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)
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 12AngryMen.) 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 GuiltyBySuspicion.
GuiltyBySuspicion 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.
GuiltyBySuspicion 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.
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.
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 Graduatereunion.) 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.
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!
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.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
First released in 1995, Heat is one of the most influential and best-known films of the past 30 years. It also received absolutely zero Oscar nominations.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that Academy — especially the Academy of the 1990s — didn’t shower the film with nominations. For all of its many strengths, Heat is still a genre piece, an epic three-hour crime film from director Michael Mann. It’s a film about obsessive cops and tightly-wound crooks and it’s based on a made-for-TV movie that Mann directed in the late 80s. While the Academy had given a best picture nomination to The Fugitive just two years before, it still hadn’t fully come around to honoring genre films.
And yet one would think that the film could have at least picked up a nomination for its editing or maybe the sound design that helps to make the film’s signature 8-minute gun battle so unforgettable. (Heat is a film that leaves you feeling as if you’re trapped in the middle of its gunfights, running for cover while the cops and the crooks fire on each other.) The screenplay, featuring the scene where Al Pacino’s intense detective sits down for coffee with Robert De Niro’s career crook, also went unnominated.
Al Pacino was not nominated for playing Vincent Hanna and maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. Pacino yells a lot in this movie. When people talk about Pacino having a reputation for bellowing his lines like a madman, they’re usually thinking about the scene where he confronts a weaselly executive (Hank Azaria) about the affair that he’s having with Charlene (Ashley Judd), the wife of criminal Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer). And yet, I think that Pacino’s performance works in the context of the film and it’s often forgotten that Pacino has quite scenes in Heat as well. Pacino’s intensity provides a contrast to Robert De Niro’s tightly controlled career criminal, Neil McCauley. McCauley has done time in prison and he has no intention of ever going back. But, as he admits during the famous diner scene, being a criminal is the only thing that he knows how to do and it’s also the only thing that he wants to do. (“The action is the juice,” Tom Sizemore says in another scene.) If any two actors deserved a joint Oscar nomination it was Pacino and De Niro. In Heat, they’re the perfect team. Pacino’s flamboyance and De Niro’s tightly-controlled emotions come together to form the heart of the picture.
No one from the film’s supporting cast was nominated either, despite there being a wealth of riches to choose from. Ashley Judd and Val Kilmer come to mind as obvious contenders. Kilmer is amazing in the shoot-out that occurs two hours into the film. Ashley Judd has a killer scene where she helps her husband escape from the police. Beyond Judd and Kilmer, I like the quiet menace of Tom Sizemore’s Michael Cheritto. (Just check out the look he gives to an onlooker who is getting a little bit too curious.) Kevin Gage’s sociopathic Waingro is one of the most loathsome characters to ever show up in a movie. William Fichtner, Jon Voight, Danny Trejo, and Tom Noonan all make a definite impression and add to Michael Mann’s portrait of the Los Angeles underworld. In an early role, Natalie Portman plays Hanna’s neglected stepdaughter and even Amy Brenneman has some good moments as Neil’s unsuspecting girlfriend, the one who Neil claims to be prepared to abandon if he sees “the heat coming.”
I have to mention the performance of Dennis Haysbert as Don Breedan, a man who has just been released from prison and who finds himself working as a cook in a diner. (The owner of the diner is played by Bud Cort.) Haysbert doesn’t have many scenes but he gives a poignant performance as a man struggling not to fall back into his old life of crime and what eventually happens to him still packs an emotional punch. For much of the film’s running time, he’s on the fringes of the story. It’s only by chance that he finds himself suddenly and briefly thrown into the middle of the action.
Heat is the ultimate Michael Mann film, a 3-hour crime epic that is full of amazing action sequences, powerful performances, and a moody atmosphere that leaves the viewer with no doubt that the film is actually about a lot more than just a bunch of crooks and the cops who try to stop them. Hanna and McCauley both live by their own code and are equally obsessed with their work. Their showdown is inevitable and, as directed by Michael Mann, it takes on almost mythological grandeur. The film is a portrait of uncertainty and fear in Los Angeles but it’s also a portrait of two men destined to confront each other. They’re both the best at what they do and, as a result, only one can remain alive at the end of the film.
I rewatched Heat yesterday and I was amazed at how well the film holds up. It’s one of the best-paced three-hour films that I’ve ever seen and that epic gunfight is still powerful and frightening to watch. Like Martin Scorsese’s Casino, it was a 1995 film that deserved more Oscar attention than it received.
Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)
Today’s scene that I love is a little scene from 1995’s Heat.
This isn’t a scene that regularly gets mentioned when it comes to discussing the many iconic scenes in this film but I picked it because it features good work from two actors who are no longer with us, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore. Add to that, Danny Trejo’s pithy comment at the end — after all the discussion that’s happened before it — is simply perfect.
It took me a while to really appreciated Jackie Brown.
I was nineteen and in college when I first watched the movie. A friend rented it and we watched it with the expectation that it would be another Tarantino film that would be full of violence, fast music, and stylish characterizations. And, of course, Jackie Brown did have all three of those. But it was also a far more melancholy film than what we were expecting and compared to something like Kill Bill, Jackie Brown definitely moved at its own deliberate pace. That’s a polite way of saying that, at times, the film seemed slow. It seemed like it took forever for the story to get going and, even once it became clear that Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max Cherry (Robert Forster) were going to steal from Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), it still felt like an oddly laid back heist. Robert de Niro, the film’s biggest star, played a guy who seemed to be brain dead. Bridget Fonda brought an interesting chaotic energy to the film but her character was disposed of in an almost off-hand manner. The whole thing just felt off. I appreciated the performances. I appreciated the music on the soundtrack. But I felt like it was one of Tarantino’s weaker films.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to better appreciate Jackie Brown. First released in 1997 and adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard, Jackie Brown finds Quentin Tarantino at his most contemplative. Indeed, Tarantino wouldn’t direct anything quite as humanistic until he did Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. If the heist seemed rather laid back, that’s because Jackie Brown really isn’t a heist film. It’s a film about aging, starring two icons of 70s exploitation. Robert Forster was 56 when he played bail bondman Max Cherry while Pam Grier was 48 when she was cast as Jackie Brown, the flight attendant turned smuggler. Jackie and Max two middle-aged people faced with a world that doesn’t really make much sense to them anymore. (Obviously, it’s easier for me to understand them now than it was when I was nineteen and I felt like the future was unlimited.) Max bails people out of jail and it’s obvious that he still has a shred of idealism within him. He actually does care about the people he gets out of jail and he’s disgusted by Ordell’s callous attitude towards the people who work for him. Jackie is a flight attendant who, when we first see her, looks like she could have just stepped out of a 1970s airline commercial. Ripping off Ordell isn’t just something that she’s doing for revenge or to protect herself, though there’s certainly an element of both those motivations in her actions. This is also her chance to finally have something for her. Jackie and Max are two lost souls who find each other and wonder where the time is gone. All of those critics who have wondered, over the years, when Quentin Tarantino would make a mature movie about real people with real problems need to rewatch Jackie Brown.
Of course, it’s still a Quentin Tarantino film. And that means we get a lot of scenes of Samuel L. Jackson talking. This is one of Jackson’s best performances. Ordell is definitely a bad guy and most viewers will be eager to see him get his comeuppance but, as played by Jackson, he’s also frequently very funny and definitely charismatic. One can understand how Ordell lures people into his trap. Jackson loves to watch video tapes of women shooting guns. He allows De Niro’s Louis to crash at his place and the scene where Ordell realizes that Louis is thoroughly incompetent is brilliantly acted by both men. And then you have Bridget Fonda, as a force of pure sunny chaos. Jackson, De Niro, and Fonda are definitely a watchable trio, even if the film rightly belongs to Pam Grier and Robert Forster.
The older I get, the more I appreciate Jackie Brown. This is the film where Tarantino revealed that there was more to his artistic vision than just movie references and comic book jokes. This film takes Tarantino’s style and puts it in the real world. It’s Tarantino at his most human.
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you find yourself awake later tonight, you can always go over to Tubi and watch the 2015 direct-to-video action thriller, Heist.
Heist takes place in Louisiana. Francis “The Pope” Silva (Robert De Niro) is a mobster and businessman who owns a riverboat casino. The Pope lives his life according to a set of simple but very specific rules. He doesn’t lend money. He doesn’t forgive people who betray him. If you steal from him, he will track you down and he will get his money back and he will make you regret your decision. Working as his main henchman is the sadistic Dog (Morris Chestnut). The Pope’s former main henchman was a man named Luke Vaughn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) but Luke grew tired of the violence and walked away from it all. Now, Luke works as a dealer in The Pope’s casino. His daughter is sick and Luke desperately needs $300,000 to pay her medial bills. When The Pope refuses to give him the money, Luke teams up with security guard Jason Cox (Dave Bautista) and sets out to rob the place.
The robbery is carefully planned by Luke but, inevitably, things go wrong. A security guard shows up earlier than he was supposed to. A shootout leads to Jason’s best friend, Dante (Stephen Cyrus Sepher), getting shot. The getaway driver panics and drives off, leading to Luke, Cox, and Dante hijacking a bus. Cox orders the bus driver (D.B. Sweeney) to take them to Galveston but Luke is more concerned with getting the money to his daughter. Meanwhile, two police officers — Kris Bajos (Gina Carano) and Detective Marconi (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) — follow the bus, each pursuing their own agenda.
Considering that this film is basically a low budget rip-off of Speed (albeit without a bomb threatening to take out the cast), Heist has an impressive cast and they all do a good job of elevating the film above its B-movie origins. Don’t get me wrong. There are hundreds of plot holes to be found in Heist. The film’s big twist really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. But, in the end, Heist is an entertaining thrill ride that moves quickly enough that most viewers really won’t have time to obsess on all the lapses of logic. Morgan plays his role with just enough heart that you want his criminal to succeed. De Niro brings some extra layers to a role that could have been a caricature. There’s a brief scene in which he meets his estranged daughter (Kate Bosworth) and, as a result, you suddenly see his character in an entirely new light. As a character who seems like a much more sinister version of Zach Morris, Mark-Paul Gosselaar keeps you guessing. And finally, Gina Carano — years before her cancellation — gives an earnest performance that works despite her character being rather inconsistently written.
Heist is an entertaining and fast-paced action film with a good cast and an interesting story. If you can’t sleep, you might as well be entertained.
Through the Shattered Lens 