Klymkiw Watches TV (Starz) on Anchor Bay Ent. Canada Blu-Ray: MAGIC CITY - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Hi there! My name is Olga Kurylenko. I'm Ukrainian.
If you've ever desired to see me in various states of nakedness,
you'll get to see plenty of my supple flesh in Magic City.
And ladies, you'll see why I only eat kapusta  (cabbage),
& avoid Ukraine's national comestible salo (salted pig fat with garlic)."

Lily (Jessica Marais) learns a valuable
lesson from her kind, loving hubby
Ben "The Butcher" Diamond
(Danny Huston) on how
quickly beauty can
become UGLY!!!

Magic City (2012, 2013) ***
Creator, Head Writer,
Executive Producer: Mitch Glazer
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, Steven Straight, Jessica Marais, Danny Huston, Matt Ross, Christian Cooke, Dominik García-Lorido, Elena Satine, Yul Vasquez, Kelly Lynch, Alex Rocco, Sherilyn Fenn, James Caan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When Danny Huston utters the word "whore", he sounds and even looks like his grand old man John Huston and gives us one very important reason to watch all 16 hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of Mitch Glazer's TV series Magic City. The young Mr. Huston is magic and not a second of screen time involving this great actor is a wasted moment. The man is electricity incarnate! He sears a hole in the screen as surely as the tip of the Havana cigars he sucks onscreen with sheer phallus-obsessed aplomb and he comes close to stealing every scene he's in because it's utterly impossible to remove one's eyeballs from his snazzy ultra-vulgarity. He's a generous actor, though, and holds back enough to allow his fellow actors the opportunity of going ma-no a ma-no with him. Huston isn't the only reason Magic City is worth watching, but he comes damn close. If anything, it's the fabulous cast and their varied looks and approaches that come very close to overshadowing the flaws of the series which, are not inconsiderable.

Conceived as a continuing series, the show was cancelled before it could go a 3rd season and thankfully creator Mitch Glazer wrapped up the loose ends. As the two seasons play out, Magic City feels more like a mini-series and I believe it would have profited so much more if it had been planned that way in the first place. Alas, a mini-series wouldn't have allowed the same degree of production value. In fact, season two was supposed to be ten episodes instead of eight, but I think the impending cancellation was a blessing in disguise.

You will BELIEVE in GOD
when you get a load of the
FORMIDABLE SCHWANCE
of Danny Huston!

Set against the backdrop of a lavish Miami hotel just after Castro's takeover of Cuba, Magic City charts the rivalry between hotelier Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his silent partner, local Jewish mob boss Ben "The Butcher" Diamond (Danny Huston). Ike sees himself as a visionary businessman, Ben just wants more and will stop at nothing to keep accumulating power and wealth. Losing the hotels in post-revolutionary Cuba has taken a huge bite out of the Mob's cash-flow and they desperately need the State of Florida to make gambling legal in Miami to build a new empire of sin to replace what Castro has destroyed. Ike is no mobster - at least so he tells himself. He does, however, need to consort with the devil to get what he wants and when a local union lobbyist is bumped off, it's Ike who becomes the prime suspect to Dade County's crusading D.A. Jack Klein (Matt Ross). This is a shocker to everyone except those in the know. Ike might well be a family man, but what family is he really beholden to? His family-family or the one he's embroiled with in the various gangster shenanigans he dips his pinky finger into.

You can't go wrong with
JAMES CAAN as a Jewish
Mob Boss fixing a big mess
caused by Ben The Butcher.

Our happy hotel keeper has three kids from his first wife, now deceased. Stevie (Steven Straight) is his eldest son, a longtime bartender in the hotel bar and part time pimp, numbers runner and really moronically, the secret lover of Ben the Butcher's beautiful wife Lily (Jessica Marais). Middle son Danny (Christian Cooke) is in law school and on the verge of taking an internship with the District Attorney's office. (Not a great idea, kid.) Ike's daughter is on the cusp of having her Bat Mitzvah and is closest to Ike's second wife, the former head dancer at the Tropicana in Cuba and gypsy-shiksa-beauty Vera (Olga Kurylenko).

There are numerous other characters and story threads, but herein, for me, lies the problem with the continuing series medium. It's too much, already! I'm happy following the businessman-gangster rivalry, all the immediate family stuff, all the crime stuff involving the central figures, but being forced to follow so many other threads gets in the way of the really juicy stuff. I also enjoyed the Jewish mob backdrop to no end and getting healthy dollops of Yiddish sprinkled throughout was tons of fun. Kudos to Magic City for this. Hell, the show even has a lavish Bat-Mitzvah sequence, a gunfight outside a synagogue PLUS we get to hear Alex Rocco as Ike's Dad, kvetching over how much he hates religion.

Judy Silver (Elena Satine)
Hot Tamale HOOKER
with a Heart of Gold
and a price on her head.

A subplot involving Judi Silver (Elena Satine), a whore with a heart of gold who becomes a target for a hit and another involving Meg Bannock (Kelly Lynch), the rich and powerful Miami socialite and sister of Ike's first wife and of course, the thread involving Sy Berman (James Caan) the really big mob boss from Chicago, are all integral to the central arc of the story. Slowing things down is a thread involving Ike's Cuban-born manager (Yul Vazquez) and his attempts to get his wife out of Cuba and his daughter Mercy (Dominik García-Lorido) and her love affair with Ike's "good" son.

Most of all, though, is that after 16 hours of following this story, one realizes how stock and derivative much of it really is. This wouldn't be so bad if it had the full courage of these trash convictions. An even shorter mini-series format or even a really long feature - possibly even in two parts with one kick-ass director - might have really delivered the shot in the arm Magic City so desperately needs. As is, the series is trying so hard to be capital "P" profound AND jamming in a whole whack of cliffhanger subplots. Having the cake and eating it too severely diminishes the overall satisfaction level.

Whatever format might have been chosen other than this one with less emphasis on "quality" might have yielded something way more rat-a-tat pulpier which, Magic City so desperately ALSO wants to be. In spite of this, there are great things in the series. The art direction and costumes are out of this world, the cool soundtrack of period tunes rocks the lid off the piece and a clever, recurring montage motif at the end of each episode delivers more than its fair share of frissons. The cast, even those struggling through threads less compelling, are all at the top of their game here. I must, though, come back to the estimable Danny Huston. He's so foul, reptilian and crude that he injects just the sort of B-movie vulgarity the entire series needed. And make no mistake, Magic City is loaded with explicit sex, tons of nudity, plenty of salty dialogue and blood splattering violence - all of this is terrific. Unfortunately, when things slow down into either soap opera territory or worse, PROFUNDITY, the narrative takes a nosedive. What this results in is not so much a roller coaster ride, but a drama that suffers from being intermittently and annoyingly bi-polar.

There is clearly much to enjoy here and I suspect the logical home for this series IS on Blu-Ray. It looks and sounds terrific and with 16 one-hour episodes, one can spread the viewing out in one's own preferred time-frame and at the end, still wind up owning a series that has individual episodes and sequences that are so garishly, genuinely and grotesquely delightful that selective repeat viewings will be inevitable.

And, oh, the nudity, the glorious nudity. One will see generous helpings of naked flesh from all the leading ladies and gentlemen, but after all is said and done, my biggest thrill came from seeing Danny Huston's trim body and healthy, dangling schwance and getting huge kicks out of Huston leeringly watching his wife fuck his business partner's son via a two-way mirror and jerking off. Of course, because Danny Huston always manages to sound like John Huston during his more vile spouting, I'd occasionally flashback to the old man himself as Noah Cross in Chinatown or the wonderful moment in Winter Kills when Huston appears in a golf cart with two gorgeous women and a blanket covering their legs and torsos and he asks: "You know what these here girls are doing under this blanket? They're playing with my nuts." Danny Huston has several great moments here to rival his old man and that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Too much of Danny Huston (and we get plenty here) is never, ever too much, already!

Magic City from the Starz Network is available as a two season box set from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada. The transfer is stunning and the only real disappointment is an entire disc used up for what amounts to 15 uninspired minutes of promotional interviews. A few of the episodes would have benefitted greatly from some Mitch Glazer commentary tracks and given that the series had some stellar guest directors like Carl Franklin, Nick Gomez and Clark Johnson, commentaries from those three on their episodes would have rocked big-time. Feel free to order directly from the links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

THE DEVIL'S LAIR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Klymkiw HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICK

The Devil's Lair (2013) ****
Dir. Riaan Hendricks

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is one grim, gritty and nerve-wracking gangster picture, but like the best of them, it's got heart.

The picture's emotional punch emanates from its central character, Braaim, a lean, lanky, almost classically handsome late-forty-to-fifty-something with a whole lot of salt and a dash or two of pepper in his hair. Though he prefers loose shirts and sweats, his wife, a caring, understanding and delightfully full-figured gal (and Mom to his three kids) tries to make sure he's spruced up suitably for important engagements. Their relationship is loving - she never nags, but always throws in gentle reminders and he clearly strives to be a devoted family man, though ultimately, his work has a habit of getting in the way.

He's a wise elder member and boss of NTK (Nice To Kill), a gang specializing in the sale of narcotics. Most gangstas die at half his age, but Braain's got staying power, not to mention plenty of the requisite hard-ass meanness and moxie to handle anything, including s vicious turf war that's being waged against his territory.

Though he wants to leave the neighbourhood and the "business" to make a better life for his family, he's bound by the code of his gang and can't break free until the right people have been whacked. (Makes perfect sense to me.) He wants NTK to be strong and secure without him and ultimately, for peace between gangs to be restored and thus making his dreams of halcyon days come true.

Braaim's wife is alternately resigned to the choice she made in knowingly marrying a thug (albeit a handsome and charming one), but she stills harbours a need for him to at least slightly curtail his activities so he can spend more time with his family. It's a pipe dream she holds onto - dangling and extending an impending divorce over his head - hoping this will change his ways.

This, in spite of many displays of his tenderness, just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Ultimately, our hero is a been-there-done-that kind of guy. His eyes have seen everything, his spirit has been infused with hatred (when necessary) and he's done what he's had to do to provide leadership and maintain the gang. He has even served a (surprisingly light) seven-year sentence in prison for murder. He's justifiably concerned that he can't ever murder again for fear of having the book thrown at him.

Most of all, Braain hopes his children will never have to follow in his footsteps. He acknowledges that he knows what he knows from growing up in a family where his own father packaged drugs, planned killings and sported a wide variety of guns. He consumed the sins of his father, but desperately hopes this will not be the fate of his own children.

These are not the mean streets of way uptown in NYC or in South Central L.A. Braain and his family live in the flats of Cape Town - a community created by the Apartheid government in the 50s to separate living space between white and black. Though people of colour now have freedom, the chasm between rich and poor is wider than before and most Cape Town Blacks live in the flats.

As well, this gangster picture is not a drama. You might have guessed that one already since it's playing at Hot Docs, but it's so expertly shot and edited (by its clearly gifted director Hendricks), with the right attention paid to narrative detail and character, that the movie feels like Mean Streets on the Cape Town Flats.

There are moments that are simply unforgettable - gunshots echoing in the streets, the gang sucking back crystal meth and planning murder, long talks into the night about shattered dreams, a child playing with a dead cat's corpse in the street, other children playing with toy guns - striking poses of bravado in honour of their fathers and among many other indelible moments, contrasting sequences between Braain and his baby girl where he's like any tender Dad doting on his little one and others where he holds her in his arms as he conducts "business".

These are real people, real locations and real events. There's a touch of Lionel Rogosin to the proceedings, but Hendricks goes way beyond staging improvised scenes based on tales crafted during the shoot itself which is why you're always on the edge of your seat. He's a filmmaker with cinema hard-wired into his genetic code and he makes it seems so easy for us to alternately cringe and weep.

And yet, it was clearly anything but easy to make.

This is a movie I shall not soon forget. Neither will you.

"The Devil's Lair" is playing at Hot Docs 2013. For tickets and showtimes, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

MervynLeRoy's LITTLE CAESAR with Edward G. Robinson - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"

Little Caesar

(1930) *****
dir. Mervyn LeRoy

Starring:
Edward G. Robinson,
Douglas
Fairbanks Jr.,
Glenda Farrell,
Ralph Ince,
Sidney Blackmer,
William Collier Jr.

Review By
Greg Klymkiw


"For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Matthew: 26-52

The words above dissolve from a title card to a lone highway gas station in the deep night. A car imbued with purpose sails into frame and rests before the pumps. A lonely figure from within the station gets up and saunters out to greet the driver who quickly leaves his car and beelines towards the entrance. The driver, with a handgun aimed at the belly of the solitary attendant, pushes him back into the light of the seemingly safe interior which immediately goes black. The quiet is shattered and the darkness is intermittently ablaze with short repeated blasts from the gun.

So begins the classic prohibition-era morality tale Little Caesar, a film that made a star of the late, great, jowly. pug-faced and portly Edward G. Robinson. With a unique nasal intonation and clipped delivery (punctuated with occasional feline-like drawls), Robinson dazzled anyone and everyone who laid eyes upon him. Rendering every one of his extraordinary line readings with a scowl and sneer, Eddie G. as Little Caesar led the Warner Bros. charge towards box office domination during the Great Depression with a series of tragic, violent, thrilling, melancholy and strangely romantic crime thrillers that took America and the world by storm.

Under Mervyn Leroy's crisp direction, this film adaptation of W. R. Burnett's grand pulp novel (and like many pictures to follow, inspired by the real-life exploits of Chicago's notorious gangster chief Al Capone), wastes no time getting to the action of the story.

The scene following the opening robbery has Rico (Robinson) eyeing a front page newspaper caption proclaiming the ironclad underworld rule of Diamond Pete Montana (Ralph Ince). Rico jealously admits to his pal and partner Joey Massara (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) what a couple of small time hicksville hoods they are and that the city is the place to ascend to new and dizzying heights of power.

No more knocking off gas stations for Rico.

From this point on, the classic rise and fall of a hoodlum - replete with killing, dames, booze, double-crosses and more killing - careens full-tilt with the velocity of a gangster's Tommy-gun.

Little Caesar is 80 years old and while certain sequences and the technique might feel dated now, it's important to remember that outside of a few silent pictures (most notably, D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley and Josef Von Sternberg's stunning Underworld), it was the first of three seminal gangster pictures in the sound era (along with William "Wild Bill" A. Wellman's The Public Enemy and Howard Hawks's Scarface: The Shame of a Nation). As such, it set the mould for all that followed.

Martin Scorsese, for one, has always revered early Warner Bros. crime pictures and we see many dashes and dollops of these works in Marty's work. When Rico, for example, seeks a toe in the door of Chicago's organized crime, he pays a visit to Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), a lower level mob boss and proprietor of the delicious den of iniquity, the Club Palermo. Upon welcoming Rico to his "family" and christening him with the "Little Caesar" nickname, we're treated to a nicely directed moment when an off-camera Vettori introduces our hero to a motley crew of hoods, pointing to each one individually round a table as they smoke, drink and play cards.

"There's Tony Passa. Can drive a car better than any mug in this town. Otero, he's little, but he's the goods, alright. Bat Carilla, Killer Pepe, Kid Bean, and this one here, Scabby, what a smart guy he is," says Vettori. During this speech, director LeRoy moves in on a series of extreme closeups, the camera whirling in a 360 degree dolly with a slightly tilted semi-God-shot as each man is introduced - some acknowledging the intro, while others do not. It's a less showy, but still effective inspiration for what Scorsese eventually did sixty years later in Goodfellas when he introduced us to the chief mobsters via the off-screen Ray Liotta in a series of brilliant singles.

Like all great artists, Scorsese borrows from the best, then makes it his own.

Edward G. Robinson borrowed, it seems, from nobody. As an actor, he was a true original. A Romanian-Jew who immigrated to America with his family when he was ten and growing up on the Lower East Side of New York, Robinson was groomed to be a Rabbi first, and when that didn't work out, a lawyer, but it was acting that ultimately beckoned. Though he worked regularly in silent films, it was theatre where he excelled. The stage was, and in fact remained his first love. He spoke numerous languages fluently and cut his teeth in Yiddish theatre. With the coming of sound, his career really took off. His swagger, style and adeptness with language served him well. His distinctive voice created many golden opportunities for him and Little Caesar provided the role of a lifetime.

While Little Caesar is a stunning, terrific picture in every respect, it's Edward G. Robinson who ultimately owns the movie.

As Rico, Robinson creates a character who is vile, cretinous, borderline psychotic and yet, from beginning to end we're with him. The script provides no literal obvious backstory for his ruthless ambition and the way he plays the role, we don't need it. Robinson fills in the blanks perfectly.

In one scene, when Rico is confronted by his pal Joe who desperately pleads to "get out" of this life of crime, LeRoy wisely and brilliantly keeps the camera over Joe's shoulder during his lengthy monologue and trained squarely on Rico. Robinson's look of vile ambition, utter disgust and pitiful envy over the fact that his friend has found love and purpose is skin-crawling. And all the while, we simply can't take our eyes off him.

Rico's deeply closeted homosexuality is also putty in Robinson's hands. At first, we wonder why he's so close to the fey, sensitive, handsome Joe, but when Joe reveals his penchant for public performance, ballroom dancing and the love of a good woman, the jealousy, disgust and yes, even heartbreak, is clear in Robinson's performance. He displays no real (or at least no overt) love, loyalty or compassion for anyone but himself - his only desire is to possess what he can't or doesn't yet have.

Robinson commands every scene, every shot he's in. It's impossible to look away, all the more extraordinary since Rico is so utterly reprehensible.

What Robinson seems to understand and convey so extraordinarily is the humanity in evil and by the time he utters his famous closing line, "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" we even shed a tear for this hollow, vicious thug.

This, however, is no real surprise. Though Robinson played mostly gangsters sleazbags or cuckolds, he was in life, an extremely delicate, intelligent and cultured man. In fact, he was an inveterate collector of fine art and once said:

"Acting and painting have much in common. You begin with the external appearance and then strip away the layers to get to the essential core. This is reality and that is how an artist achieves truth. When you are acting, you are playing a part, you are being somebody else. You are also, at the same time, being yourself."

Now that's acting!

That's a star!

"Little Caesar" is available in a extras-packed and very reasonably priced new box set of four prohibition era gangster pictures from Warner Home Entertainment under the TCM Archives banner. The package is slender and the discs are flippers, but for movie lovers, it's one of the best deals around.



-->

-->

-->