Based on a memoir by former undercover cop Joe Pistone (whose daring and unprecedented infiltration of the New York Mob scene earned him a place in the federal witness protection program), Donnie Brasco is like a de-romanticised, de-mythologised version of The Godfather. It offers an uncommonly detailed, privileged glimpse inside the world of organised crime from the perspective of ...
The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual ...
Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story (very much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal's unstoppable charm made it something really special. Crystal and Meg Ryan play longtime platonic friends who keep dancing around their deeper feelings for one another. Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are their ...
The comedic genius of This Is Spinal Tap is confirmed by the fact that a majority of studio executives were utterly clueless about its brilliance. As a first-time director and cowriter, Rob Reiner must have felt simultaneously frustrated and elated, knowing that the obtuseness of movie executives was a clue to his debut project's potential greatness. Now, of course, the clarity of hindsight ...
Bert Rigby lives in the small dying town Langmore, where most people depend on badly doing mining corporation. While his fellows are on strike once again, he decides to try his luck in show-biz meanwhile. His first appearance on stage goes all wrong - but the audience loves him anyways. So he starts as a comedian in a traveling amateur show for $50 a night. One day he gets an offer from an ad ...
Based on a memoir by former undercover cop Joe Pistone (whose daring and unprecedented infiltration of the New York Mob scene earned him a place in the federal witness protection program), Donnie Brasco is like a de-romanticised, de-mythologised version of The Godfather. It offers an uncommonly detailed, privileged glimpse inside the world of organised crime from the perspective of ...
Based on a memoir by former undercover cop Joe Pistone (whose daring and unprecedented infiltration of the New York Mob scene earned him a place in the federal witness protection program), Donnie Brasco is like a de-romanticised, de-mythologised version of The Godfather. It offers an uncommonly detailed, privileged glimpse inside the world of organised crime from the perspective of ...