Gotti (2018)

I don’t know for certain that having a lot of executive producers is a sign that the movie will be bad, but it’ can’t be good.  Consider Gotti, which has 30 names listed on IMDb:  Noel Ashman, Barry Brooker, Peter Capozzi, Fay Devlin, Maurice Fadida, Linda Favila, Thomas Fiore, Ted Fox, Arianne Fraser, Phillip Glasser, Wayne Marc Godfrey, Norton Herrick, Marty Ingels, Anthony Jabre, Robert Jones, Corey Large, Rob Logozio, Randi Michel, Keya Morgan, Vance Owen, Delphine Perrier, Rick Salomon, Steven Saxton, Kirk Shaw, Mark Stewart, Dt Thomas, John Travolta and Stan Wertlieb.  These aren’t associate producers or line producers.  These names are all listed as executive producer.

As you might imagine, Gotti is a movie about John Gotti, the famous crime boss.  It’s framed by John Gotti talking with his son, John Gotti, Jr., about a possible plea deal the son is considering taking.  Senior recounts his life story as a way of informing Junior’s decision.  Yes, it shows him as a crime boss, but it also shows his family life.  I didn’t really get the impression that it played up either aspect that well.  If anything, it portrays John Gotti, Sr., as a horrible storyteller.

The movie is fairly disjointed.  We have two or three scenes about any given aspect of his life.  When his son is hit by a car, there’s a (barely) suspenseful scene of a car approaching the child on a motorize bicycle where we all know what’s coming.  The son is buried.  Gotti tells everyone they’re going to Florida for a while.  Then, Gotti tells his wife that it’s time to move on.  That’s pretty much the end of that.

Because of this, you don’t really get the chance to connect with the characters.  After leaving the movie, I commented that it was like watching a two-hour coming attraction.  There’s no real tension.  I never felt as if I should like or hate anyone.  When one character, Angelo Ruggiero, was kicked out, I didn’t even feel any emotion about it.  This was a major character and that was the end of his part.

I don’t often talk about acting in my reviews.  I feel that if the actors are working best, their acting should go unnoticed.  You shouldn’t even think about acting.  In this case, I felt that John Travolta stuck out like a sore thumb here.  He was way to hammy for a production that was trying to take itself this seriously.  I never really noticed it until now, but it seems that Travolta has been channeling his character from Welcome Back, Kotter in most of his films.  If his character isn’t a grown version of Vinnie Barbarino, it’s at least someone that could be related to him.  His portrayal of Gotti could best be described as Vinnie with anger issues.

I really feel bad for MoviePass.  MoviePass Ventures, a subsidiary of MoviePass, acquired part of the ownership of the movie in hopes of having some sort of revenue stream.  Oh, man.  Did they pick a stinker.  This is not a movie that I can recommend.  My parents and I used MoviePass to see this movie and it was still overpriced.  If I had fallen asleep ten minutes it, I would have considered it a blessing.  I’d watch something else if you’re given a choice.

IMDb page

Get Shorty (1995)

I usually know what to make of a movie’s plot.  I may not always like it or completely understand it, but I have some sense of where the writer is coming from.  Get Shorty is an unusual movie in that I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be about.  Is it just a comedy?  Is it some sort of satire?  Is it supposed to be some sort of indictment of the movie industry or an in joke?  What’s the story?

It starts with Chili Palmer in Miami.  He’s a loan shark who works for someone out of New York until he dies.  Suddenly, Chili finds himself working for Ray ‘Bones’ Barboni.  Ray means business.  He wants Chili to collect on a debt owed by a dry cleaner.  Chili points out that the dry cleaner in question is dead.  That’s not Ray’s problem, considering that he had a wife who’s very much alive.

The wife reveals to Chili that her husband is very much alive in Las Vegas  Chili manages to collect the money and pick up a side job in California.  So, Chili travels to Hollywood to meet a producer named Harry Zimm.  Harry has problems of his own.  Chili’s job came from a casino that Harry owes money to.  On top of that, Harry blew $20,000 of his investor’s money.  Chili and Harry become fast friends, but they still have to worry about the investor, Bo Catlett.

Part of my problem may be that the story is a little complicated.  The movie goes from East Coast to West Coast very quickly.  If you blink, you might miss a few important details like I did.  There are also a lot of subplots going on.  Chili has Ray to worry about.  Harry has Bo to worry about.  Bo has a drug dealer named Mr. Escobar to worry about as well as the DEA.  All the while, Chili and Harry want to make their own movie based on the movie’s events so far.  They just have to convince Martin Weir to star in it.  I can’t blame you if you get a little confused by it.

There do seem to be a few jabs at actors and writers.  I’m not sure how much of this I’m supposed to get.  Selling the story within the story allows the characters to comment on the story-making process.  Martin talks of getting inside a character’s head, although he doesn’t seem to be that good at it.  (It’s not that he’s a bad person.  He just seems to lack empathy.)   Since most of us aren’t privy to how a movie is made, I don’t know how much of the conversations went above my head.

I also wonder how much of it is dated.  One of the running gags was Chili getting a minivan from the rental agency and having to make the best of it.  The movie came out when minivans were a big thing.  Now, it’s SUVs.  I’m not sure if the joke would play out the same way.  (I suppose it’s better than a station wagon.)

It’s interesting to hear some dialogue about Miami in the beginning of the movie.  I would like to point out that when Chili mentions Biscayne Boulevard and Federal Highway, he’s actually talking about two different stretches of US-1.  In Miami-Dade County, US-1 is called Biscayne from Downtown north.  When you reach the Broward County line, it becomes Federal Highway.  Just a little bit of trivia there.

I’m not really sure who the movie is going to appeal to.  There is a certain off-beat element to the story.  I remember liking the movie years ago when I first saw it.  I don’t remember how I felt about it specifically.  I just remember a few scenes.  Having watched it again, it was still entertaining.  I’d probably wait a while before watching it again.

IMDb page

Phenomenon (1996)

George Malley is an ordinary man.  He has a job as a mechanic and has trouble understanding how a rabbit keeps getting in his garden.  The night of his 37th birthday, George sees a bright light approach and engulf him.  He gets knocked to the ground, but appears unhurt.  In fact, he’s able to beat someone at chess.  That night, while lying awake, he figures out his rabbit problem.

George is able to read and retain increasing amounts of information.  He learns Spanish quickly, for instance.  He builds an engine that runs on (and smells of) manure.  He learns functional Portuguese in 20 minutes so he can help find a boy.  He even cracks a code used by the government, which gets him in trouble.  It comes at a terrible cost, though, and I’m not just talking about being ostracized.

The movie is a cross between Forrest Gump and The Twilight Zone.  It’s not too heavy on the science-fiction aspect.  It’s not really explained how he’s able to do stuff like telekinesis.   everyone attributes it to the aliens that George saw, but George insists that he never said anything about aliens.  Even with the learning, there’s not so much as a mention of the 10%-of-your-brain myth.  His abilities just grow.

Instead, the movie is more about the relationships.  His friend, Nate, is also interrogated when the FBI brings George in.  George’s cracking that code was impressive and the government wants to tap that ability, but George wants no part of it.  Instead, he wants to go home.   He wants to go back to his repair shop.  International espionage isn‘t really his thing.  When he gets back to the repair shop, George finds that Hell really is other people.  Since they won’t come by, he can only imagine what they must think of him.

This is one of those movies that I kind of forgot about after it first came out.  It’s not the kind of thing I would see on the basic-cable channels.  If it hadn’t come on Netflix, I might have gone anther ten or twenty years without watching it.  I think the problem is that it tries to appeal to two audiences without doing either really well.  It’s not pure science fiction and it’s not anywhere close to what I would expect with romance.

It almost seems like someone’s idea for a TV show that couldn’t quite make it a full season.  This is the kind of story I could see spending the pilot episode on George fixing up his farm.  We could have an episode or two dealing with the espionage angle.  We could have one about the earthquake.  Instead, the movie tries to pack all these amazing feats into a two-hour film.

It was entertaining the first time, but that was because you didn’t know what to expect.  Once the story has played out, there’s no replay value other than to pass the time.  I might watch it again in a decade or two, if we’re still using streaming.

IMDb page