2000 film
Titles: Amores Perros (2000) - Baise-Moi (2000) - Malèna (2000) - Quills (2000) - Requiem for a Dream (2000) - Sade (2000)
Water Drops On Burning Rocks (2000) - François Ozon
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]French director François Ozon directed a film based on Fassbinder's play. Ozon's work is in general very reminiscent of Fassbinder's.
X-Men (2000) - Bryan Singer
X-Men (2000) - Bryan Singer
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
X-Men is an action movie, first released in Australia on July 13, 2000. The film features a group of comic book superheroes called the X-Men. It formed a major part of the current revival in comic-book adaptation movies.
The movie was directed by Bryan Singer and explores the ideas of prejudice and discrimination in the United States. The screenplay was written by David Hayter (who has a cameo appearance in the film as a police officer in the Statue of Liberty area). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_%28film%29 [Oct 2006]
The film also re-introduced the notion of the uncanny into popular culture:
Initially titled The X-Men, the series added the adjective "Uncanny" to its cover treatment on issue #114 (Oct. 1978), and formally changed its title to The Uncanny X-Men with #142 (Feb. 1981). When a new series titled simply X-Men launched in October 1991, fans and historians began to designate pre-1981 issues as The X-Men Vol. 1 or, more commonly, The Uncanny X-Men.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_%28film%29 [Oct 2006]
More films
Louise Lasser and Robert Modicka put their hearts into the story of a 60-ish couple trying to make a go of it, regardless of his friends' ridicule and her low self-esteem. Their honest acting nearly gives this failed attempt at a Woody Allen-style episode of Friends needed humanity. The problem? Lasser and Modicka are not the lead actors in this film, whose tritely punning title is about the extent of writer-director Amos Kollek's wit. Anna Thomson is the ostensible heroine in this story about the denizens of a New York City diner and their romantic travails. The 35-year-old waitress, unlucky in life and love, seems such a candidate for long-term therapy that her unconventional outlook isn't so much profoundly sympathetic as simply pathetic. Kollek also stretches credulity by allowing a sex-show performer to melt at the badgering appearances of one of her "clients," the creepiest of the whole lot. --Kevin Filipski for amazon.com
Transplanted from England to the not-so-mean streets of Chicago, the screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's cult-classic novel High Fidelity emerges unscathed from its Americanization, idiosyncrasies intact, thanks to John Cusack's inimitable charm and a nimble, nifty screenplay (cowritten by Cusack). Early-thirtysomething Rob Gordon (Cusack) is a slacker who owns a vintage record shop, a massive collection of LPs, and innumerable top-five lists in his head. At the opening of the film, Rob recounts directly to the audience his all-time top-five breakups--which doesn't include his recent falling out with his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), who has just moved out of their apartment. Thunderstruck and obsessed with Laura's desertion (but loath to admit it), Rob begins a quest to confront the women who instigated the aforementioned top-five breakups to find out just what he did wrong. --Mark Englehart for amazon.com
Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix) shine in this absolute stunner of a movie. Memento combines a bold, mind-bending script with compelling action and virtuoso performances. Pearce plays Leonard Shelby, hunting down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The problem is that "the incident" that robbed Leonard of his wife also stole his ability to make new memories. Unable to retain a location, a face, or a new clue on his own, Leonard continues his search with the help of notes, Polaroids, and even homemade tattoos for vital information.
Because of his condition, Leonard essentially lives his life in short, present-tense segments, with no clear idea of what's just happened to him. That's where Memento gets really interesting; the story begins at the end, and the movie jumps backward in 10-minute segments. The suspense of the movie lies not in discovering what happens, but in finding out why it happened. Amazingly, the movie achieves edge-of-your-seat excitement even as it moves backward in time, and it keeps the mind hopping as cause and effect are pieced together.
Pearce captures Leonard perfectly, conveying both the tragic romance of his quest and his wry humor in dealing with his condition. He is bolstered by several excellent supporting players, and the movie is all but stolen from him by Pantoliano, who delivers an amazing performance as Teddy, the guy who may or may not be on his side. Memento has an intriguing structure and even meditations on the nature of perception and meaning of life if you go looking for them, but it also functions just as well as a completely absorbing thriller. It's rare to find a movie this exciting with so much intelligence behind it. --Ali Davis for amazon.com
"The Widow of Saint-Pierre" is one of those brooding, romantic costume dramas that only the French seem to do well these days. Far from being escapist fare, it is a dark, often profound meditation on the human condition and the vagaries of the human heart. In 1849, on the remote French island of Saint-Pierre off the coast of Newfoundland, an illiterate fisherman commits a drunken, senseless murder and is sentenced to the guillotine. But since the island has no guillotine, the governor must send for one--a process that will take years. Meanwhile, the fisherman is imprisoned in the island fortress; the wife of the garrison commander takes pity on the condemned man, and sets out to rehabilitate him, with the help (at first reluctant, later wholehearted) of her loving husband. Soon the captain and his wife are defying the governor in their attempts to help the condemned man--with tragic consequences. "The Widow of Saint-Pierre" works on several levels: as a romantic drama; as a denunciation of capital punishment and the cruelty of confusing the letter of the law with justice; and as a brilliant delineation of the nature of love, courage and self-sacrifice. Eduardo Serra's photography of the wintry landscape of Saint-Pierre (actually Nova Scotia) is marvelous, and the acting deserves the highest praise. By now, of course, everyone knows how exquisite Juliette Binoche is, and she is as good as ever here. But the thespian honors in this movie go to Daniel Auteuil, an actor of masterful subtlety and power, who makes Gerard Depardieu look like a double order of "jambon a' l'os." --Miles D. Moore for amazon.com
Not since Marlene Dietrich (of Blue Angel) has a woman come on the silver screen with such raw sexuality. As Lola Lola, Dietrich used men to for her own advancement and amusement; today, as woman have have made tremendous social advances, they are using themselves for their own amusement, such as Anna Battista in Scarlet Diva. If Asia Argento is course in XXX, she is an anarchist in Scarlet Diva, less of an autobiography, more of an example of 21st century voyeurism. Asia has taken all the tricks learned from her father, Dario, and using them to create a slice of life look at an actress trying to figure out what she wants -- blah, blah, blah. No one wants that type of insight about Scarlet Diva. Possible viewers just want to know if it is as sexual as the the poster teases. Oh, yes. The movie is sexual and brutal. This ain't American Pie, where sex is a nice package one can buy at Wal-mart. Sex in Scarlet Diva is shown for its many facets -- as a way to kill time, to punish, to rape, or to connect. Viewers of Scarlet Diva will be f***ed. Some will claim to have been raped but others will thank Asia for the ride. --Mark Griffin for imdb.com [...]
A classic food film from the director who brought us "My Life as a Dog". Johnny Depp is an outlaw and Juliette Binoche a fairy. Chocolat is set in a stylized version of forties France, breathes the same atmosphere as Amelie Poulain - end-of-day-lighting and general cheesiness. As you may already have gessed, I prefer Chocolat to Poulain. I saw Ms Poulain in a "L'Auberge Espanol" and while I do find her attractive I do not bond with her on screen personae. Hey, I just noticed that Amélie and Chocolat are a package deal at amazon. Don't be tempted, get Lasse's 1985 My Life as a Dog instead.
Director Spike Lee has never shied away from controversy, and with Bamboozled he tackles a thorny mix of racism and how images are bought and sold. A frustrated TV writer named Delacroix (Damon Wayans), unable to break his contract, tries to get fired by proposing a new minstrel show, complete with dancers in blackface. But the network loves the idea, and Delacroix hires two street performers (Savion Glover, who is truly the finest tap dancer since Fred Astaire, and Tommy Davidson) whose hunger for success and ignorance of history combine to make them accept the blackface. Despite protests, the show is a huge success--but gradually, the mental balance of everyone involved starts to crumble. As an argument, Bamboozled is incoherent--but how can racism be discussed rationally in the first place? Lee takes a much braver approach: Every time something seems to make sense or make a point, he complicates the situation. At one point, Delacroix goes to see his father, a standup comedian working at a small black club. Delacroix perceives his father as a broken failure. But his father's routine is full of articulate critiques of white hypocrisy, and the older man describes refusing to play the narrow movie roles that Hollywood had offered him, while Delacroix has convinced himself that his minstrel show is actually doing some social good. And what is the effect of the show itself? Lee obviously finds blackface abhorrent, but the minstrel routines are perversely fascinating and Glover's dancing, even when he mimics Amos and Andy-era routines, is outstanding. Most cuttingly, Lee points out parallels between minstrel and contemporary hip-hop personas. By the time it's over, Bamboozled won't have told you what to think, but you will have to think about these issues--and that alone is a remarkable accomplishment. --Bret Fetzer for amazon.com