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Reviews
Bookie (2023)
Interesting Premise, Bad Writing
I thought the premise was good, and that the show has some potential. The writing, though, is horrible. There are so many obvious, crowbarred-in jokes/lines.
At best the show is mediocre. I think someone else used the words "forced and awkward." I think that is a fair way of putting it. There are just so many throw away lines that would probably be best left out of the show.
I liked the Charlie Sheen cameo, but again, that suffered from poor writing.
I don't know if the show has the ability to improve by much. I think I will give it a shot because I like mob/gangster genre and I like Maniscalco (or in other words, because I'm Italian haha).
Overall though, I didn't have high expectations, so I don't know if I'm necessarily disappointed. I was just hoping for a bit more.
The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
Really Not Good on Any Level
The casting is terrible. The acting is sub par at best (the mimicking of Paulie and Silvio is literally laughable). Gandolfini's son is not good either. The story is really not entertaining. It's sad to even consider this part of the Sopranos legacy because it's not even close to the same level of quality. The whole black vs white thing is TERRIBLY contrived. Honestly, I can't say a good thing about this.
Gomorrah (2014)
A great show, but redundant
It's a great show, especially in the beginning, but it gets very redundant after about season 2. The treachery becomes sooo common it's painfully predictable. Could have been much better.
Coming 2 America (2021)
BAD
I didn't have high expectations, but this was sooooo cheesy, I could barely get through it. The only parts I laughed at were Eddie Murphy as the soothsayer guy and Louie Anderson eating the vegan burger.
Capone (2020)
If Only There Were Negative Star Ratings...
Actually, if there were negative star ratings, I may have to go near infinitely negative. The movie tries to cover a period in Capone's life that is often ignored, and it attempts to do so in a unique way, but it misses the mark terribly. There hardly feels as if there is any story worth paying attention to (and I'm someone who knows a lot about Al Capone, if you don't, I can imagine this film is somehow even worse). Insofar as Hardy's performance... I'm not sure what people are praising. Aside from looking nothing like Capone and looking more like some kind of creepy Halloween costume (whose costume I have no idea, but some type of a creepy character who may or may not be human), the performance is really cheesy and over-the-top. It does not even resemble Al Capone on any level. It's some oddly made-up person muttering pseudo-Italian words (that are clearly not spoken by anyone with any connection to the actual country of Italy). I rarely turn gangster movies off, but I could not make it through a half hour of this movie.
The Pretender (2019)
Surprisingly Entertaining
I watched this knowing Mike, but I didn't have the highest of expectations. It's quite an entertaining story about a man living out a simple dream, not unlike Rocky himself.
Made (2001)
Vince Vaughn Ruins this movie
Vince Vaughn's character is actually so annoying, it makes the movie literally insufferable.
Mobsters (1991)
The Worst Gangster Film I've Ever Seen + Inaccuracies, Incorrect spelling of names, etc
The true story behind Luciano/Lansky/The Syndicate's rise to power is an interesting one, so the authors/filmmakers had something to work with. What came of it was horrendous. The acting and casting are just dreadful. There are so many inaccuracies (I understand this to some degree, but it's overkill in this movie). The Italian they speak isn't even correct in some instances. I'm not even talking about missing the dialect completely (Sicilians/Southern Italians at that time did not speak traditional Italian). I simply mean the actual Italian made no grammatical sense in some scenes.
The war to be "capo di tutti capi" (The Castellamarese War) was between Salvatore Maranzano and Giuseppe Masseria. Not only do they pronounce Masseria's name wrong, but Maranzano is, for some odd reason, named "Faranzano" (you can verify this in the credits). I have absolutely no idea the reason for this. It just seems like a really obvious screw up. If you were writing a movie about Nixon would you call his Secretary of State Henry Flissinger?
It seems like this was scrapped together in a weekend with no attention to detail. I can keep going, but it's not worth it.