ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD

Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is a triumph.  Indeed it may be my favourite of his films since the superlative JACKIE BROWN.  It's a love letter to old Hollywood, and drips with compassion for fading stars, and indulges in nostalgia for the days when radio stations were the soundtrack of our lives.  The movie stars Leonardo Di Caprio as Rick Dalton  - a fictional TV star of the 50s and 60s whose career is in the doldrums because of his age and alcoholism.  As a portrait of the fickle callousness of the star system, it's a moving film. There isn't much that's honourable or likeable in Rick, but he's our idiot, and to see him bested in his art and conversation by a child star (Trudi - a scene-stealing Julia Butters) is to weep for him. To see him lured by the quick cash of Spaghetti Westerns and saddled with a young wife is to laugh at our own frailty. He's an idiot, but we care that he's okay.  And we care largely because of the most humanising thing about him - his long and loyal friendship to his stuntman/driver/buddy Cliff Booth. In a career-best performance from Brad Pitt, Cliff is just a decent no bullshit kind of a guy. He's tough.  We see him beat up Bruce Lee in one of the most hilarious scenes in the film, and we hear rumours about a potentially murderous past, so the final showdown is well within the realms of his capabilities, despite his being high as a kite. There's something so tragic about his life in a mobile van, heating up tinned food, and something so likeable about his seeming indifference to it.  He's just a good guy. We see this too in his care for Bruce Dern's Spahn - exploited owner of the ranch in which the Manson Family are living. Which of course brings us to the other story in this film...

I think a lot of us came to this film thinking it was going to be a film about the Manson Murders and it's kind of discombobulating realising that it isn't really. We only meet Manson in one scene, and barely see Polanski from a distance at a party.  Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) live next door to Rick, but their lives are largely separate.   And what of Tate?  She's barely given the same screen time or depth of character as the two male leads. She's just a sunny happy dancing blonde, exciting to see herself on screen, in a scene that will give anyone who knows about Tarantino's foot fetish the creeps.  I felt sad for Robbie, who has nothing to do in this film, but really sad for Sharon Tate, who apparently isn't worthy of an inner life.  We do see the events of that fateful night play out. The way in plays out won't surprise people who've seen Tarantino's recent films.  It's really fucking entertaining.  But...

ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is rated R and has a running time of 119 minutes.  The film played Cannes 2019 and went on global release last summer. It is now available to stream, rent and own.

THE IRISHMAN - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Closing Night Gala

Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? Does anyone care? Martin Scorsese sure does. He spends three and half arse-numbing hours answering who and why. We only put up with this because it's Scorsese. And even then barely just.  If created for theatrical release, then this film is just too long.  It could easily lose twenty minutes of its opening hour and thirty minutes of its closing hour. Once Hoffa's dead, do we really care about his assassin's lonely old age?  I would argue that the indulgence Netflix afforded Scorsese is a hindrance here.  It has allowed him to be baggy where a conventional studio would have demanded a sub-180 minute cut.  Still, this is a Netflix release so I guess people will watch this at home over a few evenings. If so, that's a shame because Scorsese is at the top of his game when it comes to his visual style, choice of music, kinetic editing, and brilliant evocation of mood and era.  This film really does deserve to be seen on a big screen, for all the physical discomfort that arises.

Of course, no-one really cares who killed Jimmy Hoffa anymore.  I don't know many people of my generation who know how powerful he was in 1960s America, or the mystery surrounding his death, let alone those younger than me.  Scorsese's screenwriter Steve Zaillian seems to acknowledge the problem a couple of times in his screenplay, as aged up versions of characters try to explain to younger interlocuters that Hoffa was the second most powerful man behind the President - a powerful Union leader who could make or break a political campaign, and whose multi-billion pension fund could and did bankroll the mafia. He disappeared in 1975.  Everyone acknowledges it was a mafia hit.  You don't threaten mafia funding and survive. But the precise facts around who did the job remain unsolved. The Feds have their suspicions. But we'll never know. This film, however, posits a theory based on the late-in-life confession of long-term mafia hitman Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran.

And so this film tells us the story of The Irishman, beginning with not one but two framing devices. The outer device shows us Sheeran (an aged up Robert de Niro) narrating his sins to what we'll later find out is a Catholic priest - his sole visitor in a nursing home, given that Sheeran has alienated his family.  This reminded me a bit of AMADEUS - having the murderer confess, but not particularly seek atonement, to murdering a man who was purportedly his friend.  Because Sheeran wasn't just a mob hitman - he was also sent by the mob to be Hoffa's protection. Their relationship was one of trust and intimacy, even sleeping in twin beds like Burt and Ernie. It certainly makes the killing emotionally brutal.

The framing device within the framing device is watching Sheeran on a road-trip from Philly to Detroit with his mentor, mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), and their wives. This is meant to be a trip to a wedding, but it becomes apparent in the final third of the film that Bufalino is going to call on Sheeran's higher loyalty to him than to Hoffa, by making him kill Hoffa personally. "I have to put you in this" he says.  

And then finally, we get to the meat of the film, which is a linear re-telling of Sheeran's story from the time he met Bufalino to his life in the nursing home. He starts of as a truck driver who steals for the mafiosi, then starts driving for them, then "painting walls" aka murdering people, and providing protection for Hoffa. The fact that Sheeran even makes it to the nursing home is already a gag, as time and again, we see darkly humorous subtitles telling us how various mafiosi were brutally killed shortly after the action we're witnessing. Sheeran is literally the last man standing.

The resulting story is - as I said - baggy in its first and especially final hour - but when it's solidly in the meat of its 1960s and 1970s storyline it's as pacy and compelling and stunningly put together as anything Scorsese has ever done.  The way in which he frames a shot, or explicitly moves a lens as if its our eye panning a room, or jump cuts from a violent shot to a stylish lounge scene - the way in which he uses incidental music - it's just another league from the other films at this festival, or on release, period.  The performances are also tremendous, and I have to say the subtle use of CGI de-ageing tech is an absolute success.

For me, the star of the show is Joe Pesci. His performance is so quiet, so powerful, so menacing, and so controlled.  He can condemn a man to death with the slightest, barely noticeable, nod of his head. It's also interesting to compare him with Harvey Keitel as the even more powerful Angelo Bruno. He barely says a word in the entire movie. The two characters are quiet, understated and petrifying.  Contrast this with Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa - perfect casting as Hoffa needs to be (at times) bombastic, to contrast with the mafiosi's quiet menace. Hoffa's problem is a complete lack of self-awareness. Even when they're all turning on him, he just doesn't get it. He still obsesses over "my union".  He doesn't understand he sold it to the mafia years prior.  But this isn't one of those pastiche Pacino large performance. Sure, Hoffa has elements of that. But he can also be quiet and fragile. There's also a lovely contrast between Hoffa, who's downfall is that he's so emotional, seeing the benefits of that in a beautiful family life. He's even close to Sheeran's daughter Peggy (lovely facial acting in an almost wordless and thankless role).  By contrast, Peggy instinctively withdraws from her father and Bufalino.  They are left alone.  As for De Niro, his performance is strong, as we come to expect, but his character is in some ways the least interesting of the "big three". I would nominate Pesci for the awards, every time.

In smaller roles, and I really can't state this highly enough, can we get some awards love for Stephen Graham as the dangerously explosive mafiosi Tony Pro?  There are a couple of scenes where he has to go toe to toe with Pacino's Hoffa at his most powerful and domineering and my god, Graham's Tony Pro gives as good as he gets.  Graham is in no way outclassed by Pacino, and Pacino is pretty fucking classy.  Best Supporting Actor? No doubt.

THE IRISHMAN is rated R and has a running time of 209 minutes. The movie played New York and London 2019. It opens in cinemas on limited release on November 1st in the USA and November 8th in the UK, and will be released globally on Netflix on November 27th.

PATERNO

PATERNO is a superb TV movie about the impact of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal on the legendary sports coach Joe Paterno - who was Sandusky's boss and became implicated in - at the very least not acting quickly enough when he became aware of the abuse - and at most - a cover-up. Paterno and his football programme had been responsible for elevating - arguably funding - their host university - and this film goes beyond looking at the personal emotional reaction of "JoPa" to the impact the scandal has on the wider community.  For British people, it's almost surreal seeing the seriousness with which college sport is taken in the USA and the riots that break out in Paterno's defense are quite shocking.  It is no wonder that this unhealthy elevation of a single aspect of college life to almost godlike status has created an environment in which the powers that be will be reluctant to besmirch the sport's character - even at the risk of child safety.

All of this is deftly handled and emotionally powerful thanks to assured direction by Barry Levinson (RAIN MAN) - an even-handed script by Debora Cahn (THE WEST WING) and John C Richards (NURSE BETTY) - and a powerful central performance by Al Pacino.  It's the first time in years that Pacino plays someone other than himself. Instead of the much parodied voice inflections and large character we get a Paterno who is old, unsure of himself, out of touch and both sympathetic and infuriating.  This ability to give a nuanced performance - to create a character that we feel deeply ambivalent about - is rarely seen but I guess Pacino just needs the material to motivate him.

PATERNO has a running time of 105 minutes. It was released by HBO in April 2018.  In the UK it's available on Sky On Demand. 

MANGLEHORN

MANGLEHORN is a super low budget indie drama from director David Gordon Green (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, UNDERTOW).  It stars Al Pacino as a long heart-broken local locksmith who finds late love with Holly Hunter's bank teller.

For the record, this is how you use voiceover. You use it to indicate a man out of step with contemporary life, withdrawing into himself, and melancholy for a former love, Clara.  You use it as one of many layers of sounds showing his disconnect - the incessant yapping of a former little league player he coached (Harmony Korine) - the electronic dance music in the club he's mistakenly been lured into - the melancholy piano soundtrack - and his own disoriented thoughts.  David Gordon Green's direction mirrors this aural layering, with scenes being decomposed into Manglehorn's confused face against atomised youngsters going about their lives, blending into and onto a man waking alone in a house with his beloved cat, Fanny.

SALOME & WILDE SALOME

The BFI played SALOME and WILDE SALOME in a double bill followed by a Q&A led by Stephen Fry with Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain. What follows is thus a combined review of all three events.

SALOME is Al Pacino's passion project of complex origin and it stubbornly defies categorisation. It began as a project to both put on a theatrical revival of Oscar Wilde's play directed by Estelle Parsons but clearly heavily influenced by Al Pacino in the lead role of King Herod, but also in the role of film-maker, for he simultaneously directed a film version of the play (SALOME) as well as a documentary of the making of the film and play (WILDE SALOME).  To say that the resulting movies are operating on many meta levels is an understatement.  This is all made more complex by the fact that the theatrical production wasn't a full staged production but rather something of table reading in costume.  Although clearly the actors were not using the "book" to guide them but acting the lines off book.  That decision, its ramifications and reasonings, was behind some of the hostile reviews the show received.  To add to the confusion, Pacino isn't filming the play at the theatre, but rather re-creating it each day on a soundstage before the play takes place back at the theatre each night. It's a gruelling schedule, and one that clearly took its toll.

Overlooked DVD of the month - CITY HALL

From the writers of SCENT OF WOMAN, RAGING BULL, TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS and CASINO comes a political thriller starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, Danny Aiello and and David Paymer. The resulting movie is slick, compelling and labyrthinthine in the links it establishes between the mafia, the political machine and law enforcement. John Cusack plays the naive out-of-towner turned New York Deputy Mayor. Through his eyes we start to investigate the corruption in City Hall when a cop and a mafiosi kill each other in a shoot-out and an innocent kid is killed in the crossfire. The key question is why the mafiosi was on probation in the first place. The investigation takes us into bent real estate deals and exploitative political grand-standing. We see genuinely bad men and we see good men who can't help but be implicated in a corrupt establishment. The most sympathetic is Martin Landau as the judge who signed off on the probation. The most compelling is Danny Aiello's political fixer and Rogers & Hammerstein fan. In contrast to his later films, Al Pacino's histrionics are well contained and carefully aimed. As mayor, he constructs a beautifully melodramatic funeral oration - perfect advertising and yet also just what was needed. John Cusack is also perfectly cast as the charismatic Deputy Mayor who finds himself out of his depth. The movie isn't perfect. It's rare to find a film that would've benefited from a longer cut, but this is a great example. I also found the insertion of Bridget Fonda's character a bit clumsy and redundant. Still, for all that, CITY HALL is a slick, engaging political thriller that stretches the brain but still contains pleasurably witty one-liners and dramatic set-pieces. Highly recommended.

CITY HALL was released in 1996 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Bina007's Danny Dyer Memorial List of the Ten Most Piss-Poor Flicks of 2008

Just in case you'd thought I'd gone soft, we return to bitter invective with this year's Trashcan of Shame. To find each nugget of Cinema Redemption your humble servant must crawl through a veritable sewer of lazy, formulaic, badly produced, stinky bilge. Here are the worst of the many offenders, conforming to the usual mix of shameless cash-in genre flicks; politically offensive exploitation flicks and auteurs gone awry.

THE SHAMELESS CASH-INS GENRE FLICKS.

1. P.S. I LOVE YOU. Hilary Swank attempts comedy. The film-makers mistakenly believe you can make a feel-good comedy out of bereavement. Mawkish. Unfunny. And what accent is Gerard Butler going for exactly?

2. MADE OF HONOR. Another offensively lazy, formulaic and charmless romantic comedy - all the more impressive for killing Michelle Monaghan and Patrick Dempsey's natural charm.

3=. 88 MINUTES and RIGHTEOUS KILL. Lo-rent "thrillers" in which Pacino and de Niro live off viewer nostalgia and clip their pension coupons. You know it's gone Pete Tong when Fiddy is far from the worst actor on screen.

HUMOURLESS EXPLOITATION FLICKS.

5. NEVER BACK DOWN. Like Karate Kid without the naive charm, NEVER BACK DOWN was basically misogynistic macho bullshit attracting the same sort of voyeurs who get kicks from happy slapping.

6. WANTED. Again with the misogynistic, macho bullshit. Bored viewers were left to ponder which was more ridiculous: James McAvoy affecting a six-pack or the Loom of Fate?

7. RAMBO. By far the most tragic entry in my trio of macho idiocy because as lurid as FIRST BLOOD was, it at least had a point. How are the mighty fallen.

8. BABYLON A.D. The existential angst of Vin Diesel vanishes in a puff of improbability. Mathieu Kassovitz flushes his art-house rep (LA HAINE) down the toilet with this star-vehicle sci-fi mish-mash. Even Michelle Yeoh as a kick-boxing nun can't save it.

AUTEURS GONE AWRY.

9. W. Liberal intellectuals wanted answers. Oliver Stone gave them a pastiche. 

10. AUSTRALIA. Baz Luhrmann promised us a knowing epic embracing romance, political injustice and war-time melodrama. He gave us a wooden, poorly edited, over-blown vanity project - a failure of monumental proportions.

88 MINUTES - less straight to DVD than straight to Dustbin

88 MINUTES is a "troubled movie", originally scheduled for release in 2005 it was finally pushed out on the crest of the RIGHTEOUS KILL publicity. It shares the same director, genre and star - Al Pacino. It's also shares the same label, "piss-poor". Once again, we have Al Pacino as a schmoove detective (well, forensic psychologist) running around town trying to find a copycat serial killer. The high concept is that the original serial killer, now on death row, is running the copycat, and has threatened that Pacino only has 88 minutes to live.

You can see how this might've looked all sexy and Se7en on paper, but on screen, this is dull as ditchwater. Pacino runs around town, barking orders to his secretary and a friendly copper on his cellphone. Meanwhile, all the audience has to hold its interest is the increasing volume, and ever-shifting colour, of Pacino's perruque.

In fairness, 88 MINUTES is not as unthrilling as RIGHTEOUS KILL - a movie that revealed whodunnit in the first five minutes. I was guessing who the copycat was till the final reel. The problem is that the reason I was guessing is because the script offered no coherent solution. Rather, we had a series of ludicrously shady suspects - all over-acting hideously - and you could've picked any one of them to finish the picture.

Will Alicia Witt ever work again?
Will Pacino fire his agent and/or perruque-maker?
Here's hoping bad thrillers aren't like buses, and we don't get a third on Friday.

88 MINUTES was released in 2007 in Israel, Romania, France and Greece. It was released earlier this year in Japan, the Philippines, Canada, the US, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, Turkey, Iceland, Colombia, Venezuela and Kuwait. It is currently on release in the UK and is available on Region 1 DVD.

RIGHTEOUS KILL - a thriller so devoid of thrills it is actually impossible to spoil the plot

RIGHTEOUS KILL is a lazy, lethargic, deeply dull "thriller" that will only succeed at the Box Office because of the residual respect audiences have for the early work of Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. We are so infatuated with movies like SCARFACE and THE GODFATHER that we refuse to admit the obvious: Pacino and De Niro are working to pay the bills: applying no quality control to the scripts that they accept; and falling into pastiche of their tough-guy foul-mouthed iconic performances.

As for RIGHTEOUS KILL, this is a movie that declares its hand in the first five minutes. Pacino and De Niro are cops investigating a serial killer. De Niro is shown in flashback, confessing to the murders. He's a vigilante that goes after rapists and paedophiles who walked. These are "righteous kills".

Now, the audience is intelligent. We know we're watching a thriller. If a killer is presented to us inside the first ten minutes, we know he's probably innocent. And if Robert De Niro's character is innocent, and there's another heavyweight actor in the cast, it's going to be him. So after fifteen minutes, you know that De Niro's superficially angry cop is innocent; Al Pacino's superficially in-control cop is a vigilante; Carla Gugino as the CSI who likes rough sex is a red herring; and Fifty Cent is a tool.

Game over. Thank you for playing. Please slip into retirement and stop flushing your reputations down the toilet.

RIGHTEOUS KILL is on release in the UK, US, the Philippines, Greece, India, Romania, Israel, Russia, Taiwan, Estonia, Italy, Sweden and Turkey. It opens this weekend in Finland and Spain and next weekend in France, Denmark and Iceland. It opens later in October in Portugal, Belgium and Argentina. It opens on January 8th in the Netherlands.

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN are smug bastards

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN is an arrogant film. Look how smooth we are; look how well we dress; look at our private jets and our designer sunglasses; look at the luxury hotels we stay in; look at the stand-up friends we have; look how effortlessly we slice through apparently impenetratable security systems.....

In short, look how COOL we are.

We're so cool, you'll pay ten quid to watch us be cool. And we won't have to create genuine plot twists like in OCEAN'S ELEVEN. And we won't bother having a love-story at the movie's heart. Heck, with our ludicrous channel tunnel plot-line we'll break all bounds of credibility. And you won't even care because you'll be so blinded by our dazzling teeth.

The fact that the script-writers have the audacity to rail against the modern Vegas - the crass commercialisation and PG-i-sation the Strip - infuriates me with its hypocrisy. And were they trying to make some point about underpaid Mexican workers? I mean, seriously, do they really think that from THIS platform, they can hint at a social critique? I am stumped.

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN is on global release.

UNDERTOW - There are some things we just don't need to see

Josh Lucas mud-wrestling a squealing pig, his pale ass-cheeks wobbling over the top of his muddy britches. No, sir. We also do not need to see inferior remakes of cinematic classics, no matter what the pedigree of the director. No matter how impressive David Gordon Green's first two films were, there is no excuse for this blatant rip-off of The Night of the Hunter. In this version, Dermot Mulroney plays John Munn, the father of two kids, living in the backwoods of Georgia in savage conditions. One day his younger brother Deel Munn, played by Josh Lucas, shows up. He's after some old Mexican coins that Mulroney inherited from his father. This being one of Green's trademark "Southern Gothic" flicks, the fight for the coins soon turns violent. So the two kids abscond, chased by their sinister, murdering Uncle. Now, despite my deep scepticism as to the point of remaking (broadly speaking) The Night of the Hunter, there is a lot to like about UNDERTOW. Apart from Josh Lucas, the cast is outstanding. In particular, Jamie Bell and Devon Alan are captivating as the two young Munn boys. The evocation of mood - from photography to Philip Glass' score - is also first class. However, whenever Josh Lucas appeared on screen I was totally taken out of the movie thanks to his hammy over-acting. He plays menacing by opening his eyes *really* wide and getting all shouty in the manner of Al Pacino's more hammy performances. And when he starts on his sinister rampage he just reminded me of Jason Lee in My Name is Earl. And that's about as menacing as the English pace attack. (i.e. not very.) To sum up, there are worse looking films out on DVD this week, but I doubt if any are more frustratingly mis-cast.

UNDERTOW screened at London 2004 and went on limited release in the UK last autumn. It was released on DVD yesterday.

TWO FOR THE MONEY - A diabetic's nightmare

This review has been written by Nik, who can usually be found here...

I didn't expect much from TWO FOR THE MONEY, and by matter of coincidence, I didn't get much either. It's hard to describe this film, because it doesn't easily fit into any one genre - not due to its depth or variety - but rather its chronic failure to set out its stall and nail its colours to the mast.

The story follows the life of Brandon Lang (aka Matthew McConaughey), who due to a career-ending injury as a professional footballer, ends up becoming a small time 1-900 number sports pundit. As his punditry proves successful, he is recruited by Walter Abrams (Al Pacino) to work in the big time, New York, high pressure, fast talking, amoral, slick and stylised world of big money gambling. Pacino's character is given just enough depth for his natural talent to shine through - and plenty of witty and cutting one-liners besides to keep the audience amused. But that's really where my praise has to end.

The rest of the characters were 2-dimensional at best - from Abrams doting wife (Rene Russo) - to the small town country-boy who lets fame go to his head (McConaughey) - to the rest of the mediocre cast who no sooner do they chip in their lines than they are instantly forgotten. Given that the film relies almost entirely on one line gags and remarks to entertain, it is sadly poorly written towards the end, loosing the audiences interest quickly as it starts to rely on its vapid plot in the second half of the film. The moral messages contained within this effort are trite, hollow, obvious and condescendingly delivered - and the ending is so sugary that your pancreas will wish you'd never have been born, or that you'd seen Lady Vengeance instead.

But the main problem with this film, as I alluded to earlier, is its lack of defined genre. Maybe it was mis-sold to me - I was expecting a violent gansta epic about a farm-boy getting in over his head in a world of gambling, pr*stitutes and organised crime - but while the film threatened to turn nasty, it was all foreplay and no org*sm. The closest we got was our hero getting held down and given an impromptu golden shower by one of his clients - hardly Japanese ultra-violence. But the film wasn't particularly funny either, it certainly wasn't a thriller in that it's wasn't thrilling, it weren't a sports movie as the opening titles threatened, the romance was contrived and it wasn't very dramatic. So if it's not a drama, not a RomCom, not a thriller, and not a gangster movie - then what the f*ck is it?

The answer is - not particularly good. This film promised little, and delivered in proportion. I'm not trying to pan it - it more than capably passed two hours I might otherwise have been touching myself or other people - and it's certainly not a "SPHERE" or an "ANALYSE THAT" where the only highlight was brevity. Some of the one-liners alone justified the entrance fee - or would have justified it had I not been mugged for £12.50 by the Leicester Square Vue. It's just that this film wasn't very good. It had very little to it.

It failed totally as a morality play - it had too little sex and violence to deliver any thrills and spills - it was only funny in parts - and the ending was so happy and clappy that I left the cinema wanting to kick the shit out of a helpless little puppy just to redress the balance of the universe. I also left the cinema with the awful feeling that had I been walking out 40 minutes earlier, I'd have been in a better mood, and been more fulfilled in general. I already know that happiness can't be bought, and that love and family should be put before money, I don't need to be force fed it by some asshole in LA who now has £12.50 more of the latter and has probably experienced neither of the former.

There's plenty on at cinema's these days, and this addition to the playlists is mediocre at best. Go see LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN if you want a cool gangster movie - or KIDULTHOOD is you want something "street" - or LADY VENGEANCE if you like asian movies about child cruelty. Or, if it's a really rainy day, you need to get somewhere warm to escape the elements, the price is low and there's nothing else on - go see TWO FOR THE MONEY. I cannot seriously recommend it in any other circumstances.

TWO FOR THE MONEY is currently available on Region 1 DVD. It is also on cinematic release in the UK and hits Germany on April 13th 2006.