Okay, so this isn't a regular review, it's more of an anecdote: I took my kid to the "Dan & Phil: Hard Launch" show in Brooklyn because she's a huge fan of their show. It was a wild audio-visual comic experience, and just about everyone there was an emo-kid in their parents (save my kid and me and some other family members who went).
Anyhoo, the show went on at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn (lot of posts about Brooklyn lately). It was my first time there and it's a really gorgeous, huge, and cavernous theater. It used to be a movie palace and was beautifully restored as a live theater. I strongly urge you to go see a show there -- I didn't really care about "Dan & Phil" (although they were entertaining and my kid was happy) but man, oh, man, that theater is awesome.
I'm happy to say that my life has been so busy lately that I haven't been able to watch much television. However, after returning from vacation, I caught up on the new Hulu show Furious and, damn, it's crazy.
It's rare that you see an NYC show set in NYC that crosses between the high and low of the city, that goes from domestic violence shelters to high rise luxury apartment buildings, and devles into a subject matter that we'd all rather look away from -- the horrors of sex trafficking.
This series is clearly based on the Epstein case since, at the center of Furious, is a wealthy man named Jay Easton. The story involves a young ex-NYPD cop/current FBI agent named Alice (the amazing Emmy Rossum) who pairs up with a cranky middle-aged agent named Nora (the even more amazing Quincy Tyler Bernstine) and her best guy-friend Danny (Scott McNair), a sad-sack cop, as they investigate a series of murders involving wealthy men. Their work leads to a realization that all of these men were attackhed to a sex trafficking ring, and are meeting their doom at the hands of a young woman named Catherine (played by an insanely talented actress named Lola Pettigrew), a former victim of the ring. Alice, Nora, and Danny's work is greatly complicated by their messy personal lives along with colleagues and supervisors who are interfering their work.
Furious is a show about corruption, greed, sick lust, buried secrets, and how the misbehavior of wealthy and powerful people can leave a massive trail of broken lives and human destruction. This show is not for the faint of heart but it's incredible, stunning drama.
This show was created by Liz Merriweather which is a suprise since her previous hit was the sitcom New Girl. The cast is incredible, and it includes the always wonderful Hope Davis as Jay Easton's Ghislaine Maxwell-like daughter, Jake Lacey as Alice's abusive ex-boyfriend, and Campbell Scott as Easton's lawyer (and one of Catherine's victim). There's also an actor named Steve Wray who plays a disabled friend of Alice's and he is so good, so funny, I hope he gets an Emmy.
So watch this show. Then remember to keep your love ones close.
Late last year a small film came and went that didn't get a lot of fanfare but is actually really good.
Called Is This Thing On?, it's about a middle-aged couples in suburban NYC who seperate. The forlorn husband finds himself accidently turning to stand up comedy to deal with his new, unwanted life, while he soon-to-be ex-wife tries to keep their old life and their kids lives going as before -- just without him.
This movie is something you don't get a lot these days -- a very funny, wonderfully acted story about regular people leading their lives. It was directed by Bradley Cooper, the movie star (who has a supporting role), and it stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as the erstwhile couple and they excellent. Also in the cast are Christine Ebersole as the mother-in-law and the great actor Ciaran Hinds who plays the father -- and gives a beautiful, understated performance.
There are lots of movies about glamorous people in NYC living glamorous lives but this movie is about the regular, hardworking people dealing with their careers, their families, and their own sense of worth. You should see it!
A new entry into this genre is the Amazon Prime show Sterling Point.
It's about a prim and proper Brooklyn teenager named Annie and her dopey but funny brother Connor who inherit an island in Canada from their estranged grandfather -- and go to check it out.
Lots happens. Friends and lovers are made and lost and made again, buried family secrets are revealed, some pot is smoked, some sex is had, and some silly and serious situations ensue.
It's a great time. The main cast is young, gorgeous, and talented, the adult actors are excellent, and the show manages to be both very funny and emotionally dramatic at once. Really good.
I'll admit I'm biased because, yes, it's a show about displaced New Yorkers but it also takes place somewhere I know and love very well.
Sterling Point is a gorgeous, fun end-of-summer treat.
Let me be honest: The Rocky Horror Show is not really my kind of show. I've seen the movie, and enjoyed it, but let's just say that I'm a Square and this is not a show for my kind. But when you have friends and family who are most definately not Squares, ya go.
And I did. And I enjoyed it!
Back up: both the show and the movie are the brainchild of a man named Richard O'Brien who wrote and first staged this show in 1973. The plot is about a young stranded couple who, on a dark and stormy night, knock on the door of a strange house and get sucked into a world that turns out to be ... otherwordly. Great songs, and tranvestites, and all sorts of funky stuff ensues and it's a great time.
Silly as the show is, this current new Broadway production is very well done -- especially Luke Evans as the mysterious Frank-n-footer and Stephanie Hsu as the impressionable young Janet. Rachel Dratch, once of SNL, is brilliant as the Narrator, and the whole case, you can tell, is just having a great time.
The show is a wild good time -- even the audience gets into the act, and many were dressed as transvestites (!). So while The Rocky Horror Show ain't exactly South Pacific or Gypsy or Hamilton, it's still a memorable classic, and this particular staging of it is very well done.
Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.)
One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979.
Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.
When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time.
But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier.
The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.
Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park.
Well this is certainly a Mr NYC first: I'm reviewing a current Broadway show that I had previously blogged about as being a historical curiosity relegated to the distant past.
I'm talking of course about Chess, the messy and failed 1988 musical that has been revived to massive success on Broadway. In 2021 I wrote a lot about how its various problems and controversies doomed it almost 40 years ago, and I mused about whether any producers might have the courage to rework and revive it.
And they did!
Perhaps Mr NYC played a small part on this? (Who knows, only that I was ahead of my time.) So here's my review of the revival:
Set in 1979, the plot involves two brilliant chess masters, American Freddie and Soviet Russian Anatoly, who are set to compete in Milan. The match is heavy with Cold War politics, and the CIA and the KGB want Freddie to lose the match so that the Russians will be willing to engage in the Salt II Nuclear Talks. Freddie doesn't want to do this, obviously. Caught between them in Florence, Freddie's lover whom he mistreats and who, through various personal and political events, moves over to Anatoly -- who then defects to England with Florence, leaving his wife and children behind. Eventually, four years later, they all come together at another chess match in Bangkok -- the all of their fates intertwine and explode.
This version of Chess has a new book that simplifies and clarifies the story. Some of the songs have been put in a more logical order that does a better job of pushing the narrative story. As for the story itself, it still doesn't really work as being quite as compelling as it aims to be, and the characters are a bit two-dimensional. That said, it never lags and you're never bored. Not at all! It's massively entertaining.
Chess is both helped and hindered by a narrator who explains all of the action and the historical context of the show. Because this version is being staged almost 40 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is therefore presented in a "once upon a time ..." fashion which gives the audience more perspective -- something obviously not possible in 1988. So that was good. Unfortunately the narrator tells a lot of dumb, corny, jokes that gives the show some humor (it's otherwise pretty heavy) but that is tonally dissonant with the rest of the story.
However, the songs are amazing, and the production is brilliantly staged.
Lea Michele, as Florence, is beyond great -- she is a true Broadway star, the best of her generation, and her version of "Nobody's Side" is so hot, so on fire, it nearly burns the theater down. Aaron Tveit as Freddie and Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly are also great, incredible singers and actors who play these tortured geniuses struggling to survive. The rest of the supporting cast is strong and I must give a shout-out especially the ensemble which is on stage for the entire show and sings and dances throughout, performing many complicated numbers. They are the heart of this show and are wonderful.
So see Chess for a good time, a piece of fun Broadway theater -- a reminder that yesterday's failure can be tomorrow's triumph.
As a young, overeducated man who grew up with lots of books in the house, I will confess that I had literary pretensions. I dreamed about writing a great book that would be critically acclaimed and would sell big and would be turned into a hit Oscar-winning movie and that I would be rich and famous and happy for the rest of my life.
Yeah, so that didn't happen. I became Mr NYC instead.
But I will confess that, when I was operating under such a delusion, I wanted to write like Rick Moody whose 1994 novel The Ice Storm became a great movie in 1997.
As I write this post, ice has consumed the life of NYC ergo my thoughts are turning to the meaning of ice, of what ice can represent -- beyond the expanding molecules of H2O.
The Ice Storm is a very funny, very dark story about two families in New Canaan, CT, a wealthy suburb of NYC. The story takes places over Thanksgiving, 1973 where the fates of two families tragically collide while an ice storm bears down on them. Interspersed with the domestic drama -- focused on adultery, alchoholism, teen sex & "swapping", drugs, and lives held together by lies -- are wry commentaries about the popular and political culture of early 1970s America. The country is enjoying movies like The Exorcist and books like Breakfast of Champions while the Watergate scandal envolopes the nation -- the idea that darkness and corruption are endemic to the very soul of the country that the characters live in (the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre had just occurred, as shown below).
In a sense, they and us are already doomed.
The novel is a great read although you'll want to take a breather every so often. Moody's writing is funny but also deeply sarcastic and cynical, very "in quotes", often mocking and derisive in tone. The best word to describe the novel is "acerbic." But the humanity in the darkness of these characters' lives cuts through, and that's what makes it a powerful read. And it has an interesting twist at the end.
The movie is also powerful although a bit more overtly emotional. It was directed by Ang Lee who would later go on to make big hits like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. The cast is amazing -- Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver along with a young Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood. Even more interesting is that this was the film that brought Tobey Magiure, pre-Spiderman, and Katie Holmes, pre-Dawson's Creek/Tom Cruise, into prominence. And it's beautifully directed and shot, the beauty clearly at odds with the ugly lives portrayed.
It also is something of an NYC movie -- this is a story about the commuters, the people who live comfortably outside the city but whose jobs and identities exist there. And at one point the Tobey Maguire character flees to a night of booze and drugs and a failed attempt at sex at an Upper East Side apartment before he flees to Grand Central Terminal before the very real "ice storm" prevents him getting home.
What The Ice Storm reminds us is that darkness and corruption in the personal and political lives of America is nothing new -- it seems to be our constant, perenial existential state. I'm personally interested in this story because it's set just a few short years before I was actually born -- given me a sort of window into the world that I was soon to join.
And given the current weather both real and political, it's a book and a movie more timely than ever.
The world of NYC real estate is cut-throat and, in the new Netflix series The Beast In Me, it's both metaphorical and literal.
The plot to this series is pure sensationalist thriller yarn -- dead wives! dead kids! trophy wives! domineering parents! broken families! horny FBI agents! and money, money, money!
It's total nonsense. But it's really well done and quite entertaining.
The plot involves a woman named Aggie, played by the always amazing Claire Daines, who is the author of a hugely successful book that got her a Pulitzer Prize and a big house in Oyster Bay ... but is now grieving her dead son, her failed marriage, and a horrible case of writer's block on her follow up book. She then meets her creepy neighbor Niles Jarvis, scion of a powerful NYC real estate family, who many suspect killed his wife (but was never charged criminally) and whose family is trying build a massive projects in Manhattan called Jarvis yards -- that is facing stiff community and political resistance. Niles is played by Matthew Rhys and man, oh man, he was is one scary dude in this series.
Events and intrigues ensue, secrets are hidden and revealed, and it's all a lot of pulpy fun.
The reason I'm reviewing this show is that while The Beast In Me is pure sensationalist thriller, it also has a Power Broker-Chinatown angle that is quite intriguing -- namely, it makes us ponder who rules and controls the fate of great cities, how and why are these rich and powerful and murderous people allowed to control the future of millions, and how it impacts us all.
The news that Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is getting her second divorce made my mind race back to the early 2000s when she divorced movie star Tom Cruise.
In the 1990s "Tom and Nic" were the biggest celebrity couple in the world. Great actors, huge stars, they made lots of big hit movies (A Few Good Men, Jerry McGuire, To Die For, and many others), and they also made three together, including their last and most notable one, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.
I remember when news of this movie was announced. It was a big deal -- the biggest movie star couple in the world making a movie with one of the greatest directors of his time, the Bronx-born Stanley Kubrick. They were making a weird movie, in secret, in England, and no one knew anything about it. The entertainment media of the day was fascinating by what this movie would be -- and the secrecy of its making and content became its currency.
There was also a lot of other drama surrounding Eyes Wide Shut.
A noted perfectionist, Stanley Kubrick spent almost two full years shooting the movie -- keeping these two huge stars off screens and out of other movies, much to the industry's consternation. Various actors kept getting hired, then fired, or replaced because the open-ended schedule made their continued participation impossible. The movie was supposed to be released in late 1998 -- then was bumped to the summer of 1999 where it would compete with the big action movies.
Then, the biggest dramatic moment of all -- in the Spring of 1999, just a few months before the movie's release, Stanley Kubrick died. Suddenly. So this secret movie with the two biggest starts in the world would be the last movie from the directors of Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. Wow!
Then, in July 1999, after all the hype, after reams and reams, hours and hours of coverage, the movie comes out and ... no one cares. It dies quickly. And more than 25 years later it's forgotten -- except for being the last hurrah for Tom and Nic. There divorce two years later would be its coda.
So what's Eye's Wide Shut about? I still don't know.
It takes place in Manhattan during Christmas time. Cruise is a wealthy, successful doctor, with a gorgeous, very bored housewife played by Nic. One night they go to a party, flirt with other people, then go home where Nic confesses her fantasies about sleeping with other men. Tom is horrified -- so he goes out walking the strees of wintertime NYC. He meets a friend of his who works in a piano bar and he tells Tom about a masked orgy out of Long Island where the friend plays the piano during all the nooky. Tom decides to go out to Long Island, puts on a Venetian mask, and witnesses all the nooky -- before he's found out, humiliated, ejected from the orgy, and made to fear for his life.
And there's something about hookers in the meantime too.
I love, love, love Stanley Kubrick's films but this one was boring, and his weakest effort. There's really no story, and you're not made to care about any of the characters. It's visually amazingly and it's more like an early-sound European movie than a modern organic film.
When this movie was being made, and stories about it kept appearing, I was in college, and remember being super excited to see it. Then I graduated, came home, saw the movie that summer ... and left totally underwhelmed. Looking at the movie decades later, it's still lifeless -- and even more depressing considering the horrors we've learned about sexual abuse by rich people in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein.
Still, Eyes Wide Shut is an interesting look at a filmmaker at the end of his life, making his oddest movie ever, in a make-believe NYC at night, with two huge movie stars whose marriage would soon end -- and would gone on to other great movies, as well as more divorces.
I'm really digging the series House of Guinness about the infamous Irish brewery dynasty. It's set in the 1860s, and it's a King Lear/Succession-like drama about the children of a great, powerful, and wealthy man grappling with the immense legacy they've been left.
Because I'm lazy, and don't want to spoil it for you, I won't review the whole show now but the writing, acting, and production values of the show are outstanding. It's like a soap opera with lots of history and cool Irish accents.
Best of all, while most of the show it set in Dublic, part of the show is set in NYC.
One of the characters named Byron, who's an illegitimate member of the family, goes to NYC to expand the Guinness business into America. He has to deal with lots of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice, working with the Irish disapora and others to get them drinking the brew.
Also, Byron is played by Jack Gleeson who portrayed the monstrous King Joffrey on Game of Thrones more than a decade ago. He's now all grown up and here he's not crazy, just ambitious and fast-talking. He's great in this show, as is everyone else.
If you can ever call a movie nothing more than an expression of pure joy, it'd have to be the 1982 classic My Favorite Year.
It's impossible to imagine a movie this funny, well-written, heartfelt and wild coming out today. But back in the early 1980s this old-fashioned comedy gem slipped out.
The year in question is 1954, and a young comedy writer named Benjy Stone from Brooklyn is writing for the country's most popular TV variety show, Stan "King" Kaiser. One week a washed up British movie star named Allann Swan visits to guest star on the show -- and he's drunk and unreliable. Benjy is told to take care of him for the week -- and craziness and hijinks and hilarity ensue.
The plot for this movie is slight -- it's more about the characters, their romances, their hopes, and their fears. And it's about a culture clash, two very different worlds smashing together -- the world of Jewish New York City comedians clashing with the world of a British master thespian, all told through a loving 1950s nostalgia lense.
Benjy is played by a very young Mark Lin-Baker, a few years before his long run on Perfect Strangers and then on Broadway. He's charming, and I don't know why he didn't make more movies, especially since My Favorite Year was a big hit. Alan Swann is played magnificently by Peter O'Toole, a truly titanic performance (he also got an Oscar nomination for it). Joe Bologna, the great character actor, plays a Stan Kaiser and the rest of the supporting cast includes a gorgeous Jessica Harper as Benjy's love interest, Lanie Kazain, and many others. You can tell they all had a lot of fun making this picture.
My Favorite Year is very loosely based on something that happened in the early 1950s when a young Mel Brooks was a writer on Sid Ceasar's variety show. The guest one week was Errol Flynn, the great British movie star of the 1930s and '40s who was also a hopeless drunk. Brooks was tasked with making sure he made it to rehearsals and the show, and that wasn't always easy. Nothing as crazy happened in real life as in in the movie, but it's great premise for a movie -- which is obviously why they made one.
The movie is also a look at a special moment in time when NYC was still the heart of television, and shows like Sid Ceasar's reigned supreme. While they never say what network the fictional Stan Kaiser show is on, most of the movie takes place at 30 Rock so it's obviously supposed to be NBC.
In these dark times, My Favorite Year is a little piece of light.
Few filmmakers capture the life and spirit of NYC like Spike Lee. He's been making movies for forty years and he makes movies like no other -- movies that make you think, movies that sometimes make you angry, sometimes make you laugh loudly, but that you never forget.
Spike and his movies have been part of my life since I was kid -- Do the Right Thing blew we away as a teenager. And then he started his fruitful collaboratoin with Denzel Washington and they have made some modern classics -- Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, Inside Man and, now, after working together for more than 30 years, Highest 2 Lowest.
Denzel plays a music executive who is the midst of trying to save his business when his kid gets kidnapped -- only for a huge twist when its not his kid but his assistants. This awful situation leads him into a huge moral dillemma and leads to wild, unpredictable outcome.
Spike's approach to storytelling is unconventional -- he does not make predictably, standardly told narratives. And he really goes all out with that approach here. But, always, his visual flair is on full display, and Denzel just eats up the screen with a wild, fun performance -- a great actor, a master thespian, at the time of his craft. Also, Jeffrey Wright plays his assistant and, as always, he's great.
Late in the movies the rapper ASAP Rocky appears and, damn, he's got some real acting chops. There's a scene between him and Denzel that is so good, so intense, so amazing and mesmerizing that you have to watch the movies just for that. It's just two guys talking -- and its riveting.
Finally, this is a great NYC movie and it really goes from "highest to lowest", from the penthouses of highrises of gentrified Brooklyn, to the streets of Manhattan, to the subways and back alleys of the Bronx.
They don't make a lot of movies like Highest 2 Lowest these days so you gotta appreciate it when you can.
You can also listen to Spike talk about the movies with Marc Maron here.
In the mid-1990s two very different NYC-related movies graced movie and television screens that, looking back, seem truly bizarre that they were ever made.
The first is a TV movie that aired in December, 1994. It was written and directed by Woody Allen called Don't Drink the Water. It was based on a play that Woody had written and was produced on Broadway in the mid-1960s. It then became a lackluster movie starring, of all people, Jackie Gleason. Woody didn't like the movie version (he had nothing to do with it) so, thirty years later, he directed it for television.
Don't Drink the Water is about a Jewish caterer from New Jersey who is on vacation with his family in an unnamed Communist country in Eastern Europe. The country has been consumed by chaos, so the caterer and his family seek refuge in the American embassy. But things in the embassy are wacky as well, and hilarity ensues. In the meantime, the young American consult running the embassy falls for the caterer's daughter -- and romance ensues. And all the usual Woody humor is there, including lots of jokes about deli foods.
Woody made this film at a weird time in his life and career. He had just gone through the whole break up scandal with Mia Farrow and his reputation had been dinged -- but he had also just released the great movie Bullets Over Broadway, and was riding high on critical acclaim and strong box office. This TV movie was therefore something of a pastiche, a little side-project. Many Woody fans might know even know it exists.
Woody stars as the caterer in the film, his wife is played by the always wonderful Julie Kavner, and the daughter is played by Mayim Bialik who was finishing her run on the TV show Blossom. Others in the cast include the great Edward Herrmann (pre-Gilmore Girls) and Dom Deluise but the real surprise is that the American consul is played by Michael J. Fox.
Yes, Marty McFly and Alvy Singer were in a movie together.
Fox had been a huge star in the 1980s with the show Family Ties, the Back to the Future movies, and some other notable films. But by the mid-1990s his star seemed to be waning so that's why, presumably, he agreed to do this TV movie with Woody. A couple of years later he starred on the TV show Spin City, cementing a comeback -- and then years later he disclosed a devestating Parkinson's diagnosis.
It's not a great movie but it's still amazing to realize that there was a time when Woody Allen could actually get a movie made and broadcast on ABC, a big TV network -- and that people would watch it! How times have changed.
It was the third in the multi-part Die Hard movie series starring Bruce Willis. Where the first one took place in a huge office building in LA, and the second took place at an airport in Washington, DC, this third flick takes place all over Manhattan. Willis's John McClane cop character is at home in NYC this time when things start blowing up around town. A mystery man named Simon contacts McClane and forces him to play a serious of dangerous games around Manhattan in order to prevent future explosions ("Simon says" -- Get it?). It turns out that this is all a distraction so that Simon and his goons can rob the $104 billion dollars in gold that are stored under Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Simon declares that it makes Fort Knox look like something for tourists.
And lots of violence, car chases, shoot-outs and one-liners ensue.
Willis is at his charasmatic best in his film and his side-kick is played by the brilliant Samuel Jackson. They had just starred in the now-classic Pulp Fiction (although shared no scenes together) so they were riding on this juice of that movie. The villian, Simon, is played by Jeremy Irons, and he really hams it up here, a mustache-twirling bad guy. Iron was about four years removed from his Oscar win and although his days as a big movie star were coming to an end.
And the big secret is that we find out he's the brother of Gruber, the villian from the first Die Hard movie played by Allan Rickman. "He was an asshole," both Simon and McClane agree.
The plot and action in this movie are idiotic in the extreme, and the idea of terrorism in NYC seemed much more far-fetched in 1995 than it did six years later. However, it's a real NYC eye-candy movie -- not only do we see great shots of Lower Manhattan, we also go to Harlem, the ports, and even the subway stop at 72nd Street and Broadway.
Again, getting actors of the caliber of Willis, Jackson and Irons in a movie together that was this wild -- as well as the biggest box office hit of 1995 -- seems crazy today (this movie spelt "big pay day" all over it). And making a movie where NYC gets mostly blown up would not be PC today. Also, I actually remember going to see this movie in theaters right before I went to college -- and then totally forgot about it until now.
So there's a look back at two movies from 30 years ago that, in today's NYC and entertainment environment, would be unthinkable of getting made today.
The subject of immigration has been a political hot topic for years, decades, now. It's a paradox: America is a country built by immigrants, almost all of us are the children of immigrants, and yet most of this country hates immigrants.
America is a contradictory country if there ever was one.
But a lot of the war of American immigration comes between those whose families have been here for years, decades, or centuries and more recent arrivals. For a lot of people, the old immigrants (i.e. them or their families, usually white) were great but the new ones (usually not white) ... not so much.
One of my favorite movies about the clash between the Old World and the New, between the nativist Whites and non-White arrivals, is the 1985 crime flick Year of the Dragonthat came out in the summer of 1985, forty friggin' years ago.
It's a tight, fast-paced crime thriller about an out-of-control NYC cop named Stanley White (played amazingly by Mickey Rourke at the height of his 1980's movie career) who is determined to take down the Chinatown gangs, the Triads. The Triads are at war with the Italian mob, the Thai mobs, as well as each other. The main crime boss Stanley is trying to bust is a young, handsome, very smart guy named Joy Tai (played really well by John Lone).
The problem is that Stanley is being thwarted by his bosses in the police department who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their bribes. Into the mix comes a young, gorgeous, Asian-American TV reporter (played by an ex-model named Arianne) who wants to help Stanley bust the gangs, free the slave labor that the crime bosses exploit, and make Chinatown a crime-free, honest place. (In their first meeting he tells her, "You're a helluva lot sexier than those other broads on the other channels." Sweet man.)
See, Stanley is a tough, politically-incorrect, totally honest, incorruptible cop who doesn't care how the Chinese did things in the old country, or how they ignore law enforcement -- no, he's gonna make them follow the law like everyone else, "even the Polacks." What evolves is a cool story about how personalities, violence, greed, and an overwhelming passion for culture and justice make NYC (and America) a wild place. I won't give it away but the ending chase scene is classic. Quentin Tarantino himself said it's one of his favorite scenes in all of cinema, and that Year of the Dragon is one of his personal favorites.
Mickey Rourke is great in this movie, a really fun, blazing talent. It's a shame that his movie career became so hit or miss (mostly miss) after this but his perfomance is a reminder of what a talent he is. John Lone was also great in this movie, and shortly after that he starred in the 1987 Best Picture Oscar-winner The Last Emperor because of his performance in this movie. The only sore point is Arianne - she really can't act and she didn't have much a movie career after this. Even the director said afterwards about her performance "I tried ..." But all of the other actors are good, and
Year of the Dragon was the first movie that director Michael Cimino made after the historic debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Cimino's first movie, the 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper Thunderbolt & Lightfoot had made Cimino a notable director but then his 1978 operatic Vietnam masterpiece The Deer Hunter made him an Oscar-winning, big-time director. But his attempt to make another epic masterpiece with the Western Heaven's Gate was such an overlong, ponderous and financial failure that he didn't make another movie until this one in 1985 -- and it was a return to form, in a way, back to the taught crime movie that started his career. And interestingly, even though this movie really captures Manhattan's Chinatown well, you really feel and small the streets when you watch it, it was actually all shot on a soundstage in North Carolina!
Cimino was an intriguing figure -- a director of both great talent and great sloppiness. I've blogged about his bizarre life and career many times over the years but when he hit -- like with Thunderbolt, Deer Hunter and Year of the Dragon, he hit the bullseye.
Even though this movie came out forty years ago, I think it's more relevant than ever. Watch the whole thing below and let me know what you think!
Flying home from Paris one of the in-flight movie options was, naturally, Julie & Julia from 2009.
This comedy is a dual bio-pic about the famed cookbook author and OG TV cooking show host Julia Child, and a woman named Julie Powell who cooked all 524 recipes from Child's 1961 tome Mastering the Art of French. The movie flashes back and forth between the late 1940s/early 1950s (when Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul, were living in France and she was discovering her love of French food and the genesis of her book), and 2002 when a young, newly married woman named Julie Powell, living in NYC, decides to cook all of the book's recipes.
It's a movie about love and inspiration -- the love of food, of culture, of significant others, of the better and more refined things in life, and how these things are always challenged by the harsh realities of the world. In the Julia Child/French/mid-20th century part, Julia and her husband's life and careers are challenged by the Cold War and encroaching McCarthyism, and the Julie/NYC/early 21-st century part is challenged by the shortness of money and the dark shadow of 9/11. The movie's point is doing what you love, being with who you love, enjoying what you love is possible -- but it's a lot of hard work and sometimes we face big forces beyond our control.
Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep in one of her typical dazzling performances. Her husband is the always great, always lovable Stanley Tucci. Julie Powell is played by the perky Amy Adams and Chris Messina is her clueless but loving husband. The movie does a good job of interweaving the two stories and showing us the luscious world of post-war France and the gritty reality of early aughts NYC. And if you love food, especially French food, you'll get really hungry after watching this.
Julie & Julia was the last movie written and directed by Nora Ephron, three years before her death in 2012. She was the brilliant writer of When Harry Met Sally ..., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and other movies. This movie was her swan song -- and a really good one at that -- if not necessarily up there with her classics. It's worth seeing, especially if you love Paris, NYC, food, and everything that makes life worth living.
Of the fifty-something movies that Woody Allen has made over half-century, some are great classics, some are really good, some are just okay, and some are entirely forgettable.
One of my favorite of his movies that is often overlooked in his oeuvre is Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993. It's actually really good.
The story concerns a middle-aged, empty-nest couple named Larry (Woody) and Carol (Diane Keaton) who live a good quiet Manhattan life with friends and work and culture and all that you could want from marriage and NYC. But Carol is bored -- and when she suspects that their neighbor might have murdered his wife, she takes it upon herself to investigate the "crime", dragging a very reluctant Larry along the way. What starts out as a lark becomes something much, more darker.
And, in the meantime, they talk a lot about the state of their marriage.
By the time Woody made this movie, he had been directing movies for almost 25 years and was already wildly successful and acclaimed. And he was still challenging himself -- he shoots this movie in a documentary, fly-on-the-wall way. He manages to make the filming look casual but there's a steady intention to each shot, a real vision at work, and it's one of my favorite of his movies as matter of pure directing style.
Then there's the cast -- Keaton, reuniting with Woody over a decade since Manhattan, is brilliant and Alan Alda and Angelica Huston, who had appeared, seperately, in Crimes & Misdemeanors a few years earlier, are excellent. And the movie manages to be both an intriguing mystery yarn while also a meditation on getting older and what you want out of the rest of your life.
And it's funny! Woody has made lots of funny movies but this might be one of his best. The humor is so understated that, when a joke arrives, it lands softly and firmly and really tickles your funny bone: "I can't listen to that much Wagner, I get this sudden urge to conquer Poland!"
This movie was also a bit of a turning point in Woody's life and career. When he made it, he was going through his nasty custody battle with Mia Farrow, and that's why Diane Keaton replaced her in the movie (although Farrow, weirdly, after accussing Woody of child abuse, then showed up ready to work; Woody understandable didn't want to work with someone trying to put him in jail). He also wrote the script with his old partner, the recently deceased Marshall Brickman and their magic chemistry shows.
Right after this Woody would make the classic Bullets Over Broadway and then begin an uneven series of movies until the triumph of Midnight in Paris in 2011.
So I highly recommend this often forgotten Woody classic. It's not just a good movie, it's a balm.
A few years back I reviewed a batch of movies about New Yorkers who travel far from the city and get into all kinds of crazy adventures.
But perhaps the ultimate example of that is the show Tulsa King which I finally caught up on even though it's been streaming on Paramount Plus for a couple of years now.
It has a fun premise: a member of the NYC mafia, just out of 25 years in prison for not ratting out his bosses, is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to establish an organized crime franchise. His job is to shake people down -- or "earn" -- and send his cut back to the bosses in NYC. But, as you might imagine, things get complicated when law enforcement, women, as well as other crime gangs that the mafia hadn't encountered on dealing with emerge -- as well as some unfinished from back home.
The mob guy is named Dwight Manfredi and he's played by a 75-year old Sylvester Stallone. I've never been a huge fan, his movies weren't exactly my thing, he's REALLY good in this -- you forget that behind the muscles and brawn is a hell of a good actor, and he owns the screen as a complex man trying to takeover this town's crime business while also becoming a better man. His pathos is deeply felt.
A great supporting cast, including the lovely Dana Delaney and other excellent actors, make this show a lot of fun. And you can tell that the writers are having a blast with the culture clash of tough NYC mobsters and Western crime gangs coming into conflict -- while the FBI is hot on their tails.
It's an entertaining, good time and I reccomend it.
There aren't many movies these days like Anora so when a gem like this comes along, you must embrace it.
Anora is a reminder that movies can be funny and dramatic and entertaining at the same time, and all you need is smart writing, great actors, and an imaginative director. You don't need special effects, aliens, or things blowing up all the time -- the best action, the best humor, and the best stories come from showing human condition in all its reality.
And Anora is a great NYC movie that shows the city's unknown, outborough underbelly.
Anora, called Ani, is a stripper from Brighton Beach, working at a club, living miserably with her family, and hooking on the side. One night she catches the eye of a the son of a Russian oligarch and lap dance, a paid liaison, and some partying leads to an impromptu marriage -- until the oligarch son's father gets wind of it and all hell breaks loose.
What starts as a Cinderella story quickly turns into a madcap yarn where expletives, fists, and even cars go flying. Amazingly this movies quickly turns into the equivalent of an NYC road movie where Anora the oligarch's goons go looking for the wayward son. There are parts of this movie that are so funny and yet so intense that you can't believe them -- it's storytelling at the highest level, and the actors are amazing. (This is the first NYC gangster movie where parking problems are included in the plot.)
Anora was written and directed by Sean Baker, an indie filmmaker who won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for this movie last year. Mikey Madison, until now a minor movie and TV actress, blazes as the titular character, giving an amazing, complicated performance -- and creates one of the most memorable endings I've ever seen in a movie. The rest of the cast is mostly unknown and Russian but really good.
Please, please see Anora -- it's the kind of movie that makes you laugh, cry, love NYC, despair about the impunity of wealth but also get inspired by the resilience of some people.
If there was ever a movie that epitomized the idea of a scary NYC-at-night hellscape, then it's The Warriors. Released in 1979 and directed by Walter Hill (a few years before his big Eddie Murphy star-making hit 48 Hours), The Warriors looks and feels almost as if aliens had invaded Earth and are fighting their intergalactic battle on the streets and subways of NYC.
The movie takes place over the course of one night -- firmly, almost definitively placing itself in the realm of great NYC night movies.
The plot involves various gangs that have convened in Van Cortland park in the Bronx for a massive gang summit. One of them, the Warriors, has made the long trek from Coney Island to attend. The biggest gang leader in the city, Cyrus, announces to the amassed gangs that they should work together, respect each others turf, not kill each other, and use their collective power to overwhelm the police and control the city. He lays out his plan while, every so often, yelling "Can you dig it"? Dig it they do -- until a rival gang to the Warriors shoots Cyrus dead, turns around and blames the Warriors for the murder, and all hell breaks loose.
From there, the Warriors escape and start a long, violent trip back to Coney Island, chased by other gangs and the cops.
Knives and guns and mellees and Molotov cocktails frustrate their journey as they escape into Tremont, then 96th street and Broadway, in and out of Riverside Park, arriving later at Union Square, before finally making it back to Coney Island at early dawn -- only to find that they were still being persued by their rivals. Along the way they hook up with a hot chick (because, well, of course) and a radio DJ narrates their journey along the way. There's even a scene in the park that features a future Oscar-winner (but I won't give it away).
Can you dig it?
The Warriors had a completely unknown cast (some of whom went onto other movies but none who became huge stars) and was a modest box office hit at the time before becoming a cult classic. (Apparently at screenings in the early weeks of its release resulted in violent incidents from people trying to live out the action they were watching on screen.) Even though the book was based on a novel, the heart of the story comes from the Greek legend of the Odyssey, about how the path of humanity is just to go home.
The Warriors is a wild, fun, and bizarre movie -- some of the fight scenes drag but they're never boring. The cast is young and colorful and full of energy. Most of all, it's the kind of dangerous, subversive movie that no major studio would dare make today. It's a movie in and of its time -- but its themes of youthful alienation and the allure of violence resonants into our day.
In fact, The Warriors resonates so much that Lin-Manuel Miranda himself decided to give it a musical adaptation.
Recently he released a "concept album" simply called Warriors, retelling the story of the movie with an all-female gang (there may be a stage version but that hasn't come to fruition yet). On the album, amongst others, are the featured voices are Marc Anthony, Billy Porter, Lauryn Hill, Hamilton's Phillipa Soo, Busta Rhymes, and Colman Domingo. I've only heard the album once but obviously it's good -- if not entirely memorable like Hamilton.
So I highly suggest watching the movie and listening to the album and just be grateful that, in our day and age, if you get lost in NYC late at night you can just use your phone to get a cab.
