The Ten Best Films of 1995
01. Leaving Las Vegas
It was the movie moment that moved me more than any other in 1995. It came when Ben (Nicolas Cage) turned to Sera (Elisabeth Shue) and prepared her for his hardened set of priorities by saying, "Sera, you can never--never--ask me to stop drinking. Do you understand?" She looked him right in the eye and soulfully responded, "I do. I really do." I'm not sure there has ever been a more genuine connection between two lost souls in the movies.
As an L.A. screenwriter who loses his job, his family, and everything else to the bottle, Ben heads for Las Vegas, resolving to drink himself to death. It's there that he meets Sera, a jaded prostitute who takes him under her wing. From there begins the year's best--and most unlikely--love story.
Both actors are flawless. Cage has been building toward this brave performance for years with risky roles in movies like "Red Rock West" and "Kiss of Death." He makes Ben into so much more than just another prettified big screen drunk; this man is content with his drinking. He's genuinely happy at times, and Cage invests him with just the right amount of verve to make his actions fall right into place. Shue's performance, though, comes from out of nowhere. Here we have the sprightly co-star of fluff like "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Cocktail" delivering lines with absolute mastery; her work is truly a revelation. Sera is Ben's angel, and Shue shows us precisely why her street-smart Las Vegas prostitute would even give this hardened old drunk the time of day.
This is not a movie about an alcoholic and a hooker. Mike Figgis, the creative talent behind "Leaving Las Vegas" is too smart for that. He understands that great movies have to consist of characters, not characteristics.
02. Nixon
In the '80s, I dreaded Oliver Stone movies. "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July" typified his "beat-you-over-the-head" style, and I was either worn out or just plain mad by the time the credits rolled. Now, though, Stone has finally delivered on his potential. "Nixon" is his best film to date, presenting a flawed hero fairly on both sides--no small feat for a director who prides himself on being opinionated. Anthony Hopkins stars as the 37th president, an intelligent yet paranoid man so determined to win he ends up defeating himself. In true Hannibal Lecter fashion, Hopkins internalizes Nixon's passion, never reaching for theatrics when they were so readily at hand. Joan Allen almost does the impossible--steals an epic--as Pat Nixon, a forceful woman in her own right who made her feelings known only when the Oval Office's doors were securely locked. Best of all is Stone's demeanor as a filmmaker; this isn't "Gotcha!: Watergate Exposed," rather an American tragedy tinged with pain and grace. Making "Nixon" took some guts, and even though working in the face of backlash and furor, Oliver Stone managed to make a full portrait of a tragic hero, a man who won it all, but couldn't stop losing.
03. Smoke
Wayne Wang's "Smoke" is one of those perfect little movies that knows not to aim any higher than it needs to. Like Mike Leigh's "Life is Sweet" a few years back, it closely observes the day-to-day lives of a handful of people, in this case the patrons of and workers in a Brooklyn cigar shop, and leaves it at that. Don't expect The Moral to come creeping into the dialogue; the fact that the lives of Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel, in another example of why he's the best actor working today) and his friends are compelling IS the point. Writer Paul Auster, basing his script on his op-ed story in The New York Times, keeps on chugging out smartly-written people even up to the seventh and eighth character. It's a rare treat to have an ensemble movie in which there isn't a single weak performance, and even rarer to have one supported by writing and directing that are up to the task. All of these elements come together come together in "Smoke," an artful story about the art of storytelling.
04. Babe
Don't bother looking--you won't find a more creative film in 1995 than this immensely charming sleeper about a pig that thinks he's a sheepdog. It sounds goofy, all right, and I rolled my eyes right along with everyone else when I heard about it, but who knew that this movie would turn out to be so good? "Babe" oozes originality and emotion, as that little pig proves that it really does pay to have a kind heart and a determined mind. James Cromwell is marvelous as the farmer who is just eccentric enough to take the pig under his wing; he gives what is probably the year's most undervalued performance. Some movies ennoble your mind; some tug at your heart. It did both, but more than anything, "Babe" made me happy to be a movie lover, and there's probably nothing better you can say about a film if you really think about it. 05. The American President
There really is no question about it: romantic comedy is the toughest genre of moviemaking to get right. If any aspect of the production is off, the project is doomed from the start. Last year's "Speechless" was poorly acted, written, and directed (and a financial flop, too), so it looked as though politics and romance could never mix again. And while 1995 offered up some nice context-free tries ("Forget Paris," "While You Were Sleeping," "French Kiss"), the only romantic comedy that got it absolutely right was the topical one-- "The American President," Rob Reiner's wistfully funny and charming contraption that gave Michael Douglas his best role in years. As Andrew Shepard, a liberal commander-in- chief who flips for a spunky environmental lobbyist (the sparkling Annette Bening), Douglas seems about 15 years younger. It's a great time at the movies, one worth your vote.
06. Exotica
In a year that brought us trash like "Showgirls," it would be easy to write off any movie set in a strip club as pandering and tawdry. "Showgirls" certainly fits that description, but Atom Egoyan's provocative mystery "Exotica" is so much more. Egoyan sees the strip club as a refuge for the broken-hearted, and in a screenplay of inordinate mystification we meet an oddly aloof accountant (Bruce Greenwood) who, night after night, pays for private dances from stripper Mia Kirshner. Elias Koteas is brilliant as the seedy DJ of the club, watching over its patrons with all the iron-fisted grip that director Egoyan has over the whole movie. In "Exotica," clothes may come off, but it's the human psyche that's exposed. 07. Clockers
When you see the seemingly endless dead bodies, many brandishing bullet holes front and center in their foreheads, in the opening sequence of Spike Lee's "Clockers," you assume you're about to be sent another depressing trip through Black Cinema. It's a shame that these days all "urban dramas" (the ridiculous moniker Hollywood attributes to movies set in the inner city) are about using guns to get drugs and using drugs to get guns. They're both plentiful in "Clockers," true, but director Lee pushes the material to a higher level than anyone could have expected. Adapted from Richard Price's novel, "Clockers" makes the young man accused of a neighborhood shooting into a statistic with a face, and then has the audacity to even write a smart part for (gasp!) The White Guy, a tough-as-nails cop played by the great Harvey Keitel. As subject matter, "Clockers" is certainly sordid stuff, but Lee, in his most innovative directorial decision to date, ends his story with a ray of hope that may mean more to the genre that to any character in the movie. 08. Seven
"The world is a good place, and worth fighting for." Det. William Somerset agrees with the second part. Those are Hemingway's words, but they perfectly sum up this very 1990s serial killer thriller in which Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Det. David Mills (Brad Pitt) are after a killer whose gimmick is killing via the seven deadly sins. It's pretty dark stuff, and director David Fincher acts accordingly--using the somber, barely-there photography of cinematographer Darius Khondji. In a time when most "dark" thrillers are sunburned by the bright studio lights of convention, "Seven" broke all the rules of its genre: having the Big Chase Scene in the middle, avoiding the shoot-'em-up finale, and, most of all, daring to avoid the happy ending. And that final scene is deliriously well-written, wrapping up a superb screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker that had already outdone itself. (By the way, he won an Oscar for his work in "The Usual Suspects," but Kevin Spacey should have been up for "Seven" instead.) 09. Sense and Sensibility
It would seem that Emma Thompson could just coast on her own costume drama credentials these days. From "Howards End" to "Much Ado About Nothing" and "The Remains of the Day," she's consistently been the highlight of many a one, but she's never been farther from automatic pilot than in Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility." In her first jaunt into screenwriting, Thompson gets all the subtext of Jane Austen's novel on the screen while adding enough pizzazz to keep the piece moving. As two sisters desperate to live well and love better, Thompson and "Heavenly Creatures'" Kate Winslet are moving, forthright, and most endearing.
10. The Postman
Love in the movies these days has lost its sweetness, its innocence; contemporary Hollywood defines ardor as any scene involving a man and a woman in which one is not a psychotic loon brandishing an ice pick. Michael Radford's "The Postman," a sublime import from Italy, isn't that shallow. It knows how pushing a love story through the contrived machinations of The Plot can bog down even couples high on the chemistry scale. The late Massimo Troisi, who died just days after principal photography on the film wrapped, is gently perfect as the title character, a poor mail carrier who seeks the help of exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) to help him woo the local barmaid he adores from afar. It's a sumptuously photographed, heartfelt love story.
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