Blue Sky

The main reason to see this movie is two fabulous performances: Tommy Lee Jones as a military scientist involved with nuclear testing, and Jessica Lange as his flirtatious and rebelliously flamboyant wife. Set mainly in a straitlaced Alabama military compound in 1962, this odd little dramaeffectively directed by Tony Richardson from a semiautobiographical script written by Rama Laurie Stagner in collaboration with Arlene Sarner and Jerry Leichtlingcan be read as a suggestive reflection on the relationship between nuclear power and sexual repression during the cold war. In that sense it’s like the otherwise radically different Kiss Me Deadly, whose Va-va-voom! slogan and deadly plutonium made a similarly volatile mixture. Completed in 1991, this film remained on the shelf for three years, reportedly because of the bankruptcy of Orion. With Powers Boothe, Carrie Snodgress, Amy Locane, and Chris O’Donnell. (JR)

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