JUST A GANGSTER, I SUPPOSE

One might not immediately cite 1990 as a particularly notable year in the history of cinema. It was, after all, the year Dances With Wolves dominated the Oscars, with its lush visuals, its masturbatory, self-satisfied PC politics, its massive overlength. Flying under the radar that year were a number of fine pictures, four of which we will be discussing today, since they made 1990 an extremely notable year in the history of the gangster movie.

Usually, confluent trends in cinema are due to societal influence of some sort. The fact that 1990 saw so many different types of gangster movies might—amateur sociology alert—have something to do with the brazen, swaggering, felonious Wall Street culture of the 80s. It might just be that four (actually five if you count Ethan Coen) directors really liked gangster movies. Whatever the cause, the point is four awesome gangster movies came out in 1990.

Like any genre, gangster movies have evolved over time. Raoul Walsh basically invented the genre in 1915 with Regeneration. Shot on location in the Bowery, it's about as close as you can get to seeing what the milieu of Gangs of New York was actually like, as real gangs still prowled the neighborhood. From there, movie gangsters morphed into Paul Muni, then Cagney/Edward G. Robinson, then endless ripoffs of Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, then the paradigm shift/Shakespearean facelift performed by Dr. Francis Coppola, then Scorsese's hyper-realistic, autobiographical take on the genre, still the predominant mode in the gangster picture in 1990. Then Quentin Tarantino taught gangsters how to listen to Madonna and watch The Partridge Family, Guy Ritchie's take was awl roight, innit, then David Chase recast them in a bathrobe in their driveway, lumbering to pick up the morning's Newark Star-Ledger. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, back to 1990.

Our quartet each represents a different approach to the genre, each historically significant:


The Moody Character Piece—State of Grace

I talked about this one a bit in my St. Patrick's Day post, so rather than be redundant, let's focus on Phil Joanou's direction. The pace is deliberate (read: slow, if you're not in the mood) to give the actors all the time they need to make character choices (“I'm Irish . . . I'm drunk . . . I'm fatalistic . . . I need to brood decoratively . . .”) and the compositions, while serving the same end of not crowding the actors and giving them room to move, instead make the picture feel kind of emotionally neutral (and the lack of urgency in the editing reinforces that feeling of neutrality, and even detachment).

This would all be a critique of Phil Joanou's directing if the performances weren't all so fucking good. Sean Penn overdoes it a bit, as is his custom, but he's still pretty spectacular in this. Gary Oldman of course is Gary Oldman and nothing more need be said; he also overacts, but getting on Gary Oldman for overacting is like getting on water for being wet. Ed Harris, no stranger to overacting himself, keeps it pretty well in check here, and successfully conveys that his character's ruthlessness is due to weakness.

The psychological, Method acting approach to the gangster genre works if your purpose is examining the whys and wherefores behind gangsterism, or in State of Grace's case, the role of the gangster as the last, doomed line of defense against gentrification. The Westies were the most feared gang in New York, but they were no match for yuppies.


The Auteursploitation Picture—King of New York

King of New York is a decent companion piece to State of Grace, as both are “decline and fall of the gangster empire” narratives, and both have a similarly grim, moderato pace. One area in which King of New York is the clear superior, though, is in the overacting competition.

Remember, I'm not saying “overacting” as an insult, and remember also, King of New York stars Christopher Walken, perhaps the most flamboyantly strange actor ever seen on the silver screen. As drug kingpin Frank White, Walken is at his apex. Frank White is the king of New York, to the point where in a wonderful bit of irony, just about every black rapper from New York has, at some point or other since 1990, declared himself to be Frank White.

King of New York starts with Frank White's release from prison. Frank returns to a city where his lieutenant, Larry (pre-Laurence) Fishburne, is informed “nobody even talks to you goddamn motherfucking coños anymore.” Larry, aided by chemist Steve Buscemi and that one weird guy who just shouts shit in a coked-up rage all the time, rebut this assertion with a hail of gunfire and steal the gentleman's drugs.

The gangsters in King of New York always have half-dressed beautiful women lounging around, and the way you can tell Walken's the boss of bosses is that his half-dressed women are more beautiful than the other gangsters'. His headquarters, where all his women lounge around, is the Plaza hotel, another conspicuous sign that Walken is cooler than everyone else.

Walken attempts to diversify into the legitimate world, where he hobnobs with Pete Hamill (playing himself) and politicians, but the cops (led by a scenery chewing David Caruso and his earnest young protegé Wesley Snipes) are dead set on putting Walken back in jail, as they regard his release to be a crime in itself.

However he might crave acceptance in the straight world, Walken still has a drug empire to reconquer, which requires some doomed-from-the-start negotiations with a deliciously reptilian Chinese guy who sits around watching Expressionist horror movies with his (far too clothed for true gangster credibility) women and his henchmen. When business falls apart after the Chinese guy tells him “I didn't realize how fucking crazy you really are,” Walken and company are forced to resort to machine guns, which maneuver eradicates the Chinatown contingent.

David Caruso and the cops eventually decide that the only way to beat Walken is at his own game (which is to say, a machine gun battle), although Victor Argo (in the movie's only understated performance, and maybe its best) demurs and refuses to be party to such methods. Caruso and entourage succeed in killing a whole bunch of Walken's guys, including Larry Fishburne, though it costs poor Wesley Snipes his life, as well as a fresh-faced, recently married rookie's. Walken gets his retribution by drive-by blasting David Caruso at Wesley's funeral, leaving Victor Argo to arrest Walken, who mortally wounds Victor Argo, though he himself is mortally wounded by Victor Argo. Walken dies quietly in a cab in Times Square.

Director Abel Ferrara is very much an auteur, whose major theme is Catholic guilt, with subthemes sin and retribution, and because of his personal preoccupations, his bad men never get away with what they've done; they've sinned and ultimately must repent. So, although Walken is the King of New York, the king must die. Long live the king. And by God, long live King of New York. Few movies are as unrelentingly grim and violent, but even fewer are as fascinatingly badass. Anyone Biggie Smalls was willing to defer to in the badass department (the titular king, Frank White) is a force to be fucking reckoned with.


The Classicist Approach—Miller's Crossing

Of the movies in discussion today, the first that can unironically be branded a masterpiece is Miller's Crossing (also discussed briefly on St. Paddy's). Joel and Ethan Coen, in their nearly three-decade career, have made a half-dozen of the finest motion pictures of their generation, and to date have only directed one bad movie (Intolerable Cruelty, where they had to make chicken salad out of someone else's chickenshit script). Their finest, I submit—even better than Fargo, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, or No Country For Old Men—is Miller's Crossing.

Borrowing from Dashiell Hammett, Damon Runyon, and Grand Guignol, Miller's Crossing is an incredibly stylized, intricately constructed, unabashedly unpleasant work of genius. Gabriel Byrne stars as Tom Reagan, loyal right hand to political boss (read: gangster) Albert Finney, who is having trouble with “ethical” Jon Polito and his right hand, the terrifying Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman). Despite his loyalty, Gabriel Byrne is still fucking Albert Finney's woman, the hard-as-nails Marcia Gay Harden, whose brother, Jon Turturro, is number one on Jon Polito's to-kill list because “ethically, he's a little shaky” (an elegant understatement from an inelegant man).

So, in order to protect Albert Finney's interests, Gabriel Byrne has to disclose his affair with Marcia Gay Harden, thus prompting his exile from Albert Finney's inner circle (said exile accomplished by Albert Finney beating the shit out of him in public and throwing him down a flight of stairs), which leads to Gabriel Byrne having to go work for Jon Polito, whereupon Gabriel Byrne subtly subverts Jon Polito's organization from within, leading Jon Polito to kill Eddie Dane, after which John Turturro kills Jon Polito and Gabriel Byrne kills John Turturro, unfortunately ruining his chances at ever getting Marcia Gay Harden back but nonetheless being forgiven by Albert Finney. Exhale.

As compelling as the twisty, double-cross-laden plot is, and as gorgeous as the camerawork is (the Coens have always collaborated with the best DP's, first Barry Sonnenfeld then Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki), what makes Miller's Crossing so special is the dialogue. Basically, just read this whole page.

Of course, the scene with Albert Finney, the tommy gun, the burning house, and “Danny Boy” is the stuff of standing ovations. The fact that one of the greatest scenes ever in movies isn't even overwhelmingly the best scene in the movie is a testament to how fucking amazing Miller's Crossing is. The fact that an even better gangster movie was released in the same year is a reason to regard that other gangster movie with awe.


The Real—Goodfellas

“As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster.” --Henry Hill
“I grew up with the gangsters and the priests . . . now, as a director, I'm both.” --Martin Scorsese

It all seems so effortless. It looks like it's really happening. It's arguably the best picture in one of the most storied careers in cinema, Martin Scorsese's. Based on the memoir Wise Guy by real-life gangster Henry Hill, Goodfellas (the name change was due to there being a TV show at the time called Wiseguy, which you should see if you haven't) covers thirty years in The Life, following Henry Hill from wide-eyed kid parking cars at a Mob cabstand to high-flying coke dealer to state's witness testifying against all his friends.

By this point, practically every scene in Goodfellas has entered the realm of myth, so recapping is unnecessary. As awesome as the whole movie is, two scenes stand out. They're Scorsese at his very best, and Scorsese at his best is exciting and important:

(1) The steadicam shot when Henry takes Karen to the Copa for the first time. We start outside, see the huge fuckin line, and Karen starts to say something about “wow, we're going to have to wait” only to have Henry tell her, we don't have to wait, it's better this way, as he hustles her through the service entrance. Now, the obvious reason why this shot is awesome is that it's all in one take, with dozens of people choreographed perfectly even before we get into the main room of the Copa and they produce a table from outta nowhere and all that. But the less obvious reason is that this shot is the ENTIRE MOVIE in microcosm: Henry the gangster is taking his girl out on a date, showing her the glamor of the gangster's life, but in so doing has to drag her through the less-than-glamorous underbelly of the club where you get a glimpse of where, metaphorically speaking, the sausages are made. The fact that you don't really notice that until the thirtieth time you see the movie leaves you feeling it's all a bit of an adventure, and that Ray Liotta famously bashes himself in the nuts about two-thirds of the way through the shot but gamely keeps going further deepens the metaphor. Now, my favorite part of the whole thing, the very end, when Henry and Karen are sitting down, and a waiter brings over a bottle saying, “This is from Mr. Tony over there,” and there's that pan over to a table full of friendly, gesticulating gangsters. Martin Scorsese is so cool he can make a camera move funny. That shit has me dying, every time.

(2) Billy Batts' coming-home party. This one isn't about the flashy camerawork, this is just the fucking apex of acting and directing. Joe Pesci, as Tommy, comes into Henry's bar with a girlfriend, not realizing that Billy Batts is in there with some henchmen. Tommy doesn't like Billy Batts. Billy Batts reminds Tommy, in a very demeaning way, that he used to be a shoeshine boy, all the while pretending that he's being friendly. He is, however, reminding a lesser gangster, one who has not been “made,” who the alpha greaseball is. Now. By this point in the movie we've had it firmly established for us that Joe Pesci is motherfucking crazy as a fucking shithouse rat. While he may rationally give a fuck that Billy Batts is a made man and he isn't, when Billy Batts suicidally keeps fucking with him, Joe Pesci's rational side gradually dissipates, until the coup de grace: “NOW GO HOME AND GET YOUR FUCKIN' SHINEBOX.” Joe Pesci slams the glass he's holding to the ground and goes nuts; Henry and Jimmy only just get him out of the bar before he launches himself at Billy's whole henchmen coterie.

Of course, that's not the end of it. Joe Pesci comes back, and he and De Niro jump on Billy. Character revelation: Joe Pesci is sloppy and all over the place as he beats Billy to death, whereas De Niro calmly and methodically stomps the life out of the guy (a concise portrait of psychopath vs. sociopath; beats the shit outta the DSM-IV, which has the added disadvantage of not being scored to Donovan). The best part about the ending of the scene, where they roll the “dead” Billy Batts in tablecloths and schlep him out to Henry's car, is that it means the scene with Scorsese's mom is coming up next.

That scene, where they're all just sitting around eating dinner at like 4 o'clock in the morning, and Catherine Scorsese shows the boys this amazing, stark painting she did, and De Niro remarks “[he] looks like someone we know,” and starts laughing, because the guy in the painting looks vaguely like Billy Batts, who's in their trunk, right outside . . .

There are so many classic bits in this movie: the “do you think I'm funny?” sequence (which was actually written and directed by Pesci), the whole saga of shooting Spider in the foot and Spider committing suicide by telling Tommy to go fuck himself (later homaged on The Sopranos before it started to suck when Michael Imperioli, who played Spider, goes into a bakery and shoots some guy in the foot, telling him “It happens!”), “Don't let the sauce stick!”, Kevin Corrigan's perfectly calibrated “thaw fuuuuck atta he” (translation: “Get the fuck out of here”) when Ray Liotta tells him about the helicopters, etc etc etc.

And, on a personal note, my 7th grade basketball coach is in the movie, playing himself, as the guy toward the end who haggles with Henry and Karen over the witness protection program thing. When I was in high school, one of his sons made “High School athlete of the week” in the New York Post, and the opening of the piece went something like, “Occasionally, the phone will ring. Sean will pick it up and the voice on the other end of the line will say, 'It's Wilt Chamberlain.' When that happens, Sean calls for his father: 'Dad! It's Henry Hill!'” Priceless stuff, that.

It's pretty fucking hard to conceive of a movie as good as Goodfellas. Of the top 5 or so movies of all time, Goodfellas is probably the most entertaining of the lot, and certainly has the best soundtrack. It's a beautiful movie about something ugly, the gangster and the priest in perfect balance. And it taught me the word “fucko.” For that alone, Goodfellas is a classic.


Now, astute cineastes will probably point out “Hey, there was a fifth notable gangster movie released in 1990.” And I, being generous, will indulge you and agree:


The Misfire—The Godfather, Part III

The whole meme about Sofia Coppola ruining this is a little overblown. The other problems (no Robert Duvall, and giving all his screen time to Diane Keaton, historically the weakest link in the saga, casting people like George Hamilton and Eli Wallach, who while both awesome do not fucking belong here, the central story—about power struggles in the Vatican—being so dense that you need footnotes to figure out who's how) overshadow poor Sofia, who was fated to be a director, anyway. When you have a movie where you're supposed to consider Andy Garcia ascending to the throne as a harbinger of doom, you have a very problematic movie.


In fairly short order after 1990, Tarantino would remake the gangster movie in his own image, leaving the quartet and change I mentioned today as the swan song of an era of crime cinema. It's surprising how not dated any of the four are (well, not so much Goodfellas, movies that good don't get dated), how even though they belong to the past, they're still in a language we understand in the present. We could stand, in this self-conscious (post)modern age, to take a page out of these pictures' book (if the metaphor police call, you never saw me) and remember what made them great. And hey, a 20th anniversary is always a good excuse to watch something.

LÁ FHÉILE PÁDRAIG SONA DUIT

St. Patrick's Day has always been a source of great inner turmoil to me. I'm half Irish and half WASP, which means war at the best of times. I've also teetered on the brink of a serious drinking problem since birth. So, naturally, a day where everyone and his fuckface brother walks around bellowing about Lucky Charms at the top of his lungs and then drinking four whole beers and throwing up all over the street is going to piss me off. I abhor amateurs when it comes to drinking, which completely aside from the potential health risks turns people into retards unless they have the necessary composure to maintain. It also takes practice and experience to do properly.

But enough about drinking before I start. Today, in honor of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland (and their subsequent swim across the Atlantic Ocean to become the New York Police Department) we're going to talk about a random assortment of Irish and Irish-related cinema.


The Commitments (1991) dir. Alan Parker
Irish director: No
Irish writer(s): Yes
Irish cast: Yes

Not liking The Commitments is like not liking puppies. You are actually a bad person if you don't like this movie. That's one of the things that can be kind of annoying, periodically, about UK and Irish “proletarians with artistic ambitions” pictures (see also Billy Elliott, The Full Monty, et al). Not that the movies themselves are annoying—they're almost always terrific—but not being allowed to be pissed off pisses me off sometimes. Because even we diluted half-Irish-Americans still have that powerful Irish cranky gene.

Anyway, The Commitments fucking rocks. The protagonist, smooth-talker Jimmy Rabbitte, is on the fringes of the “music business” (i.e. selling Morrissey t-shirts to teenage girls on the subway) and one day decides to assemble a band to play classic soul music. He ropes in a couple of buddies (one of whom, Outspan, would years later get weepy over that cute Czech chick in Once, which I'm not going to be talking about) and puts out an ad in the paper to attract other musicians.

Jimmy: What do you play?
Skeevy dude: Uh, I used to play football at school.
Jimmy: I mean, what instrument?
Skeevy dude: Oh I don't.
Jimmy: What are you doing here, then?
Skeevy dude: Well, I saw everyone lining up, so, uh . . . I thought you were selling drugs.

So, yeah, it's a fairly arduous process. (Note to those who've yet to have the pleasure: auditioning sucks balls no matter which side of the fence you're on) But eventually, Jimmy assembles a group, complete with cute girls to sing backup vocals, an asshole lead vocalist—a must for any proper band—and a trumpet player who claims to know everyone who ever recorded music ever.

The band gets really good. But the trumpet player nails all the backup singers, the lead vocalist so alienates the first drummer that he quits and they have to replace him with their psycho bouncer, and as happens with so many bands, things go bad. But, as the trumpet player—of all people—points out:

“The success of the band was irrelevant - you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it's poetry.”

While non-Hibernian ears might require a couple viewings—or subtitles—to make sense of the Dublin accents, the whole movie just sings. And holy fuck Colm Meaney is hilarious as Jimmy's Elvis-worshipping dad.


The Quiet Man (1952) dir. John Ford
Irish director: Oh hell yeah
Irish writer: Doesn't really matter, John Ford was in charge
Irish cast: Yes, con molto brio

I haven't spent a whole lot of time sucking John Ford's dick on this blog, since Ford-worship is more the kind of thing my parents' generation indulged in, primarily because they were the last generation for whom Westerns were more than museum pieces. Like, look. I like Westerns. But they're very academic for me. I'll always like the remake of 3:10 to Yuma better than the original because Batman vs. Maximus is always relevant to my interests, which fact has led me to be lectured by People Who Were There that pissing on Glenn Ford like that is out of bounds. Sorry, guys. I'll just never get it on a gut level.

All of which should mean it's hard goddamn work to figure out what's so great about John Ford that his nuts have been lodged in every film critic's nostrils since even before Orson Welles, adopting humility as a pose, credited Stagecoach with teaching him how to direct. (Translation: that's a good 70 years) But it's not. John Ford's pretty awesome. When I was growing up, The Quiet Man was always on TV every St. Patrick's Day, so watching The Quiet Man on March 17th is kinda like watching A Christmas Story on December 25th. And, like A Christmas Story, it's not anything earth-shattering, it's just a really well-made movie that hits the spot as long as you're not feeling too cynical.

But, with all due respect to Peter Billingsley, The Quiet Man has John Wayne. And, with all due respect to my fellow progressives, John Wayne ruled. Six-foot-four, craggy, perpetually pissed off, can kick your ass. And no one, no one, ever looked better on a horse. Here, though, he doesn't ride a whole lot of horses. He plays a former boxer who—after accidentally killing a guy—retires in disgrace, heads to Ireland, takes one good look at Maureen O'Hara, and says, “Bring me that one. The sultry bitch with the fire in her eyes!” (Wait, fuck, that was Elliott Gould in MASH . . .)

So, it's your basic fish out of water culture clash story, but with John Wayne. There's a lot of good natured b'gosh an' begorrah Oyrishness (that during my militant teenage years inspired a lot of angry leftist ranting) and a lot of “all right his reputation is deserved” John Fordness. But, my favorite part of the movie comes at the end, when, as happens in the ways of men, Victor McLaglen and John Wayne have to beat the shit out of each other. It's a great fight scene, filmed by one of the great directors of all time, but my favorite part about the scene is that Victor McLaglen is so awesome that he fights John Wayne to a stalemate. No one does that. It's kind of like watching Jesus walk across a swimming pool and getting the bottom of his robe wet. (Yes, I went there on a Catholic holiday. Deal.)


State of Grace (1990) dir. Phil Joanou
Irish director: No
Irish writer: Yes
Irish cast: Partially

State of Grace is a goddamn mess. It's well made, really well acted, but any time you're forced to go, “ya know, if they cut 45 minutes out of it it woulda been great,” you cannot ascribe perfection. But oh man are there Irish guys in this movie. Not all of them are played by real Irish guys, but with Gary Oldman that's like being in bed with Gina Gershon, Kathryn Bigelow, and Scarlett Johansson and complaining that they're hogging the covers. Sean Penn is good, though a little too “look at me acting” as per usual. Ed Harris is fantastic.

The deal is, Ed Harris runs the Westies, who are on the decline. His brother, Gary Oldman, his enforcer when he's not too drunk to hold a gun, brings Sean Penn into the fold, not knowing that Sean Penn is an undercover cop. So Sean Penn strings along cop handler John Turturro as the Westies get into some shit with Joe Viterelli and the Eye-Ties. Wait, hold up, we need a picture of Joe Viterelli.

Man I miss that fuckin guy. Anyway, before I get sidetracked, shit eventually comes to a head when Ed Harris decides sucking up to Joe Viterelli is more important than his brother's life, so Ed Harris kills Gary Oldman. Only then does Sean Penn really get motivated to take Ed Harris down. There's a great shootout at the end set to "Trip Through Your Wires" by U2 (Phil Joanou also directed Rattle and Hum, which was also too long and about a bunch of full-of-shit Irish guys . . . OMG THEY'RE THE SAME MOVIE!)

State of Grace is one of those movies that's built around showcasing performances. Scenes are constructed more for the actors to Make Choices rather than to move the story forward. Some of those scenes—like the one where Sean Penn and Robin Wright find a so-drunk-he's-practically-tripping Gary Oldman in church, mourning Stevie (a young John C. Reilly), culminating with Gary Oldman mumbling over and over “we're gonna make Stevie a saint,” or the one where Sean Penn and Gary Oldman are trying to figure out when to bust in guns blazing on Joe Viterelli because Ed Harris hasn't called them on the pay phone (remember those? In the remake Ed Harris would have just texted them and boom, no scene) and Sean Penn tells one of the other thugs “No offense, but you're fuckin' retarded”—are good. Some of them are not. Those are the ones I sleep through. Yeah, that's another thing, when you have to take a nap in the middle of a movie, it's too fucking long.


Gangs of New York (2002) dir. Martin Scorsese.
Irish director: Um. No.
Irish writer: No.
Irish cast: No.

Oh, what might have been. I won't dwell, because this movie does suck, and it shouldn't suck, and the fact that it sucks is unfortunate. Because there really hasn't been a great movie about the Irish immigrant experience in this country, and for some reason I thought Marty Scorsese, adapting something like a couple paragraphs of Herbert Asbury's juicy 1928 page-turner, was going to make that great movie. The story goes, he wanted to make this movie forever but could never find a young actor with the necessary gravitas. Which makes it especially awesome that he went into production without a script, and his leading actor was both too old and sucked.

Goddammit this is frustrating. Remember when we all heard about this movie? We heard it was about Irish immigrants engaged in a bloody turf war with American-born gangs, and went “holy shit that sounds awesome.” I went in willing to cut Leonardo DiCaprio miles of slack, but the second he opened his mouth and started talking with that ridiculous fake accent he totally lost me. And he spent the whole movie looking like he needed to take a shit, when I guess he was trying to project inner turmoil.

Daniel Day-Lewis got a lot of attention for his performance as the villain, which, as in Tim Burton's first Batman movie, overwhelmed the ineffectual hero and totally fucked the movie up. Still, when DDL says “What's your name boy? Amsterdam? [pause] I'm New York” that's like yeah. I'm neither able nor willing to resist that line reading. But seriously, this is a movie about the Irish in New York, and the racist American guy is the most memorable thing about it. Eh?

I mean, GODFUCKINGDAMMIT MARTY, you're making a movie that concludes with the fucking Draft Riots? And it still sucks? You're lucky The Departed was good, you inconstant bastard.


Miller's Crossing (1990) dir. Joel Coen (and, let's drop the pretense, Ethan too)
Irish writer/directors: No, but it really doesn't matter.
Irish cast: Extremely

Now, this isn't necessarily a picture about the Irish experience or anything. But it belongs here because the coolest Irish guy who ever breathed real or fictional air is the main character.

Gabriel Byrne has never been better. As Tom Reagan, he pulls off an amazing balancing act, swapping meticulously-crafted Coen Bros dialogue with a variety of underworld types, any one of whom could kill him at any moment. And yet, at the end, he emerges not unscathed but alive, impressive in itself.

Equally badass is fellow Irishman Albert Finney, as political boss Leo, who “runs things.” They're the main two Irish guys, though the guy who describes Albert Finney as “an artist with the Thompson” is cool too. They deal with a bunch of obstreperous Italians, led by the relaxed and sane Jon Polito and his ingratiating, warm colleague Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman). Wait, hold on, my adjectives got scrambled. Jon Polito is batshit and spends the whole movie so worked up he turns purple, and Eddie Dane is the coldest, scariest motherfucker ever. The only thing in the world that he doesn't have a growled putdown or a couple bullets for is Mink (Steve Buscemi). He's head over heels in love with Mink. Oh, fuck, when Eddie Dane thinks Tom killed Mink it's even scarier than when Ripley realizes the Alien is in the escape pod with her.

But since this is St. Patrick's Day, I'll cease to digress. The scene about which the guy calls Albert Finney an artist with the Thompson. This is what we're talkin' about. Jon Polito sends dudes to Albert Finney's house to kill him. They kill one of Albert Finney's dudes, but the dead guy's cigarette sets something on fire. Albert Finney sees the smoke through the floorboards, and swings into action, killing the two Tommy-gun-toting thugs who burst in upon his inner sanctum. Albert Finney grabs his cigar and one of the Tommy guns then gets his ass outside. He then shoots one remaining assassin about 10,000 times. Then a car with other assassins drives by, firing machine guns at Albert Finney. Albert Finney calmly walks up the street, firing another 20,000 times without reloading, and the car eventually blows up. He then sticks his cigar back in his mouth and surveys his work. Oh, yeah . . . this whole scene, Frank Patterson's recording of “Danny Boy” is playing. This scene, more than any of their others, affirms the Coen brothers' genius to me. My favorite scene in my favorite movie of theirs.

Of course, there are other movies about Ireland, the Irish, and the Irish diaspora. I recommend staying home and watching one of them this evening, while the amateurs are out vomiting on our sidewalks and screaming about how drunk they are after one and a half pints of American seltzerbeer. God, this is an annoying holiday. Valentine's Day you can at least ignore. Instead of going forth and blaspheming against the Emerald Isle by acting like a shithead in a bar, maybe partake of some of the other fine Irish traditions: good conversation, a good book, complaining about not making the World Cup again. Drink at home. Sláinte, y'all.

TOP TEN--10 TO 6

ABOUT THAT TOP TEN . . .


I concluded my debut post with a top ten for the ten year span starting the morning we woke up and realized Y2K hadn’t happened and ending tomorrow night at midnight. Like any top ten list based on subjective criteria, it’s arbitrary, holes can be poked in it, and ultimately it doesn’t mean much. It’s not a list of the ten movies I enjoyed the most over the past ten years—if it was, Casino Royale and The Room would have been in the top three. And if it was a list of top ten experiences of a movie, that time I watched 24 Hour Party People when I was so high my eyeballs were vibrating would be near the top of the list. It’s a list of the ten movies I think are the best of what I saw.

There are some patterns in the list. All but one—The Departed—of the movies on my list were written or co-written by their directors. Most of them were fairly popular, or at least widely discussed critically; I don’t have any cred insofar as obscure shit no one else saw. Most of them won at least one Oscar, as per that last point. If my top ten is any insight into my perspective as a moviegoer I suppose it reveals a college-educated, middle-class white guy in his early 30s who likes movies and doesn’t have much of a problem with Hollywood. Which is (shockingly!) accurate. So, enough analysis of the list, more about the movies on it (10-6 today, 5-1 tomorrow):

(10) Criminal (dir. Gregory Jacobs)—2004

This is a remake of an Argentinian movie called Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), but I prefer this one. Nueve Reinas didn’t really grab me, maybe because of the mood I was in when I saw it, maybe because the pacing was a little erratic. Criminal, though, moves fairly well, and it hits me below the belt; I’ve always loved movies and books about crime and criminals, and this one waves its title in my face.

It’s one of those narratives one can only summarize so far without spoilers, so suffice to say it’s about a young con man played by Diego Luna who makes a rookie mistake scamming a casino, and is arrested by John C. Reilly, who appears to be a cop, but after hauling Diego out in cuffs, John C. explains that he’s a veteran con man, and offers to show Diego some basics. They pull a couple small-scale cons, then suddenly John C.’s sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal (they presumably take after different parents) calls him to the hotel where she works, where an old colleague has a very large job, which John C. agrees to help him with in exchange for a usurious cut of the eventual take.

This is where the twists and spoilers start, so we’ll leave the narrative be and focus on Criminal’s other virtues. Gregory Jacobs, directing his first feature, co-wrote the script with a pseudonymous Steven Soderbergh (for whom Jacobs is frequently first assistant director and occasionally co-producer), and keeps things moving briskly, never overdoing either the direction or the script. The cast is excellent—it might be John C. Reilly’s best performance, and he’s been one of the best character actors around for a long time. He and Diego Luna interact well, with the upper hand changing hands constantly and subtly. The supporting cast, especially Maggie G and Peter Mullan as a mysterious Scottish media baron, is excellent as well.

Putting Criminal at #10 on the list meant having to bump a number of movies I really liked over the past ten years—Traffic, Mulholland Dr., Far From Heaven, The Station Agent, Sideways, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac, I’m Not There, The Visitor, Inglourious Basterds, and several others. I’m sure good arguments can be made for each of those movies in terms of superiority, narrative scope, et cetera. But this is a list being compiled by someone who’s a sucker for minimalism, crime fiction, and a good plot twist. So there you go.

(9) No Country For Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)—2007

Enough has been written about this one already that I don’t need to pile on much more. Some brief thoughts (and spoilers for any Johnny Come-Latelys who haven’t Netflixed it yet):

--It’s better than Fargo.
--Fargo, while overrated, was still really, really good.
--Where the fuck did Josh Brolin come from? Seriously, he brings it.
--Once Josh Brolin gets killed, it kinda falls apart (which is why I only have it at #9), but not really; I come down on the “it’s awesome” side of the controversial ending, the “it sucks” people need to listen closer to what Tommy Lee Jones is saying there.
--Josh Brolin’s late bloom into awesome reminds me: Tommy Lee Jones is another one who was around for a long time, kicking around, not really living up to his potential, until he walks into frame in The Fugitive, says “My, my, my. What. A. Mess,” as if the train wreck was his career and proceeds to own shit for the rest of the movie, which by extension is his career. I could go on all day about The Fugitive, and may at some point.
--Javier Bardem was all that, though I did murder five people who called me “friendo” at the time.
--The Coens’ Best Director and Best Picture wins were long overdue, but it kind of pisses me off that the Academy rewards people stepping outside their comfort zone instead of recognizing brilliance at a director or actor’s strong suit. Of course, I’m the asshole in the corner of the party spilling whiskey and bellowing that Miller’s Crossing should have swept the Oscars in 1990 (and forgetting about Goodfellas in the process).
--I remember someone asking me whether I liked No Country at the time and responding “Antonioni can go fuck himself, and so can John Ford,” which was overstating it a bit in retrospect, but it’s still a pretty damn good movie.

A closing note: I’ve still yet to manage to watch this one all the way through a second time, and I’m a compulsive rewatcher. Hence, #9.


(8) The Departed (dir. Martin Scorsese)—2006

Oh, The Depaaaaaaaaahted. Some of the accents sucked, yes. Jack seemed like he grew up in Boston’s Martian district. It’s almost an hour longer than Infernal Affairs, which was a terrific movie in its own right. All this is true. The Departed is still a really good movie.

Remakes are not, in and of themselves, bad, or even inherently lazy. At their best, when there’s more to the remake than merely recasting American stars in the leads to squeeze a buck or hundred million out of the multiplexes, it’s like a cover song. Or a revival of a play. In this case, screenwriter William Monahan had a story about the Boston underworld that fit within the framework of Infernal Affairs’ premise—a cop undercover in the Mob, a Mob mole undercover on the cops—to pose the question of what exactly is it that makes a good guy, or a bad guy. Or whether either good or bad really exists.

All of this could have been terribly ponderous with the wrong director running things. Or, in a different wrong director’s hands, it could have been a rote cops-and-robbers thing that dragged on forever. Mr. Scorsese couldn’t make a boring movie if he tried (which may very well have been the motivation behind Kundun, in which case he failed, it was pretty good), nor could he paint by numbers without setting fire to the canvas and slowly pushing the camera in on it with the Rolling Stones playing on the soundtrack.

Ultimately, The Departed will live on as one of the main pieces of ammunition in cynical Oscar watchers’ arsenal when they gripe about de facto lifetime achievement Oscars. Back in the dark days when we all wondered whether Scorsese was going to join the all-time Oscarless directors’ pantheon with Hitchcock and Kubrick, this used to really piss me off:

1976—Scorsese not nominated for Taxi Driver; John G. Avildsen wins for Rocky
1980—nominated for Raging Bull, Scorsese loses to Robert Redford for Ordinary People
1990—nominated for Goodfellas, Scorsese loses to Kevin Costner or Dances With Wolves

’76 isn’t that bad. Sure, Avildsen winning for Rocky is absurd and a symptom that “the people want to feel good when they walk out of a movie!” (though the kind of person who feels good about a movie based on the premise that Muhammad Ali needed to be taken down a peg is beneath contempt), but Sidney Lumet getting shafted for Network (which was years ahead of its time and a legit contender for Greatest of All Time discussion) was a bigger tragedy than a guy in his early 30s not getting nominated for a movie that was almost rated X.

It’s those 1980 and 1990 losses that burn my ass. Ordinary People is not a badly made movie. It’s got a good cast. It is, however, a good indicator of Redford’s future directorial efforts: looks nice, has all the polish money can buy, but there ain’t a whole lotta there there. Raging Bull is Raging Bull. Sure, it’s hard to watch, and it flopped at the box office (which has always been a factor with the Oscars). But it’s Raging Bull. Even if, for political reasons, you have to give Ordinary People Best Picture (which I understand, even if I don’t condone), Scorsese should have won Best Director for the fucking credit sequence alone.

Now, 1990. Dances With Wolves, oh Dances With Wolves. When I was 12 and I saw it on cable I was pretty impressed. But a lot of things impress 12 year olds. And, apparently, Oscar voters: “Oh, look, how meaningful! It’s about an issue! Oh, we’re such bad people for not caring about the Native Americans! Let’s show how much we care!” Now, if Costner hadn’t deleted the expository sequence about the time machine they sent a late-80s vintage politically correct liberal back in time with to assume the identity of John Dunbar, I might have bought it. Without that crucial bit of narrative, it remains one of the best examples extant of Hollywood jerking off to itself. And whose face took that sensitivity bukkake? Martin Scorsese’s. Goodfellas was the best movie of that year, and after the aforementioned Taxi Driver and Raging Bull snubs, it was a classic case of “we fucked him twice, let’s give him his reach-around this time.” But, alas. There was treacly sentiment and reductive liberalism to parade. The American Left doesn’t have cancer, it has diabetes. [Remaining ten pages of this political rant redacted, to be used if I ever get on the Huffington Post].

So, anyway, back to The Departed. Maybe it was his long-delayed reach-around. But if anyone deserved one, it was Scorsese. And there’s something to be said for a 151 minute movie that’s as re-watchable as The Departed (a few months ago when it was HBO all the time I watched it almost every time it was on).

(7) I’ve Loved You So Long (dir. Philippe Claudel)—2008

This is a real good one. Kristin Scott Thomas gets out of prison after a 15-year stretch and goes to stay with her sister and her family while re-adjusting to society. And that’s pretty much it. French novelist Philippe Claudel’s first film as a director unfolds like a novel. Kristin Scott Thomas’ character is revealed slowly, each revelation making her that much more vividly real. (Among the revelations is why she speaks French with an English accent). While there’s a mildly annoying tendency in independent/art-house/what-have-you cinema these days toward arbitrarily holding back information about character and plot in order to have a good end-of-second-act zinger, Claudel’s deliberate revelation of certain rather important details the circumstances behind Kristin Scott Thomas’ incarceration is not arbitrary at all. She, as a character, has put those circumstances behind her, and it’s only because of her sister’s (and the audience’s) need to understand that they’re even revealed at all. Elsa Zylberstein does a terrific job as the sister—in an American movie the sister who doesn’t approve of her convict sibling and is always harping at her and being self-righteous would have been torturous to watch, but in a French movie somehow she gets to be a real person. This is why we need French movies.

(6) Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola)—2003

Because Scarlett Johansson’s ass over the opening credits could end all war everywhere. Because when you feel lonely and far from home, staring out the window of a taxi with My Bloody Valentine playing just about sums it up. Because Bill Murray is, as GZA later dutifully reminded us in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, “Bill Motherfuckin’ Murray,” and in his career from Rushmore forward, he’s transcended his previous incarnation as “Bill Ghostbustin-ass Murray.” Because Scarlett Johansson’s ass . . . oh, wait, already covered that (even if those underwear didn’t . . . zing!)

Most importantly, because this movie was so good that until Marie Antoinette came out as such a head-scratcher, for a couple years there I stopped thinking of Sofia Coppola as the twit who fucked up Godfather III. This was big, for me. The first two Godfathers are holy to me. The third had potential; seriously, what other mountains were there for Michael Corleone to climb than the Vatican? And after seeing his rise to power, seeing his end would bring closure. So unlike some people I’ve spilled whiskey on talking about this over years, I saw a third Godfather as being potentially a good thing. However . . .

To be fair, Sofia Coppola is not the only problem with Godfather III. Her father was no longer the same guy he was when he made the first two. Robert Duvall was sorely missed. But Sofia’s miscasting was the biggest, and most noticeable flaw (a tradition going back to the beginning of the Godfather series; Diane Keaton was awful in the first two and seemed better in the third in comparison to Sofia). And, not being above the holding of long-standing, pointless, violently irrational grudges, I completely wrote Sofia Coppola off. Rich kid, dilettante, etc etc. Until Lost in Translation, which, a couple of batting-practice-fastball Japanese accent jokes aside, is an extremely well-observed character study, and captures the awkward, otherworldly sense of being very far from home perfectly. And with a dynamite soundtrack—Bill Murray’s drunk karaoke “More Than This” is still the gold standard of drunk karaoke (my own rendition of the Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” is disqualified because, although I’d had a drink or two at that point, I was still sober).

Tomorrow, lengthy digressive essays on #s 5-1!