Glenn-31

A German couple vacationing in the U.S. get sick of each other somewhere in the Nevada desert and the wife (Marianne Sägebrecht) takes her bags and walks off on her own. Sägebrecht ends up at a seedy motel/cafe where she takes a room. The owner of the motel/cafe (C.C.H. Pounder) is a single mother of two teenagers. The daughter is a free-spirited "valley girl" type and the son is an unmarried teenage father who has a penchant for playing Bach on the piano. Jack Palance has an atypical role as a sensitive artist in the midst of an array of truckers who all hang out at the cafe. Sägebrecht's peculiarities -- including her attempt to clean up Pounder's dusty, disheveled office and storage room -- initially rub Pounder the wrong way. In the meantime, however, Sägebrecht has a magic kit and spends hours in her motel room teaching herself magic tricks. Sägebrecht eventually starts working at the cafe and everyone, including Pounder, take a liking to her -- especially when she starts performing her magic act.

Zorg, a shy, happy-go-lucky handyman and aspiring writer (Jean-Hughes Anglade) falls in love with Betty, a beautiful, free-spirited young woman (Beatrice Dalle). Betty has trouble with authority and tends to get reckless and sometimes violent when provoked. Zorg finds her manic behavior and cavalier demeanor refreshing as she brings him out of his shell. After Zorg's slum lord boss voices too many demands Betty tosses everything out of the house and then torches it. Even this exhibition of arson doesn't phase Zorg as they take off to seek a better life. As the story progresses, Zorg falls deeper in love with Betty and dismisses her increasingly bizarre behavior as quirky. Eventually, an event sets off a time bomb in Betty, and any doubts about her insanity are laid to rest.

37.2 le matin (Betty Blue) is simultaneously an entertaining "slice-of-life" romp, and a sad tragedy. This visually enticing film is perhaps the finest from Jean-Jacques Beineix.

In one of his finest and most understated performances, Robin Williams portrays real-life doctor/author Oliver Sacks (changed the name for the script to Martin Strayer), who used the drug L-dopa to bring patients in a virus-induced vegetative state back to consciousness. Prior to taking the job at a Bronx hospital for incurables, the shy, recluse Dr. Strayer worked only as a research physician in laboratories. Unsatisfied with the status quo at the hospital, Strayer manages to uncover a common cause for the condition of a group of unresponsive patients, and finds a drug that brings them out of their state. Robert DeNiro superbly plays Strayer's first patient, a victim of this condition since childhood, who is the first to be "awakened." As the patients regain consciousness, the introverted doctor Strayer also manages to come out the world of plants and opera he is trapped in.