Gavin Cresswell (gavin-thelordofthefu-48-460297) Sometimes adult films can be very entertaining with stronger premises, neat acting, and laugh-out-loud comedy which is why we get Barry Levinson's Diner.It revolves around Christmas time in 1959 where 5 boys spend their time at the diner. When the gang realizes that they have to spend a few days without the comfort of their favorite restaurant, they try to settle their lives by showing their responsibilities while sharing their details.Thinking about this movie makes me want to watch it again to keep on making me laugh my butt off. I mean, it is that good there's absolutely nothing negative to say about it.The premise about spending their lives explaining their details without the diner was very interesting. The acting was pure masterpiece. Every actor you see, Steve Guttenberg from the Police Academy series, Daniel Stern from Home Alones 1 and 2, Mickey Rourke from Iron Man 2, Kevin Bacon from Apollo 13, Balto, Mystic River, you name it.The comedy was pure genius. The jokes that I like the best were Fenwick pretending to be dead from his car accident and the part where Fenwick gets drunk while goofing off near a church.The soundtrack was great and the 1959 period setting was very creative. Diner is one of the greatest films ever made from the early 80s that defines the 50s and it is in my list.5 out of 5

jzappa Unsullied, well-acted and lively American movies by new directors with the audacity of their assurance are in danger of becoming extinct because they're either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. They ought to be defended and preserved, not to mention valued and treasured. This naturalistically acted movie isn't extravagant or lengthy, but it's the kind of minor, truthful, enjoyable movie that should never go out of fashion, even now that the tradition of sequels and blockbusters has been thoroughly established. It's not quite seamless, yet its intermittent patchiness is part of its allure. There's an exhilaration in watching a gifted hatchling filmmaker skate on thin ice.This wistful, charismatic sleeper sounds initially like a genre movie in the always trendy Stand by Me While I Look Dazed and Confused at American Pie and/or Graffiti at Ridgemont High pattern. Like American Graffiti, or like Porky's, etc., it's set in a youth-driven bygone era marked by perpetual nostalgia, routinely revisits some favorite place and highlights young men moving toward maturity while talking relentlessly about sex, to the jingle of a ceaseless line of hit records.Yet the similitude stops there. One of the most sensitive youth accounts about the vacuum between genders, it's a lot less blithe than any of its foils. The ambiance is reverberated by the set design, which is actually rather gritty and dingy. In just one crucial scene do two characters find themselves beyond Baltimore's worn boundaries, and amidst a vast, sunlit countryside in a well-heeled hamlet. Riding horseback past them is an advantaged, beautiful girl. "You ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?" one character asks the other, and then they zip right back to the movie's dim daily backdrop.Barry Levinson, the film's writer and director, almost treads more Mean Streets-style water with such strokes, and those are actually the few scenes that seem to slightly miscarry, forthright as they are. But Levinson's sentiment for and interest in his young-at-heart characters are distinctive. And his immoderation, like theirs, is effortlessly absolved.His tribute to the fine art of screen writing is about a cluster of high-school buddies who, in 1959, are a year or two graduated, and now starting to belatedly come into their own. Shrevie has already tumbled into an early marriage with a woman with whom, he entrusts to a chum, he cannot have a meaningful exchange. Sex is no longer a god to him, but he's already melancholy for the time when it was. His wife Beth, rendered very movingly in only a few scenes in Ellen Barkin's first big-screen role, knows him so little that she cannot even fathom something as essential and imperative as how he keeps his records categorized. At the end of a lingering marital clash in which he has berated Beth about the LPs, Shrevie, intending to express his recollection for details, roars at Beth that Ain't That a Shame was playing when he first met her in 1955.Another of the boys, Eddie, is about to wed a girl whom we incessantly hear about though never see. Eddie's such a Baltimore Colts devotee that he's asserting that their colors be the theme for the wedding. He's such an anxious bridegroom that he's requiring Elyse score higher than 65 on a sports quiz of Eddie's own design. If Elyse fails, he declares, wedding's off. He's for real. What'll he do when she scores 63? The other leads are self-indulgent, ill-mannered trust-fund rebel Fenwick, who, in one remarkable private scene shows an uncannily encyclopedic intellect; persuasive charmer Boogie, who gambles on everything, counting his sex life and who works as a beautician though scores better with chicks if he tells them he's studying law, and Timothy Daly's smartly played polite, square-shooting collegian Billy, who can't convince his pregnant girlfriend to marry him. These characters are well drawn on their own individual merits, and they're played stunningly. Levinson unearthed a top-quality cast, most of them no-names but few for long.Guttenberg and Stern had previous film experience, though neither played such rich characters as Shrevie and Eddie before. Kevin Bacon, who thus far had any been teen #2 and annoying jock #1 in a handful of slasher flicks and frathouse rom-coms, makes Fenwick a remarkable fusion of indulgence and despair. Rourke gives one of the best of his many memorable performances. Low-key and crafty, his shiftless Boogie also ends up being arguably the most good-natured character, and Rourke makes his gentleness feel engaging and genuine.Levinson fluctuates the movie's temper greatly from scene to scene. Some sequences, like one at a strip club, where two of the boys get the band to play lively jazz and everyone begins bopping, are wholesome whimsy, and don't quite feel like anything else. Others, as when the group sits quarrelling over who's better between Sinatra or Mathis, have a gracefully authentic ordinariness. So does a scene in which Shrevie, who works in a TV shop, attempts to sway one patron to buy a color set, although the man claims he once saw Bonanza in color and the Ponderosa looked faked. Levinson isn't above sending his characters to see Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee at a local movie house, either. The melancholy characteristic of his material is engaged to its maximum degree.However Diner has a lot more to it than that, and it doesn't seem to aspire to the calculated dependability that other, likewise constructed movies are after. Levinson isn't simply a fuddy-dud with an affectionate or comprehensive reminiscence for his own youth. He's someone trying to grasp that era, not just to evoke it. Indeed, Diner is ultimately a film we can all understand on a universal level.

dataconflossmoor-1 Who realized that back in 1982, a film like "Diner" would possess such an extraordinary wealth of talent, both on and off the screen. What was emphasized by this film's director, (Barry Levenson) was the impetuousness with which this movie's actors and actresses had to orchestrate. So often, during the film's production, Barry did not even say "ACTION" to commence a scene. So many times, would Levenson omit the word "CUT" for a scene to conclude. All of these non conventional actions by director, Barry Levenson,were for purposes of manufacturing a tertiary spontaneity from the actors in the movie. Such an auspicious lack of inhibition sparked a natural emotional realism that made the film "Diner" truly unique! Many scenes brought on a free spirited innocence that prevailed back in Baltimore in 1959 (The city and the year that this film was suppose to take place). "The Popcorn Scene" with Mickey Rourke was hysterically funny, as it is indicative of the sordid wiles men will engage in to get the attention of a beautiful woman, especially if it for purposes of impressing his close knit buddies!! "The Piano Scene" was one of the best scenes in any movie I have seen whatsoever!! Tim Daly's piano playing was a mandatory form of entertainment to break up the sedentary monotony of an ossified nightclub! The type of character Steve Guttenberg played was one which was very identifiable to me. I saw myself in Steve Guttenburg's character so many times in the movie, but, particularly in the "Piano Scene". I could envision myself dancing recklessly in dare devil fashion while wearing Shetland wool! This was so Steve Guttenberg's character, and, it was so much like something I might do as well!! This film focused on the bittersweet scenario, pertaining to the peculiar viewpoint by some barely adult men, who had a penchant for believing that an individual's sense of humor should be his single most coveted attribute in the world. Such a mindset purveys the ground-rules of survival being a case of how a human being's sense of humor should be endless, because his egregious flaws as an individual are endless as well!! "Diner" accentuated the necessary dichotomy between social cohesiveness and individuality! Ultimately, the film would bridge the gap with precocious candor. This itemization of quirky concepts accomplished a successfully ambiguous cultural dissemination of adolescent ideas with all the main characters of this movie. The incongruity contained in the conversations with everybody became a capriciously acute element to this film which successfully evoked a superbly unprecedented directorial finesse!! "Diner" did not win the academy award for best movie in 1982. When a movie wins an Oscar for best picture during any given year, it is usually a very good film. When a film manifests a fondness for individual expression by establishing a reality on how people truly are by what they find amusing, with that, emanates the real definition of a comedy. If a movie can accomplish such a feat, then this is an undeniably great film. Without question, the film "Diner' is a movie that may be put into this category!! A bevy of talented people partook in this movie. This box office bonanza of stars comprises of; Mickey Rourke, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, and Paul Reiser. (Reiser's curiosity with the term, nuance, in this movie, later surfaced itself to reality by way of a production company which was entitled "Nuance Productions" that Paul Reiser was part owner of). Given the fact that so many actors, actresses, directors and producers have 30,000 square foot domiciles in Beverly Hills and on Park Avenue, it becomes rather obvious that money is not always a top priority with them. Ultimately, they realize that the purpose for making a movie is to raise the bar on entertainment standards. This encapsulation concerning man's sanguine flippancy about perpetual failure, which this film, "Diner" illustrated, was totally astounding! More specifically put, an integral facet of movie entertainment is predicated on accurately pinpointing what human nature is truly like. Often times, I have thought that if you only want to see two movies in your entire life, those two films should be "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Diner". Both movies capture a grass roots recognition of what people's attitudes and instinctive reactions really are. I would give the nod to "Diner" over "Glengarry Glen Ross" because "Diner" illustrates a realism which is portrayed with a far more positive disposition! Such a reality gives "Diner" an enthusiastic identifiability. Attaining a stranglehold on the positive elements of human intuition in a movie like "Diner" is a goal that is so crucial to a film! So much so, that if a director does this, but, he does not win an Oscar for his film, his response should be "SO WHAT!!" The movie "Diner" is a one of a kind gem! "Diner" has achieved the ultimate accolade of being a movie which ignites a humanistic gratification to a near perfect state! This film has artistically conquered an elementary objective for making a movie! Such an accomplishment is what film making is all about, to which, I have only one thing to say, "An Oscar!! What's that?"

Cristi_Ciopron It is like some bits of careers—good choices or at least mere luck, if there is such a thing, which I doubt—that enable or empower some actors to fully express a persona, an unmistakable persona, something which transcends script, role, etc.—a full expression of an ideal themselves, and to reveal a striking expression of their identity. If you will read my choices bellow, you will perhaps notice an asymmetry—in fact, the simple remark that older actors, from Fresnay and Gabin to Grant and Bogart, got better movies, the kind of movies that empower the actor to fully give his essence.Rourke, Gabin, Clift, Mitchum, Lemmon are masters at this. They in fact know how to subordinate a movie to themselves and to be served by it and convert it into a vehicle of their own essence. No matter how chameleon's they may seem, they nonetheless bring some movies, some roles to their own humanity. They are interesting by their own humanity and savory persona, rather than by what their are able to make with a given script—like the virtuous craftsmen from my second list below. It's not about how well or even masterful or resourceful they are playing a role—but about how they do bring it to themselves, to their humanity. The rest are acting jukeboxes.There are actors who have a personalized filmography (like Rourke, Mitchum, Belmondo, Gabin, Delon, Kitano, Wayne, Clift, Dean, Nicholson, Cooper and Grant, Bogart, Philippe, Fresnay, Newman, Caine, Depp, Cagney, Mastroianni, Lemmon, Stewart, Crowe, Willis, of course Marais, Widmark, Laughton), and others who don't (e.g., Pacino, De Niro—even before he got polluted, like the previous guy listed, by stridency, O'Toole, Hackman, Hoffmann, Gere, perhaps even Rathbone and Olivier, Niven, Guinness, alas: Brando, Hopkins—it's almost as if all these folks have been reduced to doing character acting). I talk about bits of careers, a few roles, a handful of script—transcending performances. How could I define the difference?