My Own Private Idaho’s Outsider Twist on Shakespeare
Made in an era when self-consciously postmodern takes on the Bard were popular, Gus Van Sant’s melancholy road movie mines the ambiguously queer tensions in the history play Henry IV.
Chilly Scenes of Winter: Nowhere Fast
Described by director Joan Micklin Silver as “a kind of weird romantic comedy,” this defiantly ambiguous exploration of amour fou presents its obsessive antihero in all his contradictions.
When Actors Do Double Duty
From Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers to Kazuo Hasegawa in An Actor’s Revenge, performers who multitask as several characters in a single film tap into the essential uncanniness of cinema itself.
Fallen Child: Amy Wright in Wise Blood
The great character actress delivers a lusty, unbridled performance as a preacher’s daughter in this late-career gem from John Huston.
Driven: Lindsay Crouse in House of Games
Film scholar Shonni Enelow reveals the methods of the Mamet style of acting in this examination of Crouse’s subtly feminist lead performance.