You are not born a George Clooney, a Brad Pitt, or a Johnny Depp, and see no chance of ever becoming a sex symbol. What to do if you still want to make some cinema? You do John Turturro, the guy with that oblique smile and illegible smile. You do someone who is never going to be mistaken from the star of the moment (John Wayne has been rumored to say he couldn’t tell Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman), for if you are John Turturro, you only look like yourself. That’s how you enter people’s minds and memories, that’s how you build your image and make memorable characters.
An interpreter of great personality and versatility, Spike Lee loved working with him, and featured him in seven of his films. This says a lot about Lee, who is a known cultural agitator and not the accommodating type. Turturro played a racist pizza maker in Do the Right Thing (the film that consecrated both) and a Jewish nightclub owner in Mo’ Better Blues. Who, better than him, could perfectly enter the world of the Coen Brothers, starring in such masterpieces as Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and above all (we cannot seem to stop talking about this film) The Big Lebowski.
John Turturro also directed five films of his own.
The already strained relationship between Martha (Swinton) and her daughter shatters due to a misunderstanding that will permanently separate the two women. Ingrid (Moore), a bestselling author, witnesses this painful family feud. During a stay in a house surrounded by nature ...
It’s hot in New York. People yell and loiter in what reveals as a hotbed of violence. There’s no conversation – not even with pizza.
Death and transfiguration (and then death again) of a slimeball of a character. A film that the Coen Brothers inexplicably refused.
The rise and fall of an ambitious author trying to make it in the world of screenwriting.
The scion of the Van Doren family must win this quiz show – whatever it takes – against the less presentable Herb. Robert Redford directs: trust me, you can tell!
Jesus and his durag are but two of the many, many pieces of beauty in this one-in-a-million film (with some luck, there should be no sequel to mar its memory).
