Spanking the Monkey [VHS]
Jeremy Davies, so weaselly as the interpreter inSaving Private Ryan, got his break in this 1994 dark comedy debut by writer-director David O. Russell. Davies plays a college student whose entire future seems to implode when his traveling-salesman father forces him to stay home for the summer and take care of his mother, who is recovering from a broken leg. In anguish, he gives up a prestigious summer internship and moves back to the house where he grew up. There, he distracts himself with masturbation and lots of long walks, and even a half-hearted courtship of a much younger girl. But his proximity to his mother provides surprising preoccupations and impulses, which give this film the best of its squirmy humor. Russell, a sharp-eyed observer of surreptitious human behavior, extracts wonderfully drawn performances from Davies and Alberta Watson as his mother in this unexpected delight.--Marshall Fine