Your quintessential male-menopause tale, subtitled "a comedy about life, death, and freedom," by John Cassavetes. Three buddies, gathered for the funeral of their inseparable fourth, are asked to face up to their own mortality, but instead go off on an extended bender -- all the way to London. Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and Peter Falk, buddies to some degree in real life too, are a sufficiently congenial trio to function well under director Cassevetes's loose rein (but tight camera). Some of the seemingly interminable scenes capture to perfection the tempo and tone of forced celebration, perhaps because forced improvisation has something in common with it. Others, inevitably, just run out of steam. Through them all, there is a liberating absence of convention in the characterizations, with any distinguishing features among the three rounded off by the effects of too much booze and togetherness. (1970) — Duncan Shepherd
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