The Grifters: Extra points for my boy J. T. Walsh

Noir. John Cusack looks like an alien--his eyes are too far apart from one another. It's sometimes hard to concentrate on what he's saying because of it. But he was still really good, against equally good Angelica Houston and Anette Benning. In a way, the no-nonsense attitude the movie had made it seem more honest. Or more immediate, or something.

But it was still very 50's comic-booky. You become afraid of people as John Cusack becomes afraid of them. You're swept up in the plot. Probably because every character is bad and good. There were a lot of levels to the characters, some of which came and went very quickly, and unexpectedly. The way current TV dramas try to be interesting by using ten different plot threads, except in a film like this it's all in one or two characters. The side of the person you get to see transforms strangely, and it keeps everyone in the room on edge. Thank god there wasn't any twist ending--if this film were made today it would have been revealed in the end that the two ladies were working together the whole time, which is dumb, so it's great that that wasn't tacked on. Jim Thompson, the writer who's novel, this is based on, writes with a kind of relentless pessimism, like he needs to really reach through and grab his point. A twist would deny the characters Thompson's dark chaos. No one wins in this bleak life.

Anyway, after all this blah blah-ing, I wanna discuss the anti-hero soon. Maybe watch some High Fidelity, or something. Stare fixedly at John Cusack's in-human/angelic face... and maybe it'll have Annette Benning's beautiful breasts.