1990s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[swo17]

A Guide to '90s Shorts

World of Glory (Roy Andersson)
Having a reliable job, a loyal family, fine restaurants at which to dine, lavishly designed places of worship to remind you of the glories of the universe, corporations that genuinely care about you, facilities to care for your ailing parents when they reach a certain age, and well-kept gardens to house their remains when they're gone—why, it's all almost enough to keep a guy from screaming out in eternal agony most of the time.

A Sense of History (Mike Leigh)

This nice old rich guy is kind enough to give us a walking tour of his estate. That was very thoughtful of him, he didn't have to do that.

Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (David Lynch)
Ingenious skirting of the rules of the Lumière project, wherein directors were challenged to make a film with an antiquated camera that technically could have originated a hundred years earlier. Through careful planning and staging, Lynch's single-take shot fits five separate scenes onto the 50-second film reel, cumulatively hinting at something incredibly sinister almost entirely through reaction shots. If you called this Lynch's best film of the decade, I wouldn't correct you.

Study of a River (Peter B. Hutton)
Hutton makes everything he shoots look ravishing and timeless. This time it's a river.

Let Forever Be/Sugar Water (Michel Gondry)
Take your pick between the ultra-cool '90stastic Chemical Brothers video and the slowburn timewarpy Cibo Matto one.

The Films of Stan Brakhage
Brakhage made more than 100 films during the '90s, the most prolific period for his lovely, later hand-painted style. Re:voir put out a VHS a while ago containing a lot of great examples, only a few of which made their way onto Criterion's Blu-ray set. Very nice, though admittedly a lot of them sort of run together. A couple of standouts are the well-known Black Ice and Stellar, which use a similar step-printing process to very different effect. In contrast, Commingled Containers and Plato's Cave find beauty in the natural world, the first thinking small while the second looks up at the skies, hopelessly overwhelmed, until eventually being distracted and captivated by the magical dance of a gathering dust storm. Finally, I wonder if anyone is considering voting for the gorgeous 18-part, 50-minute Persian Series as a single film. If so, it would seem to be a similar situation to Histoire(s) du cinema, where it's categorized as a 2000s film since that's when most of it was released.

Bouquets 1-10 (Rose Lowder)
Discussed as my spotlight title here.

Horizontal Boundaries (Pat O'Neill)
It's easy to take image stability for granted—imagine how movies would look if there were nothing keeping adjacent frames from bleeding over onto each other, leaving you constantly trying to find your bearings amid the new, fluid geography of the projected image. Though as O'Neill shows, that might actually be an improvement. (Note: IMDb categorizes this film in the 1990s, whereas the director's website places it in the following decade. I believe this is one of those cases where the finished product includes a soundtrack that was not present during the film's first screenings. Unless anyone has solid evidence to suggest that the IMDb information is wrong, the film is eligible for this list.) Also recommended from this decade is Coreopsis, which is another strong entry in the canon of scratched film, here achieving the appearance of flickering neon lights in the film's most kinetic moments.

Rules of the Road (Su Friedrich)
Obsessively following someone's make and model of car around is technically not stalking them, and also gives you an excuse to blast out some embarrassingly catchy tunes.

Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr)
Creative camera angles simulate the wondrous transposed cityscapes of Christopher Nolan's dreams.


Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky)
Barbara Hershey being endlessly tormented by an obsessive demonic presence in The Entity is nothing compared to the terror of being a celluloid character unable to escape your frame. Get Ready has the same general idea and is nearly as good, though it's only a minute-long advertisement for a film festival, and so is permanently relegated to overshadowed status.

Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold)
Arnold's cinema seems devoted to drawing out the subliminal, base desires that went suppressed during Hollywood's golden age (as well as some that were clearly never there to begin with). I don't view this as a slight against the old guard—why would Arnold spend so much time with this footage if he didn't have some fondness for it, and what would be the point of drudging up unfashionable material only to make fun of it?—so much as a commentary on the degree to which modern cinema (which would never hesitate to make such things explicit) has warped from its origins. Or I dunno, maybe he just thinks incest is funny. In any case, the main thing I love about this film is the texture of the soundtrack as it stutters back and forth through the optical printer.

Home Stories (Matthias Müller & Dirk Schaefer)
Throwaway housewife scenes from numerous classic Hollywood films are strung together to create a melancholic and occasionally horrifying view of the purgatory of daintily waiting for your man to return home.

Blight (John Smith)
Smith remixes interview snippets from people being kicked out of their homes to make room for a highway into an evocative lamentation about urban decay. Also recommended from this decade is The Kiss, which is a pretty clever joke about the uncertainty principle. Both of these and much more are available on a great director's set from Lux in the UK.

Gnats (Guy Sherwin)
Also recently available from Lux: Sherwin has been working on his series of short 16mm B&W films since the 1970s. Each of the films takes just a few minutes to focus on some seemingly inconsequential scene from life, but approaching it with all the wonder and inventiveness of a cinematic pioneer. For example, this film simply features gnats buzzing around the camera in a futile attempt to seek shelter from the onslaught of film grain.

Hotel E (Priit Pärn)
So Europe seems like a fun place, where everyone is either pretending to be American or trying to appease their inky rotting pig overlords. Serious advice: If you ever start having dreams that resemble what happens behind the dark door in this film, seek medical help.

Fugue (Georges Schwizgebel)
Presumably the only reason that Schwizgebel hasn't caught on like M.C. Escher is that you can't put a moving image on a T-shirt.

Billy's Balloon (Don Hertzfeldt)
There's nothing quite like the feeling of sitting together as a family and bonding over mutual appreciation of stick children being tortured by inanimate objects. Much of Hertzfeldt's other work gets a little too dark to have quite the same intergenerational appeal, though Ah, l'amour never hurt anyone.

Balloon (Ken Lidster)
And then as a matter of karma, here it is the balloon that gets tortured, leaving its slavishly gullible little girl owner to try and rescue it, thus prolonging the circle of abuse.

The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park)
AKA the one with the penguin.

Lost Motion (Janie Geiser)
Children's dolls animated to live depressing, sordid, and frightening lives, all set to a deliciously sickly dirge of a score. Available on Other Cinema's Anxious Animation disc.

The Comb (Stephen & Timothy Quay)
If the Quay brothers themselves are reticent as to the meaning of this film, how am I supposed to fare any better? Well actually, it seems pretty straightforward to me: your every involuntary action is dictated by deteriorating doll people that live inside the vast caverns of your body. I must admit, I had my suspicions!

Food (Jan Švankmajer)
This film conflicts with The Comb in that we are supposed to believe that the hollow of the human body contains fully functioning dumb waiters for the delivery of food to others (nice try, Švankmajer), but if you can get over that part, the rest of the film generally makes complete sense.

[domino harvey]

"Let Forever Be" is for sure making my list. I know I am king of the hyperbolic statement but it really is a strong contender for greatest music video of all time (and at the very least it's my favorite)

[zedz]

Great shorts write-ups, swo. I'll try to add some more if I'm not too -yawn- lazy.

Rules of the Road (Su Friedrich)
Obsessively following someone's make and model of car around is technically not stalking them, and also gives you an excuse to blast out some embarrassingly catchy tunes.

I'm sure Friedrich would be proud to have "technically not a stalker" as her epitaph. It's not exactly a short (and not exactly a feature), but her extremely moving structuralist autobiography Sink or Swim is a must see for this list.

The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park)
AKA the one with the penguin.

I think you'll find that's a chicken. Wait, what??!!

A few more shorts that will probably make my top 50:

Hear My Cry (Maciej Drygas) - I can't say too much about the subject because of spoilers, but this chilling documentary has maybe the greatest use of found footage I've ever seen. Drygas is a master filmmaker who seems to have never made a bad film. Available on Drygas' dedicated PWA / NINA set.

Screen Play (Barry Purves) - Exquisite stop-motion animation - the single continuous shot that opens this film is one of the most dazzling achievements in animation that I've ever seen. And then the shit hits the fans. There's a fully Englished Purves DVD out on Potemkine that includes this and plenty of other wonderful films.

Ali Click (Lefdup / Flash / Eno) - Kaleidoscopic music video that's beautifully tailored to the beat. See it here. As the director notes: "Tout en analogique, les copains!"

Sweetness (Rachel Davies) - Looks like this is also up on YouTube. Extremely simple and effective experimental short. Davies came up with a powerful basic idea and had the good sense not to try and dress it up all fancy. Not graphic in the least, but pretty disturbing nevertheless.

[Satori]

Thanks for all the great shorts recommendations.

This also seems like a good time to put in a plug for Charles Burnett's When it Rains, a marvelously expansive 13-minute film available on the Milestone Burnett DVD set. The narrator is an older dreadlocked griot trying to gather enough money to prevent a woman and her daughter from getting evicted on New Year’s Day. The different characters he visits let Burnett flesh out the neighborhood’s diverse inhabitants and locations while music holds the whole thing together- an earlier scene takes place at a neighborhood festival with Afrobeat-style drumming and the film ends with a street musician playing jazz.

[swo17]

Where has the time gone...this is your official reminder that the deadline for this project is only one month away. Feel free to send me your lists at any time, but before doing so, please take a moment to review the first post of the thread for reminders about eligibility and any spotlights that you might have missed.

Also, please consider fitting in some of these last minute recommendations:

Whispering Pages (Aleksandr Sokurov)
This most intriguing adaptation of Crime and Punishment excises all relevant plot points from the story, leaving lots of scenes of Raskolinikov simply wandering through the streets in mental turmoil. But as per usual, Sokurov's astonishing achievement here is in the visual department, where one presumes that the film hits the screen not through the benefit of conventional projection but rather from blowing the dust off of a thick old book and having it hit the light just right.

Brigands, Chapter VII (Otar Iosseliani)
There aren't nearly enough films extolling the more playful, whimsical side of war, but I guess once you've seen as much of it as they have in Georgia, you start to develop a healthy sense of humor about it. There are too many memorable sight gags here to mention, but a few of my favorites include

Spoiler

a girl who winks knowingly at her lover before being beheaded, an officer who comes upon a man who has hanged himself, pauses for a moment, and then merely pushes the dangling legs aside like a bead curtain, and a serene picnic where a woman just starts casually shooting at some children playing nearby.

Depressingly, this is one of Iosseliani's most readily accessible films in the U.S....in an abysmal Facets edition.

Train of Shadows (José Luis Guerín)
A mostly silent, freeform film that just settles in on whatever pleases it at the moment, allowing for nice extended passages such as one devoted to watching shadows flicker on wallpaper. But things get really interesting when they turn to a frame-by-frame analysis of some very old, deteriorated

Spoiler

and faked

film footage, focusing in on the eyes of a girl and desperately searching through other remnants in the hopes of finding out more about her.

Nobody's Business (Alan Berliner)
This was a great spotlight recommendation from knives, a very entertaining genealogy tutorial that's just the right mix of caustic and profound in its illumination of how we are all connected. But what I really want to recommend here (even though they aren't eligible for this list) are the wonderful '80s shorts that Kino tucked away throughout its set devoted to the director. Though they lack the autobiographical edge of his documentaries, you can see the seeds of his editing style here, and the films are all quite delightful in their own right.

Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted (David Lynch)
Anyone lamenting their inability to vote for Twin Peaks the TV series in a '90s film list should consider this marvelous one-off, a surreal Julee Cruise concert film (presenting her in constant flight!) and virtual David Lynch - Best of the '90s collection. The Man from Another Place turns up at one point to do a saw solo, Sailor and Lula from Wild at Heart are there, and even the dead deer from The Straight Story makes an appearance, a full nine years prior to being run over by that terrible deer racist. (For those without access to The Lime Green Set where this film is featured, Raro put out a standalone DVD somewhat recently.)

[colinr0380]

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997)
A great film about the perils of living vicariously through others. Satoshi Kon is focusing relentlessly on celebrity here, and the way that fame bleeds into real life, especially with the, prescient for 1997, use of the internet, message boards and users setting up fake accounts in the name of their idols. There is the suggestion that in lieu of the celebrity having been tardy in jumping into the online world and creating a 'new media presence' themselves, others have taken it on themselves to do it for her, and to role play her daily life.

The whole film is a tangled mix of reality and fantasy, staged performance and real life acts, hallucination through mental breakdown against real antagonists destroying the character's life. And the editing compounds this disorientation that our main character is feeling by skipping freely around in time between events occuring simultaneously, previously, or in an entirely separate fictional world, all commenting on each other by their proximity. Scenes start in one location and get finished after an edit into another entirely different one, characters reminisce about events that occurred in the previous scene and in one audacious mind-bending set of scenes we get deep into Mima being trapped in a fugue state of waking up to repeat a scene of her life/the film (give that it starts with a call of "Take One", "Take Two", etc), with minor but worrying differences each time. The closest anything has come to this in live action film would be the recent French horror The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, which similarly features a third act scene of a character doing the same thing and eventually splitting in two due to the strain!

The story is about a pop star idol called Mima who at the beginning of the film announces that she is going to leave her girl group and start a career as a 'serious actress'. This involves a small role in a kind of soapy serial killer drama series. The role gets bigger and bigger and eventually the character she is playing is to be assaulted in a gang rape scene (which seems to be inspired by the notorious Jodie Foster scene in The Accused), that is obviously intended to shatter her previously demure image, and with the suggestion that it might shatter Mima's notions of herself in the process too. However it is not just Mima who is going to have to come to terms with her new career direction, but those around her who feel as if they have some say in guiding her too. Eventually the whole film climaxes in a series of gory serial murders spilling into real life, while Mima struggles to keep a sense of what is real and just her fantasy and just how culpable she herself is in the events around her.

It is a great film about the almost illusory control an actor has over their image and how difficult it might be to wrestle that control back into their own hands, away from pervy photographers and agents wanting you to do nude photoshoots, the scriptwriters of your show, your fans wanting you to have a certain idealised image, and so on. With the disturbing suggestion that Mima is the abberant one because she is struggling against the flow of a career full of others who inevitably have their own agenda on what role she is going to play, and whether she needs to 'pay her dues' by being punished in order to make the transition to being that 'serious actress' that she wishes to become. It gets deep into Mima's psychology too, especially in the brief scene in which the girl band that she has just left are shown to have become more successful than they ever were with her (number 83 in the charts!), which maybe plays its own part in triggering her breakdown, or at least preparing the way for the breakdown to be exploited.

This is one of those films that feels like it has been influential behind the scenes of a lot of other films that came after. Requiem For A Dream in particular has a shot directly lifted from this film, and Black Swan's doppleganger plot is extremely close too. Not to mention on a weird meta-level that Lindsay Lohan film I Know Who Killed Me. But Perfect Blue is also very much in the same territory as Inland Empire, although Kon's film is perhaps the more complex and coherent predecessor!

A couple of aspects prevent me from wholeheartedly endorsing this however: I do think that Satoshi Kon retreats into obvious stereotypes at a couple of moments, particularly the ugly, nerdy loner and unconventional looking characters who turn out to be the psychopaths (this turns up in Paprika too, albeit a bit more muted, so it seems that this was a bit of a Kon trait). That is perhaps too reductively obvious, even for an animated film, in showing inner corruption mirrored by outer imperfections. Also the Accused-style rape scene and nude photoshoot feel a little bit too leery and lingered on rather too long, though the uncomfortable feeling that they produce are likely the whole point!

The film does have a lot to say about notions of individual personality perhaps being a shared societal construct, only emphasised more when the individual is either a micro-managed pop idol or actor taking on difficult roles. Perfect Blue works fine on its own terms as a satisfying serial killer, giallo-style ultraviolent thriller, but gets even more powerful when considered as part of Kon's larger body of work and compared with the multiple simultaneous intercutting between roles in Millennium Actress and the shared dreamscapes of Paprika. That Every Frame A Painting video did a great job of linking these commonalities between all of Kon's films together.
That Every Frame A Painting video did a great job of linking the commonalities between all of Kon's films together

[Michael Kerpan]

I found the offputting aspects of Perfect Blue major irritants rather than minor imperfections. Clearly Kon was quite talented, but with the exception of Millennium Actress (which I am afraid to re-watch), his films struck me as ultimately unsatisfactory.

[swo17]

In preparing for the 2000s list, I just noticed that Jean-Claude Rousseau's La Vallée close, which is on TSPDT's 21st Century list, is a 1990s film per IMDb. So if you're going to want to vote for this film, do it now.

[swo17]

Just as a reminder, lists are due two weeks from today, and it would be nice not to get them all at the last minute (but please do take all the time you need). Also, if you submit a list early and then want to make any changes afterward, you are welcome to do so up until the deadline.

[domino harvey]

I Love Trouble (Charles Shyer 1994) Remarkable romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte as screwball-lite reporters who love to hate each other and hate to love each other and so on. I say remarkable because this film is so thoroughly and totally devoid of anything of value and hit every expected note of what people mock when lampooning mainstream romantic comedies from the 90s that it belongs in a museum as a catchall sampler of worthlessness. Nolte and Roberts exhibit no charisma (they reportedly hated each other outside of the perimeters of the script) and Nolte is sold as a living sex God in the film in a way that strains credibility, even for Hollywood. Despite the presence of a half-hearted red herring, any audience member who has seen a film before will figure out who the turncoat baddie is the moment he or she shows up, and the mystery at play here involving genetically-modified milk (!) is of as much interest as anything else here, ie not at all. (Although watching the film, which opens with deadly Amtrak derailment, had at least some unintended relevancy to current events!)

Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit 1996) The 90s gave us a glut of lawyer films (Grisham fever, especially post-the Firm, had almost as much of an impact on cinema this decade as Pulp Fiction), and this is one of the better ones, even if it isn't quite as clever as it thinks it is. Or as I remember it being when I first saw this on HBO in middle school. Man, this film's twist blew my mind back then, and you probably have to be about thirteen to be surprised by where this film takes its twisty murder trial. While the film is remembered mostly for Edward Norton's Oscar-nominated debut as the aww-shucks choir boy accused of brutally slicing up an archbishop, the film is primarily focused on Richard Gere as the huckster lawyer who gives a speech at the beginning of the film eschewing a lawyer's responsibility to preserve a sense of right and wrong and how it doesn't matter if a client is guilty, in case the film's trajectory was too subtle. But there's a nice lowbrow charm to the overall machinations of Gere and his NBC TV star crew of co-chairs, and Gere's sparring with former colleague and lover Laura Linney is nicely pitched. I also enjoyed John Mahoney as the corrupt DA who wastes no time threatening anyone who gets in his way. But, ultimately, the film rests on a single-use gimmick, and the film is just barely sustainable outside of it.

[flyonthewall2983]

Nolte is sold as a living sex God in the film in a way that strains credibility, even for Hollywood

[domino harvey]

Well dog my cats, I guess Hollywood was on the right track. And by that I mean they told Delta Burke to dye her hair back for fuck's sake

I know the deadline's approaching and everyone has already probably submitted their list, but I am pretty disappointed by how discussion/participation has died down the last couple months-- the last iteration of this thread had three times as many posts at this one, so I'm not sure what happened, though I'm as much to blame as anyone. I'm not even sure why I stopped, but before the buzzer sounds I'm going to try to get to some of the myriad titles I squirreled away for this decade's list and then never got around to. Maybe by the twelfth round of the 90s List I'll have gotten to everything. See you in 2034!

To wit:

Arlington Road (Mark Pellington 1999) Another 90s time capsule movie that could only have been made during the small window when the increased interest in domestic terrorism post-Waco/Ruby Ridge/OKC bombing and pre-9/11. Jeff Bridges' professor (who teaches a class on domestic terrorism, natch) begins to suspect with increasing paranoia that his neighbors Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack are anti-government operatives taking part in a massive conspiracy to blow up federal targets. As the circumstantial evidence mounts and Bridges becomes more and more unhinged with his accusations and fears, the audience is waiting for the other shoe to drop, and so

Spoiler

When it turns out that Robbins and Cusack are indeed cheerfully blatant terrorists, the film still paints their over-the-top villainy with a skeptic's brush: Is Bridges going crazy? Is there somehow another explanation for their behavior? Or, as in the Parallax View, is Bridges' paranoia being manipulated by the terrorists for their own scapegoat gain? The eventual reveal is ludicrous, of course, but contains enough internal logic to let one gloss over the grossly coincidental chain of events that would lead to the end result, if desired. Personally I found the film's early satirical treatment of how alienated the "safe" suburban spaces of new planned housing and communities more effective and incisive (The only way to feel safe with our neighbors is to not know them), but ultimately this and other positive attributes in the film are also present in other, better movies.

the Astronaut's Wife (Rand Ravich 1999) The worst film I've seen in recent memory. Astronaut Johnny Depp, with frosted tips and a phony Cracker Barrel accent, is left unaccounted for while in space for two minutes, and wife Charlize Theron suspects he was implanted/replaced by an alien being during this time, which is problematic because she's newly pregnant (and for other reasons, I'm sure). The film is filled with long, portentous shots of Theron emoting or Depp moving in or out of frame so as to indicate that this is a Serious Film while coming off as laughably self-important, especially for just being an alien ripoff of Rosemary's Baby (complete with identical hairstyles for our protagonists). The dialogue in this film is so bad too, oh man-- at one point Depp compliments Theron by praising the "warmth of [her] vagina." Also features a typically soulless "twist" ending that upends any possible remaining audience investment.

Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton 1991) Post-Do the Right Thing guilt helped Singleton net both screenplay and Best Director nods at the Oscars (becoming both the first black person and youngest person ever nominated in the category), and while Lee definitely deserved the honor more for his superior film, this is a strong and seminal work of urban violence and systemic futility. Though it takes some cheap shots (pun unintended, I think), the film's strongest assets are in its performances, especially from Ice Cube and Laurence Fishburne, and its universal themes of "Nature vs Nurture" (pushed to the extreme here).

the Edge (Lee Tamahori 1997) David Mamet is credited for the script here, and eventually this Alaskan-set tale of survival shows some of his trademark narrative and dialog-based concerns, but at the outset it appears either someone else gave this a pass after Mamet turned it in or Mamet decided to break all of his own screenwriting rules. Clumsy establishing of characters and traits, on the nose tellings over showings-- the works are blown early on and I was pretty soured on the whole mess almost immediately. But once Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins find themselves stranded and stalked by a killer bear, Mamet's voice kicked in and I could enjoy the small pleasures to be afforded in what is a pretty minor and disposable boy's adventure tale transposed onto an old rich man's fantasy.

Flirting With Disaster (David O Russell 1996) I liked Silver Linings Playbook a lot but otherwise have never quite boarded the David O Russell train, but I'm full steam ahead on this one. Cut within an inch of its life, this lean film is nothing but barbs and hilariously compounded awkward situations between an increasingly gargantuan cast roster. I admired how Russell manage to keep adding and integrating characters as the film went on, and some of the tasteless scenarios are quite inventive in their execution. A wonderfully manic experience and definitely one of the laugh out loud funniest films I've seen from the decade (Sorry swo, looks like I'll be submitting an adjusted ballot before the deadline)

the Pallbearer (Matt Reeves 1996) One of the infamous six Friends cast member movies that came out in '96, this entry in the sweepstakes had one of the better pedigrees and receptions at the time but I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Sad sack loser David Schwimmer (In true "If it ain't broke" casting) finds himself invited to give the eulogy of a high school classmate he can't remember, ends up befriending and eventually carrying out an affair with the deceased's mother Barbara Hershey, all the while pining after his high school crush who can't remember him, Gwyenth Paltrow. Paltrow attempts something like a Brooklyn accent here, which I initially registered as her just being confused a lot. Shot by Richard Elswit, the film is ostensibly a comedy but is filmed and paced like a drama, which kills any potential laughs (not much risk anyways) while the screenplay undercuts any nascent dramatic stakes. So, it's a weird film in terms of tone and execution, but not a successful one.

Safe Men (John Hamburg 1998) Lounge singers Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn are mistaken as safe crackers by members of the Rhode Island Jewish Mafia. If that sounds like it could be funny, the whole film is like that: ideas and lines and performances that could be funny, but just never quite get there. A whole lot of talented people are wasted here at the service of nothing at all.

Trial and Error (Jonathan Lynn 1997) My Cousin Vinny director Lynn attempts to rekindle the same spark here with another neophyte in the courtroom tale. Top-billed (!) Michael Richards is the actor friend of corporate lawyer Jeff Daniels who impersonates a hung-over Daniels in a small Nevada court for what should be a simple continuance, only to find himself stuck in a fraud trial with no legal knowledge outside of what he's seen on TV. The film's most successful passages are those in which the increasingly frustrated Daniels develops a system of flash cards, horn honks, etc to cue Richards to the proper responses in an effort to at least provide a competent defense for their clearly guilty client (Rip Torn, who steals the movie by just being Rip Torn). Like My Cousin Vinny, the film could stand to be a lot funnier than it is. But unlike Vinny, our "lawyer" isn't a competent foil for the legal system, which makes the investment and stakes far lower in comparison. Oh, and let's not forget Charlize Theron's totally thankless MPDG who falls all over Daniels with little provocation and forgives far more than any human ever would.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I've got 90% of my list decided upon, just catching up with a few last minute titles. I don't think I've always commented on the new films I've seen. Hopefully things pick up for the 00s.

[swo17]

Six lists in so far with five days to go until the deadline, and I'm seeing lots of votes for low profile films that I don't recall having been discussed in the thread. Evidently there are plenty of people waiting until the very end to submit their lists, so there's still time to put in some last minute recommendations.

[bamwc2]

Unfortunately, too many other commitments kept me from doing my usual write ups over the last few months. So, here's a crude breakdown of the films that I watched over that period into a few basic categories:


Great
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
Faust (Jan Svankmajer, 1994)
Hear My Cry (Maciej J. Drygas, 1991)
Midori (Hiroshi Harada, 1992)
Priest (Antonia Bird, 1994)
Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995)

Good
Black Rose Is an Emblem of Sorrow, Red Rose Is an Emblem of Love (Sergey Solovev, 1990)
O Dia do Desespero (Manoel de Oliveira, 1992)
L'Enfer (Claude Chabrol, 1994)
The Fall of Otrar (Ardak Amirkulov, 1991)
Fucking Åmål (Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)
Le garçu (Maurice Pialat, 1995)
Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembene, 1992)
Hana-bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
Hong fen (Shaohong Li, 1995)
Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira, 1998)
Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 1995)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1999)
Night and Day (Chantal Akerman, 1991)
The Puppetmaster (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1993)
The Secret of the Old Woods (Ermanno Olmi, 1993)
The Spanish Prisoner (David Mamet, 1998)
A Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
Three Lives & Only One Death (Raoul Ruiz, 1996)
Videograms of a Revolution (Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, 1992)
La Vie de Bohème (Aki Kaurismäki, 1992)

Okay
City Unplugged (Ilkka Järvi-Laturi, 1993)
Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997)
Flirting with Disaster (David O. Russell, 1996)
Following (Christopher Nolan, 1998)
German Year 90 Nine Zero (Jean-Luc Godard, 1991)
Good Men, Good Women (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1995)
Lamerica (Gianni Amelio, 1994)
Life is Sweet (Mike Leigh, 1990)
Maborosi (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1995)
Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
No Fear, No Die (Claire Denis, 1990)
Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990)
Open Doors (Gianni Amelio, 1990)
The Portrait of a Lady (Jane Campion, 1996)
Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996)
Same Old Song (Alain Resnais, 1997)
Savage Nights (Cyril Collard, 1992)
Smoking/No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993)
Thesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996)
Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995)
Les voleurs (André Téchiné, 1996)
A Woman's Tale (Paul Cox, 1991)

Pass
After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998)
Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1994)
Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1990)
Dieu sait quoi (Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1994)
From Today Until Tomorrow (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1997)
Les Misérables (Claude Lelouch, 1995)
Moonlight Seranade (Masahiro Shinoda, 1997)
Nargess (Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, 1992)
Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (Claude Sautet, 1995)
Sada (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1998)
Tren de Sombras (José Luis Guerín, 1997)

[Tommaso]

Six lists in so far with five days to go until the deadline, and I'm seeing lots of votes for low profile films that I don't recall having been discussed in the thread. Evidently there are plenty of people waiting until the very end to submit their lists, so there's still time to put in some last minute recommendations.

Okay, like bamwc2 I don't have much time at the moment, and normally I don't like to write about films that I'd actually need to see again to say something (hopefully) useful, but before I start complaining that nobody else voted for them... here goes:

Blue (Derek Jarman 1993): this is exactly what the title says: it's blue, nothing else (except for the credits) for about 75 minutes. Jarman's last film might be regarded as the attempt of a man who lost his eyesight due to his HIV illness but who wants to make a final artistic statement nevertheless, but such a dismissal could only come from someone who hasn't seen the film. This blue light is celluloid blue, not a Windows bluescreen, and the dance of the grain takes on a life of itself and creates a deeply immersive, meditative effect combined with the soundtrack, which has music by Simon Fisher-Turner, Momus, and Coil, and narration (partly by Tilda Swinton, unsurprisingly) based on excerpts from Jarman's book on colours, "Chroma". The text covers everything from reflections on the colour blue, poetical 'everyday' observations, to quite intense descriptions of Jarman's physical decline. An extremely moving and radical film in many ways. And if cinema is the art of light, then this might be the most purely cinematic film ever made. The bigger your screen, the better, no kidding. Don't miss it.
No. 3 on my list, and Jarman's The Garden will make it, too.

Also recommended and on my list:

The Mirror (Jafar Panahi 1997): a very touching early film by the Iranian filmmaker about a six-year old girl who gets lost in Teheran, told in two alternative versions, with subtle political undertones and comments on Iranian society. Some self-reflexive points on filmmaking, too, which however never feel forced. I actually didn't think this would make my list, but curiously this film has been haunting me for months now. It seems I absolutely love it.
(as a sidenote: I have to say sorry for my initial dismissive comments on Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry. While I still have my doubts about that particular film (especially the ending), thankfully I checked out a lot of Kiarostami's other films since then, and well... the greatest living filmmaker? No need to recommend The Wind will carry us or Through the Olive Trees, certainly, but I still feel completely floored by them, in a very gentle way).

Gloomy Sunday (Rolf Schübel 1999): this garnered mixed reviews, but its story about a love triangle between a Budapest restaurant owner, his waitress, and a young composer (who subsequently writes the legendary title song) is really enticing in my view. As this is set in the late 1930s/early 1940s in Hungary, you can guess that it doesn't end particularly happy. Very fine performances by Joachim Krol and Ben Becker, and an outstanding one by Erika Maroszan (who I naturally fell in love with...)

Comedian Harmonists (Joseph Vilsmaier 1997): this treads some similar ground as the above film. A biography of the most popular vocal group of Weimar Germany and the way they were forced into exile during the nazi regime. I'm not a fan of Vilsmaier at all (I find his film on Marlene Dietrich excruciatingly bad), but he hits the right notes - no pun intended - here all the time. A vivid, stylish and engaging evocation of the group and the Weimar era. And after all, anyone who turns Lilian Harvey's "Irgendwo auf der Welt" into the theme song of his film - it certainly wasn't as important for the real Harmonists! - has already half won me over...

Other left field choices of mine are Michael Glawogger's Megacities (1998, some sort of city symphony of a very different kind), two of Barney's Cremaster films (parts 1 and 5, to be precise), and Manoel de Oliveira's idiosyncratic and striking take on "Madame Bovary", Vale d'Abraao (1993). Unfortunately I'm only beginning to discover Oliveira's work, but he very quickly seems to turn into one of my favourite contemporary directors. Incredibly precise mise en scène all the time.

Otherwise, I really hope that Greenaway's Prospero's Books (my number 2) and the films of Jacques Rivette don't need a special recommendation to make the final list here. All four of Rivette's 90s films are in my top 20... and yes, I do count the two parts of "Jeanne la Pucelle" as one film, swo

[swo17]

and yes, I do count the two parts of "Jeanne la Pucelle" as one film, swo

As you should.

[John Cope]

Other left field choices of mine are Michael Glawogger's Megacities (1998, some sort of city symphony of a very different kind), two of Barney's Cremaster films (parts 1 and 5, to be precise), and Manoel de Oliveira's idiosyncratic and striking take on "Madame Bovary", Vale d'Abraao (1993). Unfortunately I'm only beginning to discover Oliveira's work, but he very quickly seems to turn into one of my favourite contemporary directors. Incredibly precise mise en scène all the time.

Vale Abraão is my favorite Oliveira and my favorite film, period. I meant to cover it in my proposed director's list of his films for the 90's but, as is the case with many others apparently, I simply didn't have time to adequately cover that whole selection (hopefully next time around). Anyway, I'm glad you brought it up however as it is indeed a well of inexhaustible riches in any and every sense. I always find it uniquely exhausting. All of Oliveira's films from the 90's will be in my own top 20 for sure (well, maybe not A Caixa...) but this is his ultimate film as far as I'm concerned as it is the most comprehensive in its aesthetic and treatment of its themes; it's also exceptionally representative of his work from Francisca through Magic Mirror.

I would actually attribute the film's success equally to the Agustina Bessa-Luís source novel even more so than to the Flaubert inspiration (the film is an adaptation of her response to his text), especially considering that huge sections of it are essentially read directly in the narration. The elaborate nature of that device reminds me of the 1970's BBC production of Jane Eyre which used huge amounts of the text in voice over too and, in doing so, made clear just how crucial the language was to understanding the meaning of that narrative--without it the material is often just a Harlequin Romance. Here it's a little different in that the 'events' of the narrative are often either elided or downplayed, made stationary or distilled into lengthy sitting room conversations (Agustina actually does far more with the time aspect in her novel, shifting it casually throughout without almost ever emphasizing it--in that sense Oliveira made a more 'conventional' film of it as he more or less chose to focus on certain aspects of the book and arrange it more or less chronologically). The difference between her book and the Oliveira adaptation can also be seen in the way Oliveira uses visual ‘quotations’, and devices such as Ema in front of mirrors, framed by windows, or looking at or standing beside historic women in picture frames and paintings to comment on the historic construction of the performative beauty of womanhood in the visual arts, the femme fatale and the adulterous woman role in cultural history etc. For Agustina this takes the form far more of the ironic, self-conscious use of the hypotext from Madame Bovary and other quotations from and references to sacrificial mythologies of womanhood. Also, of course, Oliveira does a great deal with his sensuous use of heterodiegetic music relating to the moonlight such as Clair de Lune and the Moonlight Sonata, choreographing very long scenes and takes, to run to the end of these pieces of music as Randal Johnson points out in his monograph on Oliveira (published by Indiana Univ Press). So Oliveira makes full use of certain clichés of Romantic convention (before debunking them, of course) whereas Bessa Luis tends far more towards a constant dry deployment of deconstructive irony, using a very distant, gnomic third person narrative voices/commentator.

Still deeply unfortunate how inaccessible this film is. The US DVD is notorious for being cut and in the wrong aspect ratio and dubbed in French on top of everything else. It's a monstrosity. I have two versions of the Portuguese release (one from the anniversary box) but this needs and deserves a sterling Blu Criterion treatment.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Six lists in so far with five days to go until the deadline, and I'm seeing lots of votes for low profile films that I don't recall having been discussed in the thread. Evidently there are plenty of people waiting until the very end to submit their lists, so there's still time to put in some last minute recommendations.

You'll get a list from me this weekend. Not sure if the top end of my list will change too much from last time. I think 7-8 of my top 10 from before will stay there. The list below will have more changes though.

I'll do more write ups in the results bit, especially the orphans/also rans.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I've found it impossible to watch any Manoel de Oliveira. I assume there are films I could buy from Amazon but I couldn't find anything to stream, not even anything on Youtube with English subs.

[colinr0380]

I'm finalising my list too. Although sadly I haven't found time to do many write ups this time around, I'll try and do a few brief recommendations of films on my list, though it might have to be in the orphans section. For now I'll link to a previous comment on Shinya Tsukamoto's Bullet Ballet from the last time we did the 90s project. It is still going to place very highly on my list.

[bamwc2]

I've found it impossible to watch any Manoel de Oliveira. I assume there are films I could buy from Amazon but I couldn't find anything to stream, not even anything on Youtube with English subs.

You know...those aren't the only places to get stuff online.

[domino harvey]

More recent viewings (thank God for getting sick this week!)

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991) Despite fervent calls for its deification, this film's reputation has been a bit inflated here, in part due to its unavailable position making it a cinematic fetish object, I suspect. I appreciated zedz' (and Colin's) defenses in the Yang thread, but I can't quite convince myself to embrace their specific praises. This is my second Yang, and I greatly prefer Yi Yi to this, especially since that film also used its length to paint a novelistic portrait, but additionally gave us scenes of beautiful insight and emotional release that are missing here in the more antiseptic (and somewhat tiring) four hour marathon of art house distancing.

Fear (James Foley 1996) Like Trespass a few years prior, this is a cheeky cautionary tale against slumming, here painting naive Reese Witherspoon's wannabe rebel into a corner with her paramour Mark Wahlberg, who she picks up in a pool hall and subsequently falls for lines so earnestly "nice" and sweet-sounding that any adult in the audience is wincing in anticipation of their reversal. Every teen should be taught to suspect anyone who talks this smooth and says all the right things, because of course it means it's probably not the first time they've said them. There's some half-hearted lip service paid to William Petersen's father and how he treats his sexually-maturing daughter that I suspect was watered down in order to make this a more mainstream entertainment. I did appreciate that they pretty much made him an asshole for the entire movie, at least, which at least complicates the expected strains of audience identification in his plight to protect his daughter from her psycho boyfriend. Nevertheless, the film gets far less interesting as it progresses towards a Straw Dogs-lite finale, and once it's over the film just ends, with the credits coming up mid-establishing shot!

Hoffa (Danny DeVito 1992) I complained elsewhere a few months ago about how David Mamet's Lansky was undermined by a director who didn't know how to trust Mamet. No such worries here, and DeVito's choice treatment of Mamet's script keeps in all of the playwright's trademark colorful language and interplay-- this is one of the most "Mamet" sounding things you've ever experience, and Jack Nicholson seems to relish the opportunity to bellow out "cocksucker" every other minute. Mamet's script sticks almost entirely to the realm of Hoffa's ascension to leadership within the Teamsters, forgoing love affairs and personal interest stories in favor of double-crosses and violence. The film also has a Godot-goofing framing device that works because it like the rest of the film trusts the beats and the pacing of Mamet's best work. DeVito brings a surprisingly adept visual eye to the proceedings, but his fancy set-ups (lots of traveling shots and extreme foreground framings) don't undermine the patter.

How to Make an American Quilt (Jocelyn Moorhouse 1995) A gaggle of older women gather together over a long summer to sew a wedding quilt for Winona Ryder and in the process share stories from their past that help Rider with her own cold feet. If this sounds like a Lifetime movie, nothing that happens in the film will offer a compelling defense. Though it features more name value than most TV movies-- some old school Hollywood royalty in their waning years (Jean Simmons, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn) and a smartly-cast group of young actresses as their earlier equivalents (Samantha Mathis, Joanna Going, Claire Danes)-- the flashbacks are all cliched and uninteresting, each taking a well-trod path to their inevitable conclusion. The film wants so badly to engineer a positive solution to Steel Magnolias + Fried Green Tomatoes, but as usual Hollywood forgot to carry the one.

Love and a .45 (CM Talkington 1994) Tarantino's own stated favorite amongst the swath of imitators spawned in the 90s, this is a pretty obnoxious movie with occasional moments of novelty. Gil Bellows and Renee Zellweger are two white trash lovers on the run and they meet their fair share of overly-colorful criminal types en route to Mexico and freedom. Justified has clearly spoiled me on how to present memorable lowlifes, because it just makes it all the harder to suffer through the too-cute insecure bolstering of some of the over-the-top characters and actions here. Ultimately, after a while this film just gets annoying (especially Rory Cochrane from Empire Records / Dazed and Confused, who is in desperate need of direction as his character fidgets his way from one locale to the next), and that's my overall takeaway.

Maboroshi no hikari (Hirokazu Koreeda 1995) Charming small-scale film about grief and renewal, with some nice subtle observations of normalcy as markers for time's march forward. Visually the director wears his influences well, but as in Still Walking the most memorable aspects are those everyday observations of the emotional pull of familiar situations and scenarios.

Overnight Delivery (Jason Bloom 1998) Unfunny romantic comedy in which Paul Rudd becomes convinced his virginal bride-to-be (Melody from Hey Dude!) is cheating on him, which results in him mailing pix of him naked with Reese Witherspoon's stripper (and a fake used condom-- gross) via fake movie name FedEx, only to realize he was mistaken, leading him on a mad dash with the cheerful stripper in-tow across the midwest in hopes of outrunning the package. Lowbrow and predictable, the only thing I appreciated about this was how it let the Witherspoon character be the one with a crush and not the goofy guy, but man, talk about grasping at straws.

the Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella 1999) Surprisingly light on its feet, this lively adaptation of the Highsmith novel keeps everything moving along with a suitably jazzy pace. The film is especially effective in its examinations of how different the rich are from the rest of us and how social classes stick with their own out of necessity (rich people are friends with other rich people because they can afford to go to the same places and do the same things), despite how appealing the occasional interloper may appear. Plus, you know, they might kill you and steal your identity.

Trial by Jury (Heywood Gould 1994) Typical basic cable staple (which means one of the usual suspects here probably considers it a masterpiece) with mousy single mom Joanne Whalley-Kilmer serving on the jury in the trial of mobster Armand Assante and getting threatened by crooked cop William Hurt. I thought the film was passably average until a particularly tasteless and unnecessary rape scene took the film into corners it is not smart enough to explore in any way but pruriently.

[swo17]

I've found it impossible to watch any Manoel de Oliveira. I assume there are films I could buy from Amazon but I couldn't find anything to stream, not even anything on Youtube with English subs.

The Convent is available to rent on Netflix or to stream on Amazon.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I've found it impossible to watch any Manoel de Oliveira. I assume there are films I could buy from Amazon but I couldn't find anything to stream, not even anything on Youtube with English subs.

The Convent is available to rent on Netflix or to stream on Amazon.

I'm in the UK. British Netflix is terrible.Can you stream from Amazon US Instant Video if you're in the UK?