LeonLouisRicci
If you have not seen a Cassavetes Film this is the one to start with. Some consider it his best and most accessible. It is most likely both. It is certain he would agree that it is made for a wider audience, but...This is a Mob Movie that is quite different and yet mostly the same. The standout is the middle-aged Hooker cleverly embodied by the worn-out looking Gena Rowlands. It is apparent that despite the physical sagging there once was quite an attractive and smart and feisty Female. What clearly remains is the smart and feisty.The New York locations are rugged and regaling and the pacing is swiftly somber. This feels real and despite some awkward dialog, some of the interplay between the two leads is precisely people. A trademark of the Director. There are some very tense scenes between the breath catching rest-stops.Overall, if you are looking for squibs, trash talking, and flash, go elsewhere. This is meant to be unattractive and poetic with dabs of cinematic non-conformity and is heavily heartfelt. Some Jazzy Music helps as does the unpretentiousness of it all. An anti-mainstream Movie that is not really a sellout from this Maverick Director but more like a reluctant paycheck.
sunznc
I dig this out once a year to watch it and it always gets me. I've been watching this film ever since it came out! The production, including the opening credits, has a foreign feel to it. The opening has watercolor artwork that appears to have been made by a child. The camera sweeps over this while displaying opening credits as jazz music plays.The film takes place in New York City and not the glamorous areas of New York. No, here we see the seedier, gritty, grimy side of New York where children run unsupervised and people are struggling to survive.The acting here is excellent by everyone. Some people say it seems unrealistic and there might be times when that becomes apparent but you can't deny the raw, nervous energy of the film. It's hard to escape the atmosphere here. Gene Rowlands plays her role perfectly and despite her tough as nails attitude you can't help but love her character.Give this a chance. It could become one of your favorite films as it is hard to forget.
jacklmauro
I won't relate the storyline - it's all over the place here. Just trust me on this: GLORIA is a wonderful modern noir, full of kicks and energy and schtick. It belongs to its time and its setting - the 'not nice', hot, sweaty NYC of the late 70's - as much as any great Warner Bros. classic. And Gena Rowlands...oh, my. As with many a classic, there are flaws all over the place, from the murdering of the family in the beginning - dad and mom know what's going to happen and everybody just hangs around, tense and fearful? - to the adorable boy's fairly wretched performance. Doesn't matter. Rowlands takes this flick, straps it on her back, and runs. She is nothing short of sensational, as she was as well a brilliant actress. Too bad she limited herself to (mostly) her husband's films. But, they gave us this. And, if you need to learn how to ride a subway with attitude, order a cold beer, or treat a cabbie, watch and learn.
elshikh4
What really made me pity this movie is its idea and what it got of elements. The Beauty and the Beast in the action genre.. Great, and that was before movies like (Léon - 1994) came out, but it seemed that a tornado of naivety hit the whole thing ruthlessly. It needed a lot and a lot and a lot to be a great movie. The dealing with the possible good material was highly provocative where some scenes deserved the laugh, because the writing (Gloria threatens the whole gang in a restaurant!), or the directing (the boy says : "I love you to death" while the camera is almost shooting only his forehead !!?), or the acting (The mafia men couldn't act, John Adames as the kid was unbearably awful = John Cassavetes's responsibility).Elaborately, It forces me to believe that its script had been written (read : fabricated) in 2 days, especially when it relies on the dialog to develop everything, and the dialog was too far-fetched to be logically possible. Also with matters like killing the family at the beginning which's my definition for horrible hastiness, or the end where it turns out that Gloria is Supergirl or the woman of steel, which's quite nothing in familiar flicks, but on the top of OTHER catastrophes here, it is pain barrier. I become so sick whenever I watch artistic movies that lack everything except the laziness, and proudly it brags with that in the name of novelty, realism, whatever. Here, the anguish is double because it's not a movie like that, it's an American thriller with different idea and a dull everything I suppose ! It looked as low as some Blaxploitation movies while it isn't one, it just took the worst of them.Some would say "It's a classic", and other would say "it's the worst ever" ! Actually it's a movie you can summarize its status by the irony between (Rowlands) who got an Oscar nomination for it, and (Adames) who got a Razzie nomination for It (and fairly won !), so IT WAS the Beauty and the Beast indeed ! And I ranked it as one of the worst Buddy-movies, if not the worst ever. Though, when I first watched it I was a kid (a freak kid who loves movies more than life!) so I loved it so much. In fact I think (Gena Rowlands)'s acting was impressive, she owned the role and the screen, if only that was through another script! The cinematography tried to be as non-Hollywood as it could be, I recall clever sequence with a running steadicam (in 1980) in which Gloria escapes with the kid from the restaurant, as a whole it managed to be somewhat harshly real yet through bad-made unreal story ! Plus it didn't add anything profound.. Unlike the music.(Gloria) as a movie, fails on the romantic level and sucks on the thrill level, but the music helps out to redeem both. Bill Conti handled it seriously more than anybody got involved in it. OH MY GOD, his music was like a diamond in the rough. No doubt it's bigger than the movie. It managed to give it a sublime soul, a touch of greatness, and wide shadows to the flat characters and fabricated events. Maybe Conti believed in the story and the movie to the utmost, or he didn't watch the movie but how he loves his work and uses to do it rightly ! Or maybe he did watch it so he was forced to lift it up and cover its faults. It created such a personality for the weak movie, that embodied the Latino background, the chase's feel, the rebellion sense of the title's character, and the passion between her and the kid; nearly all what the movie flopped at !. I think Conti was inspired by Yoakhen Rodrego's Concerto D'aranjuez, its spirit seems clear somewhat in the tunes. Anyhow, It's some catchy soundtrack that marked a movie with high quietly lacked it badly on so many levels. Sometimes, rare times, the music makes the glory of some movies, but Bill Conti just revived it, and donated it with some sensitive case or dramatic deepness, but it needed more and more to be as larger than life as its music.So take the soundtrack and remake (Gloria), I'm not kidding, (Gus Van Sant) sort of did it with (Bernard Herrmann)'s music through his (Psycho - 1999) but not to be like it, as a deformation for its original, because it can't stand more inferiority.
