New Movies: Improbable Love Story

They gather with the twilight in every city, swaggering under awnings and before the fluorescent lights of cafeteria windows. They like to bill themselves as "studs," but they are guys who swing from both sides of the bed. Around them swirls another kind of urban flotsam: maimed, embittered victims with out a prayer of sexual gratification or a hope of companionship. From these unpromising fragments, James Leo Herlihy wrote a lyric blues ballad disguised as a novel. The film adaptation of Midnight Cowboy may grant that ballad too much orchestration, but it preserves its essential compassion and humor.

Joe Buck...

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