Mask

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

1985 / 127min / 35mm

Playing Rocky Dennis—a Southern California teenager with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a genetic disorder which gives him a massive skull deformity—from beneath Academy Award-winning makeup, Eric Stoltz has the showpiece role in Bogdanovich’s unabashed tearjerker, but he’s supported by a cast no less impressive, including Cher as his fast-talking, no-b.s.-taking biker mother, Sam Elliott as his rough ’n’ gruff stand-in father figure, and a superbly sensitive Laura Dern in a breakout performance as a young woman at the summer camp for the blind where Rocky works as a counselor, who becomes his first love. “Absorbing from the very first… A wonderful movie, a story of high spirits and hope and courage.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times