Atlantic City

Rating:
Summary: Thorough original, offbeat character study
Review: Haunting, elegiac film (written by John Guare and directed by Louis Malle) focusing on an aging numbers-runner (Burt Lancaster) and a young waitress training to be a blackjack dealer (Susan Sarandon) during the resurgence of the New Jersey resort town. He takes care of an over-the-hill beauty queen, she is saddled with a drug-dealing husband who ran off with her sister. Beautiful depiction of all of the characters' dashed hopes, misbegotten dreams, and plans for the future. Appropriately, film features Sarandon's first great performance, and Lancaster's last. Superlative screenplay is one of the finest of the eighties.

Rating:
Summary: The Frenchmans American Masterpiece
Review: Louis Malle's films often have a small theatre intimacy to them. Malle is interested in drawing real life portraits of real life characters in their real life settings. Pretty Baby was the film that immediately preceded this one and was set in 1917 New Orleans and also starred Susan Sarandon. That film was as much a study of a time and a place as it was of the characters involved & Atlantic City is similar in scope but both the portrait of the characters and their city is much more complete. In the Atlantic City of 1980 the city is past its heyday and has not yet been rebuilt. There is the past city preserved and embodied by Lancaster & there is the new Atlantic City just on the horizon represented by the wide eyed and dreaming Sarandon. Those two main characters occupy the same building but they share a space only in the most general sense as each inhabits their own version of the city. Lancaster is man who never really had a prime and has sustained himself with his lively imagination which has preserved a kind of childish readiness in him. In his real life he has always fled when things got heated up and so he has never really begun to live, and late in life a growing regret as well as his glimpses of Sarandon through her apartment window has sparked that youth into action. This time he will seize his moments and make the most of them. And he gets his opportunity. Sarandon has her sites set on self improvement. She listens to opera, teaches herself French and dreams of a future dealing cards in Monaco. Her dreams have so far come to nothing and she is just at that point where a stroke of luck could mean the difference between finally beginning to live and resigning herself to her own private and quiet desperation. Lancaster & Sarandon are magic together, and though the film is sometimes awkward like a rehearsal, that awkwardness is part of the small theatre charm. Lancaster nails every line and every scene like the master that he is, Sarandon is the novice who hits and misses but she has some immeasurable and indefinable inner quality, she virtually glows with it, that makes her infinitely watchable and when she hits she knocks you over. Lancaster dreaming of the past and Sarandon dreaming of the future,and neither occupying the present. When Lancaster finally has his moment though, and his dream is realized there is no one left to share it with, just him smiling alone. And Sarandon gets her break too and finally makes her getaway in a stolen car driving away alone into some as yet undefined future w/ drug money tucked in her pocket, she too smiling to herself, still eager to learn French. Solitary dreamers to the end despite the decay all around.
This movie along with a few others released in late 70's(Ashby's Being There) and early eighties(Lumet's Verdict) were like a last few great gasps when movies were still interested in real life and offered a genuine look at it.

Rating:
Summary: One of the 80's best
Review: Louis Malle's small scale pallate of the disintegration of Atlantic City is pure gold. As seen in Robert Altman's Nashville, Atlantic City gives you a broad feel for a particular area first, then lets you absorb the characters. A one of a kind film...a great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Small Charming Movie
Review: Screen legend Lancaster and a then up and coming but still mostly unknown Sarandon are great together in this affecting melodrama about an aging tough guy who never amounted to much and a hopeful card dealer who is going nowhere fast. He has one last adventure and she faces the grim facts of life once and for all. Their sad, washed out lives mirror the sad washed out Atlantic City. If you can't make it in Las Vegas, try Atlantic City and, if you can't make it in Atlantic City, you might as well pack it in. Nominated for a bunch of academy awards but won nothing in an excellent year for movies.

Rating:
Summary: Atlantic City Is A Good Movie to Watch
Review: Sometimes if I am sick my parent will allow me to stay hom and watch the vidios. That happened today and so I watched a very good acting from Burt Lancaster. I have seen him before in a cowboy movie when he was younger. This was alot more different than before. he is grey and not such a happy and bad man. He sells drugs in this movie and I could not beleive my eyes. I guess it just shows that Holywood is showing fiction that makes it more interesting when action is moving the scenes along. I liked the way people talk to each other. This movie will show you how to sell drugs and make alot of money to spend on your girl friend but it can be danjerous and you can get killed or go to jail if you get caught. It also shows how a life of crime is not always so exciting as being in a regular job but probly better than being poor or not having any job.

Rating:
Summary: Contrasting themes of the old and new
Review: Starring Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster, this 1980 thoughtful film,set in Atlantic City as it was going through its transformation, has alot going for it. The old hotels are being demolished. And newcasinos are being built. This contrast between the old and the new isa basic and recurring theme.

Lancaster plays the role of a smalltime numbers runner and is also a bodyguard-boyfriend to an agingbeauty queen. As Atlantic City goes through its changes, he dreams ofthe old days.

Susan Sarandon works in a clam bar but is takingclasses to become a dealer. Every night she rubs her skin with lemonsin order to get the fish smell off of her. Bert Lancaster livesacross the court from her and watches this act from behind closedblinds.

Lancaster was 67 when this film was made but looks older.He's obviously had hair implants and some plastic surgery but when hetakes off his shirt, his body is firm with the kind of muscles thatcome from working out in a gym. And in spite of their ages, there'sgood romantic chemistry between him and Sarandon.

The plot, which isloosely about crime, is rather silly and if that's all there was tothis video I would have lost interest easily. But thecharacterizations and acting are so good that the plot almost doesn'tmatter.

Although this is not a great film, I really enjoyed it. Itkept my interest throughout and I cared about the characters. It'salso a snapshot in time of an Atlantic City that has somehowdisappeared in the past twenty years.

Rating:
Summary: Depressing and improbable
Review: This film ought to be on everyones list of the the ten or twenty worst ever made. A depressing film about a bunch of trashy people. The plot is a stretch, why does Sarandon perform her ablutions in front of an open window instead of in the bathroom like the rest of us? Louis Malle the French director is supposed to have quite a reputation. I can't see why after viewing this film. Even in this age of longevity, life is fairly short, so don't waste your time or money on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Top 10
Review: To say that Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon have never been better, that Malle's direction is masterly and subtle, and that the story is fascinating and satisfying, gravely understates this brilliant film. Rarely does a project so exceed the sum of such wonderful parts. This movie defies criticism, and must simply be experienced by anyone who seeks the rare magic that cinema is capable of. In a word, it's good.

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