Super Pop!

Juries are like traffic lights: they’re critical to the integrity of America as a nation, but they’re also hugely annoying. Turn off the traffic lights, and America becomes one enormous and homicidal game of roller derby; turn off the juries, and America becomes Prisons Without Borders. So yeah, juries are made up of human beings, so juries are inherently flawed, but juries also kind of work. They’re not impartial, they’re not unbiased, but they’re the best we’ve got. 12 Angry Men is, in sum, an ode to the jury. True to its title, it shows us twelve angry men as they journey from a place of flawed individuality to something like collective genius. And even though we never leave the room, it’s hard to find a more thrilling piece of entertainment—or a more inspiring testament to the power of civil discourse.

Best for when: You think jaded eyes are clearest.

Sometimes it’s enough to just know in your own heart that you are right, but in Dr. Richard Kimble’s case, no, sorry that is not enough. His lawyer’s inability to persuade a jury that Kimble is innocent of his wife’s murder means that Kimble is headed to jail for a very long time. Until, that is, his prison bus flips over and our hero is given a new chance to clear his name and punish the wrongdoers. The Fugitive is, for the most part, a chase movie, but Richard Kimble is both hunter and game, for as he hunts the now proverbial “one-armed man” so also does deputy US marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) hunt him. As Gerard and Kimble come into closer and closer contact, the movie also becomes a demented kind of buddy movie, and without giving too much away, we can at least point out that the frenemies do wind up going home together. Kimble’s hunt for justice, rather than revenge, also makes this a more-than-usually poignant tale of the good guy winning out in the end.

Best for when: You can’t see the point of trying any more.

The Princess Bride is that rare thing: a movie that has a plot we want (an adventure story with eels, super-villains, riddles, true love, and magic—at least, I think that’s what America ordered in 1987, before sushi arrived on the scene), with the cast we want (including Wallace Shawn, Peter Falk, baby Fred Savage, young Robin Wright Penn, and Andre the Giant), and the ending we want (with revenge and a kiss), but which doesn’t fall to pieces under the weight of all its many attributes.

If anyone can resist the charm and pleasure of The Princess Bride, then that person is almost certainly an R.O.U.S. (a rodent of unusual size) and not a human being at all. (And if you are around such an R.O.U.S., it’s probably time you moved out of the fire swamps.) The Princess Bride is a comedy, a romance, a fantasy tale, and a revenge story—but whichever aspect of the story most lights your particular fire (swamp), rest assured that the people you are rooting for will win, the people you are rooting against will lose, and you will want to hear the story again tomorrow.

Best for when: You think that simply knowing what’s going to happen next means that you won’t care. Revenge is a dish best served . . . unexpectedly.

So to borrow a line from Woody Allen, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” The ancient Greeks had an even simpler way of saying the same thing: with the single word “hubris.” Hubris—a willful defiance of the gods—is at the heart of almost all Greek drama, and we retain it today in the dramatic idea of a “fatal flaw,” and in all the tragedies that draw their inspiration from the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Claude Berri’s two films begin innocently enough (the most foreboding phrase of all) in the countryside of France, where Gérard Depardieu, a newcomer from the city, has inherited some land. He intends to teach himself all he needs to know about farming, raise rabbits, and live off the soil. Unfortunately, the neighbors (played by Yves Montand and Daniel Auteil) have their eyes on the newcomer’s land and its hidden spring, and they plot together to take control of his property.

Manon of the Spring takes place many years later, but it is still very much the same sort of film. Manon is the young daughter of that same failed farmer, and she is living like a wild animal on the outskirts of the farming village. She still harbors a deep resentment about what happened to her father, and before long she is finding out much more than she ever wanted to know. As it happens, no one knows quite as much as they think they do, but when the truth comes out, everyone who’s still alive has done the duty of the farmer and reaped what they have sown. Cue tears of humans/laughter of the gods.

Best for when: You want to see smiles wiped off of faces.

So here’s the set-up: Bill (the Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio) and his friend Stan have been imprisoned and charged with a murder they didn’t commit, so Bill asks his family for help. They send cousin Vinny (played by Joe Pesci) down from Brooklyn. Vinny has not yet passed the bar in any state, let alone in Alabama, so he is not legally a lawyer, but he comes down anyway, and he brings with him his beautiful, if impatient, fiancée (played by Marisa Tomei) and enough attitude to fill an attitude bucket to the very brim. (Attitude buckets, in case you don’t know, are those things that athletes turn upside down over coaches’ heads when they win championships. Attitude!) This is, quite obviously, a ridiculous set-up for a ridiculous movie, but this is also a movie that made a relationship between short, irritable Joe Pesci, and charismatic, beautiful Marisa Tomei seem completely believable—so this is a movie that is not short on miracles. And when, against all odds, cousin Vinny does win his case and does free his cousin Billy (on the heels of Marisa Tomei’s career-making testimony, I might add), it just feels so, so good.

Best for when: You doubt that your uncouth and relatively unlearned cousin will be able to forestall the machinations of American justice and save your skin. (But also, for the record, it’s probably best not to call your cousin under those circumstances— unless, of course, your cousin really is a Vinny.)

Do the Right Thing is a bit of an outlier here, because not only does it not end well, it ends very badly indeed. There’s a riot, someone is murdered, something is destroyed, and all the people we thought we knew and liked have been compromised in some very serious ways. But there is a very real sense of justice here as well, despite the overwhelming injustice of the movie. And despite the fact that almost everyone winds up betrayed, and nearly everyone winds up playing the role of betrayer.

It is not right that a young man should be killed because he is black. There is no just recompense for murder, because lives can’t be returned. But there can still be such a thing as a just portrait of a people in crisis, and at its core that’s what Do the Right Thing is. The film itself provides the prescription for the malady that its characters face. It itself contains the empathy and understanding that its characters sometimes have and sometimes lack. And it shows, at one and the same time, the logic (on the one hand) and the superficiality (on the other) inherent in the concept of revenge. It doesn’t pretend there are easy answers—and there’s a real sense of justice in that answer.

Oh yeah and it’s Spike Lee’s breakout movie, and it takes place in ’80s Brooklyn, and it came out the same year that Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you should check it out.

Best for when: You think you’ve found the solution to a problem like race.

Human beings prefer good to evil and pleasure to pain, and we would rather see innocence rewarded with pleasure than we would see guilt punished with pain. The thing is though, it’s not really that fun to watch good people get wealthy, get married, and have happy little bouncing babies—none of whom are murdered or robbed. There’s just not a lot of suspense in that. And that’s where the problem lies. Jane Austen solved that problem by allowing her shockingly realistic characters (shockingly realistic especially in light of the generic romantic-comedic characters that developed from her template) to make the same dumb, insecure, egocentric judgments and decisions that normal people do. And that makes sense. I mean yeah, that works. But that’s not the only solution. Shakespeare in Love, for its part, utilized Elizabethan gender norms and Queen Elizabeth herself to get in the way of Shakespeare (Ralph Fiennes) and Viola de Lesseps (Her GOOPness, Gwyneth Paltrow). And that also works. The script, written in part by Tom Stoppard, makes history fun as well as obstructionist, and the result is a Shakespearean romantic comedy that has the urgency of a contemporary crime thriller.

Best for when: You think the past can’t be rewritten for the better.

So Taken is a movie that takes Liam Neeson—a man that everyone agrees should be punching, kicking, knife-fighting, and swearing at as many things as possible—and then gives him a character resembling a daughter, so that said daughter can then be kidnapped, enabling Liam Neeson to get down to the business of punching, kicking, knife-fighting, etc, as a form of retribution. It takes a long time to say all that, but it doesn’t take very long for it to happen, especially with the aid of a few “Armenian” sex traffickers. Yeah, you know what I’m talkin’ about: foreigners.

Note to Armenian sex traffickers/foreigners of all stripes: You steal Liam Neeson’s daughter, Liam Neeson hunts you down. If you can add two and two, you should know that much. But no matter how transparent the set-up may be (very), or how exploitative (very), the fact is, it really is fun to watch Liam Neeson be pissed, have a mission, and go chasing after bad guys. In the end, L-Neezy is obviously going to get his daughter back, but still, just imagine how Liam Neeson you would have gone on Liam Neeson’s ass if he hadn’t actually succeeded in his mission. It would have been the righteous knife fight to end all righteous knife fights—and Liam Neeson would have won. And then stabbed himself in the chest (“oof!—just a flesh wound!”) as a punishment for failing his earlier mission. That is how Liam he is.

Best for when: You need an excuse to just burn all your bridges and stomp on all your forts.

It really shouldn’t be this fun to watch this much pain. In each of Park Chan-wook’s three vengeance movies, the crimes are horrific, the vengeance missions are ambitious, the characters are compelling, and the twists are plentiful—but if you ever do press Play on any of these, be forewarned: it is not over ’til it’s over, and when it’s over, everyone will probably be dead or shaking with grief. Does that sound like fun? Well, it is. The movies look incredible and could not be more thrilling. They could be a little happier and less hammer-murder-ish (I’m looking at you, Oldboy), but hey, you can’t have everything.

Best for when: You think that vengeance is yours.

Homer’s Iliad is famous for many reasons, but one of the most impressive things about it is the way it displays beauty in everything—even in death. (Hold on, Tarantino’s coming.) The deaths of the Trojan War are described in such elaborate yet beautiful detail that, as we read, we can’t help but view mortality with a new respect. At one point a chariot race is held with a gravestone serving as the turning point: the closer you come, the more extreme the angle and the greater the risk, but the further afield you stray, the less chance you have of victory.

Death is something that touches on life yet also ends it; it is silent, terrible, profound, and poetic. Homer, for his part, is celebrated for his descriptions of death, but Quentin Tarantino is faulted for his proximity to the very same idea—perhaps because he comes too close to it; perhaps because he does not come close enough. (Perhaps also because he loves to use the N-word. And watch people die. And kill people in creative new ways. But hey, to each their own.)

In Django Unchained, Tarantino splatters retributive blood—elegantly and ostentatiously— over virginal white flowers and catapults villains backwards when they are shot with a righteous gun. The violence becomes more extreme the closer we come to justice (and the further away we move from it). It looks like comedy and schlock, but it plays like melodrama, and it feels like justice.

Violence and death are serious topics, and when Tarantino treats them offhandedly, it’s hard for him to not seem crass; but when he treats them seriously, it’s hard for him to not seem pandering. So what’s the middle ground? Oh, that’s Django. Django (played by Jamie Foxx) is first a slave, then an ex-slave; first a bounty hunter, then a bounty; first a failure, and then a hero. He is a testament to the vagaries of history, and when he gets his way, it is hugely entertaining, even if it isn’t history, per se. And sometimes that is enough. Sometimes entertainment is its own form of justice. We want to hear the story we deserve. And sometimes that’s the last laugh. Sometimes, that’s justice.

Best for when: You don’t mind playing Monday morning quarterback and you don’t mind watching your quarterback win.

REST ASSUREDMOVIES WHERE PEOPLE GET EXACTLYWHAT THEY DESERVE

REST ASSURED
MOVIES WHERE PEOPLE GET EXACTLY
WHAT THEY DESERVE