Finding Forrester (2000)

Director: Gus Van Sant

Cast: Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, Rob Brown, Anna Paquin

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Hell, I once gave a presentation to a writer’s group where I showed the famous “You’re the Man Now, Dog” scene as a segue to the virtues of using a typewriter.

Which really should have been the takeaway from that scene, not the decade-plus of memes we got as a result.

Did I Like It: It would be easy to dismiss the film for the parts that some might call derivative. The film is built on a foundation of the white savior complex, which one can only hope will age even more poorly as the years progress. It has enough of Van Sant’s early triumph with Good Will Hunting (1997) looming over it to ever get to be its own movie. And there’s more than a little bit of Scent of a Woman (1992) to make the whole thing feel familiar to the point of being a pat.

The thing is, I can never truly dismiss the film any time I see it. For one thing, it gets the feeling of writing correct*. Punching the keys; sometimes its the rhythm. Reading for dinner and dessert. Write with your heart; re-write with your head. 

And then there’s the case of Sean Connery. His storied film career went out with whimper in films like The Avengers (1998) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), and we forget that he had one great film performance left to him. His Forrester takes the broad brush strokes of J.D. Salinger and made him a triumph of both sadness and triumph. There are plenty of leading men built on an image of machismo who couldn’t reach for that level of vulnerability, much less in his second-to-last role.

*For other entries in this hallowed pantheon, see Shakespeare in Love (1998), Wonder Boys (2000) (of which I am shocked to learn that, as of this writing, I have not written a review), and Adaptation (2002)… I’m sure I’m missing others which might have been made prior to the Clinton administration, but they are escaping me… Let’s just go with the introduction scene of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and call it good.

Amadeus (1984)

Director: Miloš Forman

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. Despite its R rating, I have a strange memory of see most of the movie in my youth, as showing (certain parts) of the film was the “giving up” action of a music teacher in elementary school. That’s an ugly way to see a movie, honestly. Let the kids skip the movie, and watch it in its full context later on, if you ask me.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty sure only Forman could bring to life the ultimately vulgar reality of Mozart to life. Between Andy Kaufman and Larry Flint, it might seem like the story of the greatest classical composer would be an aberration. But working with source material like Peter Shaffer’s stage play makes it almost inevitable that Forman and Mozart would find one another.

The production is immaculate, with every attempt made to authentically recreate the later years of the eighteenth century, even if the vast majority of the audience would have no way of knowing if the film achieved any sort of historical accuracy. It largely is not accurate, as scholars have long since proven that Salieri could not have been responsible for Mozart’s death, and Mozart was not dumped in a mass grave. However, there is no trace of contemporary fashion in the production, so people years from now would not be able to place it in the context of other films produced in the 1980s. Timelessness in this fashion lends credibility, even if the story is nearly completely fiction.

Tom Hulce brings the title character to such vivid life, it’s a wonder that he didn’t enjoy a more notable career in motion pictures beyond the role. It’s also hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mark Hamill might have played the role instead, as he was playing the role on Broadway at the time, but was dismissed as a prospect for the movie because Forman decided people would not be able to think of the actor outside of his involvement with Star Wars.

But this movie is only tangentially about Mozart, right? Abraham as Salieri is one of the more delicate balancing acts of the movies. Functionally the villain and the protagonist of the story (Mozart has no arc other than to burn out his talent and die), he is sympathetic, likable, odious, and unrepentant, often moment-to-moment. His tale of woe and jealousy fueled by a contempt for a world which did not see fit to reward the sacrifices he thinks he has made for his future success. In that sense, even though the film is a foreign subject made by a foreign director, the tragedy of Salieri might be the most American tale ever put to film.

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, F. Murray Abraham

Have I Seen it Before: Over twenty years ago, I opted out a date with my first girlfriend to ensure I saw this one opening weekend. So yeah.

Did I Like It: How many new episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are we likely to get? Don’t answer that question just yet… Picard is coming back…

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies? Part Two, But With No Electric Boogaloo.” published 04/30/2017.

I’m not sure why the ninth film in the series—the fourth to feature The Next Generation crew—gets shit on so much. This is especially true when the series also includes the two-plus hour sleeping pill that is The Motion Picture (1979), the sloppy ode to mountain climbing that is The Final Frontier (1989)*, and that testament to uninspired mediocrity that was Nemesis (2002).

The most frequent complaint I hear about this movie is that, after the epic battle across time and space in First Contact (1996)**, this follow-up is less an actual movie, and more a very basic, episode of the television series upon which it is based. To that, I ask: Why is that a problem? If anyone reading this has ever taken in any random episode of The Next Generation*** and not enjoyed it, then, maybe your problem with Insurrection is that you just don’t like Star Trek that much.

The ancillary material for the film is even better. The late Michael Piller wrote a no-holds-barred account of his experiences writing the screenplay. It’s one of the truly great screenwriting books, ranking right up there with William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. It’s only recently available, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

*Which I actually kind of like, and almost made its way onto this list, except that I get that the movie doesn’t work for the most part. 

**I realize now that movies may have began and ended for me in 1996.

***First season being the only exception, naturally.