Capsule movie reviews
'Beautiful Darling,' 'Forks Over Knives,' 'Daydream Nation,' 'Mia and the Migoo,' 'Passion Play.'
May 6, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-capsules-20110506,0,1079742.storyAndy Warhol star Candy Darling loved movies so much that she strived to live in that projected flicker between illusion and reality. A transgender icon with a life as tragically short as some of the idols she worshipped, she's the deserving subject of an archivally rich remembrance, and such is James Rasin's poignant documentary "Beautiful Darling."
Using plenty of movie clips ("Flesh," "Women in Revolt"), new interviews on camera and old ones recorded by close friend Jeremiah Newton after her 1974 death, footage of her star-making off-off Broadway shows and readings from letters and diaries (with Chloë Sevigny as Candy), Rasin helps recapture the outré sparkle of her self-created glamour. At the same time, he sensitively threads in the outsider's sadness that never dissipated from her troubled youth as cross-dressing suburban boy James L. Slattery.
