Movies / Barfly (1987)

The script for this movie was written by outrageous poet-author-alcoholic Charles Bukowski. But director Barbet Schroeder makes it into an oddly amusing story of a pugnacious drunk writer (Mickey Rourke) based on Bukowski himself. Rourke spends almost all of his time at the bar, struggling with sobriety (he's against it) and, occasionally, having fistfights with the bartender (Frank Stallone). He meets another souse, a formerly attractive woman (Faye Dunaway), and gets involved with her, which means they drink copious amounts of liquor and try to have sex. Not much happens beyond that, yet this film is strangely entertaining, for all of its bottom-of-the-barrel humanity. Maybe that's the secret: "Oh, the humanity...." --Marshall Fine