A Top 100 Films of All-Time

It is time once again for a Top 100 Films of All-Time list. As I’ve done for the last few years, the first ten spots on the list comprise a hypothetical Sight & Sound-style ballot. We’ll be discussing them on this week’s episode of The George Sanders Show. This top ten is presented here in chronological order. The remaining 90 films were randomly selected from a consideration set of 902 films, which excluded films that made my Top Tens in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

1. Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
2. City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
3. Out of the Past (Jacques Turner, 1947)
4. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
5. Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
6. The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968)
7. A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971)
8. The Killer (John Woo, 1989)
9. The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)
10. Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley, 2008)
11. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
12. Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
13. Fat Choi Spirit (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2002)
14. The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991)
15. Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais, 2006)
16. Ivan the Terrible Part 2 (Sergei Eisenstein, 1958)
17. American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)
18. The Midnight After (Fruit Chan, 2014)
19. The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
20. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007)

21. Eight Men Out (John Sayles, 1988)

22. Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman, 2011)

23. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

24. Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford, 1937)

25. The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)

26. The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu, 1973)

27. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

28. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

29. Dream of the Red Chamber (Li Han-hsiang, 1977)

30. Last Hurrah for Chivalry (John Woo, 1979)

31. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

32. Dune (David Lynch, 1984)

33. Starman (John Carpenter, 1984)

34. Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosada, 2012)

35. Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983)

36. Applause (Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)

37. Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)

38. One from the Heart (Francis Ford Coppola, 1981)

39. Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948)

40. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

41. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959)

42. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

43. Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012)

44. Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller, 1957)

45. The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

46. New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998)

47. Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)

48. Man on Fire (Tony Scott, 2004)

49. The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)

50. Bambi (David Hand, 1942)

51. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

52. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)

53. 7 Women (John Ford, 1966)

54. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

55. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)

56. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)

57. I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Turner, 1943)

58. Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa, 1965)

59. Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (Chor Yuen, 1972)

60. Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939)

61. They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)

62. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

63. The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992)

64. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)

65. What Price Glory (Raoul Walsh, 1926)

66. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)

67. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

68. Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1996)

69. Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994)

70. Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954)

71. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (John Lounsbery & Wolfgang Reitherman, 1977)

72. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

73. The Sun Also Rises (Jiang Wen, 2007)

74. Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)

75. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

76. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

77. Romance Joe (Lee Kwangkuk, 2011)

78. The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)

79. The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray, 1959)

80. The Royal Road (Jenni Olson, 2015)

81. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

82. Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, 1948)

83. Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)

84. The Thin Man (WS Van Dyke, 1934)

85. Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

86. Golden Swallow (Chang Cheh, 1968)

87. Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948)

88. Porco Rosso (Hayao Miyazaki, 1992)

89. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

90. Godzilla (Ishirô Honda, 1954)

91. Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961)

92. Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

93. They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)

94. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

95. An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951)

96. Madame de. . . (Max Ophuls, 1953)

97. Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)

98. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

99. The Wold Shadow (Stan Brakhage, 1972)

100. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)

VIFF 2015: Introduction and Proposed Schedule

Part of my coverage of the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival.

It is time once again for the Vancouver International Film Festival. This will be my seventh year making the trip, every year since 2008 with the exception of 2011. Here at The End, I’ll be reviewing as many movies as I can for as long as I can, probably in the same digest format I used last year. In a somewhat exciting development this year, the entire cast of The George Sanders Show will be attending the festival, and we plan on doing some on-the-spot recording while we’re there as well (we also have a preview episode planned for the weekend before the festival begins). We’ll have coverage of the festival over at Seattle Screen Scene as well, even though Vancouver is obviously not Seattle (except in In the Line of Duty 4 and Paycheck, of course), because it’s a reasonably short train ride and VIFF is better than SIFF.

Once again there’s a great selection at VIFF, with several films from international festival circuit along with more obscure titles from the Dragons & Tigers series highlighting Asian cinema, the largest such program outside of Asia. Again the loss of the Dragons & Tigers Award is sadly felt, and last year’s consolation award for New Directors is missing as well. It looks like the festival is simply repositioning itself as a forum for local film and television production, with an emphasis on the VIFF Industry sidebar conference, and away from the kind of festival that would seek out and fly-in directors from around the world, like former award-winners Hong Sangsoo, Jia Zhangke, Liu Jiayin, Kore-eda Hirokazu, and so on.

Because I’m only able to be there for 10 of the festival’s 16 days, there are a handful of anticipated titles I won’t be able to see. These include: Arabian Nights, In the Shadow of Women, Son of Saul, Francofonia, Our Little Sister, Aferim! and Cemetery of Splendor, as well as The Royal Road, which I saw at SIFF earlier this year and was hoping to see again. Fortunately I should be able to catch up with most of these at a later date, but missing out on the Miguel Gomes and Apichatpong Weerasethakul films in Vancouver is especially heart-breaking.

In addition to the podcast coming up in a couple of weeks, I’ll be doing some pre-festival viewing again, trying to catch up on previous works by directors I’m hoping to see this year. Those titles are to-be-determined, but I’m certain Sylvia Chang will be involved.

This is a rough draft of the schedule I’m looking to follow at the 2015 festival. Showings that conflict with each other are listed without a space in-between, with the film I’m leaning toward attending listed first. There are a lot more conflicted time slots this year than in years past, which is either because there are fewer films I’m really excited about or more films I’m somewhat excited about, or both.

Friday, September 25:

Paradise (Sina Ataeian Dena)

Li Wen at East Lake (Luo Li)
The Thoughts that Once We Had (Thom Andersen)

The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzmán)
A Tale of Three Cities (Mabel Cheung)
The Visit (An Alien Encounter) (Michael Madsen)


Saturday, September 26:

A Matter of Interpretation (Lee Kwangkuk)

The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers)
The Thoughts that Once We Had (Thom Andersen)

Alice in Earnestland (Ahn Goocjin)
The Club (Pablo Larraín)


Sunday, September 27:

Dead Slow Ahead (Mauro Herce)

A Tale of Three Cities (Mabel Cheung)
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (Douglas Tirola)
Entertainment (Rick Alverson)

Beeba Boys (Deepa Mehta)

The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson)


Monday, September 28:

Port of Call (Philip Yung)

It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong (Emily Ting)

Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sangsoo)

Erbarme dich – Matthäus Passion Stories (Ramón Gieling)

Gonin Saga (Ishii Takashi)


Tuesday, September 29:

Love is All/Exquisite Corpus (Kim Longinotto/Peter Tscherkassky)

From Scotland with Love (Virginia Heath)

Topophilia (Peter Bo Rappmund)
Dead Slow Ahead (Mauro Herce)

Tharlo (Pema Tseden)
31st October (Shivaji Lotan Patil)


Wednesday, September 30:

The Visit (An Alien Encounter) (Michael Madsen)
Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello)

Mr. Zhang Believes (Qiu Jiongjiong)

Kaili Blues (Bi Gan)

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

Three Stories of Love (Hashiguchi Ryosuke)
The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)


Thursday, October 1:

Wondrous Boccaccio (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani)

Taxi (Jafar Panahi)
Argentina (Carlos Saura)

Magicarena (Andrea Prandstraller & Niccolò Bruna)

The Dream of Shahrazad (François Verster)
Paulina (Santiago Mitre)
Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra)
Disorder (Alice Wincour)


Friday, October 2:

Murmur of the Hearts (Sylvia Chang)
Three Stories of Love (Hashiguchi Ryosuke)
Dheepan (Jaques Audiard)

Monty Python: The Meaning of Live (Roger Graef & James Rogan)

My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
Louder than Bombs (Joachim Trier)

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley)
London Road (Rufus Norris)
100 Yen Love (Take Masaharu)

AAAAAAAAH! (Steve Oram)


Saturday, October 3:

45 Years (Andrew Haigh)

Into the Forest (Patricia Rozema)
Taxi (Jafar Panahi)

The Treasure (Corneliu Porumboiu)


Sunday, October 4:

The Summer of Sangailé (Alanté Kavaïté)
Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari)

Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)

This Week in Rankings

Since the last update we actually managed to put out a couple episode of They Shot Pictures. One on Preston Sturges and another on John Woo. I had reviews of Woo’s Princess Chang Ping at Seattle Screen Scene and Jackie Chan’s Project A films here at The End. We’ve also had episodes of The George Sanders Show on The Look of Silence and The Sound of Music and Man of Aran and Neo Tokyo.

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. Short comments or capsule reviews for them can be found over at letterboxd.

Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty) – 3, 1934
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise) – 31, 1965
The Young Dragons (John Woo) – 17, 1974
The Dragon Tamers (John Woo) – 22, 1975
Princess Chang Ping (John Woo) – 16, 1976

Last Hurrah for Chivalry (John Woo) – 12, 1979
Laughing Times (John Woo) – 32, 1980
Neo Tokyo (Rintaro, Yoshiaki Kawajiri & Katsuhiro Ōtomo) – 16, 1987
The Killer (John Woo) – 1, 1989
Just Heroes (John Woo & Wu Ma) – 49, 1989

Bullet in the Head (John Woo) – 4, 1990
Hard-Boiled (John Woo) – 3, 1992
Hard Target (John Woo) – 46, 1993
Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee) – 19, 1995
Broken Arrow (John Woo) – 30, 1996
Face/Off (John Woo) – 30, 1997

Windtalkers (John Woo) – 14, 2002
Paycheck (John Woo) – 27, 2003
Red Cliff (John Woo) – 6, 2008
Oki’s Movie (Hong Sangsoo) – 1, 2010
Reign of Assassins (Su Chao-pin) – 48, 2010

The Crossing Part One (John Woo) – 11, 2014
The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer) – 33, 2014
Shaun the Sheep Movie (Mark Burton & Richard Starzak) – 16, 2015
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie) – 20, 2015
Ant-Man (Peyton Reed) – 23, 2015

Running Out of Karma: Jackie Chan’s Project A and Project A 2

Running Out of Karma is my on-going series on Johnnie To, Hong Kong and Chinese-language cinema. Here is an index.

Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983)

Comparing Project A to Sammo Hung’s Wheels on Meals, released the next year in 1984, shows some stark differences between Sammo and Jackie Chan as directors. Both films are swashbuckling adventures with ridiculously athletic fights and stunts, slapstick comedy and a real obsession with beating the hell out of Jackie Chan. Both star Chan, Sammo and Yuen Biao. Sammo’s film though tells a real story, about immigrants in Barcelona (granted, a Barcelona where everyone speaks Cantonese) that find themselves caught up in what we slowly realize is a fairy tale: three musketeers rescuing a princess from a castle. It isn’t as socially conscious as Hung’s Pedicab Driver (a great film which is now available to stream on Warner Archive Instant), but that little bit of grounding makes the escalating fantasy even more effective. It’s packed with purely visual humor (the split screen gag in the opening moments, Sammo’s variety of hats and Yuen’s entire wardrobe) and moments of sublime absurdity (Wu Ma’s “guy who thinks he’s a clock”). Wheels on Meals is a true ensemble film, with Yuen and Chan sharing the lead and Sammo in support, like he is in almost all of his films from this period.

Project A, however, is a Jackie Chan-starring vehicle all the way. There are long stretches of the film where the other two Little Fortunes are entirely absent (Yuen has a large role as a rival cop in the first half of the film, then mostly disappears, Sammo pops in and out for some scoundrelly awesomeness). Chan is the prime mover of the plot and the true hero of a very thin story about Hong Kong’s Coast Guard fighting a gang of pirates at some very unspecific time in the past. The humor is even more broad and less inventive, wild overacting (even by Hong Kong standards) and literal pie-in-the-face jokes (well, spaghetti-in-the-face). The plot barely makes sense, little more than an excuse for fights, sketchy gags and chase sequences (and of course a contextually nonsensical but nonetheless kind of stirring patriotic dressing-down Chan gives his British superior). The actions scenes are, of course, amazing: the coordination of the fights with Chan and Sammo (side by side, for the moment) is unbelievably fast and intricate, and these are some of Chan’s most famous and inventive chases, especially the central bicycle chase, with Chan’s exasperation toward the useless female lead (another unfortunate Chan trope) and culminating in a Harold Lloyd homage. But even the finale becomes overcrowded with extras and effects. The climax of Wheels on Meals gives each hero a highlighted fight, we see the differences in their personalities reflected in their fighting styles: Sammo’s silliness, Yuen’s gracefulness and speed, Chan’s masochism. In Project A, the climax is a series of mistaken identity gags (which are, to be fair, pretty funny) followed by an all-too-brief mass fight punctuated by the repeated use of hand grenades (some brilliant falling stunts by Sammo here). The three unite to gang up on the villain Dick Wei (terrific here, wish he had a bigger part), but even in this fight, it’s technology that wins as much as anything else.

Project A 2 (Jackie Chan, 1987)

The sequel is even more Chan-focused, as the other Little Fortunes are absent (they were off in the jungle making Eastern Condors) and Jackie is joined by a trio of women played by Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau and Rosamund Kwan, in an apparent nod to Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues and its trio of Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh and Cherie Chung. The film picks up right at the end of the first one, with surviving members of the pirate gang vowing revenge on Chan. They end up poor and desperate in Hong Kong where they join the various factions trying to kill our hero. These include a corrupt cop with a penchant for inflating his reputation with fake arrests and a gambling den magnate/gang leader. The women are part of Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary group, and they try to get Chan to join up as well. As always, Chan refuses to take a political stand, rather than supporting one government or another he sticks to a personal ideology of honesty and righteousness. He’s against corruption, aids the sick and helpless and protects the innocent. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, of course, but one can’t help notice that this political vagueness also makes his films palatable for the widest possible audience, whereas more committed films like Tsui’s, in which the female revolutionaries are the heroes and prime movers of the plot, make an unmistakeable political argument threatening to the powers that be.

Chan’s political vagueness aside, I think this is actually even better than the first film. It expands and perfects his desire to pay homage to old Hollywood classics, with an extended sequence in Cheung’s apartment that recalls A Night at the Opera (as well as a similar, but smaller-scale, sequence in Tsui’s Shanghai Blues) and the finale ups the Harold Lloyd sequence from the first film by recreating Buster Keaton’s most famous stunt (from Steamboat Bill, Jr.) The best sequence though is an extended chase with Chan and his rival cop handcuffed together and attacked by the ax-throwing pirate gang that starts in a restaurant and extends across the streets of the city. This is the pinnacle of Chan’s slapstick kung fu style, avoiding the brutal masochism of Police Story (made between these two films in 1985), in which the light-hearted comic hero Jackie gradually comes undone at the abuse of his body perpetrated by the villains and his own choreographic imagination. The conclusion of that film is violent and cruel, as the hero resorts to a pure expression of murderous rage against his (captured and defenseless) enemy, part of a series of Hong Kong films in the 80s that seem to justify police vigilantism and brutality, also a popular trope in American cop films of the same era. As Chan’s career went on, the cartoon of the Project A films became his default persona while the Police Story darkness, a natural outgrowth of the masochism of his early films, dissipated. But aside from a spark here and there, the films were rarely so good, becoming increasingly content to rest on audacity rather than ingenuity for his stunt sequences and awkward mugging for his comedy. And as his physical skills have declined with age, the hollowness of his work has become ever more apparent. Unlike Tsui Hark, or Lau Kar-leung, he’s been unable to extend his directorial career into old age with any kind of success. He never really had anything to say anyway.

This Week in Rankings

Over the past month or so I wrote about King Arthur here at The End and a bunch of movies over at Seattle Screen Scene, including Christmas in July, Trainwreck and The Lady Eve, A Hard Day and Unexpected, and a quartet of Running Out of Karma movies: Wild City; Yes, Madam!; The Heroic Trio, and A Better Tomorrow.

We discussed that last one as well on The George Sanders Show, along with Blackhat. We also did shows on Summer Interlude and Songs from the Second Floor and The Green Ray and X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes. We have a new episode of They Shot Pictures on Preston Sturges ready to go, it should be making it’s way onto the internet any time now. And, following tradition, I made a bunch of Best of the Year So Far lists.

I also went on a bit of an Endy Awards kick, handing out fake cat statues to films from the years 1993, 1995, 1996 and 1997. I also updated the years 1994 and 1998-2014, changing some nominees and winners based on new movies I’ve seen since the last revision in March. You can find all of those, as always, in the Endy Awards Index.

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. Short comments or capsule reviews for them can be found over at letterboxd.

The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard) – 33, 1933
The Good Fairy (William Wyler) – 11, 1935
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz) – 2, 1938
Christmas in July (Preston Sturges) – 4, 1940
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges) – 20, 1940

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges) – 2, 1941
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges) – 11, 1941
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges) – 5, 1942
Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges) – 8, 1944
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges) – 12, 1944

Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges) – 5, 1948
Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman) – 31, 1951
X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman) – 24, 1963
Temple of the Red Lotus (Hsu Tsung-hung) – 27, 1965
The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (Patrick Lung-kong) – 21, 1967

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo) – 1, 1986
The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer) – 2, 1986
Middlemarch (Anthony Page) – 40, 1994
Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson) – 23, 2000
Emma (Jim O’Hanlon) – 27, 2009

Blackhat (Michael Mann) – 3, 2015
Wild City (Ringo Lam) – 12, 2015
Trainwreck (Judd Apatow) – 13, 2015
7 Days in Hell (Jake Szymanski) – 17, 2015

1993 Endy Awards

These are the 1993 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Endy Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Best Picture:

1. The Age of Innocence
2. Dazed and Confused
3. Green Snake
4. Iron Monkey
5. Matinee
6. The Piano
7. The Puppetmaster
8. Six Degrees of Separation
9. Sonatine
10. Three Colors: Blue

Best Director:

1. Martin Scorsese, The Age of Innocence
2. Richard Linklater, Dazed and Confused
3. Tsui Hark, Green Snake
4. Hou Hsiao-hsien, The Puppetmaster
5. Krzysztof Kieślowski, Three Colors: Blue

Linklater’s chronicle of the last day of school/first night of summer of a bygone era grows as it recedes in the memory. 20 years ago it was a goofy bit of comic nostalgia, an excuse to laugh at 70s fashions and the importance of Aerosmith. But the older I get, the better it gets. But I just recently watched The Age of Innocence again, and it’s now my favorite Martin Scorsese movie and I’m giving it the Endy here. This is Scorsese’s first directing nomination, but surely not his last. It’s Hou’s sixth nomination.

Best Actor:

1. Daniel Day-Lewis, The Age of Innocence
2. Bill Murray, Groundhog Day
3. Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Last Action Hero
4. Anthony Hopkins, Shadowlands
5. Takeshi Kitano, Sonatine

Best Actress:

1. Brigitte Lin, The East is Red
2. Maggie Cheung, Green Snake
3. Holly Hunter, The Piano
4. Stockard Channing, Six Degrees of Separation
5. Juliette Binoche, Three Colors: Blue

This is Murray’s fourth nomination (third in Best Actor) and his first win. Binoche won previously in 2007 and 2010. This is Cheung’s fifth nomination (fourth in Best Actress) with no wins as yet.

Supporting Actor:

1. John Goodman, Matinee
2. Larenz Tate, Menace II Society
3. Li Tien-lu, The Puppetmaster
4. Will Smith, Six Degrees of Separation
5. Val Kilmer, Tombstone

Also receiving votes: Harvey Keitel (The Piano), Tony Leung Ka-fai (He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father), Dennis Hopper (True Romance), Ralph Fiennes (Schindler’s List), Sean Penn (Carlito’s Way), Matthew McConaughey (Dazed and Confused), John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), and Kevin Costner (A Perfect World). This is the best selection of Supporting Actors I’ve seen in the course of handing out the Endys. Of course I’m giving the award to the guy who’s playing himself.

Supporting Actress:

1. Christina Ricci, Addams Family Values
2. Winona Ryder, The Age of Innocence
3. Josephine Siao, Fong Sai-yuk
4. Joey Wang, Green Snake
5. Emma Thompson, Much Ado About Nothing

The Supporting Actress group this year is not as good, but still has a pair of all-time great performances. Josephine Siao, with the best supporting performance in a kung fu comedy ever, just edges out Ryder’s career-best performance.

Original Screenplay:

1. Richard Linlater, Dazed and Confused
2. Danny Rubin & Harold Ramis, Groundhog Day
3. Jane Campion, The Piano
4. Chu Tien-wen & Wu Nien-jen, The Puppetmaster
5. Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Three Colors: Blue

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Jay Cocks & Martin Scorsese, The Age of Innocence
2. Lillian Lee & Tsui Hark, Green Snake
3. Steven Zaillian, Searching for Bobby Fischer
4. John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation
5. Robert Altman & Frank Barhydt, Short Cuts

Non-English Language Film:

1. Green Snake (Tsui Hark)
2. Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-ping)
3. Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano)
4. The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski)

Three Colors: Blue was the first art film I ever saw that made me want to watch and rewatch it until I took it all in and felt I really understood what was happening and why. As such, it’s probably overrated in my memory. I can’t tell and I don’t care: these are my fake movie awards.

Non-Fiction Film:

1. Latcho Drom (Tony Gatlif)
2. The War Room (Chris Hegedus & D.A. Pennebaker)

Animated Film:

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick)
2. Ninja Scroll (Yoshiaki Kawajiri)

Unseen Film:

1. Blue (Derek Jarman)
2. The Blue Kite (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
3. Naked (Mike Leigh)
4. Stalingrad (Joseph Vilsmaier)
5. 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard)

Also receiving votes: Madadayo (Akira Kurosawa), Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley), The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung), Smoking/No Smoking (Alain Resnais), Caro diario (Nanni Moretti), Fearless (Peter Weir), and M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg).
ironmonkey_poster
Film Editing:

1. The Age of Innocence
2. Dazed and Confused
3. The Piano
4. The Puppetmaster
5. Three Colors: Blue

Those dissolves.

Cinematography:

1. The Age of Innocence
2. Green Snake
3. The Piano
4. Schindler’s List
5. Three Colors: Blue

Art Direction:

1. The Age of Innocence
2. Green Snake
3. Matinee
4. The Piano
5. The Puppetmaster

Costume Design:

1. The Age of Innocence
2. The Eagle Shooting Heroes
3. Green Snake
4. The Heroic Trio
5. Matinee

Mant vs. Maggie Cheung. Mant wins.

Make-up:

1. Army of Darkness
2. The Bride with White Hair
3. The Eagle-Shooting Heroes
4. Executioners
5. Matinee

Original Score:

1. Jurassic Park
2. The Nightmare Before Christmas
3. The Piano
4. Schindler’s List
5. Three Colors: Blue

Adapted Score:

1. Coneheads
2. Dazed and Confused
3. Judgement Night
4. Matinee
5. True Romance

Sound:

1. Jurassic Park
2. The Piano
3. The Puppetmaster
4. Schindler’s List
5. Three Colors: Blue

Sound Editing:

1. Gettysburg
2. Jurassic Park
3. The Last Action Hero
4. Schindler’s List
5. True Romance

Visual Effects:

1. Army of Darkness
2. Green Snake
3. Jurassic Park
4. Kung Fu Cult Master
5. Matinee

1995 Endy Awards

These are the 1995 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Endy Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Best Picture:

1. Ballet
2. The Blade
3. Dead Man
4. Fallen Angels
5. Good Men, Good Women
6. Heat
7. Kamikaze Taxi
8. Kicking and Screaming
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. Whisper of the Heart

Best Director:

1. Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man
2. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Good Men, Good Women
3. Michael Mann, Heat
4. Masato Harada, Kamikaze Taxi
5. Yoshifumi Kondō, Whisper of the Heart

Very close race for the top prize this year, as Good Men, Good Women might be Hou Hsiao-hsien’s best movie. But Dead Man is simply one of my all-time favorite films. We discussed it way back on Episode 2 of The George Sanders Show.

Best Actor:

1. Johnny Depp, Dead Man
2. Takeshi Kaneshiro, Fallen Angels
3. Robert DeNiro, Heat
4. Colin Firth, Pride & Prejudice
5. Morgan Freeman, Se7en

This is DeNiro’s first Endy nomination, but I suspect it won’t be his last. Depp previously won for 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Firth’s performance is deservedly considered definitive. For those who say it a performance in a TV miniseries and not a film, I say “Pffffbbbbtt.”

Also receiving votes: Ralph Fiennes (Strange Days), Leslie Cheung (The Chinese Feast), Denzel Washington (Devil in a Blue Dress and Crimson Tide), Ian McKellen (Richard III), Stephen Chow (A Chinese Odyssey), Chris Farley (Tommy Boy) and Lau Ching-wan (Loving You).

Best Actress:

1. Alicia Silverstone, Clueless
2. Annie Shizuka Inoh, Good Men, Good Women
3. Parker Posey, Party Girl
4. Jennifer Ehle, Pride & Prejudice
5. Nicole Kidman, To Die For

Also receiving votes: Miho Nakayama (Love Letter), Julienne Moore (Safe), Charlie Yeung (Love in the Time of Twilight), Julie Delpy (Before Sunrise), Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility), Lili Taylor (The Addiction), Catherine Keener (Living in Oblivion), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Georgia), Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking) and Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas).

Supporting Actor:

1. Gary Farmer, Dead Man
2. Kōji Yakusho, Kamikaze Taxi
3. Chris Eigeman, Kicking and Screaming
4. Ciarán Hinds, Persuasion
5. Alan Rickman, Sense and Sensibility

Supporting Actress:

1. Sharon Stone, Casino
2. Chloë Sevigny, Kids
3. Miki Sakai, Love Letter
4. Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite
5. Gina Gershon, Showgirls

Farmer is an obvious pick, of course. In Supporting Actress, this is one of the rare times when the Oscars and I agree on an acting winner. Sorvino really is quite wonderful, it’s a shame she never got another role half this good again.

Original Screenplay:

1. Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man
2. Masato Harada, Kamikaze Taxi
3. Noah Baumbach, Kicking and Screaming
4. Shunji Iwai, Love Letter
5. Daisy von Scherler Meyer & Harry Birckmeyer, Party Girl

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Amy Heckerling, Clueless
2. Chu T’ien-wen, Good Men, Good Women
3. Andrew Davies, Pride & Prejudice
4. Emma Thompson, Sense & Sensibility
5. Hayao Miyazaki, Whisper of the Heart

That’s right: three Jane Austen adaptations. There’s a fourth that just missed a nomination as well. There was something in the air in 1995.

Non-English Language Film:

1. The Blade (Tsui Hark)
2. Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai)
3. Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
4. Kamikaze Taxi (Masato Harada)
5. Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondō)

Just missing are Shunji Iwai’s Love Letter, Tsui Hark’s Love in the Time of Twilight, and Pedro Costa’s Casa de Lava.

Documentary Film:

1. Ballet (Frederick Wiseman)
2. The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman)
3. Unzipped (Douglas Keeve)

This is Wiseman’s second win and eighth nomination. He won in 2014 for National Gallery.

Animated Film:

1. Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii)
2. Toy Story (John Lasseter)

Unseen Film:

1. La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol)
2. Mabarosi (Koreeda Hirokazu)
3. Ulysses’s Gaze (Theo Angelopolous)
4. Underground (Emir Kusturica)
5. The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi)

Also receiving votes: La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz), Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung), The Flower of My Secret (Pedro Almodóvar), and Village of the Damned (John Carpenter).

Film Editing:

1. The Blade
2. Dead Man
3. Fallen Angels
4. Good Men, Good Women
5. Heat

Tsui Hark reaches the apotheosis of the fast-cutting action movie, a full decade before Hollywood begins to (badly) imitate the style.

Cinematography:

1. The Blade
2. Casa de Lava
3. Dead Man
4. Fallen Angels
5. Good Men, Good Women

What can I say? I’m a sucker for fish-eyes.

Also receiving votes: Love Letter, Se7en, Dead Presidents, Strange Days, City of Lost Children, Heat, Nixon, Shanghai Triad, Ballet, Sense and Sensibility.

Art Direction:

1. The Blade
2. Casino
3. City of Lost Children
4. Dead Man
5. Pride & Prejudice

Costume Design:

1. The Blade
2. Casino
3. A Chinese Odyssey
4. Dead Man
5. Sense & Sensibility

Everything Sharon Stone wears.

Make-up:

1. The Blade
2. Casino
3. A Chinese Odyssey
4. City of Lost Children
5. Species

Original Score:

1. City of Lost Children
2. Dead Man
3. Friday
4. Toy Story
5. Whisper of the Heart

Adapted Score:

1. Clueless
2. Dead Presidents
3. Devil in a Blue Dress
4. Kicking and Screaming
5. Kids

If it was “Adapted Song” this would easily go to Whisper of the Heart, as it is, “Country Roads” is almost enough to get it nominated in both categories.

Sound:

1. Casino
2. Dead Man
3. Good Men, Good Women
4. Heat
5. Seven

That telephone ringing.

Sound Editing:

1. The Blade
2. Braveheart
3. Crimson Tide
4. GoldenEye
5. Heat

Visual Effects:

1. Apollo 13
2. Babe
3. A Chinese Odyssey
4. Love in the Time of Twilight
5. Species

That’ll do, pig.

SIFF 2015 Index

This is an index of my coverage of the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival. The reviews are all at Seattle Screen Scene, the brief comments are on letterboxd.

Reviews:

Temporary Family (Cheuk Wan-chi, 2014) – May 14, 2015
Snow on the Blades (Setsurô Wakamatsu, 2014) – May 14, 2015
Results (Andrew Bujalski, 2015) – May 18, 2015
Back to the Soil (Bill Morrison, 2014) – May 18, 2015
Beyond Zero 1914-1918 (Bill Morrison, 2014) – May 18, 2015

Natural History (James Benning, 2014) – May 18, 2015
The Coffin in the Mountain (Xin Yukun, 2014) – May 22, 2015
Haemoo (Shim Sungbo, 2014) – May 22, 2015
The Color of Pomegranates (Segei Parajanov, 1968) – May 22, 2015
A Hard Day (Kim Seonghoon, 2014) – May 22, 2015

Overheard 3 (Alan Mak & Felix Chong, 2014) – May 29, 2015
Dreams Rewired (Manu Luksch, Thomas Tode & Martin Reinhart) – May 29, 2015
The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray, 1955-59) – May 29, 2015
Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, 2015) – May 29, 2015
Unexpected (Kris Swanberg, 2015) – May 29, 2015

A Matter of Interpretation (Lee Kwangkuk, 2014) – May 29, 2015
Dearest (Peter Chan, 2014) – May 29, 2015

Brief Comments:

When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014) – May 05, 2015
Virtuosity (Christopher Wilkinson, 2014) – May 10, 2015
The Royal Road (Jenni Olson, 2015) – May 30, 2015
Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014) – May 31, 2015
The Teacher’s Diary (Nithiwat Tharathorn, 2014) – Jun 01, 2015

Saved from the Flames (Compilation hosted by Serge Bromberg) – Jun 02, 2015
Cave of the Spider-Women (Dan Duyu, 1927) – Jun 03, 2015
Cave of the Silken Web (Ho Meng-hua, 1967) – Jun 03, 2015
Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2014) – Jun 04, 2015
¡Que viva México! (Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, 1932) – Jun 07, 2015

Podcast:

The George Sanders Show Episode 62: SIFF Recap

1996 Endy Awards

These are the 1996 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Endy Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Best Picture:

1. Big Night
2. Bound
3. Comrades, Almost a Love Story
4. The English Patient
5. Goodbye South, Goodbye
6. Irma Vep
7. Mahjong
8. Romeo + Juliet
9. Trainspotting
10. Viva Erotica

Best Director:

1. Peter Chan, Comrades, Almost a Love Story
2. Anthony Minghella, The English Patient
3. Edward Yang, Mahjong
4. Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep
5. Danny Boyle, Trainspotting

Like with Boogie Nights in 1997 and Pulp Fiction in 1994, the exuberance of Trainspotting defines for me a stage of cinephilia, when I first began to really believe in the joy of making cinema. The Assayas film is a more refined expressions of that same drive, while the Chan and Minghella are sublime examples of more traditional romantic forms. But the Endy this year goes to Edward Yang, for what I consider to be his finest film.

Best Actor:

1. Stanley Tucci, Big Night
2. Anthony Wong, Ebola Syndrome
3. Ralph Fiennes, The English Patient
4. Philip Baker Hall, Hard Eight
5. Christopher Guest, Waiting for Guffman

Fiennes will eventually win in 2014 for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anthony Wong gets the win for one of the all-time great sleazy performances.

Best Actress:

1. Maggie Cheung, Comrades, Almost a Love Story
2. Frances McDormand, Fargo
3. Lili Taylor, I Shot Andy Warhol
4. Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep
5. Josephine Siao, Stage Door

Disaster as Maggie Cheung becomes the first actor to be nominated twice in the same category in one year, only to split the vote and allow Frances McDormand to sneak away with the Endy. One of the biggest upsets in Endy history. Nicole Kidman, Gina Gershon and Michelle Yeoh just miss out on nominations for Portrait of a Lady, Bound and The Stunt Woman, respectively.

Supporting Actor:

1. Tony Shaloub, Big Night
2. Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket
3. Vince Vaughn, Swingers
4. Francis Ng, Young & Dangerous
5. Anthony Wong, Young & Dangerous 2

Supporting Actress:

1. Jennifer Tilly, Bound
2. Juliette Binoche, The English Patient
3. Virginie Ledoyen, Mahjong
4. Sylvia Sidney, Mars Attacks!
5. Shu Qi, Viva Erotica

Binoche will win Best Actress in 2007 (Flight of the Red Balloon) and 2010 (Certified Copy).

Original Screenplay:

1. Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket
2. Ivy Ho, Comrades, Almost a Love Story
3. Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep
4. Edward Yang, Mahjong
5. Derek Yee, Law Chi-leung & Bosco Lam, Viva Erotica

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Anthony Minghella, The English Patient
2. Jonathan Gems, Mars Attacks!
3. David Koepp & Robert Towne, Mission: Impossible
4. Laura Jones, Portrait of a Lady
5. John Hodge, Trainspotting

Non-English Language Film:

1. Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan)
2. Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
3. Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
4. Mahjong (Edward Yang)
5. Viva Erotica (Derek Yee)

Documentary Film:

1. La Comédie-Française (Frederick Wiseman)
2. Get on the Bus (Spike Lee)
3. Hype! (Doug Pray)
4. The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (Adam Simon)
5. When We Were Kings (Leon Gast)

The is the second year to feature a film about Samuel Fuller in the Best Documentary category, after 2013’s A Fuller Life.

Animated Film:

1. Beavis & Butthead Do America (Mike Judge)
2. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise)

Unseen Film:

1. A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
2. The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway)
3. La Promesse (The Dardennes)
4. A Summer’s Tale (Eric Rohmer)

Also receiving votes: Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier), Crash (David Cronenberg), Evita (Alan Parker), Kansas City (Robert Altman), Escape from LA (John Carpenter), and Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf).

Film Editing:

1. Comrades, Almost a Love Story
2. The English Patient
3. Irma Vep
4. Romeo + Juliet
5. Trainspotting

Cinematography:

1. Bound
2. Goodbye South, Goodbye
3. Irma Vep
4. Mahjong
5. Romeo + Juliet

Art Direction:

1. The English Patient
2. Portrait of a Lady
3. Romeo + Juliet
4. Shanghai Grand
5. Trainspotting

Costume Design:

1. Irma Vep
2. Kingpin
3. Mars Attacks!
4. Romeo + Juliet
5. Trainspotting

Claire Danes with wings.

Make-up:

1. The English Patient
2. From Dusk til Dawn
3. Kingpin
4. Mars Attacks!
5. Romeo + Juliet

Farrelly grotesquerie at its best.

Original Score:

1. Comrades, Almost a Love Story
2. The English Patient
3. Goodbye South, Goodbye
4. Irma Vep
5. That Thing You Do!

Adapted Score:

1. Basquiat
2. Comrades, Almost a Love Story
3. Romeo + Juliet
4. Swingers
5. Trainspotting

Very tough category this year. Swingers rode a wave of swing dance/Rat Pack revivalism, so that’s obviously out. Tough to pass over the New Wave/Punk hits and The Cardigans, but I have to go with the Teresa Teng tribute that is Comrades.

Sound:

1. Big Night
2. Comrades, Almost a Love Story
3. The English Patient
4. Irma Vep
5. Trainspotting

The sound of scrambling eggs.

Sound Editing:

1. The Frighteners
2. Independence Day
3. Mission: Impossible
4. The Rock
5. Twister

Visual Effects:

1. The Frighteners
2. From Dusk til Dawn
3. Independence Day
4. Trainspotting
5. Twister

mj-1996-poster-1

1997 Endy Awards

These are the 1997 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Endy Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Best Picture:

1. Boogie Nights
2. Cure
3. Happy Together
4. Jackie Brown
5. Lost Highway
6. The Mirror
7. Starship Troopers
8. Taste of Cherry
9. Too Many Ways to Be No. 1
10. Xiao Wu

Best Director:

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights
4. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure
2. Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown
3. David Lynch, Lost Highway
5. Wong Kar-wai, Happy Together

Honestly I’m afraid to go back and rewatch Boogie Nights. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, a film that defined the youthful exuberance and openness of the early stages of cinephilia for me in my younger days. I’d hate to go back and find it to be less than the thrill I got walking into the theatre right at the start of that opening tracking shot. Lynch will win Best Director in 2001 for Mulholland Dr. This is Tarantino’s first nomination for directing, he will have been nominated for Original Screenplay in 2009.

Best Actor:

1. Kōji Yakusho, Cure
2. Leslie Cheung, Happy Together
3. Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Happy Together
4. Thomas Jay Ryan, Henry Fool
5. Leonardo DiCaprio, Titanic

Best Actress:

1. Joey Lauren Adams, Chasing Amy
2. Pam Grier, Jackie Brown
3. Patricia Arquette, Lost Highway
4. Mina Mohammad Khani, The Mirror
5. Kate Winslet, Titanic

I’m arguing back and forth on whether this should go to Cheung or Leung, they’re both so good. Giving it to Leung, as his perspective dominates so much of the film, while knowing that both will have more chances at the Endy as we move backward in time. Leung will be nominated another four times between 1997 and 2004, winning in 2000 for In the Mood for Love.

Supporting Actor:

1. John C. Reilly, Boogie Nights
2. Chris Tucker, The Fifth Element
3. Robert DeNiro, Jackie Brown
4. Robert Forster, Jackie Brown
5. Russell Crowe, LA Confidential

Supporting Actress:

1. Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights
2. Minnie Driver, Grosse Pointe Blank
3. Parker Posey, Henry Fool
4. Bridget Fonda, Jackie Brown
5. Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter

You could fill out two or three supporting actor categories with the cast of Boogie Nights, Jackie Brown and LA Confidential. 1997 was a great year for ensembles. Moore just missed a nomination for The Big Lebowski in 1998, so this might be a bit of a make-up award for her.

Original Screenplay:

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights
2. David Lynch & Barry Gifford, Lost Highway
3. Jafar Panahi, The Mirror
4. Abbas Kiarostami, Taste of Cherry
5. Matt Chow, Szeto Kam-yuen & Wai Ka-fai, Too Many Ways To Be No. 1

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure
2. Hideaki Anno, End of Evangelion
3. Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown
4. Sadayuki Murai, Perfect Blue
5. Edward Neumeier, Starship Troopers

Non-English Language Film:

1. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
2. Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
3. The Mirror (Jafar Panahi)
4. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
5. Xiao Wu (Jia Zhangke)

Documentary Film:

1. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Errol Morris)

Morris picks up his first (but surely not the last) Endy with the only doc I’ve seen from this year.

Animated Film:

1. End of Evangelion (Hideaki Anno & Kazuya Tsurumaki)
2. Evangelion: Death and Rebirth (Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki & Masayuki)
3. Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon)
4. Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)

Unseen Film:

1. Destiny (Youssef Chahine)
2. Made in Hong Kong (Fruit Chan)
3. Same Old Song (Alain Resnais)

Film Editing:

1. Boogie Nights
2. Cure
3. Happy Together
4. Kundun
5. Lost Highway

Cinematography:

1. Boogie Nights
2. Happy Together
3. The River
4. Titanic
5. Too Many Ways to Be No. 1

Art Direction:

1. Boogie Nights
2. The Fifth Element
3. Starship Troopers
4. Titanic
5. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

Costume Design:

1. Boogie Nights
2. The Fifth Element
3. The Ice Storm
4. Starship Troopers
5. Titanic

Don Cheadle’s King Tut outfit.

Make-up:

1. Boogie Nights
2. The Fifth Element
3. Kundun
4. Men in Black
5. Titanic

Not only because of Milla Jovovich’s hair. Other stuff too.

Original Score:

1. Kundun
2. LA Confidential
3. Princess Mononoke
4. Starship Troopers
5. Titanic

Score, not song. The song is terrible, the score is good.

Adapted Score:

1. Boogie Nights
2. Grosse Pointe Blank
3. Happy Together
4. The Ice Storm
5. Jackie Brown

The Delfonics in an upset!

Sound:

1. Boogie Nights
2. Lost Highway
3. The Mirror
4. The River
5. Xiao Wu

The sound design in Jia Zhangke’s debut is extraordinary, the noises and chaos of the rapidly modernizing city intruding on and dominating every aspect of the young pickpocket’s life.

Sound Editing:

1. Face/Off
2. The Lost Word: Jurassic Park
3. Men in Black
4. Starship Troopers
5. Titanic

Visual Effects:

1. Lifeline
2. Men in Black
3. Starship Troopers
4. Titanic
5. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs