Words Seem Out Of Place

Everybody knows I love Frankie and Johnny . Everybody knows that, hard as it is to choose a favorite, Frankie will always have my heart when it comes to Michelle Pfeiffer characters. So, pardon me if you've heard or read all of this from me before, but here are just a few reasons why I love everything about this beautiful film. Sometimes you form such a personal connection with a film that you can't even imagine who you would be without it in your life. Frankie and Johnny  (1991) is that film for me. It hooked me first time I saw it, thanks to e xtraordinary performances from the two leads, Michelle Pfeiffer as Frankie and Al Pacino as Johnny; a sensational supporting cast, including Nathan Lane, Kate Nelligan, and Hector Elizondo; that sublime Marvin Hamlisch score; and Terrence McNally's exquisite adaptation of his own off-Broadway play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Together, these elements combine to create something truly magical. I've been liv...

Looking back at the pop culture mainstays of this Gen Xer's gloriously misspent youth. I first laid eyes on screen and stage actress Kate Nelligan watching John Badham's Dracula (1979) a few years after its release. Even at that time, at a very young age of seven or eight, I was captivated by her. I understood nothing about romance or attraction yet, but I could still see why Frank Langella's Dracula wanted to sink his teeth into that neck. There was something in her eyes—an attractive melancholy that I'd be increasingly drawn to as I got older and became more melancholy myself. She had a pensive, thoughtful look. Something about her face felt safe and comforting to little me: "This," some omniscient narrator declared in my head, "is what quiet beauty looks like, kid." Nelligan was heartbreakingly good as Lucy in Dracula . That must've been the early 1980s, probably during the brief halcyon period when my parents subscribed to...

Revisiting—or in a few cases, watching for the first time—and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer,  the best actress of my lifetime. And then there was the time my two favorites starred in one of the most starkly honest and mature films about grownup relationships this viewer has ever seen. Frankie and Johnny (1991) is a beautifully melancholic tale, laced through with rich and sincere humor aimed at adults—people who've lived long enough to have loved and lost and felt real longing and despair. Al Pacino is fantastic as Johnny, the new short-order cook at the diner where Michelle Pfeiffer's Frankie works. Johnny is a good man who truly believes that he and Frankie are meant to be together. Johnny is fully alive now to the realization that life is short, so he's resolved to cherish every minute of it moving forward. Frankie is the cynic, the beaten-down diner waitress who masks the pain of previous relationship failures with biting sarcasm and avoidance. S...