Mrs. Harris

The sensationalistic murder of diet guru Dr. Herman Tarnower is explored in this stylized take on the tabloid cover story from first-time director Phyllis Nagy. As the inventor of the popular "Scarsdale Diet," Dr. Herman Tarnower (Ben Kingsley) became an overnight success during the peak of the ...more

The murder of Scarsdale Diet inventor Herman Tarnower could easily have become fodder for a Lifetime TV movie starring, say, Meredith Baxter or Jane Seymour. Luckily for premium cable devotees, it instead inspired this wonderfully tart HBO movie, which subverts docudrama clichés at every turn. In a part as smart and sour as her role in Being Julia was steely and grandiloquent, Annette Bening plays spurned lover/murderess Jean Harris with a lethal combination of self-knowledge and fatalism. ...more