Fall 2014 #9: Rain Man (1988) - Barry Levinson

Okay, four reviews in one day, not so bad. Rain Man was a weird film to have on the list, because it’s one of the ones that gets a lot of pop culture references, and yet I still had no idea what it was about. But now I’ll get those references for the rest of my life!

Thank you, Tom. Okay so Rain Man is a film about a guy named Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), a sleezy sort of businessman who is the process of importing four Lamborghinis into the US for resale. Unfortunately, there’s a problem at the border with the EPA on account of the cars emissions statuses, and Charlie took out a loan to pay for the cars, and the buyers have already paid for them, so it’s kind of a financial mess. While all of this is going down, Charlie finds out that his estranged father has died.

Charlie quickly learns that his father is leaving his $3 million estate to a brother that Charlie didn’t even know he had, Raymond Babbitt. Raymond lives in a mental institution, and Charlie takes (kidnaps?) him to try to figure out how to get his $3 million.

Charlie is annoying, ruthless, and incapable of understanding Raymond’s situation. He reminded me a lot of Matthew McConaughey’s character from Dallas Buyers Club, which kind of made me wonder if this was a cheesy movie about an unlikeable middle-aged white guy learning to accept someone who was different from him. Well it is actually exactly that.

Raymond is insistent on sticking to his routines from the mental institution, which makes it impossible for Charlie to get him on a plane, drive on the highway, or even make him miss Jeopardy. Charlie does soon learn, however, that while Raymond has a high-functioning form of autism, he is also a mathematical genius.

Their fraternal bond grows deeper as they continue their cross-country drive from the mental institution in Ohio to Los Angeles, where Charlie needs to get to figure out his Lamborghini situation. But not without a few bumps.

Interestingly, the film is credited as both creating misconceptions about autism (that all people with autism have some kind of genius) as well as spreading awareness of the mental illness. The film includes a scene where Raymond effortlessly counts cards in Vegas, which has been parodied multiple times in pop culture, including The Hangover.

The film is also credited for creating the rumor that counting cards is illegal. It’s not!

Well, the feel-good film went on to become the highest grossing movie of 1988, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman. And yet, it’s not in the AFI Top 100 or the IMDb Top 250.

Also since there aren’t that many gifs of Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man, here’s one from a much more exciting film, Steven Spielberg’s Hook.

Fall 2014 #5: The Exorcist (1973) - William Friedkin

Alright so I was beyond excited to put this on my list. I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t scare easily, which took about… 21 years of desensitizing myself to horror movies by growing to absolutely love them for cinematic purposes. I still stay away from slasher films, but in the past two years or so I saw Carrie, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Living Dead, The Grudge, Silence of the Lambs, The Ring, Scream, and The Exorcist for the first time. I guess you could say

But I knew I had to get this one off my list before Halloween, so I sat down and let myself get taken away… to the 1970s.

I know, I know, scary. The film follows a 13 year old girl who is suddenly possessed by a very disturbing and cruel demon. After what seems to be weeks of hiring doctors, therapists, and running tests, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn) decides that to save her daughter she will need an exorcism.

To get to this point of desperation, Chris sees her daughter, Regan, do some pretty horrifying shit. 

When the priest, Father Karras, is contacted, the church also sends the help of Father Merrin, one of the only priests they know to have performed an exorcism before.

This is when the movie gets really good.

I should also probably mention that I had seen Scary Movie 2 before, so I knew a lot of these special effects were coming before they happened. This didn’t in any way affect my enjoyment of the movie. I loved every minute of watching Regan transform from a normal girl into the most hideous, foul-mouthed demon I had ever seen.

From that into this.

The process is pretty incredible. 

The film is also based on the events of a real exorcism, performed in Maryland in 1949. Supposedly most of the events that take place in the film actually happened, although the head-spinning-around is probably the most disputed of all.

Last fun fact: Adjusted for inflation, the film is the highest grossing R rated movie of all time. It also was so horrifying to viewers, that several injuries occurred due to audience members fainting in the theater.

The film won two Oscars, Best Screenplay and Best Sound.

Fall 2014 #3: The Usual Suspects (1995) - Bryan Singer

Okay so I may have watched this a few weeks ago but I think I finally have time to review it. The Usual Suspects, the 1995 Neo-Noir Crime thriller by Bryan Singer tells the incredibly well-written story of a con-artist who recounts how he and four other criminals ended up being a part of heist that ended in the deaths of the other four. Kevin Spacey plays Verbal Kint, who, after surviving a massacre on a boat where he and his gang failed to destroy $91 million in cocaine after they were blackmailed into doing the job in the first place, is telling his story to an FBI agent in exchange for near-total immunity.

If that sounds complex it’s because it is.

The title of the film is inspired by the famous line from Casablanca, “Round up the usual suspects.”

When Verbal begins his story, he explains that he and four other criminals met one night when they were rounded up as suspects for a gun-shipment robbery, they decided that their will never to rat the others out would make them an elite team of con-artists. They get revenge on the cops by outing them as being corrupt, busting them for helping a smuggler get his drugs into New York City by stealing the drugs themselves.

The five then move to LA, where a series of miscommunications lands them with the lawyer Kobayashi, who says he works for Keyser Söze, an infamous yet mysterious criminal who has the power to kill them all if they disobey him. Their task is to intercept the delivery of $91 million in cocaine, but when they get to the ship and kill all of the Hungarian gang involved in the drug deal, a mysterious agent approaches and kills all of them except for Verbal. Being the sole survivor, he agrees to tell his story in exchange for immunity.

The film’s twists and turns are worth every moment of watching it, because it’s impossible to tell as a viewer who is lying and who is closest to solving the case. Kevin Spacey gives an amazing performance as Verbal Kint, a dim-witted man with cerebral palsy.

I recognized so much of the film just from its effect on pop culture. TV shows, movies, everyone has played with this idea of tricking the audience so fully into believing one thing and then revealing another. I was so thrilled while watching it that when the ending finally happened I just froze and slowly dropped my jaw. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes films that present puzzles for their viewers to solve.

The film is #23 in the IMDb Top 250, winning Oscars for Best Screenplay and Kevin Spacey for Best Supporting Actor.