A Walk in the Clouds (1995) Review: Keanu Reeves in a Timeless Romance

A Walk in the Clouds 

Directed by: Alfonso Arau

Written by: Robert Mark Kamen, Harvey Weitzman, Mark Miller

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Anthony Quinn

Release Date: August 11, 1995

Rediscover A Walk in the Clouds (1995), Alfonso Arau’s lush romantic drama starring Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, and Anthony Quinn.

A Surprising Gem from 1995

Covering the movies of 1995, for the I Hate Critics 1995 podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts, has been full of surprises, but none greater than A Walk in the Clouds, Alfonso Arau’s romantic drama starring Keanu Reeves and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón.

My memory of the film had been that of a gauzy, soft-hearted romance starring a then-teen heartthrob Keanu Reeves. Revisiting it three decades later, I discovered a well-textured, genuinely moving love story of incredible beauty and powerful performances.

The Story: Love, Loss, and the Vineyard

Keanu Reeves stars as Sgt. Paul Sutton, a young man freshly returned from World War II. Back home in San Francisco, his wife Betty (Debra Messing) is nowhere to be found at the docks. Despite Paul’s letters from overseas, Betty hasn’t read most of them and isn’t interested in his desire for a new purpose in life. Their marriage, hastily arranged before Paul shipped out, feels more like an obligation than a bond.

When Paul leaves Betty behind the next morning, it feels final—an unofficial divorce.

Fate soon intervenes when Paul literally crashes into Victoria Aragón (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a young woman pregnant and abandoned by her lover. Facing rejection from her strict father Alberto (Giancarlo Giannini), Victoria fears disgrace. Paul steps in, offering to pose as her husband for one night to protect her honor.

What begins as an act of kindness turns into something deeper as Paul is embraced—at least by some—into Victoria’s vineyard-owning family. Most welcoming is Don Pedro Aragón (Anthony Quinn), Victoria’s grandfather, a larger-than-life figure whose warmth and wisdom help guide Paul toward love and belonging.

A Visual Masterpiece by Alfonso Arau and Emmanuel Lubezki

Director Alfonso Arau, working with three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, creates images of remarkable beauty. The California wine country has never looked so heavenly on screen.

One unforgettable scene sees the family fighting to save the vineyard from frost, lighting torches and fanning giant butterfly-wing-like fans to keep the grapes alive. The visuals, paired with Maurice Jarre’s sweeping score, turn what could have been cloying into pure cinematic poetry. Watching Paul and Victoria grow close amid firelight and music is the essence of romantic filmmaking.

Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn: A Perfect Match

Keanu Reeves in 1995 was often criticized for lacking depth, but in A Walk in the Clouds he delivers a performance that is sweet, vulnerable, and earnest. He shines especially when paired with Anthony Quinn. Their scenes together, particularly one where Quinn’s Don Pedro drunkenly pushes Paul to declare his love, show a relaxed and heartfelt side of Reeves rarely captured on screen at the time. Quinn’s presence elevates the film, and Reeves rises to meet him with surprising warmth.

Final Thoughts: A Walk Worth Taking

A Walk in the Clouds is a wonderful surprise. It’s a warm, romantic film filled with irresistible characters, anchored by Reeves’s sincerity, Sánchez-Gijón’s luminous performance, and Quinn’s towering presence.

Against the breathtaking backdrop of California wine country, captured in all its glory by Emmanuel Lubezki, the film becomes more than a romance—it becomes a meditation on love, family, and finding purpose after war.

Looking back at 1995, A Walk in the Clouds deserves recognition not just as one of Keanu Reeves’s best performances of the decade, but as one of the most beautiful films of its year.

Classic Movie Review La Stada

La Strada

Directed by Federico Fellini

Written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano

Starring Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Baseheart

Release Date September 6th, 1954

On June 13th, 2022, Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room hosted a free online screening of Federico Fellini’s remarkable 1954 romantic tragedy, La Strada. It’s the second free online restoration screening for Scorsese and The Film Foundation and they are going to be doing this once a month for anyone who loves classic films fully restored to their glory by The Film Foundation. And thanks to The Film Foundation, La Strada is another Fellini movie off of my bucket list of classics. 

La Strada begins on a tragedy and ends on a tragedy. In the beginning of the story we find our protagonist, Gelsomina (Giulieta Masina), idly gathering sticks on the beach. Gelsomina is called home for some terrible news. Gelsomina’s sister has died in some far off town. The man who had left with her sister so many years ago, Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a sideshow performer, is now back at her family home requesting the company of Gelsomina to take her sister’s place. He’s given Gelsomina’s mother 10,000 lire for her.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Lust for Life

Lust for Life (1956) 

Directed by Vincente Minnelli 

Written by Norman Corwin 

Starring Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn

Release Date September 17th, 1956 

Published September 5th, 2017 

Our classic this week on the Everyone is a Critic movie review podcast is Kirk Douglas and director Vincent Minnelli’s portrayal of the life of troubled artist Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life. If the film illustrates one thing more than anything else it is that acting has changed a great deal since 1956. While Douglas and co-star Anthony Quinn, as fellow painting legend Paul Gaugin rage at each other, it’s not hard to see why the directors of the next generation began to strive for something more natural and genuine from their actors. Lust for Life seems to me to be among the last films for which theatrically trained actors were the vanguard of the cinema.

Lust for Life picks up the life of Vincent Van Gogh as he is first rejected for a position as a priest. After pleading with a church leader that he must be allowed to minister and preach the word of God he is finally given an assignment. Van Gogh travels to a small mining town where he fails to connect with the mineworkers and their families with his scripted sermons. It isn’t until a parishioner takes Van Gogh into the mines that he begins to see that he must not hold himself above his flock.

The church is horrified by Van Gogh’s choice to live without the garish accoutrements his church salary should have allowed him. Their theory is that living a life of privilege away from the common people is to live as an example of what the poor should strive for. What they don’t understand and what Van Gogh completely understands is hopelessness, the way it seeps into the bones of people who’ve never known anything but toil and suffering.

While it is unspoken in the film, my interpretation was that Van Gogh was so moved by what he saw in the mines that he lost his faith in God and began searching for the meaning of life in his paint, a search that consumed him so deeply that his life ended at the age of 38 with suicide. Lust for Life hints that Van Gogh's suicide is part madness and part his belief that he was unable to capture the meaning and beauty of life on his canvas, even though today he is recognized as genius for capturing and enhancing the beauty of humanity and nature in his work.

When Van Gogh is dismissed from the church he begins dedicating himself to painting, specifically attempting to create art that respects a good hard day’s work. He wants to capture life on canvas but his restless mind robs him of the faculties necessary for managing the rest of his life. What little money Van Gogh received from his more successful and stable brother Theo, Van Gogh spends on more paint and canvases, even after he briefly marries a woman who has a small child.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Last Action Hero

Last Action Hero (1993) 

Directed by John McTiernan 

Written by Shane Black, David Arnott 

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dylan O'Brien, Charles Dance, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, Tom Noonan 

Release Date June 18th, 1993  

Published June 19th 2023 

In the history of Hollywood debacles, Last Action Hero has quite a reputation. With massive budget overruns and egotistical executives pushing for an extremely misguided schedule and release date, Last Action Hero was a doomed production. Having began life as a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger style action movies, the film had to be radically retrofitted when Schwarzenegger chose to star in the film. No longer could the star be the subject of the jokes, he was now the one making the jokes. With Schwarzenegger aboard, the original screenwriters were booted in favor of Shane Black and David Arnott who were tasked with solving a tricky tone of meta-humor and action movie tropes. 

That a movie vaguely watchable came out of the mishmash or rewrites and revisions, that included something like 7 writers, including rewrites by William Goldman and Carrie Fisher, on top of the original duo of Zak Penn and Adam Leff. Both the director and star each offered insight on the script and well, you know what they say about Too Many Cooks? Yeah, way too many cooks took their turn in trying to boil up a workable version of Last Action Hero and the result is a bland, tasteless, pile of gruel, a little salty thanks to Schwarzenegger's star power, but mostly a forgettable and moderately distasteful meal. 

The concept is really the only thing anyone seemed to like about Last Action Hero. In the plot, a 12 year old boy named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), receives a magical movie ticket as a gift from his friend, Nick the Projectionist (Robert Prosky), who has gifted Danny a preview showing of the new Jack Slater movie, Jack Slater 5. Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is an action movie hero in an action movie universe where he's an indestructible action machine who kills bad guys and cuts mad quips at their expense, all while rock music plays on a loop. 

It's everything an adrenalin fueled 12 year old could want, bullets, babes, bad guys, and our hero always wins in the end. This Jack Slater adventure however, is going to be a little different. Thanks to Danny's magic ticket, Danny is transported inside the movie. After dynamite seemingly blows up the movie theater, Danny wakes up in the back of Jack Slater's car, mid-car chase and shootout. Slater is as surprised as Danny to find a young boy in his back set, but that doesn't stop him from finishing off the bad guys and finishing the action scene. 

From there we explore the world of Jack Slater with Danny as our audience surrogate. All the while, Danny tries to convince Jack that they are in a movie in a series of jokes that diminish in comic returns each time. When Danny starts telling Jack that he saw the bad guys set up Jack's favorite second cousin Frank (Art Carney), Jack starts to take Danny seriously, a little bit. Things ramp up when the baddies realize Danny is on to them and the evil Mr. Benedict comes into possession of Danny's magic movie ticket and takes the chance to escape into the real world. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Avenging Angelo

Avenging Angelo (2003) 

Directed by Martin Burke 

Written by Steve Mackall 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Madeleine Stowe, Anthony Quinn, Raoul Bova, Billy Gardell

Release Date May 20th, 2003 

Published July 5th, 2003 

It's been a rough couple years for Sly Stallone's film career. The man has gone from the world’s biggest box office draw to holding his film premieres at Blockbuster Video. Nevertheless, Stallone is still a huge star internationally and whether or not he is successful in the US, he can make movies for international audiences for the rest of his career. Successful money making movies that American audiences almost never see. His latest is a romantic-mob comedy Avenging Angelo.

As you watch the film you can hear the Hollywood pitch meeting, "It's When Harry Met Sally meets The Sopranos.” Stallone is Frankie, a mob bodyguard for an aging Mafioso played by Anthony Quinn. Employing both a flashback and voiceover from Stallone we learn that Quinn's character had a child years ago but was forced to give the child up because of a vendetta from his enemies. Now as Quinn is dying he is ready to tell his daughter the truth.

The daughter is an unhappy housewife named Jennifer (Madeline Stowe). She’s married to a cheating husband who forces her to send her son to military school. After finally catching her husband cheating with a close friend, she throws him out. At the same time the mob boss has passed on and sent Frankie to deliver the news to Jennifer. Surprise, your real father was a mob boss! Not only that but the secret is out that you are a mob princess and there are people out to kill you. So, Frankie moves into her home to protect her.

There are some very funny moments in Avenging Angelo, especially in the chemistry of Stallone and Stowe. Though Stowe's performance is somewhat on the shrill side, she is tempered by Stallone's relaxed, confident performance. Unfortunately, the story that surrounds the performances is contrived and unconvincing. Once Stowe accepts her new persona as a mobster's daughter, she starts talking about whacking people and taking on the family business. Apparently, the transformation from WASPy housewife to Italian mob mother is only a script contrivance away.

Director Martyn Burke is yet another in a long line of directors who are excellent technicians but not great directors. Burke is a great choice if you want a straight transfer of script to screen but if you're looking for innovation, for a director to bring some spice to a familiar story, you should look elsewhere. See Avenging Angelo for Anthony Quinn. While this film may not be the perfect coda for his amazing career, it was nevertheless his last film and that makes it historic. That Stallone and Stowe make the film mildly entertaining around him is a nice bonus.