Abel Ferrara continues to make dark, brutal, punishing movies that piss people off. Obviously, the director of Bad Lieutenant and King of New York is doing something right. The Funeral isn't up to those twin Ferrara peaks, but this Depression-era crime drama, with a script by Nicholas St. John, has some of the same jangling tension. When racketeer Johnny Tempio (Vincent Gallo) is shot down after seeing Humphrey Bogart in The Petrified Forest at a movie house, his family joins his fiancee, Helen (Gretchen Mol), to mourn at the coffin. Johnny's two brothers, Ray (Christopher Walken) and Chez (Chris Penn), search for the killer. A rival hood, Gaspare (a superb Benicio Del Toro), is the obvious suspect in a film that works hard to dodge the obvious.

Ferrara is less interested in who done it than why they done it. Flashbacks reveal the three Tempio brothers, raised in savagery by a sadistic father, in emotional conflict. Johnny wanted out of the crime game to pursue leftist politics. Ray, married to the canny Jeanette (Annabella Sciotra), hides his anger. Chez, married to the fearful Clara (Isabella Rossellini), can't control his. In a film of strong performances, Penn's is the standout. He finds the madness in Chez that is the key to Ferrara's tale of blood ties that choke off compassion and hope.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.