Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2001 entry.

The following things happened in 2001:

• America Online and Time Warner merged to form AOL Time Warner.
• Wikipedia was launched.
• The U.S. and Britain bombed Iraq repeatedly.
• Pop singer Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash.
• 2,977 people died as a consequence of the September 11 attacks.
• The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was established.
• Apple introduced the iPod.
• The People's Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix. 

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Some Good Ones

1. Save the Last Dance

Julia Stiles - an actress I often find irritating - stars as a white high school student dropped into the ghetto after the death of her mother.  My chief complaint is that the high school students act way more mature than would be the case, and the "gangsta friend's" subplot is one of the most predictable things ever.  As early 2000s dance movies go, I think 2003's Honey works better.

Fun Fact: Thomas Carter, the director of this movie, also directed Coach Carter, a really underrated film.

2. Don't Say a Word

Michael Douglas stars as a psychiatrist extorted into revealing a patient's secret.  Sean Bean is in it... and guess how the movie ends for him?  Not well, my friends, not well.  It's professionally made but it seems to be missing something.

Sad Fact: This movie hit theaters right after 9/11.  Shots of the World Trade Center were removed from it just before its release.

3. Joy Ride

Paul Walker and Steve Zahn prank call the wrong guy on a CB radio.  The weird thing about this movie is that it feels like it's about to end halfway through.  Then, for whatever reason, they continue their drive without notifying the police, and of course the crazy truck driver shows up again.

4. The Score

It's interesting to see director Frank Oz attempt something darker, but this movie really falls apart toward the end.  It was Marlon Brando's last film, and seeing Brando (the elder Corleone) and De Niro (the younger Corleone) onscreen together is cool.  Edward Norton pulls up the rear as a newcomer with an idea for a new heist. 

The Score gets bogged down in its own details.  The first half hour is solid, but then you start to wonder why we need to know that much about the access codes, and why so many shots of De Niro's character mapping the sewer system were necessary.  This, and the way De Niro tricks Norton's character at the end is just stupid.  Why wouldn't he have checked the bag?  Why would he have thought De Niro was so easy to outsmart?

To make matters even worse, that's the shittiest happy ending ever.  At some point a person as smart as Norton's character is going to find De Niro and exact revenge, or he's going to get caught and tell everyone that De Niro has the scepter.  And where's Marlon Brando in that ending?  Are we supposed to assume that he got his money, too?

5. Manic

This movie needed more Don Cheadle.  Joseph Gordon Levitt is good in this look at life in a juvenile detention facility, but yeah, more Don Cheadle would have helped.  Definitely worth watching, but given that Scum explored similar subject matter with more depth I'd describe this movie as simply "Good" rather than "Excellent."

Fun Fact: That argument about superheroes is amusing in retrospect.  Three of the people engaged in it would go on to play superhero sidekicks later on.  Don Cheadle would play War Machine in Iron Man 2, Joseph Gordon Levitt would play Robin in The Dark Knight Rises and Elden Henson would play Foggy Nelson in Netflix's Daredevil.

Pretentious Enough for Ya?

1. Waking Life

A young guy walks around listening to various people lecture on the nature of the self, human experience and perception.  Oh, and there's a lot of stuff about dreams.  I was not at all surprised to learn that Richard Linklater directed it.

And no, I'm not trying to dismiss Waking Life.  It's worth seeing.  I loved the soundtrack, and it scores serious points for referencing Philip K. Dick's V.A.L.I.S. trilogy.  Linklater would go on to direct the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly five years later, and his affinity for PKD-style paranoia is also evident in this movie.

2. Mulholland Drive

Hey, it's Laura Herring, last seen in 1990's The Forbidden Dance!

Besides her, Naomi Watts is in this one starring as... an aspiring actress?  A jilted lover?  A figment of someone's imagination?  I figment of her own imagination?  David Lynch directed, so you can probably guess how deliberately stupefying it all is.  

At least it's not long.  That's something, right?

Some Bad Ones

1. Thir13en Ghosts

All that money spent on makeup and other effects, only to squander it on an uninteresting story populated by uninteresting characters. Tony Shalhoub stars as a father of two inheriting a haunted house, with Matthew "Scooby-Doo" Lillard as a psychic.

2. Original Sin

I'd like to find the director of this film and tell him to go fuck himself.  What a nonsensical two hours.  I get why Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas purchased a ticket for this train wreck, but damn, this movie is full of the most anachronistic behavior ever captured on film.  Would people at that time have done half those things?  Made those kinds of choices?  Hell no.

Depressing Fact: Original Sin is a remake of the Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid.  I'm sure the original of this Original Sin is much better.

3. Spy Game

Yawn.  Robert Redford making phone calls.  Robert Redford sending faxes.  Even with Tony Scott directing it's not exactly a thrill ride.  This might have been a good movie if they'd focused on Brad Pitt's character instead of Redford's - there's a moral ambiguity to his character's story  that's more compelling. - but as it is the framing narrative adds nothing to the movie.

Fun Fact: Brad Pitt passed on The Bourne Identity to do this film.  Good news for Matt Damon?

4. The One

Evil, multiverse-hopping Jet Li versus non-evil, non-multiverse hopping Jet Li.  It's silly fun in the beginning, but by the end it makes almost no sense.  Hong Kong director James Wong would go on to direct Dragonball: Evolution, so you know what you're in for here.

5. Evolution

When you think about it this Ivan Reitman-directed comedy isn't all that different from Ghostbusters.  Bumbling scientists in an out-of-the-way college stumble on a new scientific phenomena, tests are conducted, the government intervenes, and bumbling scientists are called in to set things right.  It's just that Evolution, unlike Ghostbusters, just isn't funny.  David Duchovny and Orlando Jones do their best with the script, but even so most of the jokes fail to land.

6. Enemy at the Gates

Jude Law and Ed Harris star as two snipers hunting each other through the ruins of Stalingrad.  This movie reminds you how much better genuinely Russian or German movies on similar subject matter are.  And even if Stalingrad and Come and See didn't exist, there's also movies like Saving Private Ryan, which do a much better job of framing a large conflict in human terms.

So Bad It's Not Bad

1. Devil's Prey

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with murderous Satanists standing in for murderous rednecks.  And let me tell you that nothing - and I mean nothing - demonstrates your commitment to the craft of acting like mouthing some of the lines in this movie.  "We're going to have a fucking great time or a great time fucking!"  And this isn't to imply that anyone in this movie a great actor or actress - they're atrocious - but I admire their commitment nonetheless.

"Die in hell, motherfuckers!!"  Wouldn't that be a desirable outcome for Satanists?

Not Sure What's Going On Here, Not Sure If I Care

1. Swordfish

Studio Executive: "Hey, this script is terrible.  How can we keep people from noticing?"

Yes Man: "Uh, how about casting John Travolta as the bad guy?  And rising star Hugh Jackman as the hero?  And we'll have Halle Berry running around half naked for most of the movie?  Oh, and don't forget explosions!  We'll have a lot of those!"

Studio Executive: "Works for me."

...and to add insult to injury, this movie has the audacity to compare itself to Dog Day Afternoon, and to then to imply that it's somehow better for having a morally ambiguous conclusion.  No, John Travolta.  I don't think so.

Fun Fact: Both Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry appeared in this movie between X-Men and X2.  Berry would win the Oscar for Best Actress the same year for Monster's Ball.

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Some Other Movies From 2001

In 2001 I was living in Taichung, Taiwan.  I was married, a dad, and I'd been living in Taiwan for about two years.  I believe I was living in an apartment building by the name of "United Nations" behind the private kindergarten where I worked.

2001 was also the year 9/11 happened.  I can tell you where I was when I heard about it, though I'm not sure where I was when it actually happened.  My dad called me from Seattle and said "It's ok, we're safe."  I had trouble believing what he told me after that, and the truth only really sank in after I went downstairs and saw the papers in the local convenience store.  That plane hitting the Twin Towers, ending lives on the other side of the world...

But that aside, 2001 was a good year for me.  My life was changing for the better and the future looked very bright.  Writing this in 2019, I suppose my optimism was justified.  That baby that sat in a crib back then is an adult now, and her sister (not yet born in 2001) is already in junior high school.  Time flies, if you're lucky.

The top 5 movies of 2001 were Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Monsters, Inc., Shrek and Ocean's Eleven.  Of these movies Ocean's Eleven is my favorite, and the only of that year's top 10 that I still like.

Critical favorites of 2001 included A Beautiful Mind, Moulin Rouge!, the above-mentioned Fellowship of the Ring, Gosford Park, The Royal Tenenbaums and Monster's Ball.  I liked all of these movies except Gosford Park, which I thought was boring.

Other good movies of that year were Memento, Blow (really underrated movie), A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Zoolander, Training Day (amazing), From Hell, Shallow Hal and Ali.

The worst movie?  To be honest I can't remember any really bad ones, but then again I wasn't watching that many.  Wikipedia tells me, however,  that Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles was released in 2001.  Was it terrible?  To find out the answer, look below!

Some Good Ones

1. The Fast and the Furious

Yeah, the first one.

Two things date this movie: 1) the bits of rap/nu metal in the soundtrack, and 2) how young Vin Diesel and Paul Walker look in it.  It's a decent undercover cop movie, but not nearly as good as some of the sequels.

2. Baran

Love story centered around Afghan (Afghani?) workers in Iran.  I liked this one a lot more than the recently reviewed A Separation.  Both movies are good, yet this one seemed more immediate.

3. In the Bedroom

On the slow side, but a great movie nonetheless.  Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson star as a married couple touched by tragedy.  It's in some ways reminiscent of the more recent Manchester by the Sea.

4. Uriah Heep: Retrospective 1970-2001

YouTube says this came out in 2001, but someone in the documentary mentions 2004.  Whatever the case, this overview of Uriah Heep's career stops at 2001, and I stopped watching it much earlier than that.

Is it a good documentary?  Actually yes.  Say what you will about "Deep Purple Lite," but the interviews are surprisingly frank, and multiple perspectives are offered on each album.  The producer of their classic albums is probably the highlight of the whole endeavor, given the way he consistently downplays the band's musical abilities.

The one strange thing about this documentary is how much the John Lawton albums are discussed.  Maybe this is because the band felt they were more divisive?

5. Albela

What the hell does "bloody basket of flowers" mean?  They keep saying it in this movie, and I've never heard it anywhere else.  Is it something specific to Goa?

In Albela Aishwarya Rai walks around in various outfits looking HOT, and a pervy tourist guide tries to win her love by helping her search for her mother's grave.  As plots go it's like pfffft, but the songs are pretty good and the girl who plays the tour guide's "servant" is also very beautiful.  I can't remember her name as I type this, but she was also the bride in Lajja below.

6. Chingu ("Friend")

Four friends get mixed up with South Korea's criminal underworld.  It's a great movie, and more people should see it.  There was a sequel in 2013, but I have the feeling it wasn't nearly as good.

7. The Clinton Years

Ah, Bill Clinton.  If only he'd had better control over his dick he would have been right up there with JFK.  Not that JFK had that much control over his own dick either, but you know what I mean.  Different time periods, with a totally different set of consequences.

This insightful documentary brought up a lot of things I'd forgotten about Clinton, and also reaffirmed my general impression of the man.  It would make a good companion piece to the movie Primary Colors, which remains one of John Travolta's best movies, and a fascinating portrait of the Clinton presidential campaign.

8. Street Life

Damn it doesn't always feel good to be a gangsta.  As documentaries go this one is all over the place, but there's some riveting stuff in it.  It was filmed in the late 90s, so it's more about crack, but the interviews with gangsters, prostitutes, drug addicts, rap stars, exotic dancers and people who are a little bit of all five are as eye-opening now as they were in 2001.  This movie makes a particularly good point about police informants and how they can be used to target a specific community.

Fun Fact: Bushwick Bill is actually Jamaican.  The authorities wanted to deport him back to Jamaica following a recent drug bust.

Two That I'm On the Fence About

1. Super Troopers

A latter-day Police Academy.  On the one hand there are some genuinely funny bits in it.  On the other it wasn't nearly as good as the internet had led me to believe.  

It might just not be that funny.  It might be one of those comedies (like Hot Rod) that takes a while to grow on you.  I'll watch it again later and see.

2. Pearl Harbor

Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett contend over the love of the same woman.  And whatever happened to Josh Hartnett?  He used to be a big deal...

On the dramatic side this movie is the corniest, most overwrought piece of nonsense I've seen in a while.  On the action side the battles are excellent.  Michael Bay directed, so you know it's all cut, cut, cut, snippet of dialogue, cut; but this said it might be one of his better movies.  There's a far superior version of the same love triangle in Brothers, and for Pacific Theater action you'd do no better than Flags of Our Fathers, but if you've seen all the other famous war movies this one does have some redeeming features.

The real problem with this movie is that it doesn't end with Pearl Harbor.  Like the similarly unsatisfying The Alamo, they felt the need to add a "striking back at the enemy" part after what should have been the climactic battle.

Fun Fact: Jennifer Garner plays one of Kate Beckinsale's friends.  Garner and Ben Affleck would later marry, and later still divorce.  Affleck was dating Jennifer Lopez at the time.

Informative, but Not Interesting

1. Argentina's Financial Crisis

Documentary on Argentina's financial woes.  It'd be interesting if you were studying International Finance, but man it's a deep dive.  I feel for the people of Argentina, but I couldn't stay focused on this catalog of indiscretions.  I'm not that knowledgeable on Argentinian politics and finance either, and a lot of the people in this documentary seem to be playing the victim.

Some Bad Ones

1. Lajja

Domestic violence!  And... songs!  And... odd bits of comic relief?  It's not these three things together that make Lajja bad, it's the fact that once the abused wife hides at the wedding geological ages seem to pass, all without a single funny or interesting thing happening.  I got about an hour and a half into its 3.5 hour runtime and had to quit.

2. Glitter

No big surprise here.  Mariah Carey's star vehicle was noted for its disastrous qualities when it came out, and even though it's definitely bad it's not - I have to say - bad enough to be good.

What I'm wondering is if the countless similarities between this movie and 2018's A Star is Born are accidental or intentional.  It could be that any movie like A Star is Born shares certain plot elements with Glitter, but I'm tempted to say that whoever wrote the script for A Star is Born had at least a passing familiarity with Mariah Carey's movie.

Fun (?) Fact #1: This movie was filmed just before the September 11 terrorist attacks.  You can see the Twin Towers in one of the scenes.

Fun (?) Fact #2: Carey celebrated the release of Glitter by having a complete nervous breakdown.

Fun Fact #3: The movie mixes up Carey's mixed race ancestry.  Actually it was her father that was black, while her mother was Irish.  She also had a very good relationship with her mother, who taught her how to sing.  Of course in the movie she's "Billie Frank" and not "Mariah Carey," but Glitter was obviously meant to be biographical.

Fun Fact #4: In case you're wondering, Carey has a much greater vocal range than Lady Gaga.  I myself prefer Lady Gaga, but it's beyond dispute that Carey's singing ability approaches the superhuman.

Two So Bad They're Good

1. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles

Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski return in the sequel nobody wanted.  This is doubly ironic because the movie features a subplot in which a fictitious movie studio produces sequels that nobody wants.

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles also reminds you just how long ago 2001 really was.  Passing references are made to Tower Records, Baywatch and The Rock's celebrated career in the WWE.

And perhaps best of all, Mike Tyson appears as Hogan's meditation teacher.  I say again: Mike Tyson.  Paul Hogan.  Meditation teacher.  It's a wonderfully weird scene.

It threatens to grind to a halt at several points, the jokes never quite land, and one wonders if Kozlowski wasn't just famous for her ass, so famously exposed in the first Crocodile Dundee.  Whatever the case, she sure can't act.

2. The Path Beyond Thought

Training video for a chain of Aikido schools, or colossal monument to Steven Seagal's ego?  I'll let you be the judge.  Whatever it is it's pretty entertaining.  I'd also like to know what would happen if one of these Aikido guys took on someone like Royce Gracie.  I have the feeling Gracie would take them apart.

Fun Fact: Steven Seagal holds American, Serbian and Russian citizenship.  He's referred to Vladimir Putin as one of the great living world leaders, and he's been accused of sexual assault multiple times.

One That Film Buffs Would Probably Think I'm Crazy for Not Liking

1. Amelie

This movie couldn't be more French if it tried.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed this tale of a young woman who decides to be a good samaritan.  I enjoyed its quirkiness in the first half, but I had trouble concentrating on it during the second.  The camera all but consumes star Audrey Tautou, the movie is full of memorable scenes, but at a certain point I found it hard to empathize with the characters.  Perhaps I'm just too American?

Fun Fact: Five years later Audrey Tautou would star opposite Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, it would be her first and last Hollywood movie.  Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet also had a brief association with Hollywood, directing only Alien Resurrection in 1997.

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"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

"...however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods.  Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion.  Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.  No one ever demonstrated, as far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.  The Wainwrights fear, too, that we know the truth about the origins of their faiths.  How long, they wonder, have we been observing humanity?  Have we watched Mohammed begin the Hegira, or Moses giving the Jews their laws?  Do we know all that is false in the stories they believe?"

"Childhood's End" was first published in 1953, though parts of it were published as a short story, "Guardian Angel," as early as 1945.  This novel, in various forms, would be roughly contemporary with Isaac Asimov's first "Foundation" stories, and would predate Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels by two decades.

The novel details the arrival of an alien race, the Overlords, in the year 1975.  The Overlords assume stewardship over the Earth and its peoples, ushering in a golden age of peace and prosperity.  Humanity, at first straining against the controls imposed by the Overlords, learns to live in harmony with the aliens, and to eventually evolve beyond the aliens' technological superiority.

All of which will sound very familiar to anyone who's read 2001, or any of its three sequels.  The difference being that the Overlords of "Childhood's End" endeavor to establish a dialogue between humankind and themselves, to the mutual advantage of both species.  The "aliens" (if they can be called that) of the 2001 series are much further removed in terms of time, space, and intelligence, and the mysteries they guard over are only ever glimpsed - much less understood -by the feeble minds of Man.

While I loved the 2001 novels for their scientific accuracy, their prognostication, and the questions they posed, I found "Childhood's End" to be a far more human novel, and in a way far more wide-ranging. "Childhood's End" is rather like the corollary of the 2001 novels, in that it explores many of the same questions from the opposite point of view.  Where 2001 begins from "What does it mean to be alien?", "Childhood's End" begins from "What does it mean to be human?"  Both questions are, of course, equally valid, but the center of "Childhood's End" is our own, living selves, and this is a much easier place to start from.

Another great thing about this novel is the way in which it seems to anticipate later works, by other authors.  As stated above, Asimov was already writing the "Foundation" novels at about the same time, and the following quote from Clarke's work brought those novels immediately to mind.

"A society consists of human beings whose behavior as individuals is unpredictable.  But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws begin to appear - as was discovered long ago by life insurance companies.  No one can tell what individuals will die within a given time - yet the total number of deaths can be predicted with considerable accuracy.

"There are other, subtler laws, first glimpsed in the early twentieth century by mathematicians such as Weiner and Rashavesky.  They had argued that such events as economic depressions, the results of armament races, the stability of social groups, political elections, and so on, could be analyzed by the correct mathematical techniques."

Thus we have something very similar to Asimov's idea of Psychohistory, explained in less obtuse terms.  Even Asimov's prescient character, The Mule, is foreshadowed in "Childhood's End," as humanity begins to evolve abilities that put them beyond the Overlords' control.  And whereas Asimov spends three volumes (the original "Foundation Trilogy") working through these ideas, for Clarke they are issues of secondary importance, outside the main narrative thrust of "Childhood's End."

There is also this passage, which brought to mind Frank Herbert's "Dune":

"Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth.  There are powers of the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which your science could have never brought within its framework without shattering it entirely. "

In this we have some intimation of a messianic quality within the human race, which will place it beyond the reach of interlopers.  The novel even goes on to state that there is an element of prescience involved with the quality, in that mythical archetypes within our human culture have predicted the coming of the Overlords.  Seen in this light, humanity's rapid evolution under the Overlords comes to resemble the kind of genetic manipulation seen in "Dune," with the result being a messiah or messiahs who will free humankind from bondage.  While Herbert certainly added a host of other ideas to this central concept, it is clear that it had origins at least as old as "Childhood's End."

I could go further, and point out all the other novels that "Childhood's End" seems to anticipate, but if you've read this far you're probably sufficiently interested to read it yourself, and draw your own conclusions.  I highly recommend this book, and I'm sure that any fan of the more intellectual science fiction novels will love it.