A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Alphabet City (Amos Poe, 1984)

Michael Winslow in Alphabet City

Cast: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Kate Vernon, Jami Gertz, Zohra Lampert, Raymond Serra, Kenny Marino, Danny Jordano, Tom Mardirosian. Screenplay: Gregory K. Heller, Amos Poe. Cinematography: Oliver Wood. Production design: M. Nord Haggerty. Film editing: Graham Weinbren. Music: Nile Rodgers. 

In 1984, a cop show called Miami Vice revolutionized its genre with hip music and lots of style, transforming the city where it was set into a place where even wickedness looked good. In the same year, director Amos Poe tried to do something similar for New York, particularly the Lower East Side, with a movie called Alphabet City. He cast a 20-something actor, Vincent Spano, as Johnny, a 19-year-old factotum for the mob, and sent him cruising the city streets in a limited edition Pontiac Trans Am to the music of Nile Rodgers. The streets are hosed-down and shiny and the city lights are haloed by a fog filter. Johnny has a wife/partner/companion named Angie (Kate Vernon), who is an artist, and they live in a loft where she paints and tends to their infant daughter, while he cruises about, collecting from drug dealers like Lippy (Michael Winslow) and club owners who are paying the mob protection. But then the mob boss wants Johnny to torch an apartment building, which is a problem because Johnny's sister, Sophia (Jami Gertz), and his mother (Zohra Lampert) live there. Sophia is a party girl and Mama spends her time ironing while her latest boyfriend snoozes on the sofa before the TV, and Johnny has some trouble persuading them to vacate. So he decides to quit the mob and tries to persuade Angie that they should take the baby and run. Naturally, the mob sends out hit men and Johnny has to deal with them. And that's pretty much it. There are some good performances: Spano has real presence, and Winslow creates an amusingly quirky character for Lippy. But the clichés are as thick as the lens-created fog that blurs the streetlights. Alphabet City is worth watching only as an example of high '80s style, the style that MTV made ubiquitous, and if you want to see that, check out the reruns of Miami Vice.


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