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

[hayabusa]

Currently my top ten:
Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) (1991), Zhang
To Live (Huozhe) (1994), Zhang
Peppermint Candy (Bakha satang) (1999), Lee
Chungking Express (Chung Hing Sam Lam) (1994), Wong
Fireworks (Hana-bi) (1997), Kitano
Swallowtail Butterfly (Suwarôteiru) (1996), Iwai
After Life (Wandâfuru Raifu) (1998), Kore-eda
The Emperor and the Assassin (Jing ke ci qin wang) (1998), Chen
The Black Panther Warriors (Hei bao tian xia) (1993), Yiu-leung
Hard Boiled (Laat sau sen taan) (1992), Woo

[LQ]

Are there are any other list-worthy comedies for the 90s?

I just realized that Le Diner de Cons will be eligible, so that will definitely make my list.

[Sloper]

Living In Oblivion is pretty funny, and a good companion piece to Irma Vep. They're both films you really have to be in the mood for - in the mood, that is, for smug, self-referential humour. Oblivion's 'dream-within-a-dream' structure gets a little tiresome, but it boasts at least three hilarious scenes: James LeGros (as a preening, Brad Pitt-esque star) trying to improvise with a belligerent Catherine Keener; Steve Buscemi losing it spectacularly with his entire cast and crew; and an embittered tirade from a midget who is sick of being cast in dream sequences (plagiarised slightly by Martin McDonagh in In Bruges).

[swo17]

Are there are any other list-worthy comedies for the 90s?

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN
Joe vs. the Volcano
Gremlins 2
Welcome to the Dollhouse/Happiness (sort of)
Election
Buffalo 66
Ed Wood
...and a few others I'm sure you all know that I dare not mention for fear of shame

I was also pretty impressed with Miami Blues, by the same director who brought us the also pretty good Grosse Pointe Blank.

[zedz]

Are there are any other list-worthy comedies for the 90s?

Buffalo 66

I'm with you on this, but we might have to barricade ourselves in the basement when the not-amused come calling.

[domino harvey]

I've got two fists with your names written on 'em, boys! [-X

[zedz]

I've got two fists with your names written on 'em, boys! [-X

I knew it. I probably could have predicted the first zombie to the door as well! It's going to be a long night, so I hope swo didn't get bitten on the way down here.

[swo17]

I hope swo didn't get bitten on the way down here.

I fear I may have been bitten but the only change I have noticed so far is a nearly diuretic urge to say "Gorin" over and over.

[Camera Obscura]

Are there are any other list-worthy comedies for the 90s?

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN
Joe vs. the Volcano
Gremlins 2
Welcome to the Dollhouse/Happiness (sort of)
Election
Buffalo 66
Ed Wood
...and a few others I'm sure you all know that I dare not mention for fear of shame

I was also pretty impressed with Miami Blues, by the same director who brought us the also pretty good Grosse Pointe Blank.

Don't worry. Still many things unseen, or totally forgotten about it. And Rushmore is a long-time favorite that'll defintely make my list, just to get that out of the way. Let's see, Election (1999) is a favorite, that's also a likely candidate for me. Payne's Citizen Ruth (1995) is pretty good as well. Laura Dern is great, although all the best jokes seem to be in the first half, after that it sort of petered out and had little going for it. Gremlins 2, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness and Ed Wood are all fine films, but won't really cut it for a top 50 (but again, 50 films is not a lot, so many fine films won't make it).

Waiting for Guffman is a film I would probably enjoy - I didn't even realize Christopher Guest directed quite a few films. I'm pretty sure I saw Miami Blues in cinema when I was 15 years old or something, so perhaps it's time to revisit that one. I'll put Bufffalo 66 on the top of my (long) list as well.

I watched Living in Oblivion (1995) again a couple of months ago, not as good as the first time I saw it (couple of years ago). I thought Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup (1992) handled a comparable subject much better (and somehow made me laugh much more - hell, there even welled up a couple of tears in the end). Incidentally, Living in Oblivion reminded of another James Le Gros film, Floundering (1994) with James LeGros as some angst-ridden existential slacker in Venice Beach, and a whole gallery of star cameos (Viggo Mortensen as a bum on the sidewalk for starters and Steve Buscemi is in as well). It's very much a LA-film and not really a comedy perse, in the sense that there's a real comedic set-up or premise. Watched it a couple of times and it seems to improve with age - grew quite fond of that one, although I'm not sure I would dare recommending it full heartedly - might be a very personal thing.

I enjoyed Le dîner de cons (1998) and it might be one of Veber's best, but it's still pretty lightweight. But then again, not a huge list of great '90s French comedies that I can think off right now, so I might be too picky.

And I just made good with Steve Martin - I purchased The Steve Martin Collection (R2UK, 7 films), which (for the '90s) includes Housesitter (1992), Sgt. Bilko (1996) and Bowfinger (1999), which I saw last night. Time well spent, Eddie Murphy's funniest roles to date as far as I'm concerned. Awesome!. Nevertheless, L.A. Story and The Lonely Guy remain my favorite Steve Martins.

And thanks for all the other tips I failed to mention, many of them I haven't seen or even heard off, so I'll try watching them, but time (and money) can be in short supply.

[kaujot]

I'm kind of glad to see you mention Sgt. Bilko. I know it's looked down upon, and, I agree that it's a fairly dumb movie, but I just can't help but love it. His enthusiasm is so fucking infectious.

[Camera Obscura]

I'm kind of glad to see you mention Sgt. Bilko. I know it's looked down upon, and, I agree that it's a fairly dumb movie, but I just can't help but love it. His enthusiasm is so fucking infectious.

Actually, I have yet to see Sgt. Bilko, but I will treat it with the utmost respect.

[knives]

Wild at Heart gave me some of my heartiest laughs, It felt like a live action Preacher with those pesky religious elements turned to Oz references.

[domino harvey]

Watched Bogdanovich's Noises Off! It reminded me a lot of One Two Three, in that I have a lot of admiration for the real talent and skill went into making such a horribly unfunny film. The movie is split into three on-stage performances of the first act of a sex farce, with each run-through getting progressively more chaotic. One of the biggest problems is that the film peaks in the middle with the performance that is shown entirely from behind the stage-- this segment is so intricate and involved that it becomes borderline ballet at some point. But Christ why did all this hard work and technical prowess have to be at the service of such fantastically terrible material? And the third performance is just an extreme retread of the second (and one born out of motivations that don't even make sense within the world of the film), making that last thirty minutes interminable. This is probably the best kind of bad film that can be made, but that's a small consolation.

[Fiery Angel]

But Christ why did all this hard work and technical prowess have to be at the service of such fantastically terrible material?

Frayn's hilarious play is definitely not the problem; I haven't seen the film, but it's definitely material that needs to be seen onstage for greatest comic impact.

According to Wikipedia,

Frank Rich, who had called it "the funniest play written in my lifetime", wrote that the film is "one of the worst ever made."

[swo17]

The Quince Tree Sun (Erice)

I was having a hard time finding this under this title, but found that my library has a VHS of it under the title Dream of Light. \:D/ Also, the original Spanish title is El Sol del Membrillo, which literally means The Sun of whatever the hell a membrillo is, presumably a quince tree, whatever that is. Anyway, just thought I'd mention these alternate titles to anyone having trouble locating it.

[zedz]

The Quince Tree Sun (Erice)

I was having a hard time finding this under this title, but found that my library has a VHS of it under the title Dream of Light. \:D/ Also, the original Spanish title is El Sol del Membrillo, which literally means The Sun of whatever the hell a membrillo is, presumably a quince tree, whatever that is. Anyway, just thought I'd mention these alternate titles to anyone having trouble locating it.

Eek, I forgot about that grotesque American release title. For the desperate or those who have just won a lottery, there's a superb English subtitled double disc of this available in Spain but only it seems as an exclusive from fnac (as El sol del membrillo, natch), which means you get to pay outrageous shipping costs.

[reassurance]

A few I didn't see mentioned (though I didn't read every post), or figured they needed to be re-mentioned.

Rosetta
The Living End
Human Resources
Leaving Las Vegas
Wittgenstein
Orlando
J'embrasse pas
Sombre
Ratcatcher
The Addiction

50 can be a really small number.

[zedz]

L'eau froide

Rewatched this old favourite on the weekend (to take the taste of a particularly bad recent teen angst film out of my mouth).

It was the first Assayas film I saw, and it might still be my favourite. It's up there with US Go Home as the best of the 'Tous les garcons et les filles de leur age' series, and both films are direct spiritual descendents of Pialat's Passe ton bac d'abord. L'eau froide is the darkest of the three, and probably the darkest of the 'Tous les garcons. . .' series, the one in which the desperation of adolescence breaks out of the minds and into the lives of the protagonists.

Like the Denis, it's largely a mood piece that strips its plot down to the basics in order to privilege the sights, sounds and feelings of fraught teendom. The film's signature shot is a sinuous, prowling travelling shot that stalks the action behind glass and foreground objects (frames, trees, walls, people), and which perfectly conveys the sense of unease and threat that haunts its central couple, young rebel Gilles and his troubled girlfriend Christine (a very young, amazing Virginie Ledoyen). Early in the film, there's a beautiful series of shots of Christine in the police station, her face framed between oblique slashes of the opaque frosted stripes on the internal windows. Later, we skulk behind trees while Gilles cycles through the misty woods declaiming Ginsberg.

The apotheosis of this technique, and one of my favourite shots of the decade, is the stunning 'morning after' plan-sequence which dips in and out of darkness as it tracks behind the walls of a ruin to surveys the sleepy rural landscape littered with kids after their all-night bacchanal - scored to Nico's hair-raising 'Janitor of Lunacy'.

That central party sequence is as brilliant as the one in US Go Home. Like Denis, Assayas seems to have taken the 'rules of the game' and constructed his entire film out of them. Although the situation and mood is somewhat similar, there's even more at stake in this film, and the party builds into a play-apocalypse while a real, personal apocalypse is transpiring somewhere in the background. The music (c.1973) is as perfectly programmed and sequenced as Denis's ('Me and Bobby McGee,' 'Cosmic Wheels,' School's Out,' 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door,' 'Avalanche,' 'Up Around the Bend,' 'Easy Livin',' 'Virginia Plain') and there's one particular moment of genius I don't think I've ever seen in a film before or since, but which sums up just how right this film gets the mood of this long sequence. Creedence's explosive 'Up Around the Bend' takes the musical baton from the lugubrious Cohen (a brilliant segue to start with) just as the kids start dragging the old furniture out of a nearby house and tossing it onto their bonfire. The music is so perfect in the moment that, partway into the sequence, somebody takes the needle off the record and starts the track again from the beginning. I've heard this happen enough times at real parties, but never before in a movie.

[colinr0380]

I certainly agree on L'eau froide, though I've not had much experience of the Pialat or the Denis films to accurately gauge how it fits in with films from the same time (though I thought I could sense a little of its influence on a film like Clubbed To Death a couple of years later).

I really liked the way that the sense of 'apocalypse' for the characters builds up and up (the arrest for shoplifting, the truancy, the fights with parents and being sent to a detention centre) until that final night of the party, which becomes a final night of abandon of responsibility and of rules for our main couple as well as a bid farewell to their old lives.

But instead of purely focusing on our couple being beaten down and driven apart by an uncaring society the film allows them to come across as unsympathetic (as when Ledoyen's character in the interview after her arrest for shoplifting says that she could easily claim that she was groped by one of the officers).

Also when we see the mother and stepfather appear at the party, who up to that point have been characterised by the arguments they've been having with their daughter, we see them sick with worry and willing to do anything to find them. It puts their earlier arguments into a caring context, and makes the teenage protagonists seem more deluded, anticipating an area explored more fully during the party sequence by the letter from a friend who 'escaped' to an idyllic rural life.

It all builds following the party sequence into a beautifully poetic and quiet scene of the couple setting out on their quest for this friend to join her commune lifestyle, and Gilles (in a childish manner unable to grasp the full significance of this act) willing to sacrifice any semblence of his normal life for the girl he loves, while Christine herself seems fully aware of the note being a pretext to simply escape to nowhere. The beautifully poetic final scene of Christine stripping nude and the couple making love in the outdoors is followed by Christine disappearing during the night, leaving Gilles to return to his father while she, like Sandrine Bonnaire in Vagabond (though without the finality!), disappears to an uncertain future beyond the boundaries of societal conventions.

[Camera Obscura]

Are there are any other list-worthy comedies for the 90s?

Buffalo 66

I'm with you on this, but we might have to barricade ourselves in the basement when the not-amused come calling.

What a wonderfully strange film. I loved it. Christina Ricci's little tapdance in the bowling alley is one of the most beautiful (and surreal) moments I've seen in a while, and the soundtrack is amazing - always a big plus. I'm glad I caught this one.

[zedz]

What a wonderfully strange film. I loved it. Christina Ricci's little tapdance in the bowling alley is one of the most beautiful (and surreal) moments I've seen in a while, and the soundtrack is amazing - always a big plus. I'm glad I caught this one.

Glad you liked it. The success of the soundtrack is all the more amazing given its provenance. It's the only time I've been able to stomach Yes. This is probably also the only time I've been able to stomach "bullet time" in a movie.

I know this is something of a cliche - and no doubt really annoying ten years after the fact - but this is a film that really benefits from being seen in a good print on a big screen. I can't remember all of the details, but the process Gallo chose was extremely exacting (35mm reversal stock, flashed) and in brand new prints on the big screen (something I was lucky enough to see twice) it looked like no other movie of its era. I've been waiting for Acord to match his work on this film ever since.

I've only skimmed this on DVD, and the transfer gives an OK account of the film, but nothing like the strange intensity of the 35mm.

[kaujot]

I've not seen Buffalo 66, though it's in my Netflix queue. I just have a hard time enjoying his films after reading his website.

[ptatler]

Anybody have IRMA VEP in their top ten?

[roujin]

I just have a hard time enjoying his films after reading his website.

His website is one of the more hilarious things I've ever read.

[kaujot]

Well, I guess virulent racism just doesn't tickle my funny bone.