From the wonder of the first brontosaurus appearance and the iconic simplicity of the concentric ripples in a cup of water, to the peerless construction of the T-Rex attack. Laila Morse, R Stars: Quite what her plan is – is she seeking some sort of revenge or class vendetta? This is most clear — and most beautiful — in Beau Travail, where this sensibility brushes against the goal-oriented, impersonal routine of men in a French Foreign Legion training camp. | With his generous performance, Pacino makes Carlito’s voiceover monologues and profound tenderness ring true, while Sean Penn’s bizarre turn as a sleazy lawyer, by contrast, accentuates the cruelty of a world more savage than it has ever been. 136,659 $78.65M, PG “What is this thing called love?” the opening credits croon. Oft-cited as a kind of Taiwanese Rebel without a Cause – the film is based on a real-life incident of violence that relates to the film’s Chinese title of The Youth Killing Incident on Guling Street – Edward Yang’s four-hour epic, set against the political and social tensions of early 1960s Taipei, is so much wider in reach than Nicholas Ray’s CinemaScope melodrama. Looking at these adroitly created films, the director-writer’s slot as perhaps the master film moralist of his time is made abundantly clear. Despite how it may sound, the film is, arguably, not overtly political, it proved to be a surprise success as a comedy in the U.K and as more of a Rom-con in the U.S (something reflected quite strikingly in the film’s posters). The last three months of Vincent Van Gogh’s life were as full of colour and pain as much of his art, and Maurice Pialat’s biopic captures it well. Biography, Comedy, Drama. | One of the true wonders of modern British cinema is director-writer Mike Leigh, a man who could be considered the embodiment of the spirit of independent film. Both have very dry and deadpan styles which seem to observe some rather outrageous characters and events in a blackly comic way but the difference is that while Jarmusch is seemingly content to leave it at that, Kaurismaki seems to understand that even those who may be considered grotesque have their side of things to be considered. A ponderous philosophical inquest about man’s capacity to find a semblance of inner peace amid the chaos of war, the film largely takes place in the breaths taken between battles. Comedy, Drama. A straightforward narrative cuts through the all-enveloping chaos of the film’s visual scheme: in the spring of 1953, during the final days of Stalin’s rule, the so-called Doctor’s plot ensnares surgeon Yuri Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo). Chris Marker described his documentary as “a Citizen Kane-like inquest whose purpose would be not so much to achieve a biography, however fascinating, but to draw the portrait of an era through the portrait of a man.” The era was Soviet Russia, the man was Aleksandr Medvedkin, a forgotten filmmaker of the 1930s that Marker brought back into the spotlight almost by accident. News, features and opinion on the world of film. It’s a romance, like most of Cronenberg’s work, empathetically attuned to the need for human connection, however marginally framed. With a style ranging from timelapse photography to dreamlike home movies to delicately acted scenes of intimate emotion, the film’s uniqueness may be summarised by some of Mike’s opening lines: “There’s not another road anywhere that looks like this road … It’s one kind of place.”. | Blue was acclaimed, White considered a relative weak link, Red a masterpiece, though, as ever, the Academy said no to a Best Foreign Film nod due to a conflict concerning the film’s country of origin but the film was recognized in other categories including director and writing nominations for Kieslowski. His best film came at the start of the decade, two years after The Abyss (1989) under-performed at the box office. Director: As far as blockbuster cinema goes, the GOAT’s right here. One wishes more people had thought so too at the time. 105 min Up there among Allen’s best. Calling Pedro Costa’s 1997 film Ossos his most commercial effort may be a stretch, but it was the one that put the Portuguese director on the map, drawing good box office results in his country. Peter Cattaneo Sign up for our newsletter. Marker explores Medvedkin’s artistic playfulness and perceptiveness — from his entertaining horse theatre to his movie-train, which travelled across the country for a year, creating films with and about the disgruntled workers in the kolkhozs — all serving to reveal how Medvedkin’s exceptionally firm belief in communism made him unprepared for the harsh realities of its botched execution. Curiously, the concept of several old university friends meeting amid the backdrop of the English countryside had been explored two years earlier in Brit comedy Peter’s Friends, which plays a little like a foundation for Four Weddings. $3.90M, R | Gross: We want to hear from you! $22.95M, R $0.10M, R $0.35M, R Director: Yes, with his recent death at 87, he outlived the bulk of his contemporaries (Jean-Luc Godard still lives but no longer seems to be active). Judi Dench, Jenny Howe, From the vantage point of Twin Peaks: The Return’s critical success, and the esteem in which we hold the likes of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, some might presume David Lynch has always been as beloved as coffee and cherry pie. > The 15 Best British Films of The 1990s The 15 Best British Films of The 1990s. Martin Scorsese’s rapid-fire chronicle of the rise and fall of Henry Hill, a real-life Lucchese crime family footsoldier who began his criminal career as a low-level hood torching cars in the 1950s and ended it in the 80s as a coked-out FBI informant, has proven so influential in its mix of gritty drama and directorial flash that it’s since become the genre’s signature style. | He is the oil rigger who tempts her into a union that is at first happy, then tragic. Stars: William Eadie, In This Article: 36,684 Krzysztof Kieslowski’s beloved Three Colours trilogy — and his career as a feature filmmaker — ended on a note of warm resignation with Red, taking its thematic motif from the ‘fraternal’ third of the Tricolour. Looking back on the movies that made the Nineties such a surprisingly fertile period for filmmakers and film lovers, you can see how so much of the foundation for the past few decades was laid so early on, from the rise of documentaries as a mainstream phenomenon to the meta touches that would turn so many mix-and-match movies into wax museums with pulses. In this world, cinemas are secular churches ministered by Judy Garland or Alastair Sim. Simon Callow, Votes: Robert Carlyle, I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar is one of the most explicit in those terms, and a great place to start for Garrel newcomers. 162 min In this case, the chance encounter leads to him helping out on a film shoot. However, unlike many of them, he stayed true to his New Wave ideals and style up until the very end. The 100 Greatest Movies of the Nineties From serial killers to slackers, ‘Fight Club’ to ‘Pulp Fiction’ – the best comedies, dramas, thrillers and killer horror flicks of the 1990s Linda Bassett, Director: | Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the retired judge, at first seemingly impervious to Jacob’s singular charms, until Kieslowski’s fable kicks in, and the Polish master works his gentle, gestural magic on the strange nature of human relationships. Winning both Best Director and Best Actor (for David Thewlis’s Johnny) at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, Naked saw Mike Leigh move from modest domestic social comedy to a much darker, bleaker vision of contemporary Britain, specifically London. Stars: | In this candid work, Crumb’s family, the youthful fondness for psychedelic drugs, and sexual proclivities prove to be the chief influences on his distinct oeuvre. Jim Broadbent, 124 min Stars: Find out about international touring programmes, BFI Film Academy: opportunities for young creatives, Get funding to progress my creative career, Search the BFI National Archive collections, Read research data and market intelligence, Search for projects funded by National Lottery, Apply for British certification and tax relief, Get help as a new filmmaker and find out about NETWORK, Find out about booking film programmes internationally. All rights reserved. 1993 was a banner year for Steven Spielberg, with one film eviscerating the summer box office and another securing him his first Oscar for Best Director.