CITYist

If you were born after 1978, the year An Unmarried Woman came out, then chances are you haven’t even heard of it. And yet, in some ways, you have. If you’ve ever seen any movie about a divorcée, a middle-aged, single woman or a group of friends liberated by their own independence, then you’ve seen bits and pieces of An Unmarried Woman. But more than the story of a woman whose husband leaves her for a younger woman (which it is), the movie is also a quintessential New York film, marveling in the street-scapes and the pulse of the city nearly as much as its characters. A predecessor to Sex and the City? You could sat that.

Watching My Own Private Idaho, it’s easy to see the predecessor of the modern day hipster. The 1991 film, a follow up to Gus Van Sant’s professional breakthrough with Drugstore Cowboy, is about hustlers on the streets of Portland who wear dirty old boots, aviators and motorcycle jackets. The only difference between them and their modern descendants, perhaps, is that they also live in decrepit, abandoned hotels, exploit their bodies and are actually able to smoke inside diners. But the movie is much more than its setting or its fashion. It’s also a remake of Shakespeare’s Henry the V, a tale of unrequited love and, most of all, an examination of vulnerability: River Phoenix’s character is narcoleptic, leaving him at the mercy of his body and brain wherever he goes.

Film noir is a term that’s tossed around a lot. Several recent movies have been championed as the return of the genre, but with the exception of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s brilliant high school caper Brick, we haven’t seen anything to touch the likes of Chinatown or The Big Sleep. One sometimes overlooked addition to the field is the 1944 film Laura. Directed by Otto Preminger and starring two similarly overlooked actors, Dana Andrews (a leading man also known for the excellent post-war film The Best Years of Our Lives who lost most of his career to alcoholism) and Gene Tierney (a classic beauty along the lines of Ingrid Bergman who lost most of her career to mental illness) the movie is an excellent example of the plot twists, intrigue and intense emotions of film noir.

This movie isn’t exactly obscure, but we still feel it managed to slip under the radar and didn’t receive all the accolades it deserved. First of all, it’s a Michael Mann film, so you can expect large, beautiful expanses of Midwest America. Second of all, it stars the superb Johnny Depp as his childhood hero, John Dillinger, and the aforementioned Marion Cotillard as his main squeeze. Throw in some thrilling historical detail (not entirely accurate—if you’d like accuracy, we suggest you read the book, which is equally fabulous) and some gorgeous 30s styling, and you’ve got a biopic we could watch over and over again.

If you haven’t seen the original, now is the time: Bonnie and Clyde is about to become the latest in a long line of Hollywood remakes. Now, we aren’t saying the new version will be terrible, necessarily, but we think this tidbit speaks for itself: the new Bonnie Parker will be played by Hilary Duff, most recently seen in the TV movie Beauty and the Briefcase. On the other hand, the beautiful, black and white 1967 version cast a regal Faye Dunaway as the girl outlaw, looking lethal with a beret and a shotgun. Add to that Warren Beatty in his prime, acclaimed director Arthur Penn and the French New Wave as muse, and you’ve got a landmark of American cinema.

The iconic American teenage film has taken a swan dive in recent years, making it difficult to imagine how somewhat intelligent, eloquent films like “American Graffiti” or “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” ever made it into popular consciousness. Less talked about, however, are two beautiful films that Francis Ford Coppola churned out in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1983. Retaining the same production crew and even some of the same cast, Coppola directed the deeply American tale of class oppression “The Outsiders” as well as the deeply artistic, European-influenced “Rumble Fish.”