THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG - A Look at the Best Films of 1997

I already touted 1997 as being a strong continuation of the output from 1996, but I would actually argue that the list ahead is a little stronger. Maybe there won't be a Fargo-level favorite per se, but this list has a high level of films that I consider to be truly great.

If I am ranking films on a 5-star scale, 1996 would've had 3 by my standards.

1997 has 7.

So we are talking a pretty strong year to a point where I am, once again, a tad surprised by what the 90s offered as a decade year after year. I would say having 3 is a bit more common. There are even some years where I've given no films a 5-star rating (...ugh 2022...)

I do have more I want to say on the topic, but I am going to save that for my Final Thoughts. I am going to veer over into my Honorable Mentions, and I will be listing 5 films again this time.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Gummo

Written & Directed by Harmony Korine

Out of all the films on this list, Gummo is the one that is by far the most divisive. 

Upon its release, Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "the worst movie of the year", and it still to this day has a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

It may be dour and dirty and uncomfortable, but there is something so oddly intriguing about Gummo. 

Set after a destructive tornado hits Xenia, OH, we watch a loosely based narrative form around the residents who are living in destructed poverty and have to find creative...or revolting...ways to pass the time.

It's not an easy watch, but sometimes it is worth admiring that kind of effort.

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Good Will Hunting

Directed by Gus Van Sant

Written by Ben Affleck & Matt Damon

I will admit that I have never been as passionate about Good Will Hunting as a lot of people are, but it does succeed in a lot of its emotional beats. If anything, Robin Williams steals the show with his Oscar winning performance as Dr. Sean Maguire. 

I do recall the excitement people had with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon after this came out. Even when Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau presented them with their Screenplay Oscar, you could tell Lemmon in particular was thrilled to do so. It felt like a coronation amidst a ceremony dominated by Titanic.

Speaking of....

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Titanic

Written & Directed by James Cameron

Okay, addressing the elephant in the room.

Titanic was a legit phenomenon. It was EVERYWHERE. I can remember "My Heart Will Go On" playing on the radio daily, sometimes hearing it multiple times.

It was an epic and for its time, the technical aspects were impressive. The film that was supposed to flop became the highest grossing film of its time and then swept the Oscars with ease.

And yet...the film suffers from one truly crucial thing: its screenplay.

The film may be directed with great flair and it may have a pretty solid structure, but the dialogue????

"I saw the iceberg, and I can see it in your eyes".

"To me, it was a slave ship. Taking me back to America in chains"

"Something Picasso? He won't amount to a thing. Trust me."

"They're so small, my crowd. They think they're giants, they're not even dust in God's eyes".

There is a clear reason why this film managed to get a record 14 nominations, but still got easily snubbed for a Screenplay nod. 

But I still maintain it is a highly entertaining film.

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Anastasia 

Directed by Don Bluth & Gary Goldman

Written by Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, Bob Tzudiker, & Noni White

A true return to grace for Don Bluth after his empire began to dwindle in the early 90s, Anastasia felt as though it was meeting the standards formed by the Disney Renaissance musicals. The irony is that Bluth had left Disney for more creative prospects only to regain a level of success by going for the new Disney formula.

Nevertheless, the musical score by Broadway vets Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, best known for Once on This Island, Ragtime, and Seussical, is one of the best aspects of this. "Journey to the Past" got a well-deserved Oscar nod (that it lost to "My Heart Will Go On") but I wish we could've seen a nod for "Once Upon a December", which is such a haunting lullaby of a song.

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Eve's Bayou

Written & Directed by Kasi Lemmons

This one is a gem that I feel like has been lost to time a bit, which is a shame because it was such an assured debut for Kasi Lemmons. 

Embraced by Roger Ebert as the best film of 1997, Eve's Bayou is a little bit of everything.

It's a coming-of-age film, it deals with voodoo, you have Samuel L. Jackson at his most reserved and haunting all wrapped up in a Southern Gothic vibe with gorgeous cinematography.

A young Journee Smollett plays Eve who was fresh off of playing Denise on Full House and she's wonderful but it is Debbi Morgan, most known for her role as Angie on All My Children, who steals the film as Aunt Mozelle, a Hoodoo practitioner known locally as "The Black Widow". I would've loved to have seen her get an Oscar nomination for this.

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THE TOP 10:

#10 - THE SWEET HEREAFTER

Written & Directed by Atom Egoyan

I feel like despite them being our neighbors to the north...with better weather and a seemingly better country I would rather live in than here...we don't seem to see a surge of Canadian films coming over here. Instead, we got a lot of Canadian TV whether it be children's shows or comedy programs.

However, The Sweet Hereafter is a wonderful film; a strong effort from Atom Egoyan. 

Egoyan was part of a Canadian film movement called the Toronto New Wave, but this movement was certainly not as prominent as others. Admittedly, a lot of the filmmakers from this group are shamefully a bit of a blind spot for me.

Set in a small Canadian town, we follow the grieving lives of various parents/children after a school bus accident takes the lives of 14 kids. The parents are seeking to file a class action lawsuit, while a lot of the community's personal issues come to light and create further turmoil. 

Perhaps one of the brightest spots from this was a young Sarah Polley, who was fresh off her stint as Sara Stanley on one of the many Canadian television imports aired on The Disney Channel back in the 90s, Road to Avonlea. In the film, she plays 15 year old Nicole, who survives the bus accident but is now paralyzed from the waist down. She had hoped to become a successful musician and had thought of it as an escape from her sexually abusive father. 

With the likes of actors like Ian Holm and Bruce Greenwood doing effective work with such an intelligent and moving script, The Sweet Hereafter is an unflinching look at grief and how its ramifications affect us in ways we don't even realize. 

With its score based in medieval influences and snowy landscapes, it feels almost like we are witnessing a beautiful but dreary dream that follows a tragic nightmare.

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#9 - HAPPY TOGETHER

Written & Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Welcome back to the Wong Kar-wai universe!

Happy Together is very much a film with themes that Wong loved to tackle: longing and regret.

However, what made Happy Together feel particularly exciting, at least for that era, was that it depicted a gay couple at its center. With Tony Leung as the sensitive Yiu-Fai and Leslie Cheung as the extroverted promiscuous Po-Wing, we watch this couple disintegrate before our eyes but it doesn't feel exploitative or degrading, it presents the story as it is without judgment. 

The two frequently breakup only to reconcile shortly thereafter, but their goal is to take a trip to Argentina as a means to add a little more excitement to their lives. The two end up getting lost while traversing Iguazu Falls and have yet another fight that leads to a breakup, only to realize they no longer have enough money to fly home. Yiu-Fai tries to get work while Po-Wing essentially pimps himself out, until a violent encounter leads the two to reconsider yet another reconciliation. 

Happy Together is clearly not a happy film. 

This is a clear case of a couple that doesn't belong together, and one of the pair finally having the courage to say that he knows that there is more out there for him and prepares to make that change. It may not have been the most glorious representation of love between two gay men, but it felt like an honest one with dignity.

That is certainly all one could've asked for, especially circa 1997.

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#8 - L.A. CONFIDENTIAL

Written & Directed by Curtis Hanson 

Co-written by Brian Helgeland

At that year's Oscars during Billy Crystal's opening musical number, he sang the lyric "L.A. Confidential, you could be the iceberg tonight!"

Prior to the televised award ceremonies that lead up the Oscars, all of the major critics organizations rallied behind L.A. Confidential and in theory, it seemed like it would be the film to beat.

But alas, the gargantuan success of Titanic made it catnip for the Oscars who were very prone to opt for sweeping epics throughout the 80s and 90s.

I do have to think that if the preferential ballot existed back then, L.A. Confidential might've put up more of a fight, but the real truth is I feel like people talk about the film less these days.

Set in 1950s LA (and the visual aesthetics are absolutely glorious, we follow various detectives in the corrupt LAPD who resort to trying unusual methods to solve a mass murder in an all-night diner. 

It's a stellar ensemble. You have the two Aussies, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe; the now disgraced Kevin Spacey; legendary character actors Danny DeVito, James Cromwell, David Sraithairn, and Ron Rifkin...and then somehow it was Kim Basinger who got the only acting nod and win for the film.

I still don't think Kim Basinger was as effective in this role as it could've been. While I do think she had a certain presence that worked, it wasn't Oscar worthy...especially considering she beat out Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights (more on her later) and Joan Cusack's comedic tour-de-force in In & Out.

A gritty but glossy and seductive mystery that felt like the film Curtis Hanson had been building to his entire career.

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#7 - TASTE OF CHERRY

Written & Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

I guess we will never escape the world of Kiarostami, it seems.

I think the crazy thing about doing these posts is how I didn't truly realize how solid a track record Abbas Kiarostami had back in the 90s, and it was clear that a surge in Iranian cinema was booming as evidenced by the previous inclusion of Children of Heaven. 

Taste of Cherry stars Homayoun Ershadi who, like a lot of Kiarostami's actors, was not a professional actor when he made the film. Kiarostami noticed Ershadi while sitting in Tehran traffic and offered him a chance to star in the film.

How wacky is THAT?!

It is like the story of discovering Lana Turner sitting at a soda counter, but even more crazy in that he saw something in Ershadi and said "Yes, you. I want you to lead my film that will end up winning the Palme D'or at Cannes 1997".

Ershadi plays Badii, a middle-aged man who we see driving around Tehran. All he wants is for someone to do a job for him and in turn they will receive a large sum of money.

The job? 

Badii doesn't want to live anymore. He intends on killing himself and he wants the person he hires to bury him with dignity.

Okay, no pressure there. 

Taste of Cherry is a brooding character study that somehow feels so grand despite being so small and simplistic in its scope. It even latches on to the idea of how you'll be handled after you are dead, something that I used to have a morbid fear of.

Hilariously though, despite the high acclaim, Roger Ebert famously loathed the film to the point that he called it "excruciatingly boring" and would put it on his most hated films of all time list. You really can't please everyone!

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#6 - CHILDREN OF HEAVEN

Written & Directed by Majid Majidi

My introduction to Children of Heaven was when it got nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars a year after its release; an award it would lose to Best Picture nominee Life is Beautiful. 

Now, I am not saying I hate Life is Beautiful, but I do think it has suffered a lot over time in how Roberto Benigni presented that material...let alone him winning Best Actor...

Upon seeing Children of Heaven, I found myself enamored it and wished it had been the winner of that category. It's like Majidi made a children's film, but found a magic touch to make it very palatable for adults.

The premise is simple: Zohre no longer has her shoes because her older brother Ali lost them. Since they are from a poor family, they can't afford a new pair so they decide to share a pair of shoes. 

Iranian cinema is endlessly fascinating in that these filmmakers can often take the simplest seeming idea, and weave it into something magical/profound/bittersweet. It may be about shoes, but it is also about the bond between siblings, the way one wants to protect the other, but they know they truly can't to the potential they desire.

A magical, bittersweet effort that feels like Majid Majidi was tapping into the world of Vittorio De Sica.

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#5 - PERFECT BLUE

Directed by Satoshi Kon

Written by Sadayuki Murai

Beyond the works of Studio Ghibli, I can't say that I have much of a history with anime as an artform. Aside from 1988's Akira, the only other anime film I remember watching and loving was Perfect Blue. 

I will admit: I used to sort of scoff at the idea of anime. It was a toxic trait of my younger film bro days, but I fell upon Perfect Blue in an unexpected way.

While I was in college, I briefly had a roommate who was a bit...eccentric. By "eccentric", I mean that he would practically watch C-Span or CNN several hours a day (this was during the 2008 election) and if he wasn't watching those, he was watching webcam footage of Shiba Inu puppies where he would quietly chant "Puppies, puppies, puppies, puppies..." and also proclaimed "I want them to fight for my pleasure".

...anyway.

This guy randomly gave me a DVD of Perfect Blue when he heard it was my birthday. Looking back, I was barely civil when he gave it to me. Maybe it was because of the snobby nature, but to be fair, he had done and said some things that were either weird or borderline offensive (including saying I needed to lose weight even though I was arguably much closer to my healthiest weight).

I finally watched the DVD when I went home for the winter break and it felt like a slap in the face. Every now and then, I have to be put in my place when it comes to film snobbery.

Perfect Blue is the kind of animated film that proved you could tell darker and far more complex stories despite the stigma of animation being for children. A J-Pop star named Mima Kirigoe leaves her group CHAM! with the hope of becoming an actress. However, her journey is affected by a stalker and a series of murders occurring at the same time, which sends her down a spiral.

Dark and stylish and brimming with gloom, it is a beacon for the genre...and with the next film on this list, we will stay in Japan and deal with similar themes.

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#4 - CURE

Written & Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

No relation to the legendary Akira, Kiyoshi Kurosawa was a major reason that that Japanese cinema became synonymous with horror in the late 90s and beyond.

Before we had Memories of Murder or Zodiac, we had Cure. 

The great Koji Yakusho plays Detective Kenichi Takabe, who is investigating a series of murders in which the victims have the letter X carved into their neck or chest. The twist is that each of the murderers are found near the victim...but despite confessing to the murder, they don't have any real motive to show why they actually did it.

Procedurals are never a genre I gravitate towards with any kind of regularity, but it is a key example of a style that is compelling when done well. We watch this investigation descend to levels of obsession and psychosis; there is a strong desire for him to understand evil but it is putting him right in the heart of the beast.

It becomes a film where you second guess every little thing: a quiet liminal space, a cup of water, a flickering light, a waitress holding a knife.

Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho once stated that Cure was among his favorite films ever made, and you can totally see the influence on him in not just Memories of Murder but even in some of his other works like Mother. I also see the influence in Park Chan-wook's works, especially Decision to Leave.

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#3 - FUNNY GAMES

Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke is one of those dark and dreary filmmakers that I admire for how far he tries to take his material, and when I revisited Funny Games during my oft-mentioned COVID Quarantine Film Marathon, it played out a lot better than I remembered. 

This is not a film for just anyone. It isn't even for all film lovers. 

When the film got screened at the Cannes Film Festival, it was met with boos and about a third of the audience walked out. Filmmakers like Jacques Rivette dismissed the film as being vile and a disgrace...but while what happens in the film is truly vile, the film is speaking on so much more.

Set in along a remote lakefront in Austria, a couple named George & Anna (Ulrich Muhe & Susanne Lothar) along with their son Georgie and dog Rolfi, are set to have a quiet and relaxing stay at a cabin. 

Upon arrival, they notice their neighbors are conversing with two young men which they find a little unusual. The neighbor, Fred, shows up with one of the young men who says his name is Paul. The other young man shows up, named Peter, and proceeds to ask if he can borrow some eggs. He outstays his welcome by breaking multiple eggs and "accidentally" knocking the phone into the kitchen sink. 

What progresses from here is perhaps one of the cruelest and most sadistic concepts you could ever conceive: a family being tortured for no reason simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

I am not going to say that Funny Games is some easy watch or that it is something I will promote as a film all of you should watch, but this is a prime example of how absolutely brutal subject matter is presented in a compelling way. 

This isn't just a film that could be deemed "torture porn". It is a highly volatile, yes, but it has this meta edge as Peter and Paul frequently break the fourth wall...even to the point of rewinding the very film we are watching to make sure that THEY have the happy ending and not the family they are having fun with.

The film does go a bit too far at times where I wish Haneke hadn't gone that route, but he walked a really precarious tightrope with this one and he succeeded.

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#2 - PRINCESS MONONOKE

Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A list for the best films of a given year will likely include a film by Miyazaki if he made a film that year. In the past, I have discussed My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service and we will see more work of his in other years I've yet to discuss.

The simple truth is that very few filmmakers, live action or animation, have the stellar consistency that Miyazaki has. He is literally on par with the likes of fellow Japanese filmmakers like Ozu and Kurosawa or those such as Stanley Kubrick or Ingmar Bergman. 

Set during the Muromachi period in Japan, we meet a young prince named Ashitaka who placed under  a curse by a demonic god. As he begins a journey west to find a cure, he encounters a younger woman named San who is trying to protect the forest while Lady Eboshi is trying to destroy it. 

We had seen Pixar come out with so many stellar animated films, particularly their stretch from 2007-2010, and it seemed to prove to a lot of people how affective animated films could be.

Miyazaki was proving this to be true about a decade or two prior, and at an even higher level.

This could be said about many of his films, but Princess Mononoke is stunning, profound, and spellbinding. It takes a story about the destruction of nature in favor of industrialization and finds a way to make it accessible enough for younger audiences while truthfully being a film that caters to mature ones. Everything about this film drips with passion and fervor and creativity and in the end, I think the better thing one can do about Miyazaki is to just shut up, sit down, and go experience his work for yourself. 

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#1 - BOOGIE NIGHTS

Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Although this was only his sophomore outing after 1996's Hard Eight, it was clear that this Paul Thomas Anderson fellow was going places. 

Now here we are nearly 30 years later and I would consider him to be in the running as the best English language filmmaker working today. I have even described him as the closest living equivalent we have to Stanley Kubrick in that his output is so consistently strong and varied in genre that it is yet another reason to marvel at the guy. 

Boogie Nights showcases a lot of the elements that would go on to become early trademarks of his style: vivid colors, one-shot continuous takes, a vast ensemble of performers. The ensemble angle feels very reminiscent of Robert Altman's works, namely Nashville or The Player or Short Cuts. 

It is 1977 in the San Fernando Valley (a setting that is also a frequent staple for PTA), we meet college dropout Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) who still lives at home with his father and abusive, alcoholic mother. While working one evening, he meets a porn producer named Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) who has an interest in using him in his films.

He takes on the stage name of Dirk Diggler, and a legend is born in that industry. Not only is he viewed as handsome and youthful, but he just so happens to have a rather large penis. The image of Phillip Seymour Hoffman holding a boom mike lusting over after this penis will always stay with me. 

Boogie Nights embraces the idea of depicting sex on film, but it also doesn't shy away from the more disenchanting elements or the negative stigmas. We live in a society that would sooner allow a child to watch someone's head get blown apart than catch a glimpse of a woman's breasts. 

Perhaps one of the more emotional and grounded bits of the film revolves around Julianne Moore as Maggie, who goes by the porn name of Amber Waves. 

She has a young son that she really wants to raise and take care of, but her ex-husband takes her to court and they instantly deem her unfit since she is a porn star with drug issues and a criminal record. When we see Moore crying outside the courthouse, it feels devastating. It is easily some of Moore's finest work and I think she should've won the Oscar that year...certainly over Kim Basinger in the previously discussed L.A. Confidential. 

Boogie Nights might not be as praised as strongly when put up against some of PTA's later work, but I still think it stands pretty high on his list...but it is also a very mighty list considering the man has only made one film I truly didn't care much for (Licorice Pizza) and perhaps only two pretty good efforts: Hard Eight and Inherent Vice.

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FINAL THOUGHTS:

1997 is an important year for me. When I wrote about 1998 a couple of years ago, I talked about how it was the year that I began my journey as a film lover but a lot of that also stemmed from the films of 1997.

In that post, I talked about watching that year's Oscar ceremony and a lot of these films were nominated or won in some capacity so they now feel very engrained in my mind. 

I really sound like a broken record, but it hard for me not to marvel at the quality and the variety of these films above. The fact a film like Eve's Bayou is my #11 is a kind of a shocker considering there are quite a few years post-2000 where it would likely be a top 3-5 contender for those lists.

Since 1998 has been done, that means we are about to reach the final year of the 90s and the 20th Century. 

1999 is one of those legendary years where it seems like all the excitement and energy of the decade behind it led for films to explode with even more vibrancy and intensity than before. 

It'll be a challenge of a list, especially because some of the most beloved films from that year (much like I had occur in 1994) will not factor as strongly on that list.