DIANE KEATON STARRING IN 'LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR'

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPF1aV0BEgGpHIzYHqfKdcbEgPbW9VV7I0sg86osyldcTaUrcvAgIvCz_g3UoTW4PepgEsdL3Wg6TTaA4zxXJMUCX5uoAxGGGtGildC0SjnQb4QYmPH1Z1kUFXUyyNTq4Ilael3uNJSy4/s1600/20543347555.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1239" data-original-width="1600" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPF1aV0BEgGpHIzYHqfKdcbEgPbW9VV7I0sg86osyldcTaUrcvAgIvCz_g3UoTW4PepgEsdL3Wg6TTaA4zxXJMUCX5uoAxGGGtGildC0SjnQb4QYmPH1Z1kUFXUyyNTq4Ilael3uNJSy4/s400/20543347555.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year: 1977 Cast: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger Score: ****</u></td></tr> </tbody></table> A movie that can make even the most jaded viewer dead silent as the end credits roll...<br> <br> Following the sexual exploits of a newly independent woman, played by Diane Keaton, beginning with an infidelity with her college professor then escalating into a wild singles scene that includes a hopped-up gigolo (Richard Gere), cocaine and a score of random sexual encounters...<br> <br> IN COLD BLOOD director Richard Brooks juggles Keaton's wild nightlife (featuring a creepy Tom Berenger), her day job as a deaf-school teacher, and her frustrating family squabbles with ease, sporadically glimpsing into her vividly morbid imagination as if it were really happening. And while many films about a character's escalation into an out of control lifestyle will have a message intact, Brooks brings the viewer so close to the madness it all seems normal somehow, making the odyssey more energetically adventurous than foreboding. Meanwhile, Diane Keaton (who won an Oscar for ANNIE HALL that same year) has never been so good, flawlessly mixing determination, sensuality, stubbornness and vulnerability. So no matter how callous you are as an exploitation cinema buff: This one <i>will</i> stick with you. <br>

diane keaton, drug culture, exploitation, neo noir, richard brooks, richard gere, seventies, thriller, tom berenger

DIANE KEATON STARRING IN 'LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR'

Year: 1977 Cast: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger Score: **** A movie that can make even the most jaded viewer dead silent as t...

LEFTOVER REVIEWS: AND SO IT GOES & PLANES 2

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi13ctDPPLkOqQMLZZ38JNaQXxdlacNiPoMM2As00i4I3t1yBhqsbuMWvD-M34z8RNrJRfJ0_PZkfxp4GIkVVbKuzJhY7ZCRkBOZRfsG6SIZPdW9b3vrMWqBcjj09BnNCw2TkjFbEl2INE/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi13ctDPPLkOqQMLZZ38JNaQXxdlacNiPoMM2As00i4I3t1yBhqsbuMWvD-M34z8RNrJRfJ0_PZkfxp4GIkVVbKuzJhY7ZCRkBOZRfsG6SIZPdW9b3vrMWqBcjj09BnNCw2TkjFbEl2INE/s1600/1.jpg" width="220" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 2014 rating: *</td></tr> </tbody></table> <span style="background-color: white;"><b>AND SO IT GOES:</b></span> In a way, the once worthy SPINAL TAP, PRINCESS BRIDE, STAND BY ME and MISERY director Rob Reiner has returned to his ALL IN THE FAMILY roots by making a film in which the main character, played by AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT Michael Douglas, is the type of racist, sexist, grumpy lug that, by the end, you’re supposed to embrace… Especially after reluctantly connecting with a young girl (where we enter the Meathead-free ARCHIE BUNKER'S PLACE territory)...<br /> <br /> But Oren Little, a cantankerous East Coast real estate mogul who lives in a dilapidated yet artistic apartment complex while trying to sell his mansion, is no Archie Bunker. Nor is he the kind of antagonistic protagonist that Jack Nicholson brought to life in AS GOOD AS IT GETS, a movie AND SO IT GOES tries desperately hard to imitate. <br /> <br /> Douglas isn't peripherally funny enough in his loathsome bickering, and the writing is disjointed and awkward, especially as we progressively learn of Oren's tragic back-story: either through his heroin-addicted son, faithful employees or the tenants inhabiting the outdoorsy complex, including and especially low rent lounge-singing Diane Keaton as Leah. Imagine if Annie Hall, now older, more content and still dreaming of a possible musical career, lacked the right romantic partner to make her quirkiness shine...  <br /> <br /> As a love interest, Keaton is wasted in a movie that promises a Rom-Com outlet for older viewers. With a barrage of forced blue humor and extremely uncomfortable sexual discussions, GOES doesn’t seem catered to its target audience, providing a vapid catharsis for the bland couple who have zero chemistry together, or with anyone else. Even when the lead plot is unburied… of Oren and Leah forced to take care of his granddaughter… the story, balancing clichés and frivolous bouts of contrived dialogue, leads absolutely nowhere.<br /> <br /> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsv5IY3keaF8CW3_9x-pR6x6ieOPBgEIZ0GzLR-p96el07DR9y8RHBQ4unM2VqcPeY53usAK5mQAyE1nky3C_i3HjMbqiy49HrdWrBsysFMxvGZDtUQTVvNhrRCz6Qymq1-D8WP_ER7v8/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsv5IY3keaF8CW3_9x-pR6x6ieOPBgEIZ0GzLR-p96el07DR9y8RHBQ4unM2VqcPeY53usAK5mQAyE1nky3C_i3HjMbqiy49HrdWrBsysFMxvGZDtUQTVvNhrRCz6Qymq1-D8WP_ER7v8/s1600/2.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 2014 rating: *1/2</td></tr> </tbody></table> <span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black;">PLANES 2</span></span>:</b></span></span> Any movie that has Erik Estrada providing the voice of a cocky helicopter as part of a nostalgic television show called “CHoPS” has to be worth something... <br /> <br /> Well PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE is a tad better than the original, PLANES, a CARS spinoff providing Disney a series of relatively low budget programmers for kids: Now taking the main character Dusty Crophopper, fresh from globetrotting race fame, to a new job as part of a fire rescue team, using his former dust-cropping skills for a worthy cause.<br /> <br /> Unfortunately, much of the story deals with Dusty having dull conversations with other cutesy machines, and little time is spent on the adventurous premise. Besides the one big rescue scene, reminiscent from any old school Irwin Allen disaster flick, it’s mostly a chance for our poorly-voiced hero (Dane Cook couldn't be more dull) and his new mentor, Blade Ranger, a has-been celebrity helicopter, to gripe about their pitiful lives... And this is supposedly catered to kids!<br /> <br /> From sneaking curse words into sentences to random pop culture references, children will not know enough to even scratch their heads about it. They just want colorful characters... who in this case, needed way more color...<br /> <br /> In a world without humans, perhaps next time we can find out who actually built the vehicles. The machines are cool enough, especially during action sequences, but as “people” they’re simply not that interesting.<br /> <div style="text-align: left;"> </div>

2014, diane keaton, disney, michael douglas, rob reiner, sequel

LEFTOVER REVIEWS: AND SO IT GOES & PLANES 2

year: 2014 rating: * AND SO IT GOES: In a way, the once worthy SPINAL TAP, PRINCESS BRIDE, STAND BY ME and MISERY director Rob Reiner h...

THE BIG WEDDING

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2qqfrBPWrXK3KWwdBuEJxc07oDmSZUZOkRl2rS2guZ-LQP94L4bhChFXoqZibHElUwbfJ7DY7bwr9IUNmQPQFdB1MxOZEE8tEbMN2YarZxtjM3fJghW4NfgVzmONlvXC2kFSDAytri3MD/s1600/The-Big-Wedding-04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2qqfrBPWrXK3KWwdBuEJxc07oDmSZUZOkRl2rS2guZ-LQP94L4bhChFXoqZibHElUwbfJ7DY7bwr9IUNmQPQFdB1MxOZEE8tEbMN2YarZxtjM3fJghW4NfgVzmONlvXC2kFSDAytri3MD/s640/The-Big-Wedding-04.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>year: </b>2013 <b>cast:</b> Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams<b> rating:</b> *</td></tr> </tbody></table> Robert De Niro’s character Don, whose son is about to get married, has a pretty good line in the beginning of THE BIG WEDDING, something having to do with marriage being liken to a phone call at night… First the ring, and then you wake up. Well here we have more of a message – an extremely familiar one at that –  spoken on a broken down answering machine.<br /> <br /> After about twenty frantic minutes of all the characters... including sons, daughters and girlfriends... bitching at each other incessantly, an actual "plot" surfaces: Don and his ex-wife Ellie, played by Diane Keaton, has to pretend to be married (BIRDCAGE, anyone?) in order to please their adopted son’s uptight catholic mother, who frowns on divorce. The first of many problems is simply: Who the heck cares about this woman anyway?<br /> <br /> Robert De Niro, relating back to that initial joke, phones in a lazy performance but his beard fits him well – you can say he looks better now, at the beginning of being legitimately old, than he did ten years ago as an aged version of his younger self.<br /> <br /> But his character's crass humor is more fitting to the young. Spouting Judd Apatow style sexual jokes is awkward and unfunny throughout this muddled mess of a romantic comedy, leading to that big wedding only lasting ten minutes before the film ends quickly.<br /> <br /> Well that was one prayer answered…

2013, diane keaton, katherine heigl, robert deniro, robin williams, romantic comedy, susan sarandon

THE BIG WEDDING

year: 2013 cast: Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams  rating: * Robert De Niro’s character Don, whose son is ...

DIANE KEATON IS LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJpf1eihCQFga-V503cTujO1b0YKDPHMa26RQMnDTw6JXNSm0btuKltIapB0PyEJAdrXSImVk4VFMHB0skwZo0t5W4C0TKa1LkQ9ngdYvlkaX-gJSVyHwlFEboS_5ICABKYebIHq2KsQ/s1600/lookingformrgoodbar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJpf1eihCQFga-V503cTujO1b0YKDPHMa26RQMnDTw6JXNSm0btuKltIapB0PyEJAdrXSImVk4VFMHB0skwZo0t5W4C0TKa1LkQ9ngdYvlkaX-gJSVyHwlFEboS_5ICABKYebIHq2KsQ/s1600/lookingformrgoodbar.jpg" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 1977 cast: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger rating: ****</td></tr> </tbody></table> A movie that can make even the most jaded viewer dead silent as the end credits roll... Following the sexual exploits of a newly independent woman beginning with an infidelity with her college professor then escalating into a wild singles scene that includes a hopped-up gigolo (Richard Gere), cocaine and a score of random sexual encounters, IN COLD BLOOD Director Richard Brooks juggles Keaton's wild nightlife, her day job as a deaf-school teacher, and her frustrating family squabbles with style and ease, sporadically glimpsing into her vividly morbid imagination as if it were really happening.<br /> <br /> Many films about a character's escalation into an out of control lifestyle will have a message intact, but Brooks brings the viewer so close to the madness it all seems normal somehow, making the odyssey more energetically adventurous than foreboding. Keaton has never been so good, flawlessly mixing determination, sensuality, stubbornness and vulnerability. So matter how callous you are as an exploitation cinema buff: This one <i>will</i> stick with you.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div>

diane keaton, richard brooks, richard gere, seventies

DIANE KEATON IS LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR

year: 1977 cast: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger rating: **** A movie that can make even the most jaded viewer dead silent as ...

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQudz1H1Y1rw3tpSYQ04ONwJDcU7_wzK_GwztXb2mRzV_XqtCnFUdGq6Vdiahbh7eMAJwHKf7KI9XBc398OJm3et8GgfxHS1Kwozg9wsEK8eJirsMqcAoV8i0ouanEhlM7Lv7duAJ6t5t/s1600/004710_27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQudz1H1Y1rw3tpSYQ04ONwJDcU7_wzK_GwztXb2mRzV_XqtCnFUdGq6Vdiahbh7eMAJwHKf7KI9XBc398OJm3et8GgfxHS1Kwozg9wsEK8eJirsMqcAoV8i0ouanEhlM7Lv7duAJ6t5t/s1600/004710_27.jpg" /></a></div> <b>title: </b>MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY<br /> <b>year: </b>1993 <br /> <b>cast: </b>Woody Allen, Diane Keaton<br /> <b>rating:</b> *<br /> <br /> This frantic comedy, released during the tumultuous tabloid scandal between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, is co-scripted by Marshall Brickman, Allen's writing partner for MANHATTAN and ANNIE HALL, the latter originally conceived as a murder mystery before reimagined as the rom-com we know and love, and here’s a double-whammy collaboration: Diane Keaton, Woody’s co-star/love interest during the seventies, also returns to the iconic director's canon. And the results are disastrous. Allen and Keaton play a THIN MAN “Nick and Nora” like couple who meet their elderly neighbors – a seemingly normal stamp collecting coot and his talkative wife. The wife dies and the husband doesn’t seem very jaded. Keaton, desperately attempting to ignite a dull script, investigates the possible murder, which at first seems a long shot. When she's not tailing the accused through New York, or teaming up with her charming playwright friend (Alan Alda), the film consists of tedious dialog between Allen and Keaton, whose chemistry is, to quote Alvy Singer in ANNIE HALL, “A dead shark.” Allen delivers flat one-liners like a sleepy clown after the circus has let out. And when the convoluted mystery's solved there’s still twenty minutes to figure out what exactly? Although the climax, <i>mirroring</i> Orson Welle’s THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI using clips of the famous Fun House sequence, is a clever twist, the rest is a failed class reunion. And even worse than the chicken at Tresky's.

alan alda, comedy, diane keaton, mystery, nineties, woody allen

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY

title: MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY year: 1993 cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton rating: * This frantic comedy, released during the tumult...

MRS. SOFFEL

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg45xkYMI7cVj-nJVBdXIwAgaMgZvK2IjrhnXln8t3UCcC79oWzICCDjRp19ucUWPxbr-WPwDldOgj1Y3v1v8xngQGTpQHBSf21RdIajvSmlcTENVSYSOtiqhKz4kG9vf1_SZG6C9hiTB8/s1600/mrs-s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg45xkYMI7cVj-nJVBdXIwAgaMgZvK2IjrhnXln8t3UCcC79oWzICCDjRp19ucUWPxbr-WPwDldOgj1Y3v1v8xngQGTpQHBSf21RdIajvSmlcTENVSYSOtiqhKz4kG9vf1_SZG6C9hiTB8/s640/mrs-s.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>year: </b>1984<b> cast:</b> Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Terry Quinn <b>rating:</b> ***</td></tr> </tbody></table> Somewhere between BADLANDS and DEAD MAN WALKING lies MRS. SOFFEL, a time-period melodrama about a warden’s Christian wife, played by a wistful Diane Keaton, who, while handing out bibles on death row, gets enamored with a slick, handsome folk hero, a young Mel Gibson soon to be hanged with younger brother Matthew Modine.<br /> <br /> Whether it’s true love, or the fact Gibson’s character (who sounds strangely like Eric Roberts) has a way of conning naïve women, the underlying passion between the polar opposites, with the gray prison bars between them, is an engaging buildup to the inevitable escape and, during the final act the trio: Keaton, Gibson and Modine, ride a sled through the snowy winter with Terry O’Quinn’s posse on their tail.<br /> <br /> The romantic aspect is somewhat thin – if Gibson resembled an everyman prisoner, would there be a film at all? But the direction, gorgeous cinematography and apt performances provide a spellbinding combination of style and substance, although there’s more of the first than the latter.

courtroom drama, diane keaton, eighties, matthew modine, mel gibson, prison, romance

MRS. SOFFEL

year: 1984 cast: Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Terry Quinn rating: *** Somewhere between BADLANDS and DEAD MAN WALKING li...