Some of my favourite films

(director unknown - help me out, if you can!)

• (none at the moment!)

Hal Ashby

• Harold and Maude (71)
  

Alain Berliner

• Ma Vie en Rose (97)
  One of my favourite films - a little like I hired a Contract Killer in its colour coding and its fairy-tale like plot! Plus it's got a brilliant soundtrack which makes you want to get up and dance immediately.
  Plotwise, this is the story of a little boy who discovers that people around him find it rather difficult (in a number of ways) to deal with the fact that he knows himself to be a girl. Unwittingly, he poses a challenge to society with its overwhelmingly binary, neatly gendered system of values and behaviour - his presence acts as a catalyst which draws a whole range of reactions, positive and negative, from the comfortable and leafy suburbian community into which his family has just moved. (Interestingly, the ending too is another beginning...)

Philippe de Broca

• Le Bossu (97)
  Adapted from one of the many delightful serial novels of the last century, this film is great fun to watch - great baroque costumes, quite an active, independent heroine and good plotting (even though you anticipate what's going to happen, it never quite happens how or when you expect it) - comparable to D'Artagnan's Daughter. Its website is exemplary, including the whole of the script (in French, obviously).

Tod Browning

• Freaks (32)
  

Tim Burton

• Edward Scissorhands (91)
  

• The Nightmare before X-Mas (94)
  

Vera Chytilova

• Sedmikra'sky (67)
  

Peter Greenaway

• The Draughtman's Contract (82)
  Here's the castlist with links.

• A Zed and Two Naughts (86)
  There's a castlist with links for actors and actresses.

• The Belly of an Architect (87)
  There's another castlist with links for actors and actresses.

• Drowning by Numbers (88)
  Lots of sheep, deichs and the sea. And dead cows. Famously, numbers everywhere. Plus lots of games which have more to them than meets the eye, including strange versions of that already strange game cricket. Another castlist with links.

• The Baby of Macon (92)
  There is site with cast list, synopsis and intro by the director. Another castlist featuring links for all concerned in making the film.

Derek Jarman

• Wittgenstein (93?)
  Includes a cute green Martian, Wittgenstein at various stages of his life, and Tilda Swinton as one of the Cambridge crowd back then...

Aki Kaurismaeki

• Calamari Union (85)
  

• Ariel (88)
  

• Leningrad Cowboys Go America (89)
  

• I hired a Contract Killer (90)
  One of my absolute favourites, quite scathing about today's world, our selfishness and isolation, which is only in the end redeemed by the three main characters, all of whom are very much on the margins of society. It starts with a Frenchman in London, who looses his job in the water industry (I think) due to restructuring (including a heartrending moment when he receives a completely ridiculous redundancy payment), who finds it difficult to kill himself. Then he meets a woman selling roses in the pubs...
  (The colours are really nice and bright, giving the film a kind of surreal, modern fairy tale style.)
  Another plot summary.

Michael Klier

• Ostkreuz (91)
  Kind of surreal, tracing the two abandoned children's wanderings through a derelict city.

Baz Luhrmann

• Romeo and Juliette (98)
  Excellent, fast paced, modern, theatrical and brightly coloured rendition of Shakespeare's Renaissance Play. The device of the narrator opening and closing the drama works almost better than on stage, with the use of a news anchor on television. There is no room for stale sentimentalism, with the characters driven by their emotions and impulses in a fast living, divided society.

• Wild at Heart (1990)
  Nicholas Cage (in his snake skin dress) and Laura Dern in a fairy story (there's fairies in there, good and bad, and we get a happy end despite more disturbing happenings inbetween).
  Lots of official (and commercial) info.

Jean-Pierre Melville

• The Samurai (67)
  Incredibly stylish film, with minimal dialogue (I think) about a contract killer with an imperturbable Alain Delon. (Apart from starring Nathalie Delon, there's "NICO" written in huge letters outside Delon's bedroom window... - most curious.) The costumes, make-up and of course the Citroens are simply beautiful.

Susanne Ofteringer

• Nico Icon (95)
  Very interesting documentary about Nico's life; most poignant ending showing how its troubles live on in her (and Alain Delon's, who comes out as a really awful person) son.
  Short summaries: in German and English, just in English, and a more extensive one (English again).

• Orlando (93)
  I find on the web: a list of reviews, books and videos; a major study on the (fe)male gaze and the politics of it in film, incl. discussion of and some clips from Orlando; a not-too-bad review.

Peter Richardson

• Eat the Rich (?)
  

Steven Shainberg

• Secretary (2001)
  Great lovestory between a US lawyer with an interest in unusual plants, and people. He likes orchids, seemingly fragile but in fact rather tough plants he propagates in a corner of his large office (and upstairs!). When he employs Lee, also apparently fragile and troubled, as his new secretary following his acrimonious divorce, they find themselves attracted to each other and grow increasingly close. However it takes Lee's decision to take a stand for their unusual relationship and to assert her love for him, for Edward E. Grey to accept its value and for both of them to find fullfilment.

Lee Tamahori

• Once were Warriors (94?)
  Incredibly tragic story of a dysfunctional family, a young girl raped and the consequences... Even though the film is very clearly set in NZ (brilliant colours, some truly amazing tatoos...) and focuses on the problems of Maori life today, it could really be anywhere where there's a largely unemployed underclass. In the end there is maybe a little too much "poetic" justice for some, including a pretty neat division into the goodies and the baddies. I've made up my mind that the balance between individualist realism and a more general moral is just about right and makes for a fine closure to a powerful film.

Peter Schamoni

• Who is the Monster - You or Me? (?)
  Unfortunately, I haven't seen this film, but it celebrates the work of Niki de Saint Phalle and includes footage of films she made herself.
  There are various reviews on the web, a very brief one from California, a longer one in French and another one in German.

• D'Artagnan's Daughter (94)
  Actually, I've seen this again recently and didn't like it much.

John Waters

• Polyester (81)
  Comes with "scratch and smell" card with the appropriate odours to the events on screen. Great parody of suburban middle class culture, if my memory serves me right.

• Hairspray (88)
  A variation on the ugly duckling story (if I'm not mistaken after so many years...); with Debbie Harry as the mother of her beautiful rival, plus Divine in a double role as both as the first girl's mum and some town official.

• Cry Baby (90)
  Film with musical interludes about rival gangs (in the 50es), in which the outsiders get into trouble as a well-brought up girl discovers her love for Johnny Depp (in one of his earlier roles). The fairy tale story and songs remind me very much of Wild at Heart.

• Pecker (99)
  Somewhat predictable, but enjoyable feature pitting - in this case - Baltimore's indigenous people against the New York art crowd. Luckily, there's a happy ending bringing the two together, following a reversal of their fortunes, plus a meta-cinematic reference to boot as a final closural device.