Some New Orleans Films for Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras is 2/13, so we wanted to find something a bit more enlightening than MARDI GRAS: SPRING BREAK, a 2011 comedy with college guys on a road trip, boobs flashed on Bourbon Street, and the perennially favorite feces bomb. We happily re-discovered some favorite films set in New Orleans, including the clever neo-noir, THE BIG EASY (1986), starring a sultry Ellen Barkin in a highly popular and successful thriller; Clint Eastwood's sex-panicked role as a cop trying to swallow his urges for kinky sex as he tries to catch a kinky serial murderer, TIGHTROPE (1984); and two important documentaries made about the despicable response of rescue authorities after Hurricane Katrina, the award-winning TROUBLE THE WATER (2008), a fascinating doc stitching together home movies and sophisticated storytelling with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, and THE BIG UNEASY, by humorist and radio personality Harry Shearer, an investigative look at his adopted hometown five years after the disaster.
