Reversal of Fortune
Director: Barbet Schroeder. Cast: Jeremy Irons, Ron Silver, Glenn Close, Uta Hagen, Annabella Sciorra, Stephen Mailer, Felicity Huffman, Fisher Stevens, Jad Mager, Sarah Fearon, Jack Gilpin, Christine Dunford, Mano Singh, Johann Carlo, Keith Reddin, Alan Pottinger, Tom Wright, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Christine Baranski, Julie Hagerty, Thomas Dorff, Kristi Hundt, Bruno Eyron. Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan (based on the book by Alan Dershowitz).

Photo © 1990 Warner Bros. Pictures
Close top-billed; check those tech credits; prod Edward R. Pressman & Oliver Stone; door to coma room opens itself for us; First line: "THIS was my body" - whether I was asleep, or in a COMA, later became a subject for dispute"; rather plummy; (dissolve from hospital room to bedroom); "I never woke from this coma, and I never will -"; persistent vegetative; "They found plenty, in CLAUS' closet" - 14x normal insulin; 1982 on both counts, Isles testified against him; Tristan & Isolde as AD enters CVB's house; editing between UH's testimony and AD's conversation with his son?; Sunny drug and alc problems? CVB: "SpecTACular understatement"; completely OBLITERATE medical & witness-based case (high bar for reversals); FH fluffing her hair while impatiently raising her hand, in Lucky Star hairdo and jean-jacket (boy, is she terrible); Private prosecutors and private searches, which AMD feels is a class issue for Cadillac prosecutions; I think it's a little more complicated than your simple moral superiority; "I believe Van Bulow is guilty, but that's the fun, that's the challenge"; Defense never saw notes from Brillhoefer, AS is already saying "us"; Fisher Stevens as a Less Than Zero faggot-dickhead; You run around with drug dealers and drag queens - the least impressive witness I've ever seen; "You know there are some things even mistresses won't do"; "A good lawyer is part psychiatrist, detective, logician" - lots of cutesy poo reaction-shot shit among the lawyers; Baranski doing her arch, upper-class swan-bitch thing; "Get the Jew, I said" - a line that's beneath the movie; mother's death wasn't reported for five full days, in the same flat where CVB was living; "My mother is my own bsuiness"; Sunny talking about her lack of sex life with Claus while the hospital attendants sponge-bathe her?; obviously a suicide attempt - why?; We're waiting; Pu Pu Platter scene - well, I presume she was unhappy; We have to convince the judges that YOU are innocent - RI otherwise doesn't reverse decisions; "Well Sunny LAAVD Christmas" - dissolve to cold-ass, White House-style parlor, which only after a few beats dissolves to Xmas outfitting; Sunny eggnog overdose; we'd been discussing divorce all afternoon; GC: "I'm thinking of redecorating this whole fucking house"; GC: "May I at least urinate alone"; asking for scotch & soda; stumbling back from dinner table, Fiona Shaw-style; "the prince of perversion..." "Are you trying to destroy our whole family?" - "I simply want some intercourse with the world"; "Is that it? Another divorce?"; two-time loser! I'll divorce everybody; Nobody AAVAA shook Sonny; (primal scene of GC in bed, precipitated by this suicide attempt); GC: "Can't you ever leave me alone" - she's mad that he saved her life; "Of course I care, Alan - it's just I don't wear my heart on my sleeve"; after he calls her second coma "much more theatrical"; After first coma, went into a rage; "Did you take them?" - "Certainly not. Take waat"; I am breaking every rule; About an hour in - flashback to 1964, when Sunny met CVB; same blue tinge in first rendezvous room as in her later coma room; GC: all of this legal stuff, "is it in SATAN'S SERVICE?" - sometimes it's a bit purple; Sciorra: "No, you're debating me, personally. Why?" - she's actually quite good in this; "You give everything you have to law, and you forget the people you care about"; Saany was Ahnwaal - hugging herself in the sunlight in a freezing-looking room; "That evening, everything seemed normal enough" - GC eating in huge bug sunglasses, eating a sundae with cocked cigarette in hand, lugubrious family; He often seems like an unlikely but compliant-under-the-circumstances house-husband; "I could have had anybody. With my money? Anybody" - GClose as SWinters; "I don't want this"; Underexploited joke about CVB exploding into professional life by making phantom calls about numbers, accounts, figures, etc.; RS: "You're a very strange man" / JI: "You have no idea"; RS on Red Auerbach?; self-righteous incorporations of Alabama black-kids to be executed; FS's blackmail attempt written off as doctored; Sunny's aspirin overdose - WHY did she take so many? Headache was Alexandra, right? (All about extorting accounts, not psychiatry, logician, etc.); And is it really genius to think Sunny didn't like Alexandra; "You may not like Claus von Bulow"; THIS judge wrote the precedent for new evidence in an appeal case; "It is not a rapier, it's a cudgel"; Brilhoffer: "They're not what we hoped... They're better" (we want him to succeed?); "Legally, this was an important victory; morally, you're on your own"; elevator door slows; CVB acquitted on both counts in second trial - this is all you can know, all you can be told - when you get where I am, you will know the rest; "The Johnson Brothers" are still on deat row"; rather self-serving, yes?; "Yes, a vial of insulin" to London shopgirl; "Just kidding"; B

Academy Award Nominations and Winners:
Best Director: Barbet Schroeder
★Best Actor: Jeremy Irons
Best Adapted Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan

Golden Globe Nominations and Winners:
Best Picture (Drama)
Best Director: Barbet Schroeder
★Best Actor (Drama): Jeremy Irons
Best Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan

Other Awards:
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Actor (Irons); Best Screenplay
National Society of Film Critics: Best Actor (Irons)
Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Actor (Irons); Best Screenplay
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