Film Festivals 1999
1999's festivals were categorised by a stand-out crop of documentaries, 'Ghengis Blues', Werner Herzog's 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly', Ken Burns' 'Frank Lloyd Wright', Cuban music legends 'Buena Vista Social Club' and the hilariously insightful 'American Movie'. And along with these some highly imaginative and challenging features such as Lars von Trier's 'Idiots', Darren Aronofsky's 'Pi', Todd Solondz's 'Happiness', Tom Tykwer's 'Run, Lola, Run' and low-budget sci-fi hit, 'Cube' (pictured).
Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
7.6/10
Director: Wim Wenders
Starring: Ry Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, Eliades Ochoa
German filmmaker Wim Wenders' documentary counterpart to the Grammy-winning album follows guitarist/musicoligist Ry Cooder on a trip to Havana and an... Read more
Clockwatchers (1996)
6.4/10
Director: Jill Sprecher
Starring: Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach
Four women hired as temp workers in a credit company are united by dissatisfaction with their tenuous job status and the lock of direction in their li... Read more
Cookie's Fortune (1998)
6.9/10
Director: Robert Altman
Starring: Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Charles S Dutton, Patri...
Robert Altman's homespun comedy/mystery is set in a small southern town, where the suicide of wealthy, eccentric Cookie (Patricia Neal) brings out the... Read more
Cube (1997)
7.3/10
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Six strangers wake up inside a three-dimensional maze of interlocking cubes. None of them know how they got there or why they have been chosen. Some c... Read more
Das Boot ( aka The Boat ) (1981)
8.4/10
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Herbert Gronemeyer, Jurgen Prochnow, Klaus Wennemann
A.k.a. 'The Boat.' Totally restored and with over an hour of never-before-seen footage, Das Boot: The Director's Cut is Wolfgang Petersen's acclaimed... Read more
Das Boot ( aka The Boat ) ( Blu-ray ) (1981)
8.4/10
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Herbert Gronemeyer, Jurgen Prochnow, Klaus Wennemann
A.k.a. 'The Boat.' Totally restored and with over an hour of never-before-seen footage, Das Boot: The Director's Cut is Wolfgang Petersen's acclaimed... Read more
Earth (1998)
7.8/10
Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Kulbushan Kharbanda
A powerful, moving tale about real people caught in a historical nightmare. The movie opens in Lahore of 1947, before India and Pakistan became indepe... Read more
eXistenZ (1999)
6.8/10
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Eccleston, D...
Playstation it ain't. This 'video game' has a latexy pod, made from the intestines of mutant amphibians, that plugs directly into the user's spinal c... Read more
Frank Lloyd Wright (1997)
7.8/10
Director: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick
Starring: Frank Lloyd Wright
An absorbing study of U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous life and career. Using all manner of original photographs, plans, home movies of... Read more
Genghis Blues (1999)
8/10
Director: Roko Belic
Starring: Paul Pena, Kongar-Ol, Richard Feynman
This captivating, Oscar-nominated offering centers on blind San Francisco blues musician Paul Pena, who taught himself the unusual art of 'throat sing... Read more