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    #51
    Originally posted by Bruno

    According to this writer, it's all made up.

    https://slate.com/culture/2019/08/th...tory-lies.html
    I think ursus was referencing the Gommorah book's author when he posted this.

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      #52
      Pretty much same review from me. Could easily and happily have edited out 30 to 45 minutes. But hey...how often are you going to see something like this? What a stellar cast all around.

      And Van Zandt is named in the closing credits.

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        #53
        Originally posted by WOM View Post

        I think ursus was referencing the Gommorah book's author when he posted this.

        Got it in one

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          #54
          It does feel pointless and I think that *is* the point. Mob life is just mean and ugly and usually ends violently. It’s not glamorous or cool or Shakespearean.

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            #55
            Yeah but follow that thread right back to the start of the labyrinth, and you start to wonder "Have I spent my life just glorifying toxic masculinity, and psychopathy?" Something that all those involved should probably ponder.

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              #56
              Maybe the daughter Peggy is a subconscious comment on the genre itself, as is the priest that can't overcome Frank's lack of remorse? She knows she's been born into an inhuman universe and begs the question as to why you'd want to turn it into cinema.

              he mistakes Hoffa for a good guy because he's not Frank or the Pesci character. Unlike them, Hoffa is not someone who is drawn to killing as a profession because it is the job that best suits his inner drives.

              I think De Niro incorporated Gandolfini's style to some degree, just as Gandolfini's style owes a lot to his early work. But Frank's self-disgust when he's given the grim task of killing Hoffa is brilliantly played, especially him and Hoffa in the car.

              Pesci is amazing throughout, even in his scene after the stroke. He keeps the character calm even when Pacino's Hoffa is blasting off the hubristic verbals that get him killed.

              I'm not really seeing Trump in this. It's Nixon's world in collusion with both corporations and gangsters rather than purely despotic theft by an oligarchy in a one-party state.
              Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 29-12-2019, 21:06.

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                #57
                Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                Yeah but follow that thread right back to the start of the labyrinth, and you start to wonder "Have I spent my life just glorifying toxic masculinity, and psychopathy?" Something that all those involved should probably ponder.
                I don’t think they’re trying to “glorify” it but to just show it as it is.

                “Glorifying” gets thrown around a lot and it’s not clear what it really means or how creators can stop so many people - especially young men - from idolizing the villains. I recall that Vince Gilligan sounded dumbfounded when interviewers would ask him if he thought the audience should be pulling for Walter. Of course not.

                The only way to make the villains unappealing to macho dickheads is to make them seem weak, but a weak villain isn’t very interesting for a story.

                It’s a shame that Godfather III didn’t really work - It might have if they got Duval and Winona Ryder as originally planned - because Pacino is good in it and it shows how Michael just ends up alone and full of regret. That’s a more suitable ending to the saga than just killing Fredo and sitting in the dark.

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                  #58
                  I've just started Gomorrah on Netflix. Wow, awesome stuff. Like 'Sons of Anarchy'* but at a far higher level of acting and craft that does not glamourize the lifestyle in any way. The lead is terrific and portrays his inner conflicts really well. The poverty in Naples in starkly shot.

                  *specifically in the theme of the lieutenant who realizes the boss is toxic.
                  Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 31-12-2019, 10:13.

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                    #59
                    'Glorify' might be a bit strong. But pretty much all of scorsese's films seem to have been about Arsehole men being arseholes in an interesting but kind of superficial way. One problem I have with gangster movies, which I didn't know I had, until I saw the Sopranos and Boardwalk empire, is that even a long film isn't really long enough to tell stories about what are essentially groups of manipulative sociopaths. These people are quite complicated, and the level of compression of information is too great. There's no room in the godfather films to show Paulie walnuts shaking down gardeners, which is actually most of what he did in practice, or patsy parisi trying to shake down a Jamba Juice, and failing because the massive corporation is too big to shake down. (or tony's role in shutting down the old school community delicatessen because the corporation offered more money.) I think that scorsese himself probably recognises this. This isn't really a traditional film as much as a four part mini-series glued together. Tie that in with his involvement in Boardwalk Empire, And I find myself wondering If he regrets not having had this level of story telling freedom back in his prime.

                    I think as well there was something particularly unsatisfying about the way that a film doesn't really allow you to talk about involvement in wider events other than a) by exposition "We killed JFK" or b) Cartoon, like jimmy hoffa. Godfather 2 got away with integrating the Kefauver hearings, because people like michael corleone, and frank pentangili actually testified at these things. SImilarly the Cuban thing worked well because he goes there, and you see them having the meeting, and this is the sort of thing that actually did happen to people on the level of michael Corleone. But by Godfather III they're trying to crowbar michael corleone into the vatican bank scandal because there might have been mob involvement somewhere along the line. on a personal level I found that kind of jarring and fourth wall breaking.

                    on the other hand, watching Nucky Thompson going off to the 1920 republican convention in chicago, as the boss of the republican party machine in Atlantic City (Which is exactly what Enoch Johnson would have done) and all of the horse-trading that went on there. That was quite a good way of illustrating what presidential politics was like in the lead up to the tea pot dome scandal. I suppose if you're trying to tell a story about the nexus of organized Crime, and its capture of Local government, national politics and social attitudes during Prohibition, you need time.

                    Actually thinking about it, maybe glorify is the right word after all. I found myself watching a documentary series about mobsters, and it was only watching people talking about italian mobsters, Irish mobsters, and jewish mobsters side by side that a number of things occurred to me. The Italian mobster section featured the traditional mob programme sort of things, where you get guys wishing they were still living the life of dean martin. The Irish mobster (who had the same name as my dad, and was born around the same time) was a frankenstein of every different Irish manifestation of toxic masculinity stitched together by a drunk Igor, topped off with a mop of hair redder than any found in ireland, and freckles. If you saw him in the street, you'd cross the road. Everything about him screamed to me "dangerous lunatic, keep the fuck away" to me, and the people talking about him didn't seem too fond of him. the extreme mental instability of the Irish american gangsters meant that the people talking about them weren't glorifying a lifestyle. And people talking about Jewish gangsters would always be sure to point out that though these people offered some level of protection to the wider community in their neighbourhood, they were effectively stealing from every single person and making their lives more expensive. (A situation made abundantly clear when carlo gambino took over the kosher chicken butchers union, and effectively exacted a tax on every observant jew in New York. ) It was only when I saw these three culturally very different ways of assessing what was basically the same sort of thing, that we take a lot of that glorification of the mafia kind of for granted.

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                      #60
                      Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                      It does feel pointless and I think that *is* the point. Mob life is just mean and ugly and usually ends violently. It’s not glamorous or cool or Shakespearean.
                      The captions at the introduction of characters, even some who were less than important, point to that: "Shot in the head in 1980", "Stangled to death in 1979", "Died in prison in 1981" and so on.

                      I was a bit worried about what Pesci and Pacino might do. Both have a way of annoying me. But, my goodness, both were marvellous. Pacino was playing a larger-than-life kind of guy with great restraint. He could have chewed the scenery, but it was a very subtle performance.

                      As has been said, the set/location design was superb. Even in slower moments, I was admiring the scenery.

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                        #61
                        Watched this last night. I loved it. Loved the pace, loved the craft that went into it. And has been said on here, Pesci was superb. By far the best performance I've ever seen him give. I can't see that it glorifies anything or anybody. Quite the opposite in fact, everything about it screams misery being stuck in this depressing and oppressive world. Culminating in Frank being told to kill someone who is one of his very few friends - and doing it without so much as a word of complaint. There are no scenes of happiness in it, we never see them enjoying life (unlike say, Godfather 2 in Cuba before the revolution), the only party scene is at Frank's testimonial dinner but that is right at the centre of Jimmy's collapse.

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                          #62
                          I watched it last night too- think all three of them were superb.- Pesci, de Niro and Pacino. Pesci is so still.

                          ( that sudden laugh that de Niro gives when being asked to finally spill the beans by the FBI guys is astonishing)

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                            #63
                            Does it matter that it’s almost all certainly not true?

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                              #64
                              No.

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                                #65
                                Agreed

                                I find it strange that that has become a talking point

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                                  #66
                                  It bothers me, to be honest. I am not sure why.

                                  I have seen it 2.5 times. It’s impressive, but I don’t really like it, if that makes sense. It’s a grind, which is the point, but that doesn’t make the experience more enjoyable.

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                                    #67
                                    Not having bothered on release, I watched Silence over the weekend and found it both impressive and absorbing. Scorsese's preoccupation with whether people can really change (spoiler: no) is well to the fore in Silence, The Irishman and The Wolf of Wall Street too, flashy and unpleasant though the last is.

                                    Putting The Irishman's length in perspective, it is only half an hour longer than TWoWS and much less of a drag as a watching experience.

                                    The accuracy or otherwise of The Irishman would be less of an issue if the Kennedy assassination reference had been left out, I think. The claim about that particular unresolved episode draws heat onto the veracity of the rest of the story in a way that the mob-on-mob stuff alone wouldn't.

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                                      #68
                                      Is it a claim by the film, though ? I saw it as something asserted by one person-who may be telling the truth, may be an unreliable narrator, or may be using Kennedy’s assassination to put pressure on someone else.

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                                        #69
                                        You're right, Nef, and it adds another dimension to the film once we start to question whether De Niro's narrative voice is as authoritative as it initially sounds and as we are preconditioned to think of it. I do wonder whether the Kennedy assassination is such a hot button issue that it might skew that discussion. Equally it might seem strange were it to be ignored, even as a rumour, in an account of organised crime during the period.

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                                          #70
                                          I’m thoroughly unbothered by the unreliability of the narrator. That seems to be hinted at throughout, so we’re not meant to take everything at face value. My problem is that I was just bored and didn’t see the point of it - WOWS might have been nearly as long, but I found it mostly entertaining.

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                                            #71
                                            Originally posted by Benjm View Post
                                            You're right, Nef, and it adds another dimension to the film once we start to question whether De Niro's narrative voice is as authoritative as it initially sounds and as we are preconditioned to think of it. I do wonder whether the Kennedy assassination is such a hot button issue that it might skew that discussion. Equally it might seem strange were it to be ignored, even as a rumour, in an account of organised crime during the period.
                                            It also implicates Hoffa’s adopted son Chuckie O’Brien, who is still alive, as I recall. That seems problematic.

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                                              #72
                                              As his law professor stepson made very clear in an op-ed for the New York Times.

                                              Though I still don't expect historical accuracy from non-documentary films.

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                                                #73
                                                Yeah. I heard that guy talk about it.

                                                I don’t like some of his ideas about the power of the president, but that’s neither here nor there.

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                                                  #74
                                                  I wouldn't be worried about taking bog breaks during The Irishman. I watched it on Saturday night and dozed off at least a dozen times, and every time I woke up the same conversation between the same two characters seemed to be going round in circles. No doubt this was deliberate, but fuck was it boring.

                                                  I think this would have been better made 30 years ago casting Jack Lemmon and Walther Matthau as Sheeran/Hoffa in a buddy movie.

                                                  Maybe a more adventurous idea would have been to make the movie from Sheeran's daughters' point of view. But no, we have to go with the same old angle about greedy, selfish violent male psychopaths being mainly obsessed with a perceived slight. I get that some of you liked the feel, but de Niro constantly channelling Gandolfino was either a deliberate, knowing self-referential sleight of hand or very careless, and neither way was it impressive.

                                                  As for the truth, I think it's important when you're naming real people as characters, which is one of the reasons I've mainly given up watching bio-pics. I didn't even realise these people were once real until Hoffa appeared. While the old folks' home scenes were comical at the end, they weren't a patch on the gradual decline of Uncle Junior.

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                                                    #75
                                                    De Niro is quieter and stiller here than Gandolfini tended to be, partly due to his age. The explosions of violence are more difficult to square with the surrounding plot though.

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