Email Author Bret Fetzer

1999 Stories by Bret Fetzer

• Hot for teacher

  published August 18, 1999

  TEACHING MRS. TINGLE purports to be about three teenagers fighting back against a tyrannical history teacher, but it's really about... More >>

• Brokedown premise

  published August 11, 1999

  ALICE (CLAIRE DANES) and Darleen (Kate Beckinsale) decide to go to Thailand instead of Hawaii after graduation—and it's there that... More >>

• Eyes bored shut

  published July 21, 1999

  EVERY TIME TOM Cruise and Nicole Kidman use the word "fuck" in Eyes Wide Shut, it comes out of their mouths like some new teen... More >>

• Holed on

  published July 14, 1999

  THE HOLE SHOWS nothing of Taiwan but the inside of a huge industrial apartment complex, upon which rain falls relentlessly,day... More >>

• Not now, girls

  published July 7, 1999

  SOMEONE IS CLEARLY frightened of the female orgasm: There's a charming teen sex comedy called Coming Soon that can't find a... More >>

• Dear David

  published June 30, 1999

  Just as all male activity is meant to impress girls (or boys, depending), writers write to seduce their readers. Naturally,... More >>

• Kissing off

  published June 30, 1999

  A FRENCH TELEVISION company commissioned seven directors from seven different countries to somehow capture the turn of the millennium on... More >>

• Walk on the Wilde side

  published June 23, 1999

  FOR YEARS, the early plays of Oscar Wilde were dismissed as sentimental melodramas with snippets of sparkling wit. But recently, An... More >>

• Aping man

  published June 16, 1999

  ANIMATION BRINGS OUT the best in Tarzan. The impossible flexibility of a cartoon ape-man leaps out first: He twines through the trees,... More >>

• Austin's Power Failure

  published June 9, 1999

  THERE'S A THESIS waiting to be written about how you're not laughing at Mike Myers as much as you are laughing at yourself for laughing... More >>

• I want you (to stop making movies like this)

  published June 2, 1999

  IN I WANT YOU, a moody guy named Martin comes home after spending eight years in prison for murder. In the course of moping and... More >>

• Tales from the underside of SIFF

  published May 12, 1999

  IF YOU PERCEIVE the Seattle International Film Festival as an oasis of glamour in our desert of drab, you probably don't work for it.... More >>

• SIFFting

  published May 5, 1999

  THINK YOUR JOB IS a drag? Imagine you're a Seattle International Film Festival programmer who has to sort through more than 1,000... More >>

• History lesson

  published May 5, 1999

  WRITER-DIRECTOR ALEXANDER PAYNE debuted with a satirical comedy about abortion. Not surprisingly, that movie (Citizen Ruth,... More >>

• Boobs

  published April 28, 1999

  THE HOLLYWOOD OBSESSION with cool keeps getting worse, whatever the movie's setting or story. The hero can be a fighter pilot, a hit... More >>

• Interview with an angel

  published April 21, 1999

  SIMPLE IN ITS OUTLINES but entrancing in its emotional richness, The Dreamlife of Angels follows two young women as their... More >>

• Babes Off Broadway

  published April 7, 1999

  ROBERT ALTMAN HAS made some of the darkest, most devastating American movies ever made—movies like Nashville, The Long... More >>

• Laughgasm track

  published April 7, 1999

  ANNIE SPRINKLE—POST-PORN modernist, tantric sex worker, "the Yoko Ono of porn"—is quick to defend her background: "If people... More >>

• What's up, Doc?

  published March 31, 1999

  AN ATMOSPHERE OF WARTIME desperation and recklessness permeates the opening scene of Dr. Akagi. Three American fighter planes... More >>

• 24-hour man

  published March 24, 1999

  IT'S FASCINATING to discover who works on TV and who doesn't. Some high-wattage movie stars would be unbearable on the small screen. The... More >>

• The Exceptional norm

  published March 17, 1999

  Despite the undeniable entertainment power of sequins, cleavage, and appalling musical numbers, the Oscar ceremony tends to be dull. Sure,... More >>

• 200 butts

  published February 24, 1999

  MOST MOVIES GO TO great pains to make their characters likable and at least apparently soulful. The new comedy 200 Cigarettes, on... More >>

• Hold the cheese

  published February 24, 1999

  IT'S EASY TO BE prejudiced against The Other Sister. For one thing, its director, Garry Marshall, created such awful but... More >>

• Homage to Haskell

  published February 10, 1999

  MOST MOVIE RETROSPECTIVES focus on a director or actor; to build one around a cinematographer is to argue that a movie's look is as... More >>

• Reel life

  published February 3, 1999

  MY NAME IS JOE has everything against it: It's about a recovering alcoholic and a social worker; it's set in a poverty-stricken... More >>