Pages tagged “robert deniro”

Release Date: Oct. 3
Director: Barry Levinson
Writer: Art Linson
Cinematographer: Stéphane Fontaine
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, Michael Wincott
Studio/Run Time: Magnolia Pictures, 102 mins.

Harpooning Hollywood hijinks

Given Hollywood’s proclivity for epic narcissism, it’s not particularly surprising that there’s such a rich history of self-satire in film, from The Player to The Kid Stays in the Picture. Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? is based on producer Art Linson’s 2002 memoir (Linson’s credits include The Untouchables: Capone Rising, Fight Club and Into the Wild), fictionalized here as a story about Ben (Robert De Niro), a Bluetooth-toting, fire-extinguishing producer with a fractured family, a massive SUV and a cabal of eager assistants. Ben’s got all the power but no control: Bruce Willis, playing himself, threatens to shut down Ben’s new film with his scraggly “Grizzly Adams beard” and 30 pounds of paunch, while studio exec Lou (Catherine Keener) insists that Ben convince director Jeremy (Michael Wincott) to transform an art-house tragedy into a blockbuster. Miraculously, Levinson (Diner, Rain Man) manages to spin familiar power plays (the studio wants something more commercial; the actor is difficult) into genuinely charming vignettes, and What Just Happened? ultimately transcends a potentially disastrous same-old-story/same-old-town conceit.

Robert DeNiro has had a year of reunions. His two 2008 credits are Righteous Kill, the crime thriller notable solely because it reunited him with his Heat co-star Al Pacino, and the forthcoming What Just Happened?, a Hollywood satire that lands him back in the hands of Barry Levinson, the director of Wag the Dog and Sleepers.

Release Date: Sept. 12
Director: Jon Avnet
Writer: Russell Gerwitz
Cinematographer: Denis Lenoir
Starring: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson), John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino
Studio/Run Time: 
Overture Films, 100 mins.

In Double Indemnity, one of the classic film noirs directed by Billy Wilder, the main character’s voice-over is explained through a Dictaphone recording. As he tells the story we watch it unfold, a grim stylized version of the story that comes from his point of view. Righteous Kill updates this framing device for the 21^st century. Turk (Robert De Niro) speaks into a video recording device of some sort, explaining away a rash of killings coming from a serial killer likely connected to the police force. The film’s goal is to understand why he cracked and why his partner, Rooster (Al Pacino) stayed, for the most part, on the legal side of crime-fighting.