Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
This weekend, we get three new wide releases, but the one most likely to garner the most attention from audiences is the latest video game adaptation, Uncharted. Tom Holland stars in a prequel to the video game series about a treasure hunter looking for legendary artifacts. It’s not far removed from ideas created for the Tomb Raider video games or the Indiana Jones films. Holland’s star may have risen with the performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home at the box office, but it has yet to prove ascendant at the box office otherwise. His last attempt, Chaos Walking, was a bomb last year, but perhaps this one will do better. Since there are so few video game adaptations that would be worthy of filling a top 5 list, I chose to highlight the works of five individuals associated with Uncharted. Actors Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, and Antonio Banderas, director Ruben Fleischer, and film editor Chris Lebenzon.
Top Gun (1986)
Editor Chris Lebenzon’s career started well before those of many of the others on this list, but only five years ahead of Antonio Banderas. While his first feature editing job was in 1977, it was the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun that really put him on the map, bringing him his first of two Oscar nominations to date. The film stars Tom Cruise as a fighter pilot working hard to be the best in his Naval flight class. Although my memory of the film is a bit dated, not having seen the film since its release, I can remember being impressed by the film’s pacing.
Top Gun was directed by Tony Scott and also featured Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, and Michael Ironside. Unlike a lot of 1980s hits, Top Gun wasn’t turned into a film franchise, though a revisit to the film, Top Gun: Maverick, is coming soon with Lebenzon once again acting as editor. The original film is not only memorable for its rousing fighter jet scenes, but also for the four Oscar nominations it received in editing, sound, sound effects editing, and original song. That song, “Take My Breath Away,” won Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock Oscars and remains one of the most memorable of ’80s soundtrack staples.
No original review available.
Evita (1996)
Outside of Disney’s slate of animated features in the 1990s, the movie musical had taken a disappointing slide towards irrelevancy. While it wasn’t quite as successful as the film sometimes credited with the genre’s rebirth (Chicago), there’s little denying that Evita helped bolster the medium just long enough for a full blown revival to launch in the 2000s. Alan Parker, no stranger to directing musicals, having helmed the terrific Pink Floyd – The Wall more than a decade earlier, brought Andrew Lloyd Webber’s expansive musical extravaganza to the big screen.
Madonna took on the lead role as Eva Peron from her humble beginnings as a middle class working girl to the “spiritual leader” of Argentina, her performance is terrific, the best she’s ever given. Jonathan Pryce played her husband, President Juan Peron, but the real musical discovery of the film was Antonio Banderas standing in as revolutionary Ché (Guevarra) as he counteracts every maneuver Evita makes, an embodiment of the voice of the people. Banderas was already familiar to American audiences, but few knew of his capabilities as a singer. In the film, he is both physically and vocally impressive and he works wonderfully well as counterpoint to Madonna’s Evita.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Every new film by director Paul Thomas Anderson is an Oscar contender before it even reaches the big screen. That wasn’t always the case. His debut feature, Hard Eight, was well regarded, but came nowhere close to the Oscars. His 1997 follow up, however, launched the love affair Oscar voters have with the filmmaker. Boogie Nights is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the 1970s porn industry. Mark Wahlberg starred as an industry up-and-comer whose career is launched by a titan of the industry played by Burt Reynolds. It isn’t an industry you thought would be appropriate for a major motion picture, but Anderson successfully made the case for the topic’s salience.
Anderson always manages to pull in a terrific cast of actors and this film is no slouch in that department. Apart from Reynolds’ Oscar-nominated turn, Julianne Moore also landed a nomination for her appearance as a maternal force within the industry who takes Wahlberg’s character under her wings. Moore and Reynolds should both have won the Oscar for their performances. They weren’t the only terrific cast members, which included Luis Guzman, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, and William H. Macy. It’s a film that holds up remarkably well despite now being 25 years removed from our current film landscape.
No original review available.
Zombieland (2009)
You can’t really say that Ruben Fleischer’s directorial career has been impressive. Since this debut feature in 2009, Fleischer has directed a total of five films, one of which was a sequel to Zombieland. Other than Venom, the rest of his features have been mostly forgettable. What makes Zombieland stand out is that it hit theaters at the right moment as the zombie genre was beginning to boom. The hilarious script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick made Fleischer’s job easy establishing the tone and character of the film. He was further bolstered by his terrific cast.
Jesse Eisenberg plays one of a handful of survivors in a post-apocalyptic landscape where those who live travel from place to place looking for safety and solace. Along the way, he meets fellow travelers played by Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin. Eisenberg, Stone, and, to a lesser extent, Breslin, weren’t incredibly well known quantities at the time, but they acquit themselves nicely alongside the experienced Harrelson. It’s a movie that tears apart the genre while lovingly embracing it and the 11th-hour cameo by Bill Murray is an absolute pleasure.
The Impossible (2012)
While it might seem strange to say this now, but there was a time when no one really knew who Tom Holland was. Before his appearance in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, to most film audiences, he was an unknown quantity. For some, though, his big screen debut in this 2012 film from J.A. Bayona, was a welcome one. In it, he plays the young son to Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor while they vacation in Thailand. In the aftermath of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the trio is separated. Watts and Holland must survive through a dangerous landscape in an effort to make it back to civilization while McGregor desperately searches for his missing loved ones.
Bayona’s film is a riveting disaster flick that focuses primarily on Watts and Holland in their fight for survival. Not only does it explore the fate of its trio of protagonists, it also gives the audience glimpses into the destruction and chaos surrounding the horrific events of that oceanic disaster. For their part, McGregor is dependably great, but Watts is spectacular in a role that would earn her the film’s only Oscar nomination, though it would have been deserving of far more. As to Holland? He was terrific, it marked the emergence of a wonderful talent whose capabilities are now being appreciated by a mass audience even if his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is significantly inferior to his work in this film.
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