Reviews

I saw this movie at home more than thirty years after it was first made, and without the background to appreciate the director and his style of directing, which frankly got on my nerves. I also dislike "biographies" which take wild liberties with the actual facts of their subject's lives.

But oh, the sets! Oh, the wardrobe! And most especially, oh, Nureyev!! Now lost to us due to AIDS, international ballet star Nureyev did well in this movie, over-acting and under-acting apparently per the director's instructions. Of course, every dance scene is exquisite. (I flinched at the reviewer here who burbled that golly, he's a better dancer than Al Pacino! Yes, dear; a moment on Wikipedia would tell you why.)

And, given who and what Nureyev was, the nude scenes are exquisite, too, and plainly show a great deal of acting ability (neither over- nor under- ) on his part. Alas, the beautiful seduction scene in the tent has *talking*. Ah, had they only shut up! The grumpy, intrusive dialog is acidic enough to stifle the eroticism of the encounter. For that scene, one could wish this movie about the silent-film era were silent itself.

Trivia: compare his nude photo shoot scene with the two women to the costuming by Bakst for Nijinsky in "Afternoon of a Faun." (Google all that to see pics.) I felt terrible when I missed the revival of the Bakst costumes and Nijinsky's choreography when "AoaF" came to my area in the early 1990s; the photo session scenes in this movie made me feel that at least, I have seen the Faun. This means that the director did the work to reproduce the 1912 original wardrobe over a decade *before* the same exhausting work was done for the 1990's revival.

The rest of the movie was essentially one long jangle and blare, with artsy flashbacks and an early stab at what I guess might be magical realism, or something else disjointed, recursive, and melodramatic. In any case, it was enough to alienate me and I never did get fully into the narrative thread (narrative snarl?) of the film. So, five stars - raves for the settings and wardrobe and Nureyev, and just "eh" for everything else.

Superb acting, writing, and directing, and I'm boggled that it didn't get major theatrical play and multiple award nominations. The material is difficult, handled with grace and maturity. Is that what doomed it to limited release? It very nearly went direct to cable and DVD, and that's a shame.

It's hard to write a review without spoilers, so I'll just say that this is a movie which takes eternal love seriously and unbearable loss realistically.

Aside from that, the cinematography is beautiful, and the eroticism is gently but powerfully portrayed. There's a lot of eye candy in this movie: rich colors, Indian-American culture, dance, landscape... all are treated with the same tender respect and celebration as the central relationship which defines the movie's dramatic arc.

There was no bad acting in this film, but Kal Penn (best known as Kumar as in "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle") and lead actor Erick Avari were both painfully good. Kal Penn has shown he can do a lot more than comedy; look for him in dramatic leading-man roles, including some where his ethnicity will be a footnote and not an innate part of the narrative.

I love Ellen Barkin, 'deed I do, but even she cannot make the romance with Jack Nicholson believable here. Even back in 1992, Nicholson was TOO OLD to play a romantic lead with a woman seventeen years his junior.

I was getting the creeps watching this in the fall of 2008, and suddenly I realized why. The pairing reminds me of John McCain and his trophy wife, Cindy. McCain: born 1936. Nicholson: born 1937. Cindy and Barkin: both born 1954.

It's obnoxious, the way Hollywood continues to indulge Nicholson (and, presumably, equally elderly male producers and writers) with this assumption that an audience can believe gorgeous young women will fall all over him. Oh, spare me. And start giving actresses Nicholson's own age parts like the plums HE gets, or at least, parts playing his love interest.

I like dogs, I like Ellen Barkin, and that's why I was able to endure the movie at all, though I was embarrassed for her being stuck with such a ludicrous part - and one which, in a movie meant to be funny, failed to take full advantage of her talent for comedy, especially her considerable physical comedy chops.

Also loved Lauren Tom as the Nicholson's wife! Again, the age difference is severe - Tom was born in 1961, making her fully 24 years younger than Nicholson and his character - but Tom's put-on accent (she was born in Chicago) and Nicholson's overall sleaziness suggest that she's a mail-order bride struggling to make the best of a groom who calls her "Iwo Jima." Tom, like Barkin, deserves better writing than this.

One star for Barkin, one star for Tom, and one star for the dog. Zero stars for the rest of it, particularly casting Nicholson and for the overly-complex plot lines.

One star for Elvis, one for Mary Tyler Moore, four stars for good intentions in depicting the racism, violence, and crime (particularly loan sharking in the character of The Banker) afflicting the poor. The other four stars are lost because of the relentless sexism the writers perpetrated while addressing practically every other -ism out there (even the inclusion of two significant minor characters with disabilities.) "What do you think we are, faggots?" This is the line from one of the men whose been enticed to move furniture after one of the nuns dresses like a prostitute and hollers "I need a man!" to try to get some help from the idlers across the street. Seriously. She puts on sheer black stockings, hooker lipstick and hair, and pulls her dress down off her shoulders. (Remember, this movie is not supposed to be one of Elvis' farces; we're supposed to take this seriously.) The faggot remark comes after she suggests the piano is very heavy. The nun apparently doesn't understand the comment, or chooses not to. Maybe by identifying homophobia with alcoholic ne'er-do-wells, the writers were trying to cast aspersions on that point of view; maybe that's as "out" as they could be about it.

The Hispanic characters are depicted with some sympathy. The black nun, Irene (Barbara McNair), is trapped in a stairwell by two black activists who accuse her of "selling out" to "those ofay chicks" (that means white, if you haven't heard it before, and is a reference to the two white nuns), gets into a squabble about "Negro" v. "Black" and is told by the men that's she's too pretty not to stay pretty - a threat to mutilate her unless she... what? Unless she becomes a black separatist? What's the scene for, to identify black men as just generically all-purpose menacing? Well, yes, but only *angry and political* black men, contrasted to the woman's nose-to-the-grindstone apolitical and assimilationist work ethic. It's depressing to realize that yes, for its time, this probably *was* progressive. (In a later scene, Irene bluntly discusses the n-word with the Elvis character; that was *definitely* progressive back then!) Eventually, the black activists demonstrate peaceful intentions.

So maybe, as some of the other commenters suggest, this was a serious attempt at being progressive racial and social justice commentary. The big bad however, here, is that the movie relies very heavily on sexual stereotyping. The nuns are subjected to the hateful misogynist Father Gibbons, the one who imitated the hooker is nearly subjected to what certainly sounds like it could develop into a gang rape "party" from the men who moved the furniture, and the young doctor treats his nurses very poorly indeed when they are just his office "girls" before he learns they are nuns.

Also troubling, but not at all the movie's fault, is the diagnosis of a child as autistic "because she was rejected by her mother" - a theory totally discredited now - and the reliance on "holding" therapy, also discredited. "Holding" therapy has gotten children killed via suffocation, so don't try this at home. It's creepy to see it, even though the writers and producers did not know better at the time.

But about the sexism, yes indeed, they did know better. By 1969, the Second Wave of feminism had been underway for several years and it's annoying to see MTM here, as she often was in "That Girl," forced to play a 50's stereotype as the 70's were about to begin.

HIGHLIGHTS: A very young Ed Asner is a stitch as the neighborhood cop; if you're a fan, you won't want to miss his too-short, too-few scenes. Also, anyone who remembers the fury of pre-Vatican II Catholics at the inception of "guitar Masses" will be delighted by Elvis' rendering of same.

Why two stars? One for the immortal James Brown (well, I *wish* he were immortal) and one for the 22-year-old Chris Rock, who looks about 17, and still acts the pants off of that dreadful dork who played Tubbs. Brown, of course, was an excellent actor in addition to his unmatched talents as a singer and performer.

I'm not a Miami Vice fan under any circumstances except when they're playing the theme song (though I despise some of the visuals for that) and when Don Johnson is standing still and not talking, in a shot all by himself. In this and in his later series with Cheech Marin, he makes an excellent mannequin for a really great wardrobe mistress. And in "Long Hot Summer," he makes an excellent actor, so let's blame MV on really poor writing.

Other than Johnson standing around being handsome, MV usually is an excuse to dress "policewomen" as prostitutes and send them teetering along in 4" hooker heels, no matter what they're doing. This episode had a lot of that, including at least two trips to a rotting, rope-bestrewn dock where such shoes would be an immediate peril to one's survival. (There's also an extraordinary frequence of needs to have meets in stripper bars, and interviewing witnesses in teeny bikinis down ankle-deep in sand -- no matter what the detectives were wearing at the time -- but two tendencies aren't specific to this episode, they're general complaints).

This was supposed to be a psychedelic mind-futz episode, with LSD-like experiences that involved quaint special effects we can now look back on with nostalgic smiles. There's no spoiler in this review because the plot was so goofy it couldn't hold my attention, despite my best efforts because I wanted to write this review to commend Brown & Rock. So enjoy if you can... LSD? UFOs? Black helicopters? (just kidding; or am I? even *I* don't know for sure). But Brown! Rock! These two are always worth watching, even if the glop inbetween is so forgettable it makes their scenes incomprehensible.

The earliest scenes are the most awkward scenes, particularly those in which Our Hero, Detective Mitchell (Scott Bakula) is blasted by other cops for being insufficiently bloodthirsty as far as the death penalty goes. Even the masterful Miguel Ferrer has a hard time seeming credible with the lines he's given. Mitchell's refusal to do a public service announcement pushing capital punishment offends the police department's leadership, and, if we are to believe the script, the police department's grunts as well. All manner of aspersions are cast on Detective Mitchell's character, on up to suggestions that he is in the pay of the Mob to try to keep mafiosi off Death Row.

However overdone in spots, the film is interesting for the chance to see many men who would later go on to be major character actors in the crime-drama field:---Robert Clohessy of "Oz" and the "Law & Order" franchises;---Luis Guzmán of "Oz," "NYPD Blue," and dozens of crime films;---Tony Sirico, who would become Pauly Walnuts on "The Sopranos"---Joe Viterelli, a constant presence in second-tier Mafia shows;---and J.T. Walsh, who, like Viterelli, is no longer with us.

Bakula overacts in the first half of the film, but that might be problem of direction. His part is well-written, in contrast to the ham-handed lines given his opponents. Another complaint about the writing: a priest tells Mitchell, "Capital punishment is not inconsistent with Church doctrine." Yes, it is, and even back in 1992, the script's fact-checkers should not have missed this. Opposition to capital punishment is in the top three of the most pressing political priorities of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, and Pope John Paul II himself frequently made calls to governors to attempt to stop executions. This was a blunder that discredits the "true story" credentials of this tale. (I never did figure out which "true story" this film is supposed to represent, after an hour mining Google for every combo of terms I could think of.)

For all that the movie improved significantly from the hokey opening scenes to the competent end, it couldn't hold my interest. The first impression of polemical tripe was too strong. For those who are interested in either the issue or the lead actor, Bakula returns to the issue of the death penalty in the 2000 film, "In the Name of the People," in which he plays a man on death row.

This episode is an early appearance by Annie Potts, who would guest star again in "Magnum P.I." three years later, in 1986. The plot line is that Annie's character presents herself as a homicide detective, who forces Magnum to work with her through a variety of tough-chick ploys and "feminine wiles." Nice thought -- well, half a nice thought -- but the scriptwriters are as condescending as Magnum. At one point, the character shamefacedly admits her gun "got stuck... in my make-up bag." Later, it's revealed she's actually a "meter maid" (parking enforcement officer, these days) who merely *aspires* to be in homicide "before my 31st birthday, and that's in two days!" What would be reasonable ambition in a male character (other than the two-day deadline) is presented here as something plaintive and ludicrous; you expect her to start yelping, "...and my career clock is ticking Like That!" while stomping one hoof, like the "My Cousin Vinny" scene rendered glorious by Marisa Tomei.

Potts does what she can with writing like that, but what *can* you do with writing like that? Other female characters: a pair of early 1980's hotties in spandex who kung-fu chop-socky Magnum to the floor, "because they're women! I can't hit a woman!" After being teased by his male chums, Magnum finds it in him to sucker-punch the blonde and knock her to the floor on their next meeting. Ah, there, manhood restored all around. As the two hooker-like henchwomen secure Magnum in the back seat for what might be his final ride, he quips, "You hated your fathers, didn't you?" The director has Potts drop her gun and knock her glasses askew in the final face-off, shouting "Police!" in a whiny, pleading voice so that it comes out as "Please?" In her last scene, the owlish glasses are removed without explanation so that she, too, can join the legion of lovelies who flirt with Magnum at the end of most episodes.

The only other female is a rich-bitch ice queen -- but I can't tell you her story, as that's relevant to the murder and would be a spoiler (though it's hard to imagine how one can spoil tripe this rank). On the other hand, the Hawaiian scenery is lovely, the clothes are an amusing review of early 80's fashions, the men are handsome, the real villain comes across as truly menacing (Bob Minor's character -- it looks like Minor's present career is solely as a stuntman, which is a shame, because he was quite good in this), and Selleck wears short-shorts for much of the episode...if you're into that. Not that there's anything wrong with that (cough, cough). So getting 5 out of 10, for Potts and Minor and Hawaii; and losing 5 out of 10 for the sexism that was retro and reactionary even back in 1983.

Penny Marshall produced this?

Harvey Miller, who wrote "Private Benjamin," wrote this?

Lemmon, Aykroyd, Hunt, and the incomparable LILY TOMLIN agreed to work on it?

Tasteless, unfunny, painful to watch.

Whatever moral point they were trying to make, and whatever humor they were trying to achieve, this film just... just hurt. Hurt my eyes, and hurt the reputations of all involved.

I'm embarrassed for all involved, and chagrined that I felt I had to watch to the end, to justify writing a review to warn others. Fifteen minutes would have been more than enough.

Ugh. Yes, it's exactly like the McMartin mess, or the horrific arrests in Wenatchee, Washington. In the movie, the mother keeps aggressively questioning her little boy, over and over and over, until he finally tells her what she obviously wants to hear. The court investigators and "therapists" repeat the pattern. The questioning itself is sexually creepy, a relentlessy repeated assault in its own way.

The moviemakers throw in a doctor talking about physical evidence of abuse, maybe to justify the film's point of view: that two- to four-year-olds never make "things like this" up. Well, they will if every adult they know is asking them to. The way this piece endorses such discredited interrogation techniques makes watching it an exercise in frustration for anyone who knows what it takes to get a successful prosecution in real life.

(They also add a special arrest incident towards the end to "prove" their case -- no parallel to this fictional incident ever occurred in real life. Can't say more here without turning this into a spoiler, but you'll know it when you see it.)

Yes, children are abused, sometimes by paid care providers. But to watch a movie which affirms the ludicrous, hysterical accusations against so many totally innocent people, to watch re-creations of the trials that ruined the lives of countless children as well as the lives of the accused -- I didn't think I'd last until the end. It's just too sad, and made more so by the writing team's seeming endorsement of the abusive, paranoid, obsessional questioning techniques that started -- what can we call it? The bonfire of the sanities?

No one I know has ever been accused of child abuse, thank heaven, but my 12-times-over-great grandmother was accused of witchcraft and killed for it. Mobs filled with what they think is holy anger are just as dangerous now as three hundred years ago. Sensational drivel like this -- "These accusations of Satanic abuse are cropping up all over the country, there must be something there!" "So tell the jury that!" -- just eggs them on.

And whoever thought it was a good idea to have kids under ten, some of them under five, play these roles? It's traumatic to watch them delivering their lines; how much more traumatic was it to act these parts? The moviemakers' commitment to fight child abuse apparently doesn't apply to themselves. And what were the child-actors' parents THINKING? "Melinda" (uncredited, at least in the version on the A&E Network in 2005, but I think it was Cassy Friel) and "Teddy" (Brian Bonsall) were terrific. Professionals or not, though, they were too young to be exposed to this material, much less to be paid to act it out. Despite ruthlessly exploiting these real-life children, "Do You Know The Muffin Man" got an Emmy nomination for directing -- which just goes to show how crazed things were, back in 1989.

Whoa! Some of these reviewers bring so much of gender politics and national politics to their reviews, the movie itself is lost. I wasn't going to add a comment until I found the one that said, "We didn't know what this movie was about, so it's a bad movie; by the way, we wore earplugs all through it."

Come on, folks, get the cotton out and listen up. Matt Damon's ability and willingness to lose forty or fifty pounds in the course of his role is certainly above and beyond the usual call of duty for a supporting actor. His expert embodiment of the fragility and shame of his character foreshadowed his leading-man career to come. Denzel Washington and Lou Diamond Phillips merit the kind words other reviewers have left here, and certainly Meg Ryan deserves none of the harsh ones.

Her performance was perfect, whether portraying the gutsy leader recalled by some narrators or the over-estrogened mess detailed by her bitter gunner. Someone here complained she was "too pretty" -- please! Pretty happens, even in the military. Others here complained her voice was too high, no, too low, no... perhaps it's their expectations of female soldiers that are too high, too low, too wedded to or too opposed to gender stereotypes.

One of the European reviewers here complained that this film was too pro-American and dehumanized the Iraqis. I thought the director was showing that it is a universal tactic to assure yourself of your righteousness by dehumanizing and misrepresenting "the enemy," whether it is the opposing force or a captain you despise for her power over you. Remember, the film begins with a scene showing that the forces are so similar that they are literally indistinguishable -- though that point may not have been intentional on the director's part. Certainly the point is lost as the film goes on to lionize every American life lost while placing only target value on the deaths of opposing soldiers.

This was a war movie that acknowledged cowardice as well as courage, shame as well as gallantry, deadly mistakes as well as brilliant tactics, all in the same arena and sometimes all in the same individual. One movie can only carry so much freight, and perhaps asking every war movie to highlight the pointlessness of war and the excesses of nationalism is asking too much.

Aside from all that, the filmography and special effects were astonishing, both in the war shots (the napalm drop, the tank lines, the helicopters in the cliffs) and in the most dramatic domestic death scene.

This was an excellent movie, with stunning performances, great direction, and a fine story line. But if you're wearing earplugs or blinders, you're going to miss it.

I tuned in when the movie was more than half over. In a scene in a speakeasy, Chris Penn was singing -- singing so well that I sat through the rest of the movie without a clue as to what was going on, just to find out from the credits if that was his own voice or not (and in hopes he'd sing some more).

Yep, that was his own voice, all right. DANG, he's good. I'd buy a whole CD of him doing 30's hits or Squirrel-Nut-Zippers-type material without hesitation. He was THAT GOOD. I'd buy a concert ticket, and I hate going to concerts. I'd buy tickets for my friends. I don't know beans about him as an actor, nor anything else about this movie, but I am glad I had the chance to hear him sing and hope some director has the sense to exploit this gift of his at length soon.

I've heard this film called anti-feminist. You can't get more feminist than I am, and I thought it was fine! I won't spend more time on the Hunt-Gibson chemistry which everyone else has discussed to death, save to say I thought they made a believably flirty pair. On to some small observations:

a. anyone notice how similar the scene in which Hunt and Gibson dance in the empty-bedroom of her new home is to the closing scene of "The Big Easy," in which Dennis Quaid dances Ellen Barkin around an almost-identical room? Same chemistry, same setting, same action, similar looks on both sets of protagonists.

b. kudos to Gibson on his dancing!!! I never dreamed he'd be so good. His solo to "I've got you under my skin" blew me away. Most people will compare him to Astaire, but a better match is Gene Kelly. Just wonderful. Amazing grace from Mad Max. And his sudden assumption of gay body language as he moves into his final embrace with Marissa Tomei was deftly done, too. Let's see Mel in more roles that allow him to express body language other than "Me strong guy, me kill you, ugh." More dancing, PLEASE! Not, mind you, that he isn't awfully attractive doing the me-strong-guy thing... mmm, mmm, mmm.

c. Delta Burke appears in a small role as Gibson's secretary. Not only is she perfect in the part -- no prima donna behavior at all -- but she looks twenty years younger than she is. Good for her!

d. nice sub-plot on the character Erin planning suicide after maltreatment by cold-hearted bosses. A good lesson to any boss -- a reminder that a small decision for you may have a huge impact on your subordinates, especially young and impressionable types.

e. Alan Alda must have enjoyed yet another chance to play a chauvinist klutz, so very much in contrast to his well-known feminist politics. After being Saint Hawkeye for so long, he's really thrown himself into being Mr. Nasty when he can. "Murder At 1600" and "Whispers in the Dark" come to mind.

Ten stars for the humor, the lack of gender-spitefulness in either direction, the lively sub-plots about Erin and Gibson's daughter, and the perfect performances from all involved.

Oh, yuck. Like Lemos (see his comment), I watched this because there was nothing better to do -- though I'm glad I saw it on cable and didn't pay for it. And also like Lemos, I agree that Ms. DeMornay is wonderfully seductive, with scenes in this movie nearly precisely like those in which she enchanted Tom Cruise and the rest of us in "Risky Business" so long ago. What a shame she can't get better roles! Must she *always* play a prostitute? (sigh) Well. Not her fault that Hollywood wants her naked or not at all.

The worst thing about this movie was not its misuse of DeMornay, but rather its misuse of viewer time. Yes, she plays a nut, and is very convincingly nutty. (And yes, the movie complies perfectly with the Hollywood Rules for Mental Illness: if female, the person must be either an elderly hag who eats garbage, or a gorgeous young nymphomaniac).

But as convincing as DeMornay is, the plot just is NOT. There is no way that one, much less two, adult men would be interested in this goofball for more than a single sweaty half-hour. Both of the men are not-quite-right-in-the-head either, but the writer (who is also the director) gave them the dignity of being both less conspicuously nude and less conspicuously nuts than the female character.

Summary: a little sexy, a little creepy, a lot boring, and even more annoying. Unless DeMornay is your particular dream girl, don't waste your time.

You want to force politicians and lawmakers to watch this film. You want high school kids considering drugs to watch this film. And you want to watch this film yourself, over and over, for the sheer drama of the story and for the tremendous performances by each and every person in it.

Equally poignant were the appearances by the people who weren't performers: at the end of the series, there's a brief meeting with the real individuals who were portrayed in the six episodes, along with a "five years later" update on what actually happened to other characters whose real-life counterparts didn't live long enough (or live free long enough) to participate in the on-camera reunion.

Dutton's direction is brilliant, presenting the cold facts of a deadly situation with great compassion as well as narrative force. Although not explicitly political and never preachy, the film makes the unpopular point that medical treatment backed up with intensive rehab works and pouring money into fruitless attempts at law enforcement doesn't.

This series is a great American tragedy and crime story combined, a fit companion to "The Godfather" and "Grapes of Wrath," combining the gritty crime story of the first with the deadly grind of verité poverty from the latter to produce an engrossing synecdoche of our culture at the end of the century.

This isn't an "inner city" movie -- this is about all of us. What Dutton shows us in the Baltimore ghetto happens in rural towns in the heartland, too. One small mistake leads to another until, all too soon and too often inevitably, the chances of a happy ending become very, very slim. A universal plot, as timeless and as touching as Shakespeare's finest.

Frederic Forrest does a fine job as the emotionally and physically abusive father in this early entry in the "dysfunctional family" genre. Here's a toast to all the actors who have to do the dirty job of making child abusers, rapists, and wife-beaters come alive on screen; it must be harrowing, thankless work.

The writer and director should get credit too, for giving Forrest the lines and settings for his truly creepy performance. All the actors did well -- Justine Bateman was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Deborah Jahnke -- but Forrest should get special kudos. (Don't you wonder if anyone would eat lunch with him on the set? or if they shunned him for the duration?)

The film's mission of revealing the gaps in our domestic violence policies works as well as a drama as a political statement. A teacher is slow to believe; a social worker questions the kids and mother about abuse in front of the abuser; the rural home has no near neighbors and the rural community presumably has limited shelter resources.

Gossip in town that acquitting the Wyoming teen will be a "license to kill" for other abused kids not only reflects this case (the writers relied on interviews, transcripts, and news reports), but echoes what was said about one of the first battered wives to go on trial for killing an abuser in Michigan, years before.

Watch it if you've got a strong stomach or a strong interest in domestic violence. Otherwise, it's too much of a downer to qualify as "entertainment," despite the excellent performances and powerful script.

The first women's adventure film from a progressive director's point of view. An often-overlooked aspect of this 1991 feminist classic is that the portrayals of almost all the men -- specifically characters played by Brad Pitt, Michael Madsen, & Harvey Keitel -- are tender, heroic, or both. (Come on, TELL me Pitt isn't the erotic hero of this film!)

Geena Davis followed up the next year with the other 90's feminist classic, "A League of Their Own." In 1996, Davis returned to "Thelma & Louise" to reprise some identical images, lines, and situations in her Samuel Jackson thriller, "The Long Kiss Goodnight." Unfortunately, this includes the mock-macho "suck my..." line (which Demi Moore also re-uses in "G.I. Jane" in another hidden tribute to "Thelma & Louise.") I can't imagine a non-fictional feminist using that phrase under any circumstances, but ah well, nothing's perfect! Scott & Khouri's film comes close enough for me.

Also see the very same teal-green T-Bird appear in Jodie Foster's "Contact" -- another quiet tribute to this fabulous film about women launching themselves into the unknown. I'd give it twenty stars if I could. Probably best seen letterboxed with stereo to truly enjoy the great scenery, cinematography, and soundtrack.