Robert Pattinson will be answering your questions as you ask them. He is currently in-between costumes at the Warner Bros lot! Ask anything you like!
Victoria will not be helping him, as he was uncooperative. He will be typing himself on a Macbook M5 Pro.
The Batman: Part II is in theatres OCTOBER 2027.
Hullo, everybody. To celebrate the IMAX 70mm release of my long-awaited THE ODYSSEY IMAX 70mm adaptation starring Matt Damon and featuring the rest of worthwhile humanity known to man, I have been asked to conduct an AMA (ask me anything).
THE ODYSSEY IMAX 70mm is out in IMAX 70mm cinemas and theatres worldwide on July 17th. Ransack your pockets, homes, family, and friends for the £$€¥¢ to watch it on IMAX 70mm film.
Ask me anything (AMA) in the meantime.
Did I mention IMAX 70mm film?
Of course, not every film is centered on Batman, but all of them feature him in some capacity. A few parts of my criteria were the influence of the films, their ambition, and personal biases, as ever. I was born in the 21st century which explains why 'Batman Begins' holds a high place. In fact, part of me wants to move it to #2 as a true 'Batman' film. '89 is interchangeable with Reeves's film. I suppose the fantastical elements (something sorely missing from live-action Batman) give it an edge. TDKR was the first one I saw in the cinema—there's definitely a bias there. 'The Mask of the Phantasm' is unequivocally THE Batman film. I still need to track down the Batman/Scooby team-up from the 70s.
For anybody interested in the list, here is a link to it on Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/St1bE
Today is the last of my 35 days to spend £200 for the Lloyd's Premier offer of £500. I made a debit payment yesterday that is pending—will this count? Even if it doesn't go through for a few days? Thank you.
Here are some links to his suits: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8b/4c/18/8b4c184f67db1ab3e6f651643d2d3119.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c1/9d/f0/c19df00c5647b3cfa70574fa84b32e9f.jpg
Unbuttoned: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6c/ce/e4/6ccee4ce12cc1d66169e634a09fa90fd.jpg
I've read that they are spread collars but I have no idea. Does anybody know, for example, what kind of Charles Tyrwhitt shirt collar would match this?
Hi, I would really appreciate some opinions on the writing style of a film review I wrote. Here is a link to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/s/pz6tfuwiL7
Critiques of any sort would be great.
Thank you very much.
'How am I driving? 1-800-I'm-gonna-fuckin'-die!'
'Hudson Hawk' is berserk. Madcap. A visual synonym for 'rambunctious'. It does not even try to be connected to reality at any point. It is often described as a live-action cartoon, and that is as close as you are going to get for descriptors. For god knows what reason, Sony unveiled an associated video game not long after the film bombed at the box office. That did not go well, of course. I genuinely cannot understand how they greenlit a video game for this—I cannot even understand why they agreed to spend $65 million big ones on the movie itself. But, boy oh boy, am I glad they did.
Bruce Willis clearly has a demented sense of humour; he received his sole writing credit on this production. Every zany line he throws out is like watching him subsume Brad Pitt's character from '12 Monkeys', which Willis starred in. The main problem with that notion is that 'Hudson Hawk' was released four years prior to that film. I started to wonder whether Willis was just taking the mickey as he went along with it all, because not only did he and the producers initially promote Hawk's escapades as a 'Die Hard-esque action blockbuster', but every line said in the movie is ironic on some level. It is quite the achievement when you have serious money to recoup. After watching it, I was fantasising about how the inclusion of famously unhinged actor Nicolas Cage would cut like butter for a romp like this.
Willis's Hawk, a cat burglar released after a decade of imprisonment, is joined by his long-term crime partner, Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Willis's unmoored performance is without a doubt enjoyable to watch; he is hilarious with line delivery, his natural face carries an ideal, permanent split of half-confused/half-reckless, and he is having fun. Aiello, however, is once again the ballast in a production. His screen time is somewhat limited in the middle, but his presence is always yearned for; he has all of the comic qualities of a fun sidekick and partner in some proportion: faithful (in the end), capable (to a degree), and present (when you need him). I have a real affinity for Danny Aiello. The pairing uses millisecond-perfect songs to time their burglaries, so there exists a whole host of Aiello/Willis karaoke recordings inserted into the multiple scenes of theft. That musical element is the cherry on top of the story's jam-packed cake of chaos.
The film begins with a ludicrous, almost self-serious spoof of Leonardo da Vinci at work, somehow converting lead to gold via a very literal version of 'deus ex machina'. This soon transitions into modern day, with Hawk prison sentence coming to an end. Something you will notice as running gags in the film are the inexplicable transitions from one scene to another. It happened a few times and had me rewinding with bewilderment. The central motif is the impossibility for Hawk to find some quiet and an unspoiled cup of cappuccino. It is in the not-so-lofty dreams and desires of Hawk, like that cappuccino, that the film finds its heart amidst a background of noise.
The remainder of the cast is occupied by names: you have Richard E. Grant stealing scenes with, going back to the adjective, cartoonish villainy and even bigger acting. He plays one half of the villainous couple in the film, the British Darwin Mayflower; 'Darwin' is no doubt a misnomer, for the character is an aristocratic knave who serves up endlessly quotable lines such as 'Tommy, you New-York-Italian-father-made-twenty-bucks-a-week son-of-a-bitch' and 'I'll kill your friends, your family, and the bitch you took to the prom!'
His other half, Minerva, portrayed by Sandra Bernhard, is just as misnamed. Minerva has the foremost line of dialogue, 'Bunny, Ball Ball!'. That is one of the more barmy dog commands I have heard and ends up being the downfall of the dog. The couple heads Mayflower Industries and seeks to… Run the world, of course. And metamorphose lead to gold, like da Vinci 'did'. Bernhard, like Grant, turns in a supremely BIG performance, and that, at least, is worth its weight in gold by the end.
James Coburn plays CIA figurehead George Kaplan, who is in league with the Mayflower two and seeks the same spoils as them. Kaplan brings with him a selection of chocolate. Well, his agents are all codenamed after chocolates. All of the chocolates are personalised with riveting quirks and behave so that complete suspension of disbelief, above-and-beyond the already mentioned, is required. The Mario Brothers of New Jersey (a nod to Nintendo and also built-in video game promotion) are played by Frank Stallone and Carmine Zozzoro. The casting of Frank is subversion in and of itself. Hawk is forced by the Mario brothers to burgle a museum for da Vinci's model Sforza horse, and then later he is transported to Rome by force to continue thieving for them until the syndicate compiles the components for their lead-to-gold machine.
Andie MacDowell's Anna Bargali, a sort of hesitant nun at the Vatican, is the heroine and Hawk's love interest. MacDowell plays her with a constant sense of conflict and craftiness. The romance between Hawk and Bargali is fundamentally unbelievable, but we are made to root for them as the escapades progress, and they do work as a pairing. The trio they end up forming with Tommy included is as endearing as any two-criminals-and-a-nun triumvirate. MacDowell's drug-addled dolphin sounds, 'I must speak with the dolphins now…' Eeeee-eeee-eeee-eeeeee!' is quite the sound for sore ears.
The 1990s was a decade replete with cinematic masterworks. 'Hudson Hawk'… Is probably not one of them. But it is necessary levity, a concoction of acid-trip proportions. I enjoyed watching this far more than I thought I would, from the Hawk/Tommy loft apartment hideout in New Jersey to their first on-screen burglary to the anarchy that permeates every second they spend in Rome, scored by a coterie of miscreants. This film has achieved cult-classic status, I think, and if it has not, then I will do my part to ensure it does. Sometimes the unserious deserve to be taken more seriously. How many other films feature a car chase where the main character somehow drives a gurney?
'How am I driving? 1-800-I'm-gonna-fuckin'-die!'
'Hudson Hawk' is berserk. Madcap. A visual synonym for 'rambunctious'. It does not even try to be connected to reality at any point. It is often described as a live-action cartoon, and that is as close as you are going to get for descriptors. For god knows what reason, Sony unveiled an associated video game not long after the film bombed at the box office. That did not go well, of course. I genuinely cannot understand how they greenlit a video game for this—I cannot even understand why they agreed to spend $65 million big ones on the movie itself. But, boy oh boy, am I glad they did.
Bruce Willis clearly has a demented sense of humour; he received his sole writing credit on this production. Every zany line he throws out is like watching him subsume Brad Pitt's character from '12 Monkeys', which Willis starred in. The main problem with that notion is that 'Hudson Hawk' was released four years prior to that film. I started to wonder whether Willis was just taking the mickey as he went along with it all, because not only did he and the producers initially promote Hawk's escapades as a 'Die Hard-esque action blockbuster', but every line said in the movie is ironic on some level. It is quite the achievement when you have serious money to recoup. After watching it, I was fantasising about how the inclusion of famously unhinged actor Nicolas Cage would cut like butter for a romp like this.
Willis's Hawk, a cat burglar released from a decade of imprisonment, is joined by his long-term crime partner, Tommy Five-Tone, who is played by Danny Aiello. Willis's unmoored performance is without a doubt enjoyable to watch; he is hilarious with line delivery, his natural face carries an ideal, permanent split of half-confused/half-reckless, and he is having fun. Aiello, however, is once again the ballast in a production. His screen time is somewhat limited in the middle, but his presence is always yearned for; he has all of the comic qualities of a fun sidekick and partner in some proportion: faithful (in the end), capable (to a degree), and present (when you need him). I have a real affinity for Danny Aiello. The pairing uses millisecond-perfect songs to time their burglaries, so there exists a whole host of Aiello/Willis karaoke recordings inserted into the multiple scenes of theft. That musical element is the cherry on top of the story's jam-packed cake of chaos.
The film also begins with a ludicrous, almost self-serious spoof of Leonardo da Vinci at work, somehow converting lead to gold via a very literal version of 'deus ex machina'. This soon transitions into modern day, with Hawk prison sentence coming to an end. One thing you will notice as a running gag in the film are the inexplicable transitions from one scene to another. It happened a few times and had me rewinding. Another motif is the impossibility for Hawk to find some quiet and an unspoiled cup of cappuccino. It is in the not-so-lofty dreams and desires of Hawk, like that cappuccino, that the film finds its heart amidst a background of noise.
The remainder of the cast is occupied by names: you have Richard E. Grant stealing scenes with, going back to the adjective, cartoon villainy and even bigger acting. He plays one half of the villainous couple in the film, the British Darwin Mayflower; 'Darwin' is no doubt a misnomer, for the character is an avaricious, inane, aristocratic knave who serves up endlessly quotable lines such as 'Tommy, you New-York-Italian-father-made-twenty-bucks-a-week son-of-a-bitch' and 'I'll kill your friends, your family, and the bitch you took to the prom!'
His other half, Minerva, portrayed by Sandra Bernhard, is just as misnamed. Minerva has the foremost line of dialogue, 'Bunny, Ball Ball!'. That is one of the more barmy dog commands I have heard and ends up being the downfall of the dog. The couple heads Mayflower Industries and seeks to… Run the world, of course. And metamorphose lead to gold, like da Vinci 'did'. Bernhard, like Grant, turns in a supremely BIG performance, and that, at least, is worth its weight in gold by the end.
Another important villain is James Coburn, who plays CIA figurehead George Kaplan. Kaplan is in league with the Mayflower two and seeks the same as them. Kaplan brings with him a selection of chocolate. Well, his agents are all codenamed after chocolates. All of the chocolates are personalised with riveting quirks and behave so that complete suspension of disbelief, above-and-beyond the already mentioned, is required. The Mario Brothers of New Jersey (a nod to Nintendo and also built-in video game promotion) are played by Frank Stallone and Carmine Zozzoro. The casting of Frank is subversion in and of itself. Hawk is forced by the Mario brothers to burgle a museum for da Vinci's model Sforza horse, and then later he is transported to Rome by force to continue thieving for them until the syndicate compiles the components for their lead-to-gold machine.
Andie MacDowell's Anna Bargali, a sort of hesitant nun at the Vatican, is the heroine and Hawk's love interest. MacDowell plays her with a constant sense of conflict and craftiness. The romance between Hawk and Bargali is fundamentally unbelievable, but we are made to root for them as the escapades progress, and they do work as a pairing. The trio they end up forming with Tommy included is as endearing as any two-criminals-and-a-nun triumvirate. MacDowell's drug-addled dolphin sounds, 'I must speak with the dolphins now…' Eeeee-eeee-eeee-eeeeee!' is quite the sound for sore ears.
The 1990s was a decade replete with cinematic masterworks. 'Hudson Hawk'… Is probably not one of them. But it is necessary levity, a concoction of acid-trip proportions. I enjoyed watching this far more than I thought I would, from the Hawk/Tommy loft apartment hideout in New Jersey to their first on-screen burglary to the anarchy that permeates every second they spend in Rome, scored by a coterie of miscreants. This film has achieved cult-classic status, I think, and if it has not, then I will do my part to ensure it does. Sometimes the unserious deserve to be taken more seriously. How many other films feature a car chase where the main character somehow drives a gurney?
'How am I driving? 1-800-I'm-gonna-fuckin'-die!'
'Hudson Hawk' is berserk. Madcap. A visual synonym for 'rambunctious'. It does not even attempt to be connected to reality at any point. It is often described as a live-action cartoon, and that is as close as you are going to get for descriptors. For god knows what reason, Sony unveiled an associated video game not long after the film bombed at the box office. That did not go well, of course. I genuinely cannot understand how they greenlit a video game for this—I cannot even understand why they agreed to spend $65 million big ones on the movie itself. But, boy oh boy, am I glad they did.
Bruce Willis clearly has a demented sense of humour; he received his sole writing credit on this production. Every zany line he throws out is like watching him subsume Brad Pitt's character from '12 Monkeys', which Willis starred in. The main problem with that notion is that 'Hudson Hawk' was released four years prior to that film. I started to wonder whether Willis was just taking the mickey as he went along with it all, because not only did he and the producers initially promote Hawk's escapades as a 'Die Hard-esque action blockbuster', but every line said in the movie is ironic on some level. It is quite the achievement when you have serious money to recoup. After watching it, I was fantasising about how the inclusion of famously unhinged actor Nicolas Cage would cut like butter for a romp like this.
Willis's Hawk, a cat burglar released after a decade of imprisonment, is joined by his long-term crime partner, Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Willis's unmoored performance is without a doubt enjoyable to watch; he is hilarious with line delivery, his natural face carries an ideal, permanent split of half-confused/half-reckless, and he is having fun. Aiello, however, is once again the ballast in a production. His screen time is somewhat limited in the middle, but his presence is always yearned for; he has all of the comic qualities of a fun sidekick and partner in some proportion: faithful (in the end), capable (to a degree), and present (when you need him). I have a real affinity for Danny Aiello. The pairing uses millisecond-perfect songs to time their burglaries, so there exists a whole host of Aiello/Willis karaoke recordings inserted into the multiple scenes of theft. That musical element is the cherry on top of the story's jam-packed cake of chaos.
The film begins with a ludicrous, almost self-serious spoof of Leonardo da Vinci at work, somehow converting lead to gold via a very literal version of 'deus ex machina'. This soon transitions into modern day, with Hawk prison sentence coming to an end. Something you will notice as running gags in the film are the inexplicable transitions from one scene to another. It happened a few times and had me rewinding with bewilderment. The central motif is the impossibility for Hawk to find some quiet and an unspoiled cup of cappuccino. It is in the not-so-lofty dreams and desires of Hawk, like that cappuccino, that the film finds its heart amidst a background of noise.
The remainder of the cast is occupied by names: you have Richard E. Grant stealing scenes with, going back to the adjective, cartoonish villainy and even bigger acting. He plays one half of the villainous couple in the film, the British Darwin Mayflower; 'Darwin' is no doubt a misnomer, for the character is an aristocratic knave who serves up endlessly quotable lines such as 'Tommy, you New-York-Italian-father-made-twenty-bucks-a-week son-of-a-bitch' and 'I'll kill your friends, your family, and the bitch you took to the prom!'
His other half, Minerva, portrayed by Sandra Bernhard, is just as misnamed. Minerva has the foremost line of dialogue, 'Bunny, Ball Ball!'. That is one of the more barmy dog commands I have heard and ends up being the downfall of the dog. The couple heads Mayflower Industries and seeks to… Run the world, of course. And metamorphose lead to gold, like da Vinci 'did'. Bernhard, like Grant, turns in a supremely BIG performance, and that, at least, is worth its weight in gold by the end.
James Coburn plays CIA figurehead George Kaplan, who is in league with the Mayflower two and seeks the same spoils as them. Kaplan brings with him a selection of chocolate. Well, his agents are all codenamed after chocolates. All of the chocolates are personalised with riveting quirks and behave so that complete suspension of disbelief, above-and-beyond the already mentioned, is required. The Mario Brothers of New Jersey (a nod to Nintendo and also built-in video game promotion) are played by Frank Stallone and Carmine Zozzoro. The casting of Frank is subversion in and of itself. Hawk is forced by the Mario brothers to burgle a museum for da Vinci's model Sforza horse, and then later he is transported to Rome by force to continue thieving for them until the syndicate compiles the components for their lead-to-gold machine.
Andie MacDowell's Anna Bargali, a sort of hesitant nun at the Vatican, is the heroine and Hawk's love interest. MacDowell plays her with a constant sense of conflict and craftiness. The romance between Hawk and Bargali is fundamentally unbelievable, but we are made to root for them as the escapades progress, and they do work as a pairing. The trio they end up forming with Tommy included is as endearing as any two-criminals-and-a-nun triumvirate. MacDowell's drug-addled dolphin sounds, 'I must speak with the dolphins now…' Eeeee-eeee-eeee-eeeeee!' is quite the sound for sore ears.
The 1990s was a decade replete with cinematic masterworks. 'Hudson Hawk'… Is probably not one of them. But it is necessary levity, a concoction of acid-trip proportions. I enjoyed watching this far more than I thought I would, from the Hawk/Tommy loft apartment hideout in New Jersey to their first on-screen burglary to the anarchy that permeates every second they spend in Rome, scored by a coterie of miscreants. This film has achieved cult-classic status, I think, and if it has not, then I will do my part to ensure it does. Sometimes the unserious deserve to be taken more seriously. How many other films feature a car chase where the main character somehow drives a gurney?
'How am I driving? 1-800-I'm-gonna-fuckin'-die!'
'Hudson Hawk' is berserk. Madcap. A visual synonym for 'rambunctious'. It does not even attempt to be connected to reality at any point. It is often described as a live-action cartoon, and that is as close as you are going to get for descriptors. For god knows what reason, Sony unveiled an associated video game not long after the film bombed at the box office. That did not go well, of course. I genuinely cannot understand how they greenlit a video game for this—I cannot even understand why they agreed to spend $65 million big ones on the movie itself. But, boy oh boy, am I glad they did.
Bruce Willis clearly has a demented sense of humour; he received his sole writing credit on this production. Every zany line he throws out is like watching him subsume Brad Pitt's character from '12 Monkeys', which Willis starred in. The main problem with that notion is that 'Hudson Hawk' was released four years prior to that film. I started to wonder whether Willis was just taking the mickey as he went along with it all, because not only did he and the producers initially promote Hawk's escapades as a 'Die Hard-esque action blockbuster', but every line said in the movie is ironic on some level. It is quite the achievement when you have serious money to recoup. After watching it, I was fantasising about how the inclusion of famously unhinged actor Nicolas Cage would cut like butter for a romp like this.
Willis's Hawk, a cat burglar released after a decade of imprisonment, is joined by his long-term crime partner, Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Willis's unmoored performance is without a doubt enjoyable to watch; he is hilarious with line delivery, his natural face carries an ideal, permanent split of half-confused/half-reckless, and he is having fun. Aiello, however, is once again the ballast in a production. His screen time is somewhat limited in the middle, but his presence is always yearned for; he has all of the comic qualities of a fun sidekick and partner in some proportion: faithful (in the end), capable (to a degree), and present (when you need him). I have a real affinity for Danny Aiello. The pairing uses millisecond-perfect songs to time their burglaries, so there exists a whole host of Aiello/Willis karaoke recordings inserted into the multiple scenes of theft. That musical element is the cherry on top of the story's jam-packed cake of chaos.
The film begins with a ludicrous, almost self-serious spoof of Leonardo da Vinci at work, somehow converting lead to gold via a very literal version of 'deus ex machina'. This soon transitions into modern day, with Hawk prison sentence coming to an end. Something you will notice as running gags in the film are the inexplicable transitions from one scene to another. It happened a few times and had me rewinding with bewilderment. The central motif is the impossibility for Hawk to find some quiet and an unspoiled cup of cappuccino. It is in the not-so-lofty dreams and desires of Hawk, like that cappuccino, that the film finds its heart amidst a background of noise.
The remainder of the cast is occupied by names: you have Richard E. Grant stealing scenes with, going back to the adjective, cartoonish villainy and even bigger acting. He plays one half of the villainous couple in the film, the British Darwin Mayflower; 'Darwin' is no doubt a misnomer, for the character is an aristocratic knave who serves up endlessly quotable lines such as 'Tommy, you New-York-Italian-father-made-twenty-bucks-a-week son-of-a-bitch' and 'I'll kill your friends, your family, and the bitch you took to the prom!'
His other half, Minerva, portrayed by Sandra Bernhard, is just as misnamed. Minerva has the foremost line of dialogue, 'Bunny, Ball Ball!'. That is one of the more barmy dog commands I have heard and ends up being the downfall of the dog. The couple heads Mayflower Industries and seeks to… Run the world, of course. And metamorphose lead to gold, like da Vinci 'did'. Bernhard, like Grant, turns in a supremely BIG performance, and that, at least, is worth its weight in gold by the end.
James Coburn plays CIA figurehead George Kaplan, who is in league with the Mayflower two and seeks the same spoils as them. Kaplan brings with him a selection of chocolate. Well, his agents are all codenamed after chocolates. All of the chocolates are personalised with riveting quirks and behave so that complete suspension of disbelief, above-and-beyond the already mentioned, is required. The Mario Brothers of New Jersey (a nod to Nintendo and also built-in video game promotion) are played by Frank Stallone and Carmine Zozzoro. The casting of Frank is subversion in and of itself. Hawk is forced by the Mario brothers to burgle a museum for da Vinci's model Sforza horse, and then later he is transported to Rome by force to continue thieving for them until the syndicate compiles the components for their lead-to-gold machine.
Andie MacDowell's Anna Bargali, a sort of hesitant nun at the Vatican, is the heroine and Hawk's love interest. MacDowell plays her with a constant sense of conflict and craftiness. The romance between Hawk and Bargali is fundamentally unbelievable, but we are made to root for them as the escapades progress, and they do work as a pairing. The trio they end up forming with Tommy included is as endearing as any two-criminals-and-a-nun triumvirate. MacDowell's drug-addled dolphin sounds, 'I must speak with the dolphins now…' Eeeee-eeee-eeee-eeeeee!' is quite the sound for sore ears.
The 1990s was a decade replete with cinematic masterworks. 'Hudson Hawk'… Is probably not one of them. But it is necessary levity, a concoction of acid-trip proportions. I enjoyed watching this far more than I thought I would, from the Hawk/Tommy loft apartment hideout in New Jersey to their first on-screen burglary to the anarchy that permeates every second they spend in Rome, scored by a coterie of miscreants. This film has achieved cult-classic status, I think, and if it has not, then I will do my part to ensure it does. Sometimes the unserious deserve to be taken more seriously. How many other films feature a car chase where the main character somehow drives a gurney?
'Revenge is a dish best served cold.'
'Dinner Rush' is one of those films which, if you catch it at the right time, will stay with you for a long time. It may not become a major favourite; it may not even crack the longlist if you have watched a reasonable number of films, but it will stick around for good and remind you of the mellow day you saw it. It is a landmark movie that invites you to sit in its trattoria setting alongside the patrons and remember the evening. What is there to not say about a story as atmospheric as this? It is a 'hangout' film—one that washes over you without asking too much in return.
The mainstay of the film is far and away the incredible mystique of Danny Aiello; he is one of those character actors who, to put it succinctly, make you forget many of those vacant 'lead' actors ever existed. Aiello is so charming on-screen; I found myself lauding both his acting, which is lived-in and does not require grotesquely overperformed scenes to be showcased, and his ability to inspire trust. It is the latter quality I felt more than anything; Aiello is an actor who tempts the viewer to give over to him, to gift the benefit of the doubt in his presence. I stress this Aielloian phenomenon because it is actually a self-serving act for the viewer; performances of characters of this breed are that indulgent, the viewer must allow these often shady types some room to behave on the erring side as a trade-off for enjoyment.
Aiello's performance as Louis Cropa, a restaurateur in New York City, is just wonderfully fine-tuned. Cropa sits in his cosy dining corner calling the shots, offering up malapropisms, and waiting for his sausage-and-pepper dish cooked by a man other than his son. Udo (Edoardo Ballerini), the son, has injected the restaurant with a certain degree of fashionable buzz on account of his innovative, 'nouveau' dishes. Well, Cropa prefers the old faithful Italian dishes, the kind his late wife would cook, so the aforementioned sous chef, gambling addict Duncan (Kirk Acevedo), sorts him out with those… To Udo's perfunctory displeasure.
The cast beyond Aiello is very rich, indeed. It is a complete rogue's gallery of New Yorkers. Mobs, snobs, and massive gobs bashing between scenes like revolving doors. You have the magnificent Mark Margolis as a stuffy and blunt art critic; Margolis has an excellent voice and immaculate enunciation, and he uses it to the extreme with his screen time. He is the polar opposite of his 'Breaking Bad' character. John Corbett plays an enigmatic barstool hugger; he's there all night and he performs it tastefully. Jamie Harris electrifies with his English bartender character, a man of encyclopaedic trivia knowledge, which is put to the test for cash by drinkers. All of the waiters, including Summer Phoenix's role, are given a surprising amount of characterisation for a ninety-nine-minute runtime.
Lastly, we have the main menaces to Cropa's establishment at large, the mob pair 'Black and Blue' (Mike McGlone and Alex Corrado). They are the ungraceful brothers-in-law who, between mouthfuls of food, spend their time attempting to strong-arm Cropa out of his majority restaurant ownership. They want the restaurant alongside the already surrendered bookkeeping side operation he ran with his partner, who was murdered within minutes of the beginning by the brothers. On top of this, idiotic Duncan is critically indebted to them for five figures.
Those two circling like sharks, and the opening ten minutes, imbue the story with a great deal of the 'Italian mob' feeling we have come to associate with New York City; that feeling provides the direst stakes of the evening. On the night, Louis Cropa must contend with these boneheads amidst the growing demands of Udo, who also wants ownership as compensation for his revitalisation of the joint; there is the chaos of the kitchen, which is mostly caused by Duncan's inability to stop ragebetting on sports; and quotidian failings of the city—power cuts, in this case.
I was surprised by the soundtrack choices; they are a little at odds with the conventions this movie would typically follow. Those musical choices worked for me because of the variegation the film is suffused with: the differentiated characters, the interweaving narrative threads, and the fact it decides to subvert a lot of the expectations one has coming into it. The transitions from two characters making insignificant small talk at a bar to the pretentious drivel of Margolis's art critic to the very real violence bubbling within the kitchen and threatened by the mobsters from Queens are a worthwhile feat.
Bathed in a warm and disarming sepia tone, 'Dinner Rush' is sunset on a perfect Saturday evening. Bob Giraldi managed to direct a real culinary creation here, a microcosm of New York sensibilities, identities, and struggles. Inevitably, this film draws comparisons to Stanley Tucci's 'Big Night'. One thing is for certain—they make for a delicious double-feature.
'Revenge is a dish best served cold.'
'Dinner Rush' is one of those films which, if you catch it at the right time, will stay with you for a long time. It may not become a major favourite; it may not even crack the longlist if you have watched a reasonable number of films, but it will stick around for good and remind you of the mellow day you saw it. It is a landmark movie that invites you to sit in its trattoria setting alongside the patrons and remember the evening. What is there to not say about a story as atmospheric as this? It is a 'hangout' film—one that washes over you without asking too much in return.
The mainstay of the film is far and away the incredible mystique of Danny Aiello; he is one of those character actors who, to put it succinctly, make you forget many of those vacant 'lead' actors ever existed. Aiello is so charming on-screen; I found myself lauding both his acting, which is lived-in and does not require grotesquely overperformed scenes to be showcased, and his ability to inspire trust. It is the latter quality I felt more than anything; Aiello is an actor who tempts the viewer to give over to him, to gift the benefit of the doubt in his presence. I stress this Aielloian phenomenon because it is actually a self-serving act for the viewer; performances of characters of this breed are that indulgent, the viewer must allow these often shady types some room to behave on the erring side as a trade-off for enjoyment.
Aiello's performance as Louis Cropa, a restaurateur in New York City, is just wonderfully fine-tuned. Cropa sits in his cosy dining corner calling the shots, offering up malapropisms, and waiting for his sausage-and-pepper dish cooked by a man other than his son. Udo (Edoardo Ballerini), the son, has injected the restaurant with a certain degree of fashionable buzz on account of his innovative, 'nouveau' dishes. Well, Cropa prefers the old faithful Italian dishes, the kind his late wife would cook, so the aforementioned sous chef, gambling addict Duncan (Kirk Acevedo), sorts him out with those… To Udo's perfunctory displeasure.
The cast beyond Aiello is very rich, indeed. It is a complete rogue's gallery of New Yorkers. Mobs, snobs, and massive gobs bashing between scenes like revolving doors. You have the magnificent Mark Margolis as a stuffy and blunt art critic; Margolis has an excellent voice and immaculate enunciation, and he uses it to the extreme with his screen time. He is the polar opposite of his 'Breaking Bad' character. John Corbett plays an enigmatic barstool hugger; he's there all night and he performs it tastefully. Jamie Harris electrifies with his English bartender character, a man of encyclopaedic trivia knowledge, which is put to the test for cash by drinkers. All of the waiters, including Summer Phoenix's role, are given a surprising amount of characterisation for a ninety-nine-minute runtime.
Lastly, we have the main menaces to Cropa's establishment at large, the mob pair 'Black and Blue' (Mike McGlone and Alex Corrado). They are the ungraceful brothers-in-law who, between mouthfuls of food, spend their time attempting to strong-arm Cropa out of his majority restaurant ownership. They want the restaurant alongside the already surrendered bookkeeping side operation he ran with his partner, who was murdered within minutes of the beginning by the brothers. On top of this, idiotic Duncan is critically indebted to them for five figures.
Those two circling like sharks, and the opening ten minutes, imbue the story with a great deal of the 'Italian mob' feeling we have come to associate with New York City; that feeling provides the direst stakes of the evening. On the night, Louis Cropa must contend with these boneheads amidst the growing demands of Udo, who also wants ownership as compensation for his revitalisation of the joint; there is the chaos of the kitchen, which is mostly caused by Duncan's inability to stop ragebetting on sports; and quotidian failings of the city—power cuts, in this case.
I was surprised by the soundtrack choices; they are a little at odds with the conventions this movie would typically follow. Those musical choices worked for me because of the variegation the film is suffused with: the differentiated characters, the interweaving narrative threads, and the fact it decides to subvert a lot of the expectations one has coming into it. The transitions from two characters making insignificant small talk at a bar to the pretentious drivel of Margolis's art critic to the very real violence bubbling within the kitchen and threatened by the mobsters from Queens are a worthwhile feat.
Bathed in a warm and disarming sepia tone, 'Dinner Rush' is sunset on a perfect Saturday evening. Bob Giraldi managed to direct a real culinary creation here, a microcosm of New York sensibilities, identities, and struggles. Inevitably, this film draws comparisons to Stanley Tucci's 'Big Night'. One thing is for certain—they make for a delicious double-feature.
