1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
781
Rain man (Barry Levinson, 1988)
Rain man (Barry Levinson, 1988)
Rain Man is the kind of touching drama that Oscars are made for--and, sure enough, the film took Academy honors for best picture, director, screenplay, and actor (Dustin Hoffman) in 1988. Hoffman plays Raymond, an autistic savant whose late father has left him $3 million in a trust. This gets the attention of his materialistic younger brother, a hot-shot LA car dealer named Charlie (Tom Cruise) who wasn't even aware of Raymond's existence until he read his estranged father's will. Charlie picks up Raymond and takes him on a cross-country journey that becomes a voyage of discovery for Charlie, and, perhaps, for Raymond, too. Rain Man will either captivate you or irritate you (Raymond's sputtering of repetitious phrases is enough to drive anyone crazy), but it is obviously a labor of love for those involved. Hoffman had been attached to the film for many years, as various directors and writers came and went, but his persistence eventually paid off--kind of like Raymond in Las Vegas. Look for director Barry Levinson in a cameo as a psychiatrist near the end of the film.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
782
Une affaire de femmes (Story of women- Claude Chabrol, 1988)
Une affaire de femmes (Story of women- Claude Chabrol, 1988)
Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert) wants to be a singer, but she is a woman struggling against poverty in war-torn France, with two children to feed and a husband away fighting. When a neighbor becomes pregnant, Marie performs an abortion and is rewarded for her services with a Victrola. It's a small step from the Victrola to an income, and Marie finds that she likes to live comfortably and feed her children well. Her husband Paul (Francois Cluzet) returns and attempts to coerce her into being the type of wife he imagines he wants, but Marie insists on running things her way, and her husband is relegated to the role he imagined for her. She finds contentment in her power (merely the power to be herself and pursue her desires), but things are terribly out of balance in the world she was born into and eventually revenge is exacted. Claude Chabrol (Madame Bovary) has created a remarkably complex and poignant film about a very complex subject: the true story of the last woman to be executed in France by guillotine. An important film to see.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
783
Drowning by numbers (Peter Greenaway, 1988)
Drowning by numbers (Peter Greenaway, 1988)
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was entered into the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.
The film's plot centers on three women — a grandmother, mother and daughter — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, and Joely Richardson. Bernard Hill plays the coroner Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.
The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett's son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film.
Number-counting, game rules and the plot's repetitions are devices that emphasize structure and symmetry in Drowning by Numbers. Through the course of the film the numbers one to one hundred appear in order, sometimes seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
784
Něco z Alenky (Alice- Jan Svankmajer, 1988)
Něco z Alenky (Alice- Jan Svankmajer, 1988)
This adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland mixes animation and live action to create a dreamlike world, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's simply a kid's film. Young Alice (Kristyna Kohoutová, spoken by Camilla Power) watches a stuffed and mounted rabbit come to life in her playroom and follows it through a magical drawer into a strange world that resembles a 19th-century toy store come to life, with a few specimens from a natural history museum thrown in. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer retains the familiar story elements but tweaks them with bizarre imagery brought to herky-jerky life with his spasmodic style of stop-motion animation. The caterpillar becomes a sock puppet with dentures, while other crazy creatures materialize as creepy skull-headed beings that bleed sawdust. Throughout the tale Svankmajer returns to punctuating close-ups of Alice's lips telling the story, just to remind us that this is a tale told. In the best surrealist tradition Svankmajer uses familiar objects in unfamiliar ways, giving a fantasy quality to the banal (and the not so banal) while tipping the dream logic to the edge of nightmare. While the imagery remains more unsettling than genuinely disturbing, younger children will certainly be happier with Disney's brightly colored animated classic Alice in Wonderland. Older children and adults will better appreciate Svankmajer's sly visual wit and unusual animation style.
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785
Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
A sumptuously mounted and photographed celebration of artful wickedness, betrayal, and sexual intrigue among depraved 18th-century French aristocrats, Dangerous Liaisons (based on Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses) is seductively decadent fun. The villainous heroes are the Marquise De Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte De Valmont (John Malkovich), who have cultivated their mutual cynicism into a highly developed and exquisitely mannered form of (in-)human expression. Former lovers, they now fancy themselves rather like demigods whose mutual desires have evolved beyond the crudeness of sex or emotion. They ritualistically act out their twisted affections by engaging in elaborate conspiracies to destroy the lives of their less calculating acquaintances, daring each other to ever-more-dastardly acts of manipulation and betrayal. Why? Just because they can; it's their perverted way of getting get their kicks in a dead-end, pre-Revolutionary culture. Among their voluptuous and virtuous prey are fair-haired angels played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman, who have never looked more ripe for ravishing. When the Vicomte finds himself beset by bewilderingly genuine emotions for one of his victims, the Marquise considers it the ultimate betrayal and plots her heartless revenge. Dangerous Liaisons is a high-mannered revel for the actors, who also include Swoosie Kurtz, Mildred Natwick, and Keanu Reeves.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
786
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
(David Zucker, 1988)
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
(David Zucker, 1988)
David Zucker--of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker creative troika behind Airplane! and television's Police Squad!--directed this 1988 feature film based on the latter show. Leslie Nielsen returns to his old TV role of Lt. Frank Drebin, the deadpan idiot with a detective's badge. The reinvention of the failed series as a theatrical feature seems to have inspired everyone involved to make a pretty funny movie, and the jokes gather a momentum that lasts until the final act. Ricardo Montalban is a perfect foil as a villain whose aquarium is being invaded by Drebin during routine questioning, and George Kennedy is delightful in a self-parodying part as an earnest but obtuse lawman. There's a hilarious bit when Drebin--wearing a live police wire while going to the bathroom--can be overheard over the loudspeakers at a speech given by a flustered mayor (Nancy Marchand). Yes, that's O.J. Simpson as a detective who ends up on the wrong side of numerous Drebin blunders.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
787
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios
(Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown-
Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios
(Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown-
Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
Pepa is having a crisis. Her lover is leaving her and now her doctor tells her she is pregnant. Her best friend may be wanted by the police for her association with a Shiite terrorist. And now her lover's psychotic wife is knocking at the door. Can she catch up with her lover, protect her friend, arrange a new romance for her lover's son, dodge the police, and disarm her lover's wife in time to foil an international terrorist plot? Well... maybe after she serves her guests some gazpacho.
In any other hands WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN would collapse into mere frantic farce, but Almodovar directs Carmen Marua and an ensemble cast to a brilliant series of plausible performances that allows the viewer to buy into the story, improbabilities and all--and the result is a hilarious, touching, and fascinating film that is considerably more than the sum of its parts. This is certainly comedy at its most sophistocated, splashed with social satire and spangled with a touch of symbolism for those inclined to seek it.
A number of motifs run through the film--recorded voices, telephones, and the color red are but a few examples--but Almodovar doesn't force his audience to deconstruct his film in order to enjoy it, and WOMEN ON THE VERGE is easily one of the funniest European films of the past fifty years. Those who expect farce plain and simple or who like their movies to tie up into a neat package by the time the credits roll may be disappointed--but if you can make a leap of faith and meet the film on its own terms you'll find it sly, witty, often laugh-out-loud funny... and it will leave you with a feel-good afterglow too. Strongly, strongly recommended.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
788
Spoorloos (The vanishing- George Sluizer, 1988)
Spoorloos (The vanishing- George Sluizer, 1988)
When a young Dutchman discovers that his girlfriend has gone missing during their return to Holland from a bicycling trip in France, he begins a three-year search that forms the basis of this unsettling psychological thriller from 1988, originally titled Spoorloos. The missing woman's whereabouts remain a mystery, but the film provides an early introduction to her abductor, a seemingly normal family man whose domestic tranquility hides a meticulous, methodical madness. As the despondent husband advertises all over France and Holland for his missing wife, this game of cat-and-mouse escalates into a strategy of psychological horror, revealing certain facts and merely suggesting others to create an intense atmosphere of dread and anticipation. A film that Alfred Hitchcock would certainly have admired, The Vanishing leads to an unforgettable conclusion that's sure to send chills down your spine. Ironically, this film's director, George Sluizer, also made the inferior 1993 American remake starring Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges.
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789
Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
Bull Durham is about minor league baseball. It's also about romance, sex, poetry, metaphysics, and talent--though not necessarily in that order. Susan Sarandon plays a loopy lady who just loves America's national pastime--and the men who play it. At the opening of every season, she attaches herself to a promising rookie and guides him through the season. Unfortunately, the player she bestows her favors upon does not really deserve it. She knows it, and veteran Kevin Costner knows it. Her choice, a dim bulb played for laughs by Tim Robbins, is the only one who doesn't know it. The film, directed by its writer, Ron Shelton, a former minor league player, is rich in subtle detail. There are Edith Piaf records playing in the background, fast-talking managers, and minor characters as developed as the leads. Sarandon's retro-'50s outfits make you think she's just another bimbo, not an English teacher very much in control of her life. And Costner's clear-eyed, slightly vitriolic performance is devastatingly sexy and keenly witty. The love scenes, though tasteful, are almost as humorous as they are hot. Sarandon's character likes to tie her players up and expand their horizons by reading Walt Whitman to them, "'cause a guy will listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay." How can you not love a movie with such a wicked sense of humor?
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790
Ariel (Aki Kaurismaki, 1988)
Ariel (Aki Kaurismaki, 1988)
Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki may not have become a household name in arthouse circles until the U.S. release of Match Factory Girl in 1992, but by then he had already established an international reputation with Ariel, which was named the Best Foreign Language Film of 1991 by the National Society of Film Critics. A series of unfortunate events befall the film's hero, Taisto (Turo Pajala). First, he loses his job when the mine closes down. A suicidal friend gives him a car, and Taisto takes all his money and heads to the city to find work. He's quickly robbed by a couple of thugs, and shows up in town with no money and no job. Soon, he meets Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto), a resourceful divorcée who works a wide variety of jobs to support her young son and pay off their mortgage. "Will you disappear in the morning?" Irmeli dryly asks on their first night together. "No," Taisto responds emotionlessly, "We'll be together forever." Unable to find work, Taisto tries to sell his car. But then he runs into one of the men who robbed him, who pulls a knife on him. Taisto manages to disarm the man, and is subduing him when the police arrive. Taisto is convicted of assault and attempted robbery. He winds up in a cell with Mikkonen (Matti Pellonpää), who is in prison for manslaughter. He claims he's innocent, but tells Taisto that by the time he gets out of jail, he "won't be able to go three hours without killing someone." When Irmeli comes for a visit, Taisto impulsively proposes, and before long, she's helping him and Mikkonen plot their escape.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
791
The thin blue line (Errol Morris, 1988)
The thin blue line (Errol Morris, 1988)
This landmark award-winning documentary, which revolutionized the form and helped acquit an innocent man of murder, came about almost by accident. Errol Morris had already directed such offbeat documentaries as Gates of Heaven (concerning pet cemeteries; a favorite of Roger Ebert's) and Vernon, Florida, which touchingly portrays the small town's eccentric inhabitants. He'd intended to travel to Texas to make a film about the criminal-psychiatry expert James Grigson, or "Dr. Death" as he came to be known for his frequent testimony against defendants, who were often then sent to death row. When Morris discovered that the doctor was involved in the trial of Randall Dale Adams, a man who, it seemed, had been falsely accused of the highway murder of a police officer, he decided that Adams's story was the real one to tell. Morris's innovative use of repeated dramatization, multiple points of view, talking-head and phone interviews, and symbolism--in concert with Philip Glass's haunting music--establishes that a combination of communitarian zeal and overly eager testimony persuaded the jury to find Adams, a "drifter" from the Midwest, guilty of the crime, instead of his underage (and, for the death penalty, ineligible) acquaintance, David Harris, who had a criminal record. The "thin blue line" of police officers separating the public from chaos--as the judge, quoting the D.A. in the case, has it--destabilizes in Morris's world and puts people at risk of injustice as often as it protects them. After serving time for a sentence commuted to life imprisonment, Adams was freed, making Errol Morris his most talented advocate.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
792
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)
Artist-writer Katsuhiro Ôtomo began telling the story of Akira as a comic book series in 1982 but took a break from 1986 to 1988 to write, direct, supervise, and design this animated film version. Set in 2019, the film richly imagines the new metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, which is designed from huge buildings down to the smallest details of passing vehicles or police uniforms. Two disaffected orphan teenagers--slight, resentful Tetsuo and confident, breezy Kaneda--run with a biker gang, but trouble grows when Tetsuo start to resent the way Kaneda always has to rescue him. Meanwhile, a group of scientists, military men, and politicians wonder what to do with a collection of withered children who possess enormous psychic powers, especially the mysterious, rarely seen Akira, whose awakening might well have caused the end of the old world. Tetsuo is visited by the children, who trigger the growth of psychic and physical powers that might make him a superman or a supermonster. As befits a distillation of 1,318 pages of the story so far, Akira is overstuffed with character, incident, and detail. However, it piles up astonishing set pieces: the chases and shootouts (amazingly kinetic, amazingly bloody) benefit from minute cartoon detail that extends to the surprised or shocked faces of the tiniest extra; the Tetsuo monster alternately looks like a billion-gallon scrotal sac or a Tex Avery mutation of the monster from The Quatermass Experiment; and the finale--which combines flashbacks to more innocent days with a destruction of Neo City and the creation of a new universe--is one of the most mind-bending in all sci-fi cinema.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
793
Cinema Paradiso
(Nuovo Cinema Paradiso- Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
Cinema Paradiso
(Nuovo Cinema Paradiso- Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
Giuseppe Tornatore's beautiful 1988 film about a little boy's love affair with the movies deservedly won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Philippe Noiret plays a grizzled old projectionist who takes pride in his presentation of screen dreams for a town still recovering from World War II. When a child (Jacques Perrin) demonstrates fascination not only for movies but also for the process of showing them to an audience, a lifelong friendship is struck. This isn't just one of those films for people who are already in love with the cinema. But if you are one of those folks, the emotional resonance between the action in Tornatore's world and the images on Noiret's screen will seem all the greater--and the finale all the more powerful.
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794
Hotel Terminus (Marcel Ophuls, 1988)
Hotel Terminus (Marcel Ophuls, 1988)
This brilliantly constructed documentary presents the story of Klaus Barbie--head of the Gestapo in Lyon, France, during the Nazi occupation--by amassing interviews with those who came into contact with the notorious war criminal. The many interviewees speak at length (accounting for the documentary's total running time of more than four hours), and an image of Barbie as both a real person and a symbol of evil slowly emerges. Those who knew him as a student profess to be puzzled over his later reputation, but a woman who served in the French resistance and was beaten nearly to death by Barbie solemnly recounts the hideous tortures he inflicted on her. Filmmaker Marcel Ophüls (The Sorrow and the Pity) spoke to a number of resistance veterans, aging Nazis, and even retired American intelligence agents who employed Barbie to spy on Communists following the end of World War II. When Ophüls conducted interviews in the mid-1980s, Barbie was an old man languishing in a French jail after decades of living comfortably in South America. Memories of him, and all the pain he inflicted, were still vivid. As the many interview subjects speak (some slam doors and even punch at the camera), their own characters and motivations are revealed, and the truly unsettling character of Klaus Barbie is exposed.
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795
A fish called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)
A fish called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)
Kevin Kline took home an Oscar for his performance as a self-absorbed lothario who prepares for lovemaking by drinking in his own "manly" musk, but it would be hard to single him out as the best thing about the film. The fact is, the entire cast of this hilarious comedy is perfect: John Cleese as the conservative barrister defending a member of sexy Jamie Lee Curtis's gang, Ms. Curtis as the conniving crook out to grab the haul for herself, and Michael Palin as the stuttering, animal-loving hit man whose attempts to murder a little old lady only decrease the size of her poodle pack. Cleese cowrote the zingy script with British comedy veteran Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob), whose smooth direction balances Monty Python farce, hysterically tasteless gags, and an unexpectedly romantic subplot with style and confidence.
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797
Roger and me (Michael Moore, 1989)
Roger and me (Michael Moore, 1989)
Roger and Me is a loose, smart-alecky documentary directed and narrated by Michael Moore, an everyman host with a devastating wit and a working-class pose. When his hometown is devastated by the plant closure of an American corporate giant (making record profits, one should note), the hell-raising political commentator with a prankster streak tries to turn his camera on General Motors Chairman Roger B. Smith, the elusive Roger of the title, and the film is loosely structured around Moore's odyssey to track down the corporate giant for an interview.
While Moore ambushes his corporate subjects like a blue-collar Geraldo Rivera, a guerrilla interviewer who treasures his comic rebuffs as much as his interviews, his portraits of the colorful characters he meets along the way can be patronizing. The famous come off as absurdly out of touch (Anita Bryant appears for some can-do cheerleading, and hometown celebrity Bob Eubanks tells some boorish jokes), and the disenfranchised poor (notably an unemployed woman who sells rabbit meat to make ends meet) all too often appear as buffoons or hicks. But behind his loose play with the facts and snarky attitude is a devastating look at the victims of downsizing in the midst of the 1980s economic boom. This portrait of Reagan's America and the tarnish on the American dream comes down to a simple question: what is corporate America's responsibility to the country's citizens? That's a question no one at GM wants to answer.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
798
Astenicheskiy sindrom (The Asthenic Syndrome- Kira Muratova, 1989)
Astenicheskiy sindrom (The Asthenic Syndrome- Kira Muratova, 1989)
Some films and filmmakers don't budge an inch from their artistic visions, regardless of whether they are easy for the viewer to understand or tolerate, and (in this case) regardless of the inevitable disapproval of the state censors. Award-winning Russian director Kira Muratova has put together such a grimly comic film here, in two segments - one of them black and white. In the opening (black and white) segment, a woman doctor, is coping very badly with the recent death of her husband; she refuses to treat one of her patients and later goes out on the streets and picks up a drunk and takes him home with her for sex. In the next segment, a film school teacher asks his students what they thought of the previous segment. Interspersed with the student's characteristically self-serving and uninsightful answers are moments of bleak beauty, as when a lonely overweight woman, totally ignored by her son, plays a moving solo of "Strangers In The Night" on the trumpet.
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799
Sex, lies and videotapes (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)
Sex, lies and videotapes (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)
Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, sex, lies, and videotape transformed the independent film industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Sly, seductive, and coolly intelligent, the movie explores the sexual shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, revolving around a selfish lawyer (Peter Gallagher) who responds to his wife by having an affair with her free-spirited sister (Laura San Giacomo). But when the lawyer's college roommate (James Spader) arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife (Andie MacDowell) is surprisingly responsive to his seductive hobby of videotaping women as they describe their sexual fantasies. It's his way of compensating for impotence, but the curious wife considers this a sexual challenge, and Soderbergh turns sex, lies, and videotape into a fascinating chamber piece that puts a decidedly different spin on the consequences of infidelity. Balanced on a risky and finely tuned performance by Spader, the film delivers frisky passion and emotional intrigue, and yet much of its allure is found in the exchange of secrets and the hidden mysteries of sexual desire.
Última edición por JM el Miér Dic 16, 2009 3:36 pm, editado 1 vez
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
800
Say anything... (Cameron Crowe, 1989)
Say anything... (Cameron Crowe, 1989)
Seven years after he earned his first screen credit as the writer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, former Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe made his directorial debut with this acclaimed romantic comedy starring John Cusack and Ione Skye as unlikely lovers on the cusp of adulthood. The casting is perfect, and Crowe's rookie direction is appropriately unobtrusive, no doubt influenced by his actor-loving, Oscar-winning mentor, James L. Brooks. But the real strength of Crowe's work is his exceptional writing, his timely grasp of contemporary rhythms and language (he's frequently called "the voice of a generation"), and the rich humor and depth of his fully developed characters. In Say Anything... Cusack and Skye play recent high school graduates enjoying one final summer before leaping into a lifetime of adult responsibilities. Lloyd (Cusack) is an aspiring kickboxer with no definite plans; Diane (Skye) is a valedictorian with intentions to further her education in Europe. Together they find unlikely bliss, but there's also turbulence when Diane's father (John Mahoney)--who only wants what's best for his daughter--is charged with fraud and tax evasion. Favoring strong performances over obtrusive visual style, Crowe focuses on his unique characters and the ambitions and fears that define them; the movie's a treasure trove of quiet, often humorous revelations of personality. Lili Taylor and Eric Stoltz score high marks for memorable supporting roles, and Cusack's own sister Joan is perfect in scenes with her onscreen and offscreen brother. A rare romantic comedy that's as funny as it is dramatically honest, Say Anything... marked the arrival of a gifted writer-director who followed up with the underrated Singles before scoring his first box-office smash with Jerry Maguire.
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801
The unbelievable truth (Hal Hartley, 1989)
The unbelievable truth (Hal Hartley, 1989)
The films of Hal Hartley, New York's modern beatnik cinema laureate, are not for everyone. His self-consciously clever ping-pong dialogue sounds like a cross between song lyrics and Samuel Beckett, while his deadpan direction gives a wry cast to it all. It's romantic comedy skewed through a thoroughly modern perspective, and it sprung fully formed in his debut feature. Gloomy redheaded pixie Adrienne Shelly, a neurotic high school student fixated on doomsday scenarios, falls for the tall, dark, and mysterious Robert Burke, a black-clad, philosophy-spouting mechanic who is constantly mistaken for a priest and rumored to be a convicted murderer.
An enigmatic, intellectually playful farce played with ironic understatement, Hartley's austere film was shot on the cheap with a handsome, restrained style and directed with an approach straddling verbal slapstick and modernist irony. Shelly mixes the goofy, obsessive distractions of a screwball heroine with smarts, determination, and hardball negotiating skills, while Burke's quiet calm and confidence radiates warmth and sincerity even while playing the loner. Hartley explores the line between truth and rumor, and he takes satirical swipes at the culture of cash and contracts--yet for all his irony he remains an optimist. For all its hip '90s attitude, the unbelievable truth is that Hartley is a romantic at heart.
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802
Beiqing chengshi (A city of sadness- Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989)
Beiqing chengshi (A city of sadness- Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989)
A previous poster described this film as a Taiwanese Godfather, but better. Indeed, this film has a lot similarities to godfather, in which the most notable is the condensation of an entire nation into the life of one single family. Even though I never really come to love other Hou's films, City of Sadness is a flawless epic that truthfully depict an era that is forgotten by most of my generation. I have heard those stories from my paternal grandparents, who are like people portrait in the film, grass root Taiwanese. I have also heard stories from my maternal grandparents, who are the late comers from mainland China. The entire different perspectives surprised me that in such a small nation, mistrust is still profoundly rooted and transmitted via generations. City of Sadness portraits this image so hauntingly and yet with beautiful and quiet transcendence seeing the turmoil through the eyes of the deaf and mute son of the Lin family. Taiwan, the city of sadness, is eternally sorrowful because of its rootlessness, which until today, still runs in my blood.
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803
Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989)
Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989)
One of the finest films ever made about the American Civil War, Glory also has the honor of being the first major Hollywood film to acknowledge the vital contribution of African American soldiers to the country's historic struggle. Based on the books Lay This Laurel, by Lincoln Kirstein, and One Gallant Rush, by Peter Burchard, and the wartime letters of Robert Gould Shaw, the film tells the story of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-black unit comprising Northern freemen and escaped slaves. Under the command of Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick), the 54th served admirably in battle until they made their ultimate demonstration of bravery during the almost suicidal assault on the Confederate Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863. Glory achieves its powerful impact by meticulously setting up the terrible conditions under which these neglected soldiers fought, and by illuminating the tenacity of the human spirit from the oppression of slavery to the hard-won recognition of battlefield heroism. Although Denzel Washington deservedly won an Oscar for his supporting role as a runaway-slave-turned-soldier, Glory faced some tough competition at the 1989 Academy Awards (against popular hits like Driving Miss Daisy and Dead Poets Society) and was shut out of nearly all the major categories. Since then, it's been duly recognized by historians and critics as a classic film of its genre.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
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Do the right thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Do the right thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colorful and exuberant for its first three-quarters that you can almost forget the terrible confrontation that the movie inexorably builds toward. Do the Right Thing is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece--maybe the best film ever made about race in America, revealing racial prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings. Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie shows the whole spectrum of life in this neighborhood and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the "right thing." Featuring Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlor owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal's sons; Lee's sister Joie as Mookie's sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie's girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie's hot-headed friend Buggin' Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L. Jackson as deejay Mister Señor Love Daddy. A rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure, and learn from--over and over again.
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
805
Dip huet seung hung (The killer- John Woo, 1989)
Dip huet seung hung (The killer- John Woo, 1989)
John Woo's 1989 Hong Kong action classic, a stylish, bullet-riddled elegy to friendship under fire, firmly established him as the maestro of mayhem. Superstar Chow Yun-Fat, Asia's king of cool, plays the most charming hit man ever (and yes, he only takes contracts on those who deserve it), but when one of his killings leaves an innocent nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) blinded, he dedicates his life to giving her back her sight. Danny Lee is the cop on his tail, but the two adversaries become unlikely comrades when the mob decides to cancel its debt to Chow by taking him out, leading to a beautifully filmed and incredibly violent confrontation. Woo places the showdown in a church and punctuates the acrobatic gunfight with images of religious icons, flying doves, and burning candles. An ode to Jean-Pierre Melville's existential gangster classic Le Samouria, Woo's delirious mix of melodrama and stylized action recalls the balletic bloodletting of Sam Peckinpah, the elegant camerawork of Martin Scorsese, and the operatic, larger-than-life grandeur of Sergio Leone. Woo's love of American musicals (and his own background as a dance instructor) adds a touch of grace to the fluid choreography of the action scenes. In terms of sheer action, Woo topped himself a few years later with Hard-Boiled, his Hong Kong swan song, but most critics still rate The Killer as his masterpiece.
JM- Cantidad de envíos : 1948
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Re: 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIII: 1985-1989
806
Batman (Tim Burton, 1986)
Batman (Tim Burton, 1986)
Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basinger plays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a takeover of the city with his lethal Smilex gas. Triumphant Oscar-winning production design by the late Anton Furst turns Batman into a visual feast, and Burton brilliantly establishes a darkly mythic approach to Batman's legacy. Danny Elfman's now-classic score propels the action with bold, muscular verve.
JM- Cantidad de envíos : 1948
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» 1001 films you must see before you die- Part I: Silent era
» 1001 films you must see before you die- Part II: 1930-1934
» 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIV: 1990-1994
» 1001 films you must see before you die- Part III: 1935-1939
» 1001 films you must see before you die Part XV: 1995-1999
» 1001 films you must see before you die- Part II: 1930-1934
» 1001 films you must see before you die Part XIV: 1990-1994
» 1001 films you must see before you die- Part III: 1935-1939
» 1001 films you must see before you die Part XV: 1995-1999
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