Movie/film suggestions.

Free HBO this week, so I killed two birds with one stone:  first bird was I watched Alto Knights (2025), and the second bird was I didn’t have to rent it.  The film portrays a version of the feud between Vito Genovese and Frank Costello and concludes with a version of the Apalachin meeting of 1957.  Robert Deniro played the roles of Genovese AND Costello.  I am not crazy about that kind of technique, but I guess he pulled it off.   

The Wizard Of Lies (2017), starring Robert DeNiro as Bernie Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife (Ruth) was quite well done and rather fascinating.  I cannot imagine living in a world where people treat a million dollars more casually than I treat one hundred.  

And I made a passing reference to Phil Spector (2013) before in this thread, but I’ll mention it again because HBO is featuring it, and comcast has seen fit to give me free HBO this week.  Al Pacino played the starring role of Phil Spector, and as an Al Pacino fan, this was one of my favorite performances by him (Donnie Brasco and Scent Of A Woman are way up there on my list as well).  The movie focuses on Spector’s defense in the first trial which ended in a hung jury, and presents an alternative theory to that of Spector sticking the barrel of a .38 special in Lana Clarkson’s mouth and pulling the trigger. 

Helen Mirren played his lead attorney who started out quite skeptical but later became convinced of reasonable doubt.  Jeffrey Tambor was also cast as Bruce Cutler, the attorney who got Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) to represent Spector.  What I found interesting was that Rebecca Pidgeon was cast as Dr. Fallon who I believe (because I have not rewatched the movie yet) was a consultant for the defense.  I found that interesting because on Pidgeon’s Chesky produced CD, The Raven (1994), she performs a hauntingly beautiful cover of Spanish Harlem.

The Brutalist (2024) with Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce  was a long movie (over 200 minutes) and I had not intended on watching the entire movie in one sitting, but it was kind of like a book that keeps you turning pages and you don’t put down because you want to see what happens next and where it ultimately winds up going.  After it was over, I did think that maybe it was based on a true story, but a cursory google came up with AI saying "no."  However, it was an interesting movie that dealt with historical events.

And speaking of Adrien Brody, I always thought that Summer Of Sam (1999) was a fantastic movie with a good cast that included Brody, John Laguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Mike Starr, Ben Gazzara, Jimmy Breslin and Spike Lee who had an acting role and I believe he also directed the film.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve watched it, but it was one I wouldn’t have a problem watching again.  

I was looking for any other Adrien Brody movies that I thought might be interesting, and of course the star studded The Thin Red Line (1998) came up, but the one I thought was more thought provoking was Detachment (2011) with a cast that also included James Caan and Lucy Liu.  Brody plays an educator who makes a career of substitute teaching, and in this setting he is subbing at a low achieving high school  where most of the students don't have any desire to be there or to learn anything.  In this dark film with a secondary underlying dark layer (which was not a comedy although James Caan did elicit a snort of laughter from me two or three times) he tries to do the right thing and although he does see some results, there are also what seem to be two major backfires. It really appears as if there will be no redemption whatsoever at the end, and imo it would have been more impactful if there wasn't, but the ending offers a glimmer of something that the viewer can make up her or his own mind on how heart warming it actually is.