The Irishman (I Hear You Tag Spoilers)

[RumHam]

Surprised not to see a thread already. I'm only a little over halfway through but I love it so far. Happy to see Stephen Graham and a few other faces from Boardwalk Empire show up. 

The book it's based on is such obvious bullshit. Someone once mockingly called him "the Forrest Gump of organized crime." like really you

 

 

personally delivered arms to the cubans who died at the bay of pigs? ok sure.  I half expected them to put Sheeran on the grassy knoll. 

 

edit: Also really enjoying Domenick Lombardozzi's audition for The Thing. 

[Zorral]

Too distracted with pre-Thanksgiving cooking and other pre-Thanksgiving matters to give it the kind of attention I want to.  So am waiting until later.

Savoring the wait -- I've waited this long already.  But I want no interruptions from anything or anybody.  Though I am also glad I am going to see it on Netflix since it is so long.  I can take breaks. I couldn't sit through 3 1/2 hours in a movie theater, even if there was an intermission.  I love that I can do this at home. Without other people around.   (Flu fears, etc.)

 

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

Surprised not to see a thread already. I'm only a little over halfway through but I love it so far. Happy to see Stephen Graham and a few other faces from Boardwalk Empire show up. 

The book it's based on is such obvious bullshit. Someone once mockingly called him "the Forrest Gump of organized crime." like really you

  Hide contents

 

personally delivered arms to the cubans who died at the bay of pigs? ok sure.  I half expected them to put Sheeran on the grassy knoll. 

 

edit: Also really enjoying Domenick Lombardozzi's audition for The Thing. 

Yeah, the Gump association makes sense, many historical items touched on. I enjoyed the movie for what it was, a fictional telling of some real life happenings. Don't think I will ever watch it again though.

The one thing i liked, as weird as it sounds were the hits. No over blown dramatic scenes, just, hey,,,bammmm, end scene.

[Prince Yourwetdream Aeryn]

going to watch but not expecting MCU movie quality.

[Mark Antony]

I loved it. Scorsese didn’t glorify these guys one bit. The last third was so fucking depressing. Glad I could watch that at home and take breaks but the pacing was fine. Didn’t drag at all for me. Perfect bookend to Goodfellas/Casino. 

Pesci is such a legend. Coming out of retirement after 20 years and put in that performance. Boss. Complete opposite demeanor of his characters in his other Scorsese films. So cool. Pacino might’ve been the highlight for me though. Loved whenever Hoffa was on screen..
The De-aging stuff mostly worked for me. It was Deniros movements that felt really old. Especially in the scene where he beats up the store owner who pushed Peggy.

So glad this movie got made after being on the shelf for so long. Was a joy to watch. Deserves all the praise it’s getting 
Spoiler tags to be safe 

 
 

[RumHam]

I figured we'd make it a spoiler thread tomorrow. May as well give people a chance to watch with the holidays and it being such a long movie. 

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Prince Yourwetdream Aeryn said:

going to watch but not expecting MCU movie quality.

I will say the Disney movies do a better job with the de-aging. Probably because they cast someone young who kinda looks like the actor and then do like a digital face transplant. Scorsese seems to have had all the actors do the whole movie an then de-aged them. It shows at times, when someone is supposed to be young but moves like an older man. 

[dbunting]

9 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

 

  Hide contents

I loved it. Scorsese didn’t glorify these guys one bit. The last third was so fucking depressing. Glad I could watch that at home and take breaks but the pacing was fine. Didn’t drag at all for me. Perfect bookend to Goodfellas/Casino. 

Pesci is such a legend. Coming out of retirement after 20 years and put in that performance. Boss. Complete opposite demeanor of his characters in his other Scorsese films. So cool. Pacino might’ve been the highlight for me though. Loved whenever Hoffa was on screen..
The De-aging stuff mostly worked for me. It was Deniros movements that felt really old. Especially in the scene where he beats up the store owner who pushed Peggy.

So glad this movie got made after being on the shelf for so long. Was a joy to watch. Deserves all the praise it’s getting 
Spoiler tags to be safe 

 
 

I forgot all about that scene

Spoiler

But yeah it really looked like a 70+ year old man doing it, like I was afraid he was gonna break a hip in that scene, and yet he was supposed to be like 40?

I was almost laughing it was so bad.

[Ran]

Enjoyed the film very much. Did not really feel like 3.5 hours long for me, but that said, the narrative could have stood tightening up at points. And yes, the de-aging... I get what Scorsese was going for, using the actual actors, but besides the rubbery quality of their de-aged faces in the early sections (I think it got better when they weren't trying to make them look like they were in the 30s)the physicality was wrong. A valiant failure, that part of things, but I'm not going to dwell on it as it was wonderful to see Pesci, De Niro, and Pacino  together in a good film. 

[Mark Antony]

23 minutes ago, Ran said:

A valiant failure, that part of things, but I'm not going to dwell on it as it was wonderful to see Pesci, De Niro, and Pacino  together in a good film. 

For sure. The joy of seeing them all together greatly outweighed the wonkiness of the deaging for me. But I really didn’t think it was that bad except for the scene I mentioned and a few other moments and really only with DeNiros character 

[Ramsay B.]

Yeah, that scene was kinda cringey. I liked how those kicks could’ve maybe bruised his hand if anything, and the guy was acting like it was cut off. But that was the worst of the de-aging by far.

I really enjoyed it. Pacino was flawless and the other guys were great. I never felt the length of it until the way end also. Nice seeing so many actors from all the shows we love popping up everywhere too.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Fantastic cast and not just talking about the headliners but all the really great supporting cast roles with actors from Boardwalk Empire and Fargo. Also R.Romano nailed his role in a way that I wouldn't have thought going in but he was very convincing.

What's not to love, I don't give a shit if Deniro, Pesci and Pacino are all old now. This was my last chance to celebrate these legends and they were magnificent for me.

[Mark Antony]

Keitel has a smaller role but I loved his presence as well. 

[RumHam]

4 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Keitel has a smaller role but I loved his presence as well. 

I didn't even recognize him. Nor did I recognize Steve Van Zandt as the singer in that one club scene. 

[The Monkey]

I thought it was brilliant. 

Deniro did a solid performance, but felt tired throughout (reminded me of Ian McKellen in The Hobbit in that regard). The telephone scene towards the end of the movie was his best work in decades though. 

Pacino was great, although it felt weird having an actor with Italian roots play an Irish-German-American, primarily regarding with Hoffa's anti-Italian sentiments being vocalised throughout. It also made the differentiation between union corruption on the one hand and the mafia on the other blend together too much.

Pesci was the best out of all of them, truly mesmerising with his calm, minimalist approach to the character. It allowed for a different kind of menace that I haven't seen in the actor before.

Stephen Graham was also brilliant.

 

My only quibble was that god-awful scene where Deniro is beating the store owner. They could have shot that scene in a way that didn't make him look like an 80-year old guy, no idea what Scorsese was thinking there.

[Zorral]

16 minutes ago, The Monkey said:

Pacino was great, although it felt weird having an actor with Italian roots play an Irish-German-American

You can imagine then my reaction to Pacino as a Cuban in Scarface!  That was the most ridiculous a performance as a Spanish speaking heritage character one can see.

 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That was the most ridiculous a performance as a Spanish speaking heritage character one can see.

Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil says "hold my beer!"

[Zorral]

Spent hours watching it, with a long break for dinner.

Totally thumbs up.

The aging and anti-aging thing was occasionally jarring though I wonder if others hadn't written about it so extensively for weeks before I could watch -- would I have noticed?  I kinda think I would have noticed something, but not sure.

This is a late life film of all the Big Names involved in the very late life of the USA, which has been so shaped by organized crime and corruption for about a century now.  It's again, history, history as fiction entertainment, but gets one thinking reflectively on what this country was and now is.

The actors were not only spectacular, but courageous, showing themselves as the flawed near corpses they are. who yet push us into both emotional and critical feeling and thinking, about what is it to be a human, a person, a bad person looking at the inevitable end.  Those scenes between Frank and the priest, when Frank honestly says that he wasn't sorry and didn't care that much for even the families, with maybe a mild exception, was again, a courageous bit of writing.

In the meantime the Union's pensions funds were handed over, under Giuliani, to the Wall Street real estate baronage, and they lost it all.  IOW, the Las Vegas investments were far safer than the financial industry.

[Nictarion]

I thought it was damn close to a masterpiece. Maybe it’s not bumping Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or Goodfellas, off the top of Scorsese’s filmography, but it’s one his best, imo. Masterful performances across the board. I’d be hard pressed to pick who the best was out of the big three. I’d probably lean towards Pesci, but De Niro absolutely killed it in the final act. I definitely see a lot of nominations coming for this one, so I think the limited theatrical release was a smart move. 

I actually thought the de-aging looked really good, and never once was distracted or taken out of the film by it. Pacing was great too for a 3.5 hours. Props to Thelma Schoonmaker on that front. 

As for the infamous kicking scene, yeah, it was pretty bad. But oh well. Sonny punching air in The Godfather certainly didn’t ruin that film, and one small scene didn’t ruin this one either. Honestly that, and not using I Heard You Paint Houses, as the main title were about my only complaints. 

Absolutely worth the wait, and good on Netflix for stepping up and getting this made. Easily one of the best films of the year. 

[Corvinus85]

I haven't typically watched this genre of movies, it's not the kind of cinema I like.

But I was enthralled with this one, and it was, for certain, an excellent movie. Early in the movie I was thinking that maybe Scorsese should have gone with age-appropriate actors, and the de-aging wasn't that good, mainly because you can't hide their movements, no matter what you do to their faces. But by the end, I had changed my mind. De Niro was amazing in the last act, and Pacino and Pesci were great throughout. 

The movie painted a realistic and sober image of 50s-70s America. Though I'm not familiar with any of this history other than the big events, and don't know how accurate things were.

I wonder why Hoffa had to be disappeared. So many killings, with bodies left in the street or in their houses. Were they afraid he was going to become a martyr for the union folks?