Diner

Pros: Great dialogue, classic comedy, strong cast
Cons: Doesn't really go anywhere

1982’s Diner was the launching pad for many careers. Barry Levinson had already made a name for himself as a writer. He was Oscar nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 with …And Justice For All. Diner got him another Oscar ...

Pros: performances, a pleasent slice-of-life, with good humour and truth.
Cons: Pretty casual storytelling, some will find it aimless.

Well, as usual,it’s been a few weeks since I watched this film, so most likely I’m going to forget all of the pertinent points of Barry Levinson’s Diner, which is too bad, because it is a pretty decent slice-of-life film, as well as being a good example ...

Pros: Blow-hard males, late-night coffee and first-rate dialogue—Barry Levinson’s directing debut remains one of his best
Cons: (Some) Chicks don’t get it

The thick porcelain cups filled with the kind of graveyard-shift coffee that wakes your tongue with its sharp acid.

The plates of fries smothered with gravy.

The booths with their linoleum tabletops and bench seats (usually with a...

Pros: It's real and it's real funny.
Cons: None, really.

Diner is a wonderful movie full of memorable scenes and realistic and likable characters. Extremely well acted and directed in a very personal fashion. So many scenes seem like conversations you may overhear in public, except they're too damn funny.
...

Pros: Warm, affectionate memoir of a place and time some can still remember.
Cons: It lacks drama and point, except that most of us live the same way.

Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Glasgow, Pilsen, Smolensk . . . the far flung cities of America and the World are passing as some of us knew them. Certainly in America the old neighborhoods from which the young and imaginative once came are being...

Pros: Memorable scenes, memorable characters, evokes the late 50's
Cons: No real plot, seems pointless

While working on the script for High Anxiety, Barry Levinson was telling stories about his old Baltimore friends and Mel Brooks suggested that these wacky characters deserved a movie. From that conversation Diner was conceived, and we're...

Pros: Good Acting by stars about to break through, well written/directed.
Cons: A little outdated/hard to relate to from a non-nostalgic stand point. Steve Guttenberg.

Times have changed much in this country since the late nineteen-fifties. Diner, Barry Levinson’s nostalgia piece offers a view into the lives of five different boys on their way to becoming adults in this last calm before the storm. While these young men ...

Pros: Simple, effective ensemble work
Cons: A bit wordy

The promise of The Future, with all of its potential for success and disaster, is the underlying electric current that powers Barry Levinson's DINER, a current which both drives the film and its characters beyond its "coming of age"...

Pros: Good story, excellent cast, true portrayal of early 1960s Baltimore
Cons: Blunt talk about sex from the perspective of twenty-year old boys (not for everyone)

Written and directed by Barry Levinson (also Wag the Dog and Donnie Brasco,) I find it hard to believe that this film was released in 1982 since it still remains fresh. Set in Baltimore 1959 for one week between Christmas and New Years...

Pros: Talented cast, great buddy flick, heartwarming and very funny.
Cons: Not much!

Women beware! If your (sometimes immature) man has any ambivalence towards the sanctimony of matrimony, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, allow him to see this sometimes depressing, often hilarious, but definitively brilliant film, until you hear the words...

Pros: Great characters, wonderful dialogue.
Cons: None.

I don't remember the first time I saw DINER, but over the years I've watched it again and again. It's one of those films that just makes you smile and yearn for the days when friendship was the only thing that mattered. I think this film is Levinson's...

Pros: Great acting, dialogue and characters
Cons: May be more of a "guy" movie, not enough people have seen it!

Updated: April 16, 2000

It is the mid-1950’s in Baltimore, Maryland. A collection of twenty-something guys, friends from high school, live their varied normal lives during the day, and spend most of their nights at the Fells Point...

Pros: Good characters and dialogue
Cons: Somewhat kitschy.

If there is a unifying theme to all of the entertainment industry: it would be expressed in the overused phrase “my, how the mighty have fallen.” This principle – that every man get his 15 minutes of fame (at least according to Andy Warhol) and from...

Pros: quite possibly perfect film making-everything shines here, folks
Cons: MAYBE a cheesy line once or twice. Nothing significant.

Forget everything you know about "buddy" flicks. "48 Hours", "Lethal Weapon", even "Swingers"---and prepare for the real deal. Barry Levinson's 1982 masterpiece "Diner" trumps them all to establish...

Pros: funny, sweet, believable
Cons: women as props, but that would be how these guys see them anyway.

Barry Levinson has shared with us on several occasions his bittersweet memories of growing up in Baltimore in the 50s and 60s, as the director of not only DINER, but TIN MEN, AVALON, and LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Unlike Oliver Stone, whose period pieces always...