The Irishman: A Crushing Disappointment

[David Andrews]

LOL 😋😂😃

Funniest comment since DVP left

I hope you're getting the jokes here, son. -- Foghorn Leghorn

Edited January 14, 2020 by David Andrews

[Ron Ecker]

12 hours ago, David Andrews said:

I disagree.  Al's head-toss reaction when Joe Pesci tells him that the Mob feels he's being ungrateful was his most Hoffa-like moment, and the most original acting move he's pulled in decades.  Well worth sitting through the whole performance for, and I think Academy members perceived it that way as well.  In contrast, Bening hardly moved her head at all, even though her Feinstein hairdo was lacquered in place.  Shows a lack of ambition unseemly in an older actress.

FWIW I remember Pacino saying that one of his best acting moments in any movie was his reaction to the discovery, right from the horse's mouth, that Fredo had betrayed him. (Then he gives Fredo the kiss of death.)

As for Bening, she's going to make a new movie titled Old Movie Stars Don't Die at the Academy Awards.

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

I always loved Pacino's reaction scene when he found out that Donnie Brasco was an informant and had betrayed him.

His shock and grief had to be deeper than what he showed for his own blood son dying.

Combined with the sick realization that he looked like a fool and knew his Mafia pals would be blaming him for bring in Donnie in the first place and marking him for death.

A complete crushing of his reality and spirit.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Ecker]

Any number of Pacino's reactions are great in Dog Day Afternoon.

 

 

[David Andrews]

4 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

FWIW I remember Pacino saying that one of his best acting moments in any movie was his reaction to the discovery, right from the horse's mouth, that Fredo had betrayed him. (Then he gives Fredo the kiss of death.)

 

 

 

 

Well, I was making a joke, but, yeah, that bit in Godfather II is pretty great, where Pacino first rubs his forehead like he's been hit with a sudden migrane, then buries his face in his hands in horror: business-as-usual with Fredo turns apocalyptic.  It's especially effective because it's behind Fredo's back, just like the gun that will later kill him.

In a crap movie like Godfather III, Pacino's Edvard Munch-like silent scream at the end is also one of the best things.

Edited January 14, 2020 by David Andrews

[Ron Ecker]

2 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

In a crap movie like Godfather III, Pacino's Edvard Munch-like silent scream at the end is also one of the best things.

I may have missed it. I think I screamed and left before the movie was over.

 

[Ron Ecker]

Perhaps my favorite Pacino reaction is when he first sees Michelle Pfeiffer in "Scarface." I had the same reaction.

 

 

[David Andrews]

Pacino's late renaissance was roughly 1995 to 2002, when his acting style was as top-notch as his defiant hairstyle and his dark-on-dark wardrobe.  It's too bad that not all the films were of the quality of Heat and Glengarry Glen Ross.  In Insomnia, he was so into the title condition that I chucked "suspension of disbelief" out the window, worrying he was going to have a heart attack soon.  His last best role was Roy Cohn in Angels in America (2003, HBO), including this scene in which Cohn's doctor - James Cromwell, holding up his end admirably - tells him he has AIDS. It's one of the greatest moments in television, and a marker of how far television had come since Pacino's youth.

Rough language below:

I saw Roy Cohn for a couple of minutes in the early 1980s, gladhanding an adoring crowd before making a graduation address at NYU, and I'll say it's no slur for him to be played by Pacino.  The slurs came, also in crowds, when Cohn was disbarred.  Pacino should have brought some of this ruthless edge to his Hoffa, who comes off a little hangdog on screen, and in the script as well.  Scorsese ought to have called Tony Kushner in for a screenplay polish.

The Steve Zaillian script for Irishman soft-pedals Hoffa's hatred for the Kennedys, which might have emerged in scenes like Kushner's below while keeping moments sympathetic to Hoffa in his out-of-the-office scenes with De Niro and his screen family.  Scorsese's audience isn't so simple minded that it couldn't reconcile the two sides of Hoffa. 

More rough language:

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by David Andrews

[Ron Ecker]

I'm old enough to remember watching Roy Cohn whisper in Joe McCarthy's ear in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and heard Army attorney Robert Welch famously ask McCarthy, ""At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Those theatrics landed Welch the role of the judge in "Anatomy of a Murder." But he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor? Come on. Did they have no sense of decency?

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

You are that old Ron?🙁

Geez, I thought I was a geezer.

 

PS  An underrated film is CItizen Cohn.

Edited January 15, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Ecker]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

You are that old Ron?🙁

Geez, I thought I was a geezer.

 

Jim,

I'm sort of in a second childhood. When I was too young to drink, I would lie about my age. Now I'm so old I'm lying about my age again, especially when I drink.

 

 

[David Andrews]

Roger Stone and his big, planar, polyhedral head on Roy Cohn and Trump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTfOVmukqYA

[James DiEugenio]

One of RFK's best moments was when he almost got in a fistfight with Cohn.

 

[Ron Ecker]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

Roger Stone and his big, planar, polyhedral head

I've often wondered how to describe Roger Stone's head. You've sent me to the dictionary.

 

 

[David Andrews]

17 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

I've often wondered how to describe Roger Stone's head. You've sent me to the dictionary.

 

 

Just look at that damn head.  He looks like the Incas bound it to flat boards as a baby.