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Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2025 6:48 pm**

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1998

VOTE THROUGH OCTOBER 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2025 8:11 pm**

This is as good an excuse as any to finally watch Cowboy Bebop.

Posted: **Wed Oct 01, 2025 10:36 am**

Could you add the following:

Gordon’s Luminous Motion which is a truly disturbed gender play about snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

For completely different reasons I’m often thinking about Maya Angelo’s sole turn as director with Down in the Delta. It’s the most gentle blast of ice one could feel as this woman of infinite potential wrestles with her inability to achieve.

The last feature is the brilliant satire of Belgian and Congolese mores Pieces of Identity. Ngangura is so sharp in his teasing of everyone without harboring seemingly any true dislike. It gets into how post-colonialism still means within globalism.

Finally two little shorts that I just find charming and have seen too many times: Jensen’s Election Night which just hints at how weird his humour is and McKellar’s The Elimination Dance which gives a sense of what a flat out Cronenberg comedy could be.

Posted: **Thu Oct 02, 2025 1:24 am**

All added, thanks

Posted: **Thu Oct 02, 2025 8:57 am**

I see 1998, 1999 & 2000 for Edge Of Seventeen (David Moreton). Looks like there may have been a NYC screening in 1998, but general release open in 1999.

1998 also saw release of my favorite short of the 90s Anthrakatis which stars my favorite British supporting-role actor of the 80s & 90s, Liz Smith (not to be confused with the American gossip columnist). She often played a wry old bitties in period films & British TV, but easily stole scenes with her wit & understated comic delivery (Apartment Zero, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, The French Lieutenant's Woman, A Private Function). I always got enjoyment any time she popped up in a scene, regardless of what the film/show was. Sara Sugarman wrote the script specifically as a vehicle to highlight Liz Smith's talent. Anthrakatis is the rare occassion that she plays the lead. In it she portrays an elderly widow living on her own in the rural outskirts after her husband died in the mines. The film really allows her quirkiness to shine. Unfortunately there's only 17 ratings for it on IMDB & a Google search turns up nothing, so good luck trying to find it. I saw it open for another film in the early 2000s, but it doesn't seem like it's even been screened much in the UK & has never made it to disc. I don't know if I'll vote for it since it's not likely anyone else has even seen it, let alone would also vote for it, but having the option would be nice.

Posted: **Thu Oct 02, 2025 3:00 pm**

Both added

Lowry_Sam wrote: Thu Oct 02, 2025 8:57 am I see 1998, 1999 & 2000 for Edge Of Seventeen (David Moreton). Looks like there may have been a NYC screening in 1998, but general release open in 1999.

This played at least 3 festivals in 1998 where it won several awards, so I've put it in 1998

Posted: **Thu Oct 02, 2025 3:36 pm**

Looks solid overall, but I think we might be missing a couple of smaller 1998 releases that didn’t get as much attention at the time. I’ll double-check my notes and bring them up if they should be considered. Otherwise, the list looks pretty complete.

Posted: **Thu Oct 09, 2025 6:15 pm**

Finally found a great film for this year in Secret Defense which almost seems as much Rivette doing Bresson as Hitchcock. It’s one of the most lean films I’ve seen from the ‘90s with not a wasted frame.

Posted: **Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:47 am**

Please add Meschugge (Dani Levy, Maria Schrader), The Negotiator (F. Gary Gray), Zugvögel - ... einmal nach Inari (Peter Lichtefeld), Under solen (Colin Nutley), De Poolse bruid (Karim Traïdia), El abuelo (José Luis Garci), Los años bárbaros (Fernando Colomo).

Posted: **Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:58 am**

the preacher wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:47 am The Negotiator (F. Gary Gray)

Not seen this but the trailer was notorious for giving too much away. Letterman did a bit after the opening weekend where he addressed the controversy by showing the trailer, which his writers had rewritten with new narration giving away the complete plot of the film from start to finish. Maybe the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life at that point, it had a massive impact on my sense of humor

Posted: **Wed Oct 15, 2025 4:39 pm**

All added

Posted: **Tue Oct 21, 2025 5:16 am**

Missing Cats https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173714

Posted: **Tue Oct 21, 2025 5:29 am**

Sure, I've added that and your other request

Posted: **Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:04 am**

Could you add Ozon’s sweet natured X2000? I a short time it gently conveys the web that longing can weave.

Posted: **Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:27 am**

Added

Posted: **Fri Oct 24, 2025 12:54 pm**

Place Vendôme (Nicole Garcia)
A CEO of a jewellery business commits suicide because of some stolen diamonds in this crime drama set at the luxurious Place Vendôme in Paris. It is a big budget film starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Emmanuelle Seigner, Jacques Dutronc and others, and it reached almost 1 million admissions in France.

I don’t think it’s too effective as a crime thriller: the interpersonal relations are quite complex and the plot is extremely complicated but there are some underlying layers that make this a great film.

The Deneuve-character, the widow, has been sidelined (blacklisted) because of some drinking issues and because of some events in the past, but she is determined to step up to the task when her husband dies. And some Vertigo-references lifts this film into excellence!

I read an interesting analysis about 20 years ago. I don’t remember the author but it was a published work from a UK university (spoilers for Vertigo and Place Vendôme):

Spoiler

In Vertigo, Gavin Elster used (abused) Judy in his scheme to kill his wife Madeleine Elster but in Place Vendôme, the women get the upper hand and revert whatever happened in Vertigo. I don't neccesarily agree with the analysis but the Vertigo references, however brief, make this a great viewing. There are some similarities between the Deneuve and the Emmanuelle Seigner characters (they are two different characters but have the same Vertigo-like hairstyle at one point) and there's a flashback scene where Deneuve as a young woman is played by Seigner, somehow underlining the double characters.

Great music, stunning location cinematography and amazing title sequence with shots of the famous column at the Place Vendôme square.

Posted: **Fri Oct 24, 2025 5:55 pm**

If memory serves (haven't seen it since release), there's similar Vertigo reference in A Christmas Tale with Emmanuelle Devos approaching Deneuve from behind at an art gallery, Deneuve's hair similarly styled. (I'm thinking the Herrmann love theme is playing on the soundtrack, but my mind may be playing tricks on me.)

Posted: **Sat Oct 25, 2025 5:19 am**

I've added the Garcia film

Posted: **Mon Oct 27, 2025 10:15 pm**

Ha! Was just about to submit my list a bit early when I realized I must not've checked the titles at the start of the month per usual. Sorry. But could you please last-minute add Mori Tatsuya's incredible doc about the AUM members, A? Also missing is Jissoji's D-Slope Murder Case. I'll vote for it in a top 25.

Errol Morris' "Stairway to Heaven" - I saw it in 1999 - was completed in 1998 and had a few screenings then. It was a kind of pilot for his "First Person" series that aired in 2001. Makes sense to list it as 2001. But fyi.

Posted: **Mon Oct 27, 2025 10:37 pm**

Added. And I wasn't aware of that history for Stairway. I'm actually inclined to move it to 1998

Posted: **Mon Oct 27, 2025 10:46 pm**

Almost missed this one as I had to go through the laundry list of titles to find it, but it gets a big recommendation if you can see it in time. This was a great year for teen comedies and unless you count Rushmore as one, this is the best of the bunch

domino harvey wrote: Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:36 am In a follow-up to our discussion on Dead Poet's Society, I'd like to put in a strong recommendation for a corrective film, All I Wanna Do (Sarah Kernochan 1998) (Which also goes by the Hairy Bird and Strike!), which puts the better known private school film to shame with its tale of young women attending single-sex boarding school in 1963 and gradually finding a voice both as women and as individuals within the confines of the structure. In marked contrast to the phony sentimentalizing of Dead Poet's Society and its unlikely bolstering of surface-level English literature appropriation and hero worship, All I Wanna Do has its cadre of young women meet in its secret society to keep their school from being integrated as co-ed. The film makes perceptive and well-observed arguments for how this symbolically represents the tightening muzzle on women in general, and the gradual volition and agency of all our main female characters is not only moving, but it reminds us of how few films bother to offer such a full view of female voice and concerns within the confines of an amusing and well-crafted teen comedy. I'm not exactly saying the film is a masterpiece, but in its fashion it kind of is: the messages reinforced are smart and progressive without being preachy or aiming for unearned "moving" moments. It's a raunchy teen sex comedy you'd actually want your kids to watch! It's a shame this wasn't one of Miramax's success stories, because I'm kind of shocked I'd never heard of it before-- it holds up better than most teen products from the era, and as far as boarding school movies go, this makes Dead Poet's Society look even worse, and I didn't know that was possible!

Posted: **Mon Oct 27, 2025 10:50 pm**

Ah, yes:

Miramax insisted on retitling the film Strike! because they found the film's original working title, The Hairy Bird (which alluded to male genitalia), to be too offensive... On March 24, 2000, Miramax permitted the filmmakers to re-release the film in the U.S. under another title, All I Wanna Do.

Posted: **Tue Oct 28, 2025 6:50 am**

Please add Lulu on the Bridge.

Posted: **Tue Oct 28, 2025 7:06 am**

Added

Posted: **Fri Oct 31, 2025 4:36 pm**

As a reminder, lists are due today. However, my internet access over the weekend could be spotty, meaning I may not be able to post results until as late as Monday. But I'll issue results Saturday if I can. In other words, it's best if you vote today, but if it's Saturday or Sunday and I still haven't posted results, then there's still time to submit a new or revised ballot

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