Worst Ten Movies I Personally Saw in 1996
Chungking Express
Green Snake
The Rock
Eraser
Freeway
The Juror
The Nutty Professor
Richard III
Star Trek: First Contact
James & the Giant Peach
Terminal Essay
1996 was the year of sniping critics, actually. Hollywood
and the independents cranked out a huge amount of Product, more
than anyone could possibly see. Most of it was crap genre films,
films that celebrated their plotlessness like Mission Impossible.
Meanwhile, the "good" films, I think, suffered from being praised
too much, so that other critics, in order to remain elitists, had
to trash them! Would that we all saw our movies in a vacuum: how
could anyone avoid seeing Trainspotting, The English Patient,
Fargo, Secrets & Lies, Lone Star et cetera without accreting
serious review baggage? It was not possible. Every single movie
that was on one person's top ten list was on another person's
bottom ten list!
Sometimes I myself, striving for objectiveness, couldn't
tell whether I was being influenced by critical sniping
(particularly with The English Patient). I hope this never
happens again. I am truly sorry that I didn't think Fargo was
the greatest movie ever, but I just didn't. I am not going to
trash it, however. I simply liked the Hudsucker Proxy a million
times more.
Another VERY disturbing trend this year was the number of
movies released virtually on New Year's Eve so that they qualify
for Oscar nominations while people can still remember seeing
them. This makes compiling a top ten list in a timely fashion
virtually impossible. Each year this problem has increased.
Unfortunately, so many movies are ironically slipping through the
cracks, not having been seen actually in one year and not able to
qualify for the other year's top ten list. Thus I would like to
note that "12 Monkeys" and "Dead Man Walking" deserve to go on
SOME top ten list. I am not even sure if "Hamlet" or "Evita" or
"The Crucible" or "Mother" or "Slingblade" came out in 1996 or
1997. Therefore they are not on my wish list this year, but
probably by next year they will be disqualified. What a waste.