Directed by Oxide Pang, this was re-edited after his success with The Eye—Pang presumably feeling he could now take more stylistic liberties. The movie concerns a drug dealer who courts disaster by upping the ante to keep his girlfriend from prostitution, and sees Pang grandly messing with timelines, colour and reality. An enjoyable dip in the seedy Bangkok underground.
Comic book adaptation with Woo favourite Chow Yun-Fat as a kind of near-immortal arse-kicking Dalai Lama who's spent the last 60 years battling baddies for possession of the Scroll of the Ultimate. And now it's time to pass the baton to a younger chap. You could see it as a martial arts Raiders Of The Lost Ark, or a Crouching Tiger for nitwits. Or you could not see it at all. The choice is yours.
Patrice Leconte (Ridicule) brings a sombre poetic realism to this elegiac meditation on the nature of fate and the road less travelled. Johnny Hallyday, battered and craggy with gravitas, is awesomely iconic as the taciturn gangster who encounters Jean Rochefort's inquisitive retired schoolteacher. The two men are inexorably attracted, seeing in the other the tragedy of the life they never lived.
Mining that fecund Field Of Dreams territory, where baseball and unresolved Oedipal complexes collide, The Rookie is a rousing real-life account of loyal Texan husband, science teacher and occasional 98mph pitcher Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid), whose small-town existence and lifelong battles with cantankerous pop (Brian Cox) are suddenly transformed by the offer of a place in the Major League.
A rather contrived sequel to 1999's Billy Crystal/Robert De Niro buddy comedy (Analyze This), Analyze That nonetheless has enough sporadic wit and infectious Hope/Crosby chemistry to justify its existence. Here De Niro's neurotic mobster is released from prison into the protective custody of Crystal's wisecracking shrink (don't ask). Cue some 'fish out of water' shenanigans, a Sopranos parody, and a grand heist finale.
Four years before The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino made his debut as writer and director with this macho love story, starring Clint Eastwood as a typically crusty old bank robber and Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges as his wide-eyed and adoring young sidekick. Excellent support from George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis as a couple of hoods after Clint's ass (as it were).
Filming in Venice and Morocco whenever funds permitted, Orson Welles shot this adaptation of The Bard's play in scraps over four years in the late 1940s. The circumstances—there were literally years between shots—inspired kaleidoscopic editing and audacious improvisation:when costumes failed to arrive for a critical murder, Welles restaged it half-naked in a Turkish bath. The result:the most vibrant slice of Shakespeare-noir ever filmed.
The promising 1996 debut by Greg Mottola, The Daytrippers is the epitome of early-'90s Sundance syndrome, where fulsome character and sharp dialogue take precedence over narrative logic. Thus, on the whim of daughter Eliza (Hope Davis), the entire Malone family (including indie queen Parker Posey) take an entertaining but essentially unjustifiable day trip to Manhattan.
Miraculous, much underrated adaptation of posthumous Kieslowski screenplay by Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. Cate Blanchett is a British teacher in Turin who, as an act of vengeance, becomes an unlikely terrorist. Young policeman Giovanni Ribisi falls in love and joins her on the run, but it's more about magic realism and haunting, luminous beauty.
Based on a John Cheever story, this 1968 movie stars Burt Lancaster as a seemingly prosperous and urbane middle-aged man who decides to swim back to his suburban house via all the pools in the neighbourhood. But his journey turns out to be an exposé of his personal downfall. An enigmatic meditation on the American Dream, marred only by a couple of hazy, slo-mo scenes that radiate '60s naffness.
