1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[Zazou dans le Metro]

If you get the chance to see any of them, snap it up, or if you know where they can be found on disc, even better - let us know.

Life and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami, 1991) – Probably my favourite Kiarostami, with one of the greatest closing shots ever.

This is available as La Vie Continue with french subtitles if that's any help. I think Ellipsis was keeping tabs on the same companies new Kiarostami titles coming later this year on another thread.

[Michael Kerpan]

Life and Nothing More was released on video (with English subtitles) in both the US and Canada (different editions).

[Yojimbo]

colin I think he overdid the mother as monster schtick: it was a bit obvious.
The pity is that so many people will be put off by descriptions of it as 'sick' and 'bad taste', because there's so much visual invention on display here.
Now I've just been reminded I haven't seen 'Meet The Feebles', available here.

Speaking of 'Evil Dead 2', I recorded it on video a few and was just about to convert it to DVD when I noticed the picture was 'jumping' a lot

[domino harvey]

colin I think he overdid the mother as monster schtick: it was a bit obvious.
The pity is that so many people will be put off by descriptions of it as 'sick' and 'bad taste', because there's so much visual invention on display here.

I think the film ends for me after the lawnmower. The mother was just too much, but that thirty minutes of continual carnage still ranks pretty damn high-- my favorite gag is probably when the girl opens her mouth to scream and the zombie punches through the back of her head and his fist exits her open mouth. Brilliant! The film is played for laughs is the important thing to stress-- the goriness doesn't feel "gory" because of how exaggerated the whole thing is, and Jackson masterfully edits the film for laughs, not shocks.

[Yojimbo]

I wonder did Peter Jackson have 'mother issues' as a boy that caused him to create that monster?
like "Peter, now be sure and straighten your tie", and "Peter, tuck in your shirt!"

[domino harvey]

I shouldn't even be posting in here given that I still have some 80s films to discuss in that thread, but I did see my first film for the 90s project. At the risk of alienating myself further from the board, I found Brian DePalma's Snake Eyes to be vastly superior to Blow Out! I probably joined in on the piling-on of DePalma and this film sight-unseen in the past, but for all its problems, this movie does a much better job of fulfilling its potential than other DePalma films I've seen. True, it pretty much falls apart in the last act (Everything after the stairwell scene appears to be from a different draft of the film), but that first hour is one hell of a kick. Admittedly I'm a sucker for films set in real time (though not enough to list, say, Nick of Time), but the energy of the picture extends past the "one"-shot opening into the back-trackings, false flashbacks, and Lady in the Lake-aping that soon follow. Wikipedia says an entire action sequence was cut from the ending of the film in post, which might explain why it feels so lifeless compared to what came before-- perhaps the best later bits directly referenced this MIA sequence?

[Forrest Taft]

I shouldn't even be posting in here given that I still have some 80s films to discuss in that thread, but I did see my first film for the 90s project. At the risk of alienating myself further from the board, I found Brian DePalma's Snake Eyes to be vastly superior to Blow Out! I probably joined in on the piling-on of DePalma and this film sight-unseen in the past, but for all its problems, this movie does a much better job of fulfilling its potential than other DePalma films I've seen.

=D>

I almost agree, certainly it´s much a much better film than its reputation might suggest. For DePalma Snake Eyes is in many ways a "been there, done that" film, just like Carlito´s Way. Still, the execution is top notch, and both films have great repeat value. These are both beautiful films and very entertaining. Whatever flaws they have (there are plenty in Snake Eyes), DePalma more than makes up for it with his infectious enthusiasm for the material.

[Binker]

Watched Henry Fool. I think it's a great film, although flawed in some key aspects. For one, it hits a wall about 3/4 of the way through, as everyone's waiting around for Simon's break to come. We coast until the temporal jump, when the film picks up again and finishes with a bang. Aside from a few false notes (the mother's suicide after reading Simon's poem), the script is wonderful. After perusing some online reviews, it seems as though most critics responded to the film as a reflection on censorship and obscenity in art. Certainly that's all there, and the film makes its position abundantly clear, but it isn't what interested me. The most compelling questions the film poses arise from the division between loving art and creating it... between knowing what's great and making what's great... between being educated and culturally aware enough to create great art ("there are 3 there's; there, their, and they're...") and not being self-aware enough to try to create it (Henry's extravagant descriptors of his own work, "a poetics, a philosophy, a literature of protest")... It's a film about the pain of appreciating great art, of loving a piece of work and knowing you could not have created it. The scene with Simon's mother playing the piano is crucial.

"Don't stop, it sounded good."
"It was unremarkable."
"Does that matter?"
"Yes."

The film goes beyond the emotion of the issue and addresses the practical relationship between the intellectual/lover of art and the artist. We watch Henry teach Simon the basics of language, introduce him to great art, RECOGNIZE the greatness in Simon's art, encourage him ("You can't go to work, you have to stay home and write") and finally work to introduce it to the rest of the world. When Simon tells Henry he would be nothing without him, it rings deeply true.

Aside from all this, the film just contains some wonderful moments. The discussion of Fay's age, "OTB winners", the high five after Henry hears some magazines comment on Simon's poem.... Plus, Hartley's score is fucking wonderful, esp. in that final sequence. This will make my list.

Anyone have any strong thoughts one way or another on Tree's Lounge?

[Peacock]

Sorry if i'm being hasty, but is there any rough idea of when the list has to be done by?

[zedz]

It's due at the end of June, which should have been mentioned at the top of this thread! I'll go back and edit the first post so that all of the housekeeping stuff is there.

[swo17]

Just a thought--is the idea to do the 1990s list by the end of June, and the 2000s list (with the decade then complete) by the end of December? I'm thinking that with the glut of (supposedly) quality films at the end of each year, many of which are not readily available for viewing to the average list compiling layperson until early in the following year, it might be beneficial to have a couple more months for that project (say, end of Feb 2010). And the extra time could be spread out to the '90s project as well, maybe to the end of July. What does everyone think about this?

[zedz]

Just a thought--is the idea to do the 1990s list by the end of June, and the 2000s list (with the decade then complete) by the end of December? I'm thinking that with the glut of (supposedly) quality films at the end of each year, many of which are not readily available for viewing to the average list compiling layperson until early in the following year, it might be beneficial to have a couple more months for that project (say, end of Feb 2010). And the extra time could be spread out to the '90s project as well, maybe to the end of July. What does everyone think about this?

The 2000s was scheduled for the end of January. This could be extended to Feb if people wish, but personally I suspect that it will take a lot longer than that for a lot of this year's truly great movies to trickle down to most of us (but then, I'm assuming that those won't be next year's Oscar contenders, as well). By the same token, great movies from the 1930s are still trickling down to me, so there's never a 'perfect time' for this kind of exercise.

We can review the 90s deadline closer to the date, but the end of July is smack dab in film festival season for me, so I will be AWOL.

[domino harvey]

Don't forget about the Alternate Best Pictures List being due in the summer as well [tumbleweeds]

[colinr0380]

Don't forget about the Alternate Best Pictures List being due in the summer as well [tumbleweeds]

I thought that film only had Janet McTeer nominated for Best Actress, not for best film itself?

Just a quick note to British TV viewers to help domino out with the project - the 1949 Best Film winner All The King's Men is showing on the BBC this Saturday night (and Robert Rossen's non-Oscar nominated 1959 film They Came To Cordura is showing on Sunday!)

[LQ]

After seeing it mentioned in this thread, I picked up Single White Female yesterday. Very Lifetime-movie but I enjoyed it, mostly due to Jennifer Jason Leigh. She plays creepy so well here, and it was entertaining to watch her develop into full-blown crazy. Somehow or another I haven't crossed paths with many of her movies so I'm really not all that familiar with her as an actress. I'm starting to get the hype.
Fonda however is a thuddingly bad actress and as for being the heroine, completely unsympathetic. The intrigue dawdled a bit longer than I would've liked before finally crescendoing, but it was a pretty satisfying if not-quite believable finish. I was also impressed with the look of the film; it is quite an elegant-looking movie and the gothically beautiful, decaying building was a fantastic locale for it all to play out.

[colinr0380]

I still have not seen Kansas City or Georgia yet but for more Jennifer Jason Leigh I'd certainly recommend seeing her portrayal of Dorothy Parker and the film Rush in which she and Jason Patric play undercover cops succumbing to drug addiction. While I don't think eXistenZ is one of Cronenberg's best works it is certainly powered by Leigh's central performance that shifts from absolute certainty and authority over her world to shocked helplessness and back again (seen through the eyes of an outsider unsure what to make of her, which itself prepares the way for the more extreme shifts identities and personality traits shown by everyone in the film).

I'd even make a case for her small supporting performance in Dolores Claibourne, as the unexpected emotional core of that film.

(If we move back to the 80s for a moment, I would definitely seek out The Hitcher where she plays a minor role, but a significant and shocking one. And of course Last Exit To Brooklyn)

[Cronenfly]

Received the French edition of Mamet's Homicide remarkably quickly (France to Canada in 5 days), and though the picture quality is merely acceptable (puzzlingly the film's presented 16x9 1.66:1, not 1.85:1 or 1.78:1; compositions seem fine, but it's strange all the same), I was glad to be able to finally see the film. A solid effort overall from Mamet (though it won't win him any new fans), I found the film not entirely successful in marrying the more conventional manhunt storyline with the Jewish murder-conspiracy one, but I appreciate the attempt (and Mamet's willingness to conclude the film so ambiguously). Good to finally see Mantegna anchor a Mamet picture; the role may not be as showy as his part in House of Games, but his character's arc here is nevertheless intriguing. In the end the movie's probably justifiably obscure (even within Mamet's own filmography), but it's absolutely worth a view if you have any interest in Mamet/the subject matter/etc.

Also viewed Zero Effect recently; the movie's way, way overlong, but the premise is intriguing and the performances are uniformly fine. And I agree with everything Binker said about Henry Fool; flaws aside, it's by a wide margin the best Hartley I've seen thus far, and definitely worth a look. I don't know if it'll win him any converts (and I'm sure it's not the best movie of his to start with; of his '90s movies, I'd give Trust a spin before this), but it's making my list all the same.

Anybody have any thoughts on Swoon? Kalin's Savage Grace had its moments, and I'm a big Compulsion fan, so I figure it's going to be one of my next rentals for this project.

[GringoTex]

Fucking Amal by Lukas Moodysson

I didn't expect to like this but I watched out of a sense of duty to the 90s list. Best movie about teenagers I've seen since Dazed and Confused.

Moodysson could teach Wes Anderson A LOT about how to use pop/rock music on your soundtrack.

[zedz]

Anybody have any thoughts on Swoon? Kalin's Savage Grace had its moments, and I'm a big Compulsion fan, so I figure it's going to be one of my next rentals for this project.

It's pretty good, if rather mannered (but what do you expect?). Looks great for such a low-budget work. Personally I prefer some of his experimental shorts from the period (e.g. the Eno ones) or Todd Haynes' stuff.

Safe is a must-see for the 1990s list (though it gives some people the screaming abdabs), and Dottie Gets Spanked is wonderful too. Poison is 2/3 excellent ('Homo' and 'Hero'), but the 'Horror' section always seemed obvious and overegged to me, though not without its fun.

Velvet Goldmine is really problematic. I saw it twice theatrically: the first time was fantastic; the second time, in a venue with weaker sound at a lower volume, it slowed to a crawl and I could only see the flaws. One of those flaws is that Shudder to Think's glam pastiches are much less convincing than those of the other bands on the soundtrack, so they continually threaten to jar me out of the film, and the film doesn't work unless you're completely inside it - something that might be true for all of Haynes' films. This is one of the reasons that I've tended to avoid seeing them on the small screen.

[sidehacker]

Like the last time, I'm willing to take you up on your offer, zedz. Unfortunately, I was out in Italy during the main voting cycle of the 1980s list so I wasn't able to submit and compile a list. It's okay, though, because thankfully some of my most polarizing favorite films come from the 90s, I recommend them with the possibility that someone on the forum will hate them vehemently.

Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997) - It's so easy for me to talk about why this film means so much to me, but it is very difficult to do so without sounding profoundly dumb. I guess someone could argue that is proof that it is terrible, but there are very few films I love quite as much as this one. It almost always manages to bring a smile to my face, and it is not that condescending "boy these people sure are awful" smile, but a (you were warned...) smile equivalent to the pure joy of living. I think that's what the film captures so perfectly. There's a lot of favorites that it reminds me of - I Was Born But..., L'Enfance Nue, Pixote - but overall it is an experience that is so unique that it easily extends beyond the realm of just storytelling. It's more like a picture book, a collection of tiny bizarre moments, captured by the late, great Jean-Yves Escoffier.

Nowhere (Gregg Araki, 1997) - Probably the only film mentioned here likely to create more disgust than Gummo. This doesn't even have anything technical going in its favor. It's ugly, unrealistic, totally campy depiction of teenage life in LA. It's not a objective observation of high school life, it's a dramatic ideal. What we all (well, some of us at least) feel high school is like. It's not some symbolic explanation of life's complications but rather a dramatization or more accurately, exaggeration, of the chaos the comes with transitioning into adulthood. The whole thing can be seen on YouTube, which isn't a problem since (a) Araki's aesthetic is pretty dull to begin with and (b) the Australian DVD isn't much better.

Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) - Much more accessible than the previous two, but still a pretty tough nut to crack. At first, it seems very much like the rest of Rivette's work from the past two decades, but then, almost out of nowhere, it becomes... a musical! There's got to be someone out there rolling their eyes, but I can't blame them. On paper, it seems like some sort of joke, but on film, it is totally captivating.

Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung, 1995) - It's funny how I would describe Tran's first and third films as being "relaxed" probably to a fault. Where as his other films are very laid back family examinations greatly influenced by Satyajit Ray, this is something completely different. This is the sort of movie Scorsese would have made had he worked with Christopher Doyle in the 90s. Oddly enough, the visuals come from the extremely talented Benoît Delhomme who also shot Tsai's What Time is it There?, which is the polar opposite of this film in terms of pacing.

Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1991) - Speaking of Tsai, this film, his very first feature (right?) is stylistically, the odd one out in his full length oeuvre. Here, the camera moves, quite frequently in fact. This doesn't really change things that much, though. Tsai still captures the same sense of ennui, alienation, and constrained angst present in his later, more austere pictures. An ideal double bill with Jia Zhang-Ke's Unknown Pleasures, which came out eleven years later.

Little Cheung (Fruit Chan, 1999) - Another great example of saturated visuals in Asia, this time from mainland China. A story of a little boy being mischievous, a la The 400 Blows and countless other films. Simple, but it unfolds beautifully. I uploaded the opening (albeit without subtitles) here.

[colinr0380]

A couple of relevant Cult Canon articles from The Onion AV Club:

Exotica

Bitter Moon

[zedz]

Jag Mandir: The Eccentric Private Theatre of the Maharajah of Udaipur

This is a pretty amazing film, though it's amazing more for what it documents than for how it goes about doing so. It's a documentary, but about as far removed from what normally passes for reality on screen as you're likely to get.

The fabulously wealthy Maharajah of Udaipur has been advised by a holy man that he should gather together thousands of performers from around India in order to show his young son these traditional arts before they disappear (and before the island-sized palace on which the festival is held sinks).

After a prefatory interview with Andre Heller (the producer of the occasion, and presumably Werner Herzog's 'in'), it's basically just a straightforward document of the singular proceedings - a procession around the island, the marathon performance, celebratory fireworks - and Herzog's attitude is pretty much the same one of slack-jawed amazement as we see on the Crown Prince's face from time to time. So the film lacks many of the narrative twists and turns of Herzog's other films and leans heavily on sheer spectacle. The best of Herzog's films, both dramatic and documentary, do both, and in this case the film feels a little underdeveloped as a consequence. There is a great story here, but it's simply narrated in the first ten minutes.

But you do get a lot of first-rate eye-candy: an amazing Day-of-the-Dead-type parade, full of giant heads and bizarre mythical creatures, casual shots of the improbable or impossible (and old man regurgitating scorpions, a juggler lifting a heavy weight with his eyelid), whirling dervishes, uncanny monkey-men, infants playing with fire, tableaux straight out of late Paradzhanov.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Encouraged by its supporters in this thread I watched To Sleep With Anger today. I haven't seen any Burnett previously but thought it thoughtfully and sympathetically observed the dynamics within a family and how they react to the arrival of the mysterious Harry. The device of an outsider causing chaos within a family isn't original; see Pasolini's 'Teorema' for instance. Is Harry the cause of the troubles that follow or merely the exposer of pre-existing tensions. I admired how Burnett kept the tone completely ambiguous. Then there's the link between the past and present, the contrasts between the values of the South and the more upwardly mobile values of this middle class family. I can see why so many on this board were so keen with their cheerleading; it's certainly an impressive film.

[Sloper]

It has its flaws, but Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998) may be my favourite thriller. It’s scarier (not to mention better) than any of Raimi’s horror films, and does things to me that few other films can do. Several critics at the time compared it to Fargo, which I guess will come pretty high on a lot of people’s lists for this decade, but A Simple Plan is a far more effective portrait of characters destroyed by everyday greed. This is mainly because it has a real sympathy and understanding for the people involved, as opposed to the snide, lazy moralising (often mistaken for ‘humanity’) of the Coens’ film. When Frances McDormand does that ‘all this for money’ speech at the end of Fargo, we’re supposed to nod our heads along with her and smile at the grasping stupidity of the other characters; but when, in A Simple Plan, Billy Bob Thornton says to his brother, ‘I feel evil’, you’re right there with him, staring into the abyss, and it’s just spine-chilling. Despite a few implausible twists, there’s a terrible logic to the way things spiral out of control, and Bill Paxton (surprisingly very good) beautifully conveys his character’s sadness and desperation as he is driven to one atrocity after another. Thornton’s is the stand-out performance, of course: his character develops from what seems to be a rather hackneyed caricature into something very layered, and even tragic. There’s a scene towards the end between him and Paxton – they’re sitting in a car, reminiscing – which bears comparison with the cab scene in On the Waterfront. It seems like a snobbish thing to say, but you don’t often see acting that subtle in this kind of movie.

Breakdown (1997), with Kurt Russell, is another superior thriller, and features a great turn by the lovely, slimy J.T. Walsh. I love the way the hero fumbles around and makes mistakes, like a real person – it’s so much more exciting to watch a man clamber over a speeding truck when it really doesn’t look like he’s up to the job.

[swo17]

It has its flaws, but Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998) may be my favourite thriller. It’s scarier (not to mention better) than any of Raimi’s horror films, and does things to me that few other films can do. Several critics at the time compared it to Fargo, which I guess will come pretty high on a lot of people’s lists for this decade, but A Simple Plan is a far more effective portrait of characters destroyed by everyday greed.

I don't think Fargo is going for quite the same thing, but yes, yes, yes, Simple Plan is an excellent thriller, with a great performance from Billy Bob before he started doing Bad Santa on an endless loop. I love the way blood looks on fresh snow...

I'd also like to champion a little film that possibly doesn't need it, but I just saw Kusturica's Underground for the first time, and I should probably watch it again, but this should be placing fairly high for me. Sort of like a cross between Come and See and Playtime. Maybe a little Day for Night as well. So many great, memorable sequences. So full of energy and life (and death) and monkeys and violence and slyly smirking European debauchery. A great way to start off the '90s project!