It was funny. Clearly intended so. Hilarious? To you okay.
Whereas the choice made on the grocer scene distance made made the scene a bit funny not “distant”. Analyzing what is in the filmmaker’s mind as an intellectual exercise is not what I want to be doing. It gets me feeling and thinking one way or it doesn’t. Like I said my first comment, worth seeing as an item of technique, in that “intellectual” sense, but boring emotionally and otherwise. Maybe it stands as a meta commentary on the genre? I am no expert in that. Critics are I guess and care about that. It just doesn’t work as entertainment … to me.
While I agree that there was some intentional subversion of the standard gangster-movie tropes, that doesn’t mean every flaw (or even the specific flaw being discussed—the grocer beating) can be shrugged off as “satire.” For it to be satire, it needs to be intentional, and I’m not quite satisfied it was, as opposed to yet another consequence of using old men to portray middle-aged men.
My head is spinning. Every gangster movie that came out in the last 50 years has been advertised as “another take” on it. The flicks from the 70s were another take on the ones from the 30s. Yet all of the sudden in 2019 this is the “real” other take. I guess we should be grateful to be alive for it.
The things you are saying about this movie were also said about goodfellas. But after goodfellas becomes a culture meme and phenomenon, and people were attracted to the violence, it lost that meaning.
People have objections to the film but you don’t answer those. You just say that we’re hipster snobs. But it feels like you are retrofitting all your arguments to defend what’s on screen no matter what. You can have your opinion about what scorcese is doing but it sounds like you are scrambling to be honest.
Hey, I gave it a 6 out of 10. That’s mildly watchable (just not re-watchable) in my book. If it had been properly edited and cut down to size, I might even be calling it great (though, probably not with the miscast leads—do you suppose that supposed to be satire, too?).
Okay, lots of people agree with you. Or are pretentiously pretending to because they want to appear hip enough to understand why this boring dreg was great …
Seriously your telling those of us unimpressed that we are lying about our opinions is … weird. I do not like green thug and mob. I do not like them Bob you slob.
I asked why opinion on the SDMB seems to be overwhelmingly negative while opinion elsewhere is overwhelmingly positive. I haven’t had any credible answer to this yet.
Who do you think owes you this credible answer? We’ve told you our own various reasons for not liking it (correction, not loving it), and a few have even posited an explanation for why it might have been so well reviewed (brand recognition) even if it’s not truly great, so I’m really not sure what else you would expect.
It’s essentially a straight to Netflix film with a limited theatrical release so that it could be hyped up by the studio to garner awards nominations (typical Oscarbait) and on the viewer side, it’s as much a self-selecting audience as any other film, possibly more so than your usual Scorsese production since you really have to go out of your way to see it if you don’t have Netflix.
Kind of like Mudbound (2017). Another film that is passable for a single viewing, even managed to get some Oscar nominations, but otherwise just kind of passed by unnoticed (which, on reviewing my IMDb account, I see I also rated a 6 out of 10).
To be specific you asked this very odd (and quite insulting) question:
What I want to know is why anyone would think those are the three choices, and why anyone would ever expect any specific subgroup of self-selected people to have the same distribution of opinions as the subgroups that are users of Rotten Tomato or Metacritic?
Liking a movie or not is rarely a matter of being smarter or dumber or more or less perceptive. It is a matter of taste. Probably this movie is a big hit with those who ave been huge fans of Scorcese’s other gangster movies, and maybe of the mob movie in general. Maybe those who reviewed on those sites are mostly those people and fewer of us are? I’m not. I did not see his other gangster movies in the theater, haven’t even bothered to stream them, and only watched this because of the press it was getting and it was no special effort other than moving it ahead of more Parks and Rec episodes since Mrs. Maisel’s hadn’t yet dropped. I would never have seen this in a theater even if it was a 90 minute movie.
Its value as a meta-commentary on the genre and as a capstone to his past work is of no interest to me. I view it as something on its own.
To me it is a bit like a recent era in modern art. The works’ meanings were only in their meta-commentary on art historically - the idea of a painting that had no visible brushstrokes of a large brushstroke - made sense if one understood the history involved. And I can understand why those with that knowledge base felt those works were of value. But my viewing of art is not one that is that informed always, and if the work does not evoke something significant out of me, either emotionally or intellectually, then it is a fail for me. That meta-commentary I even understood but to me still was a not anything significant intellectually or emotionally.
Speaking for myself I get that those with a strong connection to Scorcese’s past works, his big fans who likely posted lots of those reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and include many critics, found serious meaning in his meta-commentaries, felt emotional resonances based on the actors playing the parts, and allusions to his past works I presume.
What I can tell you is that the movie did NOT work for this individual without that established knowledge base, fan status, and existing emotional connections to the actors playing these sorts of parts. Naive to those things it was a fail … for me and I suspect to many others who were not already huge Scorcese fanbois.
So maybe that means I am “dumber” because I do not have the requisite knowledge of the genre and of Scorcese’s past works “to see the subtler aspects of the movie”? Could be. And maybe some others here are in that way “dumb” like me? Could be. Maybe it works as a great movie for Scorcese fanbois and others lack the knowledge base to appreciate it. If that is who the movie is for then fine. It just wasn’t for me.
The message that a life of crime is not so glamorous and that in the end an amoral person ended up with no meaningful relationships, outliving the person who he possibly actually cared most about, his mob mentor, and maybe with a few (too few) regrets by the end just does not strike me as all that profound or even well made. The final 20 minutes that Scorcese apparently thinks has such emotional impact just had none on me. Again maybe because I lacked the requisite knowledge base, but it was just a meh. Hell I’ve known real people with meaningful lives lived well with value added to the world still sad and lonely in nursing homes at the ends of their lives no one appreciating who they were and what they accomplished. That such happened to a thug whose only skill was a near complete lack of morals and empathy? Yawn.
But tastes vary and it resonated for you. And others who are “smart” enough I guess. Okay.
FWIW, I’ve seen and enjoyed many/most of Scorsese’s other works, including all of his gangster films and every one of his feature films of the last 20 years, including Hugo. Even so, well… I’ve already expressed my “meh” feelings on this upthread.
All that to say, I don’t think just being familiar with his most closely related works guarantees much appreciation for this new film, either.
ETA: Casino… now THAT had a great scene with old men beating on someone.
I watched Goodfellas the other day, even though I’ve seen it a million times. The “You think I’m a clown?” scene gets me every time. Despite how despicable Henry Hill is, you can’t help but sympathize with him when he thinks Tommy is serious.
There’s no scene like that The Irishman for me. I can’t think of a scene in the whole movie that I would want to sit through again.
Well GreenWyveen, you are not alone, I thought the film was excellent and moved much faster than 3 1/2 hours. I was never bored for a minute and I thought all of the leads gave excellent performers. I will fault the film for the de-aging, when they try to show DeNiro and Pesci as younger I think it was a complete failure. DeNiro’s eyes were way to bright blue and his face did not look real. And some of the timelines with the flashbacks within flashbacks were a bit confusing (we see RFK talking to Joe Gallo in one scene, then Gallo is in a scene at a club where Frank’s daughter Peggy is still a kid, then after Frank kills Gallo we see Peggy watching it on the news and all of a sudden she’s a young woman? What year is this now!?)
But aside from the de-aging and the timelines I thought the rest was great!
I thought Pacino’s Hoffa was more just “loud Pacino”, and less of a portrayal.
But I think the “10 minutes late - that’s traffic. But 15 minutes, that’s saying something” may be quoted (I have already started
Overall I thought it was a good movie, but not Scorcese’s “best” as it is being touted.
It was really refreshing to see Joe Pesci not play the same, brash, violent mobster as in “Goodfellas” or “Casino”.
Sure, at the end he breaks character and it’s all a big laugh. But he isn’t just joshing around; he is trying to scare Henry (and everyone) on purpose, to demonstrate his dominance. And he wants to make sure everyone knows he really isn’t a clown.
Rewatched it, with mrAru this time around. He also liked it as entertainment not documentary history. He agreed that the unaging was too uncanny valley, and they still moved like old farts. While we both agree with the faults, we did agree it was entertaining with no deep inner meaning.
We had a discussion with the disposal of Hoffa, and we both agree - if we were to dispose of him in that time period, we would haul him off to a restaurant or meat packing plant, stash m in a deep freeze long enough to render him solid, then off to a boat with a gasoline powered wood chipper and a chain saw. WE would chop him into convenient grinding size, chip him into the water then drop the chipper and saw over the side, and then thoroughly wash the boat down, we had a side discussion of tarp vs those huge clear plastic sheets one used when painting rooms for draping around to keep the worse of the goop off the boat. We certainly wouldn’t leave the body interred anywhere someone could find him …
I grew up in the Detroit area and was in high school when Hoffa’s disappearance happened. Our take was to rename our school lunches as “Hoffa-burgers”.
