[7] Katharine Hepburn stars as a poor young woman trying to enter snobbish social circles to find a husband in this first major film directed by George Stevens (Woman of the Year, Gunga Din). Hepburn’s character eventually lands a doting beau (Fred MacMurray). Her problem then becomes how to disguise the fact that she comes from modest means. I like Alice Adams because it features …
[6] Cillian Murphy stars a young trans-woman who leaves Ireland in the 1970s to find her birth mother in London. Along the way, she has flings with a singer (Gavin Friday) and a comic magician (Stephen Rea), rough encounters with the IRA and London police, and an unexpected reconciliation with her birth father. Breakfast on Pluto reunites director Neil Jordan with material involving sexuality and …
[5] A New York city social worker becomes pregnant and decides she’d rather raise the baby with her gay best friend than with the baby’s father. But when their romantic desires begin to undercut their family goals, frustration gets the better of both of them. I almost like The Object of My Affection. Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd star in it, and they are both …
[7] A pair of New York city narcotics cops try to bust a big heroin deal being brokered between suspected mobsters and a French connection. But one of the cops, ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Gene Hackman), has a history of recklessness and threatens to lead his partner (Roy Scheider) down another dangerous rabbit hole in his obsessive pursuit of the drug dealers. Based on a true story …
[5] Eleanor Parker stars as a mail-order bride to a lonely South American cocoa plantation farmer played by Charlton Heston. When she first meets her husband, she’s taken back by his brutish behavior. The two decide maybe marrying each other without ever meeting was probably a bad idea. But before Parker can catch the next boat out of the jungle, a 20-mile wide army of …
[6] Maestro Billy Wilder directs Ray Milland as a drunk writer circling the drain in the multi-Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Milland’s character is supposed to begin recovery on a long holiday weekend with his brother (Phillip Terry) and gal pal (Jane Wyman), but after he steals money to spend at his favorite bar, he gets drunk and misses their departure time. Things get progressively worse …
[8] Writer/director John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke, Lawn Dogs) takes an earnest and engaging stab at the ‘boy meets girl and falls in love’ narrative with Flirting. Noah Taylor stars as an ostracized Australian boarding school student in the 1950s who becomes infatuated with a new Ugandan student (Thandie Newton) from a nearby girls’ school. As the two avoid their headmasters for clandestine …
[7] Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield (Grease 2) star as high school graduates who take a weekend car trip to L.A. where they start a killing spree. Sheen’s character slowly begins to wrestle with his lingering empathy, while Caulfield’s grows more homicidal. The film heads toward a climax where the boys turn on each other while the cops are hot on their tails. The Boys …
[7] A doctor visits a woman in an insane asylum to determine if she requires a lobotomy to forget the horror of seeing her cousin murdered, or if her aunt is pushing for the procedure to cover the truth. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) directed the film, and the three leads are played by …
[5] Tilda Swinton stars as a mother trying to cover-up the accidental death of her son’s aggressive gay lover. But things get even more complicated when a strong-arm (Goran Visnjik) tries to extort the dead man’s debts from her. Tilda Swinton can make the best of a lot of roles, but this character’s timidity and fecklessness are hard for me to deal with. Since the …
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