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Taboo (1999)
How am I insane?
Filmmaker(s): Nagisa Ōshima

Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.

Beautiful Face of the Senses" was an insidiously effective film: it tricked us into an obsession over sex with its frank and open explicitness. Thus, we became part of the story about sexual obsession. This does something similar, in a masterpiece of sorts in audience manipulation....


Published March 8, 2025
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Miss Julie (1999)
Worlds apart... bound by desire.
Filmmaker(s): Mike Figgis

A footman seduces a count's daughter. Adaptation of August Strindberg's famous play.

A Man and his Mistress what love does, when yearning crosses boundaries and makes someone see another as better than they really are. Here, it ends in suicide. I'm talking about Mike Figgis' view of girlfriend Saffron. A reliably trenchant play: a competent footman; a very...


Published February 26, 2025
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8 1/2 Women (1999)
If every man thinks of sex once every nine minutes, what does he think of the other eight?
Filmmaker(s): Peter Greenaway

Following the death of a mother, a father and son open up their very own harem in their Genevan estate after watching 8½.

Women: Types and Missteps master visual allegorist reaches farther and fails. But not for the reasons others claim here. Greenaway has never centred his films in the narrative — we'd always be frustrated to look for satisfaction there. (‘Drowning' which among his works most delivers...


Published December 30, 2024
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The Limey (1999)
Tell them I'm coming
Filmmaker(s): Steven Soderbergh

The Limey follows Wilson, a tough English ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter's death. Upon arrival, Wilson goes to task battling Valentine and an army of L.A.'s toughest criminals, hoping to find clues and piece together what happened. After surviving a near-death beating, getting thrown from a building and being chased down a dangerous mountain road, the Englishman decides to dole out some bodily harm of his own.

Proustian Out and Back deserves respect, as much for his failures (‘Brokovich,’’Traffic') as his successes (this, ‘Sight,’’Videotape'). When he experiments, it is with simultaneous layers of different kinds involving the eye, the mind, time, remembrance. Here he works on small, intimate layers, small visions of the...


Published December 9, 2024
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Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Filmmaker(s): Woody Allen

In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.

Sweet is uneven to say the least. His most celebrated films strike me as failures by overreaching. But here the aspirations are slight and the result is rather winning. All of Woody's pictures are self-referential in the sense that they are about him, his foibles and...


Published December 4, 2024
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Marcel Proust’s Time Regained (1999)
Filmmaker(s): Raúl Ruiz

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

Recognition, Invention, Counter-regret is one of the most ambitious film projects I have seen, risky and successful. It is not successful Proust in my opinion, something different but similar. Proust used the magic of words to weave a life out of remembered fragments. That magic depends...


Published December 4, 2024
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The Girl on the Bridge (1999)
Filmmaker(s): Patrice Leconte

It's night on a Paris bridge. A girl leans over Seine River with tears in her eyes and a violent yearning to drown her sorrows. Out of nowhere someone takes an interest in her. He is Gabor, a knife thrower who needs a human target for his show. The girl, Adele, has never been lucky and nowhere else to go. So she follows him. They travel along the northern bank of the Mediterranean to perform.

On and Off main character here is played by a young woman who we discover in an extraordinary opening sequence, an interview placed outside of the film proper, where we learn her character and her way of carrying it. This scene is memorable, because of...


Published February 22, 2024
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Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill (1999 Video)
Filmmaker(s): François Bouvier

Dress To Kill is the title of a performance by Eddie Izzard, and is a continuation of the British comedian's surrealist, ideas-based comedy. The VHS was recorded during a performance in San Francisco, California, United States. However, the tour was a global one. During this tour Izzard also wrote the book Dress to Kill with David Quantick, which was published by Virgin Books in hardback in 1998 and in paperback in 2000. Izzard's humour includes observations on the American concept of history, beginning with his throwaway line "I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from" and continuing through diversions about the belief that all Europeans live in castles and the attitude of Americans toward historical landmarks. Additionally, Izzard takes time to explain his background as an executive transvestite and how it affected his desire to join the military. This is explained through a proposal for the Army's "first battalion transvestite brigade...with fantastic makeup and a fantastic gun." The centerpiece of the performance is a retelling of British history from Stonehenge through to the Reformation. This is done with Izzard adopting a very Italian accent to signify the Pope talking to Henry VIII and explaining that he can't marry as many wives as he wants to. This is set against the backdrop of Martin Luther pinning his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, a paper that reads "Eine Minuten bitte. Ich habe einen kleinen Problemo avec diese Religione." "He was from everywhere," explains Izzard to great cheers from the audience. Similar to his use of Sean Connery as the voice of Henry VIII, he uses the voice of James Mason as the voice of God.

Mr Stevens a break from long form narrative, I have been watching a lot of films of standup comics. It is one of the most puzzling things I have done recently. Nothing tells you more in a short time about someone than what they find...


Published February 19, 2024
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Alice in Wonderland (1999)
A Masterpiece of Imagination...
Filmmaker(s): Nick Willing

Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?

Veronica Boff ‘Alice’ stories are several things at once: a remarkable fantasy, a collection of intriguing jokes and puzzles, a Bulwer-Lytton influenced cabalistic journey, and off-hand satire. It is deep no matter what direction you plumb, and that's the magic of it. But most all, it...


Published January 21, 2024
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Big Daddy (1999)
Nature called. Look who answered.
Filmmaker(s): Dennis Dugan

A lazy law school grad adopts a kid to impress his girlfriend, but everything doesn't go as planned and he becomes the unlikely foster father.

The Goof is always been an American film staple to have a simpleminded but purehearted hero. Chaplin invented the image. He would be appalled at how the notion has been appropriated by the US Republican party. An excellent character is all that matters, especially compared...


Published July 27, 2023
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