Barry Levinson’s mobster saga boasts such deep genre pedigree that they’ve cast Robert De Niro twice. With a script by Goodfellas and Casino scribe Nicholas Pileggi and a story inspired by the real-life power struggle between crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, this is, at its core, a throwback gangster flick—or at least an attempt at one.
Levinson opens with the botched assassination attempt on Costello (De Niro), adopting an almost documentary-style approach to unravel the rivalry behind the hit. As an aged Costello addresses the camera, archival-style slides and intercut vignettes chart how the ruthless Genovese (also De Niro) returned from Europe after the war, determined to reclaim the boss role he once handed to Costello. Surviving the attempt, Costello plans to retire—but Genovese isn’t convinced.
It’s a sweeping saga, jumping between hushed conversations, sudden bursts of violence, and congressional hearings. While Costello and Genovese wage their battle, Frank’s wife Bobbie (Debra Messing) and Vito’s on-again-off-again spouse Anna (Kathrine Narducci) largely remain bystanders to their machinations. The film’s whiplash-inducing scene changes can be disorienting, but they keep the momentum brisk.
The dual casting of De Niro in both primary roles doesn’t add much beyond some initial confusion. If you go in unaware, you might find yourself scrutinising Genovese’s heavy makeup just to confirm you’re not seeing double. At times, the film relies on precisely staged booth and table setups to sell the effect. Still, De Niro seems to be having fun getting to play the Joe Pesci character for a change.
Where the film does well is in evoking the era. The Kefauver Committee hearings serve as pivotal moments, though the broader societal implications of the investigation remain largely unexplored. That said, the film is steeped in period detail. Dante Spinotti’s camera captures the crisp neon glow of the streets, reflecting off polished ‘50s cars to create a mostly immersive world.
THE ALTO KNIGHTS is a serviceable mob film, albeit somewhat hampered by our familiarity with the form. As the finale escalates the rivals’ game of one-upmanship into a chaotic car chase, it feels like seasoned creatives tossing out the last of the pot—a well-worn but still flavorful serving of the genre’s staples.
2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Barry Levinson | WRITER: Nicholas Pileggi | CAST: Robert De Niro, Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (Australia), Warner Bros. (US) | RUNNING TIME: 123 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 March 2025 (Australia), 21 March 2025 (USA)
Martin Scorsese’s latest film has probably got more attention for his views on the state of mainstream cinema. Which is a shame for two reasons: it’s divided a community who have a shared love of movies, and it might just overshadow the content of his new film. THE IRISHMAN, as it turns out, is a masterpiece.
With a story as sprawling as Sergio Leone’s thematically similar Once Upon a Time in America, award-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York, Moneyball, Red Sparrow) uses the titular Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) as both his framing device and primary focal point. Based on Charles Brandt’s 2001 book I Heard You Paint Houses, it’s set against the rise and fall of multiple empires – both the governmental and the more underground kind.
Thanks to the wonders of digital de-ageing (and later more practical effects), we follow the life and career of Sheeran from the 1950s where he works as a trucker turned mafia hitman after impressing mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci).
After rising through the ranks, Sheeran becomes the right-hand man of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the head of the Teamsters. The film plays out against the backdrop of a half-century of political turmoil in the US, as JFK is elected and shot, his brother Robert targets the Teamsters, and various other players come into the orbit of this powerful gang.
Bringing together all of Scorsese’s recurring themes and motifs, ones we’ve seen in Goodfellas in particular, THE IRISHMAN is captivating for the first three hours. While it might also be said that it’s a pastiche of these trademarks, it’s only in as much as Casino is a redux of Goodfellas. Having said that, last act does feel like it drags a little, but on reflection it’s about the anticlimax of a life that has watched empires rise and fall and stays standing.
Of course, the reason to watch this film is the bringing together of “Scorsese’s boys” in one place. Aided by digital de-ageing magic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were watching one of Scorsese’s earlier films. Or that he’d somehow time-travelled to direct a greatest hits piece with all of his pre-DiCaprio muses. DeNiro is every bit the force to be reckoned with he was in those ‘classic’ days, and Pesci is a fierce animal, but it’s amazing to see Pacino with a fire lit underneath him again. (Perhaps the only real shame is that Anna Paquin was cast and then given nothing to do).
While I was lucky enough to catch this in a (sold out) cinema, I don’t feel like it would lose too much if you choose (or have no choice) to watch it on its native Netflix. Perhaps the only thing to be said for the small(er) screen format is that you can pause it for a pee break. Otherwise this is a timely reminder of why Martin Scorsese will always be the king of the mean streets.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese | WRITERS: Steven Zaillian | CAST: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, Harvey Keitel | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 209 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 November 2019 (AUS), 27 November 2019
There’s an old joke. Two elderly critics are sitting in a cinema, and one of them says “Boy, the films at this place are really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such short runtimes.”
The deceptively low-key release of JOKER is ostensibly at odds with the fanfare that usually accompanies a comic book adaptation. Indeed, director Todd Phillips has described the film, which took out the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival, as “a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film.”
The hubris of that comment, one that both puts down the source material and its fans while claiming an elevation, seems to unironically get to the heart of the perceived societal denigration he and co-writer Scott Silver are possibly railing against in their screenplay. I say possibly because this is a film that casts its nihilistic web wide while tapping into the last dying angst of the middle-aged white man in America.
Set in an indistinct period reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s 1970s New York, we’re introduced to sad clown and aspiring comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his unsupportive mother (Frances Conroy) and works a variety of small jobs on the mean streets of Gotham City. A condition causing him to laugh spontaneously masks his inner pain, yet after being repeatedly downtrodden an act of violent retaliation is the spark that ignites a city.
It’s clear from the beginning that we are not meant to trust what we are seeing in JOKER. The character has long been shrouded in mystery in comic book lore, and even those books that purport to reveal an origin – most prominently Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s controversial The Killing Joke – flip the script on us at the last moment. Despite Phillips’ initial protests, it’s a legacy that his film is indelibly tied to, awkwardly wedging in a subplot that gives Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), his butler, and some kid named Bruce prominent cameos.
Moore’s comic was as much about the mirror figures of Batman and Joker as it was about the spiralling hellhole of humanity Moore perceived during the 80s. Yet Phillips and Silver focus on the latter. The stated key influences of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, complete with Robert De Niro in the equivalent of the Jerry Lewis role, make the film more about angry male entitlement and obsession than justified outrage.
Which brings us to some of the more worrying turns of the film. The Joker has always been a problematic character when it comes mental health issues and misogyny, whether it is his homicidal tendencies or his abusive relationship with Harley Quinn. Here Fleck’s non-specific issues – which we are told led to previous institutionalisation and multiple meds – are how society labels him. “The thing about having a mental illness,” he scrawls in his barely literate journal, “is that people expect you to behave as if you don’t.”
Which would be a fine and dandy take if that treatment wasn’t coupled with such extreme violence. When Fleck lashes out, the faded 70s façade drips with gooey red. “It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero,” said Warner Bros. in a statement. Yet at no point do we get any real disapproval of his actions either: yes, some of the people he kills are bad people, and Gotham is known for its vigilantism in later years. Violence is a liberating quality for the character: even though the film doesn’t actively condone his actions, it doesn’t condemn them either.
Neither does it fully pick a side politically, taking a kind of centre-right approach. It hates everyone in equal measure, which is textbook nihilism. The rich are sneering and dismissive of the rest of the world and deserve what they get in Fleck’s mind. Yet the film doesn’t support the grassroots protests of the masses either, depicting the popular uprising as unruly and a symptom of the societal disease. At least until a dramatic turn at the climax where it does appear to suggest that the Joker just might be onto something. At least The Dark Knight’s Joker was honest in wanting to watch the world burn, and the essential goodness of the people won out in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham.
Underneath these layers of grime and unpleasantness, there’s much to be admired on a technical level. Phoenix turns in a performance that easily matches his underrated outing in You Were Never Really Here, physically emaciated and concentrating a world of emotional pain into an upturned lip or a haunting teardrop. It’s a shame that the female characters, including the formidable Zazie Beetz (as a neighbour) and veteran Conroy, are nothing more than objects or barriers respectively. Lawrence Sher (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) nails the period look (whatever period that may be) in some gorgeous photography.
As the film approaches release, Phillips has begun to use the same comic books he derided to defend himself against accusations of toxic masculinity. “[I]t’s a fictional character in a fictional world that’s been around for 80 years,” he told the press, comparing his film to the comparatively positive reaction the violent John Wick films have received. This not only misses the point of the concerns but unseats the notion that this is a “real movie” acting in the real world.
Which brings us back to that other old joke about the brother of a man who thinks he’s a chicken. When asked why he doesn’t turn him in, he simply says he needed the eggs. While I’m paraphrasing that joke from the finale of another problematic 1970s filmmaker, the fact that a film like this exists in 2019 – post #MeToo and #TimesUp – is totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because someone still needs the eggs apparently. Even if they are scrambled.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips | WRITERS: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver | CAST: Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Robert De Niro | DISTRIBUTOR: Roasdshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 3 October 2019 (AUS)
Yahoo! Movies has released the first trailer for The Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell’s adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel.
We last saw Russell with the Oscar-winning The Fighter in 2010. This latest film stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles and Robert De Niro.
Synopsis: Pat Peoples (Bradley Cooper) is a man always trying to look on the bright side of life – the title of the story takes it’s name from the expression that “every cloud has a silver lining.” Released from the hospital after losing his wife to another man, Pat believes this age-old adage is just the ticket to trying to win her back and get his life on track. Trying to remain resolutely undiscouraged, Pat moves back in with his parents and devotes himself entirely to becoming the man his wife always wanted him to be. But it’s an uphill battle. Until Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a beautiful young woman whose life also has not turned out the way she wanted. Together, the couple will try and navigate through their lives and stay true to who they are, always just one adventure away from a unique friendship, and possibly even love.
The Silver Linings Playbook is released on 29 November 2012 from Roadshow.
Based on Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ novel, The Feather Men, and not the 1975 film of the same name, Killer Elite enters a crowded market of spy flicks and secret ops that are covertly beating each other up in cinemas around the world. Fiennes’ book caused a stir when it was released in the early 1990s, as it was purportedly based on “real life” examples of a secret squad of British SAS assassins. In the wake of a decade of post-9/11 spy dramas and thrillers, this Australian co-production goes back to the heyday of the 1980s, where the good guys were good, and the bad guys had beards.
It’s 1980, and mercenary Danny Bryce (Jason Statham) is ready to leave the killing business after a job goes wrong in Mexico. Returning to Australia with his girlfriend, Danny is summoned to Oman a year later when his colleague Hunter (Robert De Niro) has been held captive. Mission facilitator Agent (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) lets him know Hunter accepted a $6 million job and couldn’t finish it, and now he is being held captive by Sheikh Amr, who wants the three SAS agents who killed his eldest sons terminated. In order to save Hunter, Danny has to get back in the game and not only convince all three agents to confess, but to make their deaths look like accidents. Plus, he must also contend with Logan (Clive Owen), the head enforcer of the Feathermen, a society that protects their own agents.
Academy Award nominated short film director Gary McKendry makes his feature debut with Killer Elite, and he has done so by throwing most of his kitchen utensils at the task. Shot almost entirely in Australia, this is an awkward fit, presumably only done to appease the local financing gods. Yet with a few trips to the UK and Morocco, McKendry attempts to give the film a bit of a globetrotting flavour in the style of the Bourne films. However, the slate-grey and über-serious way the film treats the material sucks any of the potential fun out of the mash-up of these three distinct superstars in their own right. Killer Elite is a very no frills affair, and even with explosions, car chases and gunplay galore, none of it is done with a sense of entertainment, or seemingly with a sense of purpose.
Killer Elite lurches from one scene to the next, as if carrying the weight of the action tropes it know that it must live up to. You can almost see the action movie checklist hovering over the side of the screen during this overlong movie. The usually reliable Statham takes no pleasure in the methodically presented bone-crunching action, and Owen seems to have phoned in much of his performance. Supporting cast members Dominic Purcell and the great Lachy Hulme provide a bit of liveliness in quiet moments, but only De Niro, who holds the smallest amount of screen time of all the players, truly impresses with one of his more solid performances in recent years.
Matt Sherring‘s script hints at the possibility of a sequel, although he and director McKendry will next be seen working together on Joseph and the Girl, a remake of the French film Joseph et la Fille. If that sequel does come along, Killer Elite has all of the basic building blocks to make a solid action film, it just needs to tighten them all up to truly live up to its title.
[stextbox id=”custom”]Killer Elite is neither part of the action elite, and nor is it killer, meandering from one scene to the next as if searching for its own purpose. [/stextbox]
Disney has sent over the official Australian trailer for Killer Elite. De Niro and Statham, together at last!
Inspired by true events, Killer Elite is an action adventure spy film following Danny (Statham), one of the world’s most skilled special-ops agents. Lured out of self-imposed exile to execute a near-impossible feat of retribution and personal salvation, Danny reassembles his old team of operatives to help rescue his former mentor and partner Hunter (De Niro). Together they must penetrate the highly feared and respected military unit, the British Special Air Service (SAS) to take down a rogue cell of solider assassins before their actions create a global crisis..
Killer Elite’s whirlwind journey of action crosses the globe: from Mexico to Australia, from Paris and Lodon to Oman…and Wales! The story is based on Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ controversial non-fiction novel “The Feather Men.”
Killer Elite is release in Australia on 23 February 2012 from Disney.
Once a year, the world holds its breath as the stars align for a single purpose. It brings together rich and poor, the famous and the not so famous and children sing a song in perfect harmony. That moment is, of course, the release of a new Garry Marshall film. One of the more insidious trends over the last few years has been the hyperlinked romantic comedies that throw a whole lot of celebrities at the screen for five minutes at a time, hoping that for what the films lack in depth they will make up for in volume. Last year’s Valentine’s Day was Marshall’s first foray into the this type of film, following the world that He’s Just Not That Into You created, and now the same creative team behind Valentine’s Day has reunited to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.
It’s New Year’s Eve 2011, and Claire (Hilary Swank) is in charge of the festivities at New York’s Time’s Square, including the famous ball drop. Things go wrong when the ball gets stuck. Meanwhile, record company secretary Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer) quits her job, and enlists young deliveryman Paul (Zac Efron) to help her fulfil all of her resolutions before midnight, in return for tickets to an exclusive party. At a nearby hospital, the dying Stan (Robert De Niro) refuses treatment from his doctor (Cary Elwes) and two nurses (Halle Berry and blink-and-you’ll miss her Alyssa Milano), but wants desperately to see the ball drop one last time before he croaks.
Then there’s slacker Randy (Ashton Kutcher) who gets stuck in a lift with Elissa (Lea Michele), who is in turn a back-up singer for superstar Jensen (Jon Bon Jovi), a man who simply wants to reconnect with former lover and chef Laura (Katherine Heigl). Sam (Josh Duhamel) rushes to get to New York to give a speech, but is also angst ridden over meeting up with a woman he had a chance encounter with the year before. Griffin (Seth Meyers) and Tess (Jessica Biel) compete with another couple to have the first baby of the New Year for a cash prize, and Kim (Sarah Jessica Parker) struggles with her adolescent daughter Hailey (Abigail Breslin), who just wants to be snogged.
Or: a group of people with intersecting lives do things on New Year’s Eve.
The formula for New Year’s Eve was set in stone long before the cameras rolled, and for most people this film will do exactly what it promises: engender good feelings towards the people that you see immediately after the screening, but create an empty feeling that can only be filled with more rom-coms. As can be gleaned from the plot description, for want of a better phrase, there is little room for character detail for any of these people, even in the bloated two-hour running time, with their New Year’s revelations and warm fuzzies a foregone conclusion.
Each of the stories could fill its own film, such as Sam’s road trip with a random family (that includes Yeardley “Lisa Simpson” Smith), and some work better than others. It would have been genuinely fun to spend more time with Ashton Kutcher, but not so much Glee’s Lea Michele, and there are some nice moments in the Efron/Pfeiffer subplot. Yet any film where Zac Efron’s performance outshines Pfeiffer (who incidentally is one of two Catwomen in the film, the other being Halle Berry), has serious problems. The sheer number of stars is of course unnecessary, and virtually anybody could have played these roles. It goes without saying that this is a cynical marketing tool, but New Year’s Eve is a film where the cogs are clearly visible.
If Hollywood continues to sell us these films, then we should have no trouble believing that Sarah Jessica Parker is the hard-working mom who can’t bag a man (again), that Michelle Pfeiffer is a mousy and meek secretary and that Katherine Heigl ever eats chocolate. Their continued success ensures their perpetuity, but is it too much to ask that we pull back on the celebs and amp up the story? Rom-coms have a winning formula, but as (500) Days of Summer, Knocked Up and the collected works of Woody Allen continue to prove, there is no reason they have to be this average. To writer Katherine Fugate, Garry Marshall and all of Hollywood: your New Year’s resolution is “must try harder”.
[stextbox id=”custom”]Our New Year’s resolution, on the other hand, is to never forget how mediocre this film is, lest we be suckered into seeing whatever the 2012 equivalent is. Unless it is an Easter film. Or Christmassy.[/stextbox]
New Year’s Eve was released in Australia on 8 December 2011 from Roadshow Films.
In the tradition, and from the producers, of Valentine’s Day, comes this year’s rom-com full of an ensemble cast of big name actors: New Year’s Eve. Roadshow has sent over a special trailer/featurette for the film, showing the work of the cast and veteran romance director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Valentine’s Day, Beaches).
A celebration of love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, the film is a series of intertwining stories of couples and singles, told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.
The film stars a stellar line-up including Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, two-time Academy Award winner Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer, Ryan Seacrest, two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank and Sofia Vergara.
New Year’s Eve will be released in Australia on 8 December 2011 from Roadshow Films.
Since his first screen appearance in an episode of Sex And The City, Bradley Cooper has gravitated from supporting player to genuine star. Impressing in television spy series Alias, he made his way from forgettable shows Touching Evil, Jack & Bobby and Kitchen Confidential to film appearances in Wedding Crashers, Failure To Launch and The Comebacks, with The Rocker, The Midnight Meat Train and Yes Man padding out his resume.
In 2009, he added New York, I Love You, He’s Just Not That Into You and All About Steve to his body of work, however it was the unexpected popularity of comedy The Hangover that considerably boosted his fame. After 2010 remake The A-Team, Cooper now turns his talents to mystery thriller Limitless, in the first feature to truly test his leading man credentials.
Writer Eddie Morra (Cooper) is on the fast-track to nowhere, with failure following his every move. The words won’t come to him despite the lure of a hefty advance, and his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish, Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’Hoole) has had enough of his defeatist attitude. Running into his ex brother-in-law (Johnny Whitworth, Gamer) for the first time in years, Eddie is presented with an opportunity he can’t pass up. Given a sample of wonder drug NZT-48, his mindset is altered from meandering to motivated, with anything seemingly possible. Just as things start looking up, his rise from zero to hero brings with it the attention of characters both shady (Tomas Arana, Defiance) and connected (Robert De Niro, Meet The Parents: Little Fockers). As the stakes are raised, Eddie finds himself caught in a mess of murder and mayhem, with the drugs central to his predicament.
Limitless comes with an intriguing premise, albeit one based on Alan Glynn’s novel “The Dark Fields”. Placing itself almost immediately in the realm of Philip K. Dick’s style of existential parables in which the protagonist’s reality is shifted to a point where he doesn’t know what is real and what is constructed: they are a pluralist view of reality, where the altered state begins to make more sense that what had been perceived up until that point.
We have already seen one of Dick’s stories adapted this year in The Adjustment Bureau, and Limitless holds up quite well when viewed within the contextual framework. Of course, the story is bolstered greatly by the presence of a new certified leading man in Bradley Cooper, who transforms from bum to genius quite literally before our eyes, and the smoke and mirrors direction of Neil Burger (mmm…burger) in his fourth outing in the big chair. Supporting cast members Cornish and De Niro, the latter of whom is still phoning it in at this late stage in his career, offer ample chops, but ultimately it is Cooper who must carry this premise on his shoulders.
Limitless is not quite as clever as it thinks it is, or should be, as the problem with writing a film about a super-smart person is that the people behind the film are nowhere near as brilliant as the character that they are portraying. While not to diminish anything from Leslie Dixon, the scribe behind such straightforward genre pics Mrs. Doubtfire, Pay It Forward and the Freaky Friday remake, she isn’t exactly batting with the four-figure IQ that the lead character purports to have in Limitless. This leaves the film in a bit of a quandary in the final act of the film. The intriguing premise and charming personality of Cooper have carried us through the first two acts effortlessly, and to be frank it is very cool watching a person with no restraints at work.
For the audience, this is the person that we want it to be. However, for a character as smart as this to work there are really only two options for a film that is not as clever as its main character: make all the other characters stupid, or rely on a convoluted denouement to bluff your way out. The latter works quite well for Limitless, as long as you don’t examine it too closely, and we are left with an otherwise above-average thriller.
The Reel Bits: Limitless is not without its limits, but it is clever enough to hide them with just enough pace to stop us from asking too many probing questions. Cooper confirms his status as a winning leading man, and we look forward to seeing him back with the Wolfpack in The Hangover Part II and in what will hopefully be a meatier role in David O. Russell’s The Silver Linings Playbook in 2013.
Limitless was released on March 17, 2011 in Australia by Roadshow Films.
