As our 13th round pick, team Selfmade Heroes picks Willow (1988) in the Fantasy category. Madmartigan: [sarcastically] My help? Why would you need my help? You're a *sorcerer*. Willow: You're a great warrior! And a swordsman!... And you're ten times bigger than I am, stupid!
Films like these are the essence of fun in cinema. I loved this film as a kid, and I love it still every time I see it. It might not be among the great works of film art in the traditional sense, but very few films can still awake that kid inside me that simply doesn't care how silly it all is.
In my opinion this is the greatest sword & sorcery fantasy film ever, the one that needed to be made, and one that might never be bested, largely because of the simple purity of it all. Here everything is just like it's supposed to be.
Besides, gotta love Val Kilmer. Not the best actor out there, but one of the few that have it in them to totally abandon any sense of self esteem and credibility for the sake of making a movie just a little bit more fun. The way he dives into his roles is often pretty amazing.
You also have to give big props for the expansive use of actual dwarf actors, and most notably for being a big budget film with a no-name leading actor that's propably the furthest away from normal Hollywood standards I've ever seen. It's by the way also the first film in history to use computer morphing, something which these days is a virtual must-have in every big budget sci-fi or fantasy film.
Trailer:
Willow meets Madmartigan:
This description by BlueCorsair in IMDB might as well have been written by me:
"...one might expect that someone like me wouldn't appreciate this kind of film. It's one dimensional, it plays on typical fantasy stereotypes, and it doesn't really have anything that previous fantasy films didn't except for... style.
Yes, I consider this a stylish film. Mostly because even after 'growing up', I can still watch this film and be as wrapped up in the story and characters as I was when I was a little boy. It's formulaic plot and generally one-dimensional characters are a large part of that reason - the film makes no pretensions of being something it isn't. It's honest, a quality lacking in so very many films these days which seem to be produced only to suit the latest fashion.
The characters are all well acted - there's no ham acting to be found here in my opinion. Clearly, the actors had fun with the roles and gave them as much life as they could. Madmartigan is man with a dark past, clearly an anti-hero redeemed by the end of the film. Airk, the 'good' general is everything one expects in a 'knight in shining armor' - chivalrous, dedicated, brave. Bavmorda is the quintessential 'wicked witch', scheming, maniacal, obsessed with power. It is these characters that play so well into the average person's conception of fantasy fare that is precisely what makes the film a success - it entertains us because it knows what we like, and what we expect to see, and then delivers it with action and a bombastic musical score.
Critics panned it for being unoriginal, but being original wasn't the point of this movie. The point was to entertain, to make us thrill to a tale of high adventure of dragons, of far away lands, of swords and sorcery. On this account, no other fantasy film (with the possible exception of Conan the Barbarian) has ever done this so exceedingly well."
With our 13th pick in this illustrious draft, That's What She Said is proud to select Wanted as our Action selection.
It is a recent release, true, but a fine example of the category filled with sexy people, big guns and loads of great effects that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is - an adrenaline filled, testosterone buzzing, wham-bam-kill-that-man spree of mayhem. It may not be on anyone's Oscar nominee list or be discussed on Oprah for its intriguing plot twists and exaltation of the human spirit but it does make creative use of the lowly rat and that is something I can appreciate as a film goer.
Our protagonist is Wesley, a guy stuck in a dead end job, with a cheating girlfriend and anxiety/panic attacks that come on suddenly as a result of stress. Wesley knows his life sucks but is unsure what he can do to escape it.....until he's recruited by a guild of assassins who want him to join their ranks and kill a rogue agent.
(And did I mention that all you men folk get to drool over a very inked Angelina Jolie as well?)
YouTube goodies!
Trailer #1
Wesley Feels Different (NSFW - some very bad language)
The B-List Celebs are proud to select in the Thriller category Saw
The greatest psychological thriller in recent history. Saw made people rethink that a thriller movie really was, moving away from the slash and dismember type of thriller to more of a scare your brain type.
Two men wake up at opposite sides of a dirty, disused bathroom, chained by their ankles to pipes. Between them lies a dead man loosely clutching a hand-held tape player and a handgun. Each finds a tape the perfect fit for the player in their back pocket. They play the tapes. One is threatened, the other isn't. But they have a task: One must kill the other by 6:00, or his wife and daughter will die. They find hacksaws in a toilet, and try to cut the chains, but it doesn't work. They are the two newest victims of the Jigsaw Killer. In a flashback, we learn of Amanda, a girl who falls victim to the Jigsaw Killer. On her head is a mask, which is hooked into her lower jaw. There is a timer on it. Only one key will unlock it, and that key is in the digestive tract of her cell mate who lies paralyzed on the opposite side of the room. If she doesn't unlock the mask in time, her lower jaw will be ripped wide open. She survives, but her cell mate doesn't. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn of more victims, and of the nearly-successful capture of the Jigsaw Killer, who doesn't actually kill his victims. Instead, he finds ways to make them kill either themselves, or each other, and he thinks the entire 'game' out perfectly, with no other ways out. Or so it would seem.
I wanted to go with SAW as my thriller movie, but I know this will be voted on by others. Decided on going with the more mainstream 6th Sense, but SAW is an excellent choice. Almost a better ending than 6th...
Alright, while I'm waiting for my pick to come up, I'm going to post the write-ups for my last two picks. I don't know if I could have chosen two movies that are further apart from each other in most every way. I think the only thing they have in common is that they're set in New York City...
"I believe... I believe... It's silly, but I believe."
First up, my 11th round pick, in the Pre-60s category, 1947's heartwarming, holiday classic, Miracle on 34th Street.
Maureen O'Hara (as Doris Walker) and John Payne (as Fred Gailey) may have received top billing on the poster, but the heart and soul of the movie are a 9 year-old (pre-West Side Story, pre-Rebel Without a Cause, pre-falling off a boat and drowning under mysterious circumstances) Natalie Wood as Susan Walker, a young girl who has been raised by her single mother (an oddity in itself in a late 1940s movie) to be a very serious and straightforward person, with no time for fairy tales and "silly games", and Edmund Gwenn in an Oscar winning performance as Kris Kringle, a "nice old man with a white beard", who may or may not be Santa Claus.
There aren't a lot of clips on YouTube, but this is one of the strangest (and longest) trailers I've ever seen (I didn't even know that the term "Groovey" was in use already in 1947)...
Despite being the quintessential Christmas movie, 20th Century Fox actually originally released the film in May, which probably explains the fact that the trailer really avoids mentioning Christmas.
One of the things I love about this movie is that it never tries to convince us that Kris is actually the real Santa Claus. In fact, even to the end, no one really believes that he is anything more than a nice old man with a beard who can speak Dutch ("I can speak French. It doesn't make me Joan of Arc").
Miracle on 34th Street is one of the four or five Christmas movies that you should watch at least once every holiday season. Plus, if you ever find yourself in Manhattan, standing across the street from the main entrance to Macy's and you're not sure what street you're on, you'll know (which actually happened to me in June).
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"I'm walkin' here!"
Now, my 12th Round pick, in the Best Picture category, the only "X-Rated" film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, Midnight Cowboy.
Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a Texas dishwasher who moves to New York City to become a "stud" for wealthy women, and Dustin Hoffman as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, a streetwise New York conman who initially takes advantage of Buck's naivety, but eventually becomes his friend and business partner.
Life for Joe and Ratso is never easy, and the movie is definitely not a heartwarming family film. As was mentioned earlier by Displaced Flames fan, this film has an amazing soundtrack, including Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'".
I can't find a trailer, but here's the opening scene...
United Artists studio initially released the film with a voluntary "X" rating, but after its Oscar win, it was re-submitted to the MPAA, and received the more-appropriate "R" rating, so that it could receive a wider re-release into theatres that refused to show "X" rated films and be allowed to advertise in newspapers that refused to promote "X" rated films.
This was Voight's breakout role, and Hoffman's incredible departure from the character he played in The Graduate, just two years earlier.
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Now, look at the time...I guess I can make my next pick...
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
I wanted to go with SAW as my thriller movie, but I know this will be voted on by others. Decided on going with the more mainstream 6th Sense, but SAW is an excellent choice. Almost a better ending than 6th...
I was going to pick Saw as my #1 wild card, considering it is a great movie made by two dudes from the greatest city on Earth. That, and I was always a big fan of Shawnee Smith.
15 and a half hours since the last pick, so by my clock, that means I can go now...
"I'm too old for this..."
It seems that this is being said a lot lately in this thread, but I can't believe this movie is still available in Round 13...For my next pick, team Hot Buttery Topping is surprised to be able to pick, in the Action category, Lethal Weapon.
Before they went crazy and starting shouting antisemitic curses at police officers, and hanging out with Hugo Chávez, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover teamed up as cops who didn't like teaming up in this film that really defined the buddy-cop, action, comedy genre.
Gibson plays Martin Riggs, a possibly insane, probably suicidal LAPD detective who is struggling with the recent death of his wife. Glover plays Roger Murtaugh, an aging detective and family man who is very reluctantly assigned to be Riggs's new partner.
If you're curious about which decade this movie was made during, I think the trailer should clear that up...
During the course of the movie, a lot of things blow up and a lot of people get killed and Riggs and Murtaugh develop a solid working relationship that evolves into a friendship.
Riggs doesn't care whether he lives or dies, which makes him both a dangerous and effective cop (language warning)...
"Have you ever met anybody you didn't kill?"
"Well, I haven't killed you yet."
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
Yeah, sorry for any confusion. I hadn't gotten around to posting the write-ups for the last two picks and I had time to kill until my pick time came up.
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
The MacGuffins select, with their thirteenth team selection and 346th overall pick, for entry in the Sports category:
Remember The Titans
You make sure they remember, forever, the night they played the Titans!
More thorough writeup coming later, of course, just wanted to get this up here. Didn't realize I had been holding things up. For all the cliches and the fact that the racism that existed in the South at the time isn't fully depicted (it is a Disney movie!), the performances are great and I always find it both uplifting and extremely entertaining.
Team Lucky the Donkey takes as their first Wildcard pick, the vastly underrated Nick Nolte gem The Good Thief.
A remake of the 1955 french flick, this is the role Nolte was born to play. Bob, the heroin addicted professional thief, comes back for one last score. I've seen this movie at least 15 times, and never get tired of it. Nolte's performance alone makes it worth a purchase, let alone a viewing. A great crime movie, and, imo, one of the best "twist" endings in recent memory. Clips and more to come, just getting this in there before I get AK'd tomorrow.
That, and I was always a big fan of Shawnee Smith.
