Paul Sorvino

Cruising

by
Steve applies some eyeliner

When William Friedkin died in 2023, aged 87, the obituaries talked of the director of The Exorcist and the man who gave us The French Connection. The Boys in the Band, his groundbreaking film from 1970, which took dramas about gay men into the mainstream, got some bandwidth, as did Sorceror, his remake of Clouzot’s 1953 classic The Wages of Fear, which has gained in reputation ever since it was released in 1977. Cruising not so much. Or if it was mentioned it was usually in passing, as the controversial film that ended Friedkin’s time at the top. In fact Sorceror had already done that. The title had confused people thinking they were … Read more

American Perfekt

by
Fairuza Balk and Robert Forster in American Perfekt

It’s a good rule of thumb that road movies set out in any American desert and made on a low budget have a knack of turning out OK. There’s often something fairly oddball going on too. Made in 1997, the same year that its star would appear in Tarantino’s career-boosting Jackie Brown, American Perfekt sees Robert Forster playing a psychiatrist driving through the empty desert who stops to pick up a female hitchhiker (Amanda Plummer). She is clearly deranged but no matter how mad she apparently seems, he’s even madder – it’s only thanks to a coin toss that he’s giving her a ride, rather than killing her. Half an hour or so … Read more