1987 - BARFLY - amusing film about low life drunks

Mickey Roarke and Faye Dunaway are a couple of drunks hanging out at a flea trap of a bar in Los Angeles.  The director is Barbet Schroeder and the writer is former drunk Charles Bukowski. 

Roarke is the whole show.  He looks like a bum and speaks in some sort of weird dialect.  An educated man, he listens to classical music and is a writer when he's sort of sober.  His drunken rants about life are very amusing.  I'll take this version of a Mickey Roarke loser over his overrated performance in The Wrestler. 

Faye Dunaway is also pretty darn good as his sort of girlfriend, another big boozer.  Dunaway was a good looking glamour girl in her day and she could act.  Her performance is also far more interesting than her cold fish career woman in Network. 

The film is expertly photographed by Robby Muller a German cinematographer who usually worked with Wim Wenders.  Barfly has a nice European feel to it considering it was filmed on location in some very seedy parts of Los Angeles.

The director Barbet Schroeder makes interesting if not always successful films.  Schroeder is also a producer, who has worked with Rohmer, Goddard,  Rivette, Fassbinder and Chabrol

97 minutes