Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers
Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisive family drama emerged from decades of neglect to be heralded as a lost masterpiece of American independent cinema. Brooke Adams delivers a revelatory, multilayered performance as Jo, a troubled woman who returns to her family home in Rhode Island to confront her childhood demons. There, she becomes unexpectedly embroiled in the simmering domestic discord next door. Bringing vérité naturalism to a seemingly melodramatic premise, Roemer crafts a miracle of novelistic psychological insight that, as it unspools, reveals ever-greater depths of human understanding.
Up Next in American Independents
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The World’s Greatest Sinner
Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty RowlandTimothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...
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Sleepwalk
Directed by Sara Driver • 1986 • United States, West Germay
Starring Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson, Dexter LeeSara Driver’s first feature is a tantalizingly enigmatic, surrealist fantasia rooted in the grit and anything-goes energy of the 1980s New York night world. When Nicole (Suzanne Fletch...
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Blood Simple
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1984 • United States
Starring John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan HedayaJoel and Ethan Coen's career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases...
