Samantha Mathis has spoken publicly about River Phoenix for the first time since her death in 1993.
The actors met while working on. The thing called love and started a romantic relationship on the set.
Speaking to The GuardianMathis revealed that she recently saw the 1993 comedy for the first time since Phoenix's death and, after the publication approached her, she felt "as if the universe wanted me to talk about him."
Phoenix died at age 23 of an overdose of cocaine and heroin on October 31, 1993 outside the nightclub Viper Room, owned by Johnny Depp, in Los Angeles. The younger sister and the actor's brother, Rai and Joaquin, were in the club, along with Mathis.
"I knew something was wrong that night, something I did not understand," said Mathis. "I did not see anyone doing drugs, but he was drugged in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, it was way over my head." Forty-five minutes later, he was dead.
Mathis says that she went to the bathroom and when she left, Phoenix was in a fight with another man. After security escorted the group, Phoenix began to convulse on the ground.
"I knew he was drugged that night, but the heroine who killed him did not happen until he was in the Viper Room, I have my suspicions about what was happening, but I did not see anything," he said.
From its onset of slow combustion, The Guardians becomes an epic melodrama. It is a wartime story in which, for a change, men are relegated to secondary roles. It follows a tradition of French rural family sagas such as Jean De Florette or Manon Des Sources. Landscapes and changing seasons play as important a role in history as the main characters.
Dark River offers little of that comfort. It has some lyrical and delicate moments, but the mood is generally overwhelmingly grim and dismal. Incest and abuse do not leave much room for comic interludes. This is a powerful film with a great grinding intensity. Relief of light is not, but Dark River still has a great impact.
Alamy
At the end of the surprising and original new feature of Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel, Zama, a character whose two arms have been cut, is recommended to "put the stumps in the sand … if you do not bleed, Survive." It is a dark and spooky moment in a film that continually surprises us with its brutality and lyricism.
The match factory
The most disheartening aspect of this animated feature nominated for the Oscar, is that its history still seems so current. The film shows an Afghan society in which women have no face. It was established during the Taliban rule, which lasted from the mid-1990s until the end of 2001, but this does not feel like a period piece. Seventeen years after the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan after the US invasion, the plight of women in the country seems to have not improved.
GKIDS
Spike Lee's work sometimes puts sensory overload at risk. Shoot so many different ideas and styles of storytelling that the public can be confused with their scattered weapon approach. BlacKkKlansman is one of his best films because the digressions are as entertaining as ever, but do not interfere with the main story.
AP
Much of the pleasure in Aardman's films has always been in his mildly ironic humor, similar to that of Alan Bennett. They take very exotic characters and themes, but then deal with them in a practical way. They make a virtue of their own relative modesty. Early Man is not the most eye-catching animated feature you'll see this year, but it's certainly the most enjoyable.
Like all Wes Anderson's work, Isle Of Dogs is very stylized, unconventional and is characterized by extremely dry and often ironic humor. This fable of movement in motion set by the Japanese is also magnificent to see, full of complex visual details. It deals with some important issues (ethnic cleansing, fascism and corruption), but it does so in an idiosyncratic way.
Screenwriter and director Martin McDonagh has a series of award-winning works behind him, but his films have not always lived up to his work on stage. This certainly does. Share some of the dark and nihilistic humor found in McDonagh's previous film, Seven Psychopaths.
In a time of tired poltergeist films, stories of haunted houses and porno tortures, A Quiet Place is a refreshing and very original affair. Director John Krasinski relies on editing, sound effects and off-screen action to increase tension. We see creatures from time to time, sometimes even in an extreme close-up. They are very grotesque and larger versions of the polyp-like succubus that exploded out of John Hurt's stomach in Alien. However, the most frightening moments here come when humans are waiting for them to appear, desperately hoping they will not.
Paramount Pictures
Lady Bird is one of the best American movies coming of age from Diner, by Barry Levinson. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, it offers a totally winning mix of humor, poignancy and social observation. Gerwig approaches his subject with the same tenderness and affectionate irony with which the teen Lady Bird considers Sacramento. Gerwig also shows the heroism of Lady Bird while the young heroine fights the odds of becoming the best version of herself that can be.
A24
If Phantom Thread is in fact the final film by Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor, it is coming out with an astonishingly strange note. This must be the strangest movie of his career, one in which he offers a typically dominant but very idiosyncratic performance. Almost everything here is jarring, but in general in a very positive way.
Not long ago, Paul Schrader seemed to be giving up the cinema. The American writer and director (whose credits include Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Affliction) was dedicated to making films such as Hollywood satire, The Canyons, with Lindsay Lohan and the caricaturally Dog Eat Dog, filmed at low cost, aimed at an audience of VOD. The first had a montage of closed cinemas. In interviews, Schrader hit a grim note about the future of the industry. That's why First Reformed is so refreshing. This is not just the best Schrader movie in a long time. It is also a reaffirmation of the director's belief in the middle.
Rex
Oscar Wilde is ruined in the debut of Rupert Everett as director. Everett also wrote and starred in the film, at the end of his life he had a great performance as an Irish writer, after his release from prison, where he has been doing forced labor for "gross indecency". This is a poignant and surprising biopic that squeezes every last drop of pathos from its subject.
BBC Films
Black Panther is not only one of the most entertaining recent superhero films, but it also has an intelligence and a political dimension that is completely lacking in the incipient offers such as Suicide Squad and Justice League. It is an action film that touches Pan-Africanism and that owes as much to Malcolm X as to Batman or Captain America.
Marvel Studios / Disney
Sicilian Ghost Story is a genre adventure that combines elements of teenage romance, Gothic psychodrama and political thriller. It is loosely based on a true story of a boy named Giuseppe Di Matteo, whose father, a former member of the Sicilian Mafia, became "grass" against his former associates. The mafia responded by kidnapping Giuseppe and keeping him in captivity for almost 800 days.
Altitude
The first man is all about the underestimated heroism. It is affecting precisely because Armstrong (played with a calm intensity by Ryan Gosling) does not feel the continued need to boast of his mission. The movie is a game of tears but very subtle.
AP
Dogman is one of the best Italian films of recent times, a modern neo-realist fable that compares with the great work of Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica et al. Its main character, the dog hairdresser Marcello (Marcello Fonte), is a wonderful creation: adorable, vulnerable, sordid and comical, all at the same time.
Curzon Artificial Eye
From its onset of slow combustion, The Guardians becomes an epic melodrama. It is a wartime story in which, for a change, men are relegated to secondary roles. It follows a tradition of French rural family sagas such as Jean De Florette or Manon Des Sources. Landscapes and changing seasons play as important a role in history as the main characters.
Dark River offers little of that comfort. It has some lyrical and delicate moments, but the mood is generally overwhelmingly grim and dismal. Incest and abuse do not leave much room for comic interludes. This is a powerful film with a great grinding intensity. Relief of light is not, but Dark River still has a great impact.
Alamy
At the end of the surprising and original new feature of Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel, Zama, a character whose two arms have been cut, is recommended to "put the stumps in the sand … if you do not bleed, Survive." It is a dark and spooky moment in a film that continually surprises us with its brutality and lyricism.
The match factory
The most disheartening aspect of this animated feature nominated for the Oscar, is that its history still seems so current. The film shows an Afghan society in which women have no face. It was established during the Taliban rule, which lasted from the mid-1990s until the end of 2001, but this does not feel like a period piece. Seventeen years after the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan after the US invasion, the plight of women in the country seems to have not improved.
GKIDS
Spike Lee's work sometimes puts sensory overload at risk. Shoot so many different ideas and styles of storytelling that the public can be confused with their scattered weapon approach. BlacKkKlansman is one of his best films because the digressions are as entertaining as ever, but do not interfere with the main story.
AP
Much of the pleasure in Aardman's films has always been in his mildly ironic humor, similar to that of Alan Bennett. They take very exotic characters and themes, but then deal with them in a practical way. They make a virtue of their own relative modesty. Early Man is not the most eye-catching animated feature you'll see this year, but it's certainly the most enjoyable.
Like all Wes Anderson's work, Isle Of Dogs is very stylized, unconventional and is characterized by extremely dry and often ironic humor. This fable of movement in motion set by the Japanese is also magnificent to see, full of complex visual details. It deals with some important issues (ethnic cleansing, fascism and corruption), but it does so in an idiosyncratic way.
Screenwriter and director Martin McDonagh has a series of award-winning works behind him, but his films have not always lived up to his work on stage. This certainly does. Share some of the dark and nihilistic humor found in McDonagh's previous film, Seven Psychopaths.
In a time of tired poltergeist films, stories of haunted houses and porno tortures, A Quiet Place is a refreshing and very original affair. Director John Krasinski relies on editing, sound effects and off-screen action to increase tension. We see creatures from time to time, sometimes even in an extreme close-up. They are very grotesque and larger versions of the polyp-like succubus that exploded out of John Hurt's stomach in Alien. However, the most frightening moments here come when humans are waiting for them to appear, desperately hoping they will not.
Paramount Pictures
Lady Bird is one of the best American movies coming of age from Diner, by Barry Levinson. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, it offers a totally winning mix of humor, poignancy and social observation. Gerwig approaches his subject with the same tenderness and affectionate irony with which the teen Lady Bird considers Sacramento. Gerwig also shows the heroism of Lady Bird while the young heroine fights the odds of becoming the best version of herself that can be.
A24
If Phantom Thread is in fact the final film by Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor, it is coming out with an astonishingly strange note. This must be the strangest movie of his career, one in which he offers a typically dominant but very idiosyncratic performance. Almost everything here is jarring, but in general in a very positive way.
Not long ago, Paul Schrader seemed to be giving up the cinema. The American writer and director (whose credits include Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Affliction) was dedicated to making films such as Hollywood satire, The Canyons, with Lindsay Lohan and the caricaturally Dog Eat Dog, filmed at low cost, aimed at an audience of VOD. The first had a montage of closed cinemas. In interviews, Schrader hit a grim note about the future of the industry. That's why First Reformed is so refreshing. This is not just the best Schrader movie in a long time. It is also a reaffirmation of the director's belief in the middle.
Rex
Oscar Wilde is ruined in the debut of Rupert Everett as director. Everett also wrote and starred in the film, at the end of his life he had a great performance as an Irish writer, after his release from prison, where he has been doing forced labor for "gross indecency". This is a poignant and surprising biopic that squeezes every last drop of pathos from its subject.
BBC Films
Black Panther is not only one of the most entertaining recent superhero films, but it also has an intelligence and a political dimension that is completely lacking in the incipient offers such as Suicide Squad and Justice League. It is an action film that touches Pan-Africanism and that owes as much to Malcolm X as to Batman or Captain America.
Marvel Studios / Disney
Sicilian Ghost Story is a genre adventure that combines elements of teenage romance, Gothic psychodrama and political thriller. It is loosely based on a true story of a boy named Giuseppe Di Matteo, whose father, a former member of the Sicilian Mafia, became "grass" against his former associates. The mafia responded by kidnapping Giuseppe and keeping him in captivity for almost 800 days.
Altitude
The first man is all about the underestimated heroism. It is affecting precisely because Armstrong (played with a calm intensity by Ryan Gosling) does not feel the continued need to boast of his mission. The movie is a game of tears but very subtle.
AP
Dogman is one of the best Italian films of recent times, a modern neo-realist fable that compares with the great work of Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica et al. Its main character, the dog hairdresser Marcello (Marcello Fonte), is a wonderful creation: adorable, vulnerable, sordid and comical, all at the same time.
Curzon Artificial Eye
Phoenix was a very famous actor during his life, he received an Oscar nomination for his role in Sidney Lumet Left with nothing. Mathis has had a successful career in Hollywood, becoming a star American Psycho, broken arrow Y Little woman.
Remembering Phoenix, she called him "sensitive and obsessive," adding that she felt things "in her heart very deeply."
Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds
"I think if River were still here, I think he would be acting, directing, saving the environment, just living and hanging out," he said. "Oh, God, would not that be good?"