Bill Paxton’s 10 Best Movies

While the Oscars were embarrassing themselves yesterday, we lost one of the great character actors of the last 30 years.  Bill Paxton passed away yesterday after complications from heart surgery at the all-too-young age of 61.  I am so tired of writing obituaries, so my new policy is that unless it’s someone with whom  I have a special connection (Robin Williams or Mary Tyler Moore, for example), obituaries go on the Facebook page and the deceased’s career will be celebrated in the next Their 10 Best.

From the mid-1980’s through the end of the 1990’s, Bill Paxton was in some of the most memorable films of the era: The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Apollo 13, and a host of others.  Just recently, he turned in one of my favorite of his performances in Edge of Tomorrow, taking a role that literally does nothing but repeat a speech over and over and making it new each time.  I have never watched Paxton’s successful HBO series, Big Love, but he was a brief part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, serving as the “Big Bad” in season one of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.  Like the also recently lost John Hurt, Paxton was seldom the leading man (the exception being what I think is his best performance in A Simple Plan), but he made ensembles great, and he’ll be sorely missed.

Tom Hanks’ 10 Best Movies

Tom Hanks is the biggest star in Hollywood and has been for over two decades.  From a start as a comedian, first on TV in Bosom Buddies and then in film with movies like Bachelor Party, Hanks got his big break, first in 1984’s Splash, then exploding into popularity in 1988 with his first Oscar nomination for Big.  Since then, he has gone on to win two Oscars, four Golden Globes, and his work with HBO on miniseries like From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, and The Pacific has won him six Emmys.

Hanks is often called the “Jimmy Stewart of our generation” in that despite being the star he is, he’s a genuine person; the everyman who becomes someone with whom the audience can instantly relate.  Many actors, especially comic actors, really just play a heightened version of themselves in film.  Hanks began his career doing this, but soon disappeared into his roles and those roles defined some of the finest cinema of the last 30 years.  Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, the Toy Story Trilogy, Cast Away, Road to Perdition, Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Charlie’s Wilson’s War, and the list goes on and on.  Hanks’ #11-20 films are of a quality that most actors would kill to have them as their top 10 (and I cheated and combined the Toy Stories to get two more films on the list; perks of making the rules).  Hanks turned 60 in 2016, hard as that is to believe, but he’s still Hollywood’s leading man.

PS – If you find yourself in a movie and Tom Hanks is the captain of whatever vessel you’re traveling on (Captain Phillips, Sully, Apollo 13)…..buckle up.  Things are going to be ok, but you’re in for a bumpy ride.  If he’s the captain of your platoon, that is another story altogether.

My Favorite Scene: Captain Phillips (2013) “Taking the Shot”

Warning: graphic violence in the above clip; be advised.
If you’re going to get a person to play a heroic captain in Hollywood, you have to call Tom Hanks first, and then if he passes on it other people can take it.  Hanks is the captain.  Be it in space (Apollo 13), on the sea (Captain Phillips), or in the air (this Friday’s Sully), you want Hanks captaining your Hollywood version of a real emergency.  In Captain Phillips, Hanks played Captain Richard Phillips of the MV Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates.  It was the first act of piracy against a United States ship in over 200 years.  Director Paul Greengrass is in United 93 mode here, not Bourne mode, and takes a documentary approach to the events as they culminate in Phillips in the ship’s lifeboat with the Somali pirates, who are facing the US Navy.  As snipers try to get a shot on the pirates without hitting Phillips, the captain, who has kept a stolid reserve throughout the ordeal, begins to crack. The struggle with the pirates in the lifeboat, both mental and physical, is masterfully portrayed by Hanks and fellow Oscar nominee Barkhad Abdi.  When the situation ends and Phillips finally releases that control; the emotion pouring forth is so genuine and so moving…it’s a scene to put in his portfolio with the best of his career.

Best Pictures of the Last 25 Years: KT Pick vs. Oscars

The Oscars are three weeks from tomorrow, and a new Best Picture (likely The Revenant) will be crowned.  Each year, during Oscar Week, we reveal the KT Community choice (which you  can currently vote for on the homepage) and I do The Renaissance Film Awards, which is how I stay sane (ish) during Oscar ceremonies that manage to incense me more than most Presidential debates.  The Revenant was a great film, no doubt, but this year was so good that it’s not even in my top 10 anymore.  Thus, the Academy and I will be disagreeing on Best Picture again, a historical trend that I am bored enough today to document in detail.

Here are the Best Picture winners from the last 25 years vs. my pick for that year’s best film.  Beside the Academy’s pick I have where I would have ranked it that year (there is a massive spreadsheet behind this fixation) and beside mine how it fared at the Oscars.  Even with the expansion of the Best Picture to a max of 10 nominations, I’ve only agreed with the Academy twice in the last 25 years (though they picked my runner-up thrice), and the trend seems to have us moving further apart, whereas there was a good decade stretch where my pick was at least among those nominated.  Take a look and see which you’d pick.

R.I.P. James Horner (1953 – 2015) *Music and Movies Mourn*

Multiple media sources are now confirming the movie composer James Horner, missing since his small plane went down Monday morning in California, has died at the age of 61.  The small plane that Horner was a passenger in crashed near Santa Barbara, but the composer’s fate was unknown for most of a day.  It looks like our worst fears have been confirmed.  For the initial report on the crash click here.

Horner’s career spanned over 150 films, and his music underscored many of the best films of the last 35 years.  I remember first hearing Horner’s scores as a child in The Land Before Time and An American Tail (still, two of his best).  He and John Williams were the composers that introduced me to the music behind the movies.  He won two Academy Awards for Titanic in 1998, and those are-unfortunately-the only of his prolific career.  He leaves behind an indelible legacy of beautiful music.  Coming Soon’s obituary is pasted below with a more in-depth account of Horner’s career.  He will be deeply missed by everyone who was touched by his work.