Whoa.

Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, with no exaggeration, is one of the most moving and potent cinematic experiences that I have ever had. It's a combination of everything that made me love the cinema: Immaculate cinematography, wonderful direction, a tight and free-flowing screenplay, underlying themes woven throughout the film, pitch-perfect editing, incredible performances......

This film has EVERYTHING.

Simultaneously a gangster story, a coming-of-age fable, and an ode to aging; the film cuts between these three feelings and time-periods, all with the same characters but with each of them in different stages of development. Both physically and emotionally, the audience gets a grasp of their lives throughout the 3hr and 50 minute run-time. For most of the…

I kinda hate gangster films. This isn't a new idea to me, but this film more or less crystalized what I hate about them. In short, gangsters are not Robin Hood. They do not rob from the rich to give to the poor. They do not empower the poor; they feed off of them. They do not fight injustice disguised as law; they simply treat the law as coincidental. The closest argument you have is that they gave immigrant populations recourse to power in a system that hated them, and that is certainly true. But you rarely see them wield that power toward anything but assimilating into the system in a backward sort of way. While some gangster films have…

.... a Godfather parody from Sergio Leone?

This film tried so hard to be something great and turned into anything but. So many were terribly miscast, from Noodles Jr. to adult Deborah, and the intricate weaving of past & present did nothing to engage me. Certain setpieces and acts of violence were too heavy-handed. There wasn't nearly enough Joe Pesci. The characters themselves were uninteresting and often times laughable ('.... you're crazy'.... 'don't SAY THAT!!!' ). Only a few things kept me around for the long 230 minute runtime: the abundance of beautiful shots, the score from Morricone that was perfection when it worked (like the instrumental version of Yesterday), the presence of the great actors themselves, and a hope that…

You may have or have not (probably not) seen that I updated my favourite films!
GET THE FUCK OUT LLEWYN DAVIS, YOU WON'T BE MISSSED! (it will)

Why?

I don't love this movie. It's a very very disturbing gangster film, your classic rise and fall crime drama, but of course, because of what we're dealing with there's cruelty, cold blooded murder and some very hard to watch rape.

I don't love watching this movie, but it's one of the best films I've seen. So explaining why you love or hate a movie is way harder than not liking of liking one.

So... this movie. This. Fucking. Movie.

So the cop out way I usually make my reviews longer is to…

Like Scorsese’s Irishman from last year this comes back around in the final moments to hit you with its sorrowful and melancholic view of the gangster life. It’s an amazing depiction about greed, self-destruction, inheritance and background, growth, obsessions and regret earning its status as one of the best gangster epics. Delivered through precise and poignant, character oriented storytelling with great visual cues. Combination of many parts clicking together as the editor Nino Baragli who's had numerous collaboration with Leone and Pasolini never seems to miss a mark and Morricone’s work with Leone is always telling of their cohesion. His composition expresses those themes during the whole film whether we see Noodles as a young boy finding his footing in…

UNCUT DIRECTOR'S CUT

After 1971's DUCK,YOU SUCKER!(which was released in America as A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE),Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone(ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST,FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE) returned with his first film in 13 years with this epic length U.S./Italian Mafia feature which not only wound up in being Leone's final film but its massive scope also made it a literal perfect way to climax his film career,as ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA bravely sails through the similar seas of mobster life that both Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese had previous sailed through in its depiction of gangster life as it depicts the rise and fall of a group of Jewish mobsters who meet as young…