Gangsters

The intriguing revival of the British gangster picture

Have you been watching Sexy Beast on the Paramount+ streaming service? No? Well, it’s hard to say whether you’ve missed out on much. Amid the current vogue for reviving decades-old films and turning them into television series, musicals or what-have-you, revisiting Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 debut, a blackly comic crime caper that owes equal debts to Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Stephen Frears’s The Hit and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, was probably not on anyone’s bingo card for 2024.

gangster

If you like Joe Biden, you’ll love The Irishman

According to Nielsen Media’s ratings service, 17 million people watched ‘at least a few minutes’ of Martin Scorsese's The Irishman on Netflix over its first weekend. Impressive. Rather less impressive, I'm guessing, is the proportion who actually made it to the end of this excruciating ordeal of an embarrassment of a movie. If it was even close to 50 percent, I'd be surprised. Some critics are saying its Scorsese's best since Goodfellas. Don't believe the hype. Though it reunites arguably the all time greatest trio of mob movie actors — Joe Pesci, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino — it's not the performances you notice, but their age. De Niro is 76, Pacino 79 and Pesci 76.

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