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21Dec

Smoke (1995)

Posted by: mark Categories: Moviemakers Movies
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Smoke is a hyperlink film released at the start of the 1990s hyperlink fad—which is to say one year after Pulp Fiction. But unlike less successful movies like Playing By Heart, Grand Canyon, Crash (the Paul Haggis movie, not the Cronenberg one), and even the highly-regarded Short Cuts, Smoke doesn’t ever feel like it’s trying […]

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25Nov

Guelwaar (1992)

Posted by: mark Categories: Moviemakers Movies
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Guelwaar is two films for the price of one. On the one hand, it’s a simple story of a comic mix-up. Pierre Henri Thioune, also known as Guelwaar (“the noble one”) has died, but the morgue accidentally released his body to another family, who buried him in their village’s graveyard. The problem is the Catholic […]

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9Nov

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990)

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I had a dream last night. In it, I discovered a small cinderblock building housing a Kazakh eatery. (It could have been Turkish, Azeri, it doesn’t matter.) The food was delicious, and the fatherly owner told me to return that evening and sample his specialty. “My biskek is so good,” he said, “the governor’s wife […]

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25Oct

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

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Directed by Joel Coen. Written by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen & Sam Raimi The Hudsucker Proxy one of the lesser-regarded movies from Joel and Ethan Coen. An ambitious romp with a large-ish budget, it was also a major flop for them. But what a flop. In a body of work which encompasses Blood Simple, Raising […]

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12Sep

Closet Land (1991)

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You’ve probably never heard of Closet Land, nor of its writer-director Radha Bharadwaj. You probably have heard of composer Richard Einhorn, cinematographer Bill Pope, and designer Eiko Ishioka, who all contributed to Closet Land. You no doubt know Madeleine Stowe and Alan Rickman, the stars of the film. You may also know Martin McDonagh, whose […]

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10Aug

Night Falls on Manhattan (1996)

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Sidney Lumet has an encyclopedia of classics under his belt: 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Fail Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict stand out in a parade of excellent American movies by the prolific genius. But if I had to name a favorite Lumet film, it would be… Network. Then maybe 12 […]

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Nicole Holofcener
8Jul

Nicole Holofcener: The 1990s indie scene was “exciting.” Today it’s “obscene.”

Posted by: mark Categories: Moviemakers Movies
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https://www.avclub.com/nicole-holofcener-indie-filmmaking-comments-black-widow-1851575986 Per the AV Club and The Hollywood Reporter: “Independent movies when I was coming up in the ’90s were really exciting and open, and studios were willing to take chances on me—weirdos. I was at Sundance with Todd Solondz and Quentin Tarantino,” Holofcener said during a Q&A at the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary International […]

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9Jun

Kiss or Kill (1997)

Posted by: mark Categories: Moviemakers Movies
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Kiss or Kill is a film noir in every way except for its visuals. It’s a crime thriller featuring two hapless con artists who accidentally kill a mark and go on the run across the Australian outback. So instead of dark alleys and underground nightclubs we get blazing hot deserts, out of the way motels, […]

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Run Lola Run
18May

Run Lola Run (1998)

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Run Lola Run is everything one goes to the movies for. It has action, crime, ironic comedy, hotly-burning young love, and sharply-realized characters. It also has meditations on destiny, free will, and the plasticity of time. Tom Tykwer, the brilliant writer-director-co-composer, has stuffed every idea he possibly conceived into the brisk 80 minutes of running […]

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11May

The 1990s: Thirteen Movies

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The 1990s were not the best decade artistically for independent filmmaking (not when compared to the 1960s and 70s), but it was the best time for getting your indie movie seen. Small distributors (Miramax, October/Artisan, Island) released films that enough people saw to keep indie theaters thriving. Sundance became a household name in the 1990s, […]

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