Cheap Black Rainbow (Video) (Rosanna Arquette, Jason Robards) (Mike Hodges) Price

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Customer Reviews of Black Rainbow

Greatest movie of its genre
This is undoubtedly the greatest movie of its genre and Rosanna Aruqette shines with mystery and an aura that is realistic beyond your wildest imaginations. She is so convincing that she had me believing she was the character instead of a wonderful actress who makes movies. And Jason Robards was outstanding portraying her drunken father with guilt feelings about his dead wife and mother to Rosanna. STORY, PLOT, ACTING, COSTUME, EVERYTHING=PERFECT!

Of all the movies that I feel must be owned, I could not live without this one! I would have given it 6 stars rating but they don't offer it on Amazon.

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the other side of the rainbow is noisy
In spite of being handicapped by miscasting, this film by writer/director Mike Hodges is intriguing for most of it's running time. The premise is delicious - the tale of a medium and her father touring the USA. The act is complimented by a gospel choir, so we expect it to be phony, but this isn't the story Hodges is interested in, and perhaps explains his casting of Rosanna Arquette. A better actress may have made her dialogues with those on the "other side of the rainbow" more believable and therefore the idea that she is a faker would work better. However since all Arquette does is turn her head to show she is receptive to the voices of the dead, it would be too obvious to make her a faker. Or this theory may be just a convenient justification for Arquette's poor performance. The only time we can connect with her is when she screams over her father, played magnificently by Jason Robards. Perhaps because Robards is so good it makes Arquette look amateurish by comparison, with her pouting and hair acting. Robards recalls the gruff voice and gentlemanly manner of John Huston, though he soon has nothing to do except sit drunk in his room. The thriller aspect of the film is represented by Arquette predicting deaths, specifically the husband of a woman in the first audience we see. There is some sort of Karen Silkwood reason for his contract killing but Arquette being able to identify the killer, puts her at risk. You wonder why she just doesn't go to the police with the information but she isn't that kind of gal. The threads of the web that connect the killer to a detective known to Tom Hulce as a reporter accompanying Arquette and Robards, are unclear. The detective reports to a priest who we assume is the contact killer's employer, and while the parallels between him and the medium are potentially interesting, they are not explored. The priest's connection is never exposed, but he and the detective (Ron Rosenthal) have some witty exchanges. Hulce is even less impressive than Arquette. His search for the missing medium, which brackets the narrative, is undercut by his poor accent and his habit nibbling. The nibbles seem ludicruous in the climactic show when we think Arquette is going to get it. Hodges fumbles here, with bad staging and flooding the soundtrack with hysteria music, and when Arquette challenges the audience's belief in her, their barely audible objections are uninspired. I could also have done without the rattles at the end, which lead to the tambourines of the gospel choir but also suggest a tribal/supernatural explaination. He give us 2 striking images - the camera moving towards an approaching train, and the spectre of the white gown of the medium hanging in her dressing room, which suggests things Arquette does not.