The 4th Inductee Into The Thin White Dude’s Hall Of Shame - Battlefield Earth (2000) - Roger Christian

My inductee this year breaks from my usual trend of inducting individuals, but I feel that these inductees are so shameful that they don’t deserve any semblance of consistency or respect. So, the first film to be put into my Hall Of Shame is the colossal monstrosity that is Battlefield Earth. A passion project of John Travolta, a long-time devotee of Scientology, adapted from the L. Ron Hubbard novel of the same name, it contains just about everything wrong in a movie. Travolta is at his over-acting worst, hamming up every scene to the utmost levels of ridiculousness, and poor Barry Pepper is saddled with a nothing part. It’s a shoddily scripted, messily shot (what the hell is up with the Dutch angles), preposterous piece of work. Upon release, it was critically panned, tanked at the box-office and sank the Franchise Pictures studio, taking any chance of us being subjected to the prospect of a sequel. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that in order for a movie to be a true disaster, it must be a passion project (Travolta) combined with some level of blinded megalomania (in this case, Elie Samaha). This a perfect example of that very philosophy; in short, it’s a giant turd. 

Battlefield Ham

The 3rd Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Films Beyond Definition - Last Year In Marienbad (1961) - Alain Resnais

If ever there was a film fitting the bill ‘Beyond Definition,’ this might be the one. Beginning his career as a documentary filmmaker, Alain Resnais made the transition into fictional features in 1959, working with Marguerite Duras on Hiroshima Mon Amour. That film itself is an extraordinary, enigmatic work, but nothing compares to Last Year In Marienbad. Whereas the former was more condensed, the primary focus being the central relationship through which Resnais/Duras explore their themes, Marienbad is a great dive into the wild blue yonder. Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, it’s oneiric, dream-like qualities are boundless in scope, a net cast so far that the cryptic nature has been deemed by some as incomprehensible. Indeed, the film doesn’t exactly disprove that label; the three main characters are unnamed, referred to in the unpublished screenplay as A (Delphine Seyrig), X (Giorgio Albertazzi) and M (Sacha Pitoeff) respectively, and there are no solid conclusions to be made from a given scene, never mind the film as a whole, so completely cast in ambiguity. But that’s what so brilliant about it! We draw our own conclusions from the interconnected scenes. We bring our own meanings to the table. Even though it’s a beautifully designed, highly atmospheric, austere, aurally hypnotic and immaculately framed picture, it has the same aesthetic qualities of a blank canvas. I think it’s a wondrous and stimulating work; whether or not you think the same way is another matter, but I can guarantee a head-spinning experience. 

Last Year In Marienbad Trailer

The 4th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Short Film - Un Chien Andalou (1929) - Luis Bunuel

Luis Bunuel’s 1929 collaboration with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou, is one of the most famous of silent shorts and, with all the surrealist qualities, still has the power to shock and provoke. Absent of narrative and inspired by a series of dreams the two had, there’s more legitimately iconic symbolism in this sixteen-minute short than many filmmakers are able to achieve in an entire lifetime (Bunuel and Dali were both in their twenties, yet to reach their respective creative peaks). Imagery such the razor across the eye, the nude woman, ants emerging from a hand, the death’s-head moth and the man dragging two pianos (containing dead donkeys and stone tables of the Ten Commandments) with two priests attached by ropes, for all their stark clarity, is played as a blank canvas completely open for interpretation. Deliberately designed to antagonize the intellectuals and bourgeoisie of its day, I believe that a similarly bizzare reception (ironically, to Bunuel’s dismay, his “avantgarde cine” targets embraced the picture) would meet any screening of Un Chien Andalou. 

Un Chien Andalou (full film)

The 9th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Directing - Martin Scorsese

This year’s entry into the Hall of Fame for Contribution To Directing is, to use a well-used term, America’s greatest living filmmaker. However, I may be willing to go one up there and say that Martin Scorsese might well be America’s greatest filmmaker period. His work with Robert De Niro alone produced no less than Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear and Casino. That alone would be enough to garner him status as a great director, but far from being De Niro’s go-to guy, what makes Scorsese one of the greatest is that right up to the present, with The Departed, Shutter Island, Hugo and The Wolf Of Wall Street, all films released within the past ten years, after nearly half a century since he worked with Roger Corman, he’s still making great movies. That is why he is the contemporary benchmark. 

WatchMojo.com's Top 10 Martin Scorsese Movies

The 5th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Documentary Film - Some Kind Of Monster (2004) - Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky

Among my interests outside of movies is music, and Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Some Kind Of Monster is a marriage of those two. Most famous for their 1994 documentary on the West Memphis Three, Paradise Lost (which Metallica gave permission for their music to be used, previously unheard of for the group), Berlinger and Sinofsky were granted unprecedented access to the band, and what follows is a no-holds-barred documentary. Unfolding with the scope of a truly cinematic epic, it’s an honest look at a band in turmoil, acrimonious differences, existential crises, addiction, attempting to keep a semblance of sanity amidst the tumultuous process of recording their album St. Anger. In a different context, scenes such as the sit-down between former guitarist Dave Mustaine and Lars Ulrich, or the ‘power struggles’ between Ulrich and James Hetfield, himself battling alcoholism at the time of filming, could have been cast upon the stage as an almost Shakespearean play. It’s a testament to one of the more fascinating sagas in recent music history.

James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich Squaring Off (For neither the first or last of several times)

The 7th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Producing - Jeremy Thomas

Beginning his career as an independent producer operating in the United Kingdom (founding Recorded Picture Company in his mid-twenties in 1974), he has always been a producer with a distinctly international sensibility. After the release of their first film, Polish filmmaker and Polanski-associate Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout, Thomas put his heft behind backing projects by some of the most world renowned filmmakers of the past thirty-plus years. Producing films by the UK’s Nicolas Roeg, Stephen Frears and Julien Temple, Japan’s Nagisa Oshima, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike, the US’s Jim Jarmusch, Harmony Korine and Richard Linklater, Canada’s David Cronenberg and with filmmakers from Australia, Germany, France, Israel, Bhutan, Kenya, Norway, it’s hard to think of a place where Jeremy Thomas hasn’t got his foot in! Oh, and his backing on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor won him the Academy Award for Best Picture. Just a wee side note there! 

Jeremy Thomas - Moguls - Toronto International Film Festival Industry 2012

The 6th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Action/Adventure Film - Die Hard (1988) - John McTiernan

Despite my often going for older and more outré selections in this category, I have a fondness for some of the bombastic action pictures to come from Hollywood in the 1980s, and this is one of the best. Die Hard is a non-stop rollercoaster, an exemplar example of perfectly structured action which gradually builds over the course of its running time, and from the opening bell doesn’t let go. Much like The Terminator, all exposition is told on the move; we are introduced to John McClane, played with engaging flavor by the mighty Bruce Willis (whose New York cop is a refreshing everyman amidst the onscreen musclemen of the period), as he is en-route to Nakatomi Tower in Los Angeles to meet with his estranged wife. What follows is a masterfully balanced heist film uniting strong characters (Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber is hands down one of the all-time great villains) with some of the most memorable action set-pieces to grace the screen. Even today, Die Hard represents a gold standard of action cinema.

Die Hard Trailer