikipeda list of films released in 1989 movies and listed about twenty-five that I've seen that weren't on the 1001 list. I remember seeing all of them...but the details for some are a little murky.

1. Dead Poets Society
O Captain, my captain! Lots of inspirational moments in this film, though I do think at times the line between good and bad is spelled out in terms that are a little too black and white. I would put it in my 1001 book anyway, if only for the Robin Williams scenes.

O Captain, my captain!...Dead Poets Society

2. The Abyss
Yes, here's one that I saw and it was directed by James Cameron and had a lot of good underwater special effects and...a little murky on the details.

3. Back to the Future II
I like this second movie in this series where Marty goes to that futuristic date of 2015 and we see hoverboards, the Cubs winning the World Series (Maybe they were just a year off) and other fun stuff. My son really loves the line where we see bad guy Biff telling old man Biff to "Get out of my car, old man!" Some things can just ring funny to you, I guess.

4  Driving Miss Daisy
The Oscar winning film from 1989 about the relationship between an elderly southern Jewish woman and her black driver through the years did not quite make the 1001 cut. I have a bias in favor of Daisy for a few reasons. One is that it is set in Atlanta, which \is where I grew up. Another is that I saw some of the scenes from the movie being shot in Decatur, Georgia, my hometown. But mostly because I was in a stage production of the play a couple of years ago where I played Boolie. Why wouldn't it be in my book?\

Dan Aykroyd as Boolie, my favorite character in Driving Miss Daisy.

5. Heathers
"I love my dead, gay son!" and other quotes from this pretty dark but likable teen comedy.

6. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
The kids get shrunk and then the parents try not to eat them and dogs try not to play with them as toys. Some fun special effects from what I remember.

7. In Country
You got to give Bruce Willis credit for jumping from the success of Die Hard to a serious film about a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress disorder. The film got good reviews, but really didn't do that well, which is too bad.

8. Ghostubsters II
More Ghostbusting fun five years later. When I think of this movie, I think of the song "Talk it Over," by Grayson Hugh which they showed the video for during the previews when I saw this at the theater in the Summer of 1989. I guess that's a little off point.

I really think they could have made a Ghostbusters III.

9. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Probably the best of the Indiana Jones sequels and the film is stolen by Sean Connery as Indy's Dad.

10. K-9, Turner and Hooch
USA network loved to show these two movies over and over again for years. K-9 Cop was the one with Jim Belushi as the cop and the dog was a German Shepherd. Turner and Hooch was the one with Tom Hanks as the cop and the dog was a mastiff.

11. Licence to Kill
Not everyone loved Timothy Dalton's turn as James Bond, but he was definitely more from the Sean Connery school than the Roger Moore school.

12. The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid at the time seemed to me like an unlikely candidate to lead the Disney company back into the Disney renaissance because it didn't seem to have much appeal for boys...and this is why no one's ever asked me to be president of the Walt Disney company.

Ursula in The Little Mermaid

13. Look Who's Talking
Stupid but sometimes funny movie about a couple and a baby that you can hear his thoughts and stuff. But just how many of these damn movies did they have to make?

14. Major League
Pretty funny baseball movie, but non-appearance of Kevin Costner in movie about baseball from this period just seems wrong somehow.

15. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
When Chevy Chase was roasted once, a comedian told him that he had made four good movies and forty lousy ones. I think this is one of the good ones.

16. New York Stories
Three separate stories presented here from directors Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. The one that scores the most is Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks featuring a pretty hilarious turn by Mae Questel as Woody's domineering mother.

Woody Allen's mother appears to be haunting him in Oedipus Wrecks.

17. Parenthood
Very likable Ron Howard comedy with a good cast led by Steve Martin about the ups and downs (like a roller coaster, you know) of family life.

18. Pet Cemetery
One of the better Stephen King book to film adaptations. Any movie with Fred Gwynne in it has that going for it, too.

19. Steel Magnolias
Honestly, I've watched a very good local production of this on stage. Only then did I watch the film and I honestly preferred the stage production, all-star cast in the movie or not.

20. Star Trek IV
The often maligned William Shatner directed Star Trek movie isn't awful, but is still probably the weakest entry in the movie series featuring the original cast.

God makes a cameo in Star Trek V

21. Sea of Love
I remember seeing this in the theater the week it opened. Nice story, nice use of title song and nice cast featuring Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman.

22. The War of the Roses
Another one that's a little murky in my memory. The Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner marriage was bad I think...but it was kind of funny? Danny De Vito was pretty good, too...but it's less murky in my mind than the next entry...

23. Warlock
I know I watched a movie called Warlock when it first came on cable. I remember who I watched it with. I remember pointing out to her that I don't usually watch this kind of movie. That's about all I got on this one.

24. Road House
Another film that is likely to make an appearance on a cable station near you. At least it did in the 90's. Patrick Swayze is a bouncer who takes his shirt off an awful lot.

25. UHF
I'm a big Weird Al fan. I love most of his videos and saw him in concert a couple of years ago. And UHF certainly has funny moments. But a long feature film career was not in the cards for Al.

The Oscar proves out of reach for Weird Al Yankovick in UHF

That's it for 1989, but read my lips...I'll be back!