The irony of Martin Scorcese making such sensational headlines regarding his feelings on certain modern Hollywood trends favoring theater space instead of the more intimate and arthouse cinema of his day is that even if such an assessment were taken wholly at face value, these statements were made in junkets promoting a movie that no studio in their right mind of the last 3 decades would gamble on without serious contemplation anyway.
Billed as the epic opus of a cinematic titan of our time, "The Irishman" regails the tale of Buffalino crime family enforcer later turned crime boss Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro.
Chronicling Sheeran's 50 year rise from delivery truck driver to crime boss, the Irishman grapples with watching hard work pay off while realizing too late that the career he's chosen is not quite conducive to the simple life of family and camaraderie that he desires.
Scorsese dips into his directorial bag of previously explored and developed tricks perhaps more deeply than ever before, from telling a contemplative tale of a gangster's impending midlife crisis reflection of regret to uniting a holy trinity of his muses from previous films, with the aforementioned De Niro joined by Joe Pesci as Sheeran's best friend and Buffalino mafioso Russell Buffalino and Al Pacino as 60s American labor union president Jimmy Hoffa.
What sets apart this 3 and a half hour epic from what one may come to expect of similar productions of its ilk born from the man that brought us "Gangs of New York" and "Casino" is that this film is almost staggeringly bereft of its artist's signature sense of style regarding its very subject matter.
From Larceny and assault, to extortion and murder, "The Irishman" doesn't pull any punches about what its crime family does for a living but strips its elements of the perceptions that fictionalized storytelling tend to pump up as romantic, hypnotic, or even condemning.
The context certainly exists that allows one to understand why associating with a mafia lifestyle would be appealing and consequences are never held back on as you watch the few old men that managed to not get themselves killed living this life grow old and miserable enough to regret not getting out of it to live more freely sooner but all of it is portrayed with a level of almost absurdly unbiased bluntness that it ping pongs between feeling disturbingly real when these mobsters are operating in their heyday and laughably pitiful as they struggle to do it in their more aged and increasingly geriatric states.
Combined with dynamite performances from its leads and terrific supporting cast of character actors, that 3 and a half hour length really hammer home a sense of deconstruction to this type of narrative that few deconstructions ever truly manage.
The catch is whether or not you think that the impact of seeing one's soul hollowed out over a lifetime of illicit activity tinged with regret justifies a runtime that only arthouse theaters would flock towards.
With the age of streaming breaking traditional molds of distribution and television productions impending upon film grade production techniques without sacrificing the medium's characteristic sense of in depth development, "The Irishman" sits as something of an odd duck of a product, dedicated to telling a narrative potentially unsuited to the constraints of films within said medium by pushing every aspect of that medium to its absolute limit.
Framing the narrative through Sheeran's narration, reflecting on his life in his final years at a nursing home with De Niro's charismatic performance help to keep the movie from dragging but the amount of ground that needs to be covered doesn't leave but so much breathing room, forcing the film to really lean into a set up that comes across as a string of scenes from a man's life playing out in loose succession but without firm narrative cohesion.
For all of the talk about this film being Scorcesee's opus, it ultimately feels like more of an experiment; cinema made for the sake of exploring new grounds for the medium itself to cover.
Although admirable, what kills this level of ambition is the advancements of the past few decades which have proven firmly that film is not the only viable medium in which certain stories can be told anymore.
This dulls much of the movie's bite, as I couldn't help but wonder if all of my issues with it structurally that were softened by clever direction and editing but were ultimately unavoidable, couldn't have been totally circumvented if the movie was set up as a miniseries of 4 episodes at an hour of length rather than compacted into a standalone cinematic narrative.
"The Irishman" is compelling, fascinating, and chock full of some of 2019's best acting performances but sometimes, too much of a good thing can be a problem. The film is most definitely admirable. Whether or not it's lovable is an issue I can't help but feel may be more than a little polarizing.
7 Fears of Getting Whacked by Cinephiles out of 10
There's no way to tackle "Playmobil: The Movie" in traditional manner and if what I saw on screen is indicative of the amount of effort put into it by its filmmakers in order to bring it to "life," it isn't worth my time to even try.
So rather than deliver the usual spiel the flick's synopsis and analysis of measuring quality of execution against intent and possibility, allow me to save you, the reader, and me the time that could be better invested elsewhere by just laying out what is "good" about the second rate cinematic Lego based on the real life second rate Lego.
From an animation standpoint, the crew for the film does an admirable job. It's nothing spectacular but the art direction does manage to capture a more sincere and innocent side of childhood imagination that compliments the frenetic simulation-like off the cuff antics of "The Lego Movie."
Ditto for the direction of the movie; for what it's worth, there's a prevailing sense that the animators and director are all doing what they can with a crap assignment.
Additionally, leading lady Anya Taylor-Joy actually has the makings of a solid voice actress, a transition that few screen actors are capable of.
That's about where the list ends, as the ensuing hour and a half long endeavor of lifeless and creatively bankrupt set pieces set pieces set to musical numbers so generic one could be forgiven for thinking they were watching a snippet from a fake movie crafted to play in the background of an actual film or television show not meant to be focused on may be one of the most joyless and tasking theater experiences that an animated movie has ever subjected me to.
Following a sibling duos adventures upon being magically transported to the land of Playmobil as a means of working out their issues with one another 4 years after the death of their parents, "Playmobil: The Movie" only goes down hill after putting a pitifully weak foot forward to begin with.
The film opens up with the siblings in live action in a segment so painfully stiff and poorly directed I'd be inclined to say that I've seen Disney Channel Original Movies with better coordinated productions, except that the lower budgets and smaller well of resources for those features means that the people doing them typically have to have a drive and hunger to pull them off, resulting in features that have far more energy despite a fraction of the budget and established talent.
An adventure that unfolds, involving the take down of an evil Roman Emperor that exists solely for the sake of having an antagonist while traversing a slop bucket of playsets available for purchase at a toy store near you, preaches the values and wonders of experiencing the world, nurturing your inner child, and never giving up fun loving spirit less you become a closed off and cruel curmudgeon.
This story is framed through the experience of an 18 year old girl that had to sacrifice her rightfully earned time to explore herself and who she wants to be in order to be the household adult raising her kid brother. She's chastised for not being a kid, when she needs to be a rock for her unappreciative younger brother.
I'd rail against using the stock road trip adventure story archetype to push this sort of backward morality harder but the true killer of "Playmobil: The Movie" is that it's just too boring to be worth the trouble.
I'd be willing to say that this is perhaps even worse than 2017's "The Emoji Movie." At least that film advertised its badness from a mile away and was perversely fascinating to observe on the mere foundation that studio executives had the audacity to allow it to exist, even if the results were just as dreary and dull.
"Playmobil: The Movie," doesn't have the same excuse. Terrible as it is and at a time when even Lego movies are on a downward critical and financial spiral, they had some material to pull from in order to make something at least passable. What has been produced would barely pass for a Nick Jr. special on day time cable television.
2 Views More Than This Thing is Ever Likely to See out of 10
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