Brian De Palma frames his erotic story with a lot of soapy drama, hazy lenses, and split screen shots as a the murder of one of Michael Caine's patients by one of his more disturbed patients causes Keith Gordon's clever teenager and Nancy Allen's fun hooker to figure out who's behind all of this. Pino Donaggio's score soars like nothing you've heard before, adding to the erotic feverishness of the whole film.
Reviews
12 Reviews
Fatal Attraction
(1987)
She Won't Be Ignored
27 April 2022
Glenn Close gives the defining performance of her career that probably scared the pants onto many a philandering husband in the late 80's. She plays a woman who doesn't know the meaning of a fling and gets too emotionally attached to a married man played by Michael Douglas. She won't leave him alone, threatens suicide, and then starts threatening harm to his family. Close makes it impossible for Douglas or the audience to forget her.
Single White Female
(1992)
Roommate Terror
27 April 2022
Having a roommate is scary enough, but when they're behaving like Jennifer Jason Leigh and stealing everything you own including your own identity, it's a whole new level. The story takes some predictable thriller beats here and there, but the two lead performances by Leigh and Fonda are worth seeing it for.
Basic Instinct
(1992)
Sex-Filled Noir
27 April 2022
Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas have no shortage of sparks between them as he plays the corrupt cop trying to catch her depraved novelist in the act of murder. Stone commands the screen with a simple glance like some of the best of the classic silent film stars and you can't take your eyes off of her no matter how hard you try.
Beware Who You Let Into Your Home
27 April 2022
A solid, well crafted early 90's thriller with a bravura performance from Rebecca De Mornary as every mother's worst nightmare. Julianne Moore is bundles of fun as a severe and determined real estate agent who's not buying any of De Mornay's lies and tall tales.
Pieces
(1982)
Beyond Dumb
27 April 2022
A campy, gore-soaked semi-murder mystery about a young boy who murders his mother because she won't let him play with a puzzle of a nude woman, so he decides to reconstruct it using real body parts of college coeds. How this script even got past producers, agents, and actors without serious rewrites is a mystery, but it's the type of outlandish and sleazy horror that doesn't get made anymore.
Phantom of the Paradise
(1974)
Great Tunes
27 April 2022
Brian De Palma's unusual cult classic musical is full of tuneful Paul Williams songs and does a great play on the classic Phantom of the Opera story with colorful visuals, a great sense of humor, and the appealing Jessica Harper in the lead role as the Phantom's muse. Geritt Graham just about steals every scene he's in as flamboyant rocker, Beef.
Raising Cain
(1992)
Lithgow Creeps
27 April 2022
John Lithgow gets a great multi-role arc to play in De Palma's bizarre domestic thriller about the son of a child psychiatrist who might be having a complete break from reality and starts becoming different people who mean his family harm. It's not De Palma's finest work and he repeats himself a bit, but it's always at least amusing.
Terms of Endearment
(1983)
MacLaine's Best Performance
27 April 2022
Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger play a mother and daughter whose relationship spans some 30 years who poke and prod at each other like real mothers and daughters do, but who love each other deeply deep down. The comedy works so that the drama can soar later and, yes, you will cry by the end of it.
Ordinary People
(1980)
Incredibly Moving
27 April 2022
A perfect family drama about how people process grief differently. Mary Tyler Moore was rightfully praised for her very anti-sitcom performance as the cold matriarch, but Timothy Hutton and Donald Sutherland as her long-suffering son and husband are heartbreaking. Robert Redford's directorial debut is one of the best debuts of all time.
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