Bugsy (1991)

I don’t go by what other men have done. Gangster Ben ‘Bugsy’ Siegel (Warren Beatty), who works for Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) and Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano (Bill Graham), goes west to Los Angeles and falls in love with Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) a tough-talking Hollywood starlet who has slept around with several men, as he is regularly reminded by his pals, who he meets on a film set where his friend George Raft (Joe Mantegna) is the lead.  He buys a house in Beverly Hills and shops at all the best tailors and furnishes his house beautifully while his wife Esta (Wendy Phillips) and young daughters remain in Scarsdale, New York. His job is to wrest control back of betting parlours currently run by Jack Dragna (Richard Sarafian) but life is complicated when Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel) robs one of his places – Bugsy decides to go into business with him instead of punishing him and puts him in charge of casinos, while Dragna is forced to admit to a raging Bugsy that he stole $14,000, and is told he now answers to Cohen. On a trip to a deadbeat casino in the desert Bugsy dreams up an idea for a casino to end all casinos, named after Virginia (Flamingo), bringing the stars to Nevada but the costs overrun dramatically and his childhood friend Lansky is not happy particularly when it seems Bugsy might be aware that Virginia has cooked the books … Looks matter if it matters how you look. Warren Beatty’s long-cherished project was written by James Toback and Beatty micro-managed the writing and production and the result is one of the most powerful and beautiful films of the Nineties:  a picture of America talking to itself, with a gangster for a visionary at its fulcrum, building a kingdom in the desert as though through damascene conversion while being seduced by Hollywood and its luminaries, watching his own screen test the most entertaining way to spend an evening other than having sex. It sows the seeds of his destruction because his inspiration is his thrilling and volatile lover and making her happy and making a name for himself but it’s also a profoundly political film for all that, as with most of Beatty’s work. It’s undoubtedly personal on many levels too not least because the legendarily promiscuous man known as The Pro in movie circles impregnated his co-star Bening who was already showing before production ended. They married after she had his baby and have remained together since. His avocation of the institution is an important part of the narrative and gangsterism is a version of family here too but he chases tail, right into an elevator and straight to his penthouse too. Perhaps he wants to show us how it’s done by the nattiest dresser in town. It’s a statement about how a nation came to be but unlike The Godfather films it’s one that demonstrates how the idea literally reflects the image of the man who dreams it up in all his vainglory:  he enjoys nothing more than checking his hair in the glass when he’s kicking someone half to death (perhaps a metaphor too far). He is a narcissist to the very end, charming and totally ruthless while Ennio Morricone gives him a tragic signature tune. Impeccably made and kind of great with outstanding performances by Beatty, Bening and Kingsley. Directed by Barry Levinson. I have found the answer to the dream of America

Starman (1984)

You’re not from round here, are you? I hate to think how long it’s been since I first saw this. C’est la vie, une longue fleuve tranquille! Two of the most charming actors imaginable, Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges, run the gauntlet of officialdom led by the kindly Charles Martin Smith and bad cop Richard Jaeckel when he crashlands on Earth (Wisconsin, to be precise) and mutates into her late husband.  He has three days to meet up with his spaceship in Arizona or stay grounded forever …  Director John Carpenter lends his considerable heft to the mise en scene of one of the gentlest alien films while the transformation scenes are created by the great Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Dick Smith.  It’s blessed by beautifully considered performances in the best meet cute ever. The scenes in Vegas are great fun. Written by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon with an uncredited rewrite by Dean Riesner, the soundtrack is composed by the estimable Jack Nitzche. Lovely!

My Friend Irma Goes West (1950)

The famous radio sitcom gets another big screen go-round in this diverting entertainment whose principal attraction is the Lewis-Martin team, sidekicks to wannabe card sharp John Lund, Hollywood actress Wilson and singer Lynn. Lewis’ goofy scenes with a chimp are very funny and even the PC crowd will forgive him for redding up as an Indian. (Lewis, that is.) With gangsters, kidnapping, a loony tunes fake producer, TV stardom, and a typically good music track by Leigh Harline. Written by Cy Howard and Parke Levy, directed by Hal Walker.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

Comedian turned screenwriter (I Love You Alice B. Toklas) Paul Mazursky spent a weekend at the Esalen Institute with his wife and wound up writing a five-page treatment with Larry Tucker (they wrote the pilot for The Monkees) about a filmmaker and his wife whose lives are changed by just such an experience and what happens between them and their friends when they put what they’ve learned there into practice. This elegant satire of New Age mores, the counterculture and late Sixties open-mindedness hasn’t lost its power, its humour or indeed its touching qualities. The casting is everything:  Natalie Wood and Robert Culp as the gullible couple; and Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon as their friends who suffer their own psychological crises as a result of too much information, are all fantastic;  it’s impossible to pick between them since each conveys the truth of the situation in compelling fashion.  Each performs a perfect mix of comedy and drama, specific, controlled and authentic. There are some truly stomach-churning scenes of oversharing. What a directing debut for Mazursky! And it all ends in highly ironic fashion to the sounds of Jackie DeShannon warbling What The World Needs Now is Love!

Showgirls (1995)

There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you. Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is a young drifter who hitchhikes to Las Vegas hoping to make it as a showgirl. After a driver she hitchhiked with robs her, Nomi meets costume designer Molly Abrams (Gina Rivera) who takes her in as a roommate. Molly invites Nomi backstage at Goddess, the show at the Stardust Casino show where she works, to meet Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon) the diva star of the casino’s topless dance revue. When Nomi tells Cristal she dances at Cheetah’s Topless Club, Cristal derisively tells her that what she does is akin to prostitution. When Nomi is too upset to go to work that night, Molly takes her dancing at the Crave Club. Nomi is arrested after causing a fight involving James Smith (Glenn Plummer) a bouncer at the club. James bails Nomi out of jail, but she pays him little notice. Cristal and her boyfriend, Zack Carey (Kyle MacLachlan) the entertainment director at the Stardust, visit Cheetah’s and request a lap dance from Nomi. Although bisexual Cristal is attracted to Nomi, her request is based more on her desire to humiliate Nomi by proving she engages in prostitution. Nomi reluctantly performs the lap dance after Cristal offers her $500. James happens to be at the strip club and sneaks a peek at Nomi’s lap dance. He visits Nomi’s trailer the next morning and tells Nomi that what she is doing is no different from prostitution. Nomi and James have a brief fling; the affair ends when James gives the dance routine he choreographed for Nomi to Penny (Rena Riffel) a former coworker of Nomi’s whom he gets pregnant. Nomi Malone is what Las Vegas is all about! She’s dazzling, she’s exciting, and very, very sexy! Cristal arranges for Nomi to audition for the chorus line of Goddess… If you want to last longer than a week, you give me a blow-job. First I get you used to the money, then I make you swallow. Shock and awe. Kyle MacLachlan said about it after being duly horrified at the premiere:  “It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.” Paul Verhoeven directed, Joe Esztherhas wrote and Berkley, MacLachlan, Gershon did the unthinkable and yet it’s long been so notorious as to have evolved into its own eminently lovable black sheep. She’s no butterfly. Tony, she’s all pelvic thrust. I mean, she prowls. She’s got it! Seedy, tawdry, gloriously terrible with incredible production values and big star performances, this was not how it was all supposed to turn out. Allegedly. Someone thought they were making the Vegas version of All About Eve. And in its own bonkers fashion this is exactly it. Shock and awe, folks. She looks better than a ten-inch dick and you know it!

One From the Heart (1982)

It’s fair to say that Francis Ford Coppola’s follow up to the majestic decadent symphony to insanity that was Apocalypse Now was never going to get an easy ride. Even my very young self was pretty derisive at my local cinema upon its release. Thirtysomething years on it has a passion and yearning at its centre that cannot be denied. The studio evocation of Las Vegas is unbelievably impressive, Terri Garr is sweet as the girlfriend of Frederic Forrest, who just doesn’t understand romance and the dialogue was improved by the late, lamented Luana Anders. Another almost-classic by the great man distinguished by its steadicam photography (by Garrett Brown) and a unique song cycle from Tom Waits sung by him and Crystal Gayle. Nastassja Kinski would be paired opposite Harry Dean Stanton once again in Paris, Texas.