Artivels
Undescribable Perfection
ThiefHott
Too much of everything
WasAnnon
Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
molsmith13
I am a fan of European movies because the film makers there seem to be able to create human inspired dramas which explore the realistic side of life at a microscopical level. Their films dive deep into the human condition - hopes, shattered dreams, past memories, sex, hopes, love, and despair.This movie does exactly that! Well done to all the cast, the crew, the story teller, and everyone involved to create a telling story against all the prevailing forces which consider entertainment as a business only enterprise.This is a brilliantly executed classic of the best of American film making. I am stunned that everyone involved managed to achieve such excellence in their art against the enormous pressure at the time it was made to produce bucks-only cinema.If you are a fan of serious story-telling and you appreciate the fine art which the cinema medium allows when Great story-tellers are involved, then you are going to discover an absolute classic of brilliance here.See it. Talk about it. Think about it. Many people have yet to enjoy this extraordinary excursion into the heart of human darkness, and to learn where real life is lived by the masses.mol
MBunge
Imagine taking a 1970s sitcom about a couple of senior citizen petty criminals, splicing it together with a 1980s TV movie about the hazards of being a street corner hooker and sprinkling in bits of a 1990s indy flick about the dysfunctional dwellers of a squalid hotel lobby that tries to get all heartfelt and meaningful at the end. If you can imagine that, what you come up with is almost certainly better than Night at the Golden Eagle.This isn't by any means the worst movie I've ever seen, but this type of bad movie is probably the worst kind of film to sit through. It's not really stupid or pretentious or incompetent enough for you to have fun with how much it sucks. It's merely so ill conceived that nothing about it works.There are three separate elements to this story. One focuses on Tommy (Donnie Montemarano) and Mick (Vinny Argiro). They grew up together as street thugs who were never good enough to be real gangsters. Instead, they became the sort of small time hoods who stick up ice cream trucks and that's all they've ever been, even though they're both on the wrong side of 60 as this movie opens. Tommy is just getting out after a 7 year stint in prison and Mick surprises him with a plan to move out to Las Vegas and, once and for all, go straight. That plan pretty much goes up in smoke when Tommy brings a prostitute back to Mick's room at the Golden Eagle hotel and kills her.Another aspect of this film shows us 15 year old runaway Loriann (Nicole Jacobs) as she falls in with a disgusting pimp named Rodan (Vinny Jones) and his aging whore, Sally (Ann Magnuson). Rodan works on Loriann's neediness and insecurity before handing her over to let Sally show her the ropes. We see a maternal bond form between Sally and Loriann, until Loriann emotionally ages about 20 years in 15 seconds and becomes even harder and more broken than Sally. This part of the movie made me wonder two things.1. Is the character of Rodan named after the artist or the flying Japanese movie monster?2. Is Vinny Jones a wholesome family man in real life? If he is, the guy deserves an Academy Award because on screen he is absolutely convincing as the sleaziest, most soulless piece of human excrement you can imagine.The final thread to this cinematic tapestry is the interactions between the desk clerk (Miles Dougal) and the denizens of the Golden Eagle hotel lobby. All of them are no more than a half-step up from the gutter and none of them are reaching for the stars. This is the stuff where we're supposed to be impressed with how gritty and realistic things are and at the ironic detachment that turns these people's mental and emotional wounds into sources of humor. Yet it spoils all its cynical aspirations by trying to wring a tear out of the audience by having the lovable, old black buy die.Can you see how mushing all of that together becomes a problem? The comedy can never be that comedic, the drama can never that dramatic and the snarky can never be that snarkful because it's all sloshing together in a movie goulash.Like a great many independent films, I don't think Night at the Golden Eagle was ever meant to entertain anyone. This is the sort of thing where the filmmaker hopes it gets shown at film festivals and people applaud because the folks there convince themselves that it must be art. Well, I don't know art but I know what I like and it ain't this movie.
alserve
I was undecided halfway through this very dirty movie whether I was being entertained or satisfying some sick curiosity I keep chained up in the basement of my lower brain. Don't get me wrong; I'll pay good money to satisfy both appetites. But I made up my mind about this film when it tried to sell needless additional shock value by exploiting ignorant stereotypes. I so sick to death of Black, and now apparently Latino Men being cast as nasty sexual predators. What makes matters worse is these movie bogeymen are always laying in wait for the pure white female youth of America. How frightening this must have been for those of you who found this film a work genius. It would have just been too tame for the white pimp to deflower our white teenage runaway (which is what would happen in reality). No… what's needed here is a really malevolent, un-naturally dark, sweaty, black man to scare the hell out of ignorant moviegoers. I'm not saying minorities shouldn't play the bad guys in the movies, just try to be more creative. Hey, if you liked this theme, you should rent Requiem for a Dream and Traffic as well! It's no wonder the cancer of racism won't go into remission, when you keep ingesting poison like this!
Tiger_Mark
Geez, what a dark picture! I mean, this film tries to be as ugly as humanly possible. We are either seeing sweaty old men trying to dispose of dead hookers or we are seeing a 15 year old girl sell herself to hideous looking bums. The seedy dump where it all takes place looks and feels like a septic tank. Just watching what transpires here makes you want to take a long hot shower. I suppose I was semi-interested in the movie and that is sad. Because there was nothing redeeming in it. Just a base tale for people with morbid curiosities. I am not sure if that is art or just pathetic. Moreover, I do have some problems with some of the technical aspects. I mean you have these two guys screaming at each other on how to get rid of this dead body in this dive. They are worried that people will find them out, yet they are screaming in a dive with obvious paper thin walls. I also have a problem with our young white hooker, who seems to be soiling herself, not just because she is selling her body, but because she loses her virginity to a very dark black man and then a hispanic. It seems somewhat racist in that regard. As if selling herself to an attractive, young white man would not have been as bad? No, this film just wants to be ugly. There are no promises or hope for redemption. There is no brighter future, just an abyss.
