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Men Don't Leave
: essential video:Most directors use a hit film to launch an immediate career--but not Paul Brickman, who hit in 1983 with Risky Business then waited until 1990 to make this, his second movie. And it was a good, if overlooked one, starring Jessica Lange as a woman suddenly widowed and unable to cope. She moves her kids (including Chris O'Donnell in his film debut) from the suburbs to downtown Baltimore, where they develop urban survival skills much more quickly than she does. Most of the plot centers on her inability to open up ...
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Streetcar Named Desire (1995)
: essential video:Most directors use a hit film to launch an immediate career--but not Paul Brickman, who hit in 1983 with Risky Business then waited until 1990 to make this, his second movie. And it was a good, if overlooked one, starring Jessica Lange as a woman suddenly widowed and unable to cope. She moves her kids (including Chris O'Donnell in his film debut) from the suburbs to downtown Baltimore, where they develop urban survival skills much more quickly than she does. Most of the plot centers on her inability to open up ...
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All That Jazz
: :Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) turns the camera on himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle musical, allegory to satire. It's an indication of his bravura, and possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script) literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon's heart in a key scene--an unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart procedure. Roy Scheider makes a brave and largely successful leap out of his usual romantic lead roles to step into Gideon's dancing pumps, ...
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Tootsie
: :One of the touchstone movies of the 1980s, Tootsie stars Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor who disguises himself as a dowdy, middle-aged woman to get a part on a hit soap opera. The scheme works, but while he/she keeps up the charade, Hoffman's character comes to see life through the eyes of the opposite sex. The script by Larry Gelbart (with Murray Schisgal) is a winner, and director Sydney Pollack brings taut proficiency to the comedy and sensitivity to the relationship nuances that emerge from Hoffman's drag act. Great supporting work from ...
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King Kong (1976)
: :Before John Hughes claimed the mantle of Hollywood's antichrist, that title was firmly held by producer Dino De Laurentiis, whose middle name may have been 'hubris.' He vowed that this remake of the 1933 horror classic would be a bigger hit than Jaws and that his Kong would be more sympathetic than the shark. But for all the money he spent on trying to make this monkey look real, the biggest special effect was making Jeff Bridges look like a monkey--and nearly destroying Jessica Lange's acting career before it started. The film was ...
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Crimes of the Heart
: essential video:Three Oscar-winning actresses have a go at one of playwright Beth Henley's southern-fried comedies, and cook up an agreeable gumbo. In the town of Hazelhurst, Mississippi, Diane Keaton dithers her birthday away as one sister (Jessica Lange) returns from a flopped attempt at a singing career in Hollywood, and the other sister (Sissy Spacek) languishes in jail after shooting her abusive hubby. Truth be told, all three have been a little touched in the head ever since the long-past day when their mother hanged herself along with the family cat. Bruce ...
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A Thousand Acres
: :Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this underrated adaptation of Jane Smiley's best-selling modern version of King Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family, setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only ...
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O Pioneers (1992)
: :Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this underrated adaptation of Jane Smiley's best-selling modern version of King Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family, setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only ...
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Country
: :Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this underrated adaptation of Jane Smiley's best-selling modern version of King Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family, setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only ...
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Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)
: essential video:In The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jack Nicholson teamed up again with his Five Easy Pieces and King of Marvin Gardens director Bob Rafelson for this 1981 version of James M. Cain's hardboiled novel of lust and murder. This version takes a much grittier (and sexually explicit) approach to the material than the slick 1946 MGM version starring John Garfield and Lana Turner. Nicholson plays Frank Chambers, a drifter who happens upon a roadside diner run by Cora Papadakis (Jessica Lange) and her swarthy Greek husband, Nick (John Colicos). Sparks fly, ...
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