A prostitute is found dismembered akin to the Black Dahlia mystery, and Duvall’s sneaking suspicions lead him dangerously close to members of the Irish dignitaries & the inner circle of the California Archdiocese, threatening his brother’s rise to power therein. Roberts De Niro & Duvall play brothers-Irish priest & cop respectively-in ‘40s LA. True Confessions (1981) - Long since forgotten & wrongly overlooked John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion collaboration (better known for their Panic in Needle Park & A Star is Born) directed by Ulu Grosbard, this one is for the classics. What follows might be read as a cautionary tale about sexual libertinism or a thumbing of the nose at sexual repression a misogynist nightmare or a hilarious satire of male fantasies and fetishes a smutty, freewheeling lark or a deeply personal autocritique.Polanski directs with something like his old assurance and audacity. The American sees that the Englishman is entranced by his wife, and proceeds to tell him the story of their life together. On a cruise ship, a staid British couple (Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas) meet an aging, wheelchair-bound American (Peter Coyote) and his slinky, seductive young French wife (Emmanuelle Seigner). It’s a twisting, knotty, multi-stranded thing, with a tricky narrative structure that mixes stories within stories, frequent flashbacks, and a narrator of dubious reliability. Not that I expect the movie to offer any handy, pocket-sized “insights” into the current headlines, or ones from 32 years ago. ( Tom Hall)īitter Moon (1992) - It’s been years since I last saw it, but recent events-I refer, of course, to the High Holy Days-have made me want to revisit Roman Polanski’s intercontinental sex comedy. Have fun, kiddies! Buy the book at Amazon. Tushingham’s performance and uncovering the particular peccadilloes of Manny Farber’s work. Right… or is he? Fans of the upcoming An Education will recognize plenty, but the most fun will be had dissecting the finer points of Ms. Girl With Green Eyes, made two years prior to Farber’s reprimand, is something of a standard bearer for the British realist movement that was arising in the early 1960s, the story of a country girl (Tushingham) who comes to Dublin to work in a shop and who meets Mr. In a world full of celebrity ass kissing and sterilized film writing, you may be shocked to read something as hilariously cruel as Farber’s takedown of young actress Rita Tushingham in Pish-Tush, but boy does it pop off the page: “An even worse example of the megalomaniac star who can make the simplest action have as many syllables as her name is Rita Tushingham… Tossing her head about like a basketball and nasally, toothily spewing scorn at her high school teacher, she seems a cross between an adolescent Maggie Jiggs and a delinquent Orphan Annie…”– the actress was 23 years old when the piece was originally published. Girl With Green Eyes (1964) - In celebration of the publication of Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writing Of Manny Farber, I offer Girl With Green Eyes as a unique opportunity to find your way into Farber’s mind and see a film you may otherwise have missed. Look out for awesome supporting performances by Anna Faris and Jeremy Sisto as victims of her wrath. Things take an unexpected turn when May (Angela Bettis, a favorite of mine-she’s like if Zooey Deschanel and Carol Kane merged) starts chopping up potential pals. McKee’s sensitive character study is about a lonely goth girl with a lazy eye and only one friend-her childhood doll. Yet Lucky McKee’s May avoids those pitfalls. May (2003) - The “quirky indie about an isolated awkward person lookin’ for love” genre is getting real old, real fast. The film, deeply critical of Jordanian culture, was surprisingly a top prize-winner at the ‘08 Al-Jazeera Film Festival. Then she’d sell it to the highest bidder. If there was a category for Best Performance by a Documentary Subject, Khouri would certainly walk away with the prize. You will also never forget Norma Khouri, a con artist and femme fatale par excellence, a woman who even took Broinowski for a ride. To say that the director plays with form and content with extraordinary innovation would be an understatement. Khouri, a compulsive liar, is determined to salvage her reputation when her best-selling book Forbidden Love (published in the US as Honor Lost) about her best friend’s (purported) honor killing at the hands of her own father in Jordan is exposed as a hoax a year after publication. Time to re-up y’all’s queues:įorbidden Lie$ (2007) - Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski and her subject Norma Khouri take us on a head-spinning romp of fact and fiction in this fascinating documentary.
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