John Cassavetes

Gloria

Even a genre film looks different in the hands of writer-director John Cassavetes. In this one, he casts a wonderfully hard-boiled Gena Rowlands as the title character: a former Mob moll who picked up a few tricks along the way. She becomes the unexpected guardian of a young boy (John Adames) who has just seen his parents wiped out. Worse, the Mob is after him as well, seeking a book he has--and the overdue fine is a killer. Though Cassavetes lets his actors have a little too much rein, it pays off in the complex--and surprisingly funny--performance by Rowlands as an unlikely nanny who discovers that, though she is an unwilling bodyguard, she actually learns to care for the tough little guy she's trying to keep out of harm's way. --Marshall Fine

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/27/2008 Run time: 121 minutes Rating: Pg

A Woman Under the Influence

John Cassavetes's long, free-form drama is best appreciated as a good showcase for Gena Rowlands, playing a woman whose sanity literally appears to be shattering as different aspects of her personality eclipse others at various times. Peter Falk plays her struggling, blue-collar husband, trying to understand the phenomenon and sometimes losing his patience. As with most of Cassavetes's works as a director, one can't help but find one's attention drifting in and out (especially at two and a half hours), but Rowland's performance is a key reason the film has been declared a "national treasure" by the Library of Congress. --Tom Keogh

A tough-minded, moving film about a working-class housewife's mental breakdown caused by imposed social rules. This insightful study of sexual politics earned both Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes an Oscar nomination. Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, and Matthew Cassel.

Minnie and Moskowitz

"Before I met you, I thought I was in trouble," says moneyed museum worker Minnie (Gena Rowlands) to longhaired car park attendant Seymour (Seymour Cassel) over a hot dog and a coffee. Such is the basis of true love in Minnie and Moskowitz, a shaggy, unusually romantic comedy that is nonetheless pure John Cassavetes. After a long introductory sequence in which each character fills the screen with the rhythm of their respective lives, they meet when Seymour rescues Minnie from a blind date gone hopelessly bad. Minnie and Seymour have almost nothing in common--he's a talkative, spontaneous goof with quicksilver emotions, a dead-end job, and little ambition, she's a shy, insecure but sincere upper-class single in an abusive affair with a married man (an uncredited Cassavetes, insidiously charming and cruelly bullying). But they are both lonely romantics with a love of Bogart movies. As in most of Cassavetes's work, the script is less a story than a string of dramatic engagements colored with the quirks and emotional impulses of its characters, and he takes his time exploring the nooks and crannies of the volatile relationship. But amidst the shouting matches and frenzied fights are moments of quiet intimacy, and it turns into the most hopeful portrait of romantic love in the Cassavetes canon, complete with a sunny, uncharacteristically happy home movie ending. --Sean Axmaker

Big Trouble

The last film directed by John Cassavetes, Big Trouble reteamed some of the creators of the much funnier The In-Laws. But despite another script by Andrew Bergman, and a cast that reunited Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, this comedy doesn't live up to its predecessor. A spoof of Double Indemnity, the film casts Arkin as a nervous insurance agent faced with huge college tuition bills for a trio of sons headed for Yale. To make extra money, he gets involved in a scheme with a woman (Beverly D'Angelo) trying to kill her husband (Falk). That the whole thing turns out to be an adventure in insurance fraud shouldn't come as a surprise. Despite an inconsistent script, the chemistry between Arkin and Falk can still produce the occasional laugh. --Marshall Fine

Get set for Big Trouble and double indemnity when Peter Falk (TV's "Columbo") and Alan Arkin (The In-Laws) reunite as a wacky pair of insurance swindlers. Beverly D'Angelo (American History X Vegas Vacation) aids and abets the inspired lunacy in director John Cassavetes' riotous farce. The trouble and the laughs start when insurance man Leonard Hoffman (Arkin) decides to send his three sons to Yale. To raise cash Leonard gets drawn into a bizarre scheme by Steve Rickey (Falk) and his screwball wife Blanche (D'Angelo). But their plot to collect an "accidental" death policy gets sidetracked by a series of hilariously unforeseen twists. Can these unlikely allies pull off the sting before they get stung? Falk and Arkin pile up big laughs as they get deeper and deeper into Big Trouble!System Requirements:Running Time 93 MinsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 043396103627 Manufacturer No: 10362

Opening Night

Gena Rowlands stars in John Cassavetes's drama of an aging, alcoholic stage actress in the days leading up to her latest Broadway opening. Just barely keeping herself together, she cracks after a young fan is killed while running after her limousine, continuing to see visions of the woman. Hitting the bottle even harder while her friends turn their heads and haul her off to spiritualists, she finally staggers in, barely able to stand, for her opening night performance. Like all of her collaborations with her writer-director husband, Rowlands is a woman on the verge of collapse, this time a lonely alcoholic whose very life is a performance. Overlong at 144 minutes, the film's long, loose scenes build through uncomfortable small talk and slow, tentative confrontations. Some of the scenes are edgy and thrilling, though many find this facet of Cassavetes pretentious and self-indulgent. Ultimately it's a matter of taste: if you like his style, you'll love this discomforting drama. Joan Blondell costars as the sardonic but confident playwright and longtime Cassavetes star Ben Gazarra is Rowland's smiling but pitiless manager. Cassavetes has a small role as her self-contained costar, keeping to himself until forced to deal with her onstage in a finale that is either an inspired ad-lib or the loopiest climax to a Broadway drama ever written. --Sean Axmaker

Gena Rowlands plays a nervous actress on the brink of a breakdown as she prepares for the opening night of her Broadway play. The entire movie takes place in the few days prior to the opening and shows the backstage turmoil of a doomed production. Rowlands begins to fall apart when an adoring fan dies in an accident and she is forced to look hard at her life. Starring: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Joan Blondell, Ben Gazzara.

Shadows

When you consider that the big movies of 1960 were films such as Elmer Gantry and The Alamo, it's hard to imagine what people made of this, John Cassavetes's first independent feature. Improvised by the cast, shot in black and white, it looked like no other film of its time. Cassavetes, seeking to both deal with social issues and create a new kind of cinema, told a story about a family of black siblings in Manhattan trying to make ends meet. But one brother falls in with bad company, while the sister, who is trying to pass for white, gets involved in an interracial romance that ultimately crumbles when the white man she falls for discovers her true identity. Though it meanders at times, it features the kind of spontaneous emotion Cassavetes most wanted to elicit in his films. --Marshall Fine

Cassavetes' first independent feature depicts the struggle of three African-American siblings to survive in the mean streets of Manhattan. Hugh, a would-be jazz musician, looks after younger siblings Ben and Leila, who are light-skinned enough to pass for white. This seems to give them an advantage and more opportunities while Hugh must struggle by playing the trumpet in dive bars and strip joints. Shadows was made from a script entirely improvised by the cast, and heralded a vital new era in independent filmmaking. Starring: Hugh Hurd, Leila Goldoni, Ben Carruthers.

Faces

A sensation when it was released in 1968, this John Cassavetes film earned Oscar nominations for actors Seymour Cassel and Lynn Carlin. Improvised and shot in an edgy, hand-held fashion, the film examines the disintegration of the marriage of a couple in mid-life doldrums. Each seeks solace elsewhere: husband John Marley with prostitute Gena Rowlands, wife Carlin with a free spirit played by Cassel. But neither finds anything approaching the fulfillment they feel is missing from the marriage. Indeed, in Cassavetes's probe of raw emotions, these people discover that, just maybe, the problem lies not with their spouse but with themselves. You need to be a fan of Cassavetes's loose, actor-friendly style to appreciate this intriguing but sometimes rambling drama. --Marshall Fine

John Cassavetes' probing, relentless study of a middle-class married couple is regarded as the first American independent film to cross over to mainstream audiences. The film examines a seminal 36 hours in the life of Richard and Maria Frost, during which their 14-year relationship finally falls completely apart. John Marley, Gena Rowlands

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Anyone expecting The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to be an action-packed film about a gangland murder is going to be sorely disappointed--the title is the only commercial element in this fascinating character study by writer-director John Cassavetes, who once again finds his cinematic soulmate in actor Ben Gazzara. Doing for sleazy Hollywood strip-joints and underworld bullies what Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets did for the denizens of New York's Little Italy, the film uses verité technique to tell the story of Cosmo Vitelli (Gazzara), a strip-club owner whose growing debt to a local gangster (the chilling Morgan Woodward) can only be erased if he agrees to kill a rival Chinese gangster. Reluctantly, Cosmo carries out the job with startling efficiency.

As usual, Cassavetes employs his favorite actors (including Seymour Cassel and the fearsome Timothy Carey) and vivid improvisation to give Chinese Bookie a tense atmosphere of emotional urgency--the film's tone is one of keen desperation, as if we've been invited to witness Cosmo's dark night of the soul. Anyone who's unfamiliar with Cassavetes's style may find this film grating and impenetrable, but those in tune with the director's defiant independence will surely appreciate his emphasis on character, psychology, and revealing flashes of human behavior, captured on film as only Cassavetes could capture them. Watching this film, you can readily understand why Cassavetes has had such a steady influence on Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and a host of like-minded independent filmmakers. --Jeff Shannon

A small-time Los Angeles night club owner falls for a lavish invitation to gamble at a private club. After losing high stakes on extended credit, he is pressured by a gangster to erase his debt by killing a rival underworld power referred to only as "The Chinese Bookie." Ben Gazarra, Seymour Cassel

Big Trouble [Region 2]

The last film directed by John Cassavetes, Big Trouble reteamed some of the creators of the much funnier The In-Laws. But despite another script by Andrew Bergman, and a cast that reunited Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, this comedy doesn't live up to its predecessor. A spoof of Double Indemnity, the film casts Arkin as a nervous insurance agent faced with huge college tuition bills for a trio of sons headed for Yale. To make extra money, he gets involved in a scheme with a woman (Beverly D'Angelo) trying to kill her husband (Falk). That the whole thing turns out to be an adventure in insurance fraud shouldn't come as a surprise. Despite an inconsistent script, the chemistry between Arkin and Falk can still produce the occasional laugh. --Marshall Fine

A Woman Under the Influence [Region 2]

John Cassavetes's long, free-form drama is best appreciated as a good showcase for Gena Rowlands, playing a woman whose sanity literally appears to be shattering as different aspects of her personality eclipse others at various times. Peter Falk plays her struggling, blue-collar husband, trying to understand the phenomenon and sometimes losing his patience. As with most of Cassavetes's works as a director, one can't help but find one's attention drifting in and out (especially at two and a half hours), but Rowland's performance is a key reason the film has been declared a "national treasure" by the Library of Congress. --Tom Keogh