[Apologies to casual followers and people who actually look up Shane Meadows' short during the brief window when this'll be up. Nothing for you here. This is just the best way for me to reach those who'll care.]
This is not in fact a review of the short film "Where's the Money Ronnie!" (which actually ends with an exclamation point, not a question mark), though I saw it over 20 years ago and recall it being quite funny. Rather, it's…
52/100
Fascinating to watch Coppola chafe at the Hollywood musical's conventions, and the movie repeatedly toggle between blatantly artificial sets and the Napa Valley. On the Town took the genre on location decades earlier, but it's still kinda remarkable to see Astaire, pushing 70, hoof his way over legitimately uneven ground—wonder what his insurance looked like. Show itself isn't great, with "Old Devil Moon" the only truly classic song (listen to someone as gifted as Petula Clark perform it and…
52/100
Ultimately not that great (and likely inferior to plenty of recent films that I turned off after 10 minutes), but I got sucked in by Perlman's soulful stillness in the title role. He succeeds in partially redeeming the cliché of the world-weary hitman by wearing Asher's ennui lightly, treating contract killing as if it were any other vocational grind. Chemistry with Janssen is strong, too, building a relationship you want to root for. And while it'd been 16 years…
