See also the Internet Movie Database, to which some titles below are linked.
Here are the films I've seen recently, in reverse chronological order.
High Fidelity
Director: Stephen Frears
Venue: Plaza 1, Toronto, 2000-04-15
My Rating: 8/10
Frears rejoins John Cusack (whom he last directed in the 1990 film The Grifters) in this masterful adaptation of Nick Hornby's book. Cusack plays a pathetic, self-centred man who cannot take responsibility for his numerous faults or disastrous relationships with women, obsesses about music and Top 5 lists of everything, and steps out of character every few minutes to face the camera with a brutally honest and direct authorial self-assessment. And he makes you like him, and root for him to climb out of the bottomless pit that he's dug for his life. This would be enough to make it a good film, but the supporting roles of record store coworkers Todd Louiso and Jack Black deserve a film of their own, and I can't get enough of Iben Hjejle and Lisa Bonet on screen.
Dogma
Director: Kevin Smith
Venue: Music Hall, 2000-04-13
My Rating: 4/10
Kristen's Rating: 5/10
I really wanted to enjoy this film, and I'd still recommend it especially to anyone with a Catholic background in search of light humour. But it was disappointing to see a basically funny idea (angels and ordinary modern human beings trying to avoid an apocalypse) turned into a mediocre movie by a poor final script, outstandingly bad editing and a senseless waste of the comedic talents of a great cast.
Romeo Must Die
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Venue: Uptown 1, 2000-03-27
My Rating: 6/10
Kristen's Rating: 7/10
If you're a diehard Jet Li fan, you will probably still enjoy this film, but it's mostly a disappointment. There are far too few fight scenes for a martial arts movie and too many for anything else. There's too much plot for a martial arts movie and not enough for anything else. I did like the computer animated sequences of bones breaking, but again, they only used the effect three times, which is either too often or not often enough.
Worst though is the way this film has been targeted. If you're not Asian or black, you'll wonder what you're doing in the theatre. Is there really no greater market for martial arts film?
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Venue: Varsity, 2000-03-20
My Rating: 8/10
Kristen's Rating: 7/10
Forest Whitaker plays a flawless hit man who has steeped himself in bushido and sworn fealty to his clueless Mafia boss. Things begin to go wrong when the overlord's equally Japanophile daughter witnesses her boyfriend's execution. The plot progresses inexorably but with Jarmusch's characteristic unhurried pace to a very satisfying final conflict between the Way of the Samurai and the Way of the Cowboy.
The Big Sleep
Director: Howard Hawks
Venue: VHS rental, 1999-12-14
My Rating: 9/10
Kristen's Rating: 8/10
I loved the book, but preferred the film. This time round, I read along while I watched, and got the best of both. The film adds the famous Bogart-Bacall dialogue, and simplifies the plot only as necessary to fit the medium.
The World Is Not Enough
Director: Michael Apted
Venue: Uptown 1, Toronto
My Rating: 5/10
Kristen's Rating: 5/10
The first 2/3 of this film is great, except for choppy editing. Q's apprentice is splendidly cast (don't look it up if you don't know, let it surprise you), and the obligatory chase scenes are well executed and connected by more plot than was either strictly necessary or expected. Brosnan continues his excellent work, but in the end, it's just not enough. We do not get the standard Bond spectacular finale; the villain is inadequate, annoying, insufficiently evil, not at all maniacal and surprisingly poorly acted; and maybe I'm just happily married but I was dissatisfied with the Bond Girl. And if you can't get out of the film before the last line of dialogue, for Heaven's sake, plug your ears and hum "dum-da-da-dum...".
Election
Director: Alexander Payne
Venue: VHS rental, 1999-11-23
My Rating: 8/10
Kristen's Rating: 8/10
This film was not at all what I was led to expect by its marketing. While it returns Matthew Broderick to a high school setting, it has very little to do with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one of my favorite films of the 1980s. Election is superficially about what happens when civics teacher Broderick interferes in a school election, but the plot is almost irrelevant in what turns out to be a brilliant portrayal of the dichotomy between how each character sees his or her self, and how he or she is viewed by other people. We are constantly entertained by wildly conflicting internal monologues in this very cynical but hilarious film.
End of Days
Director: Peter Hyams
Venue: York, Toronto, 1999-11-22
My Rating: 2/10
Kristen's Rating: 2/10
This is what happens when you put a good action film director together with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a religious horror film. Every time the least amount of suspense starts to build up, the adrenaline gets blown away by a gory fight scene. Don't get me started about the religious stereotyping here, either. You won't catch anyone wearing a cross in this film who isn't either a doddering ineffective fool or a superhuman fanatic. How do films like this end up being made?
Lautrec
Director: Roger Planchon (FR)
Venue: TIFF, Varsity 8, Toronto, 1998-09-19
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
Pleasantville
Director: Gary Ross (US)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-09-18
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
Rain, Drizzle and Fog
Director: Rosemary House (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-17
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
When Ponds Freeze Over
Director: Mary Lewis (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-17
My Rating: 9/10
Review to follow. Much deserved winner of this year's National Film Board John Spotton Award for Best Short Film.
Michael in the Suête
Director: Neal Livingston (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-17
My Rating: 6/10
Review to follow.
Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree Story
Director: Errol Williams (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-17
My Rating: 6/10
Review to follow.
Le dîner de cons
Director: Francis Veber (FR)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 2, Toronto, 1998-09-16
My Rating: 9/10
Review to follow. My favorite film of the festival is... I can't stand it... a French comedy.
Extraordinary Visitor
Director: John W. Doyle (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-16
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
Detective Riko
Director: Satoshi Isaka (JP)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 4, Toronto, 1998-09-15
My Rating: 9/10
Review to follow.
Bombay Boys
Director: Kaizad Gustad (IN)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 3, Toronto, 1998-09-15
My Rating: 7/10
Review to follow.
Beautiful Sunday
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima (JP)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 1, Toronto, 1998-09-15
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
Dog Park
Director: Bruce McCulloch (CA)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-09-15
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
The Last Contract
Director: Kjell Sundvall (SE)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 1, Toronto, 1998-09-14
My Rating: 5/10
Review to follow.
Jerry and Tom
Director: (Saul Rubinek, US)
Venue: TIFF, Cumberland 2, Toronto, 1998-09-14
My Rating: 9/10
Review to follow.
Elizabeth
Director: Shekhar Kapur (UK)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-09-14
My Rating: 8/10
Review to follow.
Hai Shan Hua (Flowers of Shanghai)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien (TW/JP)
Venue: TIFF, Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-09-11
My Rating: 5/10
I liked what I saw of this film, though I found it impossible to stay awake through it all. Soothing music, fadeouts every two minutes that made me think my eyelids were drooping again, and a languid storytelling pace must have had something to do with that. It's a well written, beautifully filmed story of the women and patrons of a late 19th century brothel in Shanghai. No sex, just the gamut of human emotions. Would make a great book.
Saving Private Ryan
Director: Steven Spielberg
Venue: Cumberland 2, Toronto, 1998-08-21
My Rating: 6/10
Too heavy on the gratuitously graphic depictions of the horrors of war, too light on story and character, and a good cast isn't given enough to work with. Fun to go see if you like watching people and materiel blowing up.
The Avengers
Venue: Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-08-14
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Lethal Weapon 4
Venue: Uptown 3, Toronto, 1998-08-07
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Kung Fu Cult Warrior
Venue: Bloor, Toronto, 1998-08-04
My Rating: 6/10
To be reviewed.
Out of Sight
Venue: Varsity 6, Toronto, 1998-07-31
My Rating: 9/10
To be reviewed.
Zorro
Venue: Varsity 8, Toronto, 1998-07-28
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Lethal Weapon 4
Venue: Market Square 4, Toronto, 1998-07-19
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Mulan
Venue: Plaza 2, Toronto, 1998-07-19
My Rating: 9/10
To be reviewed.
X Files
Venue: Varsity 8, Toronto, 1998-06-30
My Rating: 6/10
To be reviewed.
Mulan
Venue: Plaza 2, Toronto, 1998-06-23
My Rating: 9/10
To be reviewed.
Godzilla
Venue: Uptown 3, Toronto, 1998-06-16
My Rating: 5/10
To be reviewed.
Six Days, Seven Nights
Venue: Uptown 1, Toronto, 1998-06-12
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
The Truman Show
Venue: Cumberland 2, Toronto, 1998-06-09
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
The Truman Show
Venue: Cumberland 2, Toronto, 1998-06-09
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Quest for Camelot
Venue: Silver City, Richmond Hill, 1998-06-05
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Lost In Space
Venue: Varsity 3, Toronto, 1998-05-19
My Rating: 3/10
To be reviewed someday when I can get a good head of invective going.
Replacement Killers
Venue: Music Hall, Toronto, 1998-05-05
My Rating: 6/10
To be reviewed.
Mr. Nice Guy
Venue: Central Parkway 4, Mississauga, 1998-04-18
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Grease (rerelease)
Venue: Uptown 3, Toronto, 1998-04-14
My Rating: 7/10
To be reviewed.
Titanic
Venue: Cumberland 1, Toronto, 1998-04-05
My Rating: 9/10
To be reviewed.
The Man in the Iron Mask
Venue: Plaza, Toronto, 1998-03-25
My Rating: 7/10
To be reviewed.
Wilde
Venue: Grand Teatret, Copenhagen, 1998-03-21
My Rating: 8/10
To be reviewed.
Kundun
My Rating: 9/10
To be reviewed.
Wings of the Dove
My Rating: 6/10
To be reviewed.
Spice World (UK, 1997)
Director: Bob Spiers
My Rating: 8/10
It's true! They Don't Just Sing! They also hire a spectacular cameo cast, from Meat Loaf to Roger Moore, worth the price of admission on their own. (I feel compelled to say something like that, to avoid admitting that I liked the music.)
Oscar & Lucinda (Australia/USA, 1997)
Director: Gillian Armstrong
My Rating: 8/10
Charming period film about a couple of young oddballs who fall hopelessly in love and decide to transport a glass church halfway across Australia. Very unlike the Dickensian Booker Prize-winning novel, especially in its relatively happy ending.
The Gingerbread Man (US, 1998)
Director: Robert Altman
My Rating: 4/10
This film (story by John Grisham) has its moments, but they're too few. The final plot twists are too easy to predict, and while I was impressed with Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of a slimy Southern lawyer, I wondered why he was wasting his considerable talents doing so.
Swept from the Sea (UK, 1997)
Director: Beeban Kidron
My Rating: 7/10
Review to come.
The Full Monty (UK, 1997)
Director: Peter Cattaneo
My Rating: 7/10
Review to come.
Wag The Dog (USA, 1997)
Director: Barry Levinson
My Rating: 8/10
Review to come.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (USA, 1997)
Director: Clint Eastwood
My Rating: 8/10
Review to come.
L.A. Confidential (USA, 1997)
Director: Curtis Hanson
My Rating: 9/10
I liked this even more the second time! The first time I saw it was as part of the (1997 Toronto) festival, and I can never fully appreciate a film when it's one of twenty I see in a week. This time, I knew all the characters and their ultimate fates, and still it was a delicious pleasure to watch all the pieces of the plot slide inexorably into place. I'll go see it a third time some day.
Jackie Brown (USA, 1997)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
My Rating: 8/10
This film, like its characters, never ruins a good story by rushing through it, nor does it try to spice up a bad one with action. I haven't enjoyed one quite like it since Pulp Fiction, and look forward to Tarantino's next.
Good Will Hunting (USA, 1997)
Director: Gus Van Sant Jr.
My Rating: 8/10
From a maximum of 10 possible marks for trying to make a good movie about a young combinatorics genius, deduct 1 point for being overambitious and trying to squeeze in four hours of drama and acting into two (no more though, because the right two were chosen), deduct 1 more point for the mathematical glitches (no more, because I got to make my first 'goofs' submission to the IMDB). Let's hope Affleck and Damon can meet this high standard in film-making again, with their next project.
Tomorrow Never Dies (UK/USA, 1997)
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
My Rating: 7/10
Pierce Brosnan is settling nicely into the role of James Bond, and after a week of catching glimpses of earlier Bond movies on WTBS, I'm happy to say he's running a close second to Sean Connery in my list of favorite Bonds. Michelle Yeoh steals a few scenes from him, and makes a wonderful partner and (I hope) a new addition to the canon. A fantastic title sequence, excellent chase scenes and the best car yet help balance the usual one-dimensional modern villain and predictable spectacular destruction of his secret base.
Anastasia (USA, 1997)
Directors: Don Bluth and Gary Goldman
My Rating: 6/10
I'm not sure why this animated film about the fictional escape of the last of the Romanovs scared Disney enough to pre-emptively re-release The Little Mermaid - they seem to be aimed at different markets. Anastasia, with its slow, depressing and long historical voiceover introduction and its amoral premise, is not a film I'd take my four-year-old godson to. I think the romantic plot and Meg Ryan's strong female lead (when was the last time the heroine defeated the villain and rescued the hero in a Disney film?) would recommend it though to pre-teen girls, and older girls and women who aren't embarrassed to go see animated films.
Quibble: I really couldn't stand the visual contrast between the lush, ornate backgrounds and the flat character animation, especially when it was emphasized by a third layer of falling snow that miraculously avoided both the characters and the backgrounds.
On the other hand, the voice casting was perfect, as were the animated mannerisms of the actors. I wish I'd recognised Kelsey Grammer before the credits rolled - I never seem to be able to spot his animated characters.
Deconstructing Harry (USA, 1997)
Director: Woody Allen
My Rating: 6/10
While this is of course Yet Another Woody Allen Movie, I'm always impressed by how original he can be within the confines of this genre. I was a little turned off by what seemed to be gratuitous profanity, but was otherwise completely satisfied with the entire experience. I won't describe it in any greater detail - if you like WAMs, you'll like this one, and if you don't, you won't.
Mad City (USA, 1997)
Director: Costa-Gavras
My Rating: 6/10
John Travolta's shines as a confused out-of-work museum security guard whose fight with his former boss gets manipulated into a media feeding frenzy by reporter Dustin Hoffman, who can't decide between ethics and lucre, and cutthroat anchorman Alan Alda, who never had a choice to make. Costa-Gavras is more than a little heavy-handed in his media-bashing, and Travolta is the only one who manages to build a real character out of what little the script gives him to work with. Worst, the arc of the plot progresses seemingly inexorably until, fifteen minutes before the end of the film, it collapses into an implausible, unsatisfying resolution.
Chongqing Senlin (Chung King Express) (Hong Kong, 1994)
Director: Wong Kar-Wai
My Rating: 7/10
(Seen on video) I can understand why some people list this among their favorite films of all time; it has a distinctive (and beautiful) cinematographic look, the two stories it tells about the love lives of two young Hong Kong policeman are touching, and I was alternately mesmerised and laughing throughout the film. My main problem with it is that the North American video release has nearly illegible subtitles, and aside from a few conversations in English and Japanese, most of the film is (I believe) in Cantonese with a bit of Mandarin, and having to freeze-frame to decipher the text distracted me from the flow of the camerawork.
Ghost (USA, 1990)
Director: Jerry Zucker
My Rating: 7/10
(Seen on video) Not being a huge Patrick Swayze or Demi Moore fan, and not being willing to admit to liking Jerry Zucker's work, I put off seeing this film for seven years. What foolish snobbery. Whoopi Goldberg's Oscar was well deserved - she steals every scene she's in as the psychic con artist turned unwilling genuine medium; ILM's POV-flying-through-matter effects are still impressive seven years later; and Bruce Joel Rubin's script manages to be both predictable and quirky, delightful and embarrassingly mushy. Even Swayze and Moore are well cast in their roles as the murder victim trying to save his alternately skeptical and desperately believing love from meeting the same fate.
Shall We Dansu? (Japan, 1996)
Director: Masayuki Suo
My Rating: 6/10
I saw the shorter North American release, entitled Shall We Dance, of this charming story about how a Japanese accountant's mid-life crisis takes him into the seedy world of ballroom dancing. Very funny in parts and sometimes schmaltzily heart-warming, the film could still use a bit of shortening to fit the shorter attention span over here.
The actors danced and sparred with the cameraman all through this film, the story of a charming but thick-skulled, seller but not reader of books, who happily plots simple-minded revenge on his ex-girlfriend's nightclub owner boyfriend. A researcher and his repeatedly fragile laptop get swept oup into the conflict, which proceeds inexorably to a surprising conclusion.
Onibi (Japan, 1996)
Director: Rokuro Mochizuki
My Rating: 6/10
Not a bad Japanese gangster film, the second (after Another Lonely Hitman) Mochizuki film based on a book by Yukio Yamanouchi. Author Yamanouchi appeared at the screening, to discuss his unique insights into the world of the yakuza, thanks to his role as lawyer for the Yamaguchi-gumi. Kunihiro is released from prison and ends up having to decide how strong his sense of obligation is to his yakuza family, and what his love for a young woman means to him. The subtitles were frequently amusing, but the most egregious mistranslation can't be discussed in polite company.
Chinese Box (Hong Kong, 1997)
Director: Wayne Wang
My Rating: 5/10
I really liked Wang's earlier film Smoke and came prepared to like this one too. There just wasn't much to like. Wang uses the return of Hong Kong to China this year as an excuse to make a film documenting pre-handover life, dressed up with an allegorical English protagonist who lies down and dies on July 1st, but I was left wondering what was the point of it all.
The Life of Stuff (UK, 1997)
Director: Simon Donald
My Rating: 1/10
Loathesome, vicious, pathetic, seedy characters being cruel, inane and disgusting. I sat through the "trick the floozie into eating a severed toe" scene, but left soon after during yet another vomiting scene.
Drive, She Said (Canada, 1997)
Director: Mina Shum
My Rating: 9/10
Seeing a good first feature is like finding a treasure; seeing a good second feature is like finding a friend. Shum proves that she has more inside her than Double Happiness with this fantasy that reminds me occasionally of the better moments of Thelma & Louise without ever losing its fresh originality. And I loved the opening credit sequence - Shum says that she scripted and storyboarded it all herself, no doubt in her copious spare time in between writing, directing, and acting in the film, and writing and performing part of its soundtrack.
bp (pushing the boundaries) (Canada, 1997)
Director: Brian Nash
My Rating: 8/10
Nash somehow manages to capture the essense of Canadian poet bp nichol in only sixty minutes, leaving the audience enthralled and wanting to learn more about this national treasure.
Grace Eternal (Canada, 1997)
Director: Neil Burns
My Rating: 7/10
Burns says that when he began making this film, he found that it was not at all an unusual fact of modern life that urban people with no social contacts can maintain a post-mortem economic existence of automatic debits and deposits for years before their deaths are discovered. This nine-minute film chronicles one such story, cleverly mixing live, time-lapse and animation footage.
We Are Experiencing... (Canada, 1997)
Director: John Kneller
My Rating: 6/10
Kneller takes several years of accumulated footage and reassembles them optically (not digitally) to make twelve minutes of captivating abstraction.
The Hazards of Falling Glass (Canada, 1997)
Director: John Martins-Manteiga
My Rating: 2/10
If you can't say anything nice about a six-minute short in which dancers pose awkwardly against Mies van der Rohe's Toronto-Dominion Centre, set to Beethoven's 9th Symphony, don't say anything.
[I received a private flame about the above paragraph in February 2001 from a student of a local art college whose reputation I prefer not to tarnish. I am told that it is inaccurate to refer to the performers in question as dancers, because their stylised movements were merely the contortions they were going through to adopt the pose of a statue at the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain in 1929, and that I would know this if I had taken ART 101. (If I'd only known, I would happily have taken it instead of FAH 203.) I am told further that the bad thing about the web is that people like myself can express my views, and that these views make me look bad, but that the film itself is "not the greatest". So take from this what you will. This is clearly a film that can be poorly appreciated by people of all backgrounds. ]
Eve's Bayou (USA, 1997)
Director: Kasi Lemmons
My Rating: 9/10
This mesmerizing film builds from a gripping opening and keeps getting better and better. Not quite a Greek tragedy transported to rural Louisiana in the early 1960's, the film gives a fresh glimpse at age-old family dynamics, as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl with the Sight.
Life During Wartime (USA, 1997)
Director: Evan Dunsky
My Rating: 8/10
It came as no surprise to me that this film was based on a Broadway play. Although the cinematography is beautifully rich, I would have enjoyed seeing the characters take the plot to its logical conclusion even on a bare stage. A young man gets involved in the unexpectedly seedy business of selling home security systems, falls in love with a customer and can't decide until the end whether his boss is a fundamentally good person, a petty crook, or a murderer.
Clockwatchers (USA, 1997)
Director: Jill Sprecher
My Rating: 6/10
Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach and Helen FitzGerald play four temps trapped in completely meaningless lives in this film of quiet desperation, self-doubt and the mindless tedium and persecution of office life. A hypnotic Muzak soundtrack and not quite surreal sets make a pleasant, if subdued and slow-moving film. Sprecher reports that at least one of the lead actresses is at present back at work as a temp.
Karakter (The Netherlands, 1997)
Director: Mike van Diem
My Rating: 7/10
Van Diem directs a talented cast in this wonderful adaptation of the novel by F. Bordewijk, a Dickensian work of larger-than-life characters and an unacknowledged son's struggle with his rich and powerful father in 1920's Rotterdam. It is astonishing that this is not only van Diem's first feature film, but that most of the principal cast are appearing on film for the first time, having come (says van Diem) from a theatre background.
C'est la tangente que je préfère (France, 1997)
Director: Charlotte Silvera
My Rating: 7/10
I went to see this film because of its (to me irresistible) English title Love, Math, Sex (outside of North America, Love, Maths, Sex), but with trepidations about choosing a film on such shallow grounds. I was pleasantly surprised with this story of a 15-year-old girl in Lille, filtering her experiences learning about love from an older man through her obsession with mathematics. The subtitles made a few mathematical gaffes (translating 'corps réel et complexe' as 'real and complex bodies'), but the opportunity to talk about the film with Silvera left me with a very positive feeling about the film. I asked her "Why math, rather than physics or chemistry?", to which she replied that while she didn't remember many of the details of her high school math, and retained one of the young stars of her previous film as a mathematical consultant, she was impressed by the way in which mathematics, and to a lesser extent the classics, imbued her with a sense of the possibilities of other worlds -- the sciences, she said, were too tied to the real world.
Inspirations (USA, 1997)
Director: Michael Apted
My Rating: 7/10
Apted interviews several artists - musician David Bowie, architect Tadao Ando, painter Roy Liechstenstein, sculptor Tadao Ando, dancer Louise Lecavalier, choreographer Édouard Lock and glass artist Dale Chihuly - to investigate the nature of the creative process. The film appeals to me strongly as I begin work on my thesis, and resonates with my understanding of my own personal experience. It would have been easier to absorb had it been shorter, but I'd happily recommend watching it on video.
Apted was asked about the process by which he chose his subjects and created his film, and responded at length. He started with Liechtenstein and Chihuly for American commercial credibility, and then added the others to offer geographic, gender and media variety and sex. He had also planned out the chapters of the film in some detail, leaving only the selection of responses to edit after the interviews had taken place.
L.A. Confidential (USA, 1997)
Director: Curtis Hanson
My Rating: 8/10
If you liked The Usual Suspects, obsessively read Raymond Chandler novels, or just like seeing good cops, bad cops, gangsters and movie stars run through mazes of twistly little plot twists in 1950s Hollywood, you'll like this movie. If you meet all three criteria like me, you'll love it, and won't want to hear anything more about it before you see it.
Face (UK, 1997)
Director: Antonia Bird
My Rating: 5/10
Bird's earlier film, Priest, received a standing ovation at the festival in 1994. Face was received with a measure of polite disappointment appropriate to what the director introduced as an "unashamedly popularist" film, intended to lure a video generation into a rumoured "British film renascence" by appealing to their thirst for the Hollywood action movie formula. It succeeds in being dreary and pedantic in its condemnation of a criminal lifestyle, and doesn't aspire to be much more. I might have appreciated this film more, had I been able to understand the mumbled Estuary dialogue over the continuous drone of music and gunfire.
Loved (USA, 1997)
Director: Erin Dignam
My Rating: 10/10
This is my new favorite film of all time. I will reluctantly admit that it's not for everyone, but if the thought of a film that deals with all the non-storybook aspects of love - unconditional, obsessive, consuming love, parental love, filial love, sibling love, love of one's fellow human being - appeals at all to you, don't miss a chance to see this film. Dignam draws on a rare depth and understanding of personal experience, assembles a marvellous cast (including William Hurt and Robin Wright Penn), and conveys with grace and subtlety much that I thought impossible to put into words about the human experience of love.