Tag Archives: Vincent Gardenia

Skin Deep (1989)

Posted on May 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

skin3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Womanizer tries to rehabilitate.

Zach (John Ritter) is a successful, best-selling author, but hasn’t written a novel in quite awhile and his constant philandering has gotten his wife Alex (Alyson Reed) to leave him. Depressed about his circumstances he becomes an alcoholic, but uses the advice of his kindly bartender (Vincent Gardenia) to try and win her back, but finds fighting his hedonistic urges to be challenging.

This marked Blake Edwards fourth film dealing with the mid-life crisis issue that started with 10 in 1979 and was followed up with S.O.B. in 1981 and then That’s Life in 1986. All four had a similar setting (Malibu/Hollywood) and involved middle-aged men at a crossroads in their career/marriages. When 10 came out it was considered ‘fresh’, but by 1989 the storyline was becoming quite redundant and came-off looking like Blake’s creative well had run dry. Edwards also exposes himself as being too entrenched in the Hollywood scene and out-of-touch with the middle-class lifestyle as Zach is never in any type of financial distress despite a career lull and having his mansion burn down (he wasn’t able to collect on the insurance money due to it being caused by arson) and yet still able to stay at posh beach houses and luxury hotels. In the end his only concern is his insatiable appetite for hot women, which ultimately comes-off as plastic problems for plastic people.

The women look too much alike, including Chelsea Field, who plays Amy and Jean Marie McKee who is Rebecca. Both of these women were brunettes, the same age, and with similar hairstyles and when seeing them from behind I thought they were the same person. Zach also states that he loves ‘all women’, but only beds the hot ones. The film tries to make-up for this by having him have a sexual encounter with a female bodybuilder (Raye Hollitt), but overall they still end up looking too much like the caricature of a Hollywood Hooker.

Even Ritter, as engaging as he usually is, flops here. A lot of it has to do with his beard, which I hated. I suppose they wanted him to look different from his more famous Jack Tripper character, but turning him into an image resembling the guy on the packages of Brawny paper towels wasn’t it. Since his character does go through a transition they should’ve had him start-out clean-shaven and then as his life goes into turmoil gotten the beard only to shave it off once things returned to normal.

Zach’s incessant whining at trying to win his wife back is what really got on my nerves the most. She was right to walk out on him and he didn’t deserve a ‘do-over’. Besides not everyone is going to find happiness in a committed relationship and, even though this might’ve been ahead-of-its-time for 80’s audiences, an alternative lifestyle would’ve been a better fit like having him get into polyamory, or sex workers. As mentioned the women all looked like hookers anyways and since he seemed to have a boundless cache of cash he could’ve easily afforded them.

I did like the glow-in-the-dark condom scene, which is the film’s only funny moment and happens at the 50-minute mark. Gardenia as the intuitive bartender is amusing too and I didn’t think there was any need for Zach to see an actual therapist as the bartender’s advice was just as good and much less costly.

There are a few bits that have not aged well including Zach’s penchant for kissing a bar maids without her consent and with him sitting on a small dog and seemingly killing it. Overall, I found it superficial and trite and the only successful thing about it is that it lives up to its title.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Release: February 28, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Movies with Nudity

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Jenny (1970)

Posted on February 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

jenny

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: An unmarried, pregnant woman.

Jenny (Marlo Thomas) is a young woman living in New York City who has a one night stand with a man engaged to be married and ends up getting pregnant. She fears the stigma of being an unwed mother, so when she meets Delano (Alan Alda), a struggling filmmaker who wants to marry in order to avoid the draft, she agrees. The marriage of convenience does not start out well as living together brings out all of their differences, but the closer they get to the delivery date the stronger their bond to each other grows.

This was intended to be a breakout role for Marlo, who was still doing her TV-show ‘That Girl’ at the time and filmed this while on hiatus from that one. She was hoping this would be the first of a long line of starring vehicles for her and even precipitated the ending of her series two years later in order to be available to do more movies, but the offers never came. One of the main reasons is that the movie did not do that well either at the box office, or critically. Much of the blame could be given to the limp storyline that acted like the social mores of 1939 were still intact in 1969 where having a baby without a husband would be considered ‘scandalous’ even though it was the height of the hippie movement where lovemaking outside of marriage had become the new trendy thing making this film very dated even before it was ever released.

The film should’ve been titled ‘Delano and Jenny’ as Alda’s performance is the one thing that manages to hold it together. He’s best known for playing Hawkeye in the TV-show ‘M*A*S*H’ where he was a touch-feely, sensitive 70’s guy, but here he’s character is quite self-centered and volatile. Yet this is the one thing in the movie that’s interesting. Marlo’s performance on the other-hand ends up being one-note. Watching her big, brown eyes show a constant look of pain and sadness becomes too excessive and too redundant.

The supporting players help a little. Marian Hailey plays Delano’s world-wise, jaded lover, which is a far cry from the nerdy, nasally sounding, neurotic character that she was in the cult hit Lovers and Other Strangers. Vincent Gardenia and Elizabeth Wilson, who play Jenny’s parents, also played another married couple that very same year in the movie Little Murders. The scene where everyone takes a look at a cabinet full of teeth that Jenny’s father had made during his career, as he was a dental prosthetist, and had encased in the middle of his living room did offer a rare funny moment, but the camera should’ve done a close-up on the dentures as he described them instead of  having the viewers only see it from a distance.

The first half is surprisingly watchable as it brings out the inevitable realities that would occur when simply marrying for convenience, but having the film shift to a love story at the end doesn’t jive. These two had so little in common it didn’t seem possible that they could’ve fallen in love even if they had wanted to. Jenny’s character needed to be better fleshed out as well. She comes-off as shy and cautious and yet is brazen enough to hop into bed with a guy engaged to someone else, which is a scene we needed to see played-out instead of only discussed in passing later.

Spoiler Alert!

When the nurse brings in the infant as Jenny and Delano sit in the hospital room was the one moment I thought there might be a surprise as the baby looked from the back to be African American and from the front to be Asian even though apparently he was neither. I was hoping that it was as that would’ve been something that that neither the moody Delano nor the viewer would’ve expected and helped given this otherwise sterile story the edgy twist that it needed.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: January 2, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes

Rated M

Director: George Bloomfield

Studio: Cinerama Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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Fire Sale (1977)

Posted on January 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Burn down the store.

Benny Fikus (Vincent Gardenia) is the elderly owner of a struggling clothing store, who has decided the only way to recoup costs will be to have it burn down and then collecting money on the fire insurance policy. He has convinced his mentally ill brother Sherman (Sid Caeser), who still believes that WWII is happening, that the store is really a front for the Nazi Headquarters and thus motivating Sherman to destroy it. To make his alibi iron-clad Benny takes a trip with his wife Ruth (Kay Medford) to Florida when the arson is expected to occur. During the trip Benny has a heart attack causing his son Russell (Rob Reiner) to take over the business. When he realizes that the place is bankrupt he decides to cash-in the fire insurance policy and use those funds to help regenerate the place. When Benny recovers from his heart attack and realizes what Russell’s done the two, along with Russell’s older brother Ezra (Alan Arkin), go on a mad dash to stop Sherman from setting the fire before it’s too late.

It’s hard to imagine just how badly botched this thing is as I approached it with high expectations. Arkin had already directed the brilliant Little Murders, which is one of the best dark comedies ever made. Robert Klane, who wrote the screenplay and book of the same name that the movie is based on, had also 6 years earlier written the screenplay for Where’s Poppa?, another cult masterpiece. So, with those great films already under the filmmaker’s belts you’d expect good things from this and yet it’s pretty awful right from the beginning.

The main problem is that there’s no running theme. Little Murders centered around the isolating effects of urbanization and Where’s Poppa? dealt with the harsh realities of caring for elderly parents.  This film though has no point to it. Lots of sloppy, slapdash comedy as director Arkin and writer Klane seem more concerned with getting a cheap laugh than telling a story. The sets have no cinematic style making it look better suited for a low-grade sitcom. The score by Dave Grusin, is too generic with overtones more on-par with a cartoon. A good movie should have music that is distinct and matches the tone of the script, which this one doesn’t.

I’ve always considered Reiner the weakest link from the classic ‘All in the Family’ TV-show and while his talents have been much better served as a director this movie was made when producers were still trying to turn him into a star, but the attempt fails. That only thing that he does that could be considered ‘comical’ is the running joke of him going into wheezing fits from his asthma every times he gets stressed-out, which gets overdone. He shares no chemistry with Arkin and they’re too far apart in age to be a believable brotherly pair.

Anjanette Comer, who was married to Klane at the time this was filmed, gets wasted in a thankless bit as Arkin’s beleaguered wife and the scene where she tries to commit suicide by locking herself inside a refrigerator is pointless because it never shows how she got rescued. Caeser as the would-be arsonists relies too heavily on  zany slapstick that is inconsistent in tone with the rest of the film.

Medford, as Arkin’s and Reiner’s put-upon mother, is alright, but the person that impressed me most was Gardenia whose frantic, over-the-top delivery as the exasperated father/business owner is quite good and his energy, even though he is not the star, helps propel the film. He’s even good when he’s in a comatose state and doesn’t move at all. I was particularly amazed during a segment where Reiner and Arkin crawl over him during an altercation and Arkin accidently kicks him in the head, but Gardenia does not flinch and remains very much in character.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 9, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Alan Arkin

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R (Fox Cinema Archives)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Movies Based on Novels, Sports Movies

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Death Wish II (1982)

Posted on February 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Architect becomes vigilante again.

Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has recovered from his traumatic loss of his family from 8 years earlier and is now living in L.A. where he continues his work as a successful architect. One day while taking his new girlfriend Geri (Jill Ireland) and cationic daughter Carol (Robin Sherwood) to a fairground he gets robbed of his wallet by a gang of 5 thugs (Thomas F. Duffy, E. Lamont Johnson, Kevin Major Howard, Laurence Fishburne, Stuart K. Robinson). They use the address on Paul’s driver license to find his home and invade it while he is away. There they rape and kill his maid (Silvana Gallardo) and then when Paul returns they knock him out while kidnapping his daughter who they take back to their ‘hideout’. While there they attempt to gang rape her and in her effort to escape she’s impaled on a fence and dies. This sets in motion for Paul to return as a vigilante this time prowling the underground neighborhoods of L.A. where he’s motivated to shoot each of the 5 gang members who participated in the crime.

The film is less like a sequel and more just a slight variation from the original. Having to go through yet another home invasion/rape sequence, which is almost shot-for-shot the exact same as in the first installment (if even more exploitive) is mechanical to the extreme and an insult to the viewer. It’s like a TV-station promising their audience a new episode of their favorite series only to end up showing them a rerun instead. The story should’ve evolved more perhaps having Paul now becoming a ‘professional vigilante’ and being hired by people to track down the killers of their loved ones or at least something that would’ve taken the theme in a slightly different angle.

There continues to be the issue, like in the first film, of why does Chuck constantly get marked by these hoodlums for harassment anyways. For instance at the fairground there’s many other people milling  around and yet for some reason it’s Bronson, this very nondescript middle-aged man, that becomes their target.

The recasting of the daughter role is another problem. In the first film she was played by Kathleen Tolan and portrayed as being an adult married woman. Here though the character has regressed back to being a teenager and looking to be no older than 18 if even that.

To some degree on a sleazy B-level it actually hits-the-spot the soundtrack is done by former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and it is perfect especially the strained, loud electric guitar chords that effectively reflect the film’s dark, grimy mood. Most of the locales were filmed in actual buildings that were abandoned and in crime-ridden areas forcing the cast to require 20 off-duty police guards for protection. There’s even a scene featuring large squealing rats roaming around at the character’s feet as they say their lines.

The fact that Paul hunts down the actual perpetrators of the crime is on an emotional level satisfying, but it also becomes a logistical problem as it’s just not believable that he’d be able to find them all at random times, one-by-one simply by going to the city’s ‘bad areas’. I was also flabbergasted that in a later scene when Paul returns home from shopping and after dealing with his home being invaded now twice by crooks he doesn’t bother to lock the door once he gets inside, which you would think would be the first thing done each and every time!

The one interesting aspect that could’ve helped the film stand-out was the reintroducing of Vincent Gardenia who played the NYC police chief Frank Ochoa who tracked down Kersey in the first film and does the same here, but not to  arrest him, but instead to kill him. This could’ve created more tension had it been played out effectively as Kersey would constantly have to watch his back for an attack while simultaneously attacking the thugs when he came upon them. Unfortunately this side-story dies before it gets going when Ochoa gets kill just as he decides to help Kersey, which in itself could’ve been an intriguing odd couple-like pairing.

The ending  jumps-the-shark by having Kersey disguise himself as a doctor so that he can infiltrate a mental hospital in order to kill the last of the thugs who now resides there. This segment though becomes more like a scene from one those cheap horror movies with an asylum setting and not like an action flick at all.

The credibility gets seriously strained too by having Kersey constantly coming into contact with regular citizens who always conveniently side with him when it is most needed and thus helping him escape the clutches of the authorities. Sure this might happen every once in a while, but eventually he would confront someone who sees things differently, which all helps to make this film too dumb to take seriously, but slick enough to appease those looking for nothing more than simple-minded action.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 19, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Winner

Studio: Filmways

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Bronson/Ireland, Cult, Exploitation, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Rape/Revenge, Sequels

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Death Wish (1974)

Posted on February 26, 2018 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Architect becomes a vigilante.

In connection with the Eli Roth/Bruce Willis reboot that is set to be released to theaters this Friday I thought now would be a good time to go back and take a look at the original. The story centers on Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) who works as an architect and lives a comfortable life with his wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and adult daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan). One day while he is at work his New York apartment gets invaded by three thugs (Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Logan, Gregory Rozakis) who kill his wife and rape his daughter. Paul becomes outraged that the police can’t seem to make any headway on the case and decides to take matters into his own hands by becoming a self-styled vigilante shooting random thugs on the street late at night, which in turn has him becoming a cult hero to the many residents of the crime ridden city.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Brian Garfield. Garfield was inspired to write the story after his car got vandalized. He initially fantasized about tracking down the criminals and killing them before eventually speculating what would happen if someone actually went through with these feelings and decided to take the law into their own hands. The main difference between the novel and film is that in the book the vigilantism becomes more of the problem while in the movie it’s considered the solution.

Many critics at the time gave the film unfavorable reviews as they felt it advocated violence, but I found the movie to have a certain uplifting quality. While the message is certainly simplistic and one-sided it still nicely conveys the idea that ordinary citizens can make a difference and it is up to us, the American public, to foster change and not to simply leave it up to someone else. The film doesn’t completely promote violence as the solution either as there is one scene where an old lady (Helen Martin) scares off her attacker simply by using her hat pin.

The problem that I had with it was why does Bronson constantly get harassed by these thugs in the first place? Whether he is at a restaurant or on the subway the bad guys constantly hone in on him for no apparent reason even when there’s plenty of other people around. In the book it made more sense because the title character would intentionally set traps for the thugs like abandoning his car and putting an ‘out of gas’ sign on it, so the criminals would try to rob the vehicle and then when they did he’d shoot them. Of course this would make the character’s motives more questionable, which the film wanted to avoid, but in the process it becomes less believable.

While this has become Bronson’s signature role it still would’ve worked better had a less brawny actor played the part. In the book the character is a meek accountant and someone like Jack Lemmon, who was originally considered for the role, would’ve been a more authentic fit. Bronson’s image is so entrenched as a ‘tough guy’ that his presence here seems like just another of his action themed vehicles. Chuck should’ve also not known how to use a gun right away either and maybe even been initially clumsy with it as it would’ve made the character arch from peaceful novice to sharp shooting vigilante stronger.

I liked Michael Winner’s directing particularly the way he shot the interiors of the apartments and his grimy portrayal of the urban New York setting that perfectly played-up the city’s crime ridden paranoia at the time. This is also a great chance to see some young performers before they were famous including Christopher Guest as a patrolman. I also found it amusing that Paul Dooley and Vincent Gardenia share a brief scene together as they both went on to play the dad character in Breaking Away. Dooley portrayed him in the movie version while Gardenia played the part in the short live TV-series.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Winner

Studio: Paramount

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Classic, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Police Drama

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Little Murders (1971)

Posted on July 12, 2013 | 4 comments

little murders

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review:  They shoot at people.

Patsy (Marcia Rodd) is a woman who practices the art of positive thinking despite her dismal urban surroundings. She meets Alfred (Elliot Gould) who is very detached and dropped out of society and no longer shares any hope in humanity, but she decides to marry him anyways and ‘reform’ him.

For a black comedy this one has got to be tops. It stays on a grimly humorous level from the beginning and doesn’t let up especially with its wicked ending. Everything gets the offbeat treatment and if it starts out conventional it is soon turned upside down until it is absurd. The funniest scenes involve Patsy taking Alfred home to meet her parents where things become very odd until they are absolutely hilarious. The wedding scene is also a classic where Donald Sutherland plays a hippie minister and gives a speech about masturbation that is as outrageously funny today as it was back then. Yet it is the surreal scene of seeing Alfred riding a subway car while dripping with blood and nobody saying anything that leaves the strongest impact. The targets that this film satirizes are just as potent today as they were back then. The film also manages to dig a bit deeper than most and successfully analyzes the myriad of societal complexities while not siding with any particular social movement or philosophy.

Rodd is terrific in her film debut and Gould is good in a surprisingly restrained performance. Jon Korkes is also excellent as an infantile adult son in an over-the-top send-up of grown children still living at home. However, it is Vincent Gardenia that ultimately steals it playing a hard-liner conservative father who finds himself becoming literally imprisoned by the increasingly insane world around him.

Although still potent this outrageous story seems to have lost some of its zing through the years and doesn’t seem to be as offbeat or ‘out there’ as it once did. It also lacks any type of cinematic flair and at times seems to be nothing more than a filmed stage play.

However, for fans of black comedy and relics of a bygone era it doesn’t come much better than this. Although it has softened a bit there are still enough bizarre and funny moments to please those with an acquired taste.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: February 9, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 50Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alan Arkin

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD

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

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