The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen

by Richard Crouse

  Fubar blurs the line between fact and fiction by casting several real life non-actors playing themselves. For instance, Dr. S.C. Lim, who is actually Michael Dowse's physician, plays himself in the film. In addition many of the “extras” in the fight scene were actual bar patrons who thought they were taking part in a real documentary.

  This film was a favorite at 2001's Sundance Film Festival, and it's not hard to see why.

  FUN (1994)

  “Fun is king!”

  — Bonnie (Alicia Witt)

  Fun is divided into two time lines — the present, filmed in bleak monochromatic 16 mm, and flashbacks to the afternoon of “fun,” shot in vibrant, clear color.

  In the current day, two 15-year-old girls, the solemn Hillary (Renee Humphrey) and the raucous Bonnie (Alicia Witt), have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for the cold-blooded murder of a trusting old woman. The flashback scenes all take place on one hectic day when the two met, fell in love, and brutally stabbed the elderly woman. Why did they do it? “It was fun. Fun is number one!”

  This is a chilling peek into the minds of disaffected youth, one that recalls cinematic thrillers like Rope, Heavenly Creatures, and Butterfly Kiss. It's not preachy, but the filmmakers subtly suggest that by allowing young people from dysfunctional families into an impersonal, violence-soaked society that doesn't care about them, their resulting behavior will be anti-social and possibly violent.

  Anchoring the movie are the powerful performances of the two female leads. Alicia Witt, who got her start at age nine in the movie Dune (and whose mother holds the Guinness Book of World Record title for the having the longest hair), is particularly effective. Her mile-a-minute take on Bonnie is disturbingly real — she's a thrill seeker who killed someone just for the adrenaline rush, a drug-free high. Renee Humphrey is eclipsed by Witt, who has the showier role, but she delivers an effective portrait of a haunted, introspective soul. The two women believably display how opposites can attract, how in this case two damaged people became one whole — no longer individuals, but one lethal identity. The two actresses were awarded a special recognition from the Sundance Film Festival.

  Directed by Rafal Zielinski — best known for helming teen sex comedies — Fun maintains a high emotional pitch for its 105 minutes and contains images that will not soon be forgotten.

  FUNNY GAMES (1997)

  “Fiction is real — what you see in the movies is what you see literally.”

  — Paul (Amos Frisch)

  This violent Austrian film isn't for everyone. In fact, one critic so reviled the movie he wrote, “After watching Funny Games the Jonestown suicides will appear to be a viable option.” I guess Frank Zappa's idea that it doesn't matter what kind of reaction you get, as long as you get a reaction, holds true in this case.

  The darkly provocative Funny Games is an art-house film that explores the use of violence in the cinema. A well-heeled young family's summer vacation turns into a nightmare when Paul and Peter (Amos Frisch and Frank Giering), two seemingly well-mannered young boys who are friends of the neighbors, drop by to borrow some eggs. Soon the family is held hostage and subjected to a night of torture and degradation by the two psychopaths.

  Director and screenwriter Michael Heneke keeps the audience off guard from minute one. To make the point that the young bullies have been influenced by violence in the media he has them call one another Beavis and Butthead and speak directly to the audience in several self-aware moments in the film. In one scene they note that they can't kill the family quickly because “we're not up to feature length yet.” In another extraordinary sequence the wife Anna (Susanne Lothar) gets her hands on a gun and shoots and kills Peter. Paul, the second sadist, decides he didn't like that scene, so he grabs a remote, rewinds the scene, and takes the gun from her before she can shoot.

  Such touches add a sense of humor to the grim proceedings, but also make a comment on how we as an audience watch extremely violent material as entertainment. Heneke seems to be saying that by watching films like this we are complicit in creating a society that could create the two monsters we are watching on screen. It's an interesting thesis on film violence, one that seems at once to embrace and then reject its subject. A fine ensemble cast and skillful direction keep the themes in check, finding a balance between the humor and the violence, keeping the film on track and elevating it above the level of an average slasher flick. German with English subtitles.

  GANGSTER NO. 1 (2001)

  “It's Moet and fucking Chandon all the fucking way . . .”

  — Gangster (Paul Bettany)

  Gangster No. 1 feels like a continuation of one of the most disturbing movies of the 1970s. Malcolm McDowell became a star playing the hoodlum Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, a study of ultra-violence that shocked audiences with graphic depictions of rape and brutal behavior. McDowell's Alex was a young scowling punk with a passion for savagery. Thirty years later McDowell revisits the twisted world of the London underground. Little Alex is all grown up now, and Gangster No. 1 is the logical conclusion to his life of crime.

  Set in London in 1968 and the present day, Gangster No. 1 is a simple character-driven story about a power struggle played out between mob boss Freddie Mays (David Thewlis) and his protégé, a vicious punk simply known as Gangster. We first meet Gangster (Malcolm McDowell) at age 55 at a swank dinner with other shady characters in an upscale hotel. When he learns that his old mentor, Freddie Mays, is about to get out of prison after doing a 30-year stretch for murder, a flood of emotions envelops him, pushing him to a very dark place.

  Turn the clock back 30 years to the end of the summer of love. Jacqueline Kennedy had just married Aristotle Onassis; Valerie Solanas tried to kill Andy Warhol; and Freddie Mays is the king of the London underground. Mays is reverentially known as the “Butcher of Mayfair,” a nickname he picked up after killing a corrupt policeman. He is feared and respected by all, especially the young Gangster (Paul Bettany). Gangster desperately wants in on the action and will do anything to earn his way into the mob's inner circle.

  His ruthlessness impresses Mays, who makes Gangster his righthand man. Gangster is fiercely loyal to Mays and cold-bloodedly protects his boss's position of power within the organization. He develops a psychotic admiration for Mays born out of allegiance and envy. He wants what Mays has: the red E-type Jaguar, the kitted-out apartment with Italian leather chairs and gold fixtures, and the clothes — especially the clothes. Mays wears handmade suits from Jermyn Street, Italian shirts, silk socks, ruby cufflinks, a white-gold watch, and a beautiful tie pin. When he is near Mays, Gangster feels “arseholed on the smell of success.”

  For a time they are unstoppable. Their unholy alliance propels them to the top of the underworld, but the good life starts to unravel. Gangster's insane jealousy gets the best of him when Mays falls for a local singer named Karen (Saffron Burrows). As Mays devotes more and more of his time to making wedding plans with his new girlfriend, Gangster feels left out. He feels his world is crumbling and must do something about it. When a plot is uncovered to assassinate Mays, Gangster keeps the news quiet and sets up his boss to take a fall.

  Thirty years later the two meet again. Gangster wants to confront Mays to find out where it all went wrong, but first he must face up to his own demons as he grasps that his ascent to the top was ultimately a pyrrhic victory.

  Gangster No. 1 is a taut, bloodthirsty genre picture that offers a well-constructed peek into a brilliant but warped and cruel personality. Both Bettany and McDowell as the young and senior Gangster respectively lend a palatable air of menace to the character. Like Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, Gangster seems capable of anything, a monomaniac who will do anything to hold all the aces.

  McDowell's portrayal of the older Gangster bookends the film. We meet him in the twilight of his criminal career, looking back at his life, where we see that even now, Mays remains out of his league. Mays was a class act, stylish and charming, whereas Gangster is simply a barbarian. McD
owell plays him as an animal, feral, a creature of pure instinct. “He's a monstrous person,” McDowell said of the character. “I've never met anyone remotely like Gangster, and I wouldn't want to.”

  The real star turn in Gangster No. 1 is Paul Bettany as the young thug. He's a modern day Richard iii, a soulless man who only understands rage. His feelings for Mays range from envy to hate and very possibly love. He reacts like a spurned lover when Mays falls for Karen, and responds the only way he knows how, with extreme fury and violence. “Gangster seeks some sort of fulfillment,” says Bettany, “but he has a hole inside him that gets bigger as the violence gets more pornographic.”

  Bettany is a powerhouse, fleshing out Gangster's monstrous behavior with a mixture of wit and menace. He's at his most dangerous when he smiles, as he does when Karen spits in his face. It's a frightening scene because we learn that his reactions can never be counted on. He's a loose cannon and completely unpredictable. Director Paul McGuigan calls Bettany “a wild card, incredibly wired. He has the elegant menace of a young James Bond. Very manly, very watchable.”

  McGuigan allows most of the violence to play off-screen, allowing the brutality to play itself out in the viewer's imagination, but in one of the most terrifying scenes in this film, or any gangster film, we see young Gangster commit an unspeakable act of violence against a mob rival. After breaking down the door to Lennie Taylor's flat and disabling him by shooting him in the knee, Gangster carefully removes his coat, undoes his tie, and takes off his shirt and pants to prevent them from becoming soiled in the events that follow. Then he methodically arranges the tools of his trade: a hatchet, a chisel, and a hammer. Stripped to his underwear, Gangster savagely attacks Taylor, and we see the action from Taylor's point of view as he shifts in and out of consciousness. The image of Gangster gleefully chopping his victim to bits is one that will not soon be forgotten.

  Gangster No. 1 is a timeless crime saga that horrifies, thrills, and enthralls.

  GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (2000)

  “He has no friends and never talks to anybody . . .”

  — Neighbor of Ghost Dog

  “Ghost Dog is an imagined character that follows the Hagakure, the code of the samurai,” says writer/director Jim Jarmusch. “He's sort of a Don Quixote character really. He follows a spiritual warrior code that is from another century and another culture that doesn't really interface with the world he lives in, and yet it becomes his guide. He is a samurai because he follows the code of the samurai.”

  The Akron, Ohio-born Jarmusch is almost as well known for his bushy shock of white hair as his films. He is a critic's darling, and has a shelf full of awards to prove it, but he's never really made a commercial film. His work in the 1980s came to define a certain school of minimalist, art-house, high-concept, low-production-value, indie cinema. His 2000 big-screen release Ghost Dog is as close to a mainstream action movie as Jarmusch has ever come.

  Forest Whitaker is Ghost Dog, a self-styled samurai who works as a hit man for the mob. He fell into that line of work after his life was saved by a mafia don named Louie (John Tormey), and by samurai law Ghost Dog must now dedicate his life to his Mafioso master. Ghost Dog is a man of mystery, even to his employers. He receives his instructions by carrier pigeon, and, in an annual tribute, is paid only once a year for his services, on the first day of the fall.

  This becomes a complication after a hit gone wrong. Ghost Dog assassinates a rogue member of the crime family, but is seen by the victim's daughter (Tricia Vessey). He spares her life because she is reading one of his favorite books, Rashomon. Louie is unhappy with this turn of events and orders Ghost Dog eliminated; trouble is, no one knows where he lives because their only contact with him is through the pigeons. Ghost Dog deals with the death warrant in the manner of a true samurai warrior — he attacks.

  This is an extremely offbeat movie. Virtually every piece of the puzzle makes no sense. Is it possible for a hit man to be completely anonymous, and only communicate through carrier pigeons? I would think not, but that's not the point. Jarmusch uses this device to accentuate the alienation of the character. Ghost Dog is a man completely shut off from the rest of the world, a person with virtually no contact with others — his best friend is a Haitian ice cream vendor Raymond (Isaach De Bankole) who doesn't speak English, and Ghost Dog doesn't speak French — who is ultimately left sad and alone.

  The study of alienation works so well here because of the work of Forest Whitaker in the title role. He gives a domineering performance that drives the entire movie, and his character can be summed up in one passage from L'ours, read by his Haitian friend Raymond: “The bear is a solitary animal adaptable to all sorts of climates, environments, and foods. In groups they share food when quantities are abundant, despite their limited social interaction. The bear is a formidable adversary with no predatory instincts at all. But when surprised or wounded, a bear may attack and become very dangerous.” The viewer always knows that underneath Whitaker's sleepy eyes is a coiled snake ready to strike, and it lends a tension to his character that few actors could pull off with such subtle élan.

  “In the very beginning of Ghost Dog I was trying to think of a character that I could write and work with Forest on,” says Jarmusch. “So that came before the story, before he was a samurai.

  “I like the fact that he is physically imposing and yet has that face,” says the director of his leading man. “His face, those eyes, there is a kind of poignancy that is very soft. There is a kind of gentleness. It is kind of contradictory. I've seen a lot of characters that he has created on screen. Very often they are shaded more toward that vulnerable side. I wanted to get a balance where he was very strong, stoic, a man of few words, and let that softness that is in his features and spirit kind of be present and not be pushed in any way. We were trying to make a character that would use both sides of Forest.”

  For the film to work the bizarre character of Ghost Dog would have to be completely credible. Jarmusch thinks that Whitaker hit all the right buttons: “A samurai uses his sword as an extension of his body,” said the director, “and his body is an extension of his spirit. Forest took that further because Ghost Dog knows guns — it's modern — as well as he knows sword technique. The guns are an extension of his body, and therefore his spirit, as is the way he puts a CD into the CD player or the way he crouches or walks or moves. Forest really brought a beautiful physical translation of the soul of the character to the screen.”

  Gone are two of the trademarks of Jarmusch's previous films: the long takes and silent passages. Ghost Dog has the energy of a squirrel, and the fast, edgy cuts are combined with a harsh hip-hop soundtrack by the rza of the Wu-Tang Clan. Jarmusch has long recognized the power of music in his films, and chooses soundtrack material carefully. Whether it's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Tom Waits, or Lounge Lizard John Lurie, Jarmusch has a knack for matching his images with effective music. Ghost Dog's nervy edge is perfectly suited to rza's abrasive hip-hop, with the music lending a jittery inner-city feel to the film.

  “Music always starts really early for me,” says Jarmusch discussing the soundtracks of his films. “In the case of my previous feature film Dead Man, even while I was writing my dream was to get Neil Young to do the music, and it happened. In this case it was the same thing. While I was still collecting fragments of ideas I had this dream that I would get the rza to do the music. I was a fan of the Wu-Tang and of a certain percentage of hip-hop that I think is really amazing. Also the Wu-Tang philosophy was really interesting to me before I met the rza or any of the Wu-Tang, so I had this dream that maybe I could get the rza to do the music. I listened to a lot of his music while writing, and I was able to find people I know that knew people that he knew, and was able to get to meet and talk to him about it. My dream came true again.”

  Ghost Dog is a unique animal, a strikingly new examination of urban crime drama (although I wish Jarmusch had freshened up the characters of the mob guys a tad), that explores not only the
physical act of killing, but the metaphysical as well.

  GINGER SNAPS (2000)

  “I'm a goddamn force of nature. I feel like I could do just about anything.”

  — Ginger (Katharine Isabelle)

  In 1944 the screen's first female werewolf, Princess Celeste LaTour (Nina Foch) terrified moviegoers in Cry of the Werewolf as she murdered everyone who knew her terrible lycanthropian secret. Fifty-six years later the beastly tradition of women doomed to shape-shift into horrible creatures continued with Ginger Snaps, the story of a teenage girl and “the curse.” It's funny, feminist horror.

  If you follow the news, chances are you may have read about Ginger Snaps before it even went into production, but not because it had a cast of superstars or was being directed by an A-list Hollywood talent. No, Ginger Snaps hit the headlines in the wake of the Columbine and Taber, Alberta, school shootings. The Toronto Star ran a sensational (although untrue) story describing the as-yet-unmade film as a slasher movie featuring the toxic combo of teens and violence. In a knee-jerk reaction to the hot-button topic an onslaught of press followed, criticizing the filmmakers and one of the movie's main backers, Telefilm Canada.

  Luckily the government-funded Telefilm didn't buckle under, and continued to support the project, although the negative press made it difficult to find a casting agent willing to take on the film; several casting agents refused to even look at the script, much less send it to their clients. It took six months to cast the leads, with auditions being held in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. Eventually every role was cast and production began just a few days before Halloween 1999 in the Toronto suburbs of Brampton, Scarborough, and Etobicoke.