John Dahl made a trio of entertaining neo-noir thrillers, Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1993) and, best of all, The Last Seduction (1994). It was the third that made the biggest impact, even though the film premiered on HBO, the response from critics and film festivals was such that it earned a belated theatrical release. Sadly the HBO airing made Linda Fiorentino ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Actress — her femme fatale Bridget Gregory was among the most talked about performances of the 1990s.
After ripping off her abusive husband’s ill-gotten gains, Bridget hides out in a small town and picks up a naive insurance agent in a bar (Peter Berg). She soon decides he has his uses, and tries to manipulate him into helping her with a murderous scheme. Meanwhile, a private detective hired by her husband is on her tail.
This is a rare noir told with the femme fatale as the protagonist. And while Bridget is ruthlessly amoral (she’s no hypocrite), she’s also several degrees smarter than anyone else in the movie, which makes her quite irresistible — or at the very least, very entertaining to watch.
Dahl gives us Linda Fiorentino as the baddest of the bad women, the most full-blown yet utterly believable femme fatale to come along in years.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
A devilishly entertaining crime story with a heroine who must be seen to be believed.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
John Dahl
Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman, Bill Nunn
USA
1994
English
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Credits
Producer
Jonathan Shestack
Screenwriter
Steve Barancik
Cinematography
Jeffrey Jur
Editor
Eric Beason
Original Music
Joseph Vitarelli
Production Design
Linda Pearl
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
GoodFellas
The ultimate crash and burn movie, Scorsese's exhilarating gangster film is infused with the excitement of fast cash, girls, guns and drugs. Yet this brazenly amoral movie also captures the brutality, betrayal, and spiritual void of the criminal world.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
Pulp Fiction + The ReViberators
In the spirit of Quentin Tarantino, we're going to launch our summer series 90s, Baby! smack in the middle, with 1994's Pulp Fiction, the most exciting and influential movie of its era. On 35mm. Preceded by surf guitar sensations The ReViberators live!
Jacob's Ladder
Ever feel you're losing your mind? Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) comes back from the Vietnam War with a firefight in his head. Sanity is a losing battle in Adrian Lyne's terrifying psychological thriller.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino announced himself to the world with this ingeniously fractured heist movie, carved into character-centric chapters, riffing breezily on pop culture, but counterpointing all this with blood-soaked intensity.
Total Recall
The master of the subversive blockbuster, Paul Verhoeven concocts a film about corporate mind-control vs. revolutionary uprising by setting it on Mars and allowing for the possibility the whole thing is just an escapist fantasy...
True Romance
Rockabilly comic book clerk Clarence (Christian Slater) meets dream girl Alabama (Patricia Arquette) with trouble in her wake, in this seminal couple on the run thriller from Quentin Tarantino's excitable mind.
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
Boyz n the Hood
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director John Singleton's groundbreaking portrait of three young men growing up in South Central is a film of integrity and compassion. It's a far richer portrait of Black lives than Hollywood's gangsta exploitation pics.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. (Yep.) James Cameron's all too relevant action movie is in some ways unsurpassed. Linda Hamilton is the mom we all need right now.
Thelma & Louise
In this iconic feminist road movie BFF Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon take off for a weekend getaway that turns violent when one of them is attacked. The stakes get higher as they flee the scene. Winner: Best Original Screenplay (Callie Khouri).
Julio Avila Cuban Band Live + The Mambo Kings Film Screening
Feel the heat! Shake your booty as we combine a live set of exhilarating Cuban music followed by a rediscovered 90s barnstormer of a movie starring Latin heartthrobs Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas alongside the likes of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz.
The Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) gives FBI serial killer hunter Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) pointers from his maximum security cell. But is he trying to aid the investigation, or just messing with her head?
Delicatessen
Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jacquet collaborated with Marc Caro on their first film, a breathlessly inventive and unexpectedly charming comedy about two young lovers evading a cannibal butcher in a post-apocalyptic France.