![]() American Movie (1999)īefore advances in technology democratized filmmaking-if only to an extent-it required a potent combination of talent, self-delusion, and berserk self-determination to get a film made independently. Of its many pleasures-Robby Müller’s evocative cinematography, its picture of a Wild West tamed by the forces of violence and industry, its philosophical journey from life to death, its acute sensitivity to American Indian culture-perhaps the greatest is that Dead Man is still resolutely a Jim Jarmusch movie, not far removed from the fish-of-out-water comedy of Stranger Than Paradise or Down By Law. But Jarmusch’s mesmerizing black-and-white odyssey, charged by a rib-rattling Neil Young guitar score, acquired a few prominent champions and a devoted cult following during its brief run in theaters. It was an all-too-fitting treatment of a film whose eponymous hero, an accountant played by Johnny Depp, travels west by train to the town of Machine, an Industrial Age hellpit that seems destined to eat him alive even before a gunfight leaves him mortally wounded and on the run from bounty hunters. Which Coen brothers movie is the strongest? Which color from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy shone the brightest? Peel slowly and see…Īfter a protracted battle between director Jim Jarmusch and Miramax head Harvey Weinstein ended in a bitter stalemate, Jarmusch’s idiosyncratic “acid Western” wasn’t released so much as booted out of the trolley car and left to rot. ![]() (On Thursday, we’ll run a supplemental list of orphans, also-rans, and personal favorites that will undoubtedly be quirkier.) One more note before digging in: Filmmakers who had a particularly good decade were often divided against themselves in the voting. Presented over three days-with two 20-film lists, then a separate one for the top 10-our Top 50 survey was conducted in an effort to reflect group consensus and individual passion, with the disclaimer that all such lists have a degree of arbitrariness that can’t be avoided. ![]() ![]() Those ’70s warhorses like Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman posted some of the strongest work of their careers, and an exciting new generation of filmmakers-Quentin Tarantino, Joel and Ethan Coen, Wong Kar-Wai, Olivier Assayas, David Fincher, and Wes Anderson among them-were staking out territory of their own. Club, it was the decade when we were coming of age as cinephiles and writers, and we remember it with considerable affection. Few talk about the ’90s as a filmmaking renaissance on par with the late ’60s and early ’70s, but for many of the film critics at The A.V. ![]()
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