19th Favorite Movie - L.A. Confidential

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

This movie came out in 1997, the same year as Titanic. I remember seeing it with my dad and my brother one night after our neighborhood "Block Party" in that old-school theater in North Berkeley. I liked it the first time and grew to like it even more over the years. Had it not come out the same year that everyone went ga-ga over Titanic, it probably would have won more Academy Awards and become more well-known.

L.A. Confidential features Russel Crowe before Gladiator, Guy Pearce before Memento, and Kevin Spacey riding the wave of The Usual Suspects. I have always felt like The Usual Suspects gets a little too much attention and L.A. Confidential does not get enough. This movie had a twist I didn't see coming (The Usual Suspects' twist is obvious if you know you should be looking for one) and is a more epic and ambitious film. The cast is incredible - rounding out the three leads mentioned earlier are Danny Devito, James Cromwell and Kim Basinger (for which she won Best Supporting Actress). It is a very entertaining movie and I cannot point out a single flaw in it. The only reason I did not rank it higher is because it is not a movie that is trying to impact you in a big emotional way except for it just being a great movie. Most of the movies ranked this high on my list have some sort of emotional, educational or transformational impact on me.

By the way, there is a film to begin shooting in November called White Jazz (also based on a James Elroy book) that will feature Russell Crowe reprising his role as Bud White, but Guy Pierce, Kim Basinger and director Curtis Hanson are not involved. Hanson is in talks about a true sequel that would cover what happened to the characters in the 10 years following where the original film left off. Sounds pretty cool. I hear that Ocean's 13 is pretty good, temporarily restoring my faith in sequels, after plodding through the garbage that is Pirates 3 and Shrek 3. Stay away. You've been warned.