Joan Micklin Silver’s chronicle of a Boston alt-weekly paper in a period of upheaval, Between the Lines, is all the more prescient considering today’s state of local news journalism. The staff at The Back Bay Mainline includes a lothario music critic (Jeff Goldblum), a tortured wannabe novelist (John Heard), his ambitious photographer girlfriend (Lindsay Crouse), and a naïve rookie eager to break his first story (Bruno Kirby). This under-seen New Hollywood indie is a rich ensemble dramedy which both deftly observes the waning 70’s lefty political culture and pays tribute to an endangered, yet essential, democratic institution.
“Silver’s film also feels now like a prescient farewell to the values that had made the new American cinema of the ’70s so vital.” – Jonathan Romney, Film Comment
