Bottom Fives: Dustin Hoffman Movies

Dustin Hoffman has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, made his film debut in 1967 and has hardly taken a break since. His quietest period in terms of cinematic output was the 1980's making only four movies (and one TV movie) yet still he was nominated for two Oscars (Tootsie and Rain Man.) In the past week we have seen powerful performances from him in Marathon Man and Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate is on it's way thanks to Quickflix.

I've often said he hasn't made a bad movie but then I remember struggling with Ishtar, clearly everyone makes mistakes, and so now I bring you the five Dustin Hoffman movies you should probably avoid.

1. Ishtar (1987) Dir. Elaine May

I've already mentioned it and so I  won't save it for last. Before I'd heard of this movie I found it in a legitimate DVD store on sale by the dozen for 99p, I took one look and thought hell yeah (voice in the back of my head saying "there must be something wrong with it if it's only 99p") Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in something sounding somewhat like a Moroccan Some Like It Hot.

Ishtar is a famous cinematic bomb costing $50m and taking only $14m. So what happened? The film is nearly two hours long and is largely dull with a few good comic moments. Roger Ebert hated it, calling the film "truly dreadful" and he has a point considering how much money it cost for 1987 and the calibre of the stars Beatty and Hoffman.

I recently bought the Peter Biskind biography of Warren Beatty - Star - and it contains a section on the disaster that was the production of Ishtar. Highly entertaining reading which was also published here.

2. Agatha (1979) Dir. Michael Apted

Maybe I'm alone in thinking that novels about the fictional secret lives of famous writers are a waste of paper, but the adapting them in to a movie as well, well that's just cynical. I'm not even thinking about such high concept thrillers as the recent John Cusack Edagar Allen Poe pseudo-biopic The Raven here because it's not aiming for realism. In Agatha the film makers recreate a period of time in the authors life where she was actually missing for eleven days, Christie refused to discuss it whilst alive and had only died two years prior to this film being made.

The scenario itself is ripe for imaginations to run wild but what they came up with was a hotel room, a pseudonym and a romance with a journalist. I say don't bother.

3. Sphere (1998) Dir. Barry Levinson

I'm in the process of tracking down some more obscure Michael Crichton movies for a post on the popular author/scientist/director after watching the mostly entertaining if a bit slow Westworld recently. What I don't need is to see this movie ever again.

I admit to having read and thoroughly enjoyed the novel several times in my younger days and was actually quite excited at seeing the movie, especially with a cast supporting Hoffman that included Smauel L. Jackson and Liev Shrieber. There's so much that let this movie down but the real problem is that the tension is non existent in a movie that's supposed to be an underwater psychological sci-fi thriller. Everyone overacts. Everyone.


4. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) Dir. Tom Tykwer

Possibly the most controversial of my selections; it being a much loved novel, a box office success and retaining a realy high rating on imdb six years after release. But I have this to say on the subject, Perfume is two and a half hour long movie that looks nice and has confused everyone I have ever discussed it with.

5. Meet The Fockers (2004) Dir. Jay Roach

I tried and tried and tried to find Meet The Parents funny because people kept telling me it was and I didn't but the first sequel reached new depths of stupidity most notably because it reunited the stars of the largely unwatched Wag The Dog, two of the finest actors of all time, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, in a movie that specialises in toilet humour.

And that is why Meet The Fockers takes place five and not well meaning failures Family Business or Billy Bathgate.

Any suggestions for something I've overlooked? Do you have a different least favourite Dustin Hoffman movie? Who's going to be the first to disagree about Perfume?

The Week In Movies 19/9/11 - 25/9/11

The weeks really rack up when you keep track of them this way. The year is flying past. I saw all the Christmas stock at the company warehouse today. That was sort of depressing. But at least a Southern Hemisphere Christmas means generally a nice warm sunny time filled with beer, mojitos, picnics and the beach.

I managed to completely miss the Russian Resurrection Film Festival too. I can't believe it. If this was my job I'd expect to get fired for flagrant disregard of my responsibilities. I know I'm gonna be cursing myself for missing some of those films at the cinema too. I managed to miss How I Ended This Summer at the International Arts Festival in January and it's only just come out on DVD now, that kind of delay is no fun at all.

This week marked my grand reveal as an official contributor to Front Room Cinema which I marked with a look at some of the films that shaped my viewing tastes from my the last 20 years of watching movies.

On the home front I saw some films and I saw some movies, I squeezed them in to every spare second and took several attempts to get some finished in between sleeping whilst forcing myself to stay awake for others.


Starting with the two Japanese films screened this week, Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter was part of my Top 5 Yakuza movies post a while back and it sat in my mind demanding to be seen ever since. A brilliant piece of cinema whose influence over Quentin Tarantino is so totally and completely obvious. It's a wonderful mixture of violence, ridiculous yakuza movie plotting and French New Wave sensibilities. For a look at some of the incredible imagery on offer go see Leah at What Indie Nights? and her post on this movie. I'm gonna try to see some more of Suzuki's work this week, here's hoping I find some time.

Saturday night saw me sitting alone on the sofa whilst Leah worked and I took the chance to see Pulse after the glowing recommendation received from Jason at Genkinahito. Leah doesn't watch horror movies. I wish she had because this one was excellent. The director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, seems to have a real talent for creating incredibly disturbing scenes through some quite wonderful cinematography and creepy sound design. I hardly paid attention to the dialogue at times and just soaked up the atmosphere. I certainly agree with the 'existential horror' tag placed on it and if you have any interest in Asian horror films this one should be an essential watch alongside Ringu.


This week's Noir-a-Thon is bringing us to Otto Preminger's 1944 melodrama Laura. So tune in on Tuesday for that review. We saw another classic crime melodrama this week too. Billy Wilder's adaptation of the Agatha Christie play Witness For The Prosecution. Starring Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton and film noir icon Marlene Dietrich this movie is pure entertainment. It is both witty and clever with a fantastic ending, so shocking for it;s time that the film ends with a disclaimer that the audience refrain from telling their friends the outcome so that they can enjoy it for themselves. Do you remember when that idiot told you that Bruce Willis was already dead in The Sixth Sense? I imagine spoiling Witness For The Prosecution for people in 1957 would have been a million times worse. This movie is on the imdb Top 250 and deservedly so in my opinion.


Watching Paul Schrader's American Gigolo I was amazed at the concept of Richard Gere actually being a decent actor and quite an attractive man, because let's be honest he now looks quite a lot like a rat and is reliably awful in everything he does. Paul Schrader is known for looking at the underside of American society and in this movie he paints a believable and disturbing portrait of a man, a satyromaniac in fact, whose carefully constructed life falls apart around him only to find true love. I enjoyed it by the time the denouement rolled round but I had some difficulty with the murder storyline seeming superfluous until then.

Following up one movie about a sex industry with another we saw Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights next. I'd seen it before, but when I was much younger, and I never really appreciated it for what it actually was, finding it a little long among other negative things. Watching it again from a much more mature point of view I realised just why everyone who loves it does so. An often fun and occasionally poignant but always honest look at a group of disparate people linked by their choice of occupation. Julianne Moore is incredible, as always, but this is another fine example of PTA's work with a great ensemble cast.

And then there was Green Lantern. Ordinarily a movie this dull, this un-entertaining and unimaginative would be found under the blahblahblahgay turnoffs heading but as I was alone with some rum and it starred my guilty pleasure Ryan Reynolds I sat in vain hope that at some point I might start to enjoy it. Sadly I couldn't even bring myself to laugh at it's lack of redeeming features I was just so bored.

Another week of a single blablahblahgay turnoff on the list, and for the second week in a row it was a really poor adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel that got turned off. The Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone starring Sphere is over 2 hours long and incredibly boring throughout. A really bad performance from Stone dragged the acting quality of everyone else down but where this movie failed was in it's direction and its script. A really poor adaptation of a book I've read several times.

There were some great films here, of the less obvious/recent films I highly recommend Tokyo Drifter, Witness For The Prosecution and Pulse. If you've seen them already what were your thoughts? Am I too gushing with praise? I'm always open to recommendations so feel free to suggest something you think I might like in the blahs. On the subject of recommendations if you haven't been over to see Tyler at Southern Vision recently he has a great post to recommend movies based on your own personal taste, check it out here.