The Screen Addict | Unsung Heroes of The Aughts

I enjoy writing about films that I loved despite disparaging reviews (opinions) by critics. I did extensive pieces on Unsung Heroes of The Eighties and Nineties, so I figured it’d only be prudent to continue the tradition with a celebration of Misfits of The Noughties (a.k.a. The Aughts).

The first ten years of the new millennium brought us many films that I wish to discuss as part of the Unsung Heroes series. And although The Nineties were a pretty tough act to follow – The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995), Se7en (1995) and the list goes on and on – The Noughties definitely had some superstars and underdogs of their own.

As you might know by know, I am less interested in writing about the films that are universally acclaimed. Obviously, Donnie Darko (2001), The Dark Knight (2008) and Avatar (2009) are incredible, but what is there left to say about these masterpieces?

That is why I wish to speak about the films I’ve heard very few people talk about. I want to shine a light on the downtrodden, disenfranchised. In short – let’s celebrate the movies the so-called critics didn’t like very much.

I have always been, and will always be, a huge fan of Tom Cruise. I think Scientology is a questionable conviction – as most religions are, in my opinion – but I try to separate the artist from the zealot. This is why I can say without question that I have never seen a Cruise film I didn’t like.

That is quite a statement, I know. But what’s more – I can think of no other actor with the same track record. Cruise is impeccable in his selection of material, and is infamous for relentlessly developing that material into films that – at the very least – will have tongues wagging.

The turn of the century saw Cruise, whose image had always appeared ironclad, stumble somewhat. The Scientology Stigma began to take hold, and his couch-jumping incident on Oprah didn’t do him any favors either.?

The glitch in the Cruise Machine triggered the self-appointed judges of popular culture to pounce as well – most of his (early) 2000s films were met with indifference at best.

I am of the opinion that the first decade of the new millennium actually saw some of Cruise’ most interesting work. Following the impressive Magnolia (1999) and awesome Mission: Impossible II (2000) – by far the best instalment, I don’t care what anyone says – the actor starred in a self-produced remake of Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos (1997). Reuniting with his Jerry Maguire (1996) director Cameron Crowe, Cruise crafted a beautiful remake dubbed Vanilla Sky (2001) that was inexplicably maligned by most critics. I was deeply moved by the second Crowe-Cruise collaboration and I am not afraid to say that if I had to choose between the remake and the original, I’d pick VS over Alo every day of the week and twice on Sunday – to quote one of Cruise’ best films.

I’ve written before about white saviorism in film and how I feel about it, so it should come as no surprise that I am including The Last Samurai (2003) in this piece. I honestly don’t know how accurate Cruise’s portrayal of captain Nathan Algren is and frankly – I don’t care. For me, the film is about love, brotherhood and appreciating cultures other than your own, and Cruise did an excellent job on conveying that.

Bad men sometimes make great art, and Valkyrie (2008) is one of the finest examples of that fact. The allegations against director Bryan Singer are sad and disappointing. I struggle to come to terms with a reality in which someone is capable of making one of the greatest War films ever – not to mention co-creating the legendary Keyser S?ze – and at the same time (allegedly) be responsible for predatory behavior. Still, I have to admit that Singer’s bad rep doesn’t take anything away from my admiration of his work. Few films are more edge-of-your-seat exciting and nail-bitingly thrilling than Valkyrie.

One of the greatest High-Concept disaster movies of the Aughts is without a doubt The Core (2003). I remember being sold on the poster alone when I spotted it in the “coming attractions” frame at my local cinema. The actual film definitely made good on the exhilarating promise of the one frame, too – Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Bruce Greenwood, Delroy Lindo and Stanley Tucci really sell the clever premise of five “terranauts” piloting a subterranean craft into the earth’s dying core and rebooting it by setting off thermonuclear explosions.

Paul Verhoeven is probably in my Top-3 favorite directors, and his contributions to the SciFi genre are invaluable. There should be no debate over the absolute brilliance of RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997), but I do feel I need to defend the much-maligned Hollow Man (2000). Although Blumhouse ’s The Invisible Man (2020) definitely upped the ante for this type of film, I thoroughly enjoyed HM and am of the opinion that the at the time groundbreaking effects work still holds up today. And if nothing else, I’m always happy to see Kevin Bacon play the villain.

My love for Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) is so absolute that it even was the subject of my Bachelor’s thesis. I’ve dissected the film at length, both leisurely and academically, and still I discover new details to marvel at with every revisit. Alas, the critics did not share my enthusiasm for the great ape. I guess the culture popes felt they had to take Jackson down a peg or two after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) swept the Oscars two years prior. After all – in Hollywood one is only allowed so many successes.

M. Night Shyamalan knows all about falling out with the critics. With his first four studio features collectively grossing more than $1.5 billion, Shyamalan ostensibly could do no wrong in Tinseltown. That was until he set out to tell his most personal story yet. Lady in the Water (2006) is an allegorical fairy-tale that, admittedly, probably isn’t for everyone. I love it and will always love it. Even after reading The Man Who Heard Voices, Michael Bamberger ’s excellent exposé about the making of LitW, I remain an avid fan. If you look past the dazzling visuals and quirky tone, the film is in essence a genuinely heartfelt tale about healing from trauma and rediscovering faith. And although LitW is actually thematically very similar to Shyamalan’s own Signs (2002), it enjoyed none of that film’s critical and commercial success. William Goldman said it best when he wrote about Hollywood’s supposed secret to success: “Nobody knows anything.”

One of my favorite Nic Cage films is Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War (2005). It was one of the last high-profile productions Cage was in before he dove headfirst into the direct-to-video swamp and stayed under for close to 15 years. Cage has since of course made a glorious comeback, but for a minute there, it looked like we had lost him to the B-movie circuit for good. To be clear – nothing wrong with a big, fat, juicy B-movie, but Cage just deserves more. LoW examines the shady underworld of arms dealers, with Cage en Jared Leto playing gunrunning brothers. It is a gut-wrenching fever dream of a movie with possibly the most haunting application of Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah in a film ever. Ten years later, Todd Phillips would essentially remake LoW with the Miles Teller - Jonah Hill starrer War Dogs (2016), which is a great pic but it kinda pushed Niccol’s film into the background. Not for long, though. In 2023 the Vend?me Group announced that they are backing a sequel to LoW that will star Cage and Bill Skarsg?rd as rivaling father-and-son arms dealers. Lock and load.

More vintage Cage in The Family Man (2000), a beautiful amalgamation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). This movie really pulls at my heartstrings, especially now that I’ve become a father myself recently. Unfortunately, TFM is another example of great art by an (alleged) bad man. Director Brett Ratner, whose work I greatly admire, all but disappeared from the scene after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. Just a sad situation all around.

Insomnia (2002) is generally viewed as one of Christopher Nolan’s lesser films. It is my favorite. The film is an outlier in Nolan’s filmography either way, because it’s the only one for which he didn’t (co)write the screenplay – at least not officially. Insomnia is actually a remake of a Norwegian film starring Stellan Skarsg?rd. Section Eight, the production company spearheaded by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, picked up the rights and after Soderbergh saw Nolan’s Memento (2000), he knew he had found the right director. Al Pacino will forever be my acting hero, but this is really Robin Williams’ film. 2002 was a year that saw the release of three much darker films than we had previously seen from Williams. Insomnia followed hot on the heels of One Hour Photo (2002) and Death to Smoochy (2002), all of which I would rank among Williams’ best and most interesting performances. What a devastating loss.

My job in the media and entertainment business takes me all over the world. As a consequence, I’ve spent a large part of my life in airports and on airplanes. It should come as no surprise then, that I’m adding Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004) to this list of undervalued films. Tom Hanks plays a citizen of a fictitious Eastern-European country who is forced to make JFK airport his home when his government collapses and he is denied entry into the US. Amazingly, this High-Concept premise is based on actual events. In 1988, an Iranian man chose to live in Terminal One of Charles de Gaulle International Airport after his passport was stolen and he wasn’t allowed to enter France. Call me crazy, but I’ve always found the notion of living in an airport quite exciting. Airports are portals to wherever you want to go, with an endless stream of people and cargo from all over the world flowing through ‘em. You can go anywhere, buy anything, and meet anyone. Obviously, living in an airport would be less attractive if you cannot leave, but you get the idea. Rather than shooting in an actual airport terminal – which would have been a logistical nightmare – Spielberg and his crew decided it would be more practical to just build an exact replica of an existing one. Now that’s a terminal I would have loved to spend some time in…

Speaking of airport terminals – the RomCom masterpiece Love Actually (2003) beautifully bookends its hyperlink narrative with two airport scenes. The movie opens with Hugh Grant’s powerful and poignant monologue about the simple beauty of people reuniting at Heathrow’s arrival gate, and closes with the entire cast now at that same location. I know LA isn’t exactly a downtrodden film, but I do feel critics and audiences alike have somewhat soured on it lately. Unjustly so, if you ask me. Honestly, how can you not love a film with an opening scene like this:

https://youtu.be/Rwm2K_bBwFI?si=xqfnw7Y61d4vTfpl

Films about World War I typically aren’t as successful as those about WWII. As of late, there have been some notable exceptions – 1917 (2019), Im Westen nichts Neues (2022) – but by and large, your best bet as a filmmaker are stories about the second World War (however crass that may sound). In spite of that clinical fact, I am particularly fond of Flyboys (2006), a beautifully crafted film about a group of young Americans that joined the French military in 1916 and became the country’s first fighter pilots. Flyboys was rejected by every single studio in Hollywood but fortunately, the film attracted a couple of pretty powerful people who really rose to the challenge. Dean Devlin , founder of Electric Entertainment and writer-producer of Independence Day (1996) along with David Ellison , 甲骨文 heir and future Skydance studio-boss, believed in the film to such an extent that they spent in excess of $60 million of their own dough to produce and distribute Flyboys. I hugely admire this everything-or-nothing approach, and the film will forever have a place in my heart because of it. Fun fact – Ellison, an avid aviator who started out as an actor, co-stars as pilot Eddie Beagle.

The World’s Fastest Indian (2005) tells the true story of Burt Munro, a New Zealander who in 1967 traveled halfway across the world to the Utah Salt Flats to speed test his 1920 Indian motorbike. Amazingly, Munro to this day still holds the land-speed record for motorcycles under 1000cc. Lovingly written and directed by Hopkins’ The Bounty (1984) collaborator Roger Donaldson, TWFI reminds me of other favorites about cinematic nomads, like Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994) and Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999). Also, the film is a subtle reminder of what a phenomenal and seemingly effortless actor Hopkins is.

Frank Darabont is arguably most famous for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile (1999) and The Walking Dead. But around the turn of the century, the filmmaker brought a story to the screen that encapsulates everything I love about the movies. The largely forgotten gem The Majestic (2001) stars the inimitable Jim Carrey as a 1950s blacklisted screenwriter who suffers amnesia after a car crash. He ends up in a small California town where the citizens mistake him for the long-lost son of a movie-theater owner. The film plays like a heartfelt love letter to old Hollywood, overflowing with countless amazing cameos. Sadly, Carrey himself views The Majestic as one of his least favorite roles, which makes its inclusion on this list all the more justified.

That’s it. These are my Unsung Heroes of the Aughts. But I’ll be back very soon to celebrate more neglected cinema!

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