Rating: 
Summary: A Life Changing Experience
Review: This is one of those movies that can be a life changing experience if you let it. It's always described as a psychological portrait of a mad housewife, but that's not really what it is. No more than Hamlet is about an insane adolescent or Lear is about senility. Deeper and deeper Cassavetes takes you into questions of who we all are, what we want out of life, where we are comfortable, and how we limit ourselves and others with the roles we play and the faces we put on. That's not something limited to mad housewives. It's everyone's story!Also I want to mention an amazing book that has a lot about the making of this film and all of the other movies by Cassavetes that is available here. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes has almost 100 pages on this film alone, on how the director got the most astonishing performances ever recorded on film. Real unknown behind the scenes craziness. (There are excerpts available on his web site devoted to Cassavetes if you want to read them before buying the book.) ..., so check it out along with the movie, one of the greatest ever made about YOU and ME and everyone's life.
Rating: 
Summary: Emotional powerhouse
Review: This John Cassavetes film is best remembered for Gena Rowland's harrowing depiction of a wife/mother/daughter in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Her performance has a variety of shades, all of which are fully convincing. The oft-maligned Peter Falk also turns in a fine performance as the husband/father/son. His character has his eccentricities as well, to say the least. While this film is very powerful and shocking, it employs considerable subtlety in exploring male-female dynamics and sexism. While the double standards we use to define what types of outburst are 'acceptable' from men and women cannot alone entirely explain the 'sanity gap' between the two protagonists, society's double standards may well have led her towards this state. Not many women, for example, could get away with bringing ten uninvited guests to a spaghetti breakfast just hours after missing a dinner date. But is this film, as the cant insists, really meant to be realistic? Sure, we have 'anti-Hollywood' aspects such as characters saying things without thinking (even improvising, by all appearances), and being contradictory, and it feels as though we are seeing the little details of people's lives. Yet the fact of the matter is that much of the dialogue feels contrived. And has there ever, anywhere, been a spaghetti dinner quite like that? (Sure, things happen for the first time all the time, but they tend to be minor in their novelty.) I'm not saying I minded it, just that to simply describe Cassavetes as 'realistic' seems to miss the mark; much of this movie is quite stylized, in its own gritty way. The movie also gets props for its adult themes and family focus. Be forewarned though that watching the suffering of the kids in particular is not easy. Despite the mature nature of the film, I feel it ultimately comes up well short of being a masterpiece. I just felt Cassavetes never figured out exactly what he was going for (realism vs. style, for example), and it should have been shorter. (3.5 stars)
Rating:
Summary: A Woman caught in a vise? (3.5 stars)
Review: This John Cassavetes film is best remembered for Gena Rowland's harrowing depiction of a wife/mother/daughter in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Her performance has a variety of shades, all of which are fully convincing. The oft-maligned Peter Falk also turns in a fine performance as the husband/father/son. His character has his eccentricities as well, to say the least. While this film is very powerful and shocking, it employs considerable subtlety in exploring male-female dynamics and sexism. While the double standards we use to define what types of outburst are 'acceptable' from men and women cannot alone entirely explain the 'sanity gap' between the two protagonists, society's double standards may well have led her towards this state. Not many women, for example, could get away with bringing ten uninvited guests to a spaghetti breakfast just hours after missing a dinner date. But is this film, as the cant insists, really meant to be realistic? Sure, we have 'anti-Hollywood' aspects such as characters saying things without thinking (even improvising, by all appearances), and being contradictory, and it feels as though we are seeing the little details of people's lives. Yet the fact of the matter is that much of the dialogue feels contrived. And has there ever, anywhere, been a spaghetti dinner quite like that? (Sure, things happen for the first time all the time, but they tend to be minor in their novelty.) I'm not saying I minded it, just that to simply describe Cassavetes as 'realistic' seems to miss the mark; much of this movie is quite stylized, in its own gritty way. The movie also gets props for its adult themes and family focus. Be forewarned though that watching the suffering of the kids in particular is not easy. Despite the mature nature of the film, I feel it ultimately comes up well short of being a masterpiece. I just felt Cassavetes never figured out exactly what he was going for (realism vs. style, for example), and it should have been shorter. (3.5 stars)
Rating:
Summary: A Woman Under the Influence
Review: This movie is another "typical" John Cassavetes' movie. I believe one either adores his writing and directing or dislikes it or just plain doesn't (get it). Gena Rowlands is wonderful as Mable.She play a housewife and loves her kids and husband but there are things missing in her life such as the scene where she comes home from the hospital and talks to her father and she asks hims to "stand up for her" he just doesn't get it. Mable has many problems not just with her husband but the relationship she has with her mother-in-law, and father. She definately is a Woman Under the Influene. John's directing in setting the mood for Gena's excellent acting where she totally loses it before going to the hospital is remarkable, she is truly a national treasure. Gena and Peter are terrific in this movie. Overall the movie is very good, the spaghetti breakfast is really a "bit too much to take" but if you are a big fan of Gena Rowlands as I am you will be able to overlook some of the "Cassavete" style of writing and just enjoy a truly marvelous actress.
Rating:
Summary: Out of the Park
Review: This movie isn't watched so much as lived through. Gena Rowlands is brilliant as an L.A. housewife knuckling under to schizophrenia, with Peter Falk as her equally befuddled husband. Cassavetes refuses to play heroes and victims--the movie treats Mabel's madness as an extreme case of the pressures we all face in trying to conform to our social roles. Falk's unpredictable bouts of love and rage show how often violence polices the line of sanity, yet ultimately he's just as lost as Mabel in trying to figure out the part he's supposed to play. The story is told through a series of long, seemingly aimless events that unfold mostly in real time--a spaghetti dinner, a trip to the beach, a family party--to track the shifting relations between the characters. Each one on its own can seem pointless, but the effect by the end is tremendous; I felt I knew these people better than a lot of my family. I can't think of a movie outside of Citizen Kane that uses the medium of film so well to tell its story. Cassavetes and Rowlands knocked this one out of the park.
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