When small-town pushover Ray (John Magaro, Past Lives) finds himself caught up in a blackmail/murder-for-hire scheme, he teams up with high school-acquaintance/bumbling private investigator Skip (Steve Zahn) to get to the bottom of things.
This neo-noir crime-comedy is writer/director Shane Atkinson’s first feature (he wrote the screenplay for the 2019 Diane Keaton vehicle Poms). It feels like a streamlined take on the Big Lebowski—mistaken identity gets loser in over his head in a world full of morally ambiguous/dangerous characters. An overly-invested partner invites himself along and makes the situation worse. A somewhat complex mystery is unraveled. There are funny interactions with various weirdos.
Zahn (White Lotus) is a highlight. His cowboy-at-prom ensemble. His golden retriever vibe. His enthusiasm for detection. It’s all glorious.
Dylan Baker’s (Selma) Harry the Hitman is unsettling in the manner of that unassuming neighbor who keeps to himself but then gets caught doing something unspeakable, like using a stray cat as a fleshlight. He shifts from disarming charm to efficient malevolence like a finely-tuned racecar.
However, while LaRoy, Texas is funny, it’s missing the quirk of the Cohen brothers cult classic. The lead, Ray, lands as a too bland everyman—a boring sad-sack point of stability around which the plot turns. The dialogue could be snappier. The women could have more to do. And it definitely deserved a better soundtrack.
But if you are looking to program a night of neo-noir, you could totally play LaRoy, Texas as an opening act as long as you save the superstars like Fargo and the Big Lebowski for later in the evening.
Visual poet of the day-to-day Kelly Reichardt returns to screens this weekend with a look at art as well as craft in her dramedy, Showing Up.
Michelle Williams is Lizzy, a sculptor who’s not getting enough done for her upcoming show. It’s a small show in a small gallery not exactly downtown, but it’s a show and she’s got a lot of work left to do.
So does Jo (Hong Chau, one of three 2023 Oscar nominees in the cast!), Lizzy’s neighbor and landlord. In fact, Jo has two shows coming up, so who knows when she’ll be able to fix Lizzy’s water heater?
And just like that, Reichardt leaches the glamour from the art world, dropping us instead into a place far from glitzy but bewilderingly human.
Williams is characteristically amazing, her performance as much a piece of physical acting as verbal. You know Lizzy by looking at her, at the way she stands, the way she responds to requests for coffee or work, the way she reacts to compliments about her work, the way she sighs. Williams’s performance is as much in what she does not say as what she does, and the honesty in that performance generates most of the film’s comic moments.
Chau knocks it out of the park yet again, and like Williams, she presents the character of Jo as much in her physical action as in her dialog. The chemistry between the two is truly amazing, simultaneously combative and accepting, or maybe just resigned to each other.
Reichardt’s phenomenal cast does not stop there: Judd Hirsch (irascible and hilarious), John Magaro (sad with an undercurrent of potential danger), Andre Benjamin (chilling), Maryann Plunkett (frustrated) and Amanda Plummer (weird, naturally).
As is so often the case, the environment itself is its own character, every gorgeously mundane detail filmed in Reichardt’s go-to 16mm film. She and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt once again find the grace and beauty in the spots everyone else ignores.
Like Nicole Holofcener and Claire Denis, Reichardt invests her attention in the small moments rather than delivering a tidy, obvious structure. The result feels messy, like life, with lengths of anxiety and unease punctuated by small triumphs.
Murmurs, complaints, and whispers come in and out of focus as a camera meanders through an empty cemetery at midday: we hear souls telling the stories of their lives. We stop over the resting place of Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli). He has a tale to tell.
It’s a beautiful opening, spooky but with a bitter, familiar humor about it. With it, director Alan Taylor sets the mood for a period piece that lays the groundwork for one of the best shows ever to grace the small screen. The Many Saints of Newark brings Christmas early for Sopranos fans, but this is not exactly the story of Tony Soprano. In uncovering the making of the future, Taylor and writer Lawrence Konner invite us into the life of Uncle Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola).
Nivola makes for an ideal choice to play the beloved “uncle.” The always reliable actor depicts the film’s central figure as the struggling, complicated result of his circumstances – an excellent theme given the film’s long game to uncover the forces that forged a future boss. In many ways, Uncle Dickie’s weaknesses, indulgences, strengths and goals create a mirror image of the Tony Soprano we would come to know over eight years and six seasons.
Longtime fans will have a bada bing blast recognizing familiar characters in their youth. Vera Farmiga is characteristically excellent as Tony’s formidable mother. John Magaro is a spot-on and hilarious Silvio, matched quirk for quirk by Billy Magnussen as Paulie Walnuts. Corey Stoll brings a younger but no less awkward Uncle Junior to life beautifully.
Of course, the one you wait for is young Tony, played with lumbering, melancholic sweetness by James Gandolfini’s son Michael. The resemblance alone gives the character a heartbreaking quality that feeds the mythology, but young Gandolfini serves Tony well with a vulnerable, believable performance that only expands on our deep investment in this character.
But the film is really more interested in those we never got to know: Tony’s father Johnny Boy Soprano (Jon Bernthal), Dickie’s father Aldo and uncle Sal Moltisanti (Ray Liotta, in two exceptional and very different roles), and stepmother Guiseppina Moltisanti (Michela De Rossi).
De Rossi and Leslie Odom Jr. (who plays colleague-turned-competitor Harold McBrayer) offer some of the most intriguing complexity and context in the entire film. The first half pokes holes in the “woe is me” backstory of the entitled white male Mafioso figure by spending some time with two characters who actually did have a tough go making a life for themselves in this community.
Taylor (Thor: the Dark World, Terminator Genisys, GoT) helmed nine Sopranos episodes, winning an Emmy for one, while Konner penned three solid episodes of his own, although his decades of work for the big screen has been mediocre at best.
But here the filmmakers combine for extended family drama that, despite one major plot turn landing as entirely illogical, weaves themes old and new in a ride that is often operatic and downright Shakespearean.
If the Sopranos family feels like family, turning back the clock on these indelible characters is just as giddy and delightful as it sounds. But The Many Saints of Newark impresses most by the balance it finds between fan service and fresh character arcs.
It’s an often cruel and bloody tale of wanton crime, treacherous deceit, family dysfunction and cold-blooded murder. And it just might be the most fun you’ll have at the movies all year.
You might not be familiar with the name Meyer Lansky, but chances are you’re familiar with some of his known associates: Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Writer/director Etyan Rockaway decided the time was right to focus on one of the Mafia’s most infamous but un-famous gangsters.
There are quite a few gangster movies, both good (Goodfellas, The Godfather) and bad (Gotti, The Family). Lansky falls somewhere in the center. Never overly imaginative, Rockaway plays it safe with a middling film about a narcissistic mob figure who wants to control the narrative. To do this, an aging Lansky (Harvey Keitel) hires a broke writer, David Stone (Sam Worthington), to pen his tale.
Told in flashbacks within a 1980s framing story, Lansky
regales Stone with stories from his childhood, learning to hustle on the
streets of – where else? – New York City. However, as Lansky enters adulthood,
the tales become violent.
Portraying the Lansky of the past is John Magaro, who makes the character his own while still embracing the inflections and mannerisms of Keitel’s older wise guy. Magaro brings a sinister element, while Keitel embraces the role of a man mellowed by age. It’s a dynamic casting job, and the film’s standout element.
Rockaway’s script glosses over much of Lansky’s past, with large jumps in time, allowing the film to devote equal time to the framing story. Here is where the film tries to carve some new ground. Stone’s story is, in some ways, the more interesting of the two. There’s a moral line Stone must cross to listen to the brutalities in Lansky’s past – especially as he’s bound to secrecy until Lansky has died.
Unfortunately, rather than centering the focus on the ambiguous morality of Stone’s situation, Rockaway’s film instead tries to convince you Lansky is an ‘angel with a dirty face.’
It’s not unheard of to root for the bad guy – Scarface is one of the ultimate examples of this in the genre – but Lansky is not a fictional character. His history is bloody, and his few good deeds hardly outweigh the bad. It’s an odd choice when the true moral crux lies with Stone.
Lansky runs itself ragged trying to cover as many bases as possible, and we’re left with a messy film about one of the most notorious men in Mafia history.
Kelly Reichardt films tell a story, but not in the
traditional Hollywood sense. She draws you into an alien environment, unveils universal
humanity and shows you something about yourself, about us. There’s usually a story
buried in there somewhere. In this case, it’s about two outsiders in 19th
Century Oregon who find friendship.
And a cow.
Cookie (John Magaro) is a gentle soul, not properly built
for the fur trade. (You saw The
Revenant, right?) He’s a baker at heart, not that he gets to do much
baking on a trapping expedition with hungry, volatile, hunt-weary men.
He holds no value for these men, and has nothing in common with them. But somehow he sees a kinship with the naked Chinese man he stumbles upon as he forages for mushrooms in the woods.
It’s sweet and sad the way Cookie and King-Lu (Orion Lee)
fall into a relationship. King-Lu has ambitions. He opens Cookie’s eyes to
opportunities he’d never had the courage to consider. Through these characters
Reichardt demonstrates how fragile, lovely and heartbreaking hope can be.
Working again with regular collaborator Jonathan Raymond,
whose novel the two adapted, Reichardt keeps you pulling for her heroes. The
narrative lulls you with understated conversations and observations while the meticulously
captured natural beauty onscreen beguiles. Within that, we see the potential of
a young country through the eyes of Americans determining the dream.
Reichardt explores loneliness in all her films, the sense
that we are each simply and inevitably alone, though we struggle against it
regardless. This exploration isn’t hurried. It breathes. She emphasizes the longing
for connection in every quiet moment with her characteristic use of lighting,
the way she frames nature and the naturalistic performances she draws from Lee
and Magaro.
William Tyler’s lonesome score offers something both
mournful and tender, which is fitting. Although these men’s very existence in
this place testifies to hardy ambition, Reichardt lingers on moments of gentle
camaraderie.
When Kelly Reichardt tells a story, she breaks your heart. She does it slowly and quietly, but it’s broken nonetheless.
