Pat Wick's 2000 Lists

All right, here is my listing of the top and bottom movies I saw for 2000. I realize that there are some people out there that disagree with each others lists. That is why we are individuals. Something I really liked could be average or even hated by someone else. These are how they rank in my current mood. Next week and next year I may disagree with what I listed here, but this is how they are today.

Worst 5 (by far the more fun of the 2 lists to create)

1. Scary Movie - Painfully bad. I was expecting it to be bad, but this was retchingly bad. I like spoof movies like "Airplane!" but this was a complete waste of time. Not funny or witty at all.

2. Mission To Mars - The only redeeming thing about this movie is that at the end of it I went out to dinner with about 15 other people and dissed it for longer than the movie had lasted. There are so many scientific problems with it - it is difficult to start. The best line from that night was (regarding one of the many inaccurate portrayals) "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that - and these people were SUPPOSED TO BE [rocket scientists]!!"

3. Dinosaur - To those of you that don't know me very well, a bit of background: I adore Disney full length animated movies. I own copies of all of them, even The Fox And The Hound and The Black Cauldron - both are stinkers. This was worse than those two. It was plodding, predictable and didn't make me care at all about the characters. It breaks my heart that they spent huge amounts of money promoting this tripe and barely mentioned The Emperor's New Groove, which is a great film. I will not be purchasing this one, my collection will not be complete and that is a good thing.

4. Battlefield Earth - The concept is fine, Earth gets kicked by an alien race and they start mining the place. The story starts 1000 years later. We are almost totally extinct and very few people live outside of captivity. But then they do some absolutely insane things with science - along the lines of Mission to Mars. The worst example being: having totally uneducated wild men become good fighter pilots of 1000 year old unserviced Harrier Jets (with a few hours of training in a working simulator).

5. Space Cowboys - I was looking forward to this. The star line up was great and I knew it would be a bit hokey, but I was bored. It was uninspired and totally formulaic. The ending was trite and I saw it from the beginning - this from a person that hates figuring out the ending of a movie, I like the ride. It was probably the biggest disappointment of this year for me.

Top 10 movies:

1. Traffic - I found this film riveting. It portrayed the drug problem with more realism than anything I had seen yet. I won't get into the specifics, because then this would be more of a Masters Thesis, but the characters were compelling and the situations didn't seem forced or unnatural.

2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Beautiful scenery, story and acting.

3. Unbreakable - The Magnolia of 2000 - you either loved it or hated it (and felt the need to flame others). It rang true to me. I feel bound to keep my mouth shut on this, because saying why I liked this movie will give away some of the plot points.

4. Chicken Run - Aardman Entertainment rocks!!

5. Return To Me - This is the only movie I saw twice in the theaters. The plotline seems goofy, but the characters were real. Bonnie Hunt should direct more. Carroll O'Connor and Robert Loggia were superb as brothers-in-law who run an Irish-Italian eatery.

6. O Brother Where Art Thou - The Coen Brothers take on the Odyssey! Funny and poignant.

7. Erin Brokovich - I am not that big of a fan of Julia Roberts, and I really like this movie. Albert Finney was wonderful. His character reminds me of my father so much.

8. Charlie's Angels - a good romp. I am still quoting it.

9. X-Men - Finally a superhero movie (adapted from comics) that took the characters seriously. A universe was created where you felt that the action was plausible.

10. Keeping the Faith - What do you get when you have a Priest, a Rabbi and a former tomboy? A cute movie that touched me and kept me smiling for days.

Honorable Mentions: The Emperor's New Groove, Frequency and Cast Away. The only one I will expound upon here is Frequency. I really was impressed with this film. I am having difficulty describing why I really liked it while making sure some of the surprise remains for those who haven't seen it. The basic plot is that through some unusual sunspot activity a son speaks to his father in the past. I really liked how they dealt with time paradoxes. To make it into a trivial example, what if you changed something in the past, like changing the car your parents bought from a Ford to a Chevy? You would have the memory of being driven in a Ford they never bought. Or would you? Would you disappear and a different version of you exist, one that never knew of a Ford. What if it was something much bigger? I like how the movie handled those questions.