His last fiction feature, 2015’s Ricki and the Flash, was a
misfire, alas, but here in the Valley, Harkins Theatres hosts a well-deserved retrospective
tribute this week, featuring four of the best of Demme’s direct, humane, sophisticated
yet accessible films: His classic thriller Silence of the Lambs (1991), his fine
courtroom drama Philadelphia (1993), his brilliant, genre-bending
comedy-melodrama Something Wild (1986) and my own favorite, Married to the Mob
(1988).
If you’ve never seen this buoyantly nutty comedy, in which the Long Island mob widow Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer)
tries to “divorce” herself and her son from her extended gangster “family,” I
highly recommend. It features a terrific cast led by Dean Stockwell (who got an
Oscar nomination) as the smitten boss Tony “The Tiger” Russo, Matthew Modine as
Pfeiffer’s G-man love interest, the young Alec Baldwin as Frankie “The Cucumber”
de Marco, and the marvelous Mercedes Ruehl as Tony’s heartbroken and
hilariously terrifying wife Connie. It also features what I think is Pfeiffer’s
best, or at least most endearing, performance.
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