24 Lies a Second
Created | Updated Jan 8, 2003
That Was The Year, That
Was
Tradition is the king of mediocrity - French
proverb
Well, we've had the traditional consumerist advertising
blitzkrieg, we've had the traditional Christmas binge,
we've even had the rapidly-becoming-traditional spectacle
of the BBC buggering about with a classic Conan Doyle
novel, so it must be New Year (or thereabouts). This is of
course the time of year when third-rate columnists and
critics the world over look back on the twelve months just
gone and basically reiterate their prejudices as a lazy
seasonal filler item.
Now while obviously I don't consider this a third-rate
undertaking - perish the thought! - a boy can still dream,
so here we go with the 24LAS review of 2002, the
presentation of this year's Lassie Awards, and a quick
look ahead to the year just started.
What did you think of the year just gone? Personally I
quite enjoyed it. It seemed to me to be a case of
'business as usual' from the major studios - with the
writers' strike averted, the flirtation with imported
subtitled product that led to Crouching Tiger and
Amelie doing big business was abandoned, and on top
of this nearly all the major moneyspinners were either the
latest entries in existing franchises - Die Another
Day and Attack of the Clones, for instance - or
clearly intended to kick-start new ones, with
Spider-Man being the most obvious example.
Glancing at the list of the films I saw for this years'
columns, the thing that strikes me is how
compartmentalised and predictable things seem to have
become - this may have more to do with my taste in films,
of course, but still. I see low-budget horror movies a
plenty, most of them British, most of them featuring
soldiers, and most of them let down by weak, unnecessary
twist endings. Also heartwarming comedies by the bucketful
- often with some kind of uplifting culture-clash twist to
them.
Action movies this year were particularly interesting.
September the 11th cast an obvious shadow with the result
that they were either grimly realistic to the point of
actually being historical reenactments, or else
fantastical to the point of campness. It was also
interesting that within the space of six months, Vin
Diesel, the Rock, and Matt 'n' Ben all tried to stake
their claim to the new action-hero claim, most of them in
thinly-disguised Bond pastiches. Inevitably, the best pure
action-adventure film of the year turned out to be a
genuine Bond film.
But despite the creeping compartmentalisation of cinema
a few genuinely original and idiosyncratic movies made it
onto the screen. Some of them, like 24 Hour Party
People and The Mothman Prophecies, boldly came
out and admitted that yes, this was something a little
different from the norm, while others hid their true
colours - Gosford Park was a drama masquerading as
a costumed whodunnit, Vanilla Sky an SF movie
selling itself as a drama.
So, as I say, on the whole a good year - the movies
that made a lot of money were mostly ambitious and
inventive in conception, if not execution, a trend which
will hopefully continue next year. But before the
predictions for 2003, let's dish those Lassie awards
out...
Eligibility? Well, very simply, to be eligible for an
award I had to see the film in question in a cinema on its
original UK release at some time in 2002. Quick
fingers-and-toes style totting up reveals a grand total of
40 films which made the grade. And here they are:
Bourne Identity, Deathwatch, Die Another Day, Dog Soldiers, Eight Legged Freaks, Frailty, From
Hell, Gosford Park,
Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets, The Importance Of
Being Earnest, Iris,
K-19: The Widowmaker, The Lord of the Rings: The Two
Towers, Lost in La
Mancha, Men in Black 2,
Minority Report, The Mothman Prophecies, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Ocean's Eleven, The One, Queen
of the Damned, Red
Dragon, Reign of Fire,
Resident Evil, The Road to Perdition, The Scorpion King, Signs, Spider-Man, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones,
Sweet Home Alabama, The Time Machine, Vanilla Sky
Yes, it's not a complete list of the year's major
releases - I'm annoyed to have missed Ali,
Training Day, and Donnie Darko, amongst
others - but nobody's perfect.
Biggest Disappointment of 2002: I hate to say
it, but it was Attack of the Clones. Yes, I know
that it's not that bad a film, but my expectations were so
high for it... Ah, to paraphrase the Bard, perhaps it
could be that the fault lies not in our Star Wars,
but in ourselves.
Most Pleasant Surprise of 2002: Well, wouldn't
you know it, but none of the films this year turned out to
be spectacularly better than I expected them to be. I
can't work out if this is a good thing or not - perhaps
I've broken the bad habit of deliberately going to films
I've heard are rubbish just to have something to review.
Hmm. Let's turn this into a New Face To Watch For
award and give it to Michelle Rodriguez who effortlessly
stole Resident Evil from everyone else
involved.
Worst Accent in a Serious Film: An early
contender here was Ryan Phillipe's Scottish in Gosford
Park, but then it turned out to be intentionally bad
and thus not really eligible. Following last year's award,
which went to the entire cast of Enemy at the
Gates, I considered maintaining the Slavic theme and
awarding it to the cast of K-19: The Widowmaker -
but in the end, the Cockney Russians are succeeded by an
American Cockney, in this case Johnny Depp's shocking
performance in From Hell. The spirit of Dick Van
Dyke is alive and well.
Best Bad Acting: There's always a choice here as
to whether favour manic hamming or planklike immobility,
and 2002 was well-blessed with both - Willem Defoe in
Spider-Man and Colin Firth in The Importance of
Being Earnest on the hammery front, for example, and
Richard Gere in The Mothman Prophecies and Matt
Damon in The Bourne Identity where woodenness is
concerned. In the end this goes to someone who was in the
running last year, Sean Pertwee, for his body of work but
mainly for going so spectacularly OTT in Dog
Soldiers.
Best Actor: A rare instance of this column
nearly agreeing with the Academy as - without any
hesitation whatsoever - this award goes to Jim Broadbent
for his fantasically moving performance in Iris.
Broadbent won the Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal
of John Bayley, slightly oddly in my opinion as he plays
arguably the biggest role in the film. Never mind...
Worst Film of 2002: Quite a bit of competition
here, with Resident Evil and Ali G Indahouse
performing strongly. But for sheer misconceived
incompetence the award goes to Queen of the Damned,
a film almost entirely lacking in any merit
whatsoever.
Best Film of 2002 Not Featuring Hobbits: (Well,
it'd be terribly dull if Lord of the Rings won
again, wouldn't it? Yes, The Two Towers is the best
film of the year, but let's take that as read and see who
gets the silver medal.) Many films impressed me this year
- Vanilla Sky, Blade 2, Bend It Like Beckham and
Ocean's Eleven amongst them. But for sheer class,
intelligence, and wit, the award for 2002's second-best
film goes to Robert Altman's wonderful Gosford
Park. So there.
And so to 2003. January alone has a slew of
tasty-looking releases: Star Trek:
Nemesis, The Gangs of New York, and 8
Mile, just for starters. Later in the year we can look
forward to a job lot of superhero movies, with the
X-Men returning for a second installment and
Daredevil and the Hulk headlining their own
movies, while a more old-fashioned breed of hero features
in the steampunk adventure The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen. Not to mention Arnie's latest stab at
reviving his career in Terminator 3 (although the
wisdom of a Terminator without the involvement of
Jim Cameron and Linda Hamilton is surely suspect). Lovers
of the leftfield sensibility will probably be anticipating
Adaptation and Paul T Anderson's Punch Drunk
Love. But the most eagerly anticipated films this year
are probably the Matrix sequels, of which we should
get at least one, and - of course - Peter Jackson's final
visit to Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings: Return of
the King - which, if it surpasses The Two
Towers in the same way that that film surpassed The
Fellowship of the Ring, could prove to be the movie of
the decade. However it turns out, rest assured that - God
willing - I'll still be here writing about them whether
you like it or not.