TOP 10: Movie classics |
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Films to whet your wanderlust, as recommended by Wai Mun Yoon
Travelling can be done on screen and in the mind. These film recommendations from LOVEFiLM's Wai Mun Yoon will whet the wanderlust and sate the senses DIVA Parisian gangsters, Taiwanese music pirates and an opera singer who refuses to be recorded are the mise-en-scène for two interlocking stories – the search for an original recording of the eponoymous Diva and a murdered informer's tape exposing a white-slavery ringleader – conjoined through a postboy with a taste for high-end Swiss recording equipment and wrecked luxury cars. Jean-Jacques (Betty Blue) Beineix's debut feature is certainly style-first, ask-questions-later. Laidback to the point of being horizontal, this film glides beneath your genre radar and makes you want to bathe in the centre of your field-sized living-room, while your roller-skating girlfriend throws existential questions at you. This musky city on a swamp, filled with languid drawls and Cajun jazz, provides a humid backdrop for this steamy thriller. Dennis Quaid plays a vice cop, not averse to a spot of illegal income-supplement, opposite a DA played by Ellen Barkin, as they swim together in a gumbo of corruption and crime. While the plot doesn't slouch, the real heat is in the heady mix of the couples' romance. Authenticity is sharpened by the scorching zydeco soundtrack. You'll recognise French Quarter landmark Antoine's Restaurant as one of the sets. LA DOLCE VITA Magnificent Fellini put the Via Veneto on the world map and immortalised the term 'paparazzo' in this study of a post-war country in reconstruction. He inspiredly cast the then-unknown Marcello Mastroanni as a cypher for the confusion in Italy amongst the human relics of a more glorious age. Vignettes of faded elegance and the antics of the gilded assortment of hedonists make this a bittersweet but bravely candid vision. The Via Veneto of old is no more, but the paparazzi live on. FITZCARRALDO Mad, bad and dangerous Klaus Kinski plays a deranged opera lover who hauls a steamboat in one piece into the rainforest, in his dream to bring an opera house to the Amazon, in the hope that Enrico Caruso will come to sing there: 'If you build it, he will come...'. Both an exposure of the hubris of obsession as well as a celebration of the power of dreams, the kicker is that it was based on a true story of an Irish entrepreneur who tried to do the same thing. It makes you appreciate your last trip to Chiva-Som... WINGS OF DESIRE Or 'The Skies Over Berlin', as the original German title translates. After ten years in America, new German cinema wünderkind Wim Wenders returned to his homeland with this love letter to the city: Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander are angels, silently eavesdropping on ordinary people, unable to intervene directly, but offering some waft of comfort. Switching between black and white for the angels' vision and colour for mortal views, the film offers panoramic views of a city in transition (from atop the Victory Column, for instance), and magically transcends the Wall that divided East from West. COLLATERAL LA nocturne: nobody photographs Los Angeles with more loving detail than Michael Mann ('I think it's the most exciting city in America,' he says), and this Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx thriller offers a tour well off the beaten track, taking in Culver City, Koreatown, Wilmington and Long Beach Harbor on its way from LAX to Downtown. Cruise leaves corpses strewn along the route, while his driver learns the virtues of improvisation. DON'T LOOK NOW It's easier to lose your bearings in Venice than in any other city. The narrow streets rarely open up to landmarks, and follow their own maze-like logic. It's here that Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland mourn their dead, drowned child, and it's here that they begin to wonder if some people can see around corners. Nic Roeg's spooky, erotic thriller makes such distinctive use of wintery Venezia, you can almost believe he was blessed with second sight himself. LOST IN TRANSLATION Filmed in just four weeks, Sofia Coppola's lovely, subtle romantic comedy captures the giddy exoticism of an alien culture – when the colours seem that much brighter and sharper – as well as the sometimes ennervating effects of dislocation and jetlag. When Bill Murray and Scarlet Johannson do venture out from their perch in the Hyatt, they can't really connect with the shrines or the temples. Who knew it would be Roxy Music at the karaoke bar which would allow them to get in touch with their real feelings... THE OBJECT OF BEAUTY London in the Eighties was an all-consuming, consume-it-all palace of excess. John Malkovich plays an investor of indeterminate provenance and Andie McDowell his model (as in creature of the catwalk) wife. They live permanently in a suite at Brown's and are not strangers to post-party dancing across the front desk in their Piccadilly hotel. When Malkovich's coffee investments start to plummet, the couple's brittleness and superficiality are exposed and give way to a taste for insurance fraud. From the opening shots at Anton Mosimann's dining club to the closing in the auction rooms of Christie's, this is a eulogy to the vanity fair of the Eighties. Before Ian Schrager taught us how to do it all again. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY 'I like New York in June, how about you?' Here's New York in all its seasons both romantic and geographic, from the opening in Washington Square (pre-Giuliani) to the climax at the Rockefeller Center, wending its way via the Brownstones and Classic Sixes of the Upper West Side. Then there's also the 'what men and women really want' plot, as scripted by rom-com queen Nora Ephron, who claims to have based the details on her own experiences. LOVEFiLM.com asked their members what their favourite films for a weekend away, and here's what they said: 1. Trading Places |
