"Granted, it’s a little shameless for the guy who wrote a book on 1999 movies to include a pair of entries from that year on his list. But whenever I made a top ten for that year, these are the two films that constantly duked it out for the number one and number two slots. One’s a tightly structured, egalitarian high-school-set comedy that’s as wise about the nightmares of adolescence as it is about the doldrums of middle age; the other’s a happily absurd fable of reinvention that’s part sci-fi, part broad comedy, part media satire. But both are remarkably kind to their flawed heroes, and each one wrestles with the kinds of social and cultural dilemmas—from identity theft to burn-it-all-down political posturing—we’d be dealing with two decades later."

"Crazy Love—A Double Bill Not for the Faint of Heart: On the face, Senso’s operatic melodrama and the pornographic explicitness of In the Realm of the Senses make for an odd coupling, but both serve up powerfully extreme and provocative portrayals of love run amok. Exquisitely photographed and scored, both are tales of unbridled passion and lust told against backdrops of political and social turmoil. Both end with women gone mad, consumed by obsessive love that destroys their men, who both die at their lovers’ hands. Luchino Visconti and Nagisa Oshima are filmmakers of deeply different sensibilities and concerns, of course, and the meaning and import of their stories are utterly divergent. Senso is an opulent, chilling tragedy of individuals bound in their lives and times. In the Realm of the Senses is transcendental; in death, love is forever."

"Crazy Love—A Double Bill Not for the Faint of Heart: On the face, Senso’s operatic melodrama and the pornographic explicitness of In the Realm of the Senses make for an odd coupling, but both serve up powerfully extreme and provocative portrayals of love run amok. Exquisitely photographed and scored, both are tales of unbridled passion and lust told against backdrops of political and social turmoil. Both end with women gone mad, consumed by obsessive love that destroys their men, who both die at their lovers’ hands. Luchino Visconti and Nagisa Oshima are filmmakers of deeply different sensibilities and concerns, of course, and the meaning and import of their stories are utterly divergent. Senso is an opulent, chilling tragedy of individuals bound in their lives and times. In the Realm of the Senses is transcendental; in death, love is forever."

"Granted, it’s a little shameless for the guy who wrote a book on 1999 movies to include a pair of entries from that year on his list. But whenever I made a top ten for that year, these are the two films that constantly duked it out for the number one and number two slots. One’s a tightly structured, egalitarian high-school-set comedy that’s as wise about the nightmares of adolescence as it is about the doldrums of middle age; the other’s a happily absurd fable of reinvention that’s part sci-fi, part broad comedy, part media satire. But both are remarkably kind to their flawed heroes, and each one wrestles with the kinds of social and cultural dilemmas—from identity theft to burn-it-all-down political posturing—we’d be dealing with two decades later."

"If what make a work of literature a classic is its ability to be a mirror held up against all times and all human societies — the personal experience and the political one — I think this short novel by Isak Dinesen (or Karen Blixen in her homeland, Denmark) must be in the process of becoming one. Read against our own times it can bee seen as a simple tale about a woman on the run from civil war who seeks refuge in an isolated community. Bringing nothing along with her into her exile but her natural kind spirit and knowledge of the culture of the culinary arts, Babette makes a quiet existence for herself as a simple housekeeper until the day she gets the opportunity to show and share her extraordinary skills. And there is nothing simple about that."