The third list to be posted, in a series of six. –J.R.
Chicago Reader, 1990 (ranked):
Sweetie (Jane Campion)
City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett)
White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood)
The Icicle Thief (Maurizio Nichetti)
Pump Up the Volume (Allan Moyle)
The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer)
Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich)
Mr. Hoover and I (Emile De Antonio)
tied: The Freshman (Andrew Bergman), Miami Blues (George Armitage)
Chicago Reader, 1991: L’Atalante (restoration)(Jean Vigo) An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion) White Dog (Samuel Fuller) Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou) My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant) Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris, Jr.) Europa Europa (Agnieszka Holland) Camp Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembene) Hangin’ With the Homeboys (Joseph P. Vasquez) For the Boys (Mark Rydell)
Chicago Reader, 1992: A Tale of the Wind (Joris Ivens) Actress (Stanley Kwan) Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa) Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami) + Life and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami) The Famine Within (Katherine Gilday) Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Mark Rappaport) Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg) Close My Eyes (Stephen Poliakoff) La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette)
Chicago Reader, 1993: Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard) The Puppet Master (Hou Hsiao-hsien) Night and Day (Chantal Akerman) + From the East (Chantal Akerman) Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg) Bitter Moon (Roman Polanski) The Story of Qiu Ju (Zhang Yimou) The Passing (Bill Viola) + Histoire(s)du Cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard) Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Mark Achbar/Peter Wintonick) + It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (R. Read more
A corporate mogul from Wall Street (Richard Gere) rents, woos, and wows a street hooker from Hollywood Boulevard (Julia Roberts) in this 1990 romantic comedy, which proves that the Disney people can sell just about anythingincluding a misogynistic celebration of big business and prostitution. In this case, prostitution’s OK because the hooker’s a likable bimbo who works without a pimp or a boss, grateful for the little crumbs of high culture the suave company buster can sweep her way, and perfectly willing to offer a little therapy for his patriarchal hang-ups in return. He pays her $3,000 and they fall in loveain’t Hollywood grand? Garry Marshall directed a script by J.F. Lawton; with Ralph Bellamy, Jason Alexander, and Laura San Giacomo. 117 min. (JR) Read more
Commissioned by and published in Frank Films: The Film and Video Work of Robert Frank, a 2009 German retrospective catalogue published in English. You can see a few brief glimpses of the video in the fascinating recent documentary Don’t Blink — Robert Frank. It was produced by Philippe Grandrieux for French television. — J.R.
“I’ve seen La chouette aveugle seven times,” Luc Moullet once wrote of Raúl Ruiz’s intractable masterpiece, “and I know a little less about the film with each viewing.” Apart from being both intractable and a masterpiece, I can’t say Robert Frank’s One Hour [also sometimes known as Sixty Minutes) has anything in common with the Ruiz film, yet what makes it a masterpiece and intractable is the same paradox: the closer I come to understanding it, the more mysterious it gets.
My first look at this single-take account of Frank and actor Kevin O’Connor either walking or riding in the back of a mini-van through a few blocks of Manhattan”s Lower East Side — shot between 3:45 and 4:45 pm on July 26, 1990 — led me to interpret it as a spatial event capturing the somewhat uncanny coziness and intimacy of New York street life, the curious experience of eavesdropping involuntarily on strangers that seems an essential part of being in Manhattan, an island where so many people are crammed together that the existential challenge of everyday coexistence between them seems central to the city’s energy and excitement. Read more
