Melanie Griffith

 Born August 9, 1957

Melanie Griffith can probably tell you stories about the adolescent anxieties of growing up with a really hot mom. Her mother is Tippi Hedren, from Hitchcock's MARNIE and THE BIRDS. Few actresses got off to a faster, wilder start than Griffith. (Maybe Drew Barrymore?) She met Don Johnson on the set of her mom's movie THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT. She was 15, he was 22 and divorced, but Tippi Hedren seems to have had a very liberal attitude about these things, and allowed Melanie to move in with Don. The moment she turned 18 she became the go-to actress for precocious wild-girl roles and did a spectacular Playboy lay-out, but by 20 her drug use was so bad nobody would hire her. Fortunately for world cinema, she got cleaned up and became a star, beginning with her outrageous role as pornstar Holly Body in Brian de Palma's BODY DOUBLE, and cemented by Jonathan Demme's SOMETHING WILD. Over the years she became a decent actress; I love her in ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

 
Contains both the un-rated director's cut and the R-rated theatrical release version. This is Clark's most complete film and his usual obsessions with teenage sexuality and brutal violence seem more humane in the context of a real story. Th... (see full description)
 
Body Double (DVD)    1984
Columbia DVD / Region 1 (USA)
Far from DePalma's best but Melanie Griffith is wonderful and the film is sufficiently smutty to offer amusement. Sometimes when De Palma has been accused of borrowing from Hitchcock he was actually borrowing more from Giallo films the revi... (see full description)
 
Cherry 2000 (DVD)     
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
Likeable mix of MAD MAX and IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. It's your basic post-apocalyptic road movie action-romance. The basic romantic comedy road-movie plot: An engaged man or woman it thrown in with an exotic member of the opposite sex who i... (see full description)
 
Night Moves (DVD)    1975
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
Fine example of the dark, haunted 1970s grown-up movie, the last time movies for adults dominated Hollywood. (ROCKY and STAR WARS put and end to that.) The title is a play on words. In the movie it is "knight moves" referring to a winning c... (see full description)
 
Something Wild (DVD)    1986
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
Inventive, unforgetable dark-but-sweet romantic comedy/thriller from Jonathan Demme. One of the great 1980s soundtracks. Clean-cut hung-up New York bond trader Charlie (Jeff Daniels) accepts a ride home from a kooky sex bomb named Lulu (M... (see full description)