With John Cassavetes, it is often easier to like the man than his movies; and it is easier in this case to like his movie because the man himself is in it. He has great screen presence, so called, with a stance that suggests his shoes have been nailed to the floor, and with a tucked chin and rumpled brow that suggest he is forever facing a stiff wind. He makes more stylish use here of the half-smoked cigarette and the half-drunk drink than anyone outside a Sinatra impressionist, and those tools come in handy in the role of a hard-living writer (of books on "nightlife") who has nonetheless attained a remarkable degree of distinction, to judge by such measurements as the size of his house, the number of personal checks he peels off to very young female companions, the face-recognition he enjoys from appearances on TV, and the impromptu trip he takes to Vegas when his former wife suddenly asks him to babysit the nine-year-old son he has never before seen. Cassavetes's actual wife and frequent cast member, Gena Rowlands, plays his sister here, although their separate paths do not intersect until an hour into the movie, and their relationship is not really clarified until the better part of an hour after that. Rowlands's character, an insufficient variation on her benign lunatic in A Woman under the Influence, is less interesting (or just more taxing) than Cassavetes's, and every minute spent with her is, in a sense, a minute stolen from him. (At least until those minutes begin to overlap, and even then it is possible to feel her presence as an intrusion.) (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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