Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Top

film

Stories

 
Text Size: A A A

Delirious

Agently attitudinous, generally zippy urban fairy tale about pop stars and the hangers-on who coddle (or prey upon) them, Tom DiCillo's Delirious is a mild Midnight Cowboy, a minor King of Comedy, and mainly a vehicle for Steve Buscemi as a lower Manhattan–based paparazzo. Not entirely by accident, a dumb, sweet, homeless hunk (Michael Pitt) becomes an unpaid intern for the irascible photographer (seedy even by Buscemi standards), then manages to connect with one of the celebrity-stalker's subjects, a Spearsoid mediocrity played by Alison Lohman. Pitt falls in love with the singer's image and is swept into a VIP world where the camera mediates every emotion, particularly once he is adopted by Gina Gershon's predatory casting director. DiCillo has a feel for this milieu—the "Soap Stars Against STD" banquet and a scene in which two cell-wielding flacks negotiate their clients' impending rope-line reunion are minor classics—as well as an eye for downtown glamour. (His 1991 feature Johnny Suede gave then–TV actor Brad Pitt his first starring role; that film also established Catherine Keener's screen persona.) As a director, DiCillo has an evident rapport with his actors. Lohman demonstrates a hitherto unexplored comic timing in the mock music video "Take Your Love and Shove It." But it's Buscemi who imbues the movie with a scabrous pathos that is scarcely mitigated by the final flash-bulb white-out. A former cinematographer, DiCillo has always made visually fastidious movies. Perhaps this is the case with Delirious, but I can't be sure—demonstrating a brainless contempt for everyone concerned, the movie's PR firm chose to press-screen a cruddy digital transfer branded throughout with the frame-wide inscription "Property of Peace Arch Films."

 

Write Your Comment

*indicates required fields. Please enable browser cookies before filling out this form. All reader comments are subject to our Terms of Use. By clicking Add Comment, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms.

Comments may take a few minutes to process and appear on the site. Please do not click the "Add Comment" button again while your comment is being added.

  • *
  • *
  • *
  • *

    (The four characters are not case sensitive):

Music Recommendations

User content provided by LikeMe.net + Village Voice

Webster Hall

New York, NY

Spotted Pig

New York, NY

Corner Bistro

New York, NY

Schiller's Liquor Bar

New York, NY

Gramercy Tavern

New York, NY

Pacha

New York, NY
Give your recommendations on LikeMe.net >>

Find A Film

Most …

Box Office

  1. Dear John, 32.4 mil, 32.4 mil
  2. Avatar, 23.6 mil, 630.1 mil
  3. From Paris With Love, 8.1 mil, 8.1 mil
  4. Edge of Darkness, 7.0 mil, 29.1 mil
  5. The Tooth Fairy, 6.5 mil, 34.3 mil
  6. When in Rome, 5.5 mil, 20.9 mil
  7. The Book of Eli, 4.8 mil, 82.2 mil
  8. Crazy Heart, 3.6 mil, 11.2 mil
  9. Legion, 3.4 mil, 34.6 mil
  10. Sherlock Holmes, 2.6 mil, 201.6 mil
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Trailers

Village Voice on Digg