I found this film to be unwatchable

this ain't entertainment,
it's a Cassavetes film.
In other words, a challenging, exhausting experience.
My kind of film!

Maybe, as a bridge between 90's baby-dom and difficult 70's cinema, you should see Margot at the Wedding and/or The Squid and the Whale directed by Noah Baumbach. It's still an uncomfortable, emotional ride, but it moves at a steadier pace.

I give you props for making it all the way through!

Same here. However, I watch and enjoy movies from all periods and the 70's are one of my favorite periods. Now I wanted to check out Cassavetes, because I only knew him as an actor. Was this the wrong movie to start with? Or will I hate everything else, if I hated this one? I think Gazzara is a damn good actor. But the whole thing was more like a two-hour improv, which could have easily be trimmed down to an hour and still be unwatchable.

Perhaps I am unusual or just indifferent to my generation, however, I thoroughly enjoy a challenging film experience and therefore found The Killing of a Chinese Bookie exceptionally rewarding. One's unfamiliarity with the work of John Cassavetes, or at least oblivious to who he truly was and the type of films he strived to create, could make for a disastrous film experience, especially if one is expecting to be comfortably entertained.

"I hope I never get so old I get religious." Ingmar Bergman

Yeah that doesn't surprise me if you were born in the 90's. It's all the long takes and, for better or worse, things are just so much more calculated and polished now. I find with my daughter it's often the same with music. The 70's WERE indulgent. But if you're willing to take another shot at a Ben Gazzara film, I'd recommend SAINT JACK. He's did a lot of good work.

Cassavetes was a great writer (and director in the sense that he got great performances from his leads), but, man, this guy couldn't record sound for sh!t. It might have just been the DVD for this film, but the soundtrack was borderline inaudible. I heard a lot of noise but I had a hard time understanding what was being said.

Nothing to do with any generations, Cassavetes just had this terribly blabbery and kinda goofy style - like his earlier Faces, this one just aimlessly meanders along with lots of sitting around and chatting, with very little really happening at all. All pretty dull, underdramatized to a fault. And boy these loooong scenes of those awful stage shows that at one time went on for some 6-7 minutes nonstop... that´s truly grating. In fact the whole thing´s put together in a way that just don´t work, the assassination plot being completely out of whack with the rest of the film (and taken separately, it never builds up any suspense or tension, either). And in the end Gazzara just babbles and babbles and babbles on some more, nearly 15 minutes of that no-show. Really don´t get that stuff... or, rather, I do get the concept of concentrating on the parts that are the ones usually left out in this type of movie, but in a large part, it didn´t really seem to work all that well.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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