A Kino Listicle, Tres Brujas edition
Third time's the charm...
This is Part Tree. Read Part the First here. Read Part the Second here.
Hey-hey people. JD here. I heard you like moomies. You want to hear about moomies? Let me tell you about moomies. Remember, you people asked for this. This being the JD Sauvage Kino List. The Forty Best Moomies that live forever in my head.
In chronological order:
21. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Director Quentin Tarantino's rookie debut and, frankly, his single best moomie. Fight me. Tarantino deftly adapts Ringo Lam's cops and robbers thriller City on Fire (1987) and makes it his own.
Six men rob a jeweler for a large amount of diamonds on behalf of a boss and his son. One of the six is a dirty rat. The rat also saved one of the robbers.
Who do you trust? What is your own life worth? IS there honor among thieves? Was Mr. Blonde actually the only one of them who acted as a loyal retainer? Yes, actually. #MrBlondeDidNothingWrong. Torture you? I’m just stuck in the middle with you.
True story. I won a copy of this playing in a Cyberpunk 2020 LARP at a con once. Awarded for: best character death. Perfect.
22. Tombstone (1993)
Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday steals the show in the best nu-Western yet made. Yes, including Unforgiven (1992). Fight me.
This romanticized version of the tale deftly beats Kevin Costner's meandering and shambolic biopic version (Wyatt Earp (1994), you may skip this one with my blessing). I think I fell asleep in the theater trying to watch that.
After the writer and director was fired a month into production, studio fixer George Cosmatos was brought in to finish shooting principle photography. But he clashed with the crew and talent. Kurt Russel (Wyatt Earp) ended up shadow directing the moomie, saving it from behind the bag man's back. Critics panned it. They are as sharp as a bag of hammers.
23. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
John Carpenter's magnum opus and the single best Lovecraftian cosmic horror moomie ever made. This isn’t even in question. The final of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy - The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987) and this moomie - all worthy efforts, but this one is head and shoulders above them in overall effect.
Horror author Sutter Cane (think the talent of HP Lovecraft with the market reach of Steven King) has disappeared without turning in his latest release and the publisher hires John Trent (Sam Neil) insurance investigator extraordinaire, to track him down. Thus begins a slow but inexorable descent into madness and cosmic horror and the end of the world as we know it.
24. Leon: The Professional (1994)
Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, and a jailbait Natalie Portman star in this combination of Lolita (1962) and Le Samouraï (1967), written and directed by Luc Besson in his first ever cross over with Anglophone cinema.
Jean Reno kills it as the numbed killer who lets his guard down for a lost little girl who is his doom, but this is fine. Natalie Portman is cute. And Gary Oldman steals the show with his over the top crooked DEA agent. EVERYONE!
The sad thing is Luc Besson wrote the sequel (Mathilda) for a grown up Natalie Portman working as a cleaner as a sort of spiritual successor to the earlier La Femme Nikita (1990), but due to IP squabbles and bad blood we will never see it.
Luc Besson reportedly was inspired to write the moomie by his own relationship with Maïwenn Le Besco who he first met at that age and later married. Based. BRB, moving to France.
25. Stargate (1994)
The original theatrical version of the Stargate SG-1 limited hangout whereby our secret program to fight ancient aliens using their own leftover artifacts is presented in a dramatized and sensational manner in fiction.
You don't really think they spend that much on hammers and toilet seats, do you? Indiana Jones meets Rainbow-6. I'm not sure I would have gone with presenting Chair Force guys as uber competent pipe-fitting gropos, but hey, it is a fictionalized version of disclosure.
Go for Kurt Russel's Snake Plisken but follows orders, stay for James Spader's charming doofus of an Egyptologist. Who somehow returns to Earth only to end up as the Concierge of Crime after some time spent as a controversial lawyer, but those are other stories. Make sure to follow Jack on X.
26. Dead Man (1995)
The most psychedelic moomie ever made and it's in black and white. This "acid western" is directed by Jim Jarmusch and stars Johnny Depp as an accountant on the frontier who is confronted with death and life on the frontier. Full of strange visuals, shocking violence, sudden tenderness, and references to the poetry of William Blake. "Do you know my poetry?"
27. Heat (1995)
Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer tear up the screen in some of the best dialogue and firefights this side of Fallujah. SAS man Andy McNab taught the principles their weapons handling for the mooomie, and it shows.
Val Kilmer's mag change in the bank shootout was shown to us basic. Do it like this, Privates. The sound of echoing gunfire in the LA streets was the actual noise on set from mag dumping blanks, not foley sound, that's why it feels so right.
If you can shoot, move, and communicate like this and don't allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner, you are a dangerous man.
28. Richard III (1995)
Ian McKellan kills it as the titular King, who I am now convinced did nothing wrong. The moomie updates the Bard's history to an alternate 1930s Britain with Richard as a based and fashy dictator seizing the throne. Brilliant. Looking at the sad state of the ancestral island, one can only wish to live in that timeline. Doubleplussgood, what?
29. Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead in Denver (1995)
Pulp Fiction (1994), but good. This movie bombed with audiences and critics alike, but they are all wrong. This is the definitive 90s pulp crime moomie.
Andy Garcia. Christopher Walken. Steve Buscemi. Treat Williams. Reeling from a job gone wrong, Jimmy and his crew are betrayed by their vengeful boss and have days left to put their affairs in order.
Treat William's Critical Bill steals the show. There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who know what "buckwheats" means. And those who do not.
30. Fifth Element, The (1997)
Star Wars (1977), but good. Luc Besson's magnum opus, this moomie is a bandes dessinée comic - Jean Girad, Jean-Claude Mézières, and Jean Paul Gaultier all worked on this project - brought to life in glorious hyper-color. This film is so good, even casting Milla Jovovich doesn’t ruin it (for once).
Bruce Willis plays the last heterosexual male on Earth who gets tricked by a conniving sect of alien worshippers to save the gay world order. His reward is Milla Jovovich, I mean Leeloo. I think I would have let the Earth get scoured TBH.
But the moomie is relentlessly fun and you cannot help but root for the poor man anyway. Zorg did nothing wrong and I want a ZF-1. My favorite.
Part 3 of 4.
To be continued…
Lol, Palantiri Buttfaggots and GLOWNIGGERS like Ivan Throne Staying Salty.