Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

The Caveman’s Valentine

(2001)

A classically trained pianist has suffered a mental breakdown and lives in a cave in New York City. You can’t help thinking of David Helfgott in Shine. But Romulus Ledbetter is not as appealing as Helfgott, he is an in-your-face paranoid schizo who probably smells bad, and his family is aware of where he is. A friend of his is murdered, and he sets out to somehow solve the mystery while at the same time staying only marginally sane. Samuel L Jackson is very good here, as always, but it began to seem too unlikely.