Like a lot of movies centered around a singular great performance, “Joker” suffers somewhat from being so dominated by its central character. This is, of course, the madman villain from the Batman franchise, indelibly played by Heath Ledger and less so by Jared Leto.
Now Joaquin Phoenix tackles the role in a grim, R-rated psychological drama that seems barely tethered to the comic book world that spawned it. Like Phoenix’s other amazingly off-kilter performances of recent years -- “The Master,” “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” -- he brings such singular, loopy energy to the role that you come away believing no other actor could’ve played the part.
You could argue “Joker” is a comedy, especially as it’s directed and co-written (with Scott Silver) by Todd Phillips, best known for gross-out comedies like “The Hangover” trilogy. Certainly there is a dark undercurrent of humor here, with Phoenix playing Arthur Fleck, a pitiable clown whose dream is to make the whole world laugh.
But there’s so much of a creepy vibe as we follow Arthur on his journey toward becoming the Joker that you’re more likely to grimace than chuckle.
He lives with his mother (Frances Conroy), a feeble-minded invalid, and yearns after his down-the-hall neighbor, Sophie (Zazie Beetz). Just as things start to look up for him, Arthur begins a long spiral into madness and mayhem.
Robert De Niro plays Murray Franklin, the TV talk show host Arthur idolizes. When video of Arthur bombing at stand-up comedy goes viral, Murray is among those to pile on.
I’ve heard the complaint that “Joker” somehow idolizes “incels,” a term first used to describe, then insult, men who are unable to have relationships with women. I learn this has become an online community where men embrace the term and project their negative emotions on others, often in misogynist ways.
These critics must have not seen the movie I did. The idea that “Joker” is a celebration of pathetic loser who feels squeezed out by society is pretty bonkers from where I sit. Examining how a person reaches a place of utter nihilism is an act of creative bravery, not indulgence.
But maybe “Joker” is the perfect reflection of our age, in which we are urged to shun that which we don’t understand rather than engage with it.
Video extras are a mite disappointing, consisting of just four documentary featurettes:
Imagine a 3½-hour travelogue of Martin Scorsese’s gangster filmography. There isn’t really anything new, just riding over familiar themes he’s tread on in his other movies, over and over again. You appreciate the nostalgia tour, but in the end that’s all it is.
That’s “The Irishman.”
Heck, I thought the whole goombah thing was played out back in the days of “Casino.” But here we are a quarter century on, reuniting Robert De Niro with Joe Pesci, who was lured out of virtual retirement, and throwing Al Pacino into the mix.
Although their films share a lot of DNA, Pacino has never been in a Scorsese movie before. All four men are in their 70s now, and “The Irishman” very much as the feeling of ‘one last ride with the old gang, while they still can.’
It’s the story of Frank Sheeran, known by that titular nickname for being the only non-Italian high up in the Bufalino crime family centered around Philadelphia. Frank, played by De Niro, was a war hero who became a Teamsters truck driver and later a local chapter president with the backing of Russell Bufalino (Pesci), the mob boss who had pull in most everything, including the union.
The story, written by Steven Zallian (“Schindler’s List”) based on a book by Charles Brandt, follows Frank from the 1950s to the 1970s, with flashbacks to his World War II days and a framing story when he is an elderly man in a nursing home recalling his life -- seemingly to nobody.
There’s also a framing device within the larger one, in which Frank travels with Russ and their wives on a languid road trip to Detroit in 1975, ostensibly to attend a wedding but really to do a little business along the way, including hashing things out with a troublesome ally, former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino).
If you know anything about how or when Hoffa died, it’s not too hard to put together the real import of their trip. The subject of Brandt’s book is also well-known, but for those who aren’t familiar I’ll refrain from revealing any spoilers, even if they are glaringly obvious.
The film uses CGI to “de-age” the actors during the earlier sequences, and for the most part it’s effective enough that you don’t notice it after a while. Russ refers to Franks as “the kid” during the 1950s scenes, though even with digital help De Niro looks more like he’s in his 50s than his 30s. Only the World War II stuff looks cringingly fake.
Frank is a very passive guy for a main character; he’s mostly reacting to other people. Pacino gets the limelight as the charismatic, neurotic Hoffa, constantly blustering and schmoozing. Pesci plays the calm guy, quiet guy you have to watch out for.
Essentially, the three legendary actors switched around their stereotypical roles.
There’s some wonderfully rough dialogue, including aphorisms substituted for dark deeds. For instance, Frank first gains his reputation as an assassin, which is known as “painting houses.” (A home’s wall splattered with blood provides the visual cue.) A final judgment on a guy becomes, “It’s what it is.”
But spread out over 209 minutes, when you put it all together the result is a lot of run-on scenes of guys riding around in cars, sitting in bars, having tangential conversations.
"We gotta talk about that thing. I'm a little concerned." "What thing, that thing?" "No, the other thing, the one with Tony." "Big Tony?" "No, the other Tony." "Little Tony?" "No, the other other Tony." "Oh, so we gotta go paint his house." "No. Not that."
There’s lots of other characters who flit in and out of the story, too many to name them all. A short list would include Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale as big guys in Russ’ orbit; Sebastian Maniscalco as Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo, an upstart who likes clam sauce; Ray Romano as the obligatory mob lawyer; and Stephen Graham as Anthony Provenzano, aka “Tony Pro,” aka “the little guy,” who clashes repeatedly with Hoffa.
The female characters are used more poorly than any other mainstream film of recent vintage I can recall. They’re literally mannequins in the background, seen but rarely heard. Certainly they do not say or do anything pivotal. They do not even age like the men do, though who knows if that’s an aesthetic choice by Scorsese or simply a cutback on the film’s famously sprawling budget.
Scorsese casts Anna Paquin as Frank’s daughter, Peggy, and then gives her nothing to do. She stands witness to Frank’s crimes, but is not gifted with the ability to speak about them. We wait for the final confrontation that never arrives. What a waste of a fine actress.
“The Irishman” isn’t a bad movie -- it’s great-looking and Pacino gives a peppy performance as Hoffa. But it’s an overlong elegy for a time gone by, when mobsters were important figures and people made movies glamorizing them. Expiration dates for both are overdue.
“Hands of Stone” gets by on the power of its performances and the lifelike depiction of Roberto Duran’s fighting style in the boxing ring. Like a lot of biopics, it stumbles when trying to shoehorn a long, complicated life into a 105-minute story.
For instance, the movie covers Duran’s early career from brawler in the streets of Panama to his 1983 comeback fight against a young Davey Moore, after the humiliation of his infamous “No Mas” rematch with the great Sugar Ray Leonard, in which he relinquished the title by refusing to fight anymore.
In fact, Duran had already lost a couple other “comeback” fights before that one, and would continue to fight for nearly three decades after – including a third bout with Leonard in 1989 (which he also lost).
Still, I can understand why writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz, a Venezuelan making his English-language feature film debut, chose to cut the string of this story thread where he did. Boxing movies tend to follow a familiar rise/fall/rise again three-act story structure, and you know what they say about that which ain’t broke. It makes the movie predictable, but also more digestible.
Edgar Ramírez, almost 40, shines playing Duran from about 19 to age 32. He’s much prettier than the real Duran, but that’s Hollywood for you. Ramírez gives him a sort of feral charm, a street urchin who fought bare knuckles for cash turning into the hungry young boxer who stalked his opponents like a beast of prey in the ring.
When he spots a pretty young schoolgirl, Felicidad (Ana de Armas), he corners her and proposes marriage on the spot. Here was a man who knew real craving in life, so when he saw the things he wanted, he pounced.
Robert De Niro is in his usual fine form as Ray Arcel, a legendary trainer who was pushed out of the game 18 years earlier when he defied Frankie Carbo (John Turturro), a New York mobster who controlled the fights. Nearly killed, he promised never to make another dollar in the ring. So he agreed to train Duran for free.
Usher Raymond (using his full name here) shines as Leonard, who is depicted as a lightning-fast fighter with loads of charm and wit. Goaded by Duran to “fight like a man” in their first bout, he smiled after losing because he knew he had been outsmarted. By the time their rematch came a few months later, Leonard was a honed blade while Duran had let himself get badly out of shape.
There’s an interesting tension here between Duran, Arcel and Carlos Eleta (Ruben Blades), the wealthy Panamanian businessman who bankrolled Duran. Arcel, who seems himself as much as a father to his fighters as a trainer, sees nothing wrong with letting Duran take some time off, eat whatever he wants, and enjoy what he’s earned. But Eleta, sensing a big payday, sees money as more important than winning.
De Niro’s character imparts a lot of wisdom, both in the ring and in the narration. He differentiates between tactics, which are a fighter’s moment-by-moment decisions in the ring, with strategy, which is the long-term plan of how to outmaneuver your opponent. Arcel also employs little idiosyncratic moves, like combing Duran’s hair before each round, so he seems fresh and invincible.
Jakubowicz goes for a moderate blend of styles for the fight scenes, eschewing the ridiculousness of the “Rocky” movies – where guys absorb haymaker after haymaker without going down – and the lyrical slo-mo blood sport of “Raging Bull” and its ilk. The boxing is straightforward and deliberate, with enough “flash bulb” moments for the audience to grasp the impact of the blows.
In boxing parlance, “Hands of Stone” has punching power but a poor sense of timing. The story dances here and there, skipping over most of the 1970s and then rushing the final act. It’s a worthy picture, but destined to remain a contender.
If you were expecting the presence of acclaimed actor Robert De Niro to having a taming effect on this raunch-and-roll party, think again. De Niro plays a hard-partying gramps who has just lost his wife of 40 years, and decamps to Florida with his grandson to let his inner 21-year-old out.
On her deathbed, he insists, she told him to get out there and live the life he wants, and now he's carrying through on that pledge -- and not even waiting until her body is cold to do it.
De Niro plays Dick Kelly, a retired Army guy who, by his own acknowledgement, was an awful father. His son (Dermot Mulroney) turned into an uptight jerk, and now third generation Kelly Jason (Zac Efron) is following in his footsteps. He's already a junior associate in his dad's corporate law firm, more concerned with forming LLCs and getting married to a controlling rich witch (Julianne Hough) than pursuing his dreams.
Protesting the suspension of his driver's license due to cataracts, Dick shames Jason into driving him from Atlanta down to Boca Raton, with a few "stops" along the way. They play golf, chase some girls, head to Daytona for spring break, chase more girls, drink a lot, drug a lot, get into some fights and maybe, just maybe, learn some life lessons.
If it sounds like a goofball bender, a young-meets-old version of "The Hangover," that's because it is. Director Dan Mazer and script man John Phillips keep things loose and fast-paced. It may be 102 minutes of debauchery, but it's got just a smidgen of class.
Along the way they hook up with a threesome of hotties: Shadia (Zoey Deutch), who shared a freshman photography class with Jason and is interested in another exposure; Lenore (Aubrey Plaza), a slutty girl with a thing for oldsters; and Bradley (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman), a fabulous gay black man who can't tell if the crass grandpa is pulling his leg or not.
Both De Niro and Efron show off a considerable amount of skin in the movie, proving that the 72-year-old screen legend still has a body of iron, and that the 28-year-old Efron is a frequent patron at the hair waxing salon. There's also a bed-sharing scene that ups the ante from a similar one in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" -- though with some stunt, uh, body parts, methinks.
One of the running jokes is how lax law enforcement is in Florida. Jason Mantzoukas plays Tan Pam, who runs a souvenir shop that's just a front for his drug operation. He fires pistols randomly -- "This entire state is licensed as a gun range!" -- and has endeared himself to the local cops so much that they pat him on the head and tell him to run along whenever he does something bad, like selling meth to 8th-graders.
It's a weird kabob of a movie, one bite tasty and the next one foul, though there's probably enough good to recommend if you're into this sort of thing. Just know what you're getting: this grandfather isn't cantankerous, he's one crude dude.
"1900" is a movie that is at once very large and very small.
It was Bernardo Bertolucci's self-conscious attempt to create an epic film about Italy's struggle between fascism and socialism. He framed his tale around two characters, the son of a rich landowner or padrone and the son of a peasant, who were born on the same day and raised together. We watch them from boyhood to middle age to dotage, striving against each other, eternal friends and combatants.
The title is somewhat confusing. In Italian it was known as "Twentieth Century" to indicate the scope and sweep of the story, but perhaps they thought American audiences would confuse it with the studio. So they came up with "1900," which itself is something of a misnomer, since the movie explicitly begins on the day Giuseppe Verdi died, in 1901, when both boys are born.
Released nearly 40 years ago, "1900" is known today for three things.
There is the sexual content, which at one point earned an NC-17 rating during a 1991 re-release. It includes a scene where fully nude stars Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu are masturbated by a women simultaneously -- one (obstinately flaccid) cock in each hand.
There are the various edits of the film, all of them long. Bertolucci fought with his financial backers, at one point being literally locked out of the editing room, and different iterations of "1900" have been shown at different times and venues. Traditionally the movie has been exhibited in two parts, though the run time has varied quite a bit. I saw the full director's cut, a hair over 5¼ hours, which places it among the longest narrative films ever released.
(There is no official intermission, and my viewing took place over several days, by necessity.)
Lastly, there is the pretty uniform perception that the film is a dog, a disaster even. Right after "Last Tango in Paris," Bertolucci was being hailed as the new European master. Many people were expecting the Italian equivalent of "The Godfather" parts 1 & 2, and were left sorely disappointed by the shambling narrative.
Roger Ebert put it succinctly in his review: "Bertolucci had his pick of actors, a free run with his budget, the freedom to make a personal film. And he blew it."
I think it's still a worthy cinematic experience, and certainly it is a very beautiful film to gaze upon. Ennio Morricone, one of my favorite film composers, came up with a lush score to back up the visuals of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The rustic, slightly dreamy look of it reminded me very much of Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven."
The main problem with the film is that it wants to use the two main characters, Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò (De Niro and Depardieu, respectively), as representatives of the competing aims of fascism and socialism, and neither one is a particularly good fit.
Olmo is a born troublemaker who instinctively identifies with the collectivist agrarian ideas of his large clan, who have worked the Berlinghieri lands for generations, essentially as indentured servants. He has a tendency to provoke conflict but then shy away from the consequences, so he doesn't make for a very heroic leader of the proletariat. When he finally stands up enough to make the fascists respond, he runs away, so their punishment is visited upon his family instead.
Alfredo is even thornier. As played by De Niro, he's a pampered rich boy who takes his wealth and status for granted, but is more sympathetic to the socialist sentiments of his workforce than are his fellow landowners. When we first meet him in young manhood, Alfredo is extremely cocky and hedonistic, preferring parties, booze and cocaine over the dull homestead. Later, after taking his place as padrone, he becomes defined by his indecision. A main character who won't make a choice is rarely a compelling one.
He won't stand up to the local leader of the fascist blackshirts, Attila, even though he is Alfredo's employee. Donald Sutherland plays Attila, a snarling, depraved man who sees the fascist movement as the proper vehicle in which to express his masochism and lust for power. We see him use his forehead to smash the life out of a helpless cat, and later he sodomizes and then kills a young boy in a similar fashion.
Sutherland is arresting in the role, by far the most vivid character in "1900." But narratively he's problematic.
It's much the same issue I had with the Michael Fassbender character in "12 Years a Slave." By making a single person the representation of all evil in a movement that entailed millions of people, you end up making that character a cartoon. And you let the multitudes who embraced fascism/slavery/the Holocaust, etc. -- or were complacent in its atrocities -- off the hook.
So why exactly won't Alfredo simply fire Attila and banish him from his lands, given that the essentially existed in a feudal system with himself as lord? It's never really answered, or even explored.
The best part of the film is the first 90 minutes or so when Olmo and Alfredo are rambunctious boys. Roberto Maccanti and Paolo Pavesi play them as youths of about 12, and are both terrific. (They have their own controversial nude scene in which they compare their foreskins.)
They have all sorts of spats and adventures, such as Olmo lying underneath a passing locomotive. (Alfredo takes up the dare but then balks.) In one of the film's most visually memorable moments, Olmo catches live frogs from the farm's irrigation canals and ties them, alive and wriggling, to his hat.
Two figures who lord over this section with magisterial sweep are the boys' grandfathers. Leo Dalcò is played by the great Sterling Hayden, while Burt Lancaster is Alfredo Berlinghieri the elder. Each man has an intuitive grasp of his place in the world, and their relationship to each other. In some ways it mirrors that of their grandchildren, a strange brew of respect, affection and antagonism.
Leo is initially hostile to the socialist movement, teaching Olmo that he will always be a peasant and to accept his fate. Still, his heart is with the land and the people, so it doesn't take much to convince him to join a strike. Leo is a servant of capitalist tradition, but socialist ideals aren't much of a stretch for him: "If it's yours," he tells young Olmo, "then it belongs to all of us."
The older Berlinghieri has traits of both nobility and venality about him. He sees his workers as chattel, much like the stock in his milking pen, but he's also the sort of man who believes in treating his animals well. His own son, young Alfredo's father, inherits all of the man's pride and entitlement but none of his wisdom. In another seminal moment from the film, when the new padrone tells the workers he's cutting their wages in half, one of the men slices off his own ear and offers it to the master as a symbol of his lost dignity.
"1900" loses focus and momentum in the second half. Much of it is taken up with Alfredo's relationship and marriage with a half-mad Parisian woman, Ada, played by Dominique Sanda. Her face and low, dusky voice reminded me very much of Lauren Bacall. She's one of those women who insists on being the center of attention in any room she occupies, even if she has to act completely batty to force the limelight. Predictably, she becomes resentful of life in the country and turns to drink.
Olmo's own wife, Anita (Stefania Sandrelli), checks out of the movie midway, dying in childbirth. She is actually Olmo's instructor in the ways of socialism, but their relationship doesn't have much spark outside of that.
The other significant character is Regina, Alfredo's cousin and childhood playmate. She clearly expected to become his wife one day, and when he chooses a wan foreigner over her, it drives Regina into the arms of Attila. She becomes his hate-whisperer, urging him on to ever more destructive acts as a way to spite Alfredo.
Regina is played by Laura Betti. About 20 years older than De Niro and Depardieu, with a matronly build and stout face, Betti's presence is an incongruous one, seeming more like the witchy aunt than the third leg of a supposed love triangle.
It's interesting to note that Bertolucci filmed "1900" with actors from America, France, Italy and other nations, and instructed them all to speak in their native language. This was a not uncommon practice with international productions of the 1960s and '70s -- Sergio Leone did so with his spaghetti Westerns. So watching the film on video poses a dilemma.
In general I prefer to view non-English films in their own language with subtitles. But doing so meant watching De Niro, Lancaster and Hayden with obviously dubbed voices -- and not very good ones, either. Meanwhile, Depardieu speaks in French, the Italians in Italian, and so forth.
So I opted to watch mostly in English, but would switch to French for Depardieu's long dialogue scenes and occasionally to Italian. (This revealed that Sanda, with her distinctive low moan, apparently did her English and French lines herself.)
It was somewhat distracting, but not much. I can only imagine how it complicated the give-and-take between actors on a set.
"1900" is a flawed film, but it's certainly a noble failure. Seeing it is obviously not a thing to be undertaken lightly, given the sheer investment in time alone. But I am glad I did so.
In one of his final reviews, the incomparable Roger Ebert declared a film “fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air.” I felt much the same way about “American Hustle,” which boasts an entire crowd of Academy Award-winning and -nominated thespians, one of Hollywood’s most lauded writer/directors, a buzzy historical subject, and a crushing identity crisis.
What the heck is this movie about? Ostensibly, it’s a fictionalized version of the Abscam scandal of 30-odd years ago that led to the conviction of a bunch of Congressmen and other government officials on corruption charges. But in the sprawling, unwieldy adaptation, it seems like merely an excuse for a bunch of actors to dress up in horrid ‘70s fashions and exchange frenetic volleys of dialogue that often make not a lick of sense.
Eric Singer’s screenplay exploring some little-known peculiarities of the imbroglio had languished around Hollywood for years, turning up on lists of the best non-produced scripts. Director David O. Russell did his own rewrite to intentionally turn the real-life characters into caricatures, and make the shenanigans even crazier than they actually were.
(Fittingly, Singer’s original title was “American Bullpucky,” though he used a different word.)
The cast is led by Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld, a brilliant but complex con man. Outwardly the role is showy, with Bale putting on weight to gain a big belly, and wearing an elaborate comb-over hairdo, tinted glasses and cheesy facial hair. But Irving lives mostly inside his own head, and sometimes has difficulty putting his schemes into action.
Bale never quite breaks through the wall between an actor’s creation and the audience, and Irving largely remains a sphinx to us.
Irving’s muse and partner in crime is Sydney Prosser, played by Amy Adams, who adopted the persona and lilt of a refined British woman so long ago, it’s taken over her identity. She cares deeply for Irving, for reasons that are unclear to her, and us. Adams gets her own makeover with a poodle perm and necklines that perpetually plunge down to her navel.
The third, and unsteadiest leg of the triad of leading characters is Richie DiMaso, played by Bradley Cooper, who is the FBI agent who busts Sydney and Irving and forces them to become his operatives.
They entrap politicians (including a sharp Jeremy Renner as a New Jersey mayor) with promises of a massive casino financed by a mysterious Arab sheikh. Richie lets the power go to his head, and convinces himself he and Sydney are soul mates.
If you thought this was yet another story about a love triangle, then you’d be wrong, because it’s actually a quadrangle.
Jennifer Lawrence turns up as Irving’s wife, Rosalyn, a walking electric ball of neuroses. Feeling abandoned by her husband’s criminal antics and his attentions for Sydney, Rosalyn inserts herself into the mix by sheer force of will, which proves troublesome when their business dealings wander into the purview of the mafia.
Narratively, Rosalyn doesn’t really serve much purpose in the story, other than to gum up the works and generate chaos. Lawrence is so crackling good, though, that the film goes into a torpor whenever she walks off-screen.
Rounding out the cast is Louis C.K. as Richie’s put-upon boss and Michael Peña as a Mexican-American fed who gets tapped to portray the sheikh. Robert De Niro also makes an uncredited appearance in a familiar role.
The experience of seeing “American Hustle” is like being at a wild party where you don’t know anybody, and find yourself shoved into a corner watching the mayhem happening all around. You never really understand the whats and the whys of it all, and you stroll out the door unchanged from how you were when you walked in, mostly trying to remember who sent the invitation and why you accepted it.
"The Family" is a goof, a recycle of a rehash, a sort-of sequel to "Goodfellas" in which we find out what happens to the gangster after he snitches on his pals and goes into witness protection. It features Robert De Niro, who has largely spent the last 20 years of his career spoofing on the first 20 years of his career as a cinematic tough guy.
He still plays tough, but now it's for laughs. Or at least it's supposed to be. This inert comedy just lies there, intermixing horrific violence with jokes about more violence. It tries to skate by on the charms of De Niro and co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones. But it's essentially a one-joke movie, and that joke gets old pretty quick.
De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, a one-time mob boss who's now living in France with his family: wife Maggie (Pfeiffer, doing a screechy retread of her "Married to the Mob" role), daughter Belle (Diana Agron, pushing 30 and playing 17) and son Warren (John De'Leo). They're a collection of Italian-American stereotypes in search of a set-up to deliver the obvious punchline.
They move from place to place whenever they cause any trouble, which is frequently. When they roll up to their new place in a tiny village in Normandy, Gio -- who goes under the name Fred Blake -- already has a body hidden in the back of the car. Gio seems cool as a cucumber on the outside, but the minute he feels disrespected, someone's going in a hole.
Unfortunately, being an American in France, the clan gets disrespected a lot. Director and co-writer Luc Besson wades into a whole lot of "ugly American" territory, with the added irony that "Fred" and company really are homicidal thugs. Maggie blows up a grocery store on her first day in town when the locals snicker at her request for peanut butter, and both kids lay severe beat-downs on classmates.
The strangest thing about the movie is there really isn't any reason for the story to be set in France. None of the family speak the lingo very well, even after living there for years. Would the FBI handler (Jones) really take the trouble and expense of setting them up in a foreign country when the good ol' U.S. of A is begger than 10 Frances?
The answer is "The Family" is based on a novel by a French author, Tonino Benacquista, and Besson is another Frenchie. It's basically their homage to "Goodfellas" -- there's even a scene where "Fred" gets invited to a film club meeting and that's the movie playing. So it's De Niro poking fun at one of his own iconic roles.
This sort of self-indulgence might be more tolerable if the movie were funnier. But between the geysers of blood, repetitive jokes about boorish Americans and snooty French, "The Family" was better left dead and buried.
“Silver Linings Playbook” pulled off something that hadn’t been done in more than three decades: Academy Award nominations for best picture, screenplay, director and all four acting categories. This heartwarming but sobering drama from writer/director David O. Russell (“The Fighter”) showcases his ability to pull maximum effort from his cast.
Much like professional athletes will refer to their leader as a players’ coach, Russell is an actors’ director. Consider: his last two films have garnered seven Oscar acting nominations, with three wins.
The movie itself doesn’t live up to the strength of its performances, but it’s still an ambitious and largely successful picture. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence play Pat and Tiffany, two young people struggling with serious mental health issues. Pat has just been released from an institution, while Tiffany lives in the garage behind her parents’ house.
They’re also both single – he through divorce, she a widow – and set about on a tentative, combative romance. Pat is still obsessed with his ex-wife, and Tiffany comes up with the off-kilter idea of entering a dance contest to help them bond.
Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver have strong, authentic roles as Pat’s long-suffering parents, while Chris Tucker shines as his best friend and fellow ex-patient. One of the film’s strengths is that it doesn’t ignore the impact of the main characters’ craziness on those around them.
Funny, touching and wry, “Silver Linings Playbook” is a cracked-mirror reflection of the classic love story.
Video extras are pretty good, though lacking a commentary track. The DVD comes with deleted scenes and a making-of documentary, plus featurettes on rehearsing the couple’s big dance scene and “Going Steadicam With Bradley Cooper.”
Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you had a Q&A with the cast and another feature, “Learn To Dance Like Pat & Tiffany.”
“Silver Lining Playbook” is about two mentally unstable people who fall in love. If that sounds like a setup for an exploitative comedy, then you won’t be surprised to learn that this film from writer/director David O. Russell (“The Fighter”) does contain many moments of levity. But it’s also a serious exploration of a couple of lost souls flailing to get through the everyday existence that seems so mundane to the rest of us.
Movie depictions of mental illness tend to fall into one of two categories: somber, dramatic portraits or giddy exaggerations. “Playbook” breaks away from the herd by showing its two main characters as authentic souls who recognize their problems even as they try to distance themselves from these issues and pass as “normal.” It goes a step further by compassionately depicting the family and friends around them, who strive to cope with their behavior and attending complications.
A great cast is headlined by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, with Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker in key supporting roles. All should get consideration from Oscar voters.
Cooper plays Pat, a high school substitute teacher who’s just been released (against doctor’s orders) from a mental institution after eight months. Apparently he walked in on his wife Nikki with another man and beat the guy to a pulp, and since then his entire world has become unglued.
Pat is convinced the alpha and omega of regaining is sanity is getting back together with Nikki. That’s a challenge because she sold their house and moved away, and has a restraining order against him to boot.
Cooper, known for smarmy comedic roles, is convincing as the motor-mouthed Pat. He’s the sort of guy who can’t help himself from obsessive behavior, but is smart and caring enough to immediately apologize for it afterward. At different points he tears up his therapist’s waiting room and accidentally elbows his mother in the face, but we sense there’s no belligerence in him.
De Niro and Weaver play his parents, long-suffering but still patient and kind to Pat, if a little frustrated. Pat Sr. is obsessed with his beloved Philadelphia Eagles, and wants his son to sit and watch the games with him, both for luck and for some father/son bonding. Dolores is the family’s center and glue, tough as nails in a passive sort of way.
Tiffany (Lawrence) pops up as the sister-in-law of Pat’s best friend Ronnie (John Ortiz). Her husband died recently and she just lost her job. Tiffany lives in a converted garage out behind her parents’ house, and shares Pat’s sense of being both embraced and ostracized by her loved ones.
At dinner, Tiffany and Pat exchange laughs about the debilitating effects of various psychotropic drugs – which is sort of the crazy person version of a Meet Cute. She immediately offers to sleep with him, but Pat refuses, committed to the notion of resuming his non-existent relationship with Nikki.
It’s a wonderful, charged, loopy cinematic pairing. Each thinks the other person is the more messed up one, which sets up a weird power dynamic. Tiffany is generally the aggressor, even going so far as to insist he practice with her for a big dance contest. Soon they’re spending all their time together, and their respective families fret about their troubles colliding and compounding.
Tucker plays Danny, a friend of Pat’s from the hospital who keeps getting released and unreleased, but hangs around long enough to offer some dance advice and help cheer Pat up. Anupam Kher plays Dr. Patel, Pat’s therapist; Julia Stiles plays Ronnie’s hectoring wife, Tiffany’s sister; and Shea Whigham is Pat’s older brother Jake, who nurtures a sense of superiority.
I appreciated the skill with which Russell and his cast adapted the novel by Matthew Quick. “Silver Linings Playbook” is a film of subtlety, wit and empathy for its characters. I did find myself having trouble completely embracing them and their plight, feeling like I was sitting back and watching them perform rather than becoming absorbed in their story.
Still, this is worthy, ambitious filmmaking – an oddball ray of sunlight peeking through the clouds.
To anyone who ever criticizes movie critics for having a cushy gig, we now have a ready response: "Hey, at least you didn't have to sit through 'Machete'."
Robert Rodriguez' loopy, overlong and just plain boring "grindhouse" film is actually based on a fake trailer that appeared with "Grindhouse," the faux cheapie exploitation flick he and Quentin Tarantino made a few years ago. It featured a Mexican badass played by perennial sidekick Danny Trejo, who takes his name from the weapon of choice he uses to dice his enemies.
People were fairly indifferent to "Grindhouse," with many commenting that the previews for fake movies looked more entertaining than the one they were watching. Rodriguez, no dummy, took their advice to heart, and here we are.
Except for one thing: "Machete" is almost completely devoid of any entertainment value. It's trying to be a spoof of low-budget action movies, except it keeps forgetting to poke fun and becomes that which it mocked.
Trejo is an interesting choice as a protagonist. His face, an arid landscape of crags and canyons, is entirely watchable. But after a career of playing henchman and C-list villains, Trejo has never been called upon to use that great face of his to convey any range of emotion. It's a wall of non-communication.
I'm guessing Rodriguez directed Trejo to underplay in the long cinematic tradition of Men With No Name. But heck, even Charles Bronson showed a glimmer here and there. Trejo displays only two expressions: Contorted in rage, and preparing to contort.
He's also on the smallish side physically, and the reason Trejo has that wonderfully etched face of his is ... well, he's frackin' senior citizen! Trejo is 66 years old, and walks with the stiff ambling gait of a former bodybuilder whose muscles are drooping and weighing him down.
Rodriguez does his best to cut around his star's immobility during the action scenes, but it makes for some really dull hand-to-hand stuff -- which should be the best thing in the movie.
The plot is a screwy farce set to the backdrop of the illegal immigration problem. I'd call the movie's approach to this serious issue cartoonish, but that would be an insult ... to cartoons.
At one point, Jessica Alba, as an immigrations officer turned Machete sympathizer, rallies the day laborers to take up arms against their white oppressors: "We didn't cross the border! The border crossed us!"
Well.
Don Johnson plays the leader of an army of racist vigilantes who want to blow 'em all back across the border. Of course, they're secretly funded by a Mexican drug lord, played by Steven Seagal, doing an (I hope) intentionally bad accent. Their unwitting partner is Robert De Niro, playing a Texas state senator and anti-immigrant hardliner. In the opening sequence, the senator gleefully shoots a Mexican couple sneaking across the border for sport.
Machete is a former Mexican drug enforcement agent who had his wife and daughter killed by the druglord. He's now hiding out in the U.S. as a day laborer. He meets up with Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who's the head of the local underground railroad for illegal immigrants.
The action scenes are surprisingly infrequent, and at 105 minutes the movie feels about a half-hour too long.
There's occasionally an inspired moment of over-the-top blood-letting -- such as Machete slicing open a man's chest, grabbing his intestines, and then using them as a rope to jump out a window and swing down to the next floor. This, of course, happens right after a doctor has helpfully told us that the human intestine is 60 feet long.
Jeff Fahey plays the senator's right-hand man, and Cheech Marin shows up as Machete's priest brother, who doesn't let his holy vows interfere with his prowess with a shotgun. Lindsay Lohan plays Fahey's daughter, a budding Internet porn star who arrives at the film's climax decked out in a nun's habit and a machine gun. I'd say her career has arrived right about where it should have.
Look, I'm all for tongue-in-cheek exploitation -- if there's a drive-in showing "Return of the Living Dead," sign me up -- but this movie isn't nearly as much fun as it seems to think it is.
It's possible that "Bang the Drum Slowly" was made because of the success of the 1971 TV movie "Brian's Song," in that they're both about the brotherly bond between two professional athletes, one of whom is dying.
But I don't think so.
For starters, "Bang," which came out in 1973, was actually based on a book by Mark Harris (who also provided the screenplay) written nearly two decades earlier. Paul Newman even starred in a 1956 television version.
It's sad but uplifting, more about the bond between men than the game of baseball -- even though the film is consistently ranked as one of the best sports movies of all time.
Nobody'd heard of Robert De Niro when this came out; "Mean Streets" would hit theaters two months later and make him a name, and next year's role in "The Godfather Part II" would earn him an Academy Award and cement his place as one of his generation's greatest actors.
Interestingly, for the first decade or so De Niro was known for his brutal characters quick to violence. In "Bang," he plays a sweet, naive guy who's so slow on the uptake, he might have been classmates with Forrest Gump.
Director John D. Hancock -- not to be confused with John Lee Hancock, who made the excellent baseball movie "The Rookie," and the Oscar-nominated "The Blind Side" -- opens right away with Bruce Pearson (De Niro) leaving the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. He knows he's dying, but he and star pitcher Henry Wiggin (Michael Moriarty) resolve not to tell anyone.
The reason for their secretiveness is never overtly revealed, but it's suggested that Pearson doesn't want to be pitied. He can accept the "shit deal" he's been dealt, and he even accepts the ragging of his teammates for being a dummy. But he can't stand being looked down upon.
Henry -- whom everyone calls "Author" because he's published a book about his baseball exploits -- is holding out for a new contract with the New York Mammoths. As spring training draws to a close he suddenly lowers his asking price, with one proviso: That he and Bruce be tied together in any personnel moves. If he's traded or his contract bought out or sold, then so will Author. This also means the team can't send Pearson -- a catcher of nominal abilities -- down to the minors without sending Author, too.
Dutch (Vincent Gardenia), the crusty manager, is appalled at the demand, but gives in to keep his star player. He doesn't give up his determination to get to the bottom of the mystery, though. Throughout the season he needles Author and Bruce with questions about their winter excursions, even hiring a detective at one point to find out what they were doing in Minnesota.
Eventually their secret gets out. Author tells one of the older players to get him to lay off teasing Bruce. That player tells his roomie (a young Danny Aiello), and eventually the whole team knows.
The movie's pivotal scene takes place in the locker room. At this point, about half the players know about Bruce's diagnosis, and the other half doesn't. Piney Woods, a colorful catcher who was sent down to the minors to make roster space for Bruce, has been brought back (unknowingly) as his replacement. He strums his guitar and plays "The Streets of Laredo," a mournful song about a cowboy shot down in his prime.
Author and those in the know urge Piney to play another song, calling it cornball. But they just don't want their dying friend to have to listen to a mournful ballad about death. Piney plays on, as the cowboy is carried to the hills to be laid to rest.
"Oh, bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
And play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."
Arlo Guthrie, one of many to record the tune, called it the saddest song he's ever heard.
Strangely, the sadness over Bruce's condition galvanizes the team and the start to play better. They stop their squabbling, finding something to focus on besides their own inner rancor. Even Bruce gets into the starting rotation and plays the best ball of his life, though even Author -- who narrates the movie -- wouldn't exaggerate him into a great ballplayer.
Eventually Bruce's illness gets the better of him and he's forced to the leave the team, which goes on to win the World Series without him. Nobody from the team except Author bothers to show up at his funeral, and even he admits he stiffed his friend's request to send him his Series scorecard. He resolves to never rag on anyone for the rest of his life.
"Bang the Drum Slowly" is a lovely meditation on male relationships, and how our competitive natures --exemplified through sports -- compel us to shun intimacy and vulnerability with other men. Only when we can find sympathy for another do we earn a touch of grace, and truly win.
This inoffensive but largely charmless drama is a remake of a well-regarded 1990 Italian movie, about a retired father whose adult children stand him up on a promised visit, so he travels to each of their far-flung homes to see them. Now the story has been transplanted to the States with all the quirky opera references removed (the Italian dad was a music buff who named his children Tosca, etc.).
Robert De Niro has done many things in his great career, but he's never played a total Average Joe like this, a man without any kind of strong personality traits or identity.
Frank Goode is like a million guys you see in their early golden years: Widowed, seemingly content but a little needy, who fills his days with quotidian distractions like mowing the lawn and chewing the fat with his butcher.
Frank's getting ready for a big family reunion at his house, but one by one the kids call to cancel. Not one to wallow in self-pity, he resolves to travel the country to see his four children -- and deliver cryptic letters to each of them.
He can't fly because of lung fibrosis due to decades of putting PVC coating on thousands of miles of telephone wire, so Frank goes the train and bus route. He takes pride in watching the wires he helped make go streaming by his window, bragging to a fellow passenger that it took a million miles of the stuff to pay for his kids' educations.
Those wires also carry the conversations of his children, who soon get wind of his "surprise" visits and conspire to keep him in the dark about the youngest sibling, David, an artist who's seemingly disappeared.
After missing David in New York, Frank sees Amy (Kate Beckinsale) in Chicago. She's a partner at a big advertising firm, and lives in an art deco mansion. All seems well, but there's some dark clouds between her son and husband.
This sets up the dynamic for all of Frank's visits, which involve his children avoiding him and lying about their life circumstances. Since he doesn't seem like a bad guy, we wonder why they would treat him so shabbily.
Robert (Sam Rockwell) plays percussion in an orchestra, which is great except that Frank had been led to believe he was the conductor. It's the same with Rosie (Drew Barrymore), who lives in a fab Las Vegas apartment and has a female friend with a baby with which his daughter seems overly familiar.
The film "Everybody's Fine" will remind most people of is "About Schmidt," a similarly-themed movie starring Jack Nicholson as a man navigating the straits between family man of business and lonely retiree.
Writer/director Kirk Jones ("Nanny McPhee") layers in moments of levity, gently poking fun at the middle-class values and foibles of people like Frank. He insists on taking photographs of Amy in front of her company's sign, and even takes a picture of the impressive big-screen TV in Rosie's guest bedroom.
It doesn't really add up to much, other than a drably pleasant protagonist struggling to narrow the distance he's inadvertently placed between himself and his offspring. Like Frank himself, who doesn't traffic much in introspection, "Everybody's Fine" has few depths to plumb.
A great number of film critics and scholars regard the sequel to "The Godfather" as being superior to the original. I am not among them.
The sequel, which came out in 1974 -- a mere two years after the original -- won more Oscars than its predecessor, including Best Picture for both films. It follows the saga of mob boss Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in 1959 while interspersing the story with flashbacks of his father Vito's arrival in America in 1901 and his rise as a crime lord in 1917-1918.
Each film clocks in at around 200 minutes, making for a pretty long sit. "Part II's" plot unfolds at a much more leisurely pace, but I never find it boring. Alas, my lovely bride did not feel the same way, dozing through long stretches of a recent viewing.
My own take on seeing the movie for probably the 8th or 9th time is that the 1959 sections really sing, while the Vito Corleone stuff is actually a bit draggy. It's amazing to me that Robert De Niro won an Oscar for this role, which I don't consider anywhere near his best performances like "Raging Bull" or "Goodfellas."
It's also interesting that De Niro, who took over the part from Marlon Brando in the first movie (Brando being much too old to play a 25-year-old Vito), makes no attempt whatsoever to take any cues from Brando's portrayal of the character. There's none of the theatrical bombasity or the carefully veiled menace of Brando. Granted, this was supposed to be Vito 30 years earlier, and few men behave in middle age as they did as a young man (and woe to those who do). But I think if you showed each movie to separate audiences who hadn't seen them and told them the two actors were playing the same character, they'd be astonished.
And as much as I think the 1959 sequences with Michael are the strongest part of the movie, they don't anywhere near match the grandiosity of the original. This has mostly to do with the antagonists -- the rival Mafia figures who oppose the Corleone family. They're just not that frightening, or even interesting, as the group from the first movie. The triad of Barzini, Tattaglia and especially Virgil "The Turk" Sollazzo made for worthy adversaries. Plus Sterling Hayden as the imperial police captain. Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) is the chief heavy in "Part II," and is so low-key that even his threats seem more like whining.
"Part II" is much more a character study than the original, which is probably why critics like it more. The exploration of the disintegration of Michael's persona has generated a lot of long articles in film periodicals that nobody reads. It's still a terrific movie, but there's a reason "The Godfather Part II" did not hold up with audiences over time. When you say "The Godfather," everyone thinks of Brando.
