Best & Worst Films in 1997: Siskel & Ebert

Jackie Brown is the only film that interests me now

R1 is reductive. Look it up.

Eve's Bayou is a fantastic movie and deserves that spot. I've never understood why it doesn't get more attention.

My only (though large) issues with these lists are

[quote]As Good as it Gets

This isn't a bad movie, but it isn't top 10. Yes it has a whiney gay character. NEXT.

[quote]Starship Troopers

The books are very much satire, and I believe Verhoeven did his best to bring that to the film while keeping it "commercial". It is in no way one of the worst movies of 1997. It certainly isn't in the top 10 either.

Worst: A Thousand Acres with DL fave Jess Lange is spectacular and held up well, she got a GG nom, a bit soap opera/Lifetime, but better than 99% of films now. Starship Troopers accomplished what it set out to do and it’s very entertaining. Mad City and Buddy were actually good movies imo.

Best: Good Will Hunting and LA Con are so boring now. GWH has horrible dirty cinematography.

BAPS has a certain "White Chicks" charm.

[Quote]Best: Good Will Hunting and LA Con are so boring now. GWH has horrible dirty cinematography.

LA Confidential still holds up and should have won Best Picture instead of the boring Titanic

My personal top 10 best films of 1997:

10. Chasing Amy

9. The Game

8. Titanic

7. Jackie Brown

6. The Rainmaker

5. Good Will Hunting

4. Eve's Bayou

3. Gattaca

2. LA Confidential

1. Boogie Nights

Honorable mentions: Liar Liar, Air Force One, As Good As It Gets, Wag the Dog, The Full Monty, Breakdown, The Ice Storm, Face/Off, Donnie Brasco

R7 Top 10 worst/most hated of 1997:

10. Batman & Robin

9. A Smile Like Yours

8. Vegas Vacation

7. A Thousand Acres

6. Jungle 2 Jungle

5. Mr. Magoo

4. The Pest

3. The Postman

2. Father's Day

1. Money Talks

I enjoyed The Jackal and Starship Troopers.

I loved Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog but Sweet Hereafter was my favorite.

[quote] 1. Money Talks

Money Talks was funny as hell and far from the "worst" that year.

My likes

Absolute Power

Lost Highway

The Daytrippers

Crash

Love! Valour! Compassion!

Mrs. Brown

In the Company of Men

Career Girls

Mimic

The Game

The Myth of Fingerprints

In & Out

The Edge

The Ice Storm

Kiss the Girls

Alien Resurrection

Deconstructing Harry

Titanic

Mad City

Titanic is such a campfest; it’s hilarious.

I love Eve's Bayou

L.A. Confidential is fantastic

Boogie Nights, LA Confidential, The Ice Storm, Sweet Hereafter. So many good movies that year.

"The Sweet Hereafter" is a magnificent movie (very depressing)

The 1st half of Titanic is so terrible, the only thing that makes it bearable is knowing they’re going to hit an iceberg.

I could watch Jackie Brown, Chasing Amy and The Full Monty over and over again. Movies I liked at the time but have never wanted to see twice: LA Confidential, The Ice Storm, Good Will Hunting, Wag the Dog.

Love, love, love Wag the Dog.

Boogie Nights and Jackie Brown are two of my all-time favorites

Dustin Hoffman was a scream in a brilliant comedic bravura performance.

I thought I had quit going to movie theatres earlier than 1997, but I saw, and liked, a number of these:

Boogie Nights

Good Will Hunting

LA Confidential

The Ice Storm

The Full Monty

And some I waited to watch on VCR:

The Sweet Hereafter (one of a very few that were as good as the book)

Love, Valour, Compassion

In & Out

Wag the Dog

Best flogging scene:

Starship Troopers

Some I saw sucked:

Titanic

Donnie Brasco (ruined by Anne Heche's New Jersey accent)

Some I saw and barely remember:

The Myth of Fingerprints

In the Company of Men

No love for Spiceworld?

LA Confidential, Jackie Brown, Event Horizon, Men in Black (yes, seriously), The Full Monty, The Game, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, and Gattaca were some of my favorites that year. I was in high school then.

I'm so interested in everyone's elaborate rankings of films released seventeen years ago!

Please, let's do it for every year.

R26 everyone's invited. Not everyone has to go. Or stay.

In the Company of Men is Neil LaBute's devastating take on misogyny in the workplace. Two yuppie guys decide to humiliate a deaf woman.

^Great film. Introduced Aaron Eckhart.

Lots of great films that year. Boogie Nights is my favorite. I’ve seen it many, many times.

Recently watched LA Confidential for the first time since 1997. I remember being underwhelmed at the time, but this time I really appreciated it and thought it was an excellent film. (But still pissed that Basinger beat Julianne for the Oscar)

This makes me want to see Eve’s Bayou and Wag the Dog again.

The Ice Storm was atmospheric and so true to Fairfield County that I doubted it held much interest for Joe Average America.

Starship Trooper wasn't bad at all Casper Van Dien has always been undnerrated as an actor.

The Full Monty was lame. A Night in Heaven without the hunks and 14 years later when the world had changed.

Batman and Robin are so obviously gay I don't know why the film was even controversial

I found Christina Ricci quite moving in Ice Storm. The extra weight really worked for that part and I thought she was a more interesting actress with some weight. When she stopped eating her wheelhouse changed.

[quote] Boogie Nights is my favorite. I’ve seen it many, many times.

For this line, am I right?

“ yes I am upset, my wife has an ass in her cock!”

Yes, and:

“This is a giant cock.”

Funny, I was just thinking about that year in movies and how good so many of them were. Why have movies gone to shit so badly now? We now have 10 best picture nominees and almost none of them are as good as the 5 that were nominated that year.

r26 Glad you visited the thread, bumped it/drew more attention to it

I was 10 years old in 1997, and my uncle took me to see Boogie Nights. I was shocked, horrified, disturbed. I didn't get it, of course. However, I knew I was gay then, and was so in awe of the huge fake dick. That's the only part I really remember.

Great year for film.

Boogie Nights, Eye's Bayou, The Ice Storm, As Good as It Gets and The Company of Men are favorites.

Chasing Amy spoke to me too. It's the only Kevin Smith film with real deft. Joey Lauren Adams has a great monologue in bed about not everyone gets a free map about who and what they are or words to that effect that I found pretty thoughtful. And the relationship between the two friends that may have consisted of more subtext on the part of the Jason Lee character. I hoped he might get some Oscar consideration for a really good piece acting using his usual schtick.

[quote] I'm so interested in everyone's elaborate rankings of films released seventeen years ago!

R26 You have bigger problems if you think 1997 was 17 years ago.

In The Company Of Men is dark.

Aaron Eckhart’s character represents about 95% of all straight men that I’ve encountered.

Eve's Bayou was good, but like a Lifetime channel movie. The first time I saw Titanic I left about 20 minutes before the end. I was cold in the theater and falling asleep. I didn't realize they both didn't drown until I saw if years later on TV.

The only thing I remember from LA Con is the vintage Christmas lights on that house. And who the hell is Guy Pearce who got a lead role?? Never seen before or since…

Guy Pearce has been in a lot of things, actually

Guy has been in Mildred Pierce and Mare of Easttown, The King’s Speech, Memento—just to name a few. Check out his Wiki page.

[quote] 4. In the Company of Men

The gay porn that shares the same title is way better!

1997 was the debut of Cate Blanchett, holding her own alongside Glenn and Frances in Paradise Road and equalling Ralph Fiennes in Oscar & Lucinda.

The Wings Of The Dove deserves a lot of praise,

I loved The Wings of the Dove. Not really a Helena Bonham Carter fan but she's great in this

The Wings of the Dove is really good. Very stylish.

I never got the love for As Good As It Gets. It was so contrived.

[Quote] I'm so interested in everyone's elaborate rankings of films released seventeen years ago!

[Quote] Please, let's do it for every year.

[Quote] —It's like being trapped in a room with John Cusack in "High Fidelity"

[Quote] [R26] You have bigger problems if you think 1997 was 17 years ago.

Jackie Brown is a great favorite of mine. A nearly perfect film.

Gattaca, too, and Boogie Nights, and The Ice Storm. Not perfect but very fucking good.

The End of Violence is excellent. As is In the Company of Men, and The Sweet Hereafter.

That's seven terrific films. And many of the remaining ones of those two critics' lists are the equal or better than the best films of the past 7 years combined.

Films have gone to shit

No Boogie Nights?

Yeah 1997 was an excepcional year, even for those days standards.

I like LA Confidential but I don't know how anyone can compare it to Chinatown. The latter is in a completely different league with far more depth.

Starship Troopers is a stealth masterpiece.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R55, I think it's very good, it's hardly a bad film.

R35 because now they sit around spending more time thinking about the ratio of ethnicities of the actors than the script, casting, direction, or acting.

Ebert was way off in naming "Starship Troopers" one of the worst films. In the years since its release, that film has aged extremely well and is almost at classic status in the military science fiction genre.

R59 films have become so bad that ST looks like Lawerence of Arabia now.

As Good As It Gets has some funny dialogue, but the overall rom-com plot was hackneyed. Nicholson, Hunt, and Kinnear elevated it to be a better film than it deserved to be.

R61 that’s why the Oscars were deserved. They took a throwaway romcom-dramedy and made it a classic. Sorry but that movie fantastic.

Starship Troopers was a darkly cynical send-up of military propaganda (such as films), those who help create that propaganda (Hollywood, Leni R.) and those who fall for it (the public). It is pointedly and purposefully OTT.

However... does that make it an unsuccessful film since so much of the general public take it at face value - or - does the fact that the general public take it at face value prove its point?

[quote] Ebert was way off in naming "Starship Troopers" one of the worst films.

Ebert seemed like a nice man but as a reviewer he was middlebrow at best, and it’s painfully obvious from reading many of his reviews that he often profoundly misunderstood the movies he was reviewing.

R64, in that sense, he is no different from Pauline Kael. She was notorious for misinterpreting some classic movies. But we all have blind spots and we don't all connect with the material on screen in the same way.

Roger Ebert liked Home Alone 3 better than the first two:

One of my favorite siskel & ebert exchanges-

Ebert: Well this is gonna surprise you Gene but I actually liked the movie-

Siskel: That DOES surprise me, are you ok?

Ebert: Well, better than you were the day you liked Starship Troopers.

Perhaps r65 but seriously, she was Einstein compared to Ebert. I’m not talking about Czech neorealist films, I’m talking mainstream Hollywood. I’d read some of his reviews and laugh at his interpretation of storyline.

^ Which films are you talking about?

R67, but Pauline would do the same thing. She would misinterpret Hollywood movies too. Usually, it was the result of her disliking an actor or the director. Like Kubrick. I don't think she understood a single Kubrick film she saw (aside from Lolita).But in terms of WRITING, yes, she is absolutely superior to Ebert. I read her mostly for the writing versus her actual opinions on the film.

Spawn was a POS and Ebert made no sense liking it.

R70, the animated series on HBO was very good, highly recommended. I'm sad it ended abruptly.

This movie was fantastic

Ah, 1997... everyone was still young.

[quote] Pauline would do the same thing. She would misinterpret Hollywood movies too. Usually, it was the result of her disliking an actor or the director. Like Kubrick. I don't think she understood a single Kubrick film she saw (aside from Lolita).

I don't think she misunderstood Kubrick. She wasn't a fan of White Elephant Art (to steal a term of Manny Farber) from Hollywood or abroad and felt that Kubrick took himself too seriously as a filmmaker and "thinker." She often gets singled out for disliking Kubrick, but her contemporaries, John Simon, Andrew Sarris, and Stanley Kauffman, also didn't care much for him as a director.

Bump

R74, I really don't think she understood 2001. And I think Pauline does deserve blame for trash culture becoming THE culture. Most of the blame is probably due to Star Wars though.

[quote]Pauline does deserve blame for trash culture becoming THE culture. Most of the blame is probably due to Star Wars though.

Started with Jaws, IMO.

R77, that could be true but I do think that Jaws is a more intelligent movie than any of the first three Star Wars movies. And I don't even like Spielberg.

[quote] And I think Pauline does deserve blame for trash culture becoming THE culture

This has always been the case. The Greatest Show On Earth won best picture.

funny Siskel didn't cotton to BOOGIE NIGHTS. That shows that Ebert was always a **little** ahead of Siskel, taste-wise.

R79, there is a big difference between mediocrity and straight up trash. Basically, it's the difference between Sheryl Crow and Cardi B.

[quote] And I think Pauline does deserve blame for trash culture becoming THE culture. Most of the blame is probably due to Star Wars though.

She did concede to this and even admitted Star Wars was the beginning of the end of intelligent filmmaking in Hollywood:

[quote] Kael: Star Wars set us back in a lot of ways. Even though I thought the second film in the trilogy was really quite good, as a commercial phenomenon it set us back. And the Indiana Jones movie added to that even though I like the second one of that series also, but what they represented in terms of moviemaking was that the studios realized that the audiences didn’t mind being treated like kids at a Saturday afternoon serial.

[quote] I was 10 years old in 1997, and my uncle took me to see Boogie Nights.

What uncle takes a 10-year-old to see "Boogie Nights"? Was Bryan Singer your uncle?

[quote] I never got the love for As Good As It Gets. It was so contrived.

As Good As It Gets probably was popular with the fraus.

Gene Siskel was a hack. Ebert was a little bit better but who cares about these dinosaurs. They spat out reviews like they were god and they didn't know any better than me or you.

R82, it's really true. She would have an aneurism if she witnessed the Marvel craze.

I haven't seen any of the films in their top 10s. The closet one I've seen was Titanic but I couldn't sit thru it all so I turned my tv (& the VCR tape) off as the ending was plastered countless times by E.T., Access H., Extra, E! News & everything else with a production team.

Can someone give me a top 5 films from S. & Ebert that still would hold up by today's standards? Thanks in advance.

1992 is pretty good. I liked all the films listed, which is rare...

Siskel:

1. One False Move

2. The Player

3. Howards End

4. The Crying Game

5. Malcolm X

Ebert:

1. Malcolm X

2. One False Move

3. Howards End

4. Flirting

5. The Crying Game