Behold, in the gif above, one of the best utterances of a movie's title ever concocted. It was a tradition amongst my friends, which has continued into my family, to applaud when a movie's title is used a film. Sometimes it's done like a golf clap, quietly so as not to obnoxiously intrude upon an emotional moment - but in Independence Day, top-grossing movie in 1996, you're practically expected to stand, applaud, and cheer along with the soldiers on screen.
The arrival and attack are by far the best two-thirds of the movie, and what we're left with in the end is largely summed up by the British soldiers standing around in the Iraqi desert celebrating the fact that the United States finally has a plan to save the world, and it's "about bloody time."
After loving Stargate, I had high hopes for ID4 which were not fully met, but I got to see Brent Spiner and the always unlikely, heroic Jeff Goldblum, so it wasn't a total wash.
The English Patient, Oscar winner from 1996, really is a fine film. I like the ensemble nature of its characters and that it really doesn't play up the mystery of what comes to pass all that much. It doesn't use jumping around the timeline to offer bits and pieces to put together a mystery, for example, but more or less spells everything out early and then jumps around to fill in the details (not quite the same thing).
But these are all rather plain compliments for a movie that feels like it should be epic but never achieves it. It's one of those great romances that presents itself as a great yearning being fulfilled, but if you stop to think about it, realistically, Katherine was doing all right and the Count was kind of creepy. But, stories love a forbidden love and so does the Academy.
For me, it's easily Hana and Kip's love story and their movie, too.
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