The whiplash, double-pronged CHUNGKING EXPRESS is one of the defining works of nineties cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out restaurant stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing.
Aloof teenage Japanese tourists, a frazzled Italian widow, and a disgruntled British immigrant all converge in the city of dreams—which, in MYSTERY TRAIN, from Jim Jarmusch, is Memphis. Made with its director’s customary precision and wit, this triptych of stories pays playful tribute to the home of Stax Records, Sun Studio, Graceland, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the King, who presides over the film like a spirit. MYSTERY TRAIN is one of Jarmusch’s very best movies, a boozy and beautiful pilgrimage to an iconic American ghost town and a paean to the music it gave the world.
With DEAD MAN, his first period piece, Jim Jarmusch imagined the nineteenth-century American West as an existential wasteland, delivering a surreal reckoning with the ravages of industrialization, the country’s legacy of violence and prejudice, and the natural cycle of life and death. Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) has hardly arrived in the godforsaken outpost of Machine before he’s caught in the middle of a fatal lovers’ quarrel. Wounded and on the lam, Blake falls under the watch of the outcast Nobody (Gary Farmer), who guides his companion on a spiritual journey, teaching him to dispense poetic justice along the way. Featuring austerely beautiful black-and-white photography by Robby Müller and a live-wire score by Neil Young, DEAD MAN is a profound and unique revision of the western genre.
Director Jim Jarmusch followed up his brilliant breakout film STRANGER THAN PARADISE with another, equally beloved portrait of loners and misfits in the American landscape. When fate brings together three hapless men—an unemployed disc jockey (Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (John Lurie), and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni)—in a Louisiana prison, a singular adventure ensues. Described by Jarmusch as a “neo-Beat noir comedy,” DOWN BY LAW is part nightmare and part fairy tale, featuring sterling performances and crisp black-and-white cinematography by the esteemed Robby Müller.
Did someone say “Afghanistan banana stand”? Robert Redford and George Segal team up in this breezily entertaining heist-comedy gem, in which the pair’s plan to steal a priceless diamond from the Brooklyn Museum goes spectacularly awry again . . . and again . . . and again. Based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel of the same name—the first in a series built around the recurring John Dortmunder character played by Redford—THE HOT ROCK features a colorful script by BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID screenwriter William Goldman, a funky avant-jazz score by Quincy Jones, and evocative use of 1970s New York City locales.
Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her afternoon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits.
Jack Nicholson is at his very best in this acclaimed tragicomedy written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. Two hard-boiled Navy petty officers, Buddusky (Nicholson) and Mulhall (Otis Young), are detailed to escort a young sailor, Meadows (Randy Quaid), from Virginia to a New Hampshire naval prison to serve an eight-year sentence for a trivial offense. Buddusky and Mulhall take a liking to Meadows and are determined to show him a good time on their journey north. Once they reach their destination, though, Buddusky and Mulhall realize they are as much prisoners of their world as Meadows is of his.
Robert Altman’s distinctive genius first announced itself with this innovative, smash-hit black comedy in which a pair of irreverent surgeons (Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould) at a mobile army hospital stationed on the front lines of the Korean War stave off the everyday horrors they witness through their havoc-wreaking high jinks. The director’s stylistic trademarks—the overlapping dialogue, loose-limbed approach to narrative, and nimble marshaling of a sprawling ensemble cast—helped to create a pop-culture sensation that spoke to the unruly zeitgeist of Vietnam-era America.
A Hollywood studio executive with a shaky moral compass (Tim Robbins) finds himself caught up in a criminal situation that would be right at home in one of his movie projects, in this biting industry satire from Robert Altman. Mixing elements of film noir with sly insider comedy, THE PLAYER, based on a novel by Michael Tolkin, functions as both a nifty stylish murder story and a commentary on its own making, and it is stocked with a heroic supporting cast (Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Greta Scacchi, Dean Stockwell, Fred Ward) and a lineup of star cameos that make for an astonishing Hollywood who’s who. This complexly woven grand entertainment (which kicks off with one of American cinema’s most audacious and acclaimed opening shots) was the film that marked Altman’s triumphant commercial comeback in the early 1990s.
Elric (Jacques Dutronc) has a gambling addiction: from casino to casino, he plays the roulette table, consumed by a twisted mix of intense pleasure and desperation. His encounter with Suzie (Bulle Ogier) throws his life into turmoil, but instead of curing his pathological passion, Suzie also falls prey to the game. Prisoners of their destiny, the couple plunge into another, more dangerous world: that of professional con artists.
