Some may have missed the Being John Malkovich director's diverse portfolio. Spearheading a new label dedicated to maverick film-makers, this contains Jonze's rock videos—including Chris Walken's dance number for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon Of Choice"—but the real buried treasure are hilarious vox pops for Oasis' "Stand By Me" that proved too bizarre for the po-faced Mancs to release, a doc on rodeo-based Texas youth culture, and more of Jonze's goofball choreographer from Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" vid.
Sequenced in reverse chronological order, these videos show Stipe in his element and Buck very much not in his, counting the seconds till he gets to go home. Still, thanks to Stipe, R.E.M. were always enhanced by video. The collection begins with "Bad Day", before Stipe's face de-wrinkles as we regress into the starkly exuberant "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" and arresting "Everybody Hurts". Then Stipe regains his hair for "Losing My Religion".
Slick, entertaining debut from first-time director George Clooney, working from a typically off-beat Charlie Kaufman screenplay. The often irritating Sam Rockwell is outstanding here as trash TV pioneer Chuck Barris, who's either an arch-fantasist or the oddest CIA hitman ever.
Written by Coppola but directed painfully slowly by Jack Clayton, this expensive adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel looks lovely but doesn't understand real tragedy (quite important re: Fitzgerald). Robert Redford fails to suggest any depth of broodiness, while Mia Farrow is almost laughably dotty, and the passion is limp. Still, a Nelson Riddle score, some nice shirts, and top vintage cars.
READ OUR REVIEW OF THE 2013 FILM ADAPTATION OF THE GREAT GATSBY HERE.
Dennis Hopper is Huey Walker, a '60s radical who's been wanted by the Feds for decades. When he's captured in the late '80s, repressed, clean-cut young FBI man Kiefer Sutherland lands the job of escorting him to trial through Reagan-era America, but Hopper turns the tables, and teaches him how to drop out. Your average, idealistic, pan-generational odd-couple road movie, but Hopper, spoofing his Easy Rider persona, is a howl.
Seamus McGarvey is proving himself to be the UK's finest director of photography, and this visual poem owes its beauty to his eye. A fable following a man as he looks back over his life, from rural Ireland to modern London, it's like Cronenberg's Spider with the imagination turned up to 11.
Australian comedy starring Billy Connolly as fisherman Steve Myers, whose boat is destroyed by a lightning bolt. When the insurance company refuses to pay up, claiming the incident was an "act of God", Myers decides to take God to court and sue Him for damages. Judi Davis plays a local reporter who champions Myers' case (and wins his heart). No surprises here, but it's amiable enough.
Matthew Barney's extraordinary Cremaster Cycle has won outrageous accolades: "greatest living artist", "best fusion of art and cinema since Buñuel", etc. This is the climactic 31-minute scene of that epic, and it's every bit as wildly mind-boggling as you'd hope. Barney scales the Guggenheim Museum-staircase, assaulted by molten Vaseline, tapdancing girls, metal bands and a cheetah. The perfect intro to a warped genius.
John Cassavetes' last movie looks like 'one for the studio' compared to the ragged glories of his greatest independent films; in fact, Cassavetes claimed he was the film's director in name only. Though bland, it's still a bizarrely watchable spoof thriller, riffing on Double Indemnity, with Alan Arkin as the harassed insurance man who becomes involved in a scheme to bump off Beverly D'Angelo's husband, Cassavetes regular Peter Falk, so he can then afford to send his a cappella-singing musical prodigy triplets to university. Nuts, lightly salted.
