A bright and charismatic sociopath making his way in mid-1950s NYC through menial work and petty scams, Tom Ripley is hired through a case of mistaken identity by a shipping magnate to bring back his loafing son, Dickie (Jude Law), from a too-long extended Italian vacation with his girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Tom soon finds… Read more »
Onscreen at IU Cinema
On the Everlasting Arms: The Influence and Longevity of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter
A corpse drifts to the bottom of a river in The Night of the Hunter Chris Forrester considers the powerful legacy of 1955’s The Night of the Hunter, a nightmare-fueled noir with far-reaching iconography and themes. There are films you can almost see without seeing. Famous images, lines of dialogue, and plot points from films… Read more »
Narrative Obsession in The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides Noni Ford examines how both the Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Virgin Suicides and Sofia Coppola’s adaptation portray the disconnect between the male narrators and the sisters at the center of the story. “We saw the light in her eyes we have been looking for ever since.”— The narrators, The Virgin Suicides by… Read more »
Playboy, TV, and Genre Purism: The Salacious Origins of Steven Spielberg’s Duel
Opening title from the TV version of Duel, broadcast as part of ABC’s TV Movie of the Weekend series Guest writer Caleb Allison compares the original TV and theatrical versions of Steven Spielberg’s masterful debut feature film. The April 1971 edition of Playboy featured a story by screenwriter, novelist, and regular Playboy fiction author Richard… Read more »
The Seductive Pleasures of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Still from Bram Stoker’s Dracula Chris Forrester bites into the cinematic history of the world’s most famous vampire and how filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola transformed the story into an operatic, dazzling epic like none other. When I wrote last month about remakes, one film that consistently crossed my mind was Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992),… Read more »
Making Life Tolerable: The Hard-Won Triumphs of Rudy (1993)
Poster for Rudy Jesse Pasternack defines why audiences cheer for the Hoosier classic and its deep humanity. There’s a lot to admire about Rudy. I adore its brilliant structure and memorable dialogue by screenwriter and Indiana University alum Angelo Pizzo, the fantastic blocking and imagery by director David Anspaugh (who also graduated from IU and… Read more »