THE FAMILY: Besson's Really Redundant De Niro Mob Comedy

Opening today at a theater near you:

THE FAMILY (Dir. Luc Besson, 2013)

Seeing Luc Besson’s new mob comedy THE FAMILY makes me wonder if Robert De Niro will be remembered by future generations for his roles that poked fun at his image as a scary Mafioso type, more than the classic roles in which he actually portrayed a scary Mafioso type.



Here De Niro plays a former New York mob boss, living in France with his wife (Michelle Pfeifer) and teenage offspring (John D'Leo and Glee’s Dianna Agron) under the witness relocation program.

The set-up obviously recalls the end of GOODFELLAS, in which Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill complains about getting egg noodles with ketchup when he orders spaghetti with marinara sauce after being relocated to the suburbs for snitching on his former buddies.

THE FAMILY’s wiseguy fish-out-of-water premise also recalls the 1990 Herbert Ross-helmed Steve Martin/Rick Moranis comedy MY BLUE HEAVEN (incidentally written by the late great Nora Ephron who was married to GOODFELLAS screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi).

But those reference points are over 20 years old now, so after countless spoofs of modern mafia movies, as well as six seasons of HBO’s dark comic drama The Sopranos, every trope THE FAMILY trots out has been done to death. Adapted by Tonino Benacquista from his 2010 novel “Badfellas” (that’s right), THE FAMILY has a few funny lines and a couple of decent gags, but the overly familiar structure (along with the high volume of convenient convolutions in the storyline) can't help but highlight how redundant it is.

De Niro spends the movie either trying to write his memoirs - an activity frowned on by Tommy Lee Jones as a CIA agent assigned to protect the undercover family – or trying to get somebody to do something about the brown water coming out of his house’s taps. De Niro’s worn-out character trait is that he speaks softly but will do violent damage to any non-relative who says something offensive to him. One scene has him dragging a fertilizer plant CEO behind his car for suggesting he switch to bottled water.

Pfeifer, also no stranger to this territory (see Jonathan Demme’s 1988 mob comedy MARRIED TO THE MOB), along with D’Leo and Agron, handle matters in the same abrasive manner. Pfeifer blows up a grocery store for snide remarks made at her expense by the clerks, D’Leo arranges for a brutal beating of his high school bully, and Agron makes like KICK ASS’s Hit-Girl when she takes a tennis racket to the head of a fellow student who puts the moves on her.

Trouble is that the film is so boringly broad that these scenarios have no ambition over getting cheap laughs from indiscriminate audiences. It also tries to go where it really shouldn’t when De Niro is invited to a local film club for a screening of the 1958 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin movie SOME COME RUNNING, but there’s a mix-up and GOODFELLAS is shown instead. Besson’s film hasn’t earned that attempt at a meta moment, especially as it only aims for the funny from Jones’ grumpy cat reaction to De Niro yet again being unable to control.

After the effort De Niro put into his Oscar nominated role in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, it's disheartening to see him once again walk through a role. The man seriously doesn't seem to care about being the center of another self-referential mafia-themed farce - the ANALYSE THIS/THAT films should've been where he drew the line.

TV spots for the THE FAMILY highlight that Martin Scorsese was involved as one of the executive producers, even blaring an early ‘70s Rolling Stones track on top of clips (no Stones music appears in the movie) to shade the proceedings with his presence. This is an un-wiseguy move as it just calls into attention how much this film misses the mark.

Scorsese hasn’t directed De Niro since 1995’s CASINO, but a future collaboration – THE IRISHMAN based on the Charles Brandt book “I Heard You Paint Houses” - is reportedly in the works. Here’s hoping that will come together soon, because after the mess Besson has made here stumbling blindly around Marty’s territory, a clean-up crew is sorely needed.

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Journey Plucks Lead Singer From YouTube Obscurity In DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’

This new documentary, rockumentary if you will, as Marty DiBergi would say, is now playing in selected cities across the country:

DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’: EVERYMAN’S JOURNEY 

(Dir. Ramona S. Diaz, 2012)

Dammit! I can never escape Journey.

Over three decades since they first tortured me via AOR radio, the San Francisco band's particular brand of schlocky power balladry is still unavoidable. The use of the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the controversial last episode of The Sopranos has had a lot to do with the current resurgence of the band’s popularity that came to an ugly head in last summer’s awful ‘80s hair rock homage ROCK OF AGES (happily that movie flopped).

I should’ve accepted by now that Journey is a corporate rock machine, one that will keep going even if it has to replace a vital part. This documentary, the debut full length feature by director Ramona S. Diaz, is about the most recent replacement of the band’s lead singer in 2008, for an album and tour that was already in the works.

What’s interesting, or at least amusing, is how they went about finding their man. Guitarist and founding member Neil Schon trolled YouTube watching clips of Journey cover bands and tribute artists in a desperate last minute search to find a Steve Perry sound-alike for what he calls that “legacy sound.”

Schon happened upon videos of Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer/songwriter who could imitate Perry’s vocal chops impeccably. Schon sent Pineda an email offering him the job that stressed “this is not a joke,” and before you know it, the skinny energetic 40-year old was fronting the band he idolized.

And then suddenly, Journey has more of an international appeal.

This is all established in the first 15 minutes so after that the documentary goes in circles through Journey’s history, stuff that was better covered in their episode of VH1’s Behind The Music, and through footage of the band onstage and backstage on their Revelation Tour ‘08.

Despite the name of the tour depicted, there are no real revelations in the backstage stuff, which is the kind of fluff that fills up special features on concert Blu ray or DVD releases, and the lengthy chunks of the band performing to thousands of appreciative fans will only be appreciated by those same fans.

Diaz’s documentary is most compelling when it touches on the fans that weren’t on board with Pineda joining Journey. We see Pineda reacting to cruel racist posts on internet message boards like one that yells with all caps: “ONLY FILIPINOS WILL SUPPORT TIS CRAPPY SINGER!!!!!!” (misspelling kept intact).

“I think he should be from here,” says one young female concertgoer, who stresses she’s not being racist. Another girl in the same concert venue parking lot counters with “He sounds just like him, and it’s still music.” Well, at least she’s half right. No, that’s a cheap shot, but I wish they spent more time with the white trash fans getting drunk and spouting out inanities before the show, but that’s probably because it reminded me of HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (Jeff Krulik’s 1986 short shot in the parking lot of a Judas Priest that lives up to its cult reputation).



It’s all well and good, that Pineda was able to overcome the poverty of the streets of Manila and the rough living of his youth to hit the big-time, and it’s great he could buy his family a nice house and all, but the way that this is packaged, like an inspirational polemic is laughable. It seems to be saying that you too could be plucked from YouTube obscurity to front your favorite band, so don’t stop believin’ in your dreams, kids!

Pineda’s storyline weaving through the history of Journey’s branding does have uplifting elements, and he seems like a nice guy humbled by the spotlight, but, hey, it’s a one in a million tale of luck. No amount of belief will change that, even if it goes on and on and on and on and on…

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NOT FADE AWAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now opening exclusively in the Triangle area at Crossroads 20 in Cary:

NOT FADE AWAY (Dir. David Chase, 2012)

David Chase’s debut as director, and first project since his seminal HBO show The Sopranos, is a tribute to the era in which the British Invasion led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones hit America hard.

It was a time when tons of teenagers dreamed of forming a rock band that would have huge hit singles, tour the world, and be chased by crowds of adoring girls. This is the story of a New Jersey teenager (John Magaro), getting together with his friends to reach for that dream, but they never make it big. As a young female narrator (Meg Guzulescu, who plays Magaro’s sister), who pops up very sparingly, says: “Like most bands, you've never heard of them.”

Although Chase opens the film with the famous meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (Dominic Sheerwood and Alfie Stewart) on a London train chatting about Chicago blues records, his is a personal film about the people listening who could only fantasize about having that iconic power; the impressionable teens watching life changing TV appearances of their heroes (there are several interspersed bits of black and white footage shown full screen including the legendary appearance of the Stones on the ABC variety show The Hollywood Palace in which they were mocked by host Dean Martin).

Our young protagonist, Magaro is obsessed with the revolutionary rock of the times. His change of wardrobe and hairstyle in the span of the 4-5 years this film covers makes him look more and more like Bob Dylan, something his sullen demeanor also calls attention to.

Magaro becomes the drummer for the never really named band (the soundtrack lists them as The Twylight Zones but that’s never made clear in the film), which also includes Will Brill and Jack Huston. At one early gig at a party, Magaro takes over on lead vocal for the Stones’ “Time is on My Side,” and catches the eye of Bella Hethcote as a girl he’d been crushing on since high school. Some conflict arises when Magaro suggests that he would sing one of their songs better than Huston, and before long he’s the lead vocalist and Huston is out.

Back on the homefront, the generation gap widens as Magaro’s father (Chase’s Sopranos star James Gandolfini) disapproves greatly of his son’s rock ‘n roll lifestyle in kitchen-set scenes that remind me of the incredibly touching, rambling monologues Bruce Springsteen would deliver between songs onstage in the ‘80s about his troubled relationship with his father back during the same period this film takes place.

Springsteen is an apt analogy as E Street Band member (and another Sopranos connection) Steve Van Zandt is executive produced, supervised the soundtrack, and wrote one of the band’s few originals “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre,” as well as played on it, and their other songs too.

The Stones dominate the soundtrack, but Chase and Van Sandt touch on a lot of crucial music including old blues artists like Lead Belly, Bo Diddley, and Robert Johnson, mixed with ‘60s pop like the Small Faces, the Moody Blues, and the Left Banke. Of course, the Beatles and Dylan can’t help but pop up.

Director/screenwriter Chase sets a tone for many scenes that can make it easy to pinpoint what’s happening next, and there are one too point plot-points that never add up (Gandolfini reveals he has cancer at one point but nothing really comes from it), but the naturalistic dialogue along with the moody engulfing atmosphere, enhanced grandly by the music, made me feel like I was in these peoples’ uncertain world.

Seeing Magaro’s band find their footing practicing in the basement, gigging at parties, and recording demos at a studio is affecting even when you know they’re never going to make it. A rude awakening for the band comes in the form of Brad Garrett as a New York music business bigwig who tells them that they’re not ready; that they need to pay their dues by playing clubs full-time for 6 months.

If you’ve even been in a band, or known people in a band, or if you are into bands at all, then you’re likely to “get” this movie.



Otherwise your reaction might be like Magaro’s when going with his girlfriend Hethcoteto to see Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 pop art classic BLOW UP: “What kind of movie is this? Nothing happens.”

Director/screenwriter Chase’s NOT FADE AWAY, which is a lifted title from a '50s Buddy Holly classic that has been countlessly covered, doesn’t overly romanticize the era, it just simply conveys the excitement mixed with confusion with being so swept up in the changing times that one can, like Magaro hitchhiking down L.A.'s Sunset Strip at midnight at the film’s end, find their lives blowing in the wind.

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Talky KILLING THEM SOFTLY Gives Us A Lesson In Gangster Economics

Opening today in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

KILLING THEM SOFTLY (Dir. Andrew Dominik, 2012)

Although this film is based on the 1974 crime novel “Coogan’s Trade” by George V. Higgins, fans of The Sopranos are going to find its trappings familiar. Not only because it features Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, and series regulars Vincent Curatola, and Max Casella, but because its scenario set-up about low level idiots that try to get ahead by robbing a mob protected card game is ground well trodden by David Chase’s iconic characters.

But director/screenwriter Andrew Dominik, re-united with his THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES star, Brad Pitt, has loftier goals that just staging a big screen Sopranos episode. Dominik sets the story in New Orleans in 2008, and we are taken back to the days of Obama getting elected during the country’s economic collapse via a string of television screens in the background always tuned to the news. The underlying implication is that the mafia is yet another American corporation whose business model is faltering in these tough times.

Pitt, with slicked back hair, shades, and goatee, plays an enforcer for the mob who’s brought in to track down the three low level idiots who thought it was a good idea to rob a high-stakes card game run by the fidgety stressed-out Ray Liotta. Liotta, is in real hot water with this theft, because he’s robbed the game before himself, and he’s going to take the blame for this one.

An often smirking Richard Jenkins, brings his Nathaniel Fisher (the all-knowing ghost dad on Six Feet Under) confidence in his part as Pitt’s contact, a jaded mob lawyer, who says matter-of-factly that “this is a business of relationships,” ever so slyly adding to the movie’s not-so-subtle set of themes.

Gandolfini shows up as a boozing burn-out of a hitman that Pitt seems to think he needs in order to pull off the job. Gandolfini and Pitt have a few intense and intimate scenes together; one on one exchanges in which you feel their history together both as these shady guys, and as actors who’ve worked together for 2 decades, starting with Tony Scott’s TRUE ROMANCE. 

Despite some vivid violence (this movie is where to go to see Liotta getting the shit beaten out of him), it’s a dialogue-driven film, all about the sit-downs. The power and thrust of the film’s thesis can be found in Pitt’s parked car consultations with Jenkins, Gandolfini’s meaty monologues, and the frightened babbling of Scoot McNairy’s Frankie (one of the idiots involved in the card heist), who steals the movie out from under the bigwigs when he’s onscreen with his perfectly unhinged performance.

As McNairy’s partner in crime and stupidity, Ben Mendelsohn (ANIMAL KINGDOM) is also effective as a seedy heroin addict you can’t believe anybody would trust to get them coffee, let alone pull off a dangerous job.

Pitt, who is one of 17 (!) different producers on this project, provides a solid performance, but it’s nothing we’ve never seen him do before. Still, the man’s particular brand of presence is never bland.

Sort of like a mash-up of GOODFELLAS and MARGIN CALL, KILLING THEM SOFTLY may be a bit too talky for its target audience. 

Because of its marketing, which highlights the stars, the stylishness and the one explosion, audiences are likely to think that it’s a different movie than it is - much like Anton Corbijn’s THE AMERICAN, which looked like a commercial George Clooney action flick, or Nicolas Winding Refn’s DRIVE, which looked like a commercial Ryan Gosling car chase thriller. Both turned out to be artsy cerebral takes on their genres, and while film buffs like me loved them, I knew many folks who were turned off.

This take on the gangster drama genre deserves an audience’s attention, even if the dry tone that Dominik creates, along with the immaculately shot framework (by cinematographer Grieg Fraser) surrounding some of the year’s most astonishing acting, ultimately makes more of an impression than any of the political points he’s attempting to make. 

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