“The Irishman,” starring septuagenarian powerhouses Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, is based on “I Heard You Paint Houses” Charles Brandt’s book about a man who claims to have offed mobster Crazy Joe Gallo and Teamster Jimmy Hoffa. It’s familiar territory for the trio of stars, all of whom have made a career out of playing wiseguys, and for director Martin Scorsese, but it feels different. The heady, rambunctious filmmaking of “Goodfellas” and “Casino” is gone, replaced by the richly, contemplative tone of a man at the end of his life wondering if he did the right thing.
De Niro is Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, an 82-year-old World War II veteran, truck driver, union leader and hitman. He developed his deadly skills as a combat veteran in Italy, talents he put to use as an associate of Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), head of a notorious crime family.
Now wheelchair bound in a retirement home Frank recounts, in flashback, how he rose from smuggler to hitman to Bufalino’s inner circle. “It was like the army,” he says. “You followed orders.” It’s a wild story that reads like it was torn out of the pages of a colorful twentieth century history book. In Frank’s tale crime and politics are bedmates, bound together by power struggles between the underworld and Washington, involvement in elections and even the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Frank rise is accelerated when Bufalino gives him the job of overseeing Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). Hoffa ushers Frank through the corridors of power and becomes a family friend but when the Teamster’s actions threaten to expose his mafia co-conspirators Frank is pressed to choose between his loyalty to Hoffa and Bufalino.
Much has been written about “The Irishman’s” three-and-a-half-hour running time and the movie hocus pocus that de-ages the leads, allowing them to play their characters from cradle to grave. Don’t buy into the distractions. Scorsese wrestles the story and technology into shape, making a film that plays like a requiem for the kind of characters that made him famous. Unlike the cocky “Goodfellas,” which is all about the rush, “The Irishman” is ripe with themes of loss and legacy, regret and mortality. It’s about the consequences of the life Frank chose for himself and is a devastating portrait of a forgotten man who did terrible things out of a sense of duty.
Lead by the trio of marquee actors, the cast is uniformly fine. Anna Paquin as Frank’s daughter takes a role made up of sideways glances and terse dialogue and turns it into a damning condemnation of Frank’s work. She conveys depths with just a turn of her head. Bobby Cannavale as the colourfully named Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio and Ray Romano as a mob lawyer add interesting hues to an already colorful story.
The holy trinity, De Niro, Pesci and Pacino, hand in late career work that feels like the culmination of a lifetime of character studies. This is an examination of men who live by a brutal code that leaves little wiggle room for mistakes and disrespect but each actor find ways to humanize their characters. Rich in detail, these actors riff off one another, finding internal rhythms in the repetitious way they speak to one another.
Pesci lets go of his famous “Like I’m a clown? I amuse you?” film persona to present understated work that is equal parts loyalty and menace. Pacino plays an over-the-top character with an unhinged gusto that breathes life into someone who is now a name from the history books but was once, as is said in the film, as popular as Elvis with the working man.
Strong work abounds but De Niro has the resonate moments. The look on his face as (MILD SPOILER ALERT) he makes the grim trip to Detroit to kill his friend is stoic but pained. Placed in an unthinkable position he grims up but you can sense the wheels turning in his head. He fuels a remarkably tense thirty-minute lead up to a senseless act of violence that will have you leaning forward in your seat.
It’s in the film’s elegiac final moments that De Niro brings all of Franks humanity to the fore. “You don’t know how fast it goes until you get there,” he says. It’s a quiet, unhurried analysis of a man’s final days as he looks back that erases the memory of De Niro in movies like “Dirty Grandpa,” reminding us why he was thought of as the best actor of his generation.
“The Irishman” is an event, a movie that feels like the obvious conclusion to the gangster stories the director and cast have been telling for decades.
For many film fans the chance to see Robert De Niro reteamed with “Taxi Driver” co-star Harvey Keitel or his “Midnight Run” buddy Charles Grodin would be irresistible. The kind of magic created in those pair ups is the stuff of legend. “The Comedian,” a new film directed by Taylor Hackford, mixes and matches De Niro with his former co-stars but fails to recapture old glories.
De Niro is Jackie Burke, a comedian whose stand up career is in a downward spiral. Once a beloved sitcom star, the dirty-mouthed comic earns bad press when he punches a heckler at a TV Nostalgia Night gig and gets thrown in jail. After serving thirty days he’s sentenced to community service, working at a homeless shelter. There he meets the unpredictable Harmony (Leslie Mann), daughter of a mob boss (Keitel) doing time there for punching her ex-husband. They hit it off, spending time together as Jackie tries to rebuild his career. When he’s not insulting folks at comedy clubs he’s borrowing money from his brother (Danny DeVito) and making his manager’s (Edie Falco) life difficult.
“The Comedian” promises much. Keitel, Grodin, Mann and Falco are a dream team and De Niro’s turn in “The King of Comedy” suggests he might do something interesting with the Jackie character. Unfortunately “The Comedian” has more in common with “Dirty Grandpa” than “The King of Comedy.” Any movie that features a take off on “Makin’ Whoopee” retitled “Makin’ Poopy” isn’t aiming that high.
De Niro never convinces as a stand up comic. Jackie may be desperate to kick-start his career but apparently he’s not desperate enough to come up with material that might actually make someone laugh. Part of it is De Niro’s cue card delivery, part is the generally disagreeable nature of the character. Jackie humour comes from anger but instead of channelling that rage into an interesting storyline, he simply punches a heckler or unleashes invective on those around him. In short, he’s an a-hole, an a-hole who is in virtually every frame of the film.
“The Comedian” promises much but doesn’t deliver and in comedy delivery is everything.
“Youth,” the second English language film from “The Great Beauty” director Paolo Sorrentino, takes on some of life’s great questions, life and death stuff painted with remorse, hope and, most importantly, a large helping of whimsy.
Set in a chic hotel in alpine Switzerland, retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and his childhood friend, film director Mick (Harvey Keitel) are plotting the next moves in their careers and lives.
Ballinger wants to disappear, fade away from public life and live quietly. He refuses repeated requests to perform his best known work at a command performance from Queen Elizabeth’s envoy (Alex Macqueen) and tells his assistant, Lena (Rachel Weisz) who also happens to be his daughter, to turn down a French publisher who desperately wants him to write a memoir.
Mick is in a different place. After a string of flops he’s writing a new film to feature his greatest star, Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda). They’ve made a dozen films together but he sees the new movie, “Life’s Last Day,” as a comeback and their greatest collaboration.
“Youth” is a study of these two men. Other things happen of course; Lena’s husband leaves her for a pop star—in a po-mo twist real life singer Paloma Faith plays herself as the home wrecker—a movie star (Paul Dano) researches a new role at the hotel and Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea) makes a memorable appearance, but the attention is focussed on Fred and Mick and their divergent paths to happiness.
Their journeys are bathed in Sorrentino’s impeccable images. The film is a lush tapestry of beautifully composed frames and optical delight. Ornate and elegant, the visuals are as complex as the film’s multilayered look at life’s rich pageant. Fred and Mick have lived life, and now in their final years try and assess the value of their experience. Sounds heavy but its not. It’s fleet footed, taking time only to luxuriate in the details of their lives and surroundings.
“Youth” is a mediation on life and age that succeeds by the director’s craft. Talking to a young colleague Mick demonstrates the effects of age by having her look at the distant mountains through a telescope. The mountains appear to be close. Then he flips the scope around and changes the perspective. “Being young makes everything close,” he says. “Being old makes everything far away.” Like the rest of the film it’s simple and subtle but is perfectly realized by Sorrentino’s mastery of blending story, ideas and images.
Over the course of eight films Wes Anderson has developed a style that is absolutely singular. He spins worlds out of the smallest details with an idiosyncratic style that some call twee and overly theatrical, but whatever you call it, one thing is clear: No one makes movies like Wes Anderson.
In his latest project, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” he has once again created a movie that future film scholars will coin terms like Wesesque or Andersonian to describe.
Told in flashback, the movie is like a nesting doll, a story within a story, with in a story. Beginning in present day Tom Wilkinson plays The Author, an older man reflecting on one of his greatest books, the story of M. Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), the legendary concierge at the Grand Budapest
Cut to the late 1960s. The Grand Budapest is no longer so grand, the home to a handful of tenants left over from the place’s glory days. One visitor is the Author, now a young writer played by Jude Law. One day in the steam bath he meets the hotel’s enigmatic owner Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). Moustafa agrees to tell the writer the story of the hotel and the legendary Gustave H over dinner.
Flashback to 1932, the heyday of the glamorous hotel. Gustave H rules the place with an iron hand when he isn’t sleeping with the older female guests. A flamboyant gigolo he has a special connection with Madame D (Tilda Swinton), an insecure but impossibly wealthy woman who has fallen for his unctuous charms.
When she is found dead at her home, Gustave H and his most trusted employee, Lobby Boy Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), visit to pay respects. At the reading of the will Gustave H is endowed with a priceless painting much to the displeasure of the deceased woman’s family. Angered, her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) frames Gustave H for murder.
Amid a whirlwind of hired henchmen (Willem Dafoe), helpful concierges (Bill Murray and Bob Balaban), talented chocolatier (Saoirse Ronan), tattooed criminals (Harvey Keitel) and mounting war on the continent, Gustave H is captured and jailed. With the help of his trusted Lobby Boy, must escape and clear his name.
In keeping with Anderson’s style, the story of Gustave H and the hotel is rich with nuance and detail but never feels overwhelming or tiresome. It’s a wittily whimsical story that feels transported in from a bygone era. It’s funny and elegant, feeling like a throwback to the Ealing Comedies complete with social commentary, farce and laugh-out-loud situational comedy.
At its twee little heart is Ralph Fiennes in a strangely mannered performance that not only provides many of the film’s best moments—his Benny Hill style escape from the police is hysterical—but also it’s heart.
Like the movie itself, the performance is original, unexpected and oddly affecting.
With “The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson has found a balance between his highly stylized artistic vision, story and heart.
“Grand Hotel… always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”
That famous line from the Greta Garbo film Grand Hotel is only half right. Hundreds of movies have used hotels as a backdrop for the action because people come, people go, but despite the quote’s assertion, there’s always something happening.
This weekend’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is a case in point. Starring Ralph Fiennes as a concierge at a European hotel between the world wars, it features an all-star cast, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Harvey Keitel and Edward Norton. They are all part of the fabric of the hotel’s history, which includes assassins, murder, riches and a mysterious painting.
Hollywood has always recognized that the transient nature of hotels makes for great drama.
New York City’s Plaza Hotel has played host to many famous movie scenes. Everything from Barefoot in the Park to Funny Girl to The Great Gatsby has used the iconic hotel as a backdrop, but it is probably best known as a location for North by Northwest. In the Alfred Hitchcock film Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent and kidnapped from the ornate lobby.
The opening shot of Goldfinger features a stunning aerial view of Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel, which at the time was the most luxurious guesthouse on Miami Beach. Later in the film Bond Girl Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) dies of skin asphyxiation inside the hotel after henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) coats her whole body in gold paint.
In the 1920’s the Hotel del Coronado was a famous weekend getaway for Hollywood stars like Mae West, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn but the Victorian wooden beach resort found fame as the setting for several scenes in Some Like it Hot. Located on San Diego Bay across from San Diego, the beachfront location was the scene of one of the film’s most famous lines. When Jerry (Jack Lemmon) first spies Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) sashaying through the sand he says, “Look how she moves! It’s like Jell-O on springs.”
Stephen King was inspired to write The Shining after staying at the 140-room Stanley Hotel in Colorado. “I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years,” says Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) in the film version. “And not all of ’em was good.”
The Stanley has been used as a location for Dumb and Dumber and other films, but Stanley Kubrick chose not to showcase the place in his 1980 adaptation of the novel. Instead, much to King’s disappointment, he used Oregon’s Timberline Lodge as a stand-in for the film’s fictional Overlook Hotel.
