Best movie of this year hands down!

Fresh and Exciting

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

BERLIN 66 Reviews by Alex. Panorama. image1.jpeg "The Fabulous Baker Boys" 1989, by first time director Steve Kloves who later made the Harry Potter films. Seen as part of a retrospective of the films of famed Berlin born DOP, Michael Ballhaus, Now 82, who gets a Silver Bear this year for his life's work as a dependable Hollywood cinematographer who worked with many top directors. This however isn't one of the.Film features the real life brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges as two fictional Brothers, Frank and Jack Baker, who are not particularly fabulous but play dual back-to-back jazzy piano gigs at cheap night spots in Seattle. Whe the jobs get slim they decide that they need a female singer to liven up their fading act. After many hopeless auditions guess who turns up -- an incredibly scruffed down Michelle Pfeiffer who happens to have a knockout voice like a white Billie Holiday and a very come hither stage presentation. Her dynamic style injects new life into the Baker Boys act with a highlight reached when she drapes herself all over Jeff's grand piano as if copulating with the instrument during a sensational singing number -- "Making Whoopee" -- the memorable high point of a fundamentally forgettable picture.Unfortunately, for the rest of the film, although she has become pianist Jeff Bridges' lover and there are extended groping and snuggling scenes between them -- there is, oddly enough, no screen Chemistry between them -- zilch -- and the film dies a slow death from there. Whether it was the direction or some kind of real disattraction is hard to say, but despite the fact that both Jeff and Michele are at the height of their early screen attractiveness what one sees on screen is sheer mechanical sham. One device overly used in the Film is Jeff constantly with a lit cigarette in his mouth as if he were supposed to be Bogart in Casablanca or Gainsbourg in Paris. It just doesn't fit his look or personality and everything else in the picture including Pfeiffer's overdone raggedness is out of kilter. Even the Ballhaus cinematography is nothing to write home about. The brothers end up hassling each other heavily for no good dramatic reason and in the end Bridges rejects Pfeiffer, or was it the other way around? Anyway, she walks off into driftlessness as the picture finally ends. I normally like Bridges movies but this was a surprising disappointment from every angle considering the promising cast. One down and many more to go in a packed festival week.

Brothers Jack (Jeff Bridges) and Frank Baker (Beau Bridges) are pianists who play together in a lounge act. Frank is the responsible family man while Jack is a drunken loner who has only an old dog and a little neighborhood girl as friends. Work is drying up and Frank wants to audition for a singer. Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a former escort. They soon become a highly sought after act. However she awaken many buried feelings in the sibling relationship.Michelle Pfeiffer is terrific. Her singing isn't that bad and she oozes sexuality. The movie is also hilarious at times. It is the brotherly relationship of both the actors and the characters that is truly engaging. The plot is fairly straight forward. The relationships make this movie.

If only to see this movie for one musical number, it is worth it: Michelle Pfeiffer Red evening gown Black piano New Year's Eve "Makin' Woopie"Michelle is a great compliment to the FBB's act, and she steals all the fun scenes in which she appears: The audition (this is where Jennifer Tilley makes her big screen debut) Their first performance, when she drops all the note cards and the boys start performing by themselves, until she catches up. And of course, the New year's Eve performance that had the entire audience transfixed. And don't forget, she sang all of her songs herself.

In a curious case of life imitating art, casting real brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges as the lounge pianists Frank and Jack Baker is a super idea for chemical reasons. The ease and tension in the two men's connection is utterly natural and really draws you into this low-level romcom.The double act realises that, professionally, it needs a shot in the arm - the men probably understand that they need some sort of novelty to reinvigorate them as well, as the act not only pales for the diminishing customer base but also hangs heavily on them. Pfeiffer's Susie Diamond is almost too brash to be true (it's clear the writer-director Kloves had Desperately Seeking-Madonna in mind) but the combined talents of Pfeiffer and Jeff Bridges pull it off.It's odd as the film is principally remembered for a set piece in which Susie gives a sexually electric performance of Makin' Whoopee on a piano in a red dress. This is by no means the highlight of the film, although it neatly demonstrates how a little bit of circus magic, such as the Baker Boys consciously import to their act, goes a long way. That's showbiz. 5/10