Tag Archives: robert deniro

Silver Linings Playbook

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Silver Linings Playbook is a product of David O. Russell, the director of The Fighter.  He is clearly an excellent storyteller and he has again made this quirky story about slightly bipolar people very compelling and fun.

What catches one’s eye in the trailer is Bradley Cooper, who is one of the top male leads in the lineup.  He continues to impress that he is much more than a pretty face and abs by showing us some real acting as a live-at-home  mild psychotic who can’t control his anger or his obsession with recapturing his lost life.  What grabs you right from the start of the film, however is Jennifer Lawrence of Hunger Games, who has that full-cheeked fresh look of innocence that makes her psychoses more interesting. Add to that Cooper’s OCD Philadelphia Eagles fan father played by Robert DeNiro and you have a wonderful can of mixed nuts all working to find their way back to some semblance of normalcy.

DeNiro wants the Eagles to win and finance his new restaurant.  Cooper wants his ex-wife back (never once showing any concern about his career or lack of productivity).  Lawrence is at least focused on a dance competition for which she enlists Cooper as her partner.  When they “win” by scoring a 5 out of 10, there is great symbolism in saying that for some, just being able to get on the field is a victory.

While I really liked the movie for its message about managing one’s dreams, I am always troubled by the marginal productivity of people who should be in he mainstream.  No one here adds to the GDP and that is troubling.

Being Flynn Review

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[dropcap style="font-size: 60px; color: #9b9b9b;"] B [/dropcap] eing Flynn has all the elements for success. A great writer/director in Paul Weitz (no, not the “white shoe” Wall Street law firm, but the guy who wrote and directed one of my favorites….About A Boy). An amazing cast with De Niro, Paul Dano (think awkward teenager in Little Miss Sunshine and the kid in There Will Be Blood) and Julianne Moore. A soulful story with the tag line “we’re all works in progress”. But sometimes having all the ingredients doesn’t make for that spark that ignites a film. Being Flynn never ignites.

Robert De Niro plays Jonathan Flynn, who is a purported writer/philosopher who is a woefully deficient father and, quite frankly, a bit of a loser who travels very close to the edge of socio-economic oblivion. Few could do this more convincingly than De Niro. Paul Dano is his lost son who is more a real writer/poet than Dad could ever be. Dano simply looks like a rumpled bed on his best day, so playing a part as a homeless shelter house boy is right in his natural groove. Julianne Moore as the Mom who hopes in futile fashion that Dad will try to be a Dad does a fine job, but let’s face it, this sad-sack storyline is pretty well played out and is what starts to slip about this film. I would like to quote Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets when he says with great cynicism, ” Let’s not tell each other our sad stories…” That should be a rule for movies too. We know there are bad parents and wounds of youth and parental attempts of redemption…and piss in the dark corners. Life may not be all about “noodle pudding”, but I’m not sure it’s that entertaining to watch the dark underbelly.

My guess is that this movie only appeals to the 1% who don’t realize that life is usually not a bowl of cherries.

Killer Elite Review

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[dropcap style="font-size: 60px; color: #9b9b9b;"] K [/dropcap] iller Elite is simply a fun vehicle for Jason Stratham and Clive Owen to duke it out in an assassin v. assassin film. Do not mistake this for the similarly titled The Killer Elite with last generations’ macho men Robert Duvall and James Caan. This version is about going after ex-SAS where the 1975 version was about ex-CIA rogues. One thing this version has going for it is a last generation tough guy, Robert DeNiro, playing the ruthless and not quite yet toothless Hunter.

In a battle for pure toughness, I would always put my money on Stratham. Maybe it’s the East End accent or the virile half beard, but probably it’s that Celtic gene which he seems to possess, which says, “I will fuck you up as soon as look at you, you wanker!”. Owen, on the other hand is both handicapped by a well-bred moniker like Clive, a mustache like David Niven and a manner that just wants to make you say, “really?” when he takes on Stratham head-to-head. Calling him Spike did not help.

DeNiro has never really been a physical menace, but more the deep, dark brooding menace that is mentally tough. Nonetheless, he actually does a credible job of seeming pretty tough in an old school sort of way.

Now this story takes place in the UK and Oman and it is actually more realistic than it might initially seem. Great sheikdom wealth, even in exile, can and does revert to it’s Bedouin roots in seeking eye-for-an-eye vengeance and yet it is totally logical that the next generation, educated invariably at Eton or UCLA, wants less and less to do with the desert. This not only rings true, it is true.

On my travels to the Middle East, I found the exact same dynamic. Older sheiks who were tough as nails and treated their followers with regal paternalism and disdain and younger, Westernized kids who had never had to fight for their birthright, but now learned to grovel for it with their invariably disappointed fathers….and the women staying in the deep background all the while.

These new breed have substituted market trading toughness for physical toughness, so watch out you traders…..if there’s a Bedouin Counterparty in the trade, expect Stratham-like scrappiness.

Overall, a great action film.

New Years Eve Review

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[dropcap style="font-size: 60px; color: #9b9b9b;"] W [/dropcap] hen seeing the trailers of New Year’s Eve one is quickly drawn to the analogy of the next installment of the hugely popular Love Actually with some star updating. New Year’s Eve is Less Actually in some ways and More Actually in others. What made L.A. so good was the Seinfeld-esque integration of different story lines into a subtly connected set of stories. New Years Eve did not come close to that quality of script. In fact the writing and especially the dialogue was something close to atrocious. What qualifies it for “more” is that the multitude of stars that were cast were at least more interestingly juxtaposed in such a way as to cross generational lines, and that was at least a bit daring.

Michele Pfeiffer and Zach Efron get and deserve star billing here. He was the most likable character in the movie and despite being a bit more of a NYC mover and shaker than would be so for most bike messengers, he was very likable. She was a tad frumpy, which most men of a certain age would be hard-pressed to believe. The other very good and funny performance came from a bit player, Larry Miller, who plays a very jaundiced Connecticut tow truck driver who helps Josh Duhamel get to his gala. The other players include DeNiro (tear-jerking terminal patient), Hilary Swank (dutiful city worker), Sarah Jessica Parker, Mathew Broderick, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Halle Berry, Seth Meyers, Katherine Heigl, Jon Bon Jovi, Sofia Vergara, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones and even Lea Michele of Glee. And that’s only SOME of the names they threw at this movie. Was this a We Are The World music video or a movie?

So imagine an investment portfolio where you a so concerned about risk that you diversify and diversify and diversify in the hopes that nothing will fail or fail too badly…..what happens? You wash out any hope of a decent return. This is what has happened here. We are long on Hollywood Beta and completely lacking in that spark of Alpha that makes a movie something you want to watch over and over.