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

[GringoTex]

Can we count Histoire(s) du cinema as one entity?

I already turned in my ballot with it as one film.

[ptatler]

A few '90s titles of interest over at Facet's (rather scant) Essential Iranian Cinema Guide.

[swo17]

WTF, they have Moment of Innocence for sale? I thought it was OOP and demanding astronomical prices...

[ptatler]

WTF, they have Moment of Innocence for sale? I thought it was OOP and demanding astronomical prices...

I buried the headline. I meant to mention that. Looks like they have around 60 left. It's the New Yorker copy. Not the best transfer but worth snapping up until someone does right by it.

[swo17]

It's still a bit pricey at $30, but when paired with its logical companion, Close-Up, for only $4.99, the average price for the two is a bit easier to swallow. And even if you prefer money to Iranian tales of redemption, you could probably sell it for $50+ somewheres on the internet.

[zedz]

I've heard that the Facets Close Up is awful, whereas the UK Soda edition is excellent (though not as cheap). (Just sayin'.)

Two more lists in, and the top three are holding steady while everything else is jumping around like crazy. Number three should be starting its precipitous descent down the list in three, two, one. . .

And Histoire(s) votes have all been for a single film so far, which is fine by me.

[zedz]

Documentaries were strong in the 90's.

I'd make a minor plea, extremely late in the game, for people to watch Brother's Keeper (1992), which is really a heartrending story of a bunch of poor old bachelor brothers in upstate New York. A view of lives and living which I imagine few of us have encountered this close, as the rural poor are usually swept under the American rug easily enough. There's also an actual murder investigation and a town coming together.

My Voyage to Italy would be my top Scorsese of rge 90's and will probably fit in on my list.

I need to search around a bit more on the doc front.
Other 90's documentaries that people tout?
There's something nagging me, that I'm forgetting.

Brother's Keeper is a great film I forgot about. Berlinger / Sinofsky's earlier short Outrageous Taxi Stories (or something like that) is fantastic too, but I'm less fond of the Paradise Lost / West Memphis 3 films (which are still well worth seeing).

Just got a vote in for Alan Berliner's Nobody's Business, which I also forgot and is also great. (I think this is the one about his father's secret life).

I ensured that Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson's gobsmacking Rats in the Ranks squeaked in on my list, however. I have no idea if it's available on DVD, but it's a comic gem.

And I was just about to recommend some Heddy Honigmann docs that similarly failed to make my list (Metal and Melancholy, The Underground Orchestra) when I discovered that imdb has redated her devastating Crazy to 1999. This was in the 2000s top ten, so I'll clearly need to rearrange my list now.

[swo17]

I hate to complain about this, and honestly I don't care one way or the other as long as everyone is in agreement, but I defy someone to defend the consideration of Histoires du Cinema as a single entity but not Riget.

I've heard that the Facets Close Up is awful, whereas the UK Soda edition is excellent (though not as cheap). (Just sayin'.)

Sadly though, it's the only option I know of for someone still R1-locked like me. I've seen the Facets and, while it's not great, it's probably worth about $5.

[zedz]

My defence: people want to vote for Riget separately and for Histoire(s) as a single entity.

Strictly rule-wise, it should be the other way around, but whatcha gonna do?

(Actually, Riget is ambiguous and could go either way, depending on whether you apply the two-part film rule or the TV mini-series rule)

It's no skin off my nose, but if you want to reverse the Histoire(s) decision (are you actually intending to vote for individual sections of it yourself?) you'll need to twist the arms of two current submitters as well as bend the iron will of domino harvey. Good luck!

[swo17]

Tying in with my post about being R1-locked, I was regretfully unable to see Histoires du Cinema this go-around.

P.S. My vote for Riget will be equally ambiguous, as I only intend to refer to it as Riget, which could equally signify Part I or the whole--I'll never say which...

[ptatler]

Tying in with my post about being R1-locked, I was regretfully unable to see Histoires du Cinema this go-around.

You can catch most of it -- in spectacular Shit-O-Vision -- on Youtube. Facets also has an R1 rip for rent via their Netflix-wannabe mail order rental thing. I've heard it's a so-so (but better than a torrent/Youtube).

But -- to pick nits -- the first part of the Godard technically belongs to the '80s, yes?

[zedz]

But -- to pick nits -- the first part of the Godard technically belongs to the '80s, yes?

(Shhhh. It's supposed to be a secret.)

Number three should be starting its precipitous descent down the list in three, two, one. . .

I must be psychic.

[swo17]

zedz, when this is all said and done, will you be so kind as to fill in the blanks as to just which films you've been talking about over the last several pages? [-o<

[zedz]

zedz, when this is all said and done, will you be so kind as to fill in the blanks as to just which films you've been talking about over the last several pages? [-o<

[plug]If you send in your list, I can send you the provisional top ten, which might answer all your questions. [/plug]

[mikeohhh]

Number three should be starting its precipitous descent down the list in three, two, one. . .

I must be psychic.

oh noooooooooooooo... if this is the movie I'm thinking it is, it's got at least one ballot w/ it in the top ten on its way!

[Gregory]

Other 90's documentaries that people tout?

Microcosmos was an unprecedented work of its kind that may never be equaled.
Kopple's American Dream is one of the best political works about the 1980s, even though it's technically a '90s film.
Crumb is amazing, although in light of Zwigoff's subsequent work I'm inclined to think the Crumb family is so easy to make an interesting documentary about that the project was a relatively easy slam-dunk. Maybe he just should've stuck to documentaries.
Amos Gitai did some great work, which I'm still in the process of exploring. I'll probably vote for Arena of Murder.
Philibert's In the Land of the Deaf -- I liked it a bit better than Every Little Thing, but both are good.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (see my comments in the thread for the BFI release).
Amarillo by Morning is probably the best small-scale documentary from the decade, unless I'm somehow forgetting something.
I second Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

This is not even including things that transcend the documentary, like Herzog's Lessons of Darkness and Mekas's Zefiro Torna
What I'm trying to do is find room on my list for all of these, but I'll probably have to lose one or two.

[domino harvey]

Other 90's documentaries that people tout?

Microcosmos was an unprecedented work of its kind that may never be equaled.

Thank you for reminding me of this one, it definitely belongs on my list!

[Mr Sheldrake]

My tinkering is finally over, here is the top ten of my freshly submitted list. Thanks to Mr z for all his efforts on this project.

1 The River
2 Barton Fink
3 Chungking Express
4 Lost Highway
5 The Double Life of Veronique
6-Before Sunrise
7 Bitter Moon
8 The Comfort of Strangers
9 Clueless
10 The Sheltering Sky

Tsai strikes this humble viewer as the greatest director to emerge in the last 20 or 30 years. At least his images resonate in my memory like no other. Fink and Highway include frightening descriptions of male rage, sadly, far too relevant to our life and times. Express is the antidote of cinematic joy. For the rest, I could have just as easily listed Irene Jacob, Julie Delpy, Emanuelle Seigner, Natasha Richardson, Alicia Silverstone and Debra Winger, as they are all here, and often elsewhere, simply extraordinary.

[colinr0380]

Here's some of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills

I'd also second the Waco: Rules of Engagement film. I seem to remember seeing it in the BBC's Storyville series of documentaries from around the world followed by another fascinating film (which I cannot find listed at all on imdb) interviewing all of the participants on both sides of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, 444 Days.

A Great Day In Harlem from 1994 does a similar thing to Dan Cruickshank's later Lost World Of... films by interviewing participants and building up a whole portrait of an era from one famous photograph (I had to watch this immediately as a palate cleanser after seeing the same photograph get appropriated as motivation for the main character's visit to New York in The Terminal!)

One of the best BBC series of the decade was The Death of Yugoslavia, a multi-part series, though it was edited down into one three hour film as well.

[ptatler]

Just remembered One Day in September, the prequel to Munich.

[Gropius]

Microcosmos was an unprecedented work of its kind that may never be equaled.

Aha - I remember that one being excellent, but haven't seen it in over a decade, and don't have time to rewatch. Then again, was it notably better than any number of BBC wildlife series? There was a classic one from around the same time called Alien Empire, also about insects: a bit sensationalist at times (drawing on sci-fi tropes), but it made early use of CGI to illustrate their body structure, and really brought the subject to life.

As for other 90s documentaries, one I mentioned above - although it's probably top 100 rather than top 50 material - was Michael Glawogger's Kino im Kopf (1996), in which he interviews people about imaginary films they'd like to make, and then intercuts the interviews with fragmented attempts at realising the scenarios. I gather his Megacities (1998) is also good, but haven't had a chance to see it (2005's Workingman's Death will probably make my 2000s list).

Another doc I don't think has been mentioned is Raymond Depardon's Afriques: Comment ça va avec la douleur? (1996), a rather epic journey across Africa, self-reflexively analysing the way the continent is usually portrayed by Westerners, with plenty of impressive verité-style footage along the way. I'm sure I'd also be seconding Johan van der Keuken's Amsterdam Global Village if I'd seen it - which reminds me, I just have time to watch Face Value.

[Camera Obscura]

I think Molly Ringwald popped up in Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1997), somewhere in between Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. It's got my vote.

'Documentaries' I liked.

Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)
Crumb (1994)
Metaal en Melancholie (1994)
When We Were Kings (1996).
Looking For Richard (1996)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
André Hazes, zij gelooft in mij (1999)
Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (1999)

[Gregory]

Aha - I remember [Microcosmos] being excellent, but haven't seen it in over a decade, and don't have time to rewatch. Then again, was it notably better than any number of BBC wildlife series?

I haven't seen tons of the BBC stuff, but from what I have seen I'd say yes, absolutely. For one thing, they spent years designing cameras and equipment to be able to capture what they wanted to show. More fundamentally, it has something like a poetic/musical purpose and mood rather than informative. Perhaps I shouldn't even have lumped it in with more straightforward documentaries. I see it as carrying on Jean Painlevé's work. Planet Earth is another one that introduced some technical innovations that had not been seen before, but again that's a somewhat different kind of film. I haven't seen the one you mentioned, Alien Empire.

By the way, I can't vouch for the soundtrack to Microcosmos. After my first viewing, I started playing around with alternate soundtracks just for the hell of it, and I've done this enough times that now I can't remember all that well what the original soundtrack is like.

As for other 90s documentaries, one I mentioned above - although it's probably top 100 rather than top 50 material - was Michael Glawogger's Kino im Kopf (1996), in which he interviews people about imaginary films they'd like to make, and then intercuts the interviews with fragmented attempts at realising the scenarios. I gather his Megacities (1998) is also good, but haven't had a chance to see it (2005's Workingman's Death will probably make my 2000s list).

I think I've seen that, or something very much like it. I thought what I'd seen was considerably shorter than the 87 min. runtime listed for Kino im Kopf. Now I'm really wondering what I saw and what DVD it was on. By the way, agreed on Workingman's Death, though I had a few nagging doubts about cohesiveness.

[reno dakota]

Other 90's documentaries that people tout?

Has anyone mentioned 35 Up or 42 Up? Both will certainly be on my list.

[domino harvey]

Well, Bringing Out the Dead was a pleasant surprise. Though is clatters around in the home stretch, what came before was pretty good and Scorsese did a nice job capturing the insanity of the inner city. Ving Rhames was a hoot and given that Scorsese is not a particularly subtle director, their mutual melding of over the top-ness worked best. Still, and I have to underline this in every one of his films, at least half the music cues could and should have been dropped. I mean, Natalie Merchant, really?