$ (Dollars) - 1971

Plot:  A Hooker and a Security Expert rob a Hamburg Bank
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Gret Frobe

Yeah $, is right.  A throw-away film* by everybody involved and done only for money. No doubt Director Richard Brooks needed a new pool in 1971. Its not bad, its not good - its just another bank heist film. Yawn.

Nobody has to stretch their acting skills. Beatty is the clever, charming leader, Hawn is the adorable, child-like Prostitute who's a key player, and Gret Frobe is the pompous bank manager.  We get a very slow build-up, hard-to-follow heist sequence, disjointed 30-minute chase scene, and a tired cynical ending**.

A Comparison to other Heist/Comedy Films
When compared to the Comedy Heist Films  that proceed it (How to Steal a Million, Topkapi, Oceans 11,  The Italian Job, etc.)  $(Dollars) is noticeable for its cynicism and vulgarity. There's nothing particularly likable/admirable about the two lead characters.  If we root for them, its only because they're played by likable actors.  Nor is there any romance - after all she's a prostitute. And the 3 villains are low-class ciphers - a corrupt Army Sargent, a minor drug dealer, and Mafia Hit man. Its labeled a "Comedy" - but the laughs are hard to find.

Summary: They've probably made 30-40 Heist films since 1960, and $(Dollars) is at bottom third of the list.  Its 47 year-old disposable "plastic" entertainment. If you love Beatty and Hawn, seek it out. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

* - Beatty's authorized 500 page biography devotes a paragraph to the $(Dollars) !
** - Hawn, supposedly a nice bubble-head,  double-crosses Beatty and takes all the money, but then explains she knew the bad guys wouldn't kill him.  Really.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Plot:  In 1928 Small-town Kansas, two young lovers battle their disapproving parents .
Stars:  Pat Hingle, Warren Beatty, Natalie Wood
Moral of the Movie:  Let the young'uns have sex, or they'll go crazy!

Beautifully shot and well-directed, Splendor in the Grass  has two great looking leads and a good supporting cast. Natalie Wood gives one of her best performances.  She really upped her acting game on this one. Unfortunately, I found the story ridiculous.  Obviously aimed at the teenage market, we get the usual "Parents bad, Teenagers good" trope that started with  Rebel without a Cause and went all the way through late 1960's.  We get the following characters:

The Bad Dad (Pat Hingle) - He's the father from hell, demanding, money-mad, and oblivious to the needs of his sensitive son. He pressures Beatty into ditching poor Natalie and going to Yale. Why did every playwright in 50's and 60's hate their father?

The Bad Mom (Audrey Christie) - A super-puritan, she hovers over Natalie, telling her that "Good Girls" don't have sex and interrogating her after every date. Materialistic, she's happy Natalie is dating Beatty, since he's from a rich family.

The Good Boy (Beatty) - A sensitive lad, he has no desire to go to Yale or join his Dad's Oil Business. Who cares about money?  He loves Natalie - but when pressured by Bad Dad  -breaks up with her and goes anyway. He wants sex, but feels guilty about it.

The Good Girl (Wood) - She's in love with Beatty but wants to be a "Good Girl" too - so no sex. Frustrated and repressed, she tries to "go bad" but can't - and attempts suicide. After being released from the loony bin - her mother apologizes.  Thanks Mom!

The Bad Girl (Loden) - A peroxide flapper, she's the only non-standard and interesting character. Back from a year in Chicago, she's forced by Bad Dad to stay at home.  Disdainful of the small town, she spends most of her time looking for booze, smoking, and almost getting raped.

Summary: A very good movie of its kind - but not my cup of tea.   A hot date movie in 1961 - it now seems rather quaint in this age of non-stop sex and profanity.  Someone labeled it "Kazan sneering at the Squares" which isn't completely wrong. Becomes less interesting after Natalie goes crazy.  Rating **1/2  

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Plot: Remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.  An Angel takes an athlete to Heaven by mistake - and returns him to life in the body of a murdered Millionaire.
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Jack Warden, Charles Grodin, Dyan Cannon

Background
Produced, co-written,  and co-directed by Warren Beatty, this was his most popular film, earning $80 million in domestic Box-office alone.  The Film earned nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. However, the critics were less enthusiastic, with Roger Ebert giving the film 3 stars, and Kael dismissing the film as a "bland, safe choice". Today it has a mediocre 6.6 IMDB rating from the "Top 1000 Reviewers".

A Pleasant Romantic Comedy
And an overall improvement on Here Comes Mr. Jordan. But then, it should be, given the large budget and all-star cast. Only 104 minutes, its rarely laugh-out loud funny, but it moves quickly and is consistently amusing. Beatty dominates the movie - he's in almost every scene - and is charming and likable. The biggest flaw?  No chemistry between Julie Christie (in a terrible frizzy hair-do) and Beatty. Which is odd, given their long-term relationship.

Didn't Deserve Nine Oscar Nominations
The Oscar nominating committee seems to have loved Warren Beatty. While Heaven Can Wait is a nice Rom-Com, its not "Best Picture" or "Best Director" material.  Was 1978 a slow year?

Going through the other major awards.

• Best Actor - Nothing special here.  Beatty plays the same character he usually does: a quiet, nice, stumbling, average guy.  Only slightly different from "George" in Shampoo.
• Best Screenplay - Another puzzler. The movie's overall story and characters, even individual scenes, are lifted from the original play and Here Comes Mr. Jordan. 
• Supporting Cast - One deserved (Warden), one undeserved (Cannon). The one for Dyan Cannon makes no sense. She has few lines and is more shrill then funny. 

Cast Comparison  Here Come's Mr. Jordan vs. Heaven Can Wait

• Leading Man - Winner? Beatty. Not only is Beatty more charismatic, but Montgomery is hampered by the requirement to be a "dem and does" low-class boxer. It hampers his performance.
• Leading Lady - Advantage Keyes.  Her love affair with Montgomery  is much more better & powerful. 
• Mr Jordan - Rains wins.  Not only is James Mason "low-energy", Mason is incapable of being unambiguously good. 
• Other Supporting Actors: Warden outshines his 1941 counter-part, while Grodin and Cannon are more memorable villains.  
• Buck Henry - The only real stinker.  He wins the "Carl Reiner Award for worst performance by a comedy writer performing his own material". 

Round Midnight (1986)

Plot: Set in 1950's Paris, an old, alcoholic Jazz Great is helped by a worshipful French fan.
Stars:  Dexter Gordon, François Cluzet

The two best things about Round Midnight are the music (we hear a lot of Jazz) and Dexter Gordon.  An amateur actor, Gordon is completely believable in the role, and with his halting raspy voice, has a great screen presence.  Unfortunately, the story has little drama/conflict and moves at a snail's pace. When Gordon isn't playing jazz, he's drinking at a bar or being helped by his French fan (who's not very interesting).  The plot is repetitive -and way too thin - to cover  2 hour and 14 minutes.

Summary:  With a better script and story, this could've been a contender. Too bad.  Jazz fans might forgive the dull story and enjoy the atmosphere and fine musical score.

Bird (1988) - Eastwood

Plot: Biopic of Jazz Great Charlie Parker
Stars: Forest Whitaker,  Diane Verona

A labor of love by Clint Eastwood, who produced and directed, this mostly covers Parker's last years (1950-1955) with his common-law wife, Chan Parker. The great lead acting, and fine music score, is let down by a mediocre script with minimal focus on Parker's Jazz music & the birth of "Bebop". Instead, this dark, somber film concentrates on the Parker-Chan  relationship (neither of whom are physically attractive), Bird's heroin addiction, and his suicidal tendencies. Its dull - when its not depressing. Adding to the dark mood is Eastwood's direction,which places every scene at night or in dimly lit rooms. Way too long at 2 hours and 41 minutes.

Summary:  More a movie about Charlie Parker, "Junkie", then "Jazz Giant". - skip Bird and go buy a Charlie Parker CD.

The Parallax View (1974)

Plot:   Political thriller. When witnesses to a political assassination start to die,  a reporter decides to investigate. He uncovers more than he bargained for.
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn,  Paula Prentiss.
Best Quote: When I agreed to take you back in January I made two suggestions. One was about your drinking. Well, you seem to have licked that. The other was that you curb your talent for creative irresponsibility: you can start working on that right now.

Only 102 minutes long, I enjoyed Parallax View.  A thinly disguised riff off the Kennedy assassination (there's a white-washing Commission, and an assassinated Senator called "Carroll")  it starts out well, but soon gets bogged down in implausible situations.  And in the last half, Parallax View moves too slowly for a "thriller" thereby giving us time to dwell on the gaping plot-holes.  For example:

• How does Beatty survive the boat explosion? 
• Why is it so easy to become a contract killer?
• That super-secret assassination conspiracy, wasn't very secretive was it?
• Why assassinate someone at the Space Needle restaurant?  There only two ways down. Jumping or using the three - very slow - elevators. The police could easily isolate everyone at the restaurant, and identify/search them.  

Warren Beatty:  I'm not a fan, but Warren is good in this one. Sporting the fashionable 70's longhair, he's believable as a reporter, and doesn't have to do much acting.

The Seattle Location a Plus:  It was good to see Seattle circa 1974 and the surrounding countryside. However, the "country bar" where Beatty fights a Deputy belonged in Arkansas - not in a lumber town called "Salmon-tail"

Best Scene:  Beatty fights an evil Sheriff while being swept downstream by released Dam water.

Worst Scene:   We see a fake long-shot boat explosion with Beatty and two others on board. Next scene? We see Beatty onshore in street clothes , no worse for wear, and learn he's the sole survivor.  Say what?

Summary:  Part of the JFK assassination paranoia of the early 70s,  Parallax View covers the same ground as Executive Action, but is much better/entertaining. However, its sometimes sluggish pace - and implausible plot holes - make it no more than an agreeable trip down memory-lane.

Bulsworth (1998)

Plot: A political comedy.  A US Senator decides to "tell it like it is" before he's killed by his own hit-man*
Stars:  Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Jack Warden
Typical Joke: Murphy, Feldman, you're lookin' pretty beat / I thought you might feel better with some ribs to eat / Eat 'em, gentlemen, you'll think they're really fine / And if you want a couple more you can get 'em anytime! - Bulsworth

Background
In 1998, Bulsworth scored with most critics, who liked its political message and it received numerous award nominations.   Box office-wise, the film did good business, and was popular overseas. Today, the critics still like it, but its mostly forgotten and scores a 6.4 IMDB Rating with the "Top 1000 Viewers". Politics date a film.

The Most Embarrassing Political "Comedy" Ever 
The central conceits are:

• 61 year-old Beatty is such a hunk, beautiful 25 y/o Halle Berry falls for him
• black folks need Beatty - The Great White Hope - to save them from themselves 
• people are shocked that Corporations pay off Politicians.  

Even worse, Beatty "turns black"
And we get a rapping Beatty, who stays in Compton, fights off racist cops, and helps a black drug lord go straight.  At the end, Beatty dies in a manner evoking the MLK assassination.  Talk about bad taste! And the dialogue given to the black actors is fake, fake, fake.  Most of the film's black people are rappers, drug dealers and street people - black politicians don't seem to exist.  Maybe Bulsworth should have talked to a few.

Incredibly, the poor script got an AA award nomination! 

All the so-called humor comes from: "Beatty acts black - LoL" Warren is rapping -LoL**" and "The stuffed shirts are upset - LoL". But Beatty isn't personally funny - so all the humor comes from the situations. BTW, if you find profanity hilarious, you'll laugh your head off. 

Summary:  Praised by critics for its left-wing politics - Bulsworth  fails as a movie. Unfunny, way too long, and full of cringe-worthy racial attitudes. Its Ishtar funny - with patronizing racism.  Rating *

* = The premise of someone hiring a hit-man to kill him, and then changing his mind after meeting the right woman - is stolen from "I Hired a Contract Killer" (1990)
** = As in Ishtar,  Beatty's bad singing/rapping is supposed to be hilarious