1999: Year in Review

Writer-director Peter Greenaway's film is a bizarre, cold, dry absurdist comedy, an almost surrealistic portrait of a father and son and their (how shall we say?) "unique" coping mechanisms in the aftermath of losing their wife and mother. John Standing is Philip, a 55-year-old businessman, and Matthew Delamere is Storey, who runs the family pachinco parlors in Kyoto, Japan. Storey is mildly obsessive-compulsive, taking stock of his limbs before going to bed. Philip calls one night to tell Storey that his mother has died. Storey arrives at the family estate in Geneva to discover that she is, indeed, dead, and their collective reaction could be described as emotionally detached, at best. One night, Storey tries to comfort his father by sleeping naked next to him (the implication of incestuous homosexual intercourse is made, however subtly). Storey drags his father to a cinema, showing Fellini's "8 1/2" (1963), that masterpiece of directorial flights-of-fancy in which Mastroianni imagines a mansion in which all of the women in his life co-exist to obey him, and occasionally he tames them with a whip. Father and son devise a plan - they will turn their estate into a brothel catering only to their sexual fantasies and urges, and they will populate it with 8 1/2 women (counting a poor soul in a wheelchair). There's an Austrian who the men hit with their car that ends up in various braces (Amanda Plummer), a petulant Japanese pachinco addict (Shizuka Inoh), a would-be nun (Toni Collette), an accountant (Vivian Wu) who works for their pachinco company, and a former romantic prospect (Polly Walker, later of TV's "Rome") who asserts her standing in the pecking order, and is soon dictating terms for her own "employment." To describe all of this "plot" is merely to give some impression of what happens, but it is far from the experience of watching it. Peter Greenaway is a sly, sardonic Brit, known for his fascination with the creative sexual arrangements of his characters in such films as "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (1989) or "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982). In that one, a man agreed to draw 12 pictures of different angles of a vast country estate in exchange for making use of the lady of the house whenever and however he saw fit. His characters never say what you might expect, and always in a deadpan funny sort of way. Greenaway employs distancing devices, such as the titles which are obsessed with the cataloguing of characters, like items on a shelf rather than flesh-and-blood people. He separates his film into five "acts," each preceded by a superimposition of the first pages of that section of the film's screenplay over the images on-screen. This isn't the sort of film you "like," per say (though I enjoyed the first half quite a bit), but it is the kind of film you admire for the nerve it took to make it. "How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies," one of the men asks while watching "8 1/2." Greenaway may be one.

This classic of modern horror is as disturbing, frightening and original as horror films get. Three young student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams) headed into the Black Hills Forest of Maryland in 1994 to make a documentary about the legendary Blair Witch. At first, things are creepy but "okay." Then, strange things are left outside their tent, loud noises are made at night, and they are soon lost in the woods, cold and alone and increasingly afraid for their lives. This is the central conceit of Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez's revolutionary mockumentary, which was shot by the actors on 16mm and Hi8 video, and recorded on DAT, and has the alarming feel of being real. What Myrick and Sanchez understand, and what the actors all sell with penetratingly natural and realistic performances, is that what you don't see, what is uncertain, and what you think could get you, is far more frightening than all the Freddy Kruger's and Leatherfaces of the world. The film is a remarkably intelligent and effective portrait of existentialism in the psychological/supernatural horror vein, and will stick with you long after the final credits roll.

"What are you waiting for?," the analyst asks her from off-camera. "For something to happen," she says. Patrice Leconte's winsome fable of a romance is at once darkly comedic, bittersweet, and hypnotically watchable as it weaves its tale of that "something." Vanessa Paradis is Adele, a suicidal young waif who takes to a Parisian bridge one dark, cold night, prepared to end it all. Along comes Gabor (Daniel Auteuil), a cabaret performing knife thrower, who stalks the city's bridges looking for despondent young women to become his assistants: he likes to help. Tenuously, this duo forms a relationship, travelling the cruise ship circuit, bringing knife throwing to a new height. They soon find that they bring each other luck (she helps his gambling, he helps her love life). Meanwhile, their feelings for each other grow and fester underneath the surface, and ultimately it must all come to a head. The performances by Paradis and Auteuil are charming, taking an improbable connection to its logical conclusion with great aplomb, whilst appearing completely believable throughout. The shimmery black-and-white cinematography by Jean-Marie Dreujou is stunningly gorgeous, with an often handheld camera hyperkinetically operated by Leconte himself; it lends the film an other-worldly feel (this film actually has a literal fly-on-the-wall, or ceiling, POV that swoops down!). Patrice Leconte is quite simply the greatest living French director. He's been making films in France for a few decades, but he is largely popular there for silly comedies; here, we mostly get his sardonically humored dramas, one every few years. His first exposure in America came with the dark and creepy "Monsieur Hire" (1990). He followed this with the light and delightful "The Hairdresser's Husband" (1992). His best film seen by me is "Ridicule" (1996), the Oscar-nominee about a nobleman lobbying for favor in the wit-obsessed court of Louis XVI. His career has never shown a particular path, though (at least in the films released in America) he's shown a fascination with eccentric characters on the fringes of society, with their obsessions and fantasies, and the unlikely connections sometimes made between such figures. Working from Serge Frydman's smart, sometimes oddly funny screenplay, Leconte has crafted one of his more moving films, about finding the one person who can complete you in this world - even if it means being ready to leave this world before you find them! NOTE: Leconte has gone on to make more critically lauded works, including "The Widow of St. Pierre" (2001), "Man on the Train" (2003), "Intimate Strangers" (2004) and "My Best Friend" (2006).

Michael Mann's epic is a profoundly angering film, a deeply absorbing thriller, a passionate and inspiring drama, and a fascinating expose of the lengths to which one particular industry will sometimes go to maintain their profit margin and silence potential dissenters. Based on true events, the film concerns Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a tobacco scientist in Kentucky who, when we first meet him, is packing his office up and being escorted from the high-end cigarette company he works for. Soon, he's approached to consult on some documents and their meaning for Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), a producer for the CBS evening news program "60 Minutes" with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). Wigand offers to help decode the documents for Bergman and it's not long before his bosses (represented by Michael Gambon) are not so subtly threatening him by "expanding and clarifying the wording of his confidentiality agreement" and giving him ultimatums with regards to whether he can say word one on any subject relating to tobacco and its dettrimental nature with regards to human health. Soon, Wigand, his two young daughters and his wife (Diane Venora) are receiving e-mails threatening their lives and bullets are being put in their mailbox. Inevitably, Wigand is forced to defend his right to testify against the tobacco industry as a whole on the negative effects of nicotine, and he agrees to film a famous interview for "60 Minutes" in which he makes a very public confession about what he knows as a former tobacco scientist. Then the plot thickens: CBS Corporate is concerned about potential litigation and damages they'd have to pay to the tobacco industry if they were to air the original interview with Wigand, and executive producer Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall, having a great year) is all but forced to buckle under the pressure from a high-heeled corporate succubus (Gina Gershon) and her feckless lacky (Stephen Tobolowsky). Soon, there's an "alternate version" being aired and Bergman and Wigand feel screwed over by the lack of integrity and strong moral fiber on behalf of "60 Minutes" and CBS. Michael Mann has become a masterful filmmaker when it comes to giving us absorbing and deeply involving epics with cool, austere style and terrific acting - see his modern opera of cops & robbers, "Heat" (1995). With this film, he tops himself, painting a broad and detailed, utterly involving portrait of a man whose very livelyhood was severely placed in jeopardy until justice prevailed and censorship and fear of liability from evil and vindictive corporations was quashed. Al Pacino is terrific as Lowell Bergman, the producer who simply wants to protect his source and get his story "out there," but is seemingly powerless in the face of syccophants who are willing to bend to the will of their corporate overlords and that of the highly questional tobacco industry. Russell Crowe is brilliant as Jeffrey Wigand, who becomes something of a posterboy for sticking by your guns and fighting for your rights against oppression, threats and censorship. Christopher Plummer provides a nice little portrait of Mike Wallace, a strong-willed and sharp-witted veteran who simply wants to do his job and do it well, and for whom - eventually - enough is enough. The film, as I hinted at before, has a great cool look thanks to the lush and gorgeous cinematography, made of 2.35:1 widescreen camerawork, largely handheld, with washed-out blue-green lighting, by Dante Spinotti. The film is unique in that it manages to run 157 minutes and span a rather long time, involves tons of information and complex plot maneuvers involving many characters, and yet we are never lost for very long, if at all. It is a credit to Mann and his co-writer Eric Roth, who adapted an aptly-titled article called "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner, that they manage to absorb and export tons of facts, massaging the truth for dramatic purposes here and there, while more or less keeping the true story's integrity in tact, all the while expressing it in the form of a top-notch thriller. The film is smart, engaging, deeply moving, sometimes sardonically funny, and one of the year's best films.

NOTE: The film was nominated for 7 Oscars including Actor (Crowe), Director, Cinematography, Editing, Adapted Screenplay and Picture.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's sick, twisted, crude, stunningly profane and occasionally hilarious adult cartoon TV series has come to the big screen in a big way, and the results are often very, very funny. Kyle, Stan, Eric Cartman and Kenny (all voiced by creators/writers/directors Trey Parker and Matt Stone) are four impressionable youngsters living in South Park, Colorado, a consistently snow-capped town on the outskirts of the Rocky Mountains where nothing much happens, but lots of issues get skewered with crude, profane and often hilarious satire on an almost weekly basis - one episode of the TV series might go from fart jokes to making fun of the President, the economy or TV bureaucracy. The plot in this case kicks off when the new film "Asses of Fire" comes to South Park. The film is the first feature of the boys' Canadian heroes, Terrance & Phillip (also voiced by Parker & Stone), two foul-mouthed guys who spend virtually 3 hours sitting on a couch, farting in each others' faces, and spouting an astonishing array of vulgarity the likes of which not even our young protagonists have ever heard. They get in trouble when they begin copying the movie's profanity, and soon their mothers are on a headstrong march to pressure the United States government into declaring war on Canada. Meanwhile, Satan and his gay lover Saddam Hussein (it may surprise you who is the "bottom" in the relationship) are stewing in Hell, awaiting the day when the blood of Terrance and Phillip spilling on American soil will bring Satan back to earth (yes). The boys, however, form an underground resistance movement colorfully titled "La Resistance" and plan to save Terrance and Phillip from a public execution. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who created the TV program on which this film is based, have co-written and directed a very silly, sometimes surreal, and often very funny satire of close-minded societies in which the advocacy of censorship can lead to bigotry and, in this case, war. A confession: I am not a huge fan of the "South Park" TV series. That being said, it can be funny and so is this film - for the most part. The film's music, by Marc Shaiman, is very good - including several musical numbers such as the hilarious and surreal "What Would Brian Boitano Do?," the catchy and profane "Uncle F---a," Big Gay Al's U.S.O. performance for the troops "I'm Super," and (the Oscar-nominated) "Blame Canada." The film has a tiny bit of a good message somewhere among the excess about censorship and tolerance, I think, and as such, it's pretty effective. If an R-rated, 82-minute episode sounds like your cup of tea, you'll probably be as or more likely to enjoy this.

NOTE: The film was Oscar-nominated for Best Song ("Blame Canada"). Curiously, Isaac Hayes appears here as Chef (reprising his series role) and yet, as the only musically-talented cast member, he doesn't perform a song!

Michael Winterbottom's lovely, sad, beautiful portrait of working-class lives in South London is a deeply moving slice of life. Nadia (the perpetually lovely Gina McKee) is a waitress at a SoHo cafe seeking love in all the wrong places - mostly through ill-advised personals ads (including one that gets her a date with a jerk played by Stuart Townsend). She has two sisters: Debbie (Shirley Henderson), a hairdresser and single mother who periodically leaves her son with her no-account husband Dan (Ian Hart) so she can cavort around her salon with strange men; and Molly (Molly Parker of TV's "Deadwood"), an alarmingly pregnant woman prone to strange dreams whose husband Eddie (John Simm) is on the cusp of quitting his job. These three young women are the spawn of two aging and resentful parents, Bill (Jack Shepherd) and Eileen (Kika Markham) - he is trying to fix a car in front of their house, she is forever being tortured by the barking from the dog next door and calling her husband pathetic for, among other things, ignoring it. Then there's the one couple you begin to think might be sort of happy: Darren (Enzo Cilenti) and Melanie (Sarah-Jane Potts). They're newlyweds, and we gradually learn that he is the estranged son of the family who left years ago - we sense because his mother may have driven him to it. Finally, there's Franklyn (David Fahm), a painfully shy young black man next door who seeks privacy and companionship, is the son of Bill and Eileen's neighbor and may have his sights set on Nadia. The debut screenplay by Laurence Coriat doesn't have a plot per say, but merely circles through these lives over a four-day Guy Fawkes weekend during a rainy November. The cast is first-rate, with Gina McKee ("Naked," "Croupier") as the heart and soul of the piece. Her Nadia is a lovely creature, smiling and crying in almost equal measure, lovely doing either. Her search for "friendship...and possible romance" is at the center of the film. Henderson is cheeky and saucy as the young mother, with Parker more emotionally fragile as the pregant young wife. Although the idea of starting with three sisters and breaking off into the lives of the characters around them has been done before to great effect (Todd Solondz's "Happiness" and Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters"), Coriat's story is to a rather different purpose; indeed, in its endeavors to find the drama in everyday lives, it may remind some of Robert Altman's "Nashville" (1975) or "Short Cuts" (1993), as well as Paul Thomas Anderson's Altman-esque mosaical epic "Magnolia" (1999). There's nothing profoundly unique about these lives, but that makes them all the more human and, thus, universal. Michael Winterbottom is a filmmaker becoming rapidly famous on the world stage ("Jude," "Welcome to Sarajevo," "24 Hour Party People", "The Claim") who never sticks to one genre or type of film, but always pays a keen, almost documentary-esque attention to the details of the lives of his subjects. Working here in super-16mm (blown up to 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen), Winterbottom occasionally simply follows characters (even inviting a glance from an extra or two on the seemingly busy London streets which don't appear to have been blocked off for filming), sometimes hides his cameras in real locations to achieve a sense of the actual flavor of his characters' surroundings, always observing and probing these characters' lives with intense interest. The film, set to a lovely and insistent piano and strings score by Michael Nyman, draws us deep into these lives; we feel for them, we empathize, we care. One of the year's very best films.