Movie Review: House Of Games (1987)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: David Mamet  

Starring: Joe Mantegna, Lindsay Crouse, J.T. Walsh  

Running Time: 102 minutes  

Synopsis: Psychiatrist and successful author Dr. Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) learns that her troubled client Billy Hahn is being threatened over a gambling debt. Determined to help, she confronts Mike (Joe Mantegna), the man holding Billy's IOU, at the scuzzy House Of Games pool hall. Margaret finds Mike's combination of charm and confidence irresistible compared to her cold and lonely life, and she is drawn into his world of psychological manipulation for profit.

What Works Well: The milieu of scam artists thriving in the dark is conveyed with pleasing aesthetics, and contrasts sharply with Margaret's scrubbed professional environment. Her lack of fulfillment and subsequent attraction to Mike's seedy antics drives the plot, writer and debut director David Mamet questioning the value of risk-free existence. Joe Mantegna never betrays his character's essence as a man who thrives on exploiting weaknesses in others, and is ably supported by a cast featuring J.T. Walsh, William H. Macy, Mike Nussbaum, and Ricky Jay.

What Does Not Work As Well: After the initial con, the other twists along Margaret's journey to danger are quite easy to see through, and the ending abandons cleverness altogether in favour of old-fashioned score-settling. In a clipped and cold performance, Lindsay Crouse (Mrs. David Mamet at the time) struggles mightily to convey relatable emotions, creating instead an unfortunate vacuum at the story's core.

Conclusion: Rich with mood, but not quite as clever as it wants to be.



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Movie Review: Iceman (1984)

A science fiction drama, Iceman has a sketched-in premise and plenty of grunting.

At a scientific base in the arctic, a prehistoric man is found frozen in ice. Anthropologist Dr. Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton) is summoned to assess the find, and determines the iceman to be about 40,000 years old. To the surprise of all the assembled scientists including team leader Dr. Diane Brady (Lindsay Crouse), resuscitation efforts are successful and soon the Iceman (John Lone) is up and around.

For safety he is confined to a climate controlled vivarium. Shephard starts to spend time with him and tries to decipher the Iceman's grunts to establish basic communications. But as Shephard makes progress, other scientists argue for more invasive examinations and a noisy helicopter triggers mystifying heightened anxiety.

Directed by Fred Schepisi and produced by Norman Jewison, Iceman takes a long time to thaw, and then spends its second half in a surreal state. Most of the final 50 minutes are occupied by the Iceman grunting away and Shephard staring in sympathy and occasionally grunting back. The vivarium becomes a cinematically self-destructive disaster zone draining away the rudimentary momentum built in the laborious set-up.

The script may intend to lean heavily on the real science of linguistics, but also finds a way to recruit an MIT linguistics specialist into the movie, who proceeds to contribute less than nothing to the communication attempts. Instead Shephard alone somehow deciphers the Iceman's mystical final journey, complete with dumbfounding references to entities such as The Messenger and The Trickster. Any attempts to metaphorically represent man's quest for ultimate salvation are lost within the unconvincing dialogue and stiff acting.

John Lone delivers a fully committed performance as the Iceman, while Timothy Hutton and Lindsay Crouse are predominantly stuck in snippy mode. Danny Glover and David Strathairn have underdeveloped smallish roles as tense members of the research team.

Slow, static and stodgy, Iceman sinks in the snow.

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Movie Review: Places In The Heart (1984)

A feel good drama, Places In The Heart celebrates the human spirit through the simple story of a widow determined to thrive.

Rural Texas in 1935, the depth of the Great Depression. Edna Spalding (Sally Field) is suddenly widowed when her police officer husband is accidentally shot and killed by a drunk, leaving her to care for their large farm and two young children. Edna receives moral support from her sister Margaret (Lindsay Crouse), who does not know that her husband Wayne (Ed Harris) is carrying on a passionate affair with married local woman Viola (Amy Madigan).

Threatened with foreclosure by banker Mr. Denby (Lane Smith), Edna accepts help from drifter Moses (Danny Glover), a black man who claims that he can create a revenue-generating cotton plantation on her farm. Edna also takes in the blind Mr. Will (John Malkovich) as a boarder to raise some money. Despite the price of cotton plummeting, enormous pressure to sell the farm, rampant community racism against Moses, and nature's fury, Edna pushes ahead, determined to not give up on her land or her family.

Directed and written by Robert Benton, Places In The Heart is a slice of rural life, where the struggle for economic survival shatters class, race, and gender divides. The film may be a hopelessly optimistic parable in its portrayal of a woman in the 1930s staring down the depression, the bankers, the racists, physical disabilities and mother nature to turn her life around, but there is no denying the uplifting and well-intentioned energy coursing through Edna's story.

With beautiful period sets and Néstor Almendros cinematography glorifying the landscape, the film plays with themes of trust and betrayal. Once her husband is killed Edna is forced to trust first Moses, a drifter and thief, and then Mr. Will, a blind man much more likely to be a hindrance than a help. They will need to prove their worth, and the film revels in contrasting Moses and Will's contributions to Edna's life with the individuals who should be her more natural allies: healthy white men in the form of the banker Mr. Denby and the cotton merchant W.E. Simmons (Jay Patterson).

Benton's script includes a substantial subplot involving the illicit affair between Wayne and Viola, at the expense of Edna's sister Margaret. The story of a marriage under tremendous stress adds to the texture of the community and the themes of trust and betrayal, and Viola's fury at Wayne's continued affection for his wife contributes an uncommon cutting edge. But Edna's story of endurance never fully meshes with the turmoil in her sister's life, and the two plots occasionally trip over each other.

Sally Field won her second Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Edna, and its a solid enough performance, more robust than spectacular. Field reaches an early highlight when Edna is forced to confront punishing her young son, a distasteful duty previously performed by her husband. Field captures the horror of a mother coming to terms with what it means to physically abuse a child, ticking off one more thing that will now change in her family's life.

Wisely, Benton is capable of removing the rose coloured glasses when needed. While Edna's journey carries an eternally positive trajectory, the film avoids the temptation to neatly tie up all the loose ends. There are troubles aplenty scattered in the unforgiving southern landscape, and the only certainty is continued interaction between what is sincerely labelled good and evil. Places In The Heart ends with a beautifully mystical moment, an unlikely gathering where human judgement is deferred in favour of a greater communion.

Breathing deeply from the complexities and mysteries of life, Places In The Heart emits a warm, soft glow.

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The Movies Of Lindsay Crouse

All movies starring Lindsay Crouse and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

All The President's Men (1976)

Slap Shot (1977)

The Verdict (1982)

Iceman (1984)

Places In The Heart (1984)

House Of Games (1987)

The Juror (1996)

Mr. Brooks (2007)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Verdict (1982)

A character study hampered by a shaky story, The Verdict serves as a showcase for the brilliant talent of Paul Newman, but otherwise frustrates as a courtroom drama.

In Boston, Frank Galvin (Newman) is a washed-up lawyer. A once brilliant career has now been reduced to chasing ambulances and gatecrashing funerals in a desperate search for clients. Frank is spending his days at the bar, drinking heavily and heading towards self-destruction. His mentor and one remaining friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) reminds Frank that he does have one more case coming to court, a medical malpractice suit that has languished for 18 months. During childbirth a botched anesthetic procedure left a woman on life support and in a vegetative state. Her family is eager to settle, as is the hospital, and a generous offer is made. But Frank visits the incapacitated victim, and something inside him stirs. Against all advice, he decides to take the case to court.

The high-priced and high-powered defence team is led by the slick Ed Concannon (James Mason). Frank and Mickey scrape together their case in a matter of days, while Frank starts a relationship with Laura (Charlotte Rampling), a lonely woman he meets at the bar. With Judge Hoyle (Milo O'Shea) presiding over a jury trial, Frank builds a flimsy argument around a dubious expert witness in the form of Dr. Thompson (Joe Seneca), and doggedly pursues as additional witnesses nurses Maureen Rooney (Julie Bovasso) and Kaitlin Costello (Lindsay Crouse), who may provide key evidence to turn the argument in his favour.

More about character than story, The Verdict is a measured study of redemption and one man's struggle to reclaim himself. Frank Galvin was once a respected partner in a law firm, but circumstances knocked him wildly off course. The film creates a tentative hero out of a lawyer who insists on standing for something, more out of a desperate need to save himself than any imperative to serve his client.

Paul Newman provides the one reason to watch and enjoy The Verdict. After a string of relatively mediocre performances dating back to the early 1970s, Newman simmers again as Frank Galvin. He brings to life a character aging early and creeping towards total moral bankruptcy and utter dependence on the bottle. And yet Newman finds the morsel of caring that Frank still carries, enough to reawaken his passion for a once proud career when he comes face to face with a great injustice. Just as much as Frank finds his case, Newman finds his film, and relaunches his dominant screen presence.

The David Mamet script navigates Frank's rejuvenation with reasonable surety, and allows his self-doubt to remain close to the surface, poking his fragile confidence at regular intervals. But the rest of the story fails to surround the central character with a worthwhile narrative. The court room drama is tepid, Frank's final speech is not nearly as compelling as it pretends to be, and the trial's outcome aims at simplicity rather than intricacy. Laura is never convincing as a love interest, her role in Frank's re-engagement easily predictable. James Mason and Jack Warden are as sturdy as can be expected, but neither Ed Concannon nor Mickey Morrissey have any kind of a progressive arc.

Director Sidney Lumet keeps Newman at the centre of almost every scene and finds good locations for Frank's office and his bar hangout. The film is indoor bound, and there are few flourishes to raise the drama above the average.

The Verdict carries impressive star quality, but is guilty of providing inadequate support.

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