1990

A lot of objectors to Goodfellas, and other Scorsese movies, seem to fixate on whether the actions onscreen are held liable enough to corroborate and reinforce their held values. I find its viciousness a genuine strength. The nastier I feel the better. What was once a brisk and funny piece of unceasing directorial flair, an ostensibly commemorative movie about the lure of hoodlum routine, turns irretrievably dark once poor little Spider gets popped for an infraction as silly and trivial as wounding tiny dick Tommy’s inflated ego. Tommy, a once endearing psychopath, is now an object of scorn and a man whose comeuppance we craved. It’s not simply that Scorsese has the decency to show these goon’s obligatory downfall, it’s that these men start to become the sniveling rats that they once hated so much. They lived long enough to witness themselves/each other change into wretched losers and traitors. Scorsese would bear witness to a lot of similar riffraff growing up on Elizabeth between East Houston and Prince. My own father had a similar experience with wise-guy sodality, and the confusion felt upon realizing his father’s friends were criminals. His godfather was a racketeer and killer, my grandfather’s friend from the homeland. He remembers having pillow fights with him, wrestling, and playing baseball in his aunt Mary’s backyard. His was privy to only one side of a very complicated and wicked man, a side advantageous at that time and place. His chameleonic nature was part of his survival. My father only learned of this man’s transgressions later in life and I’ve always sensed that he had a conflicted respect despite actions that were very easy to castigate. It’s the deception that makes Goodfellas such a singular entry in an already rich subgenre. I don’t mind heaping praise on this movie, one of my favorites without question.  

Goodfellas was the only movie in this strong year that I didn’t have a hard time ranking. It’s a vapid chore; false (I will change my mind about the order as soon as I look at it again) and needlessly taxing. How can you compare Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan to Ron Underwood’s Tremors? I can’t. They are both great for very different reasons. Ron Underwood’s Tremors was my son’s favorite movie at the age of three. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he watched it upwards of forty times in the span of a year. That’s probably a low estimate. I saw it once when I was in fourth grade, at my friend Brett Rathbone’s house. I also looked at Penthouse and drank beer there. My son saw it because the television was accidentally left on AMC during and after his nap. We came downstairs and witnessed a toddler completely horrified and enthralled. When we tried to turn the channel he started screaming. It reminded me of my former self, watching AMC’s Monster-Vision at my grandmother’s house. I’ll never forget the horrifying radiation victim’s from Eugene Lourie’s The Giant Behemoth (1959) or Peter Cushing hiding out in a cave and witnessing the existence of the eponymous Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957). It was also thanks to an unsupervised AMC station being left on that I saw Michael Carreras’ The Lost Continent (1968), where a tramp steamer full of degenerates accidentally discovers the hellish landmass full of prehistoric beasts and evil Spanish conquistadors. My point being that it was Dean’s destiny to stumble upon a monster fixation that will both scare and infatuate for many years to come. Tremors isn’t merely a bygone creature-feature, it’s a solid comedy and one of two great Fred Ward performances in 1990.  

On that note, I will add that I was very glad to have had an opportunity to watch Miami Blues, Trust, and An Angel at my Table for the first time. All three of these sparked an interest in directors that either had been off my radar or that I had seemed to underappreciate.

1.      Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)

2.      Metropolitan (Whit Stillman)

3.      A Bullet in the Head (John Woo)

4.      Tremors (Ron Underwood)

5.      Miami Blues (George Armitage)

6.      Close-Up (Abbas Kiorostami)

7.      Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante)

8.      Trust (Hal Hartley)

9.      White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood)

10.  Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai)

Honorable Mentions: Miller’s Crossing (Coens), Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton), Jacob’s Ladder (Adrian Lyne), Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven), Back to the Future Part III (Robert Zemeckis), Wild at Heart (David Lynch), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Steve Barron), Cry-Baby (John Waters), Nightbreed (Clive Barker), King of New York (Abel Ferrara), Life is Sweet (Mike Leigh), An Angel at my Table (Jane Campion), Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki), A Tale of Springtime (Eric Rohmer), To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett).

You can’t argue with that bunch.

On the fence/enjoyed/respected: Godfather III, Dick Tracy, La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson), Darkman (Sam Raimi), The Exorcist 3, Frankenhooker.

No way: Leather:, Texas Chainsaw 3,

Kid picks: Kindegarten Cop, Dick Tracy, Home Alone, The Witches, Predator 2, Problem Child, Arachnophobia, Child’s Play 2, House Party, The Rescuers Down Under, Marked for Death, Another 48 Hours, Ducktales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, Narrow Margin, Ernest Goes to Jail, Delta Force 2, Graveyard Shift, Maniac Cop 2, Ghost Dad,

Haven’t seen: Joe Versus the Volcano, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Hardware, Dreams, Mo’ Better Blues, The Grifters, The Guardian, The Field, Vincent and Theo, Boiling Point, Dr. M, Nouvelle Vague, Archangel.