Released on DVD in time for International Women's Day is It Was a Wonderful Life, the 1992 feature-length documentary by Michèle Ohayon. Narrated by Jodie Foster, the film profiles several American homeless women, showing us how they cope and how they became homeless in the first place. Ohayon's movie is an impressive glimpse at the cycle of poverty, and includes some insightful stereotype-shattering. In particular, it's illuminating to see how many of these women ended up here after living upper-middle-class lifestyles. The film has a Crumb-like ending, in that one of the women takes her own life. My where-are-they-now curiosity was piqued, but not sated - there are no extras here. I'm still dying to know where the surviving women ended up.

In less enthusiastic Jodie Foster-related news, I rented Backtrack last week (at Boite Noire), a Dennis Hopper movie in which Hopper plays a hit man who falls for Foster. Sadly tedious, despite an outrageous cast that includes Charlie Sheen, Vincent Price, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Dean Stockwell and Bob Dylan. » Matthew Hays