Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 261: Fri Sep 18

Serial Mom (Waters, 1994): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.15pm


This is John Waters' favourite of all his films and can be seen at his season at the BFI. The movie is also being screened on 8th September and you can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Not quite top-grade John Waters (1994), but with Kathleen Turner offering the first top-grade star turn in a Waters picture since the death of Divine there's little cause for complaint—just a bit of awkwardness around the edges of this satire about the American worship and domestication of serial killers, plus several other Waters hobbyhorses. Turner plays a happy, wholesome mom in suburban Baltimore who happens to bump off everyone she gets irritated with—and given that this is a Waters picture, that's a lot of folks. Sam Waterston is her husband and Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard play their kids, while the many walk-ons include Mink Stole, Patricia Hearst, Traci Lords, and Suzanne Somers. There's a lot of ribbing of both police procedurals and Hitchcock productions, and, though it isn't fashionable to say so, the movie's comedy is also assisted by its libertarian-humanist politics (for gory movies and against capital punishment). The results are nothing momentous, but still loads of fun.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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