Kathie Hersch Movies
Very loosely based on the memoir of the same name, The Basketball Diaries transposes the late '60s adolescence of writer/artist Jim Carroll to some unspecified time period at least 15 years later, further confusing the timeframe with three decades of rock music, some by Carroll himself. Jim (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Catholic school chums are on the hottest basketball team in New York, but their friend Bobby (Michael Imperioli) languishes in the hospital with leukemia. In-between typically boyish adventures, Jim scribbles in his notebook and experiments with sex and drugs. His group of friends begins to disintegrate after coach Swifty (Bruno Kirby) not only makes a pass at Jim, but also catches him and his pals using drugs on the court and kicks them off the team. Out of school and on the streets, Jim turns tricks, betrays friends, robs stores, and deals drugs to feed his heroin addiction. Not even the efforts of former addict Reggie (Ernie Hudson) can cure Jim. Mark Wahlberg appears as one of Jim's basketball and drug buddies, while Carroll himself makes a memorable cameo as an addict who describes the almost Catholic rituals of shooting heroin. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jimmy Papiris, Leonardo DiCaprio, (more)
- 1991
Director Jan Oxenberg's purpose for making Thank You and Good Night was to seek out an answer to the question, "What is this thing called death?" The subject of this documentary is Oxenberg's grandmother Mae Joffe, who was dying of cancer when the film was made. In between Joffe's candid and sometimes quite funny observations, Oxenberg offers dramatized flashbacks to her childhood experiences with her grandmother. These sequences, along with a fantasy quiz show, are "enacted" with cardboard cutouts made from family photographs. Filmed in 1991, Thank You and Good Night received its national premiere on May 19, 1993, as an installment of PBS' American Playhouse. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Written and directed by the ever-unpredictable Jim Jarmusch, Mystery Train is comprised of three short anecdotes involving foreign tourists in Tennessee. Each story is set in a fleabag Memphis hotel which has been redressed as a "tribute" to Elvis Presley. Story #1 involves two Japanese tourists whose devotion to '50s American rock music blinds them to everything around them. Story #2 finds eternal victim Nicoletta Braschi sharing a room with stone-broke Elizabeth Bracco and having her problems solved by a spectral vision of The King. And story #3 offers the further misadventures of Bracco, her no-good boyfriend and her dysfunctional family. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, (more)
- 1987
The independently produced Home Remedy is virtually a textbook example of "Quirky." Seth Barrish plays a young New Jerseyite, displeased with the hustle-bustle of the world around him. He squirrels himself away in his huge suburban home, seeking only peace, quiet, and virtual non-movement. His solitude is shattered by his voluptuous next-door neighbor Maxine Albert, who seeks out sexual satisfaction with the passive Barrish. Alas, Albert has a violently jealous husband. A jet-black exercise in Woody Allenesque angst, Home Remedy is unrated, but hardly children's fare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Seth Barrish, Maxine Albert, (more)
