• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 593 0

vivid, often hilarious look at underground moviemaking long before digital video cameras made the medium accessible to just about anyone. The cast is extremely well chosen, offering solid opportunities to such talented people as Joy Bryant, Terry Crews, David Alan Grier, Nia Long, Rainn Wilson, T. K. Carter, Saul Rubinek, and Paul Rodriguez. The legendary Ossie Davis appears as Melvin’s father, and director John Singleton (who made his mark a generation after Melvin with Boyz N the Hood) has a cameo role as a disc jockey. But it’s the younger Van Peebles’s bold performance as his father that stands out most.

Mario Van Peebles has written, directed, and starred in a number of films over the years but this is his most personal piece of work—and I think his best.

5. THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO

(1993)

Directed by Maggie Greenwald

Screenplay by Maggie Greenwald

Actors:

SUZY AMIS

BO HOPKINS

IAN MCKELLEN

ANTHONY HEALD

DAVID CHUNG

HEATHER GRAHAM

RENE AUBERJONOIS

CARRIE SNODGRESS

MELISSA LEO

SAM ROBARDS

RUTH MALECZECH

When I saw this film, prior to its release in 1993, I thought it would rise to the top on a wave of critical acclaim. I was wrong. It was ignored by pretty much everyone, yet it remains one of my favorite unsung movies of the 1990s. It also holds a special place in the heart of its leading actress, Suzy Amis, who appreciated what a rare opportunity it afforded her.

The Ballad of Little Jo was the brainchild of underappreciated writer-director Maggie Greenwald. Her inspiration was the obituary of a man who lived in the Old West; when it came time to lay him to rest, it was discovered that he was in fact a she.

Greenwald did further research, but once she understood the context of that obituary, the screen story unfolded in her mind: Amis plays a naive young woman who is seduced by a photographer in Boston. When she bears his child, she is ostracized by polite society and flees to the West where no one will know her. She quickly learns that there is no place for a single woman there unless she is a prostitute, so she decides to masquerade as a man. In time, she ingratiates herself within the community…and the plot thickens.

The excellent supporting cast includes Ian McKellen, Bo Hopkins, Heather Graham, Rene Auberjonois, Carrie Snodgress, Anthony Heald, David Chung, and Melissa Leo. Amis’s real-life husband at the time, Sam Robards, plays the seducer who sets the story in motion.

A former fashion model, Amis had a decade-long career in films, and while she never became a household name, she appeared in a number of interesting movies including Rocket Gibraltar, The Usual Suspects, and Cadillac Ranch. Then James Cameron cast her in Titanic, as the granddaughter of “Old Rose” (Gloria Stuart) in the film’s modern-day sequences. A short time later she married Cameron and retired to raise a large family. She was ideally suited for the role of Jo Monaghan because she grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and already knew how to handle a gun. She worked with a coach to develop the proper body language for her male character and brought real conviction to her performance. She was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, as was David Chung, who plays her unexpected love interest, but the film made little impact on critics or audiences. It deserves to be much better known.

6. BETTER THAN SEX

(2000)

Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky

Screenplay by Jonathan Teplitzky

Actors:

DAVID WENHAM

SUSIE PORTER

CATHERINE MCCLEMENTS

KRIS MCQUADE

SIMON BOSSELL

IMELDA CORCORAN

We Americans are rather cocky about our place in the world—although we’ve taken a lot of lumps in recent years—but there is one area in which we remain utterly provincial, if not downright prudish: sex. All it takes is a brief survey of European films to see how childlike and backward we are in our attitude toward one of the most natural aspects of life.

If I were to describe the film at hand as a sex comedy, most Americans would expect sniggering jokes, most likely from a male point of view. What makes Better Than Sex so refreshing is that