Goodbye Lover (1999)

Excellent adaptation.

Beautiful, moving film.

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.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

NO,it's not "the killing fields" .It 's a thriller which verges on parody,and the unexpected twists come at such a speed it's not always easy to follow the plot.The cast is perfect :Patricia Arquette is marvelous as a sexy blonde ,who listens to Julie Andrews ("I mistrust people over 10 who still listen to "the sound of music" " says cop Rita);but the stand out is ,IMHO,her colleague ,the cop Ray Mc Kinnon ,and his fortune cookies philosophy ;"His "I arrest you" is priceless and he delivers the last line with such a naivety he almost makes me think of Joe Brown's "nobody's perfect" .Another hilarious scene shows Arquette and Johnson making love in a church to the sound of sacred music and getting an ovation. (for the music ,needless to say)

I confess, I bought the movie because my best friend, Porfirio Mojica, performed the soundtrack at the point where Don Johnson is playing the keyboards in the organ loft. This particular scene (a love scene with Patricia Arquette) is pretty steamy, I admit. Saint Mathew Passion, I believe, is the piece they used. I recognize Pro's (our nickname for Porfirio) style because I grew up listening to him play. Unfortunately, he was not mentioned in the credits because he is not a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Porfirio still performs and teaches music at Mount San Antonio Community College (MTSACC) in Walnut, California. I watch the movie from time to time to hear him in the soundtrack, but I give the movie itself an average rating of 6 out of 10.

GOODBYE LOVER slipped by a lot of viewers when it was released in 1998 and it is only now while on DVD that the quality of this little tongue-in-cheek film noir is gaining steady popularity. And that is basically due to a superb cast of fine actors who obviously are enjoying every minute of the project.Sandra (Patricia Arquette) is a girl of somewhat lethal ambition, married to Jake (Dermot Mulroney) but having an affair with Jake's brother Ben (Don Johnson) who is also having an affair with his secretary Peggy (Mary-Louise Parker). The action quickens when the dark murder-for-insurance angle appears, but this also opens the door for the entrance of detective Pompano (Ellen DeGeneres) and her oingo-boingo partner Rollins (Ray McKinnon) who set about solving the tangled mysteries. The results create a very funny, dark humored movie that sparkles in the hands of all of the actors, especially with DeGeneres and Arquette.A great movie? No, but one that is a lot of fun as directed with an astute grasp of the medium by Roland Joffé

Shady married couple conspire to knock-off the husband's rich brother, but when the wife finds out her husband is in cahoots with the brother's spouse, she does some conspiring of her own. Over-plotted mystery-comedy-drama sat a long while on the shelf. Highly mediocre picture does have a great character for Patricia Arquette to play, but it still isn't funny enough nor convincing enough to make much of an impression. Though directed by the esteemed Roland Jaffe, this is just a cartoonish doodle that only served to give several under-used actors (Don Johnson, Ellen DeGeneres, Dermot Mulroney, Mary Louise Parker) a chance to be "colorful". End result is exhausting and tedious. ** from ****