Another belter from the late Kinji Fukasaku's back catalogue. Loosely based on a true story, Fukasaku presents a chaotic swirl of gangland melodrama torn from the prison diary of a Yakuza footsoldier (Bunta Sugawara), seasoning his wild rumination on the loss of the old warrior's code with frequent bursts of histrionic Day-Glo brutality.
The year's most controversial release, Gaspar Noe's French frenzy (which unfolds backwards, like Memento) has been hammered for its scenes of rape and violence. His argument's that if you don't show them as ugly, you don't show the truth. However you react, there's no denying his visceral energy.
A subversive pleasure from the pen of Nicholas Kazan (son of Elia Kazan), Enough is an ostensibly ridiculous yarn about battered wife Jennifer Lopez who learns Jujitsu and exacts revenge on millionaire husband Billy Campbell. Yet it's also an extremely un-Hollywood evisceration of white America, the family unit, and capitalism itself. Clever, stupid film-making at its best.
Written by Joel Schumacher, Car Wash traces a day in the life of the Dee-Luxe car wash in smoggy downtown LA circa 1976. Part blaxploitation comedy and part Altman-esque ensemble drama, the huge cast includes Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas and, in a brief cameo, Richard Pryor. Norman Whitfield's score is a trash classic, but the story's muddled and full of dated caricatures.
Pussywhipped by Madonna into remaking Lina Wertmüller's 1974 film, Guy Ritchie betrays the fact that he can't direct outside the bad-lads genre, while Madge proves, for the umpteenth time, her inability to act. She's a rich socialite falling for a poor Italian on a desert island: watch Nicolas Roeg's Castaway instead.
Mike Figgis' one-take, four-camera, split-screen Hollywood satire is avant-garde without being pretentious, innovative without being wearisome. Here, like a Dogme remix of The Player, Figgis and his nimble cast ridicule the aching venality of the movie industry over one long and ultimately homicidal November afternoon.
The 1985 film that launched the careers of the Brat Packers. This finds Emilio Estevez drooling over Andie MacDowell, Demi Moore coked out of her box and Rob Lowe being annoying and fratboyish—like much of the script. A must for those who thrill to the antics of self-absorbed young Americans.
A return to classic Mike Leigh terrain, this examines desperation, loneliness and family tragedy on a grim south London housing estate. Leigh regulars Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville are long-suffering parents who manage to invest their bleak lives with tenderness, truth and humour. Leigh may sail dangerously close to self-parody here, but nobody does it better.
Underrated comedy-drama from Chuck & Buckteam. Jennifer Aniston's fine as a frustrated store-worker who cheats on pothead John C Reilly with Jake Gyllenhaal, in another Holden Caulfield-type role. The feel reminds you of James Mangold before he went shit.
