The Best 10 Movies of 1987 | Roger Ebert
The therapist turns out to be as addictive as her patient, and she is skillfully drawn into a con game by Mantegna and Mike Nussbaum, as two old partners in deception who seem able to communicate telepathically. At first the audience feels superior; we can see what's happening to Crouse, even if she can't. Then we realize we've been trapped right along with her, in a labyrinthine plot where nothing is at it seems.
"House of Games" is the first film directed by the playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, and it is an ideal presentation of his style -- the elegantly simple dialog, clipped, turning back on itself, works with the set decoration and the barren urban landscapes to create a world which has been emptied of all bystanders, and narrowed down to the con and the mark. This is not only a great film, but one of the year's best entertainments.
This is a film to listen to as well as watch. Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin enter so effortlessly into the cadences of Louisiana that the sound track provides an uncanny sense of place. Quaid plays a vice cop who is not above participating in the department's illegal "widows and orphans" fund. Barkin is a local prosecutor. They become friends, survive some scrapes together, fall in love--and then wind up on opposite sides of a case in court.
Directed by Jim McBride, "The Big Easy" is one of the most definitely regional American films ever made; the music on the sound track underlines the specific sense of place, and the Barkin and Quaid characters seem to grow naturally out of the story. Neither the movie's romance nor its thriller aspects seem familiar; McBride and his actors particularly put a new spin on everything, even including the usual clichés about one-night stands. The late Charles Ludlam provides brilliant supporting work as Quaid's lawyer--but then all the supporting work in this movie is offbeat and precise, and so are the leads.
"Barfly"
The original screenplay for this movie was written by Charles Bukowski, a Los Angeles cult novelist and poet who based it on his own life-a life spent largely in gutbucket saloons and the more disordered corners of Skid Row. The movie's obviously autobiographical hero is played by Mickey Rourke, in a performance that takes a lot of chances, and wins. And Faye Dunaway is brilliant in a comeback role as Wanda, the desperate blonde whose legs still look good but who will do almost anything for a drink. Rourke and Dunaway spend some days and nights together, trying to find poetry in sadness and sometimes succeeding, and director Barbet Schroeder is wise enough not to impose too much plot on these meandering adventures of two skuzzy but triumphantly human drunks.
