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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Arquette gives a powerful performance, 15 May 2002
By A Customer
Mike Hodges is a Director who seems to specialize in making dark dramas that divide their audience and 'Black Rainbow' is no exception.It was criticly acclaimed but audiences choose to ignore the film on its release.
This is a shame as Rosanna Arquete gives a supurb performance as the fake psychic who begins to realise that her powers are for real. She starts to go slowly mad as she sees all the tragedies around her before they've even occurred. It's no surprise that she's subsequently worked with such names as Martin Scorese and Quentin Tarantino as her performance is very powerful.
Tom Hulce and Jason Robards are both excellent as the journalist who stumbles on her secret and the father who just wants to exploit it.
Hopefully like other films Hodges has directed such as 'Croupier' it will find its audience late and come to be appreciated as the suspense classic that it deserves to be.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
At last!, 17 Mar 2004
I'm one of those sad, sad people that keeps a list of 'Films-That-Should-Be-On-DVD-But-Aren't'; "Black Rainbow" is in the Top 10 of that list.
Superficially a paranormal thriller, it's actually a highly-atmospheric drama with supernatural overtones. In many ways reminiscent of a superior "X-Files" episode, it features fine performances from Jason Robards (not-surprisingly) and Rosanna Arquette (more surprising, but then Ms. Arquette has always suffered from a poor choice of movies rather than lack of ability).
It's not exactly light-viewing, but it's engrossing throughout, well-directed by Mike Hodges and well worth a couple of hours of your time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We steal when we touch tomorrow.", 1 April 2006
Saying that Black Rainbow is one of its director's best films doesn't sound much of a compliment when you're talking about a man whose résumé includes Morons From Outer Space and not one but two Clive Owen stinkers even if it is true. Mike Hodges' reputation these days rests solely on a gangster movie he made 35 years ago, and the fact that his subsequent efforts have either been too clinical to work (The Terminal Man), too flawed to completely satisfy (Pulp), outright awful (A Prayer for the Dying) or saw him fired early in production (Damien: Omen II) has done little to deter labelling him as a one-hit wonder. True to his run of luck, this neat little supernatural thriller was barely released, going straight to cable in the US and getting caught up in a distribution scandal in the UK, where Palace tried to get copies into video stores (selling it as virtual soft porn, believe it or not!) before the film even opened theatrically.
It's that old chestnut, the medium who sees too much - in this case getting messages from dead people who haven't died yet - and puts her life in danger, but it's rarely been done this well. Starting off as a sort of Emily Gantry as written by Eugene O'Neill (with Jason Robards playing another of his drunken pater familiases), it offers Rosanna Arquette her best role, and she certainly rises to the challenge. The premonition scenes carry a real frisson, there are neat humanising touches (the hitman for once has a family life and can't get a decent seat on an airplane) and Hodges' dialog is surprisingly good. But what really carries it is the characterization: these are all believably damaged people clinging onto any tenuous hope they can find, be it religion or the bottle, to prevent taking a good look at themselves - as one bereaved character puts it, "Maybe if we weren't so bothered about the hereafter we'd pay more attention to the here and now." There has to be a catch, and there is: the Curse of Hodges has struck again with Anchor Bay's R2 DVD, which has a good collection of extras but a poor transfer with lots of ghosting and poor detail in long shots (the previous video and laserdisc issues from Tartan and Encore were much better).
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