Rain Man (Levinson, 1988): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm
This film, part of the Tom Cruise season at BFI Southbank, also screens on May 17th. Tonight's presentation will be introduced by Clare Baines, BFI Inclusion Partner.
Chicago Reader review:
When it opened, this 1988 Oscar winner sounded like a worst-case
scenario for the most lachrymose movie of the year: Tom Cruise attends
the funeral of his long-estranged father and discovers that the entire
estate has been left to an older brother (Dustin Hoffman) whose
existence he’s never known about—an autistic, institutionalized idiot
savant with a photographic memory for numbers. He abducts his brother in
an attempt to claim half of the inheritance, but in the course of a
cross-country journey gradually learns to care for his sibling.
Fortunately, the script by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow isn’t half bad,
and both Barry Levinson’s direction and the performances are agreeably
restrained. Valeria Golino is appealing as Cruise’s girlfriend; Hoffman
makes his character pretty believable without milking the part for
pathos and tears, and it’s nice to see Cruise working for a change in a
context that isn’t determined by hard sell and hype.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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