Goodfellas is totally a Christmas movie!
Tag Archives: Robert De Niro
Scenes That I Love: Travis Bickle’s Paranoid Monologue from Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is nearly 50 years old but it’s still one of cinema’s most definitive portraits of urban paranoia and societal detachment. Travis (played by Robert De Niro) obsesses on the city that he harshly judges even though he’s as much a part of New York as those who he wishes will be washed away.
This scene features Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Schrader at their definite best. I imagine that, for a lot of people, this is one of those scenes that solidified their opinions on New York City. For the record, the last time I was in New York, everyone was fairly pleasant. They weren’t exactly friendly but I also didn’t get my bag stolen. (Those of us who don’t live in New York tend to assume that we’ll get mugged as soon as we leave JFK.)
I do worry about the future of New York, especially with the election that is being held today. To say I’m not a fan of either of the two front runners would be an understatement but, at the same time, it’s not my place to tell people in New York City how to vote. (I’m a big believer in not telling people in other cities and states how to vote. Whenever anyone from up north asks me why Beto didn’t win in 2018, I tell them the truth. A bunch of pro-Beto yankees came down here and got on everyone’s nerves right before they voted.) Instead of telling people what to do, I’ll just say that I sincerely hope that whatever happens will work out as well as it possibly can.
(That’s another reason I don’t endorsements. “Vote for the candidate who will work as well as he possibly can,” probably isn’t going to gets the cheers that some other slogans would.)
The Films of 2025: The Alto Knights (dir by Barry Levinson)
In The Alto Knights, I’m pretty sure that Robert De Niro sets the record for saying “What’s the mater with you!?” the most times in one movie.
I don’t know for sure, of course. While I was watching the movie last night, I didn’t keep an exact count and, for that, shame on me. That said, when you consider that The Alto Knights features Robert De Niro playing not just one but two old school Italian gangsters, you can be sure that there were a lot of scenes of either Vito Genovese (Robert De Niro) or Frank Costello (De Niro, again) demanding to know what was the matter. When Genovese watches Costello testifying in front of a Congressional hearing, the “What’s the matter with you!?” count truly goes haywire.
The Alto Knights was directed by Barry Levinson, who has directed some great films. It tells the relatively true story of the rivalry between Costello and Genovese. Both Costello and Genovese were present when the modern Mafia was first created. The diplomatic and negotiation-minded Costello was known as the “Prime Minister of the Underworld.” Genovese was a much more violent gangster and he became one of the most powerful members of the New York Mafia by basically killing anyone who stood in his way. Costello and Genovese started out as weary friends before coming mortal enemies. Costello retired from the rackets after Genovese ordered one of his men to shoot Costello in the head. Meanwhile, Genovese ended up involving the Mafia in the drug trade and died in prison. In the film, Costello narrates their story. There’s a lot of shots of an elderly Costello sitting in what appears to be a park as he speaks directly to the camera. Interestingly enough, Gotti tried to do the same thing, with Travolta’s John Gotti speaking directly to the audience while standing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Alto Knights pretty much features all of the usual Mafia tropes. All the usual points are hit. Albert Anastasia (played by Michael Rispoli) is assassinated while getting a haircut and some viewers will remember that, before De Niro played the man who ordered Anastasia’s assassination, he also played the man who claimed to have shot Anastasia in The Irishman. Personally, I love Mafia films but The Alto Knights felt a bit too recycled to be truly effective. Barry Levison does the usual thing of dropping real-life newspaper headlines and photographs into the middle of the film and it doesn’t so much add verisimilitude as much as it just reminds one of David DeCoteau’s film about Bonnie and Clyde.
The film’s main selling point is that it features Robert De Niro playing two gangsters but there’s really not much gained from casting De Niro in both roles. We get a few scenes of De Niro acting opposite of himself and it’s hard not to notice that Genovese’s reactions often don’t seem to match whatever it is that Costello’s saying. As an actor, De Niro has the ability to be believable as both the cerebral Costello and the hot-headed Genovese but ultimately, the double casting just feels like a distraction. Watching De Niro acting opposite himself, I found myself thinking how much more entertaining it would have been if Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, or even John Travolta had played Genovese. To be honest, if Levinson really had any courage, he would have given the role to James Woods and given us the Once Upon A Time In America/Casino reunion that we all deserve.
The film did win me over a bit towards the end with a recreation of the Apalachin meeting. That was when Genovese invited every mob boss in the country to come to a meeting in upstate New York, just for the feds to suddenly show up and send everyone scattering. For most of the film, it was hard not to feel that Barry Levinson was past his prime as a director but he actually did a good job with the Apalachin scenes. I genuinely laughed when Genovese got into a pointless argument with his driver. I loved the way the film captured the real-life absurdity of a bunch of mob bosses fleeing into the woods, all of their bravado suddenly dissipating as they scrambled into the wilderness. If the entire film had just been about the Apalachin meeting, this review would probably be a lot of different. As it is, one good sequence can’t save the film as a whole.
This is an offer you can refuse.
Scenes I Love: L.Q. Jones In Casino
Today would have been the birthday of the great character actor L.Q. Jones.
Though he was probably best known for the films that he did with Sam Peckinpah and for directing the darkly humorous sci-fi film, A Boy And His Dog, Jones also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film, Casino. Playing the role of county commissioner Pat Webb, Jones went toe-to-toe with Robert De Niro and more than held his own. Reportedly, Scorsese asked Jones to rewrite much of his dialogue, in order to give it a western authenticity,
From Casino, here is a scene that I love:
4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Robert De Niro Edition
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to actor Robert De Niro. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Robert De Niro Films
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese, DP: Michael Chapman)
The King of Comedy (1982, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP; Fred Schuler)
Once Upon A Time In America (1984, dir by Sergio Leone, DP: Tonino Delli Colli)
Casino (1995, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Robert Richardson)
RIP, George Wendt: Guilty By Suspicion (1991, directed by Irwin Winkler)
George Wendt passed away in his sleep earlier today. He was 76 years old.
If you’re old enough to have watched Cheers when it originally aired or to have caught it in reruns, George Wendt will always be Norm Peterson, the beer-drinking accountant who spent all of his time at the show’s titular bar. One of the show’s trademarks was that, whenever he entered the bar, everyone greeted him by shouting, “Norm!” “How’s the world treating you?” a bartender would ask. “It’s a dog eat world and I’m wearing milkbone underwear,” Norm once replied.
(One of my favorite joke from the series was when Norm went into a steakhouse and everyone inside was heard to yell, “Norm!” as the door closed behind him.)
If we’re going to be really honest, Norm was probably a high-functioning alcoholic and terrible husband. (Wife Vera was often-mentioned but never seen.) Wendt was so likable in the role and was so good at delivering those one-liners that it didn’t matter. Watching the show, you never wondered why Norm was in the bar. You were just glad he was.
George Wendt was also an accomplished stage actor. (I saw him on stage when he was co-starring with Richard Thomas in 12 Angry Men.) He appeared in several movies, usually playing the comedic sidekick or the hero’s best friend. His film roles often didn’t ask him to do much other than be likable but one exception was his performance in 1991’s Guilty By Suspicion.
Guilty By Suspicion is a film about the McCarthy era, starring Robert De Niro as film director David Merrill, who is threatened with being blacklisted unless he names four of his colleagues as being communists. George Wendt plays screenwriter Bunny Baxter, a childhood friend of David’s who attended a few communist rallies when he was younger, failed to mention it to the FBI, and who is now being investigated as a subversive. The studio argues that David should name Baxter because his name is already out there. When David refuses, he finds himself blacklisted and unable to make a living. Bunny Baxter, meanwhile, is offered a similar deal. Baxter can save his own career but only if he names David as a communist. Unlike David, Baxter considers betraying his friend because it’s the only way that he can ever hope to work again. “Your dead anyway,” Baxter says to David.
Guilty By Suspicion suffers from Irwin Winkler’s plodding direction but De Niro gives a good performance, as does Martin Scorsese who is cast as a director based on Joseph Losey. The film is full of actors who would later become better-known, like Chris Cooper, Tom Sizemore, and Annette Bening. Wendt, however, gives the film’s best performance as the screenwriter who is torn between protecting his career and maintaining his integrity. The scene where he asks permission to name Merrill as a communist is powerful and it shows how good an actor George Wendt could be. Bunny Baxter is asking his best friend to allow himself to be stabbed in the back. Baxter is that desperate. That he’s played by George Wendt, an actor who was everyone’s favorite likable barfly in the 80s, makes the scene all the more powerful.
George Wendt, RIP. Thanks for the memories.
Scene That I Love: A Meeting With Jimmy Hoffa from The Irishman
Today’s scene comes from 2019’s The Irishman. In this scene, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) asks a former rival for an endorsement to once again be president of the Teamsters union. Needless to say, things don’t get well. I’m on Hoffa’s side here. Showing up 12 and a half minutes late? Wearing shorts to meeting? Someone is definitely owed an apology.
Once you get over the admittedly jarring de-aging effect, this scene reminds us of what a great actor Al Pacino truly is.
Icarus File No. 23: The Last Tycoon (dir by Elia Kazan)
Based on the final (and unfinished) novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1976’s The Last Tycoon tells the story of Monroe Stahr (Robert De Niro).
Monroe Stahr is the head of production at a film studio during the early days of Hollywood. Stahr is an unemotional and seemingly repressed man who only shows enthusiasm when he’s talking about movies. He may not be able to deal with real people but he instinctively knows what they want to see on the big screen. Stahr is a genius but he’s working himself to death, ignoring his health concerns while trying to create the perfect world through film. He’s haunted by a lost love and when he meets Kathleen Moore (Ingrid Boulting, giving a remarkably dull performance), he tries to find love with her but, naturally, he doesn’t succeed. Meanwhile, he has to deal with his boss (Robert Mitchum), his boss’s daughter (Theresa Russell), a neurotic screenwriter (Donald Pleasence), an impotent actor (Tony Curtis), and a lowdown dirty communist labor organizer (Jack Nicholson)! Sadly, for Stahr, McCarthyism is still a few decades away.
There’s a lot of talented people in The Last Tycoon and it’s undeniably interesting to see old school stars — like Mitchum, Curtis, Dana Andrews, Ray Milland — acting opposite a Method-driven, 30-something Robert De Niro. This is one of those films where even the minor roles are filled with name actors. John Carradine plays a tour guide. Jeff Corey plays a doctor. This is a film about Golden Age Hollywood that is full of Golden Age survivors. It’s a shame that most of them don’t get much to do. The Last Tycoon is a very episodic film as Stahr goes from one crisis to another. Characters show up and then just kind of disappear and we’re never quite sure how Stahr feels about any of them or how their existence really shapes Stahr’s worldview. Robert De Niro may be a great actor but, as portrayed in this film, Monroe Stahr is a boring character and De Niro’s trademark tight-lipped intensity just makes Stahr seem like someone who doesn’t have much to offer beyond employment. This is one of De Niro’s least interesting performances, mostly because he’s playing a not-particularly interesting person. Mitchum, Pleasence, and the old guard all make an impression because they’re willing to coast by on their bigger-than-life personalities. De Niro is trapped by the Method and a total lack of chemistry with co-star Ingrid Boulting.
Still, this is the only film to feature both De Niro and Jack Nicholson. (The Departed was originally conceived as a chance to bring De Niro and Nicholson together, with De Niro being the original choice for the role eventually played by Martin Sheen.) Nicholson’s role is small and he doesn’t show up until the film is nearly over. He and De Niro have an intense table tennis match. Nicholson doesn’t really dig deep into Brimmer’s character. Instead, he flashes his grin and let’s the natural sarcasm of his voice carry the scene. It’s nowhere close to being as emotionally satisfying as the De Niro/Pacino meeting in Heat. That said, Jack Nicholson at least appears to be enjoying himself. His natural charisma makes his role seem bigger than it actually is.
Why was The Last Tycoon such a disappointment? Though unfinished, the book still featured some of Fitzgerald’s best work and there’s a huge amount of talent involved in this film. The blame mostly falls on Elia Kazan, who came out of retirement to direct the film after original director Mike Nichols left the project. (Nichols reportedly objected to casting De Niro as Stahr. While it’s tempting to think that Nichols realized that De Niro’s intense style wouldn’t be right for the role, it actually appears that Nichols and De Niro sincerely disliked each other as Nichols also abandoned the next film he was hired to direct when he was told that De Niro wanted the lead role. Nichols choice for Monroe Stahr was Dustin Hoffman, which actually would have worked. If nothing else, it would have provided a Graduate reunion.) Kazan later said that he did the film solely for the money and it’s obvious that he didn’t really care much about the film’s story. The film has some good scenes but, overall, it feels disjointed and uneven. Kazan doesn’t really seem to care about Monroe Stahr and, as a result, the entire film falls flat.
Previous Icarus Files:
- Cloud Atlas
- Maximum Overdrive
- Glass
- Captive State
- Mother!
- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
- Last Days
- Plan 9 From Outer Space
- The Last Movie
- 88
- The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Birdemic
- Birdemic 2: The Resurrection
- Last Exit To Brooklyn
- Glen or Glenda
- The Assassination of Trotsky
- Che!
- Brewster McCloud
- American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally
- Tough Guys Don’t Dance
- Reach Me
- Revolution
4 Shots From 4 Films: The James Woods Edition!
Today is the 78th birthday of James Woods, one of the great actors of his generation. Capable of completely disappearing into his roles, Woods is known for his unmatched intensity and diversity. He can play anything from a badass action hero to the most evil scum of society, from a mentally handicapped adult to the most intelligent man in the room. He’s been one of my favorite actors since I first discovered him in the late 80’s in the movie BEST SELLER (1987). While he’s won multiple Emmy awards and Golden Globes, the fact he’s never won an Oscar for his acting skills is beyond my comprehension. As he was an Executive Producer of OPPENHEIMER (2023), I particularly enjoyed that film’s Oscar success! Happy Birthday Mr. Woods! Thanks for the countless hours of entertainment you’ve brought into my life!
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984)
SALVADOR (1986)
THE HARD WAY (1991)
GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI (1996)
April True Crime: The Wizard of Lies (dir by Barry Levinson)
For many people, Bernie Madoff is a still a name that summons hate.
Madoff was the owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, a firm that was a family business. He ran it with his two sons, Mark and Andrew, and he gained a reputation for being a financial wizard, someone who never lost money and who always returned a profit for everyone who trusted him with their money. He was someone who took money from the famous and the ordinary, the rich and the middle class, and he promised everyone that he would do wonderful things with that cash. He lived in a fabulous home in New York City. He had business and political connections. His firm was, at one point, ranked as the sixth biggest on Wall Street but Madoff, himself, tried to keep a low-profile.
Of course, Madoff was a liar. While his brokerage firm actually did make money, the asset management part of his business was actually a massive Ponzi scheme. He took his clients’ money for himself and then kept everyone at bay by sending them fake documents that showed how well their investments were doing. As long as the economy remained strong, Madoff had nothing to worry about. People gave him their money, assumed it was safe, and then went away. But when the stock market crashed in 2008, Madoff realized that his panicked clients would be coming for their money and he wouldn’t be able to give it to them.
Overnight, Madoff’s life collapsed. He spent the rest of his days in prison, having been turned in by his own sons. One son committed suicide, the other would die of cancer with his last words apparently being that his father was dead to him. It was the biggest case of financial fraud in United State history and the majority of Madoff’s clients lost all of the money that they had given to him. It was subsequently learned that many people had spotted red flags when it came to Madoff and his business. (The fact that Madoff claimed to never lose money should have been a huge one.) But Madoff invested his money in politicians and he never faced a real investigation until it was too late. Madoff spend the rest of his days as a symbol of everything wrong with Wall Street.
Not surprisingly, quite a few movies were inspired by Bernie Madoff’s crimes, some of them featuring characters based on him and a few being about the case itself. Produced by HBO, 2017’s The Wizard of Lies stars Robert De Niro as Madoff, Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, and Alessandro Nivola as his son, Mark. Directed by Barry Levinson, The Wizard of Lies follows Madoff as his Ponzi scheme collapses and it shows how the grand deception started. Robert De Niro plays Madoff as being essentially soulless, a sociopath who knew he would eventually get caught but who just couldn’t bring himself to stop stealing people’s money. Indeed, as played by De Niro, Madoff comes across as being one of the most joyless criminal masterminds in history. He’s fooled everyone but he can’t enjoy it. The impression that one gets is that Bernie Madoff was a pretty boring guy. Perhaps that’s why people were willing to trust him with their money. Someone that boring had to be trustworthy! Many people have claimed that there’s no way that Mark and Andrew Madoff couldn’t have know what their father was doing. In the film, one gets the feeling that Mark and Andrew knew something was going on but they decided to willfully blind themselves to what was happening around them. The film hints that was Madoff’s secret power. No one wanted to admit that his success was too good to be true.
The Wizard of Lies really doesn’t reveal anything new about the Madoff case. Madoff’s crimes were actually pretty simple. He wasn’t a criminal genius. He was just someone who understood the importance of telling people what they wanted to hear. Still, it’s a well-acted movie and, if you’re just looking for the facts of the case, The Wizard of Lies will give them to you.
Through the Shattered Lens 