Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Oakland-ish
Posts: 6036

Gems

List here the movies that we might have missed in the theater, any film you think should have gotten more recognition but didn't.


Box of Moonlight with John Turturro and Sam Rockwell.

from imdb.com:

Al Fountain, a middle-aged electrical engineer, is on the verge of a mid-life crisis, when he decides to take his time coming home from a business trip, rents a car, and heads out looking for a lake he remembers from his childhood. But his wandering takes him into the life of Kid, a free-spirited young man who helps Al escape from the routine of everyday life and find freedom to enjoy himself.


for paintchips: (young jennifer connelly)

Some Girls

American college student Patrick Dempsey travels to beautiful Quebec City to spend Christmas with girlfriend Jennifer Connelly, who informs him upon arrival that she's no longer in love with him. Spending the vacation with her eccentric family -- including nudist/Pascal expert Andre Gregory, staunch Catholic Florinda Balkan and the luscious Sheila Kelley -- teach him a thing or two about the mysteries of life, love and women.

Cleverly written and gorgeously mounted -- wait til you see that house -- "Some Girls" is the kind of offbeat and eccentric comedy that the French often do so well but Americans rarely attempt. Little-seen upon its initial release, the film has developed a well-deserved cult following.

for CRSR: (peter gabriel did the soundtrack)

Birdy


Two friends arrive back from Vietnam, scarred in different ways. One has physical injuries, the other has mental problems that make him yearn to be a bird, a subject he has always been fascinated with.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: albany
Posts: 1386

birdy is a great movie,also witha great soundtrack.

House of Games
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093223

The chocolate War
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0094869

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26502

For Canadians:

Last Night.

At the turn of the century, the end of the world is known to be coming to an end. This modest comedy-drama examines how the impending doom affects its cast. McKellar plays an architect who plans to meet the end alone at dinner. Others (Sandra Oh, David Cronenberg) make a suicide pact, but are caught apart and struggle to get together before the end. Another man (Callum Keith Rennie) pursues final sexual conquests and a milquetoast woman (Tracy Wright) strives to gain courage. Of course, the group ends up interacting.

(imdb sometimes sucks at summaries)

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: toronto
Posts: 1612

Last Night was fucking GREAT. Callum Keith Rennie is a great actor and an even cooler guy, and my cousin is going out with David Cronenberg's daughter.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Oakland-ish
Posts: 6036

quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs
For Canadians:

Last Night.

Another man (Callum Keith Rennie) pursues final sexual conquests ...

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: seattle-ish
Posts: 11562

Last Night was indeed a good movie.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35781

Ah, Callum Keith Rennie can never again achieve the dizzy heights of dueSouth, but I would like to see that movie, for sure.

I wonder if 'Men with Brooms' will get a release in the UK (Paul Gross film, he was the main star of dueSouth).

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: Florida
Posts: 316

Henry Fool

Socially inept garbage man Simon is befriended by Henry Fool, a witty roguish, but talent-less novelist. Henry opens a magical world of literature to Simon who turns his hand to writing the 'great American poem'. As Simon begins his controversial ascent to the dizzying heights of Nobel Prize winning poet, Henry sinks to a life of drinking in low-life bars. The two friends fall out and lose touch until Henry's criminal past catches up with him and he needs Simon's help to flee the country

Three Seasons

An American in Ho Chi Minh City looks for a daughter he fathered during the war. He meets Woody, a child who's a street vendor, and when Woody's case of wares disappears, he thinks the soldier took it. Woody hunts for him. A cyclo driver, Hai, gives a ride to Lan, a hotel call girl, and starts waiting for her daily; he falls in love with her and tries to break through her tough veneer. Kien An, a young woman, takes a job harvesting lotuses in the ponds of Teacher Dao, a reclusive man who has leprosy. Her singing awakens him from depression, and he asks her to write down poetry he has composed. The characters' paths cross in small ways, around flowers and kindnesses

Malcolm

Malcolm is a chronically shy mechanical genius who has just been fired for building his own tram. He gets Frank, who has just been released from jail, moves in to help pay the bills. Malcolm, with Franks help, turns to a life of crime.


Dirty

Angie is a middle-aged drug dealer, who fulfills the masochistic fantasies of young student David. David shares a residence with lonely log company worker Tony. Other characters - Angie's roommate Nancy, Angie's son Ethan and her old mother Abbie are also very lonely and desperate for human communication.



Adrenaline Drive

Director Shinobu Yaguchi's masterful parody of popular Japanese teenage girls' romances, Adrenaline Drive takes slapstick to dazzling Keatonesque delights in this sly comedy of robbers versus robbers. When a gas leak explodes at a yakuza's headquarters, a shy, timid nurse and a meek rental car clerk gain possession of a briefcase of blood-soaked money. The rest is a wild ride of chase and escape, as the nurse is transformed to glamorous heroine and outsmarts the gangsters eager to recover the loot.


The Eel

White-collar worker Yamashita finds out that his wife has a lover visiting her when he's away, suddenly returns home and kills her. After eight years in prison, he returns to live in a small village, opens a barber shop (he was trained as a barber in prison) and talks almost to no-one except for the eel he "befriended" in prison. One day he finds the unconscious body of Keiko, who attempted suicide and reminds him of his wife. She starts to work at his shop, but he doesn't let her become close to him.



The Dinner Game

Every wednesday night a few guys have a meal together. There is a game coupled with the meal: each one of them has to bring an "idiot". The game consists in making the idiots talk about there ideas and passions so that the hosts can have a good laugh. At the end they will choose the "idiot of the evening". One of the hosts has invited his idiot home so they could go to the dinner together, but unfortunately he gets a severe pain in his back due to an accident that day and can't go to the "meal of idiots". Even worse is the fact that the idiot tries to help him all the time, and naturally does everything wrong and aggravates every situation.



Thursday

A former L.A. drug dealer (Thomas Jane) has moved to Houston to make a new life for himself as a married architect. Everything falls apart when he is suddenly visited by one of his former cohorts (Aaron Eckhart) who comes carrying heroin. Discovering the dope, the architect flushes it down the drain. This sets up a series of tough customers seeking the dope including a rasta hitman (Glenn Plummer), an ex-lover (Paulina Porizkova) who ties up and rapes James, a criminal (James LeGros) with a penchant for torture, and a rogue cop (Mickey Rourke). Michael Jeter also appears as a psychologist from an adoption agency where the couple is seeking to adopt a child.



Twin Town

Julian and Jeremy, two brothers known as the "Lewis Twins", prefer to spend their time on drugs and joyriding. When their father, Fatty Lewis, breaks his leg working for local bigwig Bryn Cartwright, they show up demanding compensation. Underestimating the vicious humour of the twins Bryn brusquely refuses to pay for the un-insured Fatty and unleashes a ferocious feud.


(edited for paint) (all summaries are from IMDB. It would have taken me way too long to write them myself)

Last edited by blank22 on 04-12-2002 at 06:38 AM

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

"The Dinner Game" was HYSTERICAL! Classic French farce!

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Lat: 43° 42' 0 N, Long: 79° 34' 0 W
Posts: 2826

Flatliners was great... I'm not sure if it got a lot of recognition or not though, as I saw it YEARS later after it came out. The writeup: Medical students begin to explore the realm of near death experiences, hoping for insights. Each has their heart stopped and is revived. They begin having flashes of walking nightmares from their childhood, reflecting sins they committed or had committed against them. The experiences continue to intensify, and they begin to be physically beaten by their visions as they try and go deeper into the death experience to find a cure.

The Last Supper Writeup: A group of five Graduate Student room mates in Iowa fall into a decent that leads to murder after an accidental meeting leads them to search out extrimists in the local community.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Ljusdal, Sweden
Posts: 196

I don't know if anyone outside Sweden ever saw this one Show me love but if you can find it somewhere I can almost promise you that you'll like it.

The movie is about Agnes and Elin, two girls in their early teens. They live in a small town in Sweden and Agnes is fairly new in town and she hasn't made any friends yet. The thing about this movie that really makes it great in my eyes is the acting. The actors don't overact and they make it seem as if it's not a movie but real people and real events. Of course this would not be enough without atleast a fairly good script and I think that Moodysson really wrote a great one for this movie. It is funny and moving and you really feel for Agnes and Elin.

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: Florida
Posts: 316

Croupier

A struggling author (Clive Owen) uses his father's connections to get a job running a roulette wheel at a casino. Soon he meets a woman (Alex Kingston) who seduces him and then encourages him to join her associates in a robbery scheme. He joins, however, he uses his experiences for the plot of his book, "I, Croupier".



The Brother McMullen

After their mother leaves to Ireland to meet her true love whom she had waited for 35 years to meet, Jack, Barry and Patrick finds their own. Jack, happily married to Molly, is having an affair with Ann. Barry, a screenwriter, does not believe in true love, and does not want to settle. Patrick, who is a faithful Catholic, is engaged to Susan, but is having doubts. Jack, Barry, and Patrick are trying to give advises to each other. When Jack meets the beautiful Audrey...



Living in Oblivion

Recapitulating the movie-within-a-movie concept, here Nick Reve is directing an independent movie with a shoestring budget and a film crew with at least as many neuroses as goatees. When the action spills outside of the scenes and everything goes all wrong, (real- life) writer/director Tom DiCillo throws tragicomic jabs at the strange, and painfully human, process of making movies

Trees Lounge

Things aren't going so well for Tommy Basilio. He lost his job because he "borrowed" money from the register, his girlfriend left him for his boss and is now pregnant, and he can't find work because of the incident. His life revolves around the Trees Lounge, a neighborhood bar over which he lives, full of the colorful eccentrics one finds in such places, like the estranged husband, or the old boozer drinking himself to death. He drunkenly wanders through his life, still in love with his ex, desperate for some sort of meaning beyond the bar, some sort of meaning to his life.

The Minus Man

A cold-blooded serial killer (Owen Wilson) floats around the country and chooses his victims from people who complain about their lives and indicate a willingness to be killed. His murders are introduced with the killing of an asthmatic junkie (Sheryl Crow). The killer settles into a seaside rooming house run by an unhappy married couple (Brian Cox who should be remembered as the star of "Manhunter", Mercedes Ruehl) and waits for his next victims to unveil themselves. Dream cops (Dennis Haysbert, Dwight Yoakam) plague his nights, while plotting his murders. Meanwhile, he also starts a relationship with a postal clerk (Janeane Garafalo), which momentarily misleads one into thinking he is ready to give up his murderous life.



My name is Joe

Two thirtysomethings, unemployed former alcoholic Joe and community health worker Sarah, start a romantic relationship in the one of the toughest Glasgow neighbourhoods

The War Zone

An alienated 15 year old (Freddie Cunliffe), forced to move away from his friends in London when his family relocates to rural Devon, struggles with the change and becomes an observer of the family. His mother (Tilda Swinton) is pregnant, his dad (Ray Winstone) is vocally abusive, and his 18 year old sister (Lara Belmont) is sexually active and open to her brother. However, the boy guesses at and finds that he is correct that his father has had sexual relations with his sister. The boy gets a sexual education from an older woman (Aisling O'Sullivan) he meets.



Tigerland

In September 1971, a platoon of recruits arrives in Ft. Polk, LA, for infantry training before leaving for war. The final week takes place in Tigerland, a swamp similar to Vietnam. Jim Paxton has enlisted; he wants to experience everything and write books later. He befriends Roland Bozz, a cool Texan with a gift for getting into trouble and for helping misfits get discharges. At least one sociopath in the platoon hates Bozz, even as the sergeants grudgingly recognize his leadership abilities. As the platoon heads into its week in Tigerland, Paxton's body gives out, Bozz makes plans to go AWOL, and the sociopath gets hold of live ammo. Is the Louisiana swamp more dangerous than the DMZ?



Twin Falls Idaho

Francis and Blake Falls (Michael Polish, Mark Polish) are Siamese twins who live in a neat little room in a rundown hotel. While sharing some organs, Blake is always fit and Francis is very sickly. Into their world comes a young lady (Michele Hicks), who turns their world upside down. She gets involved with Blake, and convinces the two to attend a Halloween party, where they can pass themselves off as wearing a costume. Eventually Francis becomes really ill, and they have to be separated. They then face the physical and mental strains that come from their proposed separation. Viewers will be inclined to believe that the two are really Siamese twins, but in fact they are simply real-life brothers playing the parts convincingly.



Household Saints

Unsettling drama about three generations of Italian-American women (Judith Malina, Tracy Ullman, Lili Taylor) struggling to get by in post-World War II New York's Little Italy.


(edited for paint) (all summaries from IMDB)

Last edited by blank22 on 04-12-2002 at 06:44 AM

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26502

Flatliners is generally considered, if not a classic, than a cult classic. In either case, a very well exposed movie.

blank22, I think instead of masses of hyperlinks you should instead write a bit about your choices.

quote:

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Originally posted by Oracular_Jinx
The Last Supper Writeup: A group of five Graduate Student room mates in Iowa fall into a decent that leads to murder after an accidental meeting leads them to search out extrimists in the local community.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Lat: 43° 42' 0 N, Long: 79° 34' 0 W
Posts: 2826

I don't mind having similar tastes, but I will draw the line if you start coming to pissups sporting the same dresses as me.

Don't even try to deny it.

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