A view "on the waterfront"

SS Lau

This is about holiday movies ( meaning movies being shown around X'mas and
New year), and there are far too many to write about them in details. So I am going to just list them in the order of best to worst (in my view), with just a few words;

(1) Titanic---Movie making and story telling at its best. Everyone, including some of the most influential movie critics, seems to like this movie, and it is just a great movie.

(2) The postman---Everyone ( meaning the professional movie critics) seems to dislike it. I, as a movie goer, think it is a fine movie. See it and you'll see. I don't want say anymore at this point to influence your views.

(3)Wag the Dog---This is really a hilarious political satire and the story reflects a certain amount of truth in American politics. Every country does this sort of thing, the Americans do it better than anyone else, since we have Holliwood,the network News and CNN. It is almost a play rather than a movie---a fun thing to watch.

(4) Jackie Brown---Nice going for Tarantino, but it is not another "Pulp Fiction". Everyone was great in the movie, especially Robert Foster, but not Pam Grier, too bad, she is such a foxy girl.

(5) Good will Hunting---I got hooked the moment they showed the "MIT Dome" ( not because I went there, I would been more hooked if they showed "The Campanili"). Yes, go see it. The problem is that the script did not give enough time to develop the friendship/relationship between the two main characters ( I don't mean with the girl). It also does not seem likely that a genius in math is also a wizard in Organic Chemistry, they are just two entirely different branches of science, if you consider Math a science.

(6) Tomorrow never dies---I wrote a relatively long piece to discuss why I am disappionted with it, but I decided to skip it for now. I may come back to it in the future. Both Siskel and Eibert gave a thumb-up review---so we disagree, and not for the first time.

For 1997, I would rank (1) LA Confidential, (2) The Ice Storm, and (3) Boogie Nights, (4) Titanic and (5) Lone Star. It is quite possible that "Titanic" might win an Academy Award as the best movie; it is all a matter of promotion--as all awards are, including the Nobel Prize. Some of the less expensively made movies are equally compelling, if not more.

For calibration, I rank " Casablanca" an all time great ---I see that Peter Tong prefers " body and soul" all together. More on that later.

I'll throw in a few others such as "To kill a mocking bird", " Lawrence of Arabia", and " The year of living dangerous" for your reference.