PRESENTATION: MAR's Top 100 Films of the 1980s [COMPLETED!]

Awards: Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Paul Newman), Best Supporting Actor (James Mason), Best Adapted Screenplay.

Trivia: Robert Redford was originally involved with this film. After writer David Mamet delivered his draft, Redford was uncomfortable with the main character and hired another writer to do another draft, and so on until Redford decided he didn't want to do the film. He was uncomfortable because he did not want to play an alcoholic. Sidney Lumet was offered the project. He read all the drafts and identified the original Mamet version as the one to make. At that point, Paul Newman agreed to star.

The script to The Verdict - one of the finest screenplays ever - manages the near impossible: A “happy” ending that is not happy at all because what has transpired prior is so crushingly, unforgivably sad on a personal (for at least one character - more actually) and a systematic level it pervades/penetrates even the “winners” world.

Featuring the best film performance Paul Newman ever gave (now that’s saying something) - the movie is a litany of great David Mamet dialog delivered in quotable staccato bursts. One of my favorites is when Newman’s legal adversary (played by the great James Mason) is described as being “the Prince of Fucking Darkness” - and that sensibility, ingrained in every single character permeates the plot mechanics too - cynical, world-weary, and knowing about how these things usually go and why.

This script has been attempted to be copied a billion times since - almost always miserably and stupidly and without an ounce of Mamet’s idiosyncratic panache. The film’s core acting/writing/directing team - Newman/Mamet/Sidney Lumet all have field days in unison without stepping on each others work in any way too - it's all in service to the whole piece. It's almost amazing how much dramatic tension is created here by people simply talking with no extraneous dramatic device or plot contrivance added.

A studio film for smart adults that Hollywood went years making regularly and now seems utterly incapable of replicating at all (especially in the 2000s) - they rarely made one better or smarter than The Verdict.

Awards: Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actor (Michael Caine), Best Supporting Actress (Dianne Wiest), Best Original Screenplay; Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction.

Trivia: Many of Hannah's scenes were filmed in Mia Farrow's apartment. Woody Allen said that Farrow once had the eerie experience of turning on the television, stumbling upon a broadcast of the movie, and seeing her own apartment on television, while she was sitting in it.

I love Woody Allen. Everyone knows I'm probably his biggest fan on these boards. He's easily my all-time favorite filmmaker, and the only director with 3 films in my All-Time Top 20. My 3 favorites of his are the 3 that are usually considered his "Big 3": Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. Overall, I rank Hannah as his 2nd greatest film after Annie Hall, but in some ways it's the most special of his films to me. I was only 14 when I first saw it, but already a romantic at heart. It's the first of his Big 3 that I ever saw, and undoubtedly the film that made me literally fall in love with Woody's filmmaking. So, I suppose it's no surprise that it's my pick for the #1 Best Film of the 1980's.

Everyone knows Woody has always idolized the remarkable Ingmar Bergman more than any other filmmaker, and has paid tribute to him by directing several superb films in Bergman's style (e.g. Interiors, Another Woman), but Hannah is the one special film where he tells a very Bergman story but in his (Woody's) own style. And the result is a deeply introspective, gut-bustingly hilarious, profoundly moving ensemble piece with complex characters whom we empathize with & understand, even if we don't always "like them". The film beautifully zig-zags back at forth as we get to meet, and then really get to know (often in uncomfortably intimate ways), its 5 main characters: The titular Hannah (Mia Farrow); her 2 aforementioned sisters, the beautiful & elusive Lee (Barbara Hershey) and the neurotic & insecure Holly (Dianne Wiest), her wandering husband Elliot (Michael Caine), and her uber-hypochondriac ex-husband Mickey (Woody, of course!), whose latest health scare ends up plunging him knee-deep into an existential mid-life crisis. Caine and Wiest both won richly deserved Supporting Acting Oscars for their great work in the film, but the superb acting and unforgettable characters don't end there. Hershey is quite powerful in a beautifully understated performance that was also worthy of an Oscar nomination, and the great Max Von Sydow (a Bergman favorite whose casting is Woody's least-subtle ode to his idol) steals every one of the few scenes he's in as Lee's anti-social, malcontent husband Frederick. But it's always been Mickey, the Woody character, whom I found to be not just the funniest but also the most relatable of the film's characters. Obviously every character Allen has ever played onscreen is an extension of his trademark comedic persona, but Mickey has always been my favorite version of that character. A truly tortured soul, his health scare sets him on a desperate mission to find meaning in his life. He first tries a religious conversion (though he can't decide which religion ), and when that doesn't work his hypochondria morphs into a deep depression. I don't want to give too much away, because if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing this masterpiece yet I don't want to spoil its richest storylines or plot twists. I'll just say that, after the difficult journey Mickey's character goes throughout the film, where that journey leads him at the end is not just poetic or touching, it's downright magical. Magical! It's an overused word for sure, but I only use it for the very best. For every time someone asks me not only why I love WA films but why I love cinema period, Hannah and Her Sisters will always be one of my favorite and easiest answers.

Awards: Academy Award winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design; Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Glenn Close), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Pfeiffer), Best Original Score.

Trivia: Dangerous Liaisons opened in theaters in 1988, one year before its competing film, Valmont. According to screenwriter Christopher Hampton, the director of "Valmont," Milos Forman, attended several performances of the play, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in London, then decided to film his own version of the Choderlos de Laclos novel. Hampton offered to have dinner with Forman to discuss the project, but on the appointed evening, the director never showed up. But the competing film convinced the studio, Lorimar, to rush "Dangerous Liaisons" into production, in order to beat "Valmont" into theaters. "Dangerous Liaisons" won three Oscars, and was a critical and a moderate box office success. Upon its release, "Valmont" received mixed reviews and was a box office failure.

Following in the elegant footsteps of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and Polanski’s Tess, Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons is a searing, sensual costume drama.

Though filmed in some of France’s most beautiful châteaux and featuring swoon-worthy costumes from James Acheson, Frears’ deliberate direction eschews sumptuous visuals for a subdued Bergmanian approach.

John Malkovich is arguably miscast as the irresistible Valmont (just imagine Jeremy Irons or Sam Neill in this role!), but who better than Glenn Close to play the wickedly seductive Marquise de Merteuil? Close’s patrician bearing fit the classical demands of the role and her ample bosom, pushed upwards and outwards by silk corsetry, casts a delirious spell, but it’s her delicate charm and deadly wit that take full command of the film and refuse to let it go…

The Marquise’s pride, cruelty, and ultimately, her vulnerability, culminate to create one of cinema’s greatest endings. Simply unforgettable.

Awards: Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film; Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Trivia: Giuseppe Tornatore's intention was that this movie should serve as an obituary for traditional movie theatres (like the one on the film) and the movie industry in general. After the movie's success he never mentioned this again.

Many films have tried to catch the poetry of cinema, few have done it as well as Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. That might be cause it tells already from the very young age of the protagonist how movies fascinate him and we are there to watch his love grow. Maybe even more because cinema here is reflected through the mighty mirror of friendship as the old projectionist Alfredo brings the magic of it to young Toto. It's sometimes funny, it's sometimes dramatic, it's sentimental and most of all beautiful. Much of it's beauty Nuovo Cinema Paradiso owes to Ennio Morricone's wonderful music. It usually takes only the first few notes until I'm close to tears and my heart wants to burst.