willem dafoe how i met your mother
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. Slater carries the film, balancing the wavering tones of comedy, heavy material, and Mark/Harry’s conflicting personas with ease. He delivers drugs. These could be easy props to show that Strike is a youth who happens to be stuck in this violent circle, but Lee uses it to introduce the thought that neighborhoods that are overtaken by drugs make it so that a young man rarely advances past young interests because they're hardened to believe that they have no future. He sends money to his sister. Stream all four and save! Anyway, Daniel is played by Wendell B. Harris, Jr. and Soderbergh hired him because the year after sex, lies, and videotape changed the Sundance Film Festival forever, Soderbergh served on the Jury the following year and awarded Harris the Grand Prize for Chameleon Street, a film that Harris wrote, directed, starred in and produced, and also that Hollywood completely screwed him over with right after Soderbergh’s prize should’ve set the groundwork for a major career. In between tackling heavy subject matter like homosexuality, suicide and educational rights, the film occasionally veers into teenage melodrama, but never drowns in its own angst thanks to Moyle’s heartfelt script and ace performances from its young cast. That runtime is meant to show Joan of Arc’s life, deeds, and conviction but it's also meant to show how men behave around her and that because they've assumed all roles of power—courts, priesthood, bishops, governors, kings, etc.—what irks them most is that she refuses to wear a dress. Released in 1990, Pump up the Volume is more in tune with 80s cinema than 90s, but it’s just too damn good and too neglected to leave off the list. A 14-year-old Reese Witherspoon falls in love with a neighbor boy (Jason London) in this note-perfect coming-of-age drama. We tell our children not to talk to strangers but we invite anyone to stay with us whom we've not seen for years, even though years of separation can make people strangers again. The older generation experienced the Civil Rights Movement and witnessed an incremental movement of change and are expecting the next generation to step up, but are also oblivious that that change stagnated and helped create a system of inequality that's damn near impossible to escape a neighborhood without having to participate in what earns that neighborhood money; a vicious cycle has been created and it's extremely hard to escape. Television makes these daily sacrifices possible. is Leslie Harris’ only film and it’s a damn shame, but at least with one film she gave us an instantly memorable character for anyone who sees it. It essentially operates as a preposterous soap opera without the action. For a time, she stayed amongst the men because you don’t shoot the messenger when the messenger is there to exalt your higher place in society. And that's the point. How ‘bout stay off crack?”. Harry says he'll stay for a few days, but he's there drinking and playing cards much longer; he questions the masculinity of the men in the family and brings up old grudges that everyone but Harry has buried—but it's always done with a smile. And practice makes perfect. Nick Nolte is a big, shambling, confident male presence in the movies, and it is startling to see his cocksure presence change into fear in Paul Schrader's "Affliction.'' The town has a billboard of a bull whose testicles are so large they can be seen from miles away. Dante locks up the resolution sweetly, tying together the threads of impending doom and hormonal maturation in a culminating set piece that’s a dream for any movie theater junkie like myself. I wish this were the 90’s teen hit it deserves to be. He keeps a composition notebook of physical traits. Each student is trying on sexuality with the same clumsy beginners approach that students attempt in trying on ideologies. In addition to this fractured globe love affair that's played out across a lake, what makes Flirting extra special is that Duigan understands how complex teenagers actually are. She’s taking her first steps toward womanhood and becoming a woman also means dealing with jealousy. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982.[2][3][4]. He also appeared on FX's "American Horror Story," and in films like 2011's "The Smurfs" and 2014's "Gone Girl." (2004), Schechner, Richard. Finishing with Dr. Dre's first post-NWA single "Deep Cover (187)" over the credits, Duke’s film is angry about the past, present, and future. Bob presents himself as a soft-hearted youth counselor, cleverly extracting Vanessa’s darkest secrets and most perverted stories of abuse, before Vanessa catches wise to his game and turns the tables faster than you can say, “What big teeth you have.” From here, the film takes a left turn at every opportunity for conventional narrative, which manifests itself most obviously in the moments where you expect Vanessa to be victimized. ~ Brian Formo, "We're not evil because of the evil things we do, but we do evil because we are evil.". She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts from Skidmore College. She's out to get bad guys. She has conviction and charm. That's just the floor of the power pyramid which takes her literally up into the NYC helicopter zone of untouchable men. It's brave to enter that situation and it's extra horrific because the anger of a man, well, you never know what you'll see behind that door. Most everything here has under 20,000 votes on IMDb but more than half do fall under 10,000. There are three businesses in the sweaty Spanish pueblo depicted in Jamón Jamón: there’s the underwear factory, the ham factory, and the whorehouse. It’s no wonder. Would be, because it's a simulation, the woman's gun never goes off; everyone laughs at her for not considering the woman as a threat. Does Alfre Woodard, playing nurse to an alcoholic wheelchair-bound former soap opera star (Mary McDonnell), become a stereotypical early 90s black character? (2010) Shadow of the Vampire was a film we shot in Luxembourg with Willem Dafoe, and Malkovich playing Murnau, and I played the producer, Albin Grau. LeCompte was born and grew up in New Jersey.She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts from Skidmore College.She met director and actor Willem Dafoe at The Performance Group and began a professional and personal relationship. And it features a scene where Harris is dressed up like Jean Cocteau's Beast and though he's been found out by a fellow French student that he’s not actually French, he's still in awe of the translated insult that comes his way. ), Chameleon Street is quite a feat to watch today, and we're benefited by watching the 90s independent film movement unfold, as it shares some look and tone of other indie gods like Hal Hartley and Gregg Araki. It’s become pretty chic to investigate the negative aspects of eternal life in recent times, but Abel Ferrara’s sparse, black and white film definitely grapples with the most issues, using a vampiric newbie to explore religion, drug dependency, rape and the AIDs epidemic. I’m keeping this one brief because I don’t want to spoil the twists and turns of this wildly outrageous movie for those who haven’t seen it, but the fallout from their encounter leads to all kinds of fucked up directions. Mo' Better Blues is full of charisma, and jazzy peaks and valleys. Chameleon Street lacks standard pizazz, but has an angry undercurrent on how black men have to adopt personas in order to get respect and/or equal opportunity. She's unlike any woman they have encountered and they like the approach. Francois (Gael Morel) realizes his homosexuality with a new student, Serge (Stephane Rideau) in a late night study session that will not be repeated, but will change Francois forever. All it needed was a direction. The lone outlier and most still beloved title on this list is one of Haleigh's all-time favorites and features on of Brian's go to karaoke joints (by the Violent Femmes) so we're letting that slide. Let's Discuss Darkseid's Plan in 'Zack Snyder's Justice League', 'Tomb Raider' Won't Be Getting a New Game for Its 25th Anniversary, 'Raya and the Last Dragon' Gets 4K, Blu-ray & Digital Release Dates With Epic Bonus Features. Taylor gives one of the all-time greatest single-scene performances and David, lean and fierce, gives one of his fieriest performances as a cop who's disgusted that Strike doesn't even know who Rosa Parks is. ~ Brian Formo. Even when 90s nostalgia hits an all-time high it tends to be only around certain agreed upon movie titles that best represent the decade. But only once she's a simulated victim does she start to see victimized women everywhere. You can take a friend out of the south, but they'll still attempt to retain that southern hospitality as long as possible. Bigelow stages many different invasions of Curtis’ personal space in which she is told simply nothing can be done. If I try and do some good with it, maybe it just makes things worse.”, Deep Cover starts and ends with blood money. Shy A-student by day and rabble-rouser by night, Mark fills the airwaves with his rants against injustice, earnest attempts to counsel his listeners, and occasional simulated masturbation (he is a teenage boy after all). Lee, working for a script from the novel's author Richard Price, flipped the original POV from Klein to Strike and the resulting story became immensely more interesting than a standard procedural mystery. The couple share one son, Jack. She is able to shoot him first but she never looks at the woman who goes to collect her lover's gun and bang Curtis would be dead. There's also a very funny exchange when Curtis' cop has a conversation with a man at a BBQ who is threatened by her profession, since it's usually men who have that authority. “Stay black” a high roller says and the black barkeep replies, “stay black? Consider this the version of what if what separated Harold and Maude was not age but race, continents, and genocide. Less a spiritual sequel to Taxi Driver, and more so a look at someone who must've spent time in that very gutter that Bickel wanted the water to wash away, Schrader starts the film with some dialogue about how the NYC sanitation workers are on strike and there is garbage strewn in the streets and alleys. In a lesser film, the mean girls who at first tease Thandiwe will get meaner and the boy who bullies Danny for his stutter will turn him in for leaving late at night to lay down with Thandiwe. Wild Reeds presents the difficulty of finding comfort with arousal from both genders at the forefront of a coming of age story that's also bubbling with ideological influences that are constantly changing around the French-Algerian War. Yo, when I’m with my friends, I act like it don’t matter, cuz it don’t! It's a difficult task for Lee to make Strike sympathetic while also presenting that he could be a killer and Strike is indeed flawed and impish, but it's a viewing experience that makes Clockers unlike other films of its ilk. The themes remain so applicable that Pump up the Volume is practically begging for a remake with a Hard Harry spouting his anthems from a podcast or YouTube Live, or any of the new ways we clamor to connect. Every bit of currency is all you have in the world and all you leave behind. [16], Mitter, Shomit, and Maria Shevtsova, ed. Though he wears out his welcome with Gideon and his family, he's always a welcome watch for the audience. He was once an addict, he's gone straight on taking drugs but began dealing as ⦠She identifies as a Communist and resists the advances of Serge, but she is drawn to Henri despite despising his political ideologies. Not that I want to see that happen; it’s just probably going to. Danny, here's the Harold part, is an eccentric misfit who envisions the headmaster as part of the Third Reich and doesn't attempt to make any pals at school. This list was started by Haleigh Foutch and the like-minded Brian Formo took the template and added a few decades—using an under 10,000 votes criteria from IMDb to unearth some truly underseen flicks for 1970s and 80s themed lists. Luckily Taylor encounters a silky-tongued Christopher Walken—as a nightwalking spiritual guide—who gives her a lesson on how to adapt to her new affliction. This is the modern gender narrative that's filmed like a 70s exploitation film; all leering closeups, slow motion blood blasts, and all the microphones dialed to 11 to catch every sloppy kiss, belly button lick, and bullets that blast through a megaphone. ~ Brian Formo, “Money doesn't know where it comes from, but I do. Maria (Adrianne Shelly) is in high school and she's pregnant. They never married and ended their relationship in 2004 after 27 years. When Dani (Witherspoon) asks her sister how to kiss a boy, her sister shows her how to practice on her hand. This movie holds perhaps my favorite Lee camera moment, as the camera follows each of Bleek's two women as they enter in the club in the same red dress, pans back to Lee's manager watching them sit down, and then follows him upstairs to declare that he predicted this would happen. She was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. The entire movie is about a woman (Jamie Lee Curtis) doing a job that's been fetishized to make men heroes and an affluent man (Ron Silver) who fetishizes the female cop he witnesses shoot a holdup man at the supermarket. It’s the blackest of comedies, completely degenerate, utterly twisted, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Clockers was originally set up for Martin Scorsese to direct but he ended up passing the project onto Lee and became a producer. She’s not too happy that her son, José Luís (Jordi Molla), has impregnated Silvia (Penelope Cruz). I've seen Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight a handful of times and in a knockout top-to-bottom cast, Jenifer Lopez’s boss Daniel always stood out in a cast of who's who. After all, hundreds of movies are released every year; some good, many bad, and a few great, so it’s easy for quality films to slip under the radar and fall into obscurity over the years. But an orgasm isn’t. Bobby doesnât say a lot, and so Dafoe must convey his empathy through his eyes, gestures, and actions. Harris starred on the popular CBS TV show, "How I Met Your Mother," from 2005 to 2014. 90s nostalgia is at an all-time high but we wanna pump up the volume of some of these great flicks that don't get talked about enough. Deep Cover is a pulsing and angry movie. Tagline Finding Nemo is Pixar's fifth feature film. These works characteristically interweave performance with multimedia technologies and are strongly influenced by historical and contemporary visual arts and architecture. Chantel speaks the truth in every class and Harris’ film is alive with immense energy and awareness of expectations; individuality doesn’t need to be shoved down in order to defeat expectations, but rather to flourish in their natural pluralities. Thanks to VOD and streaming services it’s easier than ever to access these forgotten gems, and you really should. Willem Dafoe's John LeTour makes hand-to-hand deals with upper-level buyers. Coming after Do the Right Thing, this was the first time Lee had been given the runtime canvas to get more excessive, and he continues the narrative beyond that wounded state to show that it's acceptance of self-limitations that can create the fuller acceptance of others, and thus, a love supreme. So, let us go on; 25 of our favorite forgotten 90s movies are below. When they think they can just judge you by the way you dress, uh-uh! We run down 10 indie movies you should keep on your radar in 2020, including Promising Young Woman with Carey Mulligan and Viggo Mortensen's Falling. He attempts to reconnect with his ex-wife. But as it was ordered as such, this was how Joan the Maid was able to gain access despite societal rank and gender, by appealing to one man's ascension to govern. The movie within the movie, Mant, is affectionately made and it’s clear that Dante has a lot of love for the kitschy creature features of yesteryear. Though these characters lecture like a Greek Chorus, they're not painted as saints, but rather that they're imparting wisdom but are also flawed because they don't listen to the response. On a basic story level, Spike Lee's Clockers is a whodunit concerning drug-pushing corner kids who hang at benches all day under the watch of the neighborhood kingpin, Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo). Everybody has that movie that they love or greatly admire, but no one ever seems to talk about. A delicious taste is damn near impossible to capture on screen. Such as when Raúl inserts a garlic clove into a pig’s anus prior to one of his many sexual conquests. While his friend is passed out drunk, Rawlins and his friend's wife have sex in the parlor, she been coming on to him all night, but when she stops in marital shame mid-coitus, Washington pleads with a quiver of bewilderment. These are the things that could lead him to mass murder. ~ Brian Formo, “Oh, I wish I could speak French like that.”. Sound like a set-up to a joke? As for Washington, this is one of his best performances, and though Washington never starred in a sequel until The Equalizer 2, his Easy Rawlins should've been his Philip Marlowe. In The Addiction, Lili Taylor—one of the indie queens of the 90s, now most known for the clapping game that conjures spirits in The Conjuring—stars as a philosophy student who’s hungry for knowledge before she gets bit by a vampire in a New York alleyway and then gets “the hunger” for blood. Scenes in Trust move with great precision where language escalates quickly and absurdly but action doesn't. The Addiction is extremely academic, but though it waxes philosophical, it’s got a specific digestible rhythm that wouldn’t turn off the non-Jean-Paul Sartre inclined. ~ Brian Formo, "I'm pissed off and the whole world owes me.". Did I mention that it's bitingly funny? But money is post-racial. But sometimes, we just get it. factor because it features very early work from future Hollywood stars Thandie Newton, Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts and the future Aussie character actor, Noah Taylor. Part of a new Diversity Film Series in partnership with Toyota Motor North America, Research and Development. Subsequently, LeCompte and Spalding Gray founded The Wooster Group, along with Jim Clayburgh, Willem Dafoe, Peyton Smith, Kate Valk, and Ron Vawter. During those uncomfortable scenes she is in a dress and she resorts to retrieving the outfit that afforded her some respect, or at least not this type of treatment. As such, satire saw a major storytelling comeback, from dirtying up fairytales to tackling the previous generation's various political scandals. But Lee isn't content on making Strike a mere victim who had the deck stacked against him. Jacques Rivette and Sandrine Bonnaire partook in a two-part film concerning two distinct chapters in Joan of Arc’s life: what led her to suit up for battle and how she carried herself in prison before her trial and execution. The party is over. Physically, what actually separates Thandiwe (Newton) and Danny (Taylor) is actually a lake that's between the boy's academy and the girl's academy of a private Australian boarding school. Gaudy violence, raunchy antics, and Reese Witherspoon, America’s sweetest sweetheart, dropping F-bombs like it’s her sworn duty—all of it so in your face that it’s easy to miss the fact that the film actually does a pretty damn good job at depicting the hopelessness of underprivileged kids who enter the system too young. And when the 46-year-old isn't busy maintaining a $40 million net worth , ⦠But between you and me, that shit pisses me off. The system allows for worse things to happen to her. The sun rises and sets, casting shadows from two big balls. Mo' Better Blues is Spike Lee's masculine answer to She's Gotta Have It, wherein a two-timing man only needs to choose a woman once his job no longer provides him an identity. It's $5 covered in blood or a van full of millions and very little in between. ~ Brian Formo, "You make the teeth as big as you want, then you kill it off, everything's okay, the lights come up... ". For all the talk these days about “strong female characters”, Vanessa Lutz is the real deal in the midst of all these trashy shenanigans. — Brian Formo. Though Bonnaire puts on armor and learns to joust and orders legions into battle, what The Battles mostly concerns is Joan of Arc’s battles with men to defeat their egos by massaging their egos. ), Street benefits greatly from Harris' voice, which stood out in Out of Sight, a syrupy tone that moves slowly; and as it moves, it unfurls. It's also a shame that Franklin's been in TV jail for almost the entire 21st century. The characters are hungry for sex and power—and all of the town's industries partake in animal flesh. And Trust was his Rushmore. They do not discuss race as to why someone should be whacked, it's because they're not pulling their share or they rest on their laurels—their money—instead of getting even more. Conchita hires a hunk at the ham factory, Raúl (Javier Bardem) to seduce Silvia away from her son. People be trippin’ when they find out how smart I really am. Denzel Washington is a trumpet player named Bleek who leads a quartet with his name on it; even though they have a regular gig that's packed, his manager (Spike Lee) is probably the one holding the group back because he's not big in the business (despite his name being Giant) as he was just hired due to his friendship with Bleek; but Giant’s side debts are receiving more attention than Bleek's steady ensemble. She’s also occasionally terrifying. He knocks on the door of Gideon's home and he looms over the child who answers it. Jamón Jamón is most delicious when it provides a dash of foreplay. Why shouldn't our genitals be allowed to do the same? But John Duigan's underseen coming-of-age gem is so much more than a "before they were stars" clip show. Here we are, able to instantly connect with nearly anyone the world over, and yet we feel as isolated as ever. Let’s Talk About That ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Ending, More Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe) - A scientist working in the Department of Paranormal Activities, he is first met when Jodie's foster mother consults him on Jodie's condition. A movie where characters get to make decisions and have monologues and just plain exist before we learn about their past histories and how that echoes in the present. And the men, who hold all positions of power during this discussion, see that as her heresy, nothing to do with hearing voices from God, but disobeying their control of her body. If I keep it, I'm a criminal. Deep Cover's police work starts and ends with being asked the difference between a racial epithet and a racial identity; Fishburne's answer to that question at the start gets him a job but after what he sees on the streets and from his superior (Charles Martin Smith) he changes his answer and it signifies his mistake at the beginning. Rawlins frequently aims his hose at this man, or berates him in the street. It’s a blast, and a great reminder that movies mean more than box office and franchising. Mouse is mentioned in passing by Rawlins a few times, but never in a way that his presence feels close, and when he arrives he's the perfect, classic third-name-in-the-credits film noir hothead. — Brian Formo, “A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. Yes and no. We never saw Marlowe, or Spade, or any of the 40s stars have to beg for it; they’d just give a facial gesture with a cigarette hanging out the side of their mouths and turn off the lights. Personally, I'm not an ensemble actor, because it's always a lot of ego when you're all together in the scene.