Payment on Demand (Curtis Bernhardt, 1951). Bette Davis was a tough customer from the very beginning, but as she edged into middle age there was a special pleasure in watching her disdainfully browbeat all those wronged her. In Payment on … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Payment on Demand; The Florida Project; Money Monster
Because today I want to this space to feature a film directed by a bad-ass woman. This was written for our weekly movie review radio show in the fall of 1991, which was a helluva year for Jodie Foster. Thankfully, she was duly awarded for her accomplishments. It’s pretty easy to figure out what attracted Jodie Foster to Scott Frank’s screenplay Little Man Tate, the story of a youngster with pronounced talent who’s showered with attention because of that gift, and who has a deep, special bond with mother. It sounds remarkably like the story of Little Woman Foster, the … Continue reading From the Archive: Little Man Tate
There was a time when I was absolutely convinced that Jodie Foster was the future of U.S. cinema. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs, giving a riveting performance as Clarice Starling that justly earned her an Academy Award, her second Best Actress win in the span of three years. That same year, she delivered her directorial debut in Little Man Tate, an imperfect but insightful drama about precocious talent that benefited from the sense Foster was drawing on her own experience as a child actor who could somehow slip comfortably between a loopy Disney comedy and … Continue reading The Unwatchables: The Beaver
Coffee for Two 