By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Raymond De Felitta
Starring: Andy Garcia | Dominik García-Lorido | Emily Mortimer | Ezra Miller | Julianna Margulies | Steven Strait
Country: united_states
Year: 2010
Running time: 100
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174730/
TC says: “The title locale is a fishing village on an island in the middle of the Bronx, where corrections officer Vince Rizzo has lived almost all his life. Now Vince is the head of a family including a bored wife, college-age daughter, and teenage son, none of whom actually talk to each other about their real thoughts or dreams; instead they lie and hide things – Vince is still smoking, and tells his family that he’s going to play poker when he’s actually taking acting classes; wife Joyce is also still smoking, and pretending to be a good wife and mother when she’s actually convinced Vince is having an affair; college age daughter Vivian hasn’t yet told her parents that she was kicked out of college and lost her scholarship yet, while she works at a strip bar to make money to go back to school; and teenage son Vince Jr has a fascination with overweight women, and spends his time on online sites catering to his fetish tastes. Oh, and yes, both of the kids are smoking too.
“Into the mix comes Tony Nardella, a young man doing time for Grand Theft Auto at Vince’s prison. Vince finds out Tony could be on provisional parole if he had family willing to take him in. So Vince arranges to take custody of the young felon without telling Tony why – Vince has realized that Tony is the son he ran out on when he was 19 and his psycho girlfriend was pregnant. And it’s Tony’s unexpected influences on the family and their secrets that are at the heart of this absolutely charming comedy.
“Andy Garcia is one of the finest actors on the planet and has been for years, and as Vince he’s absolutely perfectly cast (not surprisingly, since Garcia is also one of the film’s producers). He has great chemistry with Julianna Margulies as wife Joyce, and especially with Steven Strait as felon-to-family Tony. I have yet to see Strait give a bad performance in anything (he made the best of the gawd-awful 10,000 BC a couple years back), and here he’s both menacing and utterly charming.
“But Ezra Miller is an almost-lock for the 2010 PNR Rising Star list; as son Vince Jr., he’s hilariously funny, the smartest one in the family, and far more caring than he thinks himself about his particular interests.
“Vince’s relationship with acting partner Molly is outstanding, and Molly has some secrets of her own as well. And Alan Arkin in a hilarious cameo as Vince’s acting teacher as usual commands the screen when on it. All the secrets come to a head at the climax and it’s both hilarious and deeply poignant at the same time.
“The film won the Audience Award at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and is now finally making it to theaters. I for one can’t wait to see it again when the DVD hits in August. It was worth the trek to the Kendall to see it, and I advise everyone else to do the same. 5 cats”