Among the abundance of great content available on the film streaming site Kanopy (available through our eLibrary) are a number of gems from the Nineties. Spanning a wide variety of genres, here is a sampling of what is available.
Glengarry Glen Ross
1992
1hr 40min
Adapted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross shows David Mamet at his searing, profane best. A group of Chicago real-estate salesmen-cum-con artists live on the edge. Life is good for the one on a roll. For the rest, life hangs in the balance. There is no room for losers. A-B-C: Always Be Closing, sell or go under, is the salesman’s mantra. With the pressure on, so begins a rainy night of cutthroat business and shattered lives. (Adapted from Kanopy).
Night On Earth
1993
2hr 08min
In one night, across the world, five taxi drivers experience five very different rides. In LA, a flustered agent recognises star quality in her driver, while New York in all its glory defeats a new American. A Parisian taxi driver learns the real meaning of discrimination, and a rollicking ride through Rome has repercussions for the clergy. And finally, a trio of drunken Finns make a typically humorous end to their night. (Adapted from Kanopy).
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
1993
1hr 57min
Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is a young man trapped in an eccentric family in a small town. He works hard to care for a developmentally disabled teenage brother, Arnie (played brilliantly by Leonardo DiCaprio), an incredibly overweight mother, and to maintain a house falling down around their ears. (Adapted from Kanopy).
Shallow Grave
1994
1hr 32min
Three self-involved Edinburgh roommates—played by Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor, in his first starring role—take in a brooding boarder. When he dies of an overdose, leaving a suitcase full of money, the trio embark on a series of very bad decisions, with extraordinarily grim consequences for all. Macabre but with a streak of offbeat humour, this stylistically influential tale of guilt and derangement is a full-throttle whack of Hitchcockian nastiness. (Adapted from Kanopy).
Leon
1994
2hr 13min
Jean Reno (Da Vinci Code, Ronin) is Leon, a deadly and elusive killer. He lives a routine life, alone in New York with just his pot-plant for company—until the day his twelve-year-old neighbour Mathilde (Natalie Portman in her screen debut) rings his doorbell in desperation. Mathilde has just narrowly escaped being murdered along with her parents and baby brother by a ruthless and corrupt cop Stansfield (Gary Oldman) and his colleagues. Leon reluctantly takes Mathilde under his wing, and the two go on the run. But Mathilde wants revenge, and as she soon discovers, Leon can teach her how to exact it…
La Haine
1995
1hr 37min
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with LA HAINE, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts.
Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Kounde), and Said (Said Taghmaoui) — a Jew, an African, and an Arab — give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. (Adapted from Kanopy).
Love Serenade
1996
1hr 41min
Vicki-Ann Hurley (Rebecca Frith) and her younger sister Dimity (Miranda Otto) are two lonely young women on the lookout for love in the small outback town of Sunray.
When once popular radio personality Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov) arrives in town to revive his dwindling career, the Hurley sisters welcome the distraction with open arms – vying for his attention and affection at any and every opportunity. (Adapted from Kanopy).
The Boys
1998
1hr 25min
Brett Sprague is a violent and psychopathic man, who is released on parole after serving a sentence for assault. As he returns to his family house and we watch him and his brothers, Stevie and Glenn, for the next 24 hours, it becomes clear this day will not end well. (Adapted from Kanopy).
Two Hands
1999
1hr 34min
When young struggling go-getter Jimmy (Heath Ledger) is offered the shot of a lifetime working for local crime boss Pando (Bryan Brown) he grabs it with both hands. But not everything goes to plan and when his special delivery goes missing, a package of $10,000, he finds himself in a whole lot of trouble with the boss and in desperate need of help. Against the odds and with time running out to repay the loss, it will take every trick in Jimmy’s book to save him and his girlfriend Alex (Rose Byrne) from the nefarious ways of Pando and his gang. (Adapted from Kanopy).
