Recent viewings

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Servicable 1970s thriller. A fashion photographer (Faye Dunaway) whose work capitalizes on sex, violence and shock value starts having inexplicable psychic visions of her friends and acquaintances being stabbed to death. The visions start coming true, and it looks like the killer is moving inexorably toward her.

Obviously the killer is someone close to her, but who? Her creepy ex-husband? Her shaggy, ex-convict chauffeur? Her smarmy, hard-driving agent (Rene Auberjonois, with gigantic poofy hair)? Does the handsome, ferociously intense police detective working the case (Tommy Lee Jones, also with hair) have something to hide?

There are a few telling depictions of the tawdriness of the late-70s art "scene". The scriptwriter effectively misleads the viewer for most of the movie and then ties everything up at the end only by breaking the cardinal rule of a good mystery story: basing the solution on a critical piece of information which is, so far as I could tell, completely unsignalled to the reader/viewer.

Not awful, but I feel no urge to watch it again to verify that last statement.