American Buffalo

Rating:
Summary: Friendship
Review: "American Buffalo" is a rare example of the theater play adapted from stage to the big silver screen. Watching it, you might have an impression that you watch your TV. Fortunately, the quality of the disc is one of the best I have ever experienced. Unlike your average TV program, the image is crisp and the sound is superbly engineered. Not to mention that there are no ads to divert you from what happens on the stage.

And there happens very little. As expected, the plot is designed to go on in only one room, the junk-shop, and there are basically two actors, with the small guy thrown in from time to time. Hoffman and Franz engage in a prolonged, fast dialogue with their stage potential showing off much more than in any action movie they participated in during the last decade. Quite fast into the play, we get to familiar with their personalities. Not only the script helps us in that, but also their mimics, their body-language. And this play is all about personalities.

What will long-time male friends do if confronted with external money-earning possibility? Will one let another to the secret? Will they share the task? The answer seems to be mutual trust. We are no angels, however, and some of us are short-tempered, testosteron-full, irritable, restless, self-unappreciating, blabbering life-losers. Some of us are stoic, trusting yet suspicious, naive, irritable life-losers. Hoffman masterly portrays the first type, and Franz illuminates the second.

Have you noticed the use of gadgets? The junk items and furnishings of the shop play an important role, indeed. Hoffman, while talking non-stop, touches them, moves them, looks at them without looking, concentrating on the words he speaks. Sure that this feature is overdrawn here, exaggerated. But have you thought whether you touch items while talking to others? It helps us concentrate if we are insecure and restless. On the other hand, this irritates our interlocutors beyond description. Franz does not really care about his items for sale or anything else for that matter. He is irritated by Hoffman, by his personality, incompatible with his own, disconcerted by Hoffman's inability to stay calm. He fight the irritation in the name of friendship.

The same applies to the dialogue - they get mutually irritated at each other. They challenge themselves with accusations, play these little instruments in ourselves that force men to stand up and go for something that pure reason advises against.

In the end, what matters is the friendship. People who have found themseleves in a situation where trust plays an important role - may have difficulty with loyalty. The bottom line is that some things are valued more than others. Friendship.

In summary, I have been delighted to watch this play adapted for the silver screen. It's so much different than the rest of movie production. It's refreshing, spirit-uplifting and very, very well-played. Outstanding!!!

Rating:
Summary: Friendship
Review: "American Buffalo" is a rare example of the theater play adapted from stage to the big silver screen. Watching it, you might have an impression that you watch your TV. Fortunately, the quality of the disc is one of the best I have ever experienced. Unlike your average TV program, the image is crisp and the sound is superbly engineered. Not to mention that there are no ads to divert you from what happens on the stage.

And there happens very little. As expected, the plot is designed to go on in only one room, the junk-shop, and there are basically two actors, with the small guy thrown in from time to time. Hoffman and Franz engage in a prolonged, fast dialogue with their stage potential showing off much more than in any action movie they participated in during the last decade. Quite fast into the play, we get to familiar with their personalities. Not only the script helps us in that, but also their mimics, their body-language. And this play is all about personalities.

What will long-time male friends do if confronted with external money-earning possibility? Will one let another to the secret? Will they share the task? The answer seems to be mutual trust. We are no angels, however, and some of us are short-tempered, testosteron-full, irritable, restless, self-unappreciating, blabbering life-losers. Some of us are stoic, trusting yet suspicious, naive, irritable life-losers. Hoffman masterly portrays the first type, and Franz illuminates the second.

Have you noticed the use of gadgets? The junk items and furnishings of the shop play an important role, indeed. Hoffman, while talking non-stop, touches them, moves them, looks at them without looking, concentrating on the words he speaks. Sure that this feature is overdrawn here, exaggerated. But have you thought whether you touch items while talking to others? It helps us concentrate if we are insecure and restless. On the other hand, this irritates our interlocutors beyond description. Franz does not really care about his items for sale or anything else for that matter. He is irritated by Hoffman, by his personality, incompatible with his own, disconcerted by Hoffman's inability to stay calm. He fight the irritation in the name of friendship.

The same applies to the dialogue - they get mutually irritated at each other. They challenge themselves with accusations, play these little instruments in ourselves that force men to stand up and go for something that pure reason advises against.

In the end, what matters is the friendship. People who have found themseleves in a situation where trust plays an important role - may have difficulty with loyalty. The bottom line is that some things are valued more than others. Friendship.

In summary, I have been delighted to watch this play adapted for the silver screen. It's so much different than the rest of movie production. It's refreshing, spirit-uplifting and very, very well-played. Outstanding!!!

Rating:
Summary: .
Review: It isn't one of Mamet's strongest plays, and even though I generally like the aggressive, choppy Mamet-style of dialogue, it is maybe a bit overdone in this one. The direction is very cramped, intentionally, I think, and with obvious purpose, but it does get a bit dreary after an hour or so. Still, Mamet fans will find plenty to love, here. Amusing, chatty, somewhat oblique comedy, with a dark dramatic intensity that very slowly bubbles up from underneath, creating a startlingly gripping climax.

Rating:
Summary: The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Review: Since I have a lot of friends in the theatre business I'm always assailed by Mamet films (whether directed by him or just film adaptations of his plays) whenever I get together with them to watch a movie. Although there are a few Mamet films I enjoy, most of his film offerings are perfect examples of bourgeois cinema.

The director of American Buffalo might as well have had the actors perform the movie on a stage and filmed it like he would a play; the movie felt like a play. Mamet's dialogue might work in the theatre but in the world of film it is contrived at best and seems designed so that the intelligentsia can pat themselves on the back by chortling at the right spots. A.B. is Mamet at his most pretentious and merely proves that lovers of the playwright will sit through his self-congratulatory ... and try to read an insight into his material in order to prove to themselves that they haven't been deceived--that good old David is some witty commentator on society.

But he is not. Mamet is merely the decadent mouthpiece of bourgeois society and American Buffalo, like most of his films, offer no real societal critique and are intelligent only in the way a first year philosophy student in love with Nietzsche is intelligent. The man should stick to writing for the stage since theatre--the perfect medium for pretentious bourgeois art--is the last bastion for pretentious artists like Mamet.

Rating:
Summary: american buffalo
Review: The action is in the words. Those that are a fan of the writer must see this.

Rating:
Summary: Intense Performances in a world that only Mamet can present
Review: The performances in this film keep it above the average fare. Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, and Sean Nelson all give terrific performances in this character study of those at the bottom. Many complained that Hoffman acted in a retread of Ratso rizzo, but I say Teach is a much different character. It is a shame that, to paraphrase Entertainment Weekly, films such as Pulp Fiction and Usual Suspects have softened the impact of the language used in this film, but the words act as violence, gaining intensity. Profane but also powerful. Mamet creates a brilliant view of the world through these character's eyes. Michael Corrnete's direction attempts to make it cinematic by allowing the action to breathe from the confined stage settings, and mostly succeeds. (That is the reason why I give 4, not 5 stars) It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it is a fantastically acting and engrossing story. Bonus: Thomas Newman's score is fantastic and perfectly compliments the mood of the film.

Rating:
Summary: Three Stooges Plan a Heist
Review: Three Stooges Plan a Heist

by Bruce Cantwell

You'd think that junk man Don (Dennis Franz ) knew what he was doing. You'd think he'd have a reason for putting neighborhood kid Bobby ( Sean Nelson ) on the tail of that guy: that uppity yuppy who bought the Buffalo-head nickel off Donny for ninety bucks. More than book value! But you know something. He don't know nothin'! Donny's such a stranger to good fortune that he can only conceive of one reason a guy would come into his shop and plunk down decent dough for one of his pieces of junk.

Well not this time, buddy.

Donny: There's business and there's friendship, Bobby. There are many things, and when you walk around you hear a lot of things, and what you got to do is keep clear who your friends are, and who treated you like what, or else the rest is garbage, because things are not always what they seem to be.

American Buffalo is David Mamet 's comic valentine to the disenfranchised. As clueless as the characters in Sexual Perversity in Chicago were about women, his American Buffalo are about human nature in general.

They're not illiterate, far from it. Teach's ( Dustin Hoffman ) transient hotel room is filled with books. But you have to wonder how many are Elmore Leonard novels and conspiracy theories about everything under the sun. David Mamet has made these guys eloquent, the better to analyze how greatly they exaggerate their importance. Listening to them, you'd think that the world was created and all human history set into motion specifically to screw old Don and Teach.

Teach: You got to trust your instincts, right or wrong. . . It Is kickass or kissass, Don, and I'd be lying if I told you any different.

Unlike the ill-fated real estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross , who are up against the external bogeymen of economic recession and a corporate villain who's out to shave the staff, Don and Teach are largely victims of their own dysfunctional insights.

Mamet examines how tough life can be without trust, but one senses that the shaggy-dog story of a pair of guys who would rather talk about going to a baseball game than actually going is at the heart of this film.END

Rating:
Summary: american buffalo
Review: To say that David Mamet has an ear for language and an eye for human interaction would be an injustice to this ingenious playwright/screen writer, for he transcends even the most astute observor. Few stage plays adapted for the screen maintain their integrity, but "American Buffalo" is the exception. The intensity of this movie is further heightened by the superior acting of both Hoffman and Franz. Many an aspiring actor/playwright could benefit from viewing this outstanding film.

Rating:
Summary: In Your Face
Review: To say that David Mamet has an ear for language and an eye for human interaction would be an injustice to this ingenious playwright/screen writer, for he transcends even the most astute observor. Few stage plays adapted for the screen maintain their integrity, but "American Buffalo" is the exception. The intensity of this movie is further heightened by the superior acting of both Hoffman and Franz. Many an aspiring actor/playwright could benefit from viewing this outstanding film.