Tag Archives: Burt Young

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 Gambler (1974)

Posted on February 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

gambler

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Can’t control his addiction.

Axel (James Caan) is a college professor with a serious gambling addiction. He enjoys making bets on anything and everything whether it’s in a casino, over the phone betting on sports games, or out on the street playing one-on-one hoops with the neighborhood kids. No matter how much he loses he can’t stop from continuing the same pattern. When he owes $44,000 to the mob and they come looking for him and threatening his life he’s forced to ask his mother (Jacqueline Brookes) for the money and despite her disapproval she gives it to him out of her life savings, but then instead of paying off his debt he just uses it to gamble some more.

The screenplay was inspired by writer James Toback’s own life experiences and was initially written as a semi-autobiographical book before he decided to turn it into a script. The film is intriguing to a degree as gambling addiction is not anything that I’ve ever fully understood, so trying to fathom why some people would put up such huge sums of money to make a bet that they know they have a very good chance of losing, and even if they do lose will still continue to go on making bets anyways is baffling to me. Toback makes good efforts to try to explain the psych of a gambler’s mindset, which mainly gets revealed through Axel’s lectures to his class and at one point during a conversation with his bookie (Paul Sorvino) where he admits he could beat him with safe bets in competitions he was sure to win, but that this wouldn’t give him the same adrenaline rush, or ‘juice’, that placing a more riskier bet would.

Even with these explanations it still becomes gut wrenching watching him spiral out-on-control and dig himself deeper and deeper in a hole until you feel almost like turning away as it becomes genuinely painful, and frustrating, at seeing someone self-destruct the way this guy does. There are some very powerful moments including the scenes where the mother begrudgingly takes her money out of the bank to help him for fear he may lose his life if she doesn’t and her pained expression on her face as she does it really gets etched in your mind. Axel sitting in a bathtub listening to the final moments of a basketball game that he’s also bet big money on where the final score doesn’t go the way he wanted is also quite compelling.

The acting is strong with Caan giving a great performance that Toback originally wanted to go to DeNiro, who campaigned heavily for it, but director Karel Reisz choose Caan instead, only for Caan to state in later interviews that he hated working with him. Comedian London Lee, wearing an incredibly garish bowl haircut, is good in a very sleazy sort of way and Burt Young has a dynamic bit as an enforcer who tears up a lady’s apartment when her boyfriend is unable to repay what he owes. James Woods can be seen in a small role as a flippant bank teller though overall I still felt it was Brookes who steals it as the concerned mother and I was surprised she was not in it more nor that she didn’t get an Academy Award nomination as she really should’ve.

Despite a few powerful moments the pace is slow and there’s a lot of periods where it gets boring and nothing much happens. A lot of the blame goes to the fact that the main character has very little of an arch. He starts out already with the addiction gripping him and we can see what a problem it’s causing and the rest of the movie just continues to hit home this same point until it becomes redundant. It would’ve been better to have seen him before he had gotten into the whole gambling fix took over his life and personality, which would’ve created a far more interesting and insightful transition.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 51 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Karel Reisz

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984)

Posted on March 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

over1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hoping to buy restaurant.

Alby (Elliot Gould) is tired of slaving away as a cook at a small Brooklyn diner run by both he and his mother (Shelley Winters). He dreams of owning a swanky restaurant in downtown Manhattan and finds the perfect place, but he needs help with the financing. He goes to his rich uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar), who at first is reluctant to loan him the needed money, but eventually agrees. However, it comes with one big stipulation; Alby can get the money, but only if he ends his relationship with his live-in girlfriend Elizabeth (Margaux Hemingway), who his uncle has never liked since she’s not Jewish.

From the outset I internally groaned when I saw that it was produced by Cannon Pictures, which was notorious for making a lot of cheesy action flicks during the decade, but this one is approached differently. The script, by Arnold Shulman, who died at the young age of 48 before filming of his screenplay had even begun, is much more personal than the usual Cannon fodder as it delves into the close-knit, extended Jewish family who can be both a source of great support and hindrance.

I was happy too, at least initially, to see Hemingway get another shot at a co-starring role. She was a model, and granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, who broke into the movie scene with the controversial hit Lipstick, where she played a rape victim, which was too demanding of a part for someone with so little acting experience. This role here was more reasonable, but without sounding too harsh, I couldn’t stand her voice. Her famous sister Mariel has a very pretty sounding one, so why Margaux got stuck with such an unusually raspy one that belied her otherwise young age I didn’t understand. I know when I watched Lipstick, which was released 8 years earlier, her voice was only slightly raspy making me believe her smoking caused it to get worse and in my opinion the reason why her onscreen career never took-off.

Gould’s presence doesn’t help either. During the 70’s he was a cinematic counter-culture hero taking it to the establishment, but by the 80’s that persona was no longer in vogue, so he had to settle for benign, nice-guy parts, which is clearly not his forte. He tries hard, and at one point tells-off a few people in semi-classic Gould-style, but for the most part he’s quite boring. His attempt to portray a 36-year-old even though he was actually 45 doesn’t quite work and there’s no explanation for why this frumpy guy with a limited income is able to snare such a young, good-looking babe.

Winters, who seems born to play the meddling, overly-protective Jewish mother, which she did to great success in Next Stop, Greenwich Village, but here her character is too subdued making her presence transparent. Ceasar is a surprise. After his work in the 50’s TV-show ‘Your Show of Shows’ his later parts couldn’t quite match his unique talents, but he scores both on the comedy and drama end here. Carol Kane is a delight as she courts Gould and talks breathlessly about philosophy as she hurriedly walks in a New York subway and then later at her place reveals some very bizarre sexual fetishes. Burt Young has some very funny scenes too as Gould’s cynical friend who doesn’t shy away from expressing his low opinion of marriage.

The story though is too simple for such an a relatively long runtime and by the second-half becomes strained. The idea that Gould had such a great relationship with Hemingway as the movie wants us to believe is dubious as she immediately dumps him the second his uncle tells her to leave him and then callously throws Gould out of the apartment instead of being honest and telling him about her meeting with the uncle and then talking it out like a truly close couple would. Later when Gould, who still doesn’t understand why the break-up happened, calls her to get an explanation and try to make amends, she coldly hangs-up making it seem like he was way more into her than she was into him and thus causing this to be a weak romance instead of a strong one.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 2, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Menahem Golan

Studio: Golan-Globus Productions

Available: VHS, DVD-R

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

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Lookin’ to Get Out (1982)

Posted on June 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

looking1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hiding out in Vegas.

Alex (Jon Voight) is a high stakes gambler in debt for $10,000. Joey and Harry (Allen Keller, Jude Farese) work with the syndicate and when they come around to collect their debt from Alex he escapes out of the city with his pal Jerry Feldmen (Burt Young) where they go to Las Vegas in hopes of recouping the money by playing blackjack. Alex employs the services of Smitty (Bert Remsen), an expert card counter, to help him at the dealer table, but just as he and Jerry think they’ve got their situation solved Joey and Harry reappear and chase the two through the hotel demanding that the debt be repaid immediately.

The script was written by Al Schwartz who based it on some of his own life experiences as he struggled to make it in the entertainment world. While working as the business manager to singer/songwriter Chip Taylor he showed him the script to get his opinion and Chip suggested that Al send it to Jon Voight, Chip’s brother, and when Jon read it he purportedly ‘fell in love with it’ within the first 30 pages. The story is a bit different as the situations itself aren’t necessarily funny, but instead it relies on the desperate nature of the characters and the way they interact with each other for its humor.

It was filmed at the MGM Grand Hotel, which at 6,852 rooms is the largest single hotel in the United States and third largest in the world. The ambience of the place is well captured and reminded me of the atmosphere of a lot of casinos I’ve stayed at where everyone is looking to ‘get lucky’ while in the process living very much on the edge. Having the plot that place over only a two-day period nicely reflects how gamblers live for the moment without any concern for either the past or future. It’s all just about the risk and excitement of beating the odds, which on that level, the film captures admirably well.

The acting helps, particularly from Voight who gives a souped-up rendition of his more famous Joe Buck character from Midnight Cowboy, playing a clueless schmuck who believes he can con his way out of anything and it’s also great seeing him share a scene with his real-life daughter Angelina Jolie, who at age 4 makes her film debut, appearing briefly as Alex’s daughter near the end and to date has been the only project that the two have done together. Young is also quite good as his more sensible friend and to an extent that he becomes the person the audience connects with. Remsen has a few key moments too playing a character that initially seems insignificant to the story, but slowly begins to have a much more meaningful presence by the end. As a buddy formula it works, but throwing in Ann-Margaret as Alex’s former girlfriend who comes back into his life, doesn’t gel and she should’ve been left out.

The foot chase where Alex and Jerry try to outrun Joey and Harry by dashing throughout the hotel is the film’s single best moment and I was impressed with how unlike other movie chases scenes there were no jump cuts and you can visually follow the action even as it shifts between different rooms. The other segments though get overly drawn-out. While his trademark was a slower, more subtle pace, which worked in his previous movies, director Hal Ashby would’ve been wise to have paired this one down. The plot isn’t intricate enough to justify the long runtime and a 90-minute version would’ve been ideal. The original theatrical cut was 105 minutes, which had issues too, but the longer director’s edition isn’t perfect either and in this instance less definitely would’ve been more.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 8, 1982

Runtime: 2 Hours (Director’s Cut)

Rated R

Director: Hal Ashby

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Dry Humor, Movies with a Hotel setting

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Back to School (1986)

Posted on April 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rodney goes to college.

Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) is a successful businessman who runs a national chain of clothing stores despite having never attained a degree. Now his son Jason (Keith Gordon) is attending a university, but he feels like dropping out. Thornton though doesn’t want to let him, so he decides to attend college with him in order to inspire him to remain in school.

The film would’ve been far more interesting had Rodney been poor and struggling to better himself by finally going back to school, which is much more relatable since many adults do this all the time. Making him already wealthy saps the potential drama and reality right out of the story making it more like a game that he is playing with no real consequence. He doesn’t even take any of his studying seriously, so the idea that he is at least broadening his intellect fails here too. The side-story dealing with him being a world class diver is equally ridiculous as this out-of-shape, beer guzzling, 65-year-old man looks like someone who would barely be able to run half a block before dropping dead of a heart attack let alone achieving any sort of complex dive that no one else could do.

Casting Adrienne Barbeau as his shrewish wife was a mistake as she lacks comic ability making the barbs that she trades with him unfunny and what’s a young and beautiful woman doing married to a homely dope like Rodney anyways? Okay, so Rodney’s character here has money and that’s why she married him, but that plays completely against his stand-up persona where he portrayed himself as being this loser that got no respect. The wife should’ve been a female version of Rodney looks-wise while also a nag and thus heightening the stakes for the character to go back to school and succeed. Having him later fall in love with his beautiful English professor played by Sally Kellerman makes even less sense as the two had intellectually nothing in common.

Keith Gordon is boring as Rodney’s son and having the story go off on a tangent dealing with his romance with a pretty coed (Terry Farrell) is derivative and should’ve been avoided as the film is only amusing when Rodney is in it and dull otherwise. Gordon also looks nothing like Rodney and it’s confusing why exactly he’s not ‘fitting-in’. Casting some fat, bulging eyed guy to play a young version of Rodney would’ve been funnier while also making his social ostracism more understandable.

Burt Young’s character adds to the already weird quasi-surreal atmosphere by playing Rodney’s chauffer who despite being out-of-shape, short and middle-aged just like Rodney he somehow also possess super human strength and able to beat-up and even intimidate much younger, more muscular guys. It was like there was no motivation at all by the writers to actually tell a story that made sense and they were simply throwing in any gag that they thought up and hoping some would stick.

Robert Downey Jr. as an eccentric socialist student was the only supporting character I liked, but he is not in it enough. The script should’ve had him rooming with Rodney and examining how these two very different personalities could get along while getting rid of the son character completely. Then we might’ve had a character driven comedy that was worth watching. The film though as it gets done here is too transparent and despite being filmed on-location at the University of Wisconsin in Madison poorly reflects the actual college experience and will remind no one that has attended college of what college life is really like.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 13, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Alan Metter

Studio: Orion Pictures

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, College Life, Movies with Nudity, Sports Movies

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Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

Posted on October 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Their son becomes possessed.

A family moves into the infamous home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York only to immediately start encountering paranormal events. Their eldest kid Sonny (Jack Magner) begins to display anti-social tendencies that eventually drive him to kill the entire family late one night. The family’s Priest Father Adamsky (James Olson) is convinced that Sonny did it because he was possessed from evil spirits that inhabit the home due to it being built on an ancient Indian burial ground and he takes it upon himself to perform an exorcism on the young man in order to free him of the demon.

The film is loosely based on the events of the DeFeo family, who lived at the residence, and was murdered by their eldest son on the night of November 13, 1974. However, the film deviates from what actually occurred including having the family just recently moved in when in reality the DeFeo’s had lived there for 9 years before they were killed. The film also portrays the family members as being awake and aware of what was going on when evidence had shown that most of them had been asleep when shot. There’s also a side-story dealing with a sexual relationship that Sonny had with his sister Patricia (Diane Franklin) that was only speculated never confirmed to have occurred with the real family.

This movie is only a slight improvement from the first one. Director Damiano Damiani manages to instill more of an atmosphere and uses fast moving tracking shots to create a point-of-view perspective of the demons. Also, James Olson plays the Priest role better than Steiger did in the first one by being less hammy and more understated, which is good.

Yet I still found the whole thing to be quite boring. The first half-hour is just a rehashing of many of the same scares that were done in the first one and we all know from the beginning how it’s all going to turn out, that the son will inevitably kill the family, so there’s no intrigue at all. The final half hour deals solely with the exorcism, which despite some decent special effects, is nothing more than a Grade B rip-off of The Exorcist.

There’s a lot of overacting too just like in the first one. Rutanya Alda, who plays the mother, is the biggest culprit in this area, which includes her death scene that deserves to be in the annals of all-time cheesiest death sequences ever put onto film. I was also confused why such an otherwise normal, well-adjust woman would want to marry a lout like Burt Young and having her show affection to him not more than a couple minutes after he had abused both her and the kids with a belt is misguided.

On the technical end the film seems to be done on a higher budget than the first, but the script is empty-headed and relies heavily on broad generalizations involving religion and ‘evil’. I also found it amusing that, like in the first installment, there’s a scene were the Priest tries to convince his church elders about the home being haunted and they scoff and insist that isn’t ‘rational’ when these same men have dedicated their lives to a profession steeped in supernatural, faith based claims.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: September 24, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Damiano Damiani

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2), Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Horror, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sequels

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Blood Beach (1981)

Posted on October 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

blood-beach-1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Beachgoers get sucked away.

Something is lurking beneath a Southern California beach and it’s not human. People and even animals are being sucked underneath the sand and disappearing, never to be found again. Lifeguard Harry (David Huffman) tries to do some investigating while starting up a relationship with the daughter (Marianna Hill) of one of the victims, but his efforts prove futile, so the police are called in, but do no better.

One of the nice things about this movie is that unlike most other horror films from that era it actually has a pretty decent budget and distinctive music score. The beach location, which was filmed at Santa Monica, makes for a pleasant diversion from the usual horror settings and the one thing I came away liking most about the movie.

Huffman, who ended up becoming a homicide victim himself in real-life only a few years after this was filmed, is bland to the point of being completely forgettable. However, the much more talented supporting cast gives the film some life. John Saxon is great as a brash and gruff police captain. Burt Young and Otis Young are amusing as police detectives with completely contrasting styles with Otis playing an amusing extension to the character that he did in The Last Detail where he tries earnestly to reel in his more undisciplined partner.

The film’s weak point is the second act that stalls without enough new twists being brought in. Seeing people constantly being swallowed up by the sand becomes monotonous and it takes way too long before we finally get an understanding to what is causing it. The film also has some quick cutaways showing what happens to the people once they are underneath the sand, which looks like it was spliced in from a cheaper film stock with tacky special effects that may simply be a product of the ‘Complete and Uncut’ version that I saw, but should’ve been avoided.

The attempt at doing a Jaws formula storyline on land instead of the water doesn’t work and only helps make the original seem all that much better. Had this been done as a parody might’ve helped it.

Spoiler Alert!

The biggest letdown is the ending that never fully explains what this creature is and only gives the viewer a brief glimpse of it during the film’s last few minutes, which is disappointing. The story then goes full circle by showing the sand ready to swallow up more unsuspecting beachgoers while making the viewer feel like they’ve wasted 90 minutes of their time watching a film that doesn’t progress anywhere.

End of Spoiler Alert!

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: January 28, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes (‘Complete’ cut)

Rated R

Director: Jeffrey Bloom

Studio: Compass International Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Outdoors, Police Drama

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