Robert Forster

[8] Naomi Watts and Laura Harring star in this dreamy David Lynch film that almost defies summary, but I’ll do my best. Watts plays a young actress fresh in Hollywood who meets Harring, a woman who just escaped a car crash and has amnesia. Trying to figure out Harring’s identity, the two uncover an unsettling mystery and fall in love. Meanwhile, Justin Theroux plays a …

[7] Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, The Black Hole) stars as a police detective in this better-than-average monster movie about a giant alligator that terrorizes the Chicago suburbs. Screenwriter John Sayles (Passion Fish, Lone Star) probably deserves most of the credit, giving Forster and co-stars just enough character and backstory to elevate them above the two-dimensional pawns you usually find in these flicks. He also makes …

[7] Director John Huston unites Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor for their only screen pairing in this adaptation of the perverse Carson McCullers novel. Brando plays a sexually repressed Army major who turns a blind eye to his wife’s (Taylor) extramarital affair while simultaneously finding himself drawn to a mysterious young cadet who spends his days running naked through the woods and his nights as …

[8] It may have been Disney’s pallid attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars, but The Black Hole is another kind of animal, a kitschy matinee sci-fi/horror movie that’s worth a look in its own right.  It’s a cross between Frankenstein and The Old Dark House, falling more in line with Forbidden Planet than it does George Lucas’ famous trilogy. Robert Forster, …

[9] I don’t generally like heist/swindle movies, but this Quentin Tarantino flick (his third, because he’s counting) based on a novel by Elmore Leonard got under my skin with its rich characters and dialogue. Pam Grier plays a flight attendant who smuggles gun money from Mexico to the States for a bad motherfucker played by, who else? Samuel L. Jackson. But when ATF agents (Michael …