This is How Movies Should Be Made

Instant Favorite.

Best movie of this year hands down!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Two seemingly separate stories intertwine together in the saga of brother and sister who are living on the last strands of reality. Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes, a real life married couple, are parts of their own states of confusion, pretending to be things that they are not. Rowlands, in the process of a miserable separation from a miserable marriage, ends up at the home of her writer brother (Cassavettes), turning his life further upside down while continuing to head on her own downswing. He's a miserably unhappy Playboy and she's so determined to be happy that everyone around her ends up miserable as a result. In short, their lives, separated by different problems, shouldn't align at this point in their lives.Such amazing performances are given in a film that is at alternate points deeply depressing, often confusing, infrequently funny and often maddening. Rowlands briefly gets to meet Cassavette's son from a brief marriage and doesn't even use the phrase "aunt". In Cassavettes films, it is often impossible to tell what is reality and what is in the character's kinds. These are two extremely damaged people who are often living life in a world turned upside down, and their realities are not of any sensible existence.Some of the oddities here include Cassavettes' involvement with scores of obvious call girls and presence at a party where he encounters several female impersonators who question his sexuality, Rowland's bowling trip and purchase of some exotic pets, and most bizarrely, her dream of her ex-husband and daughter in a ballet setting. In spite of this parallel universe where their minds reside, I found that I could not take my eyes of it although I did find that I needed a break from it 3/4 through to regain my own sense of reality.

Two closely bound, emotionally wounded siblings (real-life spouses John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands) reunite after years apart.Unlike his earlier films that were independent and in many ways raging against the Hollywood system, this time Cassavetes is working for Cannon, a company perhaps now best known for their 1980s action films. How much control they had over him is unclear, but allegedly they did attempt to keep him in line.But the Cassavetes of old is still here. He has his regular acting troupe: Seymour Cassel as Jack Lawson, Al Ruban (who was also cinematographer) as Milton Kravitz, and of course his wife Gena Rowlands. And there is still a bit more conversation than some viewers might like (Cassavetes has a hard time keeping his films under two hours).Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars, noting "Viewers raised on trained and tame movies may be uncomfortable in the world of Cassavetes; his films are built around lots of talk and the waving of arms and the invoking of the gods... Sometimes (as in 'Husbands') the wild truth-telling approach evaporates into a lot of empty talk and play-acting. In 'Love Streams', it works." Indeed, this is the biggest drawback to Cassavetes' films: his love for excessive dialogue that does not advance the plot. While it does exist in "Love Streams", it seems to not be as grandiose as in the past.

This movie is a bit dated but it is really great. The acting by the two stars in this, Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes, is superb. Both of them may give their best performances in this. It is a dramatic movie and dramatic roles for both of them but there is also a lot of comedy and both of them delivery which is odd considering neither especially Cassavetes is known for doing any kind of comedy at all. I see there are awards won here and that is great I am frankly surprised there were no Oscars handed out to this, but the Oscars have long been against comedy films unless they are too huge to ignore. Check this movie out if you haven't seen it!

One of the Great American directors (directing and starring in his last great film) with his wonderful Gena Rowlands told an American tale as old as the Hollywood hills in the dreaded 80's film wash-out era. Check it - a writer who lives with a bunch of beautiful "hookers, babes, whoever these chicks are" while he gets his stuff together while his unhappily married sister (G. Rowlands) is having a bad decade, you have the beginning of a story.The plot alone with some wonderful performances by bit players and some clueless extras and a kid that Cassavets has scenes with (like he did in Marvin and Tige; just acting) that are VERY REAL and so non mainstream, I can't believe this wasn't a HIT in the mid 80's. I've been a film buff for 37 years and this should be shown at Christmas, instead of that horrifying Jimmy Stewart "It's a Wonderful Life" bad want-to-be Rod Serling story about Americans and their foibles. Check this out, even if you're not a Cassavetes fan. It will be well worth your time and effort and Gena Rowlands is wonderful in it. 9 out of 10.