As far as femmes fatales in 1990s film noir, it's hard to beat Linda Fiorentino as Bridget Gregory/Wendy Kroy in John Dahl's The Last Seduction (1994). Like any guilty pleasure, it's fun to watch Ms. Fiorentino run circles around various men. Bill Pullman is good as her bilked husband, the one guy who can almost match her wits. Peter Berg plays a rube named Mike. The Last Seduction is particularly effective in making the viewer complicit in various criminal enterprises. It's no accident, I'm guessing, that this movie was shown on HBO before being released theatrically. Complicity, moral complexity and dark humor are trademarks of many an HBO series or film.
I keep meaning to track down more films featuring Fiorentino (b. March 9, ca. 1958-1960, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). She sizzles in this one, certainly.
Odd HBO connection: Peter Berg's roommate in college was Ari Emanuel, the inspiration for Ari Gold on Entourage. To follow the daisy chain down the line, the name Ari Gold is probably a play on chief Goldfinger villian, Auric Goldfinger, a name that is itself a mockery of Ian Fleming's Hungarian neighbor, an architect named, in real life, Ernő Goldfinger. But it's fiction!
Today's Rune: Movement.
Birthdays: Edward R. Murrow, Ella Fitzgerald, Meadowlark Lemon, Jerry Leiber, Alfredo James "Al" Pacino, Jaroslava Schallerová, Dominique Blanc.
2 comments:
The Last Seduction is a delicious movie. She's so wonderfully immoral and clever.
Linda Fiorentino was great in Dogma too, a completely different kind of role.
Those fictional names have to come from somewhere, no matter how far removed.
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