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Watched two movies over the weekend on DVD that I remember being critical darlings in my mid-teens but were a bit too adult (read: boring) for me at that point in time.
The Grifters. Other than the first The Addams Family movie I've never cared for Anjelica Huston. Still true. Didn't help that the whole movie is bland neo-noir wankery of the worst sort.
Reversal of Fortune. Took a bit for me to buy into Ron Silver as Alan Dershowitz but eventually I did. Jeremy Irons seemed a little too stilted but for all I know Claus von Bulow really was like that. The Claus von Bulow cas is before my time but it is one of those names that seeped into my childhood consciousness without me knowing the context. I remember hearing a Denis Leary CD in college and he made some joke about comas and von Bulow and suddenly realizing that I had no idea what the connection was.
So it was an interesting movie in that regard, to learn the details of an incident that captivated the nation but was then quickly forgotten by the same nation. But it wasn't such a great movie; the legal philosophical questions were telegraphed and then acted out. I liked one bit of dialog though for its precognition of another case Dershowitz would be involved with just a couple years after the movie. One theory being pursued is that because Sunny von Bulow's kids believe Claus tried to kill her they manufactured evidence. A person on Dershowitz's team says "they may have framed a guilty man." That is a sentence that was heard a lot during the OJ trial talking about possible police misconduct.
Anyway, if these two movies are examples of the best of the late '80s then it really was a crappy time for movies.
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