recommended by
Kenny LaCasse

 

Bottle Rocket - 1996 directed by Wes Anderson starring Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, and Robert Musgrave

"A few of the key ingredients: dynamite, pole vaulting, choppers, hang gliding...." sayeth Dignan, hatching the plans for a big hiest. If you had a junior high crush on Wes Anderson's Rushmore, then his earlier Bottle Rocket will give you the sweetest head over heels. White boy angst a la the Wilson brothers. Owen and Luke, respectively Dignan and Anthony. Dignan a manic dynamo misfit optimist, dreams of running a crew, planning crime capers to minutia cubed. Anthony, always thoughtful and loyal, who checks himself out of a voluntary psych hospital and then climbs down knotted bedsheets to satify Dignan's escape plan. Thick with charming little zings, the "Ka-Caw, Ka-Caw" bird call warning signal of the crew, crewmate Bob's older bullying brother unexplained-but-makes-perfect-sense nickname of "Future Man," Dignan's 5-year, 10-year, 75-year plans for the crew. Funny how nothing but bumbling loveable characters end up carrying you along so gracefully.

 

Brother - Russian - 1996 directed by Alexei Balabanov

Strange culture of our half-century cold war opponents. "Brother" is Danil, returning from the army seeking his older brother, a rising star of organized crime in St. Petersburg. "What did you do in the war?" (Against the breakaway Chechen republic, one assumes.) "Oh, I was a clerk at HQ," Danil tells his brother. One quickly realizes, as Danil plans a hit on a rival Russian mob boss, that it's more likely he was Spetznatz, their version of a Navy Seal. Appreciate his minimal style: he prefers his antiquated weapons, small caliber revolver, and sawed off double barrelled shotgun to the standard gangster flash automatics and sub machine guns offered him. His mind is the superior weapon against Russian mafia thugs, with great thug nicknames like Flat-Iron and Round-Head. Far from just a shoot 'em up movie. Danil's passion for the blooming russian rock music scene is great contrast to the killing. His best time is spent with Hoffman: aging peaceful sage, a homeless East German who lives in the grave yard and dispenses grandfatherly advice. All the style of any good mafia movie, but better because it's starkly real and hugely believeable.

 

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse - 1991 directed by Eleanor Coppola starring Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Sheen

For any fan of the movie Apocalypse Now, this will make you a devotee. Impress your friends and befuddle your enemies with your intimate knowledge of the story behind the story. Years behind schedule and millions in the hole, Francis Ford Coppola takes his own little boat ride down the jungle river to insanity. Did you know? Harvey Kietel started in Sheen's role. Dennis Hopper wasn't acting; he was that far gone. Mr. Clean was Lawrence Fishbourne at age 14. Marlon Brando finally shows up, 100 pounds heavier and hopelessly camera shy. Martin Sheen suffered a near fatal heart attack during shooting. This and much, much more. Although it appears to be a simple journey up a river, you find the truth is trips up and down the river, and several storm crossed oceans with a Captain Ahab-like Coppola, white whale obssesed.

 

I Went Down - 1998 directed by Paddy Breathnach written by Conor McPherson

This is one flick with a wicked sense of warped charm. In deep to the local Irish crime boss, Peter McDonald and Brendan Gleeson set out, road movie style, to kidnap a rival crime boss due to circumstances set in motion 20 years prior. A good odd couple these two: McDonald's perpetual hurt look and deep-down goodness and Gleeson's razor-tipped sideburns and gangster Irish fashions. The bathtub scene, the price of bullets negotiation and ski mask on McDonald will give you the giggles months down the road.

• reviewed by Tom Keogh

 

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - 1983 directed by Nagisa Oshima starring Tom Conti & David Bowie featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto

Trying to find the common ground between Japanese and English honor in a brutal jap prison camp... well, that's not possible, it seems. But just admiring the king of glam rock with ram rod posture, jump boots, tailored jungle fatigues, and a jaunty bushmans cap is reason enough. Tom Conti exemplifies dogged humanity thru it all, thoughtful eyebrows, beaten but not broken looks. It's worth it just to watch those two being so cool, unflappable and English, in completely opposite ways.

• Nagisa Oshima biography

 

Sorcerer - 1977 directed by William Friedkin starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou

A truly gritty tale. The strangest tilts of fate, chance and cicumstance combine to make a team of the most hardboiled, desparate, down-and-out foursome. Meet the boys: a Middle Eastern bomber for Islam, an aging South American hitman, an embezzling French banker, and a small time hood from New York. At the end of their run (the seeming end and true armpit of the earth), a Venezuelan jungle town being raped by an American oil interest. And that's only the set up... BANG! The local communist freedom fighters blow the oil well, setting our team in motion on a 200 mile cross jungle gauntlet carrying dynamite thats melted down to unstable nitroglycerin. A journey made more unsettling by a Tangerine Dream soundtrack that keeps starting whisper soft then rockets to crescendo. Superb realism in the most thrilling sequence of crawling a 10 ton truck across a crumbling suspension bridge, cables snapping, timbers crumbling, monsoon rain and gale force wind. You start leaning into this movie, sliding forward in your seat, most time spent right out on the edge.

• Nick Amado review

 

Tigerland - 2000 directed by Joel Schumacher

Roland Bozz or Bozz, Roland - no middle intial in army nomenclature. Capture that helpless, hopelessness of circa 1971 off-to-the-'Nam foreboding. Locale, Fort Polk, Louisianna. Our hero is Bozz, recycled thru training one more time and fresh from the brig. Most apparent quality: he's a natural born leader. But he's done the math and decided that the army and Vietnam don't add up. Too proud to play crazy or queer, too strong to be beaten into soldiering, Bozz has managed to get half a dozen draftees out of the green machine through loopholes in the reg's, but he can't free himself. Bozz is constantly irreverant to the army and its traditions. Constantly a hero to the underdog majority of his platoon. He's the constant bane and taunt of those few crazy brave semi-psychotic america and apple pie and old glory draftees who want to kill for their country. Watch him win, cheer him on. Don't wonder that you missed it on the big screen... it was only released on video. Strange fate, considering what a superb film it is.

• Culture Vulture review

 

When Night is Falling - 1995 directed by Patricia Rozema

Seductively kind on the eye and spirit, gentle as baby shampoo. Love, lesbian-style. Camille, snow white, bible-bound professor at an ultra oppressive calvinist college. Petra, dusky hued, exotic avant-garde circus artist. Dig Camille, smoothered in dark, conservative woolen dress, collars that threaten to swallow her head. Cut to Petra's contrast of revealing leather and bohemian glitter. A perfect score of broody cello's getting spanked by conga drums, again that contrast between the two women. A perpetual leaden grey sky, fighting Camille's black and white morals. The first love scene interlocked with cuts to twin aerial ballerina's in perfect motion, as if to say no things ever been more perfect or lovely than this. There's an element of magic and fairy tale here, and like any good fairy tale should do, it captures you and carries you away.

• Patricia Rozema's biography
• cast list

 

Zero Effect - 1998 written and directed by Jake Kasden starring Bull Pullman and Ben Stiller

Zero Effect borrows visuals Orson Well's The Third Man and the story line from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia."

• David Sunga's review