Word: cusack
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...settled in the film capital in the '30s and '40s, namely Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich (along with Austro-Hungarian dramatist Odon von Horvath, who never really made it to America but serves as fictionalized narrator). Yet an impressive cast -- Jeremy Irons, Alec Guinness, Sinead Cusack -- cannot lift this PBS American Playhouse adaptation much above elegant name dropping. Despite snatches of Ragtime-esque fantasy and an ending that pays homage to Sunset Boulevard, the drama is hobbled by an old plot: crass Hollywood grinds down true artists, told once more with less feeling...
...source of comedy. For example, a sword swallower (Mia Farrow) leaves her clown-lover (John Malkovich) after catching him with the fortune-teller (Madonna). She finds shelter with a bunch of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Kathy Bates, Lily Tomlin) and winds up getting paid for sex by John Cusack...
...exotic film tradition is minuscule. What does the rest of the audience care that it exerts a continuing influence on films noirs and, for that matter, on Batman? For those people, Allen has recruited an astonishing cast, from Madonna to John Malkovich, from Jodie Foster to John Cusack, and they ground their symbolic characters in a recognizable reality...
...subdued talents of Angelica Huston and John Cusack add up to a lukewarm but stylistically interesting movie...
Best to savor The Grifters for its handsome design -- the picture looks as clean as a Hockney landscape -- and its juicy performances. Huston and Bening, sure shots for Oscar nominations, make for two splendid carnivores; they both have scintillating street wit and legs that go on for days. Cusack, as the would-be lion tamer, naturally gets devoured. And a swell sight it is too, a mother consuming her young, for the same reason a mama scorpion does: she's hungry. That's Jim Thompson's world, and now Hollywood is welcome...