|Film Title/Year and Description|
Director Luis Llosa's horror-action thriller told about a National Geographic crew (led by Jennifer Lopez as director Terri Flores) in the Amazon Rainforest jungle area, searching for a lost native tribe (the Shirishama Indians - the "People of the Mists") to make a documentary.
After rescuing a stranded, mysterious Paraguayan named Paul Serone (Jon Voight), he promised to lead them to the tribe. But then they found themselves kidnapped by him - his secret objective was to track down and capture a monstrous and vicious Giant 40-foot Anaconda.
In the film's exciting conclusion, Serone was ensnared by the fearsome giant anaconda after it bit him in the shoulder. After wrapping its coils around him, constricting itself and breaking some of his body's bones, it opened its massive jaws to swallow him whole. His head was seen - from inside the snake's mouth as he was eaten, head-first. The snake wriggled its body to slowly take him into its belly.
Afterwards, the snake pursued Terri, and then completely regurgitated Serone's half-digested body at her feet - he was covered with digestive juices and was still alive and conscious. Kneeling in front of Terri, Serone took time to wink with his left eye. The snake became trapped within a smoke stack which exploded from ignited fuel drums, catching it on fire. The snake chased Terri again as she struggled to swim away, but then sank and submerged into the water to douse its flaming body.
In the film's final scare moment, the anaconda made one final effort to eat Terri by bursting up through the dock, but she was rescued when cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube) struck the giant snake in the head with a pickaxe. As the snake dropped back into the water, Danny exclaimed: "Bitch!"
The Ice Storm (1997)
Ang Lee's dramatic film was about the troubled and dysfunctional lives of two wealthy New Caanan, Connecticut families: the Carver and the Hood families, during Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, when a freezing rain-storm threatened. [During the sexual revolution of the 1970s, promiscuous 14 year-old Wendy Hood's (Christina Ricci) father, Ben (Kevin Kline) was having an affair with neighbor boy Mikey Carver's (Elijah Wood) mother, Janey (Sigourney Weaver).]
Mikey was tragically electrocuted while out in the devastating ice-storm. He was admiring the beautiful sight of ice-covered trees and fields, and was resting on a guard-rail.
It was a freak accident when a sparking and downed electrical power line, broken by a falling tree, came into contact with the rail.
When Mikey's body was brought back home after being discovered by the side of the road, Ben Hood simply explained: "He was just up in Silver Lane. The power line."
Jack Frost (1997)
In this serial killer horror comedy by writer/director Michael Clooney (not to be confused with the family comedy film Jack Frost (1998) with Michael Keaton), a serial killer (Scott MacDonald) about to be executed came back as a giant demented snowman with violent murderous tendencies, following a prison truck accident.
His body became fused with snow on the ground, as a result of a collision with a genetic research vehicle and a ruptured tank of acid. The vengeful, cold-blooded snowman went after victims in the fictional town of Snowmonton.
In a unique and repulsive misogynistic scene of extremely bad taste, the snowman melted itself into the hot bath of aspiring actress Jill Metzner (pre-American Pie Shannon Elizabeth (Fadal) in her feature film debut). Jill thought that boyfriend Tommy (Darren O. Campbell) had run her bath-water for her, and thanked him, not realizing that the "armed and dangerous" and self-professed "world's most pissed-off snow cone" Jack Frost had driven an icicle through his chest and forehead, and then melted himself down into the tub.
After stripping down, Jill entered the tub and began washing herself. The film hinted at the snowman's sexual intent with a quick glimpse of his phallic-shaped nose carrot floating in the bath-water. The snowman then re-formed himself (Jill screamed: "Tommy, no. Don't put cold water in. Now it's freezing") and attacked/raped Jill with his carrot-nose.
She screamed as he pounded her head and body against the shower wall behind her. She collapsed dead on the floor (with blood oozing out of her mouth), as Jack Frost joked:
L.A. Confidential (1997)
In the surprising conclusion of this popular 1950s style, post-noir crime drama, "Hollywood" vice cop/detective and Badge of Honor TV show technical advisor Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) was suddenly and shockingly killed at 1:00 am. Like others, he had been receiving kickbacks for aiding in the arrest of celebrities.
He was shot point-blank in the heart with a .32 slug by LAPD Capt. Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) in his kitchen for knowing too much. The murder revealed the film's ultimate bad guy and mastermind.
Vincennes' last words as he slumped to the floor were: "Rollo Tomasi" when Smith asked up-close: "Have you a valediction, boyo?" - after speaking the two words, the life went out of Vincennes' eyes.
Afterwards when held at gunpoint by Smith after a brutal shootout in the Victory Motel, Exley explained the meaning of the term 'Rollo Tomasi' to Smith. Realizing that the chief was a corrupt mastermind crime boss, he told him: "You're the guy who gets away with it. Jack knew it, so do I." When the tables were turned, Exley shot Smith in the back as he walked away.
Life is Beautiful (1997, It.) (aka La Vita E Bella)
The Academy Award Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film was this Italian-language film, with two decidedly different acts (or halves).
The first part of the film was a comedic romance between a clownish, madcap Jewish Italian waiter named Guido Orefice (Best Actor Oscar-winner Roberto Begnini) and a pretty schoolteacher named Dora (Begnini's real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi), with the birth of a son named Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini). The second (told in flashback) displayed the horrors of a WWII concentration camp where the family was taken.
To protect his young and innocent son Giosue from the horrors of the Nazi death camp, Guido (through humor) convinced him that they were only involved in a role-playing game. He offered his hidden son points if he would stay quiet and remain undetected. The first person to acquire 1,000 points would win a real battle tank.
In the film's sad conclusion, a "fable" about love and sacrifice, Guido convinced his son to remain in a sweatbox in order to acquire the tank, while he went off to find Dora. He was seized by guards, hauled away, and shot (off-screen). There was just a small report of machine-gun fire in an alleyway when he was sacrificially killed. The young boy thought he had won the game when the camp was liberated by the Americans riding in tanks, and he was reunited with his mother.
This adventure-action film was a continuation of the first film, set four years later, with many of the same characters from the original 1993 film. There were a number of dramatic deaths, including these three:
Gadgets expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) suffered a grisly demise after he was snatched from his jeep and bitten in the leg, flipped around, pulled in half and ripped apart like taffy, and then eaten by two Tyrannosaurus Rexs.
Sadistic dinosaur hunter Dieter Stark (Peter Stormare) also died when he became separated from his group and was swarmed repeatedly by a pack of small, carnivorous bipedal Compsognathus. A jungle stream turned red as he was consumed behind a giant tree log.
And long-haired paleontologist Dr. Robert Burke (Thomas F. Duffy) died when he ran into the jaws of a pursuing Tyrannosaurus behind a waterfall when trying to avoid a poisonous coral snake that had crawled down his shirt.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Paul Verhoeven's military-related adventure-action film was a combination spoof of militarism and a violent science-fiction saga set in the 23rd century. Gung-ho college graduates who enlisted and trained in the futuristic Federal Service (military) based on Earth, explored other regions of the universe, including Klendathu. It was the homeworld of giant, intelligent, lethal pseudo-arachnid enemy of insect-inhabitants called "Bugs."
During a lethal attack of swarming green bugs, a few of the soldiers were decapitated when struck in the head. Another kneeling down was struck by a wounded and falling bug - and squashed.
One hapless soldier was sucked into a pit, and had half of his body chewed off - visible when he was pulled out. Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) obliged the lethally-wounded soldier ("Rico, you know what to do!...Do it, Rico!") by shooting him in the chest to put him out of his misery.
When the giant, fire-breathing super-insect Mother Bug attacked, its fiery blast incinerated the right arm of one of the infantry soldiers. Rico heroically jumped onto the back of the super bug to ride it, and to enable him to shoot a large hole into its shell with his machine gun. He held onto the bloody hole he had created and then dropped a grenade into it, causing a blast that exploded the creature to oblivion. As he watched from a close distance, he was showered with bug guts.
There were heartbreaking moments after Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the love of his life Rose DeWitt Butaker (Kate Winslet) had survived the luxury liner Titanic's sinking, and he helped her onto a large floating piece of debris in the icy cold North Atlantic waters. She complained of the intense cold and her frozen body, but he encouraged her to not give up:
She promised, and he replied: "Never let go." She shivered and responded: "I will never let go, Jack. I'll never let go."
He kissed her hand before his corpse froze of hypothermia in the cold Atlantic Ocean, although they maintained their hand-grip.
When she was about to be rescued by a boat by summoning it with a whistle, she let go of Jack's hand, although repeated the phrase: "I'll never let go. I promise" as he sank underwater into the frigid waters.
In the spectacular conclusion of this 18th James Bond film, 007 agent Bond (Pierce Brosnan) confronted the megalomaniac billionaire media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce).
Carver was onboard his Stealth ship, invisible to radar, with plans to instigate a war between China and the UK, by firing a missile at Beijing. He believed he would procure exclusive media broadcasting rights in China for 100 years as a result.
Now with only two minutes left in the countdown, Carver continued to express confidence about his escape aboard a news helicopter while the British fleet, advancing rapidly upon the ship, would destroy evidence of his wrong-doing.
Bond took charge, taunted Carver:
He threw the villain into the activated Sea Drill where he was chewed up in its mechanism - a victim of his own technology.
(chronological by film title)
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