JohnDeSando
Joined Oct 2001
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After seeing over the years Robert De Niro star in gangster films such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and The Irishman, it's astonishing to see him play gangster fresh in The Alto Knights. Sure, we've seen most of his facial and vocal turns before, but never in two different mobsters in the same film with two distinct personalities.
Narrator Frank Costello (De Nir0) is an analytical businessman not wholly invested in being a mid-twentieth century icon; his former best friend from youth, Vito Genovese (De Niro), is a hot head bound to lead the mob in the US, regardless of his friendship with current mob head, Frank. To see De Niro play both nose to nose in negotiations is to see one of the great film actors of all time.
When you look into Frank's eyes, you see latent menace that has caused countless deaths. Looking at Vito's glasses, you don't have the depth but rather a surface violence, hardly hidden. A great actor brings both distinct personalities alive.
Director Barry Levinson also brings his memorable work with Bugsy and Wag the Dog while writer Nicholas Pileggi brings traces of success from Goodfellas and Casino. With the three pedigrees converging in The Alto Knights, you must expect greatness, and you get it, maybe not throughout but enough to say that if Coppola and Brando had also been involved, this film would have been incomparable.
Most scenes are intimate as Frank's wife Bobbie (Debra Messing), and he quietly map out their fate. More flamboyant is Vito's wife, Anna (Katherine Narducci), whose courtroom histrionics as she testifies against him is the stuff of in your face while it contrasts with De Niro's subtler approach (not his usual path). The variety of acting and its excellence makes this a gangster film you should not refuse.
Narrator Frank Costello (De Nir0) is an analytical businessman not wholly invested in being a mid-twentieth century icon; his former best friend from youth, Vito Genovese (De Niro), is a hot head bound to lead the mob in the US, regardless of his friendship with current mob head, Frank. To see De Niro play both nose to nose in negotiations is to see one of the great film actors of all time.
When you look into Frank's eyes, you see latent menace that has caused countless deaths. Looking at Vito's glasses, you don't have the depth but rather a surface violence, hardly hidden. A great actor brings both distinct personalities alive.
Director Barry Levinson also brings his memorable work with Bugsy and Wag the Dog while writer Nicholas Pileggi brings traces of success from Goodfellas and Casino. With the three pedigrees converging in The Alto Knights, you must expect greatness, and you get it, maybe not throughout but enough to say that if Coppola and Brando had also been involved, this film would have been incomparable.
Most scenes are intimate as Frank's wife Bobbie (Debra Messing), and he quietly map out their fate. More flamboyant is Vito's wife, Anna (Katherine Narducci), whose courtroom histrionics as she testifies against him is the stuff of in your face while it contrasts with De Niro's subtler approach (not his usual path). The variety of acting and its excellence makes this a gangster film you should not refuse.
I don't remember ever seeing a spy film where I didn't care "whodunnit"! Yet, in the new Black Bag, the dialogue is everything and second to that is the process of finding who done it. Nor does it matter how many foreign locales a hero visits, for here London, Zurich, and the sound stages are the only locations, and thank you, all we need for a first-rate thriller with accomplished, well-dressed spies trying to figure out among six, who is the traitor.
Heading the cast of operatives are husband and wife spies, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). Is she a counter-spy, traitor? George has been charged with finding out if she or one of the others could be the traitor. It becomes obvious that director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp care more about the challenge to a marriage and the dialogue than world travel or the actual counter spy at the center of the plot.
The cinematography is creative, with a long opening shot that follows George to meet a boss in a camera tracking reminiscent of the casino sequence in Goodfellows. At other times multiple closeups serve to place the aud at the same table as the spies. It's all intimate story telling with no gorgeous travelogue distractions such as in Bourne, Bond, or beyond.
Equally seductive are the private husband-wife moments, underplayed in deference to their star power. While they don't give away if she's the traitor, they do reveal the chemistry between the two stars and the characters' abiding love for each other.
Their intimacy is trumped by Soderbergh's delight in digital tongue-in-cheek, sharpened by his Oceans' experiences and his own light-hearted love of spying with memory of love, sex, and videotapes, notwithstanding the old-school McGuffin of a nuclear malware called Severus carried in an old-fashioned thumb drive!
Fassbender's droll delivery along with his Land Rover are just the retro ticket, including a suspicious movie ticket that challenges one of the most uxorious spies in film history. If not deep, Black Bag has secrets its title suggests, not to be told, serving up Spring in its many enigmatic delights.
Heading the cast of operatives are husband and wife spies, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). Is she a counter-spy, traitor? George has been charged with finding out if she or one of the others could be the traitor. It becomes obvious that director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp care more about the challenge to a marriage and the dialogue than world travel or the actual counter spy at the center of the plot.
The cinematography is creative, with a long opening shot that follows George to meet a boss in a camera tracking reminiscent of the casino sequence in Goodfellows. At other times multiple closeups serve to place the aud at the same table as the spies. It's all intimate story telling with no gorgeous travelogue distractions such as in Bourne, Bond, or beyond.
Equally seductive are the private husband-wife moments, underplayed in deference to their star power. While they don't give away if she's the traitor, they do reveal the chemistry between the two stars and the characters' abiding love for each other.
Their intimacy is trumped by Soderbergh's delight in digital tongue-in-cheek, sharpened by his Oceans' experiences and his own light-hearted love of spying with memory of love, sex, and videotapes, notwithstanding the old-school McGuffin of a nuclear malware called Severus carried in an old-fashioned thumb drive!
Fassbender's droll delivery along with his Land Rover are just the retro ticket, including a suspicious movie ticket that challenges one of the most uxorious spies in film history. If not deep, Black Bag has secrets its title suggests, not to be told, serving up Spring in its many enigmatic delights.
Queen of the Ring brings a winning combination of biopic, sports drama, and period piece with such precision and warmth, you feel you could step into Millie Burke's (Emily Bett Rickards) wrestling ring, take the blows, and be happy to experience history as it was lived. It's early 20th century, and Millie Burke, waitress, longs to entertain by wrestling men and women.
As the record has it, she becomes women's world wrestling champion three times while suffering the slings of ambition, from making a fortune, losing it, and wrestling personal relations with the same mixed results. Rickards invests herself physically and mentally in Burke's checkered career, with a fierce ambition and beauty that seems to set the standard for women's liberation.
Her tumultuous relationship with her manager and then husband, Billy Wolf (Josh Lucas), parallels the give and take of the business that grows in front of us from mid-west home style to east-coast complicated, from scripted matches to shoot events with no script. Millie's dogged ambition, which laudably always includes her son, Joe (Gavin Casalegno), is not only remarkably intrepid, but it is also inspirational, rooted as it is in historical fact.
Millie Burke, first million-dollar female athlete in history, is initially seen as a Kansas diner waitress always under the protection of her mother (Cara Buono) but longing to leave and become an entertainer. Given that she can't sing or dance, her muscles show her the way to liberation-wrestling, even if women's wrestling is outlawed in many states.
Despite the sometimes-incoherent, episodic telling, Millie's arc is much like fictional sports stories as she loses everything she's built to Billy but wins back heroically. The Queen of the Ring is a rousing biopic, mostly true, yet faithful to the chronicle of women on the ascendent in the last century. And then there's Rickards' breakout performance . . . .
As the record has it, she becomes women's world wrestling champion three times while suffering the slings of ambition, from making a fortune, losing it, and wrestling personal relations with the same mixed results. Rickards invests herself physically and mentally in Burke's checkered career, with a fierce ambition and beauty that seems to set the standard for women's liberation.
Her tumultuous relationship with her manager and then husband, Billy Wolf (Josh Lucas), parallels the give and take of the business that grows in front of us from mid-west home style to east-coast complicated, from scripted matches to shoot events with no script. Millie's dogged ambition, which laudably always includes her son, Joe (Gavin Casalegno), is not only remarkably intrepid, but it is also inspirational, rooted as it is in historical fact.
Millie Burke, first million-dollar female athlete in history, is initially seen as a Kansas diner waitress always under the protection of her mother (Cara Buono) but longing to leave and become an entertainer. Given that she can't sing or dance, her muscles show her the way to liberation-wrestling, even if women's wrestling is outlawed in many states.
Despite the sometimes-incoherent, episodic telling, Millie's arc is much like fictional sports stories as she loses everything she's built to Billy but wins back heroically. The Queen of the Ring is a rousing biopic, mostly true, yet faithful to the chronicle of women on the ascendent in the last century. And then there's Rickards' breakout performance . . . .