Five Corners

Turturro plays a brutal psycho released from prison, and Foster plays the woman in peril. Neither is really pressed hard here, therefore.

Robbins plays a guy who protected Foster before, but who is volunteering to go south to help the rights of blacks in the south, being inspired by Martin Luther King (this being a period drama). Foster also has a boyfriend who was crippled by Turturro when she was attacked.

Turturro has a weird gift for Foster, and there's a teacher who inexplicably gets shot by an arrow. Meanwhile, there's a pair of guys who are paid to look after two glue-sniffing. And there's a pair of cops and so on...

A strange drama with moments of comedy that don't really fit in comfortably. Seems more like an awkward play awkwardly made into a film.

Five Corners is a socially relevant film with a unique visual style

and a sense of humor. the cast is superb. Robbins, Foster and

Turturro give hints as to what they would go on to accomplish as

their careers grew. Todd Graff is also awesome but seems to be

having better luck as a screenwriter and producer. The two

females who play the glue sniffers are hilarious in roles that could

have easily be unsympathetic. The two mothers (Chalfant and

Gregorios) carry their weight in smaller but no less significant

roles. The two cops are straight out of the old crime dramas of the

1940's and 50's. There is also a good sense of 'place' in the film. I

got a genuine feel for the neighborhood where these characters

dwelt. I have also had the pleasure of being directed by Tony Bill in

a made for T.V. movie, A Chance of Snow. He's a professional. I

wish that he'd do more along the lines of Five Corners.

Not worth going out of your way to see, but worth keeping on if it comes on on TV. Will provide mild pleasure to fans of Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, and John Turturro (I enjoy all three). It would be interesting to watch this back-to-back with "Barton Fink", in which Turturro plays a polar opposite character.

The only other thing I have to say is that the score of this movie is one of the worst I've ever heard. I hadn't heard of composer James Newton Howard when I saw this, so I'm amazed he went on to respectable and (to my remembrance) perfectly well-scored films like "Pretty Woman", "My Girl", "Glengarry Glen Ross", "The Sixth Sense", and "Dinosaur".

His score in this film is so melodramatic, so overstated, so overly "hit-happy" (in the sense of hitting marks), and so cheesily realized, I'm amazed Howard wasn't relegated to scoring cheeseball B-flicks.

Offbeat--to say the least--comedy-drama from director Tony Bill and writer/co-producer John Patrick Shanley combines unforced, unshowy nostalgia with dark (and rather wobbly) comedic undertones. In a troubled Bronx neighborhood in the 1960s, Jodie Foster is a young woman hounded by just-released convict John Turturro, while Tim Robbins is a former classmate reevaluating his priorities based on turbulent world events. Foster has little to work with in a weakly-written role (she's not going to meet this nutcase in the park at night!), but Robbins' quiet sincerity is lovely, and his handsome face and expressive manner keeps the film grounded in reality. Overall, it's much too flighty, with a melodramatic final 30 minutes which doesn't do anything good for anybody--least of all the viewer. However, there is some dryly eccentric humor in Shanley's screenplay, and when director Bill's touch is light the film generally works. **1/2 from ****

The kind of film that doesn't get made anymore in Hollywood. Original story, great atmosphere, wonderful acting. A somewhat quirky but still powerful human drama. Somehow, everything just fits in this film. Given the cast, it's hard to believe it is so little known. One to be re-discovered (hopefully). 8 stars out of 10.

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

imdb.com/list/ls070242495