Delirious (2007)

107 min. Director: Tom DiCillo. Cast: Alison Lohman, Rodrigo Lopresti, Steve Buscemi, Joseph D'Onofrio, Michael Pitt.

Amusing and heartfelt, Delirious comes from indie darling Tom DiCillo. Steve Buscemi gives a crackerjack leading performance as Les, a profane, selfish, hypocritical, star-struck, self-absorbed paparazzo with a hair-trigger temper. When he accepts a guileless homeless youth named Toby (Michael Pitt) as his unpaid assistant, Les deals with new feelings of acceptance and hope in his otherwise dismal existence. Allison Lohman plays the pop starlet who inadvertently comes between between the uneasy friends; Elvis Costello has a cameo, designed to give Les another opportunity to come apart at the seams. Though the material about the line that divides celebrities and "peons" isn't particularly fresh, DCillo and his stars handle it expertly.

[For Groucho's interview with Steve Buscemi, click here.]