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I guess I couldn't see it that way because I've never read any of Ellroy's work.

Dr Amicus wrote:Alien 3: For Charles S Dutton and the wonderful climactic dive. Flawed, but beautiful.

It's too late, but if I had to re-do my list, the "Assembly Cut" version would easily make my top 20. If you liked the first two movies as high-tension rollercoaster rides, I can understand the contempt fans have for it because it doesn't deliver on that as much. In one of the "enhancements" from the Alien3 documentary on the Anthology release, one thing you hear a few times is that you can't root for anyone. I agree with that, but I more or less felt sorry for everyone. Yeah, the inmates are there for very good reason but some of the individual performances (especially Dutton and Danny Webb as Morse) make you look beyond that.

Also some of the visual stuff still holds up quite well, especially the "Alien POV" shots during that bait-and-chase scene. And Elliot Goldenthal had a score that was definitely equal to the other two, if not better. I can hear echoes of what he did later with Heat, especially considering they are both very experimental scores despite being two radically different films. It's a shame he hasn't worked with David since.

48. Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995)
It’s been a while, but I remember being floored by Cage and the bleakness.

That's what I said back in 2009 after the 90's list in the Defend Your Darlings thread. (I thought I would discuss the movie here, though, since there isn't a Figgis thread or anything else.)

Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995)
So, I revisited this last night to see how it stood up and I'm sorry to say it left me pretty cold. I had not seen it in probably 10 years and I remembered the film being bleak (and it certainly was) and I remembered a good performance from Cage, and he's good (even brilliant during a couple of moments), but overall the film failed to come together for me. There are several things that stood out: Shue is a little over her head in her role (or feels that way because of the direction). There were several occasions where she seemed to be put in the uncomfortable spot of trying to have some emotional connection with someone she had no emotional connection with. Her scenes with Cage, especially as the film progress, are more her sort of pitying him than empathizing for him or "loving him no matter what." Figgis doesn't really help matters by kind of forcing their relationship. I guess I never bought the main premise of the movie, which is the seen-it-all hooker meets a raging alcoholic who has more to him than meets the eye and they begin a relationship doomed to fail because neither of them will change. (It is kind of a faulty premise when you lay it out like that because one is an occupation and one is a serious addiction; they might be equally reprehensible socially, but in emotional terms, they seem completely different.) That's also where Cage's performance is not as full-bodied as you might hope. He really gets down the body language and the convulsions but I never saw anyone there. Maybe that's what it's like to live with a suicidal alcoholic but I never saw what she saw and that seems the error in the whole thing.

This leads to the other issue I had, which is Figgis' direction. He's fond of narrative ellipses but they seem to happen when he doesn't feel like putting the time into earning something emotionally or narratively. It's like he gets bored at points and then decides to have a jump cut scene with Cage going nuts over jazz music. The first time this happened (at the strip club), even though it seemed a little forced, Cage's body language and action was so strong that it made it work. But every time it happened it felt like someone saying "Look how much of an alcoholic he is!" As the movie went on there were several moments that had to happen, but it was as if Figgis was afraid of emotion and afraid of sentimentality. He was not afraid to let his characters suffer but he was afraid of getting too close to them after he took them through the wringer. And if he was afraid of sentimentality, the use of the old Vegas lounge ballads over top of the Vegas images seems a strange choice to me. The music always felt a little anachronistic in the world he made.

The most poignant moment is when she gives him a flask as a gift, and this really is the best scene in the film. There are several moments like this that tricked me into thinking there was something greater at work here but they never amount to anything more than a few great moments in an otherwise forgettable movie.