It's been
another busy year, with stacks of new videos to choose from. Here are the 25
rated highest videos first released in 1999, as judged by Apollo Guide's
reviewers.
Writer-director Susan Skoog's
honest portrayal of a teenage girl in the early 1980s is right on. This bracing and
sometimes unsettling film reflects on an age when repression, disappointment and boredom
culminate in the potential for tragedy or virtue.
This film's first half is an enchanting look at
Guido's courtship of Dora in 1939 Italy. The second half takes us to a
concentration camp, where Guido struggles to keep his family alive. A powerful,
unforgettable film. Bravo Roberto Benigni.
How did Shakespeare write his great romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet? Shakespeare in Love presents a hypothesis, and in so doing gives us
one of the year's best films. Romantic, sexy, funny and sad, this is great
cinema.
A small film that carries a
huge wallop, this film traces the life of Ray, a drug-dealer and inner city poet facing
prison time. A desperate film with a hopeful heart, Slam is centred by Saul William's
unforgettable performance.
The Klingenfeldt family is
messed up beyond belief, but things only get worse as a shocking revelation
turns a family celebration upside down. This is a powerful and troubling film
that unfolds like a storm that hits in waves.
This film studies the
emotional minefield of a set of family relationships where the hearing-abled daughter of
deaf parents struggles to please her parents and find her voice in the world. An
intelligent, honest and thoroughly captivating film.
The creators of Bottle Rocket pull off a stylish, quirky and sometimes dark
comedy featuring the geeky overachiever Max Fischer. Bill Murray is a gift as the defeated
tycoon who can't help but see himself in the adolescent Fischer.
It's
horrifying, troubling, but ultimately uplifting. This documentary tells the
story of the Holocaust in the words of Jewish Hungarian survivors, and with
film footage shot mainly during the dying days of the Second World War. A
powerfully effective film.
Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is a US senator who's gone off the deep end.
He's rapping, partying, offending the rich and powerful, and even telling the truth.
Warren Beatty has created an hilarious satire that's right on the mark.
A deliciously vicious and
intelligent satire on the media who manipulate us, and the audience who encourages it. Jim
Carrey is great as the man caught in the middle and Ed Harris is suitably evil as his
tormentor.
This
dreamy, unusual film tells the story of a couple in love from childhood and
destined to be together. Even when separated, we know fate will somehow
reconnect them. It’s complex, erotic and a classic love story with an unusual
ending.
This
is a wonderful movie about the rebirth of a woman's spirit. Compassionate, humorous, and honest, it
reminds us that wherever we are, it is what we have inside us, not that which
is around us that determines our reality.
Graphic
gore and violence meet slapstick when the devil makes use of someone's idle
hand in this hilarious but gory horror. Clever writing, energetic direction and
an impeccable cast make this teen flick a candidate for Halloween cult classic.
Tom Hanks and his troop are sent to retrieve a soldier whose three brothers
were killed. A mediocre plot and Hollywood posturing are decimated by powerful World War
Two battle scenes. This brutal, violent film is not for the weak.
Spike Lee's recounting of New York's summer of 1977 is
intense, graphically violent and disturbing. It's also a passionate, powerful
and unforgettable chronicle of the Son of Sam murderer, combined with a
fictional tale of stupidity and excess.
Snappy and stylish, this
crackerjack Brit comedy assembles eccentric characters, financial impositions,
a porn king, crooks, drug dealers, personal idiosyncrasies, calamitous
coincidences and big guns. Smart editing, clever story, fresh soundtrack and strong
acting are a veritable indulgence. Graphic violence.
A young
Indian man travels to Phoenix to recover his dead father’s belongings, accompanied by
a man his father saved many years before. Full of humour and pathos, pain and healing with
top-notch writing, acting and direction.
Ben Stiller hires a private
dick to get the skinny on his high school sweetie, who he last saw during an incident
involving his frank and beans and a pant zipper. Grotesquely hilarious comedy not for the
prudish.
Writer/director John
Sayles has created an intelligent and honest film about people who are in
limbo. It will disappoint those needing neat and tidy stories with definitive
conclusions; it will richly reward viewers who are willing to think for
themselves.
A small-town cop tries to sort out a hunting
'accident', while his own life disintegrates, in this bleak and harrowing film
directed and written by Paul Schrader. It's an excellent movie and Nick Nolte's
performance is nuanced and masterful.
This production has all the components of a
fantastic film: a winning cast, an engaging story line, and a cinematic style
that transports you to the 1920s. This
is about as impressive as made for television movies can get.
This thoughtful and talky
film explores the loss and loneliness a retired movie director feels when a new
acquaintance reminds him of better days in his youth. Filled with substance, it includes
fine performances by Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave.
High school teacher Jim
McAllister (Matthew Broderick) interferes in the election of student body
president, incurring the wrath of keener Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) and
contributing to his personal decline. It's a wonderful satire that's bang on
and thought provoking.
Lene and Hans are married on the eve of the Second World War
and we watch them survive at terrible psychological and emotional cost. This is
a troubling and powerful film showing the war from a German perspective.
Two
doctors meet behind prison bars: one, eager and assertive, to evaluate his
colleague and the other, possibly insane, who has already passed judgement.
Fascinating characters present this portrait of human society's loss of control
and place in the world.
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