Posts Tagged ‘ brad pitt ’

The fifth entry in my Great Directors series profiles Steven Soderberg best known for his work with for his work with Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels and Erin Brokovich.  He was born January 14, 1963, in Goergia, in the US.   Steven’s interest in film began at least in high school and, upon graduation, he moved to Hollywood to begin his career.

His first cinematic break was very dramatic and came in the form of sex lies and videotape, which was released in 1989, which received the prestigious Palmes d’Or  at the Cannes Film Festival, the independent spirit award for Best Director, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, with the screenplay having been written by Soderbergh himself, and in 2006 was inducted into the US National Film Registry for preservation. He is prone to casting Julia Roberts, Topher Grace, Don Cheadle, and George Clooney along with many others.  A little known fact is that he often works as his own director of photography under the name of Peter Andrews, which is the first and middle name of his father.

Terry Gilliam‘s 1995 Twelve Monkeys went largely unnoticed by most of the cinema-going public, but contains one of the best performances of Brad Pitt‘s career and one of the best and most original performances in, at that time, Bruce Willis‘ career.  Also starring Madeleine Stowe, Twelve Monkeys is the story of a man named James Cole (Willis), a convict in the future who is drafted as a volunteer to go back in time to help restore his present-time.  Forgive me if this gets confusing, but it’s confusing to watch too, in a rewarding way.

The story of the last few years of the Dalai Lama residing in Llasa, Tibet as seen through the eyes of two Westerners stranded there by World War II is the story presented in Seven Years in Tibet by director Jean-Jacques Annaud.  The movie is based on the true story written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer about his time spent in Tibet while unable to return to Austria due to the war.

Let me begin by saying that yes, there are many additional indie movies which were great in the 1990s. This is a list of what I consider to be the best ten of the decade, ranked according to their greatness. You’re welcome to disagree with titles on this list, omissions, rankings, or anything else, but choices and rankings had to be made and I made them. That said, here they are….

The second entry in my Great Directors series profiles David Fincher, director of Se7en and Fight Club, among others.  David Fincher’s directorial style seems to always incorporate novel approaches to film-making. When a film’s plot requires a gritty, realistic, but depressing feeling to it Fincher is able to deliver all of that with his directorial skill, as he had to do in making Se7en.   He is similar to Jean-Pierre Jeunet in his command of the visual elements and editing of a film to achieve his goals, but Fincher’s movies are far different than Jeunet’s.