The Screengrab : goodfellas

Reviews By Request: King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Once again, thanks to Scott Tobias from the Onion AV Club for recommending this film, which he previously selected for his weekly column “The New Cult Canon.”

One of Christopher Walken’s greatest assets as an actor is his unpredictability. Watching Walken onscreen, it’s hard to tell how he’s going to deliver even the most mundane bit of dialogue, much less predict how his characters will behave under pressure. But while Walken’s off-kilter presence has garnered him a sizable cult following, it’s easy to overlook what a fascinating actor he can be in more complex roles. In many of his character roles, Walken has fun with his image, but he’s not afraid to play it straight when the part calls for it. Abel Ferrara’s King of New York is one of those parts, and consequently one of his best performances.

Frank White, the crime lord Walken plays in King of New York, is one of the most frightening criminals I’ve ever seen in a movie, due in large part to the unpredictability that Walken brings to the role. From the first time we meet Frank, he seems to be capable of anything, which gives him an edge in his criminal endeavors. Most of his competition sticks to hard and fast traditions, the most important being that the bigwigs keep their hands clean while the foot soldiers fight the wars. Frank has no use for such traditions- when he needs someone killed, he’d just as soon do it himself. There are many possibilities as to why Frank would do this, but I think it’s because he wants people to think he’s the baddest, scariest man in New York. And when he follows the killing of a rival gang leader by inviting his underlings to join his gang, it sends a very specific message- if you’re crazy enough to follow a guy who does this, I want you on my side.

Consequently, many of Frank’s foot soldiers are as volatile as he is- and some even share his flair for the theatrical, as when one storms into a hotel room shootout screaming, “room service, motherfuckers!” In addition, Frank’s gang could be called “post-racial”- whereas Frank’s rivals generally adhere to ethnic boundaries, such concerns are beneath Frank. Most of his underlings are African-American- two of his most prominent foot soldiers are played by Laurence (then Larry) Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito- but Steve Buscemi also turns up as Frank’s in-house drug tester. And Frank’s own ethnicity- just look at his name- allows him an entry in legitimate society that would be more limited to other criminals of his stature.

It’s this air of near-legitimacy that rankles the NYPD, especially a trio of cops played by David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, and Victor Argo. Whereas the power of the city’s other top criminals is relatively contained to the underworld, Frank hobnobs with New York’s elite, turning up at black-tie parties and charity events. “He’s a movie star,” says Caruso, who bemoans the fact that Frank is running roughshod over the city while he and his partners are only bringing in a modest policeman’s salary. But how to stop him? Caruso and Snipes determine that in order to catch Frank, they need to be as crazy as he is. It isn’t until it’s too late (when Frank crashes one cop’s funeral to kill another one) that that discover that crazy isn’t enough- one must also be lucky.

Argo’s Roy Bishop is the one exception to the film’s cycle of brutality- the one “good cop” who sticks to his principles and hopes to bring Frank in not by sneaking around but by nuts-and-bolts police work. We see him sitting at home in front of his computer, sifting through police files in an attempt to make a case. Throughout the film, Ferrara contrasts Roy’s steadfast adherence to old-fashioned morality with Frank’s more slippery kind of ethics, and Frank understandably sees Roy as his biggest threat. I found it interesting to see Argo, who usually played wiseguys, playing the closest thing this film has to a steady moral compass.

King of New York is one of the bleakest crime movies I’ve ever seen, with one scene of unsparing violence after another. But it’s stylish enough that it’s anything but a slog- like GoodFellas and Scarface before it, it’s amassed a considerable cult, even serving as an inspiration for the late Notorious B.I.G. I’ve only seen a handful of Ferrara films to date, but one thing that’s impressed me about them is how stylish his films can be despite their budgetary limitations. In King of New York, Ferrara uses the low budget to his advantage, setting scenes in scruffy back-alleys and abandoned buildings to give the film a grittier feel than most movies of its kind. I also liked that Frank’s home isn’t an expansive estate but a suite at the Plaza, which combines a location in the heart of New York (perfect for shots of him overlooking the city) with a kind of rented luxury that says everything about the mystique Frank wants to create for himself.

At the center of it all is the enigma of Frank White. Throughout the film Ferrara and Walken invite us to ask the question, what drives this man? Late in the film, he confronts Roy in his apartment and tells him that he considers himself a businessman rather than a criminal, and states that “I never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.” But how to reconcile that with the charge he seems to get from his power? Or for that matter, what of his efforts to save a children’s hospital in a poor neighborhood? One thing’s for sure- he’s hooked on his sense of power. When he says he wants to run for mayor, everyone laughs until Frank tells them he’s serious. Is he? Who are we to question him?

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Let's say the opening sequence in The Wild Bunch runs through the moment when they escape their first gun battle of the movie. During the credits, the Bunch rides into town in stolen uniforms, passing teetotalers and children who have tossed scorpions in among angry ants. The enormous and lethal scorpions being brought down by millions of ants? That's less a metaphor than foreshadowing. The Bunch heads into a bank, where they quickly begin to execute their plan to rob it. And the first line from The Bunch's leader, Pike, is "if they move, kill 'em."

Soon the Bunch becomes aware that they're trapped, with gunmen hired by the railroad lining the rooftops across the street. They decide to use the passing parade of teetotalers to create confusion while they make their getaway. In the ensuing shootout, lots of innocent people die. And that's how we meet our anti-heroes, crooks lined up against the even-more-crooked railroad, bad men in bad times. The shootout is both exciting and horrific, both meant to titillate and disgust the viewer, much like the film as a whole. Sam Peckinpah knew that audiences have bloodlust, because having bloodlust is just part of being human. And he reveled in that bloodlust because he also knew that it never leads anywhere good. You want violence?, he seems to ask, well, what do you think of the leading man's horse trampling a woman? How about a man being shot full of holes in front of a couple of kids? Violence only begets violence in Peckinpah's eye. And there's no escape from it. In this movie, released at the height of the Vietnam War, Peckinpah is asking: is this the world that you want? Is your only choice whether to be a scorpion or an ant? (HC)

BLOW OUT (1981)

Throughout the 1970s, Brian DePalma positioned himself as Hollywood’s latest “Master of the Macabre”, a self-appointed heir to the mantle of Hitchcock. And in this vein, the first few minutes of Blow Out feel like a logical progression of his career -- a DePalma-esque pastiche of a fly-by-night coed slasher picture, complete with a subjective camera straight out of Halloween. What’s sort of surprising is how right DePalma gets the feel of these movies, from the clumsy camera movements (no confident Steadicam in this scene) to the oppressive cut-rate synth score and sound effects, to the nameless actresses cast entirely for their taut physiques. Gradually it dawns on the audience that this scene is a joke, and a damn good one too. But DePalma saves his best joke for last, as the killer infiltrates the shower room, draws his knife and pulls back the curtain to reveal a blonde who turns to the camera and… well, “screams” isn’t quite the word for it. “What cat did you have to strangle to get that?” asks the mixer to the sound guy, played by John Travolta. DePalma has always been fascinated with the nuts and bolts of making cinema, and he’s never been shy about sharing them with the audience, with Blow Out being perhaps the best example of this tendency. But even more important is the way DePalma uses the opening scene to set up the film’s finale, in which Travolta finally gets the right scream, albeit in the worst way imaginable. The way DePalma sets up this goal for his protagonist and then lets him back into accomplishing it would be clever and funny if it wasn’t so unbearably sad. (PC)

GOODFELLAS (1990)

Like most great directors, Martin Scorsese knows the value of starting a movie off right, in order to reel the audience into the story he’s telling. But while most of his films have pretty killer openings, nothing he’s done before or since has topped the first few minutes of GoodFellas. Instead of starting at the beginning of the story -- the early years of his protagonist Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) -- he begins in media res, with Henry and his crew, Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci), driving down the highway in the middle of the night. Suddenly, there’s a knocking sound coming from behind them, and they eventually discover that it’s the bloodied body in the trunk, not quite as dead as they’d thought it was. As hooks go, this one’s a doozy -- who are these guys, and who’s the ill-fated man in the trunk? But look also at how Scorsese uses the situation to efficiently establish the three men’s personalities -- Jimmy the cool customer, Tommy the violent hothead, and Henry the follower, standing back and taking it all in. A more conventional film might have begun with the glamorous trappings of the gangster lifestyle, but Scorsese begins with the violence and doubles back to the fun stuff, so that while we watch Henry and pals living the high life, we’ve already seen them doing the dirty deeds it took to get them there. And it’s telling that when Henry’s voiceover starts up, stating that “as far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster” before Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” kicks in, the image we see onscreen is Henry’s weary face, numbed to the brutal spectacle taking place before his eyes. (PC)

DEAD MAN (1995)

In less than 8 minutes, Jim Jarmusch has Johnny Depp's William Blake leave the relative comfort of late-19th century civilization and travel by train backwards into savagery. The landscape outside grows more and more brutal, as do his fellow passengers. When Crispin Glover's train fireman comes to undercut his assumptions (i.e., spout weirdness at him, this being Crispin Glover), Blake gets his first glimpse of just how far outside of his world he has traveled. Glover says that he "wouldn't trust no words on no paper" and Blake should realize right there how fucked he is. He doesn't, though. He really has no choice but to follow through, even if that mean staring down Robert Mitchum and his gun. Even as he speaks to Glover, his fellow passengers, hunters and trappers by their garb, leap up and start firing out of the train at buffalo, denying their meat to the Native Americans, and dealing death without meaning to the majestic animals. Life and death don't carry the same weight out here, a lesson Blake will not learn until too late. (HC)

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

Was it Oscar Wilde who said "talent borrows, genius steals"? No one knows this better than Quentin Tarantino. In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman stands motionless on an LAX conveyor belt while "Sound of Silence" plays in the background. In Jackie Brown, Pam Grier starts out on a conveyor belt at the more low rent Long Beach airport. Queue Bobby Womack's "110th Street." We see her in her bright blue airhostess uniform, nicely matching the mosaic background. Cut to x-ray images showing the insides of a few — is that a gun, or am I imagining things? A security guard's metal detector floats over some woman's white-pantsed crotch. Meanwhile Jackie glides through security with her bag and uniform, walks then picks up and runs, making it to her job at the gate just in time to greet passengers with a friendly airhostess smile. What more do you need to let you know you're in for sex, drugs, and desperation to get out of a dead-end job, just barely under the surface in sunny California? (SCS)

And finally...

JAWS (1975) & STAR WARS (1977)

A naked woman disappears in the water at night, devoured by a terrifying unseen monster, effectively terrifying generations of beach enthusiasts within minutes...a massive starship soars over my pubescent head, which very nearly explodes in sheer, geeky excitement...I don't really have much new to say about either film or their iconic, totally kick-ass opening sequences...but, damn, we couldn't really end our list of all-time great beginnings without them, now could we? (AO)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Hayden Childs, Paul Clark, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Andrew Osborne

Robert De Niro’s Pantyhose and Other Treasures

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:30:00 GMT

In 2006, Robert De Niro donated an archival collection containing “more than 1,300 boxes of papers, film, movie props and costumes” from throughout his motion picture career to the Harry Ransom Center, a research library and museum at the University of Texas in Austin. “Filling more than 300 archival boxes, the paper portion of the collection includes De Niro's heavily-annotated scripts and correspondence, make-up and wardrobe photographs, wardrobe continuity books, costume designs and posters, and extensive production, publicity and research material,” according to a press release from the Ransom Center.

“With about 8,500 items filling more than 1,000 boxes, the costumes and props within the collection constitute the Center's largest single costume holding and include such iconic items as the leopard-print boxing robe worn by De Niro in Raging Bull (1980) and the voluminous, body-length coats of the creature in Frankenstein (1994). Some of the costumes and props are accompanied by wardrobe continuity books that include notes from the wardrobe crew and photographs of De Niro in costume.”

It took more than two years to inventory and catalogue the collection, but it is finally available for viewing by the public. The Ransom Center’s web site has a searchable inventory, so I was able to find a few items of particular interest, including:

Key chain with key and silver fob engraved with “Hotel Ritz” from Goodfellas

Off-white cotton briefs with blue, white, and gold elastic waistband (Fruit of the Loom, manufacturer) from Meet the Fockers

Beige lycra sheer seamless pantyhose, worn by De Niro in Cape Fear

You’ll need an appointment to view De Niro’s pantyhose, but I think we can all agree it’s worth it.

Trailer Review: The Limits of Control

Paul Clark — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

As a longtime fan of the films of Jim Jarmusch, I sometimes find it difficult to pin down what exactly it is that draws me to his work. Perhaps it has something to do with the melting-pot nature of his stories, which throw together seemingly incompatible elements as a way of testing whether they’ll fit. How else to explain the fusion of samurai lore and sub-GoodFellas mafia movie that is Ghost Dog, or the William Blake-infused meta-Western Dead Man? With his latest, The Limits of Control, Jarmusch appears to be returning to Ghost Dog territory, with the story of a lone-gunman type (Jarmusch regular Isaach de Bankolé) who finds himself embroiled in… well, some kind of intrigue. Rather than going into much detail on the plot, this trailer seems primarily to work as a way of conveying a spiritual, fatalistic vibe and showing off the super-cool supporting cast (Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal, John Hurt, Bill Murray, not to mention unnamed favorites like Hiam Abbass and Alex Descas). Beyond that, I have no idea what to expect from The Limits of Control- I just know that I can’t wait to see more.

Screengrab Review: "Pride and Glory"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Gavin O'Connor's new film, Pride and Glory, has a plan: it's mapped out all the things it wants to remind you of. It clearly wants to echo the moral ambiguity of The Wire, the multigenerational sweep of The Godfather, the close-knit web of loyalty and betrayal of The Departed. But since it's O'Connor at the helm instead of the talented folks who brought you those stories, it conjures them in tone only, never in quality, and leaves you asking: haven't I seen this movie before -- like, a hundred times?.

If O'Connor started out with a script that wasn't particularly going anywhere, and if he wasn't especially going to bring anything to the table as the director, he at least gave us some actors with juice to play his family of often-shady New York police officers. Edward Norton, who isn't the world's most consistent performer but is occasionally capable of greatness, plays Ray Tierney, a conflicted hard-ass who is divided between fidelity to his insular cop clan and a desire to do the right thing no matter what. This sort of agonized moralist is a specialty of Nortons, but here he just seems sort of bored. Jon Voight, on the other hand, seems to be having a ball as the family's drunken father figure, and even though the vast majority of his dialogue are windy cliches, he livens up the flick every moment he's on screen. No such luck with Colin Farrell, toothy at the best of times and absolutely ludicrous here: as bad-boy brother-in-law Jimmy Egan, he might as well be twirling a Snidley Whiplash mustache and tying his wife (named, no kidding, Megan Egan) to a railroad track.

Pride and Glory tries for the kind of intensity conjured by movies like Serpico, Donnie Brasco, and Goodfellas, which is probably why all its highfalutin talk about honor and loyalty and devotion sound so familiar. But it's not a comfortable familiarity; it's a boring one. The movie never really picks up, even in its most action-packed scenes, because it has an unwarranted confidence in the dramatic potential of its plot, and an unjustified trust in the ability of its lead actors to deliver it. Farrell's goofy performance aside, there's not that much about it to actively dislike; but there's certainly not much to like, either. It's the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac: overstuffed, not very good for you, and you've already tried it so many times that you don't even really taste it anymore.

Screengrab Review: W.

EW Makes Great-Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs

Paul Clark — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With last week blessedly free of celebrities getting knocked up and/or being caught without underwear, Entertainment Weekly has seized upon this fallow period in entertainment news to unveil yet another list for your perusal. In this week’s double issue, EW’s writing staff unveiled their lists of “The New Classics” in a number of media, including their top 100 movies of the last quarter century. There were a few pleasant surprises- like #4 pick Blue Velvet making its second prominent appearance on a high-profile list in less than a week (after the latest AFI special)- and you can't really argue with Pulp Fiction at #1, but many of the choices left something to be desired. Put it another way- if you know both jack and shit about cinema, EW’s list is bound to feel pretty unsatisfactory, with a whopping six foreign-language films and two documentaries out of 100.

Of course, the makers of such lists are always prone to stating that their goal is to “stir up debate.” So in the proud Screengrab tradition of speaking truth (or at least strongly-worded fibs) to power, I’d like to go on record to state that a number of masterpieces of the past 25 years were ignominiously robbed in order to make way for the likes of Pretty Woman. On top of that, a few of the movies that made the list were so unceremoniously- and undeservingly- buried near the bottom that their inclusion is arguably even more of a disgrace when you consider the titles that outrank them. In keeping with EW’s format, I’ve kept the artsy-fartsy to a minimum- no shorts, no avant-garde, no mentions of Peter Watkins. Instead I’ve selected five pretty accessible movies (including a foreign-language pick) and one classic that deserved far better than EW wanted to give it.

But first, a note to EW’s webmaster: your online feature on the 26 greatest movie posters doesn’t want to scroll over to the poster for The Limey. Please fix this immediately. Thank you.

Now, my alternate selections, in no particular order:

The New World- to my eyes, the finest American film of the last 25 years. Should have qualified just by being one of the most beautiful films ever made, but there’s more to Terence Malick’s masterpiece than gorgeous cinematography and panoramic shots of nature. Malick’s re-creation of the founding of Virginia and the resulting “settlement” of the land is always completely convincing, transporting the viewer into the lifestyle (and mindsets) of the time in a way few period pieces can manage. But it’s also a heartrending love story of a particularly mature kind, as Pocahontas (the glowing Q’Orianka Kilcher) must learn to let go of her childish love in order to find sustainable happiness with another. The New World is a marvel, and I expect that we’ll be seeing it on plenty of lists in the decades to come.

Naked- Now, I can kind of understand leaving Malick off your list, since the guy’s only made two movies during the eligible period. But what’s your excuse when it comes to Mike Leigh? Even the Academy has caught on to Leigh’s greatness- witness the bevy of nominations for Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake- but for my money his best work to date is still Naked. Of course, it’s something of a bitter pill to swallow, with an almost painfully bleak view of human nature. And in the middle of it all is David Thewlis, giving one of the all-time great performances, as the compulsively verbal misanthrope Johnny, the kind of bastard whose sole redeeming virtue is that he knows exactly how much of a bastard he is. Thewlis owns the film, creating from the ground up a character so fascinating that we can’t help but watch him, mouth often agape, up through the film’s magnificent final shot.

Heavenly Creatures- Hey EW, you know that Peter Jackson guy? The one whose most famous films you’ve placed prominently at #2? Well, he did make movies before Lord of the Rings, and in its way Heavenly Creatures is just as good if not better. Beginning with a true-crime story that would in other hands have lent itself to sensationalism- teenage lesbian murderers!- Jackson instead crafted in alternately invigorating and harrowing movies about the seductiveness, and the dangers, of fantasy. As Pauline and Juliet (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, in their breakthrough roles) grow ever more attached to their King-Arthur-meets-Ayn-Rand fairy tale land, they increasingly feel compelled to defend it against the encroachment of the everyday world, until the story commences in a sudden, shocking act of violence that sends these killer angels crashing back to Earth forever.

Once Upon a Time in America- Once again, Sergio Leone’s final masterwork is the odd man out among gangster dramas, with the EW writers forwarding the unfortunate notion that the genre began with The Godfather and ended with GoodFellas, with a brief stopover in Scarface Land. Leone’s film may not have the iconic status of Coppola, the seductiveness of Scorsese, or the gangsta cachet of DePalma, but as a cinematic achievement, it deserves respect, at least in its 227-minute long version. As a minor-key elegy for a crime culture that has long since passed, Once Upon a Time in America mops the floor with The Godfather, Part III, with as many classic moments as any film in Leone’s oeuvre. You’ll never look at a garbage truck the same way again.

Three Colors Trilogy- I debated including Decalogue on this list but decided against it because it premiered on television. But I had no such problem with Kieslowski’s trilogy, a wholly unique- yet entirely approachable- grand work in three parts. In telling three intimate stories, Kieslowski manages to capture a specific end-of-the-millennium worldview, as well as some surprising insights into human nature in general. But the film’s true power comes from their simplicity- Kieslowski tells us everything we need to know about these people and their lives, if only we know where (and how) to look. Beyond that, they’re just ravishing cinema, with the scores of Zbigniew Preisner ranking among the greatest ever written for the screen.

And finally…

Back to the Future- #91? Really? Working from perhaps the tightest and cleverest screenplay ever made into a Hollywood blockbuster, Robert Zemeckis and company turned what was essentially a comedic take on Americana into a genuine piece of Americana itself. How many movies of the past quarter century are this widely seen, or so beloved by all sectors of the moviegoing audience? Back to the Future is a textbook case of all the pieces lining up just so, as well as a testament to how wonderful a big-budget movie when the filmmakers trust their assembled elements enough to stay out of their own damn way. But hey, if you guys really think Shrek, Gladiator, Speed, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Beverly Hills Cop, Dirty Dancing (?!?!?), Out of Africa, and Napoleon Dynamite are all better than Back to the Future, I guess I don’t have anything left to say to you.

The Rep Report (February 1-7)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Since last Thanksgiving, Village audiences have been turning out in force at the Film Forum for I'm Not There, so the theater shouldn't have too much trouble drawing an audience for a week-long showing (February 1-7) of D. A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back, the documentary record of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the United Kingdom, complete with Joan Baez singing away in her own little bubble, Dylan's notorious manager Albert Grossman auditioning for Tony Hendra's role in This Is Spinal Tap (and maybe Joe Pesci's role in GoodFellas), drop-in appearances by Donovan and Alan Price, and one of the all-time great pre-MTV music videos, with Dylan standing in the street flipping cue cards while Allen Ginsberg standing off to the sidelines looking as if he knows deep and ancient truths, even if he was really just wondering about the location of the buffet table. Released in 1967, Pennebaker's movie established Dylan as an icon of movie cool, much more effectively than his early attempts at actual movie "acting" (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Renaldo and Clara). If you've never seen it, you'll want to check it out to decide for yourself how the man himself compares with Cate Blanchett.

On February 1, as part of its "Golden Silents" program, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is hosting a special one-night event, a rare screening of Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, a 1927, sixty-seven-minute film by the men who made King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The simple story about a family farm in a jungle setting is a pretext for the exciting natural wildlife footage; the movie includes fights with big cats and a bang-up elephant stampede — make no mistake, animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture. But its mixture of awe in the face of natural beauty and man-on-safari edginess will help you understand why everyone in Hollywood understood that the jungle-raping showman in King Kong was a Cooper self-portrait. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by the Alloy Orchestra.

Famous Last Words: Round 1, Week 2

Paul Clark — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Well, the plan for the first week of Famous Last Words was to post something easy, and we'd say we succeeded. Every contestant was able to identify the final line from Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas. We may not have weeded out any of the more casual movie lovers out there, but now at least we know who our friends are. Thanks to all who played.

This week's quote is should be a touch little more obscure, but still pretty manageable if you've seen the film. In addition, we think it more or less sums up our philosophy for the contest:

"The end is important in all things."

Send your guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com. If you need a reminder of the ground rules, click here. And remember, all guesses are due by next Wednesday night at 11:59 pm. Good luck!