The Facts:

Synopsis: A schizophrenic drifter spends Halloween in his home town after returning there for the first time in decades.

Stars: Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Tom Waits, Carroll Baker

Director: Hector Babenco

Rated: R

Running Length: 143 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review:   The pairing of Nicholson and Streep worked so well in 1986’s Heartburn that the two were teamed up again the very next year in this adaptation of a novel by William Kennedy.  Set in depression-era New York, the movie is a somber look at the lives of a rag-tag group of bums and drunks around Halloween as they deal with the ghostly shadows of their unfulfilled lives.

In roles that seem tailor-made for them (perhaps a tad too tailor-made), Streep and Nicholson go for the jugular and earned Oscar nominations for their effort.  She’s a failed singer on her last legs, leaning perhaps a bit unwisely on the shoulder of Nicholson’s ex baseball player.  Now he digs ditches and occasionally visits his abandoned wife and family who want nothing to do with him.  They hang out in shanties, drink, gossip, argue, and care for one another the only way they know how.

It’s a bleak film given dignity by the performances (including Waits, Nathan Lane, Fred Gwynne, and especially Baker as Nicholson’s wife), script (by author Kennedy), and direction from Babenco who found similar light in dark pieces like Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Pixote.  By the end of the film you’ll be as haunted by these characters as they are by the dreams of their lives that might have been.