Teaser Trailer for Martin Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN

In what felt both like an uncertainty and an inevitability legendary director Martin Scorsese and one of his most notable collaborators, Robert De Niro, have once again re-teamed with one another to produce what is not only a mob/gangster drama, but to tell a decades-spanning story that follows Frank Sheeran (De Niro), a hitman whose actions changed the course of American history. Based on Charles Brandt's 2003 novel, I Heard You Paint Houses, the film chronicles the meeting of Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa (played in the film by Al Pacino) and is based on interviews Brandt had with Sheeran over the course of five years detailing how he handled more than twenty-five hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. Though I haven't read the book, I'll certainly be looking into it prior to seeing the film as Sheeran undoubtedly shared genuinely important and fascinating insights about both many a famous murders as well as this infamous chapter in US history and how intertwined it was with the mafia. And while it is nice to see Scorsese and De Niro reuniting with one another as well as including Pacino to boot the real draw here and who Netflix and Scorsese let drive this first, teaser trailer is that of the one and only Joe Pesci. Pesci hasn't had a substantial role in a film for nearly a decade with his last screen appearance being the little seen 2010 Taylor Hackford film, Love Ranch. Seeing and more impactful even, hearing, Pesci once again as he sets up the first lines of communication between Sheeran and Hoffa triggers immediate chills being experienced. Much has also been made of the rather hefty price tag on the film (a cool $160 million) much of which was attributed to the de-aging process applied to the three screen legends mentioned thus far given this is a story that, as was stated earlier, spans decades. It's difficult to even see where this technology comes in as far as the footage in the trailer save for the final, revealing shot that puts an emphasis on De Niro's face, but there is also this weird disconnect with De Niro's roles and his real life as it's difficult to sometimes remember that De Niro doesn't exactly look the way he did in Goodfellas anymore even if that's how he's been frozen in our memory as appearing. With the film premiering as the opening night film at this year's New York Film Festival on September 27th it's hard to imagine this won't be a major awards contender this year. Here's to oping! The Irishman also stars Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jack Huston, Kathrine Narducci, Jesse Plemons, Domenick Lombardozzi, Paul Herman, Gary Basaraba, Marin Ireland and will open in theaters and be available on Netflix sometime this fall.

YOUTH Review

Note: This is a reprint of my review for Youth, which originally ran on September 12, 2015 after seeing it at the Toronto Film Festival. I am publishing it again today as it hits theaters this weekend.

I may not have any right to review director Paolo Sorrentino's (The Great Beauty) new film given I'm what I'd consider a youthful twenty-eight and this is clearly a film meant to elicit the broad scope, the big picture or the authentic perspective of an experienced life. I recognize that I can't even attempt to understand all of what this film is trying to say or all of what Sorrentino hopes to accomplish with such a work, but I feel I can at least recognize what he is going for. In fact, one character even describes the seeming intent of Youth within the film when he describes the film he's set to direct himself as a, "sentimental and intellectual last statement." While Sorrentino himself seems far from this stage of his career it seems as if that's the kind of film he intended to produce here; a sentimental ode to aging and the wisdom that experience and perspective bring while simultaneously becoming too old to recall any of this knowledge as processed through the guise of an intellectual. There is no issue with the aspiration as I would love to bear witness to a film that does some kind of justice to the striking injustice that is finally reaching a point where you might find some true hint of understanding only to develop Alzheimer's or croak the next day, but Youth is more a film that serves as a discussion of such philosophies and ideas rather than one that tells a story that conveys such ideas.

First Trailer for THE RIDICULOUS 6 Starring Adam Sandler

After the success of Beasts of No Nation (it's been watched more than 3 million times in it's first ten days of release says Netflix) and on the same day that Pixels arrives on Blu-Ray and DVD the streaming service is ready to move on to it's next original film. The trailer for the first of four Adam Sandler films being made for Netflix, The Ridiculous 6, has debuted and couldn't be further from the tone of what Netflix's first original film offered. While Beasts was an intense thriller about child soldiers in Africa, this new Sandler comedy mainly concerns itself with spoofing The Magnificent Seven by featuring Sandler as Tommy “White Knife” Stockburn as a man who goes on an adventure-filled journey across the Old West with his five brothers when their long-lost outlaw father returns. Directed by Frank Coraci (Click, Here Comes the Boom) I have a bit more faith in the film because of his involvement rather than this simply being another Sandler collaboration with Dennis Dugan who tends to give Sandler his laziest results. The film generally looks like a big-budget summer Sandler flick which is exciting and the cast is beyond ridiculous. While we'll have to wait and see if the quality of the film is better than what the comedian has offered as of late on the big screen, this was without a doubt the smartest move Sandler could have made given his dwindling box office returns and that his films are largely comfort food anyway. The Ridiculous 6 also stars Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider, Luke Wilson, Harvey Keitel and will be available to stream on Netflix starting December 11th beating the 70mm release of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight by two of weeks.

TIFF 2015: YOUTH Review

I may not have any right to review director Paolo Sorrentino's (The Great Beauty) new film given I'm what I'd consider a youthful twenty-eight and this is clearly a film meant to elicit the broad scope, the big picture or the authentic perspective of an experienced life. I recognize that I can't even attempt to understand all of what this film is trying to say or all of what Sorrentino hopes to accomplish with such a work, but I feel I can at least recognize what he is going for. In fact, one character even describes the seeming intent of Youth within the film when he describes the film he's set to direct himself as a, "sentimental and intellectual last statement." While Sorrentino himself seems far from this stage of his career it seems as if that's the kind of film he intended to produce here; a sentimental ode to aging and the wisdom that experience and perspective bring while simultaneously becoming too old to recall any of this knowledge as processed through the guise of an intellectual. There is no issue with the aspiration as I would love to bear witness to a film that does some kind of justice to the striking injustice that is finally reaching a point where you might find some true hint of understanding only to develop Alzheimer's or croak the next day, but Youth is more a film that serves as a discussion of such philosophies and ideas rather than one that tells a story that conveys such ideas.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Review

Wes Anderson's latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel is many things, but at its heart it feels like a quiet epic, a love letter to time gone by with a narrative spanning decades that chronicles the exceptionally unexceptional life of one young man who was influenced by another and would have his world forever changed because of him. It is as much about the world one creates around themselves and how it determines the outcome of ones life as it is about the actual plot of the story which, be not afraid, contains prison break-outs, gun fights, affairs with older women and a fair amount of lies and deception. Over the course of his career, Anderson has created many an interesting world where his characters find their typically odd yet perfect little worlds rocked by some kind of event. Whether it be the Tennenbaums, Steve Zissou or even Mr. Fox each of these characters have a way of trying to retain the normality that has escaped them in the time of their lives that Anderson's films have chosen to document. With The Grand Budapest Hotel things are only slightly different in that the screenplay itself, for the first time in his career, was written solely by Anderson and this more intimate relationship with the material certainly makes for a strong showing by the director, one in which it feels this film is the epitome of Anderson's imagination, that he is fully operating within the confines of his own imagination that he has come to be inspired to create through the works of Stefan Zweig and his consistent themes of becoming lost in ones reality and while not only has Anderson seemed to inhabit the role of Zweig here he has also come to imprint that same mentality on his main character, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). Gustave, as one of our two storytellers overseeing the main narrative insinuates near the end of the film, may have come to live in a world that ceased to exist before he even entered it. It is this kind of thinking, these ideas beyond that of simply telling an entertaining story, but rather inspecting the mind of someone and how they look at their world and take on the challenges laid before them that makes Anderson's work so engaging and off-kilter, while this film in particular beautifully demonstrates the thin line that sometimes exists between real life and imagination.

First Trailer for THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

I have always been a fan of Wes Anderson's work if not for the fact that he has a great story of how he and Owen Wilson met and made it into Hollywood, but for the fact he has kept his singular voice throughout his now illustrious career and continues to do so. Coming off what was likely his most mainstream success as well as being one of his better films last year in Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has turned his sights on a script that for the first time he has written solely on his own. The Grand Budapest Hotel tells the story of a legendary concierge in 20th-century Hungary who takes a young employee (Tony Revolori) on as his protégé. Naturally the film looks to be much more complex than this as there is murder, scandal, and comedy thrown in for good measure all of which can be gauged in this excessively charming first trailer. The cast is ridiculous as the concierge is played by Ralph Fiennes in a rare comedic role that he looks to absolutely kill as well as the roles of Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton getting nice moments here. The set design looks to be on a massive Anderson scale and the camera work is as stoic as ever with complex shots and framing done to the hilt (Anderson also shot this in three different aspect ratios; one for each of the time periods in which the film takes palce). If it is unclear I am beyond excited for this film and only hope that it lives up to the expectations I've always held for Anderson's work. The rest of the cast includes the likes of F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. The Grand Budapest Hotel opens March 7, 2014.