Smooth Talk (1985)

 

A free-spirited 15-year-old girl flirts with a dangerous stranger in the Northern California suburbs and must prepare herself for the frightening and traumatic consequences.

Laura Dern is extraordinary in this realistic, dark adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates' story; the final sequence is particularly intense and harrowing.
 

Halliwell (no star): "Unattractive scenario about thoroughly dislikeable people."

Maltin**1/2: "Disarmingly realistic...Williams...all but deadens rest of the film. Worth seeing if only for Dern's fine performance. Impressive feature debut for documentary director Chopra..." 

 

 

First Lines: Joyce Carol Oates - What I Lived For

 (ph: Erik Skaar)

God erupted in thunder and shattering glass.

First Lines: Joyce Carol Oates - Black Water

The rented Toyota, driven with such impatient exuberance by The Senator, was speeding along the unpaved unnamed road, taking the turns in giddy skidding slides,and then, with no warning, somehow the car had gone off the road and had overturned in black rushing water, listing to its passenger's side, rapidly sinking.