Category Archives: Movies that take place in the Big Apple

The Sunshine Boys (1975)

Posted on January 2, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Comedians try to reunite.

Wily Clark (Walter Matthau) is an aging comedian from the vaudeville era who’s now in his 80’s and finding it hard to find work. His nephew Ben (Richard Benjamin) acts as his agent but signing Wily to acting gigs proves challenging due to Wily’s disagreeable manner. Al Lewis (George Burns) worked with Wily when the two where in their prime and known as The Sunshine Boys. ABC wants to reunite the two for a TV special, but Wily resists insisting that he can’t work with Al again due to petty grievances. Ben though gets the two together in Wily’s apartment for a rehearsal of their old skits, but fighting immediately breaks out. They then pair up again for the TV special under the condition that neither has to talk to the other outside of the skit, but when Wily falls over with a heart attack things take a serious turn. Will Al be able to reconcile with Wily before it’s too late?

This is another hit Neil Simon play that hasn’t aged well. At the time it was best known for having George Burns, who hadn’t been in a movie in 36 years, and his subsequent Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor, which he received at age 80 that was a record for oldest recipient until broken 14 years later by Jessica Tandy. My main gripe though is more with characters. Matthau is alright, though he was only 55 when he did the part, but still looked adequately old, but the person he plays is unlikable. Supposedly he wants acting gigs but makes little effort to get to the auditions on time, or memorize his lines while expecting his stressed-out nephew, whom he belittles and berates constantly, to do all the legwork. It’s really hard to feel sorry for someone who doesn’t put in the effort and he’s rude and boorish at every turn. The movie tries to play this off as just being a part of old age, but it really isn’t. The guy has a huge attitude problem for any stage in life, and it becomes a big turn off. The viewer could’ve sided with him more, or at least little, had he been trying his best and just coming up short and would’ve created a far more interesting dramatic arc had his only option back into the business would be pairing with Al and the internal efforts he’d have to go through to get along with him to make it work versus having his nephew desperately do all the attempted repairing, which isn’t as interesting.

The reasons for their feud are inane and hinges on minor issues like Al apparently ‘spitting on’ Wily whenever he says a word that starts with ‘T’ or poking him in the chest during a moment in their skit, but you’d think if they had been doing this routine for 43 years that Wily would’ve brought up these grievances already. Al seemed quite reasonable, so why does Wily feel the need to stew about it and not just call it to his attention? The story would’ve been stronger had there been a true gripe to get mad at, like Al stealing away Wily’s wife or girlfriend, or signing some big movie deal without Wily’s knowledge that made Al a star while Wily got left behind. All of these things would make anyone upset and create a better dramedy on how the two would be able to reconcile, but these other ‘issues’ that Wily has are just too insipid even for a silly comedy.

Spoiler Alert!

The film also lacks an adequate payoff. There’s this big build up for this TV special, but then it never gets past the rehearsal phase. It climaxes with Wily lying in bed in his cluttered apartment treating his nurse, played by Rosetta LeNoire, just as shabbily as he does everyone else and having learned nothing. I was surprised to by all of these get-well cards and telegrams supposedly by his fans and other celebrities. Would’ve been more profound if Wily received no well wishes and thus gotten him to realize that he was truly forgotten and this would then force him to reassess his selfish nature and commit to treating people better, which unfortunately doesn’t occur, and the character learns nothing.

Since it’s revealed that Wily and Al will be spending the rest of their lives in the same actor’s retirement community it would’ve been nice to show them doing their skits in front of an audience of other seniors, but the film misses the mark here to. There’s no real finality or journey, just constant rhetorical bickering and a running joke dealing with Wily unable to unlock his apartment door from the inside “don’t push it, slide it”, which gets old fast.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: November 6, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 51 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Herbert Ross

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive), Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Buddy Movies, Comedy, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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Plaza Suite (1971)

Posted on December 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: One room, different characters.

The entire movie takes place in one setting, New York’s historic Plaza Hotel, where three different couples rent out the same room at different times and the story examines what happens while they’re in it. The first segment involves Sam and Karen (Walter Matthau, Maureen Stapleton). Karen has checked into the room because that was where they spent their honeymoon 23 years earlier, but since then their marriage has soured and she hopes to rekindle the old flame but finds her husband’s resistance to it to be both challenging and troubling. The second story involves a famous Hollywood producer (also played by Matthau) checking into the room so he can have a quick fling with Muriel (Barbara Harris) a girl he dated before he was famous and who is now married with kids. The third and final act revolves around Roy and Norma (Walter Matthau, Lee Grant) and their efforts to get their daughter Mimsy (Jenny Sullivan) to come out of the bathroom, of which she has locked herself inside, and attend her wedding.

The film is based on the play of the same name that was written by Neil Simon who also wrote the screenplay. The play, which opened in 1968 at the Schubert theater before moving onto Broadway, had the same storylines, but was cast differently. In that one George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton played the characters in all three segments, but director Arthur Hiller didn’t like that approach. Initially he wanted different actors for each story including having Peter Sellers and Barbra Streisand cast in the second, which would’ve been terrific, but when that fell through, he decided to have Matthau play in all three and then simply change around the female leads, but this approach doesn’t work as well. The film suffers badly from having everything done in the same room, which quickly becomes visually static, and the talky script is only occasionally amusing.

The first story features a strong performance by Stapleton, but having the husband eventually admit to having an affair with his secretary, has been done hundreds of times before. The segment lacks anything fresh and the viewer can almost immediately guess where it’s going right from the start making it both predictable and boring. Had it unfolded differently where the husband at least pretended there was a spark left in their marriage and only revealed his true nature through subtle layers then it might’ve had potential but having him be aloof and cranky at the start offers no surprises and makes things much too obvious.

The second segment shows its cards too soon as well. It’s clear that the producer will come onto any attractive woman he sees, so watching him attempt to exploit an old girlfriend and then become shocked when he finds her more intrigued with the celebrities that he knows instead of himself doesn’t offer much of a payoff. Instead, he should’ve been portrayed as being burnt out with Tinsel Town and all of the plastic people he’s bedded and genuinely wanting to rekindle things with his past love whom he remembered as being down-to-earth and then having him shocked to learn that she had become just as superficial as the rest would’ve been funny.

The third act is by far the funniest particularly Matthau hamming up over his frustration at how much the wedding, and subsequent reception, is costing him. This is also the only segment to have some of the action take place outside of the room when in an attempt to get into the locked bathroom he goes out on the 7th story ledge, which is a bit nerve-wracking. However, there’s still some issues including the fact that Mimsy, the daughter, never says anything while locked inside the bathroom, which is unrealistic and off-putting. I didn’t like the point-of-view shots showing her sitting on the toilet through the door’s keyhole as this was unintentionally creepy as it insinuates that anybody could secretly peep at anyone else going to the bathroom and therefore putting a keyhole on a bathroom door would’ve been patently absurd. The parents are also not very likable, or caring as they seem to feel that their daughter is somehow ‘obligated’ to get married and it’s ‘too late to backout’ when it really isn’t. Forcing someone to get hitched and acting like it’s some sort of ‘life duty’ is very old fashioned making the segment quite dated even for its time period.

Some of the exterior shots were cool including the opening bit where Stapleton is shown walking down a busy New York street towards the hotel where the pedestrians are not extras, but instead regular people unaware that they were a part of a movie. The bird’s eye shot showing cars going along the Brooklyn Bridge and its ability to focus in on the one being driven by Harris is impressive and quite possibly, at least on a visual scale, one of the best moments in the film. Even these segments though have some logic loopholes as it shows the character from the segment that has just ended walking outside the hotel while the new character walks in making it seem like the new guest goes into the room the second the former one leaves it, which wouldn’t make sense as a maid would’ve had to go in there in-between to clean it.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 12, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 54 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, PlutoTV, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hotel setting

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Anna (1987)

Posted on December 23, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: A struggling Czech actress.

Anna (Sally Kirkland) was at one time a major movie star in her homeland of Czechoslovakia, but when a new government regime took over her country during the 1968 communist invasion and she spoke out against it, she was banned from reentry. She then moved to the United States trying to seek acting employment in New York, but only able to eke out a measly living with bit parts and understudy work. Krystyna (Paulina Porizkova) is a young and aspiring actress who’s also from Czechoslovakia and who comes to the U.S. looking to meet Anna whom she has always idolized. Anna decides to take Krystyna under her guidance, teaching her English and improving her appearance in hopes that she can one day land the big role, but for Krystyna things come more easily. Soon she’s a big star, which sends Anna into a jealous and despondent state.

The film was inspired by the life and career of Polish actress Elzbieta Czyzewska and her relationship with a young Joanne Pacula, who came to the U.S. from Poland looking to break into show business and in the process became a bigger star than her mentor. At the time though upon its release the attention was much more on Kirkland’s brilliant performance and whose career struggles had closely emulated the character she was playing having landed a major role in 1968 in the film Coming Apart but had since been relegated to only bit parts until her breakthrough here. This also marked a career resurgence for her co-start Robert Fields, who burst onto the scene in 1958 co-starring in the cult hit The Blob, but outside of The Sporting Club saw very few substantial speaking roles until this one came along of which he also does quite well.

The film succeeds in the recreation of the audition atmosphere. I had in my younger days went to a few acting auditions for small roles in stage productions while living in Chicago and what I went through closely resembled what Anna has to deal with here particularly the improvisational aspect where the actors are expected to discard the scripts they’ve memorized and instead forced to elaborate on a personal or touchy life experience of which Anna refuses to do with good reason. The humiliating demands the casting directors force her to do and the impersonal and competitive vibes she gets from the other auditioners are completely on-target making it some of the stronger moments in the film.

The film’s weaker scenes are when director Yurek Bogayevicz tries for the symbolic. I actually didn’t mind the shot of watching Anna going down a lonely, dark elevator while Krystyna gets invited to a posh party, or her rekindling her relationship with her off-again boyfriend Daniel while outside in a rainstorm, but when she goes to a theater to watch one of her old movies, and the film gets stuck in the projector and the image of her face gets burned up in front of her was pouring things on too thickly.

I also had a hard time understanding how Krystyna was able to get her rotted teeth fixed for free. No dentist is going to repair someone’s teeth, which looked to be a daunting task, for nothing yet that’s what seems to occur here. There’s a passing comment that he was expecting ‘something’ in return, but it’s not clear what. Maybe it was sex I don’t know, but it should’ve been verified instead of glossed over and then quickly forgotten. Krystyna’s ability to find Anna all by herself in the big city of New York where she can’t even speak the language was a bit too easy and needed better explaining as well.

The characters are also, with the possible exception of Daniel, not always likable. Krystyna is appealing most of the way but then goes on a TV talk show where she steals a personal life experience that Anna had told her about earlier and makes it her own. Then she comes back to the apartment and is somehow confused with why Anna is upset with her, which for anyone else wouldn’t have been that difficult to understand. Anna’s meltdown on stage when she was finally able to land a speaking role gets a bit overdone as well. I realize she was going through a lot in her personal life, but as a working actress she still needs to put that stuff behind and able to tackle her role, even if it’s last minute, in a professional manner and not ruin the entire production by behaving like some angry, petulant child, which actually made me agree with a member of the stage crew who told her she’d never work again.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending in which Anna stalks Krystyna and attempts to shoot her while she’s filming a movie scene on a beach is a shocker. This was the type of film where I didn’t see that coming as typically things like that only occur in thrillers, but this one had been a drama all the way, so it’s definitely unexpected, but still works. While it’s realistic that Anna most likely wouldn’t have killed her since she wasn’t used to shooting a gun, so having her miss and hit Krystyna in the arm did make sense, but it still would’ve packed a more powerful punch had she died.

I felt too that having Anna walk in the ocean and commit suicide would’ve given it a more complete finality. The idea that Krystyna would take care of Anna and even let her live in her home defied logic. This was someone who had just tried to kill her and what’s to say she wouldn’t attempt it again? How could she ever trust her again, or be comfortable around her? In reality she would’ve been either charged with attempted murder and incarcerated or put into a mental hospital.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Yurek Bogayevicz

Studio: Vestron Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Posted on October 26, 2025 | 5 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: A really awful sequel.

It’s been four years since Regan (Linda Blair) had her bout of possession and is now living a seemingly normal life in New York City with her guardian Sharon (Kitty Winn). Regan does still see a psychiatrist, Dr. Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), who despite Regan’s denials that she can’t remember anything, is convinced that she does have some dormant memories that need to come to the surface. Philip (Richard Burton) is a priest who has been assigned to investigate the death of Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow), who was the priest who died while performing the exorcism on Regan. He meets with Dr. Tuskin and Regan and gets hooked up to a machine called the syncronizer, which allows Philip’s and Regan’s brainwaves to be connected, so he can explore the inner depths of her mind. It is here that he learns about the evil spirit Pazuzu, that was the one that inhabited Regan’s body years earlier, and how Father Merrin had rid a young boy named Kokumo of this same spirit while in Africa. When Philip learns that the now adult Kokumo (James Earl Jones) has developed a special power to defeat Pazuzu he travels to the continent to meet him.

Doing a sequel to the hit movie wasn’t a bad idea per say as there were still some open-ended questions like why did Pazuzu choose Regan’s body to inhabit instead of some other girls and what mental issues would Regan have to deal with after going through such a traumatic event? None of those were ever answered in the first film, but intriguing enough to me that I felt a second film was warranted and could’ve been quite compelling. Unfortunately, what we get wouldn’t even qualify as second-rate. Most of the problem lies with director John Boorman, who admitted in later interviews that his biggest crime was that he didn’t give the viewer what they wanted, which is the truth. I don’t mean to bash the guy as he’s helmed some classics in his own right, but when he professes that he was offered the job to direct the first installment but turned it down because he thought it was ‘repulsive’ then that should’ve disqualified him from getting any consideration to doing the second one.

Everything gets botched right from the beginning including a misguided reenactment of the final segment in the first film that honestly comes-off like a cheap parody. For one thing Father Merrin is seen standing at the end of Regan’s bed, when we know clearly from the first film that he was kneeling on the right side of the bed when he died. Also, due to Blair’s insistence that she didn’t want to go through the grueling routine of having to put on the demon make-up, so a stand-in took her place, but the results are clownish. The silly-‘synchonizer’ further hampers things as it appears more like a child’s toy and the cliched idea of simply attaching a few wires to each participant’s foreheads and that would be enough to get their mind’s ‘in-sync’ looks like something straight out of a tacky B-sci fi flick from the 50’s.

Not able to get Ellen Burstyn to sign-on really hurts though I can’t blame her for being reluctant but trying to use Kitty Winn as her replacement bombs. For one thing the Sharon character didn’t have that much of a prominent role in the first one, I barely even remembered her, and she was Burstyn’s secretary who didn’t interact that much with Blair, so for them to now be so ‘connected’ seemed like a stretch and having Winn sporting short hair, in an attempt I presume to make her ‘seem’ like Burstyn, was tacky. Von Sydow suffers a similar fate. He gets portrayed as being a younger version of his character here but only appears in flashbacks and doesn’t have much to say or do making it seem like it wasn’t even worth the effort.

Fletcher is good in that she played a cold, bitchy nurse in her previous film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but here shows her great acting ability at playing the total opposite and doing it convincingly. However, her character doesn’t help propel the action and is only there to react to things, which ultimately makes her presence one dimensional. Burton, whose talents I have always greatly admired even when he took less than stellar roles, but his appearance here has to be rock bottom. He admitted that he only did this for the paycheck, due to an expensive divorce he was going through with Liz, but the material doesn’t match his ability and it’s a career low even for him as he was known to make some bad project choices during the 70’s, but this was by far the worst.

To top things off there’s James Earl Jones wearing a giant bug outfit that nearly had me laughing out of my seat. The numerous shots of locusts and the sandy African landscape make it seem more like a nature movie, but whatever it is it’s not scary. It’s so convoluted it’s not even good enough to fall into the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ category. It is cool though at least see a young Dana Plato playing an autistic child in a small but pivotal part.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Boorman

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Sequels

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The Plants Are Watching (1979)

Posted on October 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Communicating with a plant.

Laurie (Nancy Boykin) is deeply into plants and has them placed all over her apartment and even feels she has the ability to communicate with them. Directly below her place lives her sister Rilla (Nancy Snyder) along with Rilla’s boyfriend Robert (Joel Colodner). Laurie doesn’t like Robert and the two are continually getting into arguments. One day Laurie is found dead and the police consider it an accident. Rilla though fears that Robert may be responsible and tries on her own to investigate. She reads up on Kirlian photography that can capture electrical discharges from objects including plant life. Her attempt is to see if the plant that was present when Laurie had her ‘accident’ can tell her through its distress signals from its leaves, which can be detected through the photo process, can lead her to what really happened. However, as she’s doing this a new suspect emerges, Dusty (Ted Le Plat), forcing her to have to go through the difficult determination as to who the real culprit is.

Extremely odd idea for a horror film almost works with a really good and creepy beginning and excellent surprise ending. The Kirlian photo technique was one that I was not familiar with, so the movie is educational on that end as it delves into its innerworkings and history and some of the shots that it shows, including the fingerprints of a psycho compared to a regular person and the different colored light charges that it gives off, are quite fascinating as are the variety of discharges that a leaf can emit from one that is under stress, or sick versus a healthy one.

The setting is limited, mainly due to the low budget, where all the action takes place in the apartment building though this does at least give the viewer a good feel for urban New York City living and helps create a certain ambiance. While the plants never do any actual ‘speaking’ you do through the course of the film begin to see them like they’re characters alongside their human counterparts making the moment where Robert throws some of the potted plants against the wall and thus smashing them seem genuinely disturbing like you’ve just witnessed a ‘murder’ and credit goes to the filmmakers for their ability to bring this out.

Despite one good scare, which occurs during a dream sequence, there’s not enough shocks to completely keep it going. The middle drags quite a bit and the main reason is that there’s no real villain. Robert is initially portrayed as being a possible menace, but he’s just too civil to create any adequate tension. Having Rilla break-up with him and move-out only to eventually allow him back into her bed just dilutes everything. A good horror film needs a threatening dark force and this thing tip toes too much around that.

The film cheats too by ultimately having the plant ‘communicate’ with Rilla somehow by showing her a ‘vision’ of what actually occurred though it’s never explained how exactly it does this. I was okay with her hooking the plant up to a machine and monitoring its stress level whenever one of the two men are in the room and thus having her deduct on her own who the killer was from that, but then spelling everything out seemed too easy. The ending twist though is pretty cool and the scene where she’s trapped in the elevator with no escape is nicely intense and surprisingly grisly though it’s a shame that this same kind of tension and violence couldn’t have been carried throughout. 

Alternate Title: The Kirlian Witness

Released: June 14, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 12 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Jonathan Sarno

Studio: CNI Cinema

Available: Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Offbeat

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The Seven Ups (1973)

Posted on September 18, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cops use unorthodox methods.

Buddy (Roy Scheider) is a police detective who runs a group of renegade cops who employ unusual and sometimes questionable methods to nab crooks. Once apprehended the criminals they arrest usually end up serving 7-years or more in the penitentiary, which gives their group the nickname of the ‘Seven Ups’. The groups most recent mission is investigating kidnappings occurring in the city and Buddy uses the help of Vito (Tony Lo Bianco) a childhood friend who works as an undercover informant for the police, but who unbeknownst to Buddy is actually behind the recent crimes going on and even the orchestrator.

After the success of The French Connection producer Phil d’Antoni became inspired to produce another similar crime film dealing with the true-life event that occurred in the 50’s in New York that had mobsters being kidnapped by criminals posing as cops. He wanted William Friedkin, who had done so well with the first film, to direct this one, but Friedkin didn’t like the script and passed as did several other directors, which eventually lead the studio to choose d’Antoni to take the helm himself in his one and only foray behind the camera with results that are both good and bad.

The production lacks cinematic flair and shot in a flat way almost like a documentary, which to some degree actually helps it. It was filmed between January and April of 1973 and the crisp, gray, frigid look helps build an atmosphere by accentuating the grimy, cold life of the underworld and how the detectives themselves get foisted into it. The plot is basic and linear, so it’s easy to follow and not cluttered with unnecessary mystery angles and tangents as the viewer knows right away who’s behind everything. There’s also a tense scenes inside a car wash, not exactly sure the perpetrators would’ve been able to pull-off as effortlessly as they do, but it definitely keeps you riveted as you feel the same unease as the two guys in the car though having another scene come later that also takes place in a car wash wasn’t needed.

The film though doesn’t have the interesting characters like in The French Connection where Popeye Doyle’s lifestyle and temperament contrasted in fascinating ways with the man he was pursuing and in fact it was Doyle’s fractured personality that made the movie so compelling. Here, through no fault of Scheider who plays the part well for what is asked, but his character is quite one-note. We learn nothing about him, or his home life. He’s just a typical New York cop obsessed with getting the bad guys, which is fine, but doesn’t have the multi-dimensional quality to help make him memorable.

The supporting characters aren’t necessarily much better, but the actors who play them at least help give them some life. Larry Haines, probably best known for playing one of Felix and Oscar’s poker playing buddies in The Odd Couple, has a good turn here as a crime boss who’s nonchalant initially when he thinks he’s being taken to the cop station for a routine arrest only to cower in fright when he realizes he’s been duped and then when he survives shows no mercy in his unrelenting pursuit for revenge. My only quibble though is that Scheider and his cohorts are able to break into Haines’ house too easily and even able to catch him and his wife sleeping in bed, but you’d think with him being a well-known target with the police he’d have burglar alarms set-up all over his home to detect anyone trying to get in and since he’d just had a traumatic kidnapping incident earlier you’d think he wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly again, or paranoid enough to sleep lightly and aware of any noise.

The car chase sequence is by far the best moment, and some may say the only real reason to watch it. It certainly has you holding your breath, but in a lot of ways is too similar to Bullit, another film produced by d’Antoni, so it really doesn’t stand out as much as it should. There’s also the issue of Scheider pursuing the bad guys even as there’s pedestrians all around. Most real-life cops will stop chasing after a culprit’s car if they feel  it will put others at too much of a risk and this comes to a horrifying moment when school children are playing on the street and must quickly run to the curb when the bad guys drive their car through only a few seconds later to almost get hit by Scheider’s car as he plows through at high speeds without even a thought of putting on his breaks making him seem more like an irresponsible cop who’s more of a problem than a solution.

Nonetheless it’s gripping and I enjoyed how it ends with Scheider ducking under the windshield just as his vehicle hits the underside of the backend of a truck in an intended ‘homage’ to Jayne Mansfield’s wreck. It’s also great watching Richard Lynch’s facial expressions as he plays the crook sitting in the passenger’s side of the fleeing car. Some could say it’s great acting, which maybe it was, but I believe his looks of nervousness and fear was genuine, which just helps to make these shots of his face, which get intercut throughout the chase all the more entertaining and help to have a human side to the action as I and almost anyone else would be reacting the same as he does if we were in the same situation.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Philip D’Antoni

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Gangster Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Police Drama

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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Posted on February 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Fighting for nuclear disarmament.

Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) escapes from prison with the help of his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer). He is then able to create a powerful villain named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) by stealing a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum and using its code to create a genetic matrix. Nuclear Man has many of the same powers as Superman, but, unbeknownst to Superman, he’s only powerful when he’s in sunlight and without that he becomes weakened. Meanwhile Clark Kent is having battles of his own when the newspaper he’s working for, The Daily Planet, gets taken over by a rich tycoon named David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) who degrades the paper’s integrity by insisting only stories with a salacious bent get printed. David’s daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway) takes a liking to Clark and the two soon become an item.

The fourth installment was the first not to be produced by the Salkinds who decided to give up on the franchise after the box office flop of Supergirl and sold the rights to the Cannon Group who were suffering financial strain, which caused the budget for this one to be cut from $36 million down to $17 million. Many have complained that the result of this compromised the special effects though I didn’t find the drop-off to be quite a bad as I feared. The biggest drawback are the flying scenes where it clearly looks like Superman is matted in front of a greenscreen and isn’t nearly as slick looking as the first two. The opening bit though that takes place on a Russian space station I thought was alright, but I did wonder how Superman was able to know that the cosmonauts were in trouble, as he appears to the rescue out of nowhere, and what would tip him off that they were in danger?

The dumbest addition is the Nuclear Man. In the 45-minute deleted footage there were actually two with the first one being portrayed by Clive Mantle and resembling the comic book villain Bizarro. This one gets defeated by the Man of Steel prompting Lex to create a another one. The second creation is the only one shown in the studio cut version and this one looks like a male model wearing a tacky get-up stolen from Clash of the Titans. He speaks with Lex’s voice and I’m not sure why it was done this way outside of actor Mark Pillow, who plays the second incarnation, not having any acting experience, so they had his lines dubbed by Hackman, but the explanation that he has Luthor’s voice because Luthor made him doesn’t make sense. Why just stop at the voice? If he’s going to replicate his creator then he should have the same eyes, ears, and body as Luthor as well.

I was happy that Margot Kidder gets more screentime as in Part III she was relegated to being not much more than a cameo appearance. However, having her Lois Lane character constantly getting into extreme danger, this time on a subway train where the driver passes out, causing the car she’s riding in to accelerate to dangerous speeds, starts to get a bit overbaked. How many times statistically can one person accidentally walk into a life-threatening situation? Once sure, could happen to anyone, but even just twice would be a stretch. However, this lady inadvertently falls into a scary mess seemingly every other day making her more like a walking-talking bad luck charm that everyone else should stay away from for their own protection.

The scenes that she shares with Superman are stupid as he takes her on a flight with him into the night sky, but this was already done in Part I, so why redo it? Then when they land back at her apartment after revealing to her that Clark is really Superman, he does something that makes her forget that, but why even bother to let her know about his secret identity if he’s just going to make her lose her memory of it right after?

Initially I liked the addition of Hemingway as the new love interest as I thought the bratty persona of her character would lend some spice. Unfortunately, she loses her entitled attitude right away becoming benign and boring like everything else. The scene featuring her getting kidnapped by Nuclear Man, who takes her into space with him, is ridiculous because she’d never be able to survive outside of the earth’s atmosphere as there would be no oxygen, which along with the frozen temperature, would’ve had her dead instantly.

I really liked Hackman recreating his role as Luthor, who adds a much-needed campy charm. Cryer isn’t bad either as his young henchman and he does have the film’s one and only funny line. The story isn’t as political and preachy as I thought it was going to be either, which is good, but everything else falls flat. The initial runtime was supposed to be over 2-hours, but I was thankful it got cut down to a mere 90-minutes and even then, it was a drag to sit though. The franchise came to a merciful end after this, and I feel it was for the best.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Studio: The Cannon Group

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Sequels

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Tootsie (1982)

Posted on February 3, 2025 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pretending to be female.

Michael (Dustin Hoffman) is a talented actor but having difficulty finding employment due to his demanding nature and inability to get along with directors. His friend Sandy (Teri Garr) is auditioning for a part in a soap opera, and he helps her prepare for the role and even takes her to the audition only to learn that she was rejected before given any chance to do a screentest. It’s at this same time that he learns his agent George (Sydney Pollack) hasn’t gotten him a chance to audition for another role because in his words ‘no one will work with him’. Michael then decides to disguise himself as a woman named Dorothy Michaels in an effort to get the role that Sandy was turned down for so as to raise money to produce a play that will star Sandy. While he does get the part, he also becomes a big star with everyone believing that Dorothy really is a woman, which cause many complications in both his personal and professional life making him feel like he wants to end the charade and go back to his normal identity, but not quite sure how to do it. 

The genesis for the story began all the way back in 1970 and was based on an off-Broadway play by Don McGuire titled ‘Would I Lie to You?’ about an out of work stage actor who dresses as a woman to get a big part. Director Dick Richards adapted the plot into a screenplay, and it got shopped around for many years, but to no avail. Then in 1980 cross-dressing actor Christopher Morley played the role of a woman named Sally Armitage in the soap opera ‘General Hospital’. The part was played straight with the viewers under the impression that it really was a female, and Sally even gained the romantic interest from the character Luke, played by Anthony Geary, only to eventually reveal that she was really a man, which was a ratings hit and thus lead to renewed interest in this script. Eventually Dustin Hoffman got a hold of it and decided he wanted to take it on under the condition that was given full creative control and even hired his own people, Larry Gelbert and Murra Schisgal, to rewrite the story to his liking. 

Personally, my favorite parts of the film come at the beginning where we see Michael’s struggles as an actor as well as all of his thespian friends giving one a glimpse at just how hard the business is and how few people can make an actual living in it. Watching both him and his roommate Jeff, played by Bill Murray, working as waiters, but still talking about their acting ambitions while on that job was on-target. Garr gives a great performance as a struggling would-be actress who is full of insecurities and letdowns and a perfect composite of many young women who find the auditioning process grueling and thankless and for this reason, I felt she should’ve won the Oscar instead of Jessica Lange as her part as the love interest wasn’t as interesting, or honest. 

Murray is terrific as the roommate in an unusual part for him as his over-the-top clownish, snarky, frat boy persona is kept under wraps and instead he plays the part straight, but his sardonic responses to things are great. Director Pollack, who took on the role of Michael’s agent at the request of Hoffman and thus making it his first acting role in almost 20 years, is quite good too particularly with how his exasperated nature feeds off of Hoffman’s hyper one and their conversation inside his office is the movie’s highlight. Charles Durning has a few key moments as well playing Lange’s lovesick father who begins to fall for Dorothy though any man that would give a woman an engagement ring before they’d even been out on a single date has to be a bit loopy.

Hoffman falls into the woman role easily and it would be hard to recognize him had the viewer not known about the disguise beforehand though I felt the way Dorothy walked and moved her hands and arms made her seem like Mrs. Butterworth the animated character from the maple syrup commercials. It’s also hard to imagine he wouldn’t have been found out a lot sooner especially since he collected a weekly paycheck from the company, which would’ve required him to give them his social security number, which in-turn would’ve exposed who he really was. Being on magazine covers where he supposedly does interviews as Dorothy should’ve been equally problematic as the reporters would’ve asked him (her) about her past like what other stuff did she act in, where was she from, and where did she graduate. Stuff that’s very much standard questions in any interview and when he (she) couldn’t come up with anything or made-up stuff that could easily be background checked would’ve then raised red flags and brought the ruse to a very quick halt.

Spoiler Alert!

Soap operas were no longer broadcast as live and hadn’t been since 1963, so that story angle doesn’t fly either. Yes, I realize the idea was that it was taped and only had to done live as an emergency when one of the tapes got destroyed, but in reality, the taping would’ve been done so far ahead (usually by several weeks) that even if a video did somehow get corrupted there still should’ve been plenty of time to refilm it before reaching the actual air date. 

The ending it a bit disappointing as well. Sure, it’s nice seeing Lange putting her arm around him as they walk down the sidewalk showing that the two had made up after his secret identity was exposed, but it doesn’t answer what happened to his career. He did this whole thing to help finance a play for Sandy, so what became of that? Also, were casting agents so impressed with the way he fooled everybody that they now were willing to hire him, or was he still blacklisted? These were all major motivations for why he did the ruse, so there should’ve been clarity to what became of it. 

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sydney Pollack

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actress, Comedy, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Romance

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The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

Posted on January 26, 2025 | 1 comment

pope

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cousins turn to crime.

Charlie (Mickey Rourke) and Paulie (Eric Roberts) are cousins working at a restaurant who get themselves fired when Paulie is caught skimming checks. Since Charlie’s girlfriend Diane (Daryl Hannah) has a baby on the way he must act fast to bring in some money. Paulie convinces him of a ‘great’ opportunity, which is to hire a former safecracker, now working as a clock repairman, Barney (Kenneth McMillan) to break-open a safe inside the building of a large company that reportedly has a large amount of money inside it. Charlie is cautious as he doesn’t completely trust Paulie whom he finds immature and unseasoned, but he’s so desperate that he reluctantly agrees. Things go smoothly at first, as they’re able to break into the building easily, but the unexpected arrival of undercover cop Walter (Jack Kehoe) soon sends their plans awry. When Walter dies during the melee they’re now on the hook for his death as well as in the bad graces of mob boss Eddie (Burt Young) who’s safe it was that they tried to rob. 

The film is based off of the 1979 novel of the same name by Vincent Patrick who also penned the screenplay. It does an excellent job of creating a vivid feel of Greenwich Village where it was shot on-location and the interactions of the characters seem overall authentic. The only real issue is the way it hinges of extreme Italian American stereotypes where it seems like anyone from that background must be involved in crime and if any other group was portrayed that way it would be deemed problematic if not downright controversial. The cliches are so strong that had it been heightened just a small degree it could’ve been deemed as parody, or even satire and in fact IMDb does list it as being a ‘comedy’ though I really don’t think that’s the case. I believe it’s meant to be a drama, but either way, for the sake of balance, it would’ve helped had there been some Italians even just one who didn’t fall into the tired caricatures. 

The acting is the crowning achievement. Roberts is superb and I really found it hard to believe he didn’t become a star from this. While he’s always been a great character actor I think he should’ve been given more and I do realize he’s still busy in the business and has been consistently, but I don’t think the quality of the parts has always been there and most filmgoers are probably more familiar with his sister Julia, which is a shame. I was completely blow away by him here and genuinely surprised why the Oscar didn’t fall into his lap.

Rourke is excellent too, but more because he wisely underplays his role and allows Roberts to carry all the emotional energy. Had they both been competing for it it would’ve failed, but their different approaches help create a nice contrast and sometimes it’s the best actors who don’t force it and for the most part that’s what Rourke does here. Of course, he too has his moments like when they go to the racetrack, and he bumps into a guy and instead saying ‘excuse me’ like a normal person he instead says, ‘out of my way asshole’. Him beating up on his refrigerator when Diane leaves him has a memorable quality to it though I would’ve thought the fridge would’ve been more damaged and he should’ve at the very least injured his hand, which strangely doesn’t occur despite him punching at it repeatedly.  

On the female end most accolades goes to Geraldine Page who got nominated for the supporting Oscar despite having only 8-minutes of screentime. She gives a powerful performance for her limited presence, but the idea that she could stymie police efforts to search her deceased son’s room by giving veiled threats that she’ll make them look bad in the media I didn’t totally buy. If cops want something bad enough, they’ll get it with the possible exception of money exchanging hands, which in this case didn’t happen. Hannah as the girlfriend has almost the same screentime, maybe a little more, and hits the bullseye as an idealistic young woman who believes she can somehow get her boyfriend to change only to learn the ultimate harsh lesson that it doesn’t work that way. 

Spoiler Alert!

The ending I felt was a letdown. I was actually intrigued with Charlie finding the tape from the deceased cop that implicated Eddie and seeing how he could use that to stay out of trouble for being a part of the robbery. Having Paulie then swoop in by putting lye into Eddie’s drink and poisoning him seemed too easy. Eddie had just gotten done having his men cut-off Paulie’s thumb, so he should expect Paulie would be looking for revenge and not naive enough to have him make his drinks, or if he does at least have one of his henchmen taste it first. You have to wonder how Eddie was able to climb up the crime ladder if he was that stupid and thus the climax really isn’t that clever, or surprising as the camera focuses up-close on the coffee cup making it too evident that something is going to happen. A letdown for a movie that had been relatively smart up until then.  

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 22, 1984

Runtime: 2 Hours

Rated R

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube, Tubi, PlutoTV

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Gangster Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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The Out-Of-Towners (1970)

Posted on January 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

outoftowners

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Travel plans go awry. 

George (Jack Lemmon) is set to have an interview in New York City for a possible job promotion with his company. He brings along his wife Gwen (Sandy Dennis) for what he hopes will be a fun-filled trip in which they can explore the new city they hope to eventually relocate in, but things don’t go as planned. Their flight is forced to circle JFK Airport for hours before it’s diverted to the Logan Airport in Boston and then requiring them to take a train ride back to the Big Apple causing them to arrive there very late. Once they do make it, they find their hotel reservations expired since they hadn’t thought to call or wire, to tell them to hold it. They’re then mugged, and while being escorted by police to a local armory, where they plan on spending the night, they become involved with two liquor store robbers who hijack the squad car they’re in and force them out into Central Park in the middle of the night. This then leads to several more calamities, but despite everything George manages to somehow make it to his interview on time, but when offered the position he’s now not so sure he wants to accept it. 

Originally writer Neil Simon was planning on using this concept as a segment to his 1968 play Plaza Suite, but since that play was already divided up into three other segments it was deemed too many and thus this one got thrown out. He then tried making it into its own stage play but realized it would require too many different set pieces and ultimately came to the conclusion it would work better as a movie. Unlike his other works this one does not rely on dialogue for its primary humor as instead the intended laughs come from the situations, but it’s more like a dumb comedy in that what occurs isn’t all that clever, or original and relies solely on the exasperated reactions of the characters. 

Some of it goes overboard particularly an underground gas explosion that blows a manhole cover that George is standing on into the air and temporarily causes him to lose his hearing, which I found quite disturbing. What’s worse is that the cover comes crashing down just inches from George’s head, which could’ve been fatal and was apparently a mistake as it was intended to go up only a few feet and thus it could’ve really killed him had it hit him, but being the trooper that Lemmon was he remained in character despite the issue. However, exploding gas lines don’t happen that often giving the film an unintended surreal quality, or a piling-on effect and for that reason I would’ve excised that segment completely from the movie. 

The characters aren’t that lovable especially George who comes-off as what would be called today as a female Karen, or ‘Kevin’ as he complains about everything right from the start making him obnoxious and annoying. Had the character shown a laid-back Midwestern mentality, since that’s where he’s from, and been more congenial about things, only to finally get exasperated at the very end as it built up, would’ve worked better as by that time the audience could’ve forgiven him after what they’ve been through, but having him be so quick tempered already at the beginning doesn’t allow for any character arch and having him constantly threaten to sue everyone who has wronged him quickly becomes redundant. Sandy Dennis is better as she takes things in more of a strident fashion and makes a healthy contrast to George. The small bit parts made-up of a recognizable B-list actors are fun though they should’ve been given more amusing things to say. 

Spoiler Alert!

The overall point of the story is muddled. Supposedly it’s a harsh assessment on New York, but the couple’s problems aren’t exclusive to the city as they have issues when they go to Boston and even on their plane ride back when it gets hijacked to Cuba making it seem more like a cursed trip versus a nightmare place. Taking potshots at NYC isn’t hard either as most people have complaints about it even those that have lived there for their whole lives making the premise too obvious. A much more original idea that could’ve given it a fresher perspective would’ve had the couple already living in New York, but tired of the crime and rundown urban conditions, so they decide to move to a small Midwestern town but find unexpected problems at every turn and thus return to the city where they conclude that despite the less-than-ideal elements they’re still better off. 

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 28, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated G

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Reg. B/2), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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