Little Murders

Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: Watching films for sixty years, this is my favorite. It is brilliant in every way, as well as hilarious and darkly realistic. Don't miss it. Vincent Gardenia should have won an academy award. Jules Pfeiffer too.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a look
Review: Whose bright idea was it to reveal a major plot twist in the scene menu? They could have put 'The Shooting', or something. Not everyone has seen the film. In fact, very few have. I have, but didn't understand it. It's gratifying to discover that Elliot Gould didn't either, at the time. He's proud of the movie and his performance, and only occasionally strays into repitition (the crew) on the commentary. He takes things a bit too wee seriously.

Fieffer, I heard, had not liked the film and I was surprised to see he had done a commentary. It appears that he disliked Arkin's turn as the detective, thinking it was too broad and took you out of the movie. He has since changed his mind, but I think he was right the first time. Arkin over-acts the way only he can. But it's what the film needed at that point, a few laughs, or else it would have all been too heavy. Fieffer did not reveal too much to help me with my comprehension of the film, other than some suggestion of a collective American nervous breakdown after Kennedy's assassination.

Little Murders is prophetic about the fear of crime creating gated communities but has been proven wrong over the breakdown of belief in law enforcement. I don't live there, but apparently NYC has made inroads into cleaning up crime. The so-called 'zero tolerance' policy.