As Good as It Gets (1997)

Director: James L. Brooks

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Everyone loved it when it came out, pulling of the The Silence of the Lambs (1991) trick of sweeping both of the lead performers awards at the Oscars. No film has ever done it since. It’s occasionally heartwarming, often very funny, and there’s no reason why everyone wouldn’t have loved it.

I suppose the question in 2024 is, can it possibly hold up? Other celebrated films from the era—I’m mainly thinking of American Beauty (1999), but it isn’t precisely a 1:1 analogy—have been thoroughly dismissed as celebratory of our worst impulses. One would imagine that this film isn’t going to be immune from such considerations, when it is frequently both willfully and gleefully politically* incorrect.

And yet, I think there’s something telling in the fact that while the film did win those acting awards, it was completely cut out of any other attention in favor of Titanic (1997). The performances are key here. I’ve always said that more than any other movie star, Nicholson excels at portraying awfulness and charm simultaneously. He certainly had it as The Joker in Batman (1989) (although that would be a bit of a pre-requisite for the role), and I can only imagine what The Shining (1980) would have been without that quality**. So even now Melvin Udall (Nicholson) says and does deeply terrible things, you can’t help but be charmed somehow.

That wouldn’t be much to hang an entire film on anymore, though. The quality that makes the film still largely work when it might otherwise gone sour is the same quality that likely kept it from unqualified praise in the 90s. Yes, the role is tailor made for Nicholson’s talents, but the film does reach for a redemption for its characters, if even in small measures. Even if it wasn’t for love, Udall wants to be better. Will he succeed? Probably never nearly as much as the people around him might want, but if the horrors of the current age are ever going to abate, we might need to afford the assholes in our lives the grace to improve.

*You know what? I’m not thrilled with the amount of adverbs in that sentence, either.

**Likely something approaching the TV miniseries The Shining (1997), but I digress.

Cast Away (2000)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, boy. How much time do you have? I’m reasonably sure I saw it three times in the theater. I can remember so clearly being at my first job—sacking groceries for a now defunct purveyor of “fine” foods—being told that they had over-scheduled for the shift and needed someone to clock out. They had barely gotten the sentence out by the time I was already walking to my car, and heading to screening #2*.

And yet, for some reason, I have not seen it in… I don’t know how long. I’m going to guess its been about twenty years.

Did I Like It: I spent so much time writing about my experiences with watching the film in the far flung past, what more is there to say? It’s a rather brilliant way to make a movie, leaning into the central problem of trying to depict a man stranded on an island and just make two separate shoots out of the thing. Can any other actor hold a film all by himself for as long as Hanks does here? Everything is working to the film’s favor.

Some might complain about an ending that tries to put a bow on everything, but I couldn’t disagree more. The real movie for me starts when Noland (Hanks) gets back to the civilized world. He had to be so terrified that he would only make things worse by trying to leave the island once it became even remotely possible. And when he returns, the reality of the situation is not all he imagined (or had to imagine) it to be. But then he is free to live any kind of life he might imagine in that final moment. Leaving the island paid off. Some might say he goes immediately back to the angel wing girl (Lari White) and that puts too much of a bow on things. I think he might do that. But the point is he can do whatever he wants.

*I said once recently that “leaving work early to go see a movie” is my love language, and it not only goes back that far. I was not-yet six and my first time seeing Back to the Future – Part III (1990) (something about Zemeckis films released in years ending in “0”, I guess… Don’t bring up The Witches (2020), please.) was probably the incident which wrinkled my brain in such a way, and I wasn’t even the one taking off of work for it.

Twister (1996)

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. When your family gets HBO for the first time in late 1996, you almost had to watch it. It was the law. I’m sort of sad that I didn’t catch it in the theater, as my memory includes a screening of the film at the Admiral Twin Drive in here in town had to be cut short due to—you guessed it—marital discord between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.

That’s what the movie is about, right?

Did I Like It: This has got to be one of the flimsiest, silliest blockbuster films to exist, and somehow, almost kind of work at the same time. The marriage subplot is so thin that both viewers and the movie itself decide to pretty much forget about it before the third act.

The movie makes a mad scramble for an antagonist. One would think the tornadoes would be enough bad guy for a movie… about tornadoes. There’s even a moment, right at the film’s climax where I think we are supposed to believe the probes contained within Dorothy actually killed the final tornado? Was this the same tornado that killed Jo’s (Hunt) father? But it isn’t enough, there has to be a cadre of black hats, or rather SUVs. 

One might point to the special effects as worth a view, but I think the one-two punch of seeing it on television, combined with the fact that it has been 25 years since the film was released, even those moments have grown tame.

What more is there? There aren’t that many movies that take place in the place I came from, to say nothing of action movies. There’s also a certain dopey charm in the storm chasers. Sure, if you forced me to come up with the names other than Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, and that one guy who I’m fairly sure disappears before Paxton’s fiancée excuses herself from the proceedings. They’re a fun bunch and I have a vague recollection of there being development of a sequel in the years since. What would that have even looked like? Maybe they go after hurricanes? Or snow flurries. Yep. I can see the poster now. Twister 2: Snow Flurries. Released in 1999. Bill Paxton returns; Helen Hunt couldn’t be bothered. In that universe, the Twister saga displaces The Fast and The Furious. 

One shudders. I just won’t growl. That should be left to the tornadoes.