MovieChat Forums > The Blackout (1997) Discussion > Possibly my Favourite Ferrara Film!

Possibly my Favourite Ferrara Film!


Ok it ties with "King Of The New York," which is the closest the maverick director ever got to the mainstream and his most genre-bound narrative.

"The Blackout" floored me when I first saw it and it's one of my favourite films. While the setting has changed (before this Ferrara and crew ran from daylight, and here's a film mostly set in Miami Beach!), you know this is Ferrara and it is punishing. To me Matthew Modine delivers the performance of his career as the tormented and raging film star Matty, another Ferrara protagonist whose downward spiral of excess and corruption can only be met with one possible fate. The impact of his realisation as to what he's done during one of his massive binges has never faded. I look forward to Modine in the new "Mary," he's an underrated actor who deserves more attention. Hopefully like Kevin Bacon in "Where the Truth Lies" he can keep a steady and impressive body of work, and leave public psychosis and celebrity husbandry to Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

If you're an admirer of "The Blackout," please share your thoughts! :)

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I just saw this for the first time. That Matthew Modine is a brilliant actor in this! He's good in other films but this is just awesome, the depth of this character. Without looking on IMDB, I can't think of anything I have seen him in in years. What happened to that guy? He really could have been, like Kevin Bacon, the meat and potatoes journeyman character actor. This is just too amazing to have never received any acclaim.

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Abel is one of my idols, but even so, I went into The Blackout with low expectations (his post-Bad Lieutenant work, save for The Funeral, has been a little iffy). I was surprised at how good this film was. I really thought the whole thing just clicked along nicely and worked very well (save for maybe a few too many moments spent lingering on Modine stumbling around in a doped-up stupor). A powerful and unjustly maligned film.

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As a piece of soft porn, it´s top notch. As a serious film about drugs, memory and guilt in the life of a high living Hollywood actor, it´s cheesy, tacky, incoherent, confused and way too concerned with looking all slick and cool; it´s all handbag commercial chic with very little thought gone into character development or mapping out the story so that it wouldn´t feel so sketchy. And while Modine´s acting is largely tolerable, I guess, Hopper phones in another one of his Frank Booth based caricatures, with all the screaming and swearing coming across awkward, comical and altogether "acted". I´ve seen 6 Ferrara films from the 1990´s and this one´s clearly the weakest.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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