The Evolution of Adam Sandler: From Comedic to Dramatic Roles (Uncut Gems) + Top 5 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020 + The Irishman Movie Review

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. My name is Mike D on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro. You might know me from the Bobby Bones Show, where I am the resident movie guy, and this is the podcast I do every single Monday where all I do is talk about movies. This week, I am talking about the evolution of Adam Sandler from comedic to dramatic roles. I recently saw him in Uncut Gems and that movie really resonated with me in a way I wasn't expecting, and I think it's all because of his performance in the movie. So I kind of just want to go through his roles from the comedic stuff he did in the nineties, the two thousands and then kind of getting into the waters where he's just has really bad reviews movie after movie. So I'll go through all that. Also in my movie list this week, I have my top five most anticipated movies of twenty plus i'll give my review of The Irishman on Netflix, which is a long three and a half hours that I invested in my life, So a lot to talk about on this week's episode. Thanks again for tagging me in your Instagram story, rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing on I Heart Radio. A lot to cover this week, so let's get into it. In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast. So to start out this week's show, I wanted to dedicate an entire segment just to Adam Sandler because I recently watched Uncut Gems and was really moved by it in a way that I wasn't expecting because I've loved Adam Sandler movies for a very long time, and I grew up in the nineties as a nineties kid, and he was the biggest thing in comedy. I just remember going to the video store and renting Um Happy Gilmore, renting Billy Madison and thinking, man, this is like the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I would quote the movies all the time, and those movies just kind of stuck with me all throughout my life. And I've loved him from watching him on SNL and kind of seeing him go from being like that beloved funny guy to having this career where he's just kind of viewed as like putting hug bad movies, which is which is really kind of crazy that he's kind of had his resurgence now with the success of Uncut Gems and really people being able to see his range of an actor, because he's it's not the first serious role he's done, but it's the most, probably the most acclaimed role that he's taken on in a very long time. So I wanted to go through just his career and kind of see his evolution from being the funny guy and putting out hit blockbuster comedy movies to also being the guy who would put out just flop after flop. But I mean, even with those flops, he was still making a lot of money, but he has just like a track list of like the worst reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and then now kind of into two thousand and tens of also continuing those flops, um landing a big Netflix deal where he put out some movies and now he's kind of stepping back into these dramatic roles and having some success where I mean, he really had a really successful, like quiet, low key nineteen UM now moving into an entirely different decades. So I kind of want to go a decade by decade and just look at his work. So starting in the nineties where he started out doing stand up comedy in New York City, where he was going um to college at n y U for acting, and then in addition to that, he would go out and do stand up making like ten dollars a night. You really don't make a lot doing stand up and especially starting out, so he would go to the club. He had a professor at n y U who would you know, teach him acting, and his professor told him like at one point to quit acting. He's like, man, you have heart, but you really just don't have it to be an actor. And he told him, like to go pursue another path. But starting out in the nineties, like, he was like broke by the time he got to SNL, which he was discovered by doing stand up in he got hired onto SNL and he was twenty three years old. And the thing about SNL was, you actually don't make a lot of money on that show. It's basically an entry level TV job. I've seen a bunch of interviews with people starting on SNL. The perception is, Oh, you go on that show, you're on TV, you've made it, But really you're not making that much money. You do a show at night that's on once a week, so it's basically an entry level job. He's doing that for five years. He's put out some movies in between them, and the year before he got hired on the SNL he did a movie called Going Overboard, which I remember mostly for being in the Dollar Been at Walmart. And then he also was in air Heads, a movie in nineteen ninety four where they like break into a radio station, where he wasn't really the star of that movie, so his movie career hadn't really taken off. But then he got fired from SNL in nineteen and it was well before he received any kind of success at the box office. So he's twenty eight gets fired from SNL after five years on the show, along with they also fired Chris Farley, so they're both down and the dumps together. He had co wrote and started Billy Madison, which premiered a few months before he left SNL, and went on to make a good, solid twenty six million dollars on that, So after that is where he kind of just has starts having success. In the nineties, he puts out Happy Gilmore six, makes forty one million dollars, then the Wedding Singer brings them another hundred and twenty three million, and The water Boy in nine makes him one and ninety million, and then he closes out the nineties with Big Daddy making two hundred and thirty four million dollars, and at this point you cannot deny that he is a major Hollywood star and success. So all that from being fired from SNL pretty good for him. He also in the nineties started his own movie production company called Happy Madison, which just combines his first two movies, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore together, and this kind of brings him into the two thousands where he starts putting out more, you know, still the same kind of comedic movies like Little Nikki Mr. Deed's Fifty First States, but he also kind of takes a step in that direction of becoming a more dramatic, serious actor, which is really hard for any actor to do who's mainly starting comedy movies, like very few people have done it. Aside from Adam Sandler, only other people I can think of having success or Jim Carey, Ben Stiller a little bit, but there are very few actors who can be taken seriously in both the guard. But he started a movie called Punch Drunk Love, which was his first really step in this direction, and I remember kind of being confused seeing him in this role because you go into it expecting, you know, silly, wacky Adam Sandler from the nineties, and now he's in this movie playing this guy named Barry who's trying to find love and then gets extorted by a phone sex company, and it's actually a pretty good movie, and you kind of see this different side of Adam Sandler and you're like, hey, this actually starts to work. The movie received pretty good reviews from critics, although I didn't really do so well at the box office. So while it was a step in that good direction of him kind of building towards that, it still wasn't going to be his main thing to just do dramatic roles. Also in the two thousands, he started a movie called Spanglish, which was kind of a mix of comedy and drama and kind of developed this kind of style that he could balance between of like still kind of being the regular Adam Sandler he used to. But then in two thousand seven, he started a movie called Rain Over Me, which is about a man who loses his entire family in the September eleventh attack on New York City and then he runs into his old college roommate and develops a friendship with him and kind of rekindles that. And this is the first movie where you just see full on dramatic Adam Sandler, because there's no comic relief whatsoever in this movie, and you get this level of acting and performance from Adam Sandler that you never thought he could really achieve. So at this point, I feel he's established as both a comedic and dramatic actor. I kind of hope he would take on more of the dramatic roles from here. But then we get into the two thousand tens, which I kind of dubbed as the decade of bad reviews because he only has like two maybe three movies that actually have a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And it's also kind of why he put out that comedy special called Fresh, because he was like, they're not going to give me a good rating, then at least I give it to myself. He then starts putting out movies like Jack and Joe, which is probably my last draw for watching Adam Sandler movies. That's the movie where he plays himself as a woman has his long lost twin al Pacinos in it, which I don't know how they agreed him to be in that movie, but this is kind of where I lost faith in Adam Sandler. And then in two thousand fourteen, he signed a major movie deal with Netflix. It was a four movie deal for two hundred and fifty million dollars, and he put out like four movies on Netflix, which I ended up thinking, we're all right. His movie The Ridiculous Six badly reviewed movie, but I thought it was at least somewhat enjoyable if you're just watching something at home on Netflix. He also put out The Do Over, Sandy Wexler and Murder Mystery on Netflix as part of that deal, which Netflix said that a bunch of people streamed those movies that were like the highest streamed movies on their service at the time. So at this point I think Adam Sandler was just in the mindset of putting out movies that he finds that are fun to make and also his audience enjoy. Always he doesn't care about the critics at this time. He just sees it as, Hey, this is a business. I'm gonna put out movies. I'm gonna get my paycheck, and I'll continue my career whether the critics like it or not. And then in seventeen he started a movie with Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman called The Merrowitz Stories, where he's back into taking on a dramatic role and gets a lot of positive reviews. And then you get the twenty nineteen and uncut Gems where he kind of blows everybody away myself included five thousand carrots, three thousand dollars of carrots. That's the thing. They say, you can see the whole universe. And that's been all day, I'm telling you, And right, that's the bad with this one. It was just kind of cool to see Adam Sandler in a way that I forgot it was Adam Sandler, Like, he looks a lot different. He has like these fake teeth in the movie. His hair is kind of jelled up in a weird way. And it's about a guy who has an unhealthy addiction to gambling. So what he's doing is he runs like a high end jewelry company, but in addition to that, he's making these really crazy, extravagant bets with other people's money. So he's essentially just taking jewelry, moving it around, getting money from one person to bet on these crazy like NBA parlays that just end up getting him into more and more trouble. So the whole movie is just really chaotic, and it's from these two guys named the Safty Brothers who actually came to Adam Sandler with the idea of this movie ten years ago, and they're pretty young guys, but at the time he was doing other stuff and he never got to meet him. And then eventually the script came back to him again. He read it and I was like, this is actually really good, and he agreed to do it. So what I really like about this movie is that it's just filled with tension all the way through. Like I was literally on the edge of my seat in this movie, and I'm not using that as a hyper league. I was on the edge of my seat, slouched down because there's moments in this where it's so intense I also love that they use like real people in this movie, meaning that they brought in like non actors to be actual tough guys in this movie. I think it gives it a sense of realism when working with other real actors. It also starts Kevin Garnett, who's the NBA player, not an actor. He's playing himself, so you think, oh, it's kind of easy just to play yourself, but I think it's almost a harder thing to have to do for somebody who's never been in a movie before. So essentially what happens in the movie is he is able to acquire a really rare and valuable black opal, and it's all because he's watching like the History Channel, learns about it and then finds a way to get his hands on one. He gets it delivered to his shop and then shows it to Kevin Garnett, who becomes enamored with a thing and also wants to buy it from him, and then the movie just kind of escalates from there. So he has this valuable opal and he's trying to use it to pay back all his gambling debts. He was like a hundred thousand dollars to this guy who's just hounding him throughout the whole movie. Not gonna ruin the movie, but man, it really gets intense, and I think Adam Sandler just has a really great way of getting into this role of this guy who essentially just watches the History channel, learns about this thing, and thinks he has like the upper hand on the other jewelers. For some reason. The movie also takes place in twelve so they made it a point to kind of make it look like that time period, which is an interesting thing because I don't really know what you know for but in this he kind of see how they stuck to using like the iPhone that was out at that time. And also, um, the Weekend is in at the Singer and they made him like recreate his hairstyle to fit how it was when he first kind of came out, So I thought that was a really nice touch. I left the movie theater exhilarated. Like I said, I was literally on the edge of my seat, and it moved me kind of in a way that a movie hasn't done in a while, and I think it was all because of Adam Sandler's really great dramatic performance. So I myself am really happy to see him have such a big hit with this movie and kind of people taking him serious again. And it's crazy just to see how he's gone from being the dope guy on SNL who really suffered with stage fright at the time. Like the reason he would use his guitar in like a bunch of comedy bits and would write those songs is because he suffered with stage fright and needed to hold something to kind of feel like he could fall back on it. Going from that being fired onto and Know and then going on to star in these big blockbuster comedy movies. Kind of who's taking a step back and being hit and tortured by critics with these all these bad reviews and now kind of having this redefined career as he goes into the twenties. Is that what we're calling this decade the twenties? But I would just like to see him really go for this next decade. And how crazy would it be for him to go on to win something like an Oscar. Let's start that campaign now anyway, That is the evolution of Adam Sandler as told by me. And also I would give Uncut Gems easily five out of five opals. It's still in theaters now so you can go check that out. Um it is a pretty R rated movie. It has like the seventh most efforts ever in a movie. So um, if violence and bad language keep you away from going to see a movie, just a warning on that. Also, let me know which Adam Sandler you prefer, the guy who starts in the comedy movies or the one who takes on these dramatic roles. All right, that's it for Adam Sandler. Coming up, I'm gonna do my top five most anticipated movies of and also my review of The Irishman on Netflix. We're in a brand new year, Welcome to everybody. So for my movie list this week, I am looking at my top five most anticipated movies of. I threw in some reboots, I threw in some sequels, and just some movies I've been waiting a long time to see come to fruition. So let's get started. First, we are going to Top Gun Maverick, which comes out on June. Yes, we are getting a Top Gun sequel after thirty one years. Your reputation procedes. You have to admit I wasn't expecting an invitation back there called Orders Maverick. Of course you have Tom Cruise back as Maverick, and then you have Miles Teller, who you know from Whiplash, will play Goose's son in the movie, and Val Kimmer is officially back as Iceman. So for what the movie is about, they haven't released a whole lot of details about the plot. The story is rumored to explo or the relationship between human pilots and unmanned drones in the modern military. So what I pieced together, it looks like Tom Cruise's character Maverick comes back trying to show the value of having real life human pilots. So personally, I am not a Tom Cruise fan. For some reason, his movies just don't do it for me. I don't really see him as an action star. However, I am a fan of him and Top Gun, and I think they wouldn't bring it back after so long if they didn't have a really good movie on their hands. And why I put this on my list and why I'm excited about this movie is because it seems like they really went a long way to make this movie look accurate. It's basically like a love letter to aviation. So there's not a lot of c G I in this movie. The aerial footage in this is real aerial footage that they went out and shot with fighter jet pilots, and if you look at this footage, it looks amazing. So essentially what they did it was they put the actors inside of real fighter jets and they put six different camera is around him, so you have the front facing camera, which that shot looks intense because what you're actually seeing is the actor in the fighter jet and that g force hitting them, so you see their real reaction to them. However, they're not all flying the fire jets. They are in the cockpit with somebody else. The only person who actually flew a plane during part of this movie was Tom Cruise, Like he does have his license and he wanted to make it so realistic that he was trained on how to fly one of these things, not the really crazy ones, but he did fly some footage in this movie. But apparently the actors said it was really intense on scene and when they're up there, you know they're really feeling those pounds of force on their body. There's like behind the scenes footage of them essentially wanting to vomit while in the air filming this movie. So Paramount was actually able to make this with cooperation from the military because after the first Top Gun came out, there was a huge boost and recruitment in the nineteen eighties for the Air Force, so they wanted to make the sequel as accurate as possible, so they went back to the U. S. Military to ask mission to film inside these fighter jets. The Pentagon even gave them access to a military base during filming to allow the cast members to work with real military personnel. So what you're seeing in the movie is footage of them really flying in military basis. Was a real action sequences. So what I think it's really gonna do for this movie is give us a real kind of feel of what it's like to be inside one of those plans from a perspective I've never seen done in a movie before. I mean, to get that point of view from the cockpit on the big screen is the thing I'm just interested to see. So that's why I put it at number five. At number four, I had to go with Sonic the Hedgehog, which has an interesting road to even get out in theaters. So it's directed by Jeff Fowler, making his directorial debut, stars James Mars, then Ben Schwartz and Jim Carey as Dr Real Butt Nick and comes out on February four. I'm going to give you five seconds to tell me where it is. Wait, don't hurt of. So the movie is based on the Sega video game Sonic the Hedgehog, which I played all the time as a kid. Now I grew up kind of broke, so my family never had a Sega, but my cousin down the street did and that would go all the time to play Sega. I also loved the Saturday Morning cartoon where Sonic the Hedgehog was voiced by no other than Jalil White a k. A. Arkle, and for some reason he loved chili dogs on that which I never really understood. And after last year success of Detective Pikachu, I think movie studios now are looking at video game franchises as a way to kind of get people in the theaters with a familiar premise already you already know the character from the video game and turning it into a movie. So again, not really a novel approach, just the way to get people more comfortable and familiar with the character. The interesting thing about this movie, though, it was supposed to come out last year, but what happened was is they dropped a trailer where they showed Sonic and he looked way too realistic that it creud people out, like his eyes were kind of small and beedient human looking, and he had human teeth, and a bunch of people online were just like this looks terrible. Which last year Cats had a problem with people not liking their c g I, where they went back in refix it and reput the movie out. So Sonic the hedgehot kind of got ahead of it here and said, Okay, people aren't liking this version of Sonic, they went back and retooled them. They made his eyes more cartoony, like the character that we know, and they also changed the teeth, which makes them look a lot more friendlier and like a cartoon character rather than just some alien. So I'm excited for this mainly for the nostalgia factor, but also just to see how Jim Carrey pulls off a dr Robut Nick, that's why I put it at number four. At number three is a movie a lot of people were asking for for a really long time, and now it's finally here. I'm talking about Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson, directed by Kay Shortland, female director, which will be opening on May one. I've lived a lot of lives, but I'm done running from my past. So Scarlett Johanson, who's Black Widow a k a. Natasha Romanov, is finally getting her own movie. And this is Marvel's and this is the way Marvel is kicking off. It's Phase four. So what Phase four is everything that has come after the last Avengers movie and their leap intol like this whole new part of the universe. So what this movie is is actually a prequel to Scarlett Johansson's character. And while the trailer has been out for a while now, there's not a whole lot of story on what the plot is going to be about, aside from the time frame it takes place in. So chronologically, this movie takes place after Captain America Civil War and then right before Avengers Infinity War. To catch you up just about what was happening with Black Widow during that time. Civil War ended with Black Widow on the run after helping Captain America escape you know Iron Man when he's kind of trying to prosecute him. So after that her character was in hiding until Standos came around in Infinity War, which forced her to come out of hiding and helped the Avengers. They do give us a look at the bad guy in the movie named task Master. You also have David Harbor who plays as the Sheriff, and Stranger Things as the Red Guardian, and also a very rumored cameo by Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. Since is a prequel and takes place before Avengers Community War, it is a possibility. Another cool thing about this movie as Scarlett Johansson has reportedly made fifteen million for this role, which is the same amount of money that Chris Evans made playing Captain America and Chris Hemsworth made playing Thor in their own movies. So we're getting equal pay here and just for comparison here, Like in Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman made two million dollars to starring that first solo movie, and Brie Larson made five million dollars to starring Captain Marvel, which also required her to sign a seven movie deal with Marvel. So I think Marvel right now isn't a bit of a transition period. With The Avengers pretty much being over, they're kind of looking for their next big thing and where to take the franchise, which I think this will be a big building gear for Marvel. They don't have as many titles coming out this year, and there's also a larger gap in between movies as there has been since probably, but I think this could be a really big movie, and I'm excited for Scarlett Johanson to finally beginning her solo movie. That's why I put it at number three. And it looks like I'm staying with the theme of female leads and comic book movies because at number two I have Birds of Prey and The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn long title. It's directed by Kathyn Yes, another female director directing a female starring comic book movie, opening on February seven, and Margot Robbie back as Harley Quinn. It's psycho Chip never calling them the check broad Lady. So Hargara Robbie as Harley Quinn made her big screen debut in The Steen Suicide Squad, which was an overall poorly rated movie, but I do feel like she was the one shining light that DC had in this movie and the ability to take her out of that and place her into her own movie, which is kind of a Suicide Squad sequel in a way because it takes place right after that movie. But yet they're also making Suicide Squad two, so I think they're just trying to bridge the gap with having a hit in between. So where this movie takes place, it's right after a Suicide Squad. There's a brand new villain named Black Mask, and the main plot of the movie is that Harley Quinn and the rest of the Birds of Prey, which is like this gang of girls, they team up together to protect a young girl who came across a diamond that belongs to Black Mask, and it just so happens that that young girl is named Cassandra Caine, who turns out to be bad Girl. There's also rumored to be a Joker cameo, which was played by Jared Letto in the first Suicide Squad. Probably the worst portrayal ever of Joker. He I thought he was just too cartoony, too weird, and didn't really add anything to the movie. I felt like they just put the Joker in there to get kind of people interested in the movie. The reason I'm excited about this movie though, is because it's rated are Suicide Squad was rated PG thirteen, and I think that really hurt the movie because it came out after Deadpool was such a big hit. And if you don't remember Deadpool, the first one star Ryan Reynolds, and it really was the first R rated Marvel movie. Was more violent. There was cursing, and it just fit. And after that came out, d C was kind of like, oh no, that was actually a big sick tess and we're kind of trying to tell a more grittier style movie, but we have a PG thirteen rating. They went back and did some reshoots to kind of pump up the comedy a bit, but they still refrain from making that leap into an R rated movie because with these comic book movies, you want them to be entertaining two adults, but you also want to consider that you want to get everybody in the theater, which means if it's an R rated movie, you lose out on the kid audience. Now, I did some research on the movie numbers. I couldn't find exactly how much Margot Robbie was played for the first one, but she wasn't the main character in that, so I don't think it would be comparable. But she did take home between nine and ten million dollars playing Harley Quinn in this one. So while I'm not the biggest DC comics fan, I love a good R rated comic book movie and that's why I put this at number two. But before I get into my number one most anticipated movie of I want to give some honorable mentions. These didn't quite make the list either because there's no trailer out, not many details on the plot, or I'm just on the fence whether or not they're going to be good, But I think they do to serve a shout out. Coming out on August twenty one, this Bill and Ted Faced the Music, which I think will just be a fun movie. You also have coming out on March seven is the live action Mulan, which I've gone back and forth on how I feel about that trailer. I think this one may be the one that kind of ends the trend of these successful live action Disney remakes, just because this one doesn't have really the charm of the cartoon at all. It almost just looks like a straight up Disney war movie, which I don't know how audiences are going to receive that. Like the good thing about the cartoon Milan is there were some comic relief with Eddie Murphy as the dragon, but this one there's no dragon. You also have coming out on March twenty A Quiet Place Part two, and then on November sixty have Marvel's Eternals, which is kind of their new Avengers, but there's no trailer out really not a whole lot of details aside from the cast who's in it. So it just barely missed my list and at number one my most anticipated movie of I'm staying in the theme of female comic book characters. Also direct did by females, It's wonder Woman starring Galghadad, directed by Patty Jenkins, who did the first one, opening on June five, A right, that's just a trash can ash can ye, so kind of like Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad. Wonder Woman also made her debut in what is just a pretty badly reviewed movie, Batman Versus Superman, which I've never walked out during a movie. But what I do is I fall asleep during movies when they're boring, and that is a movie. I took a good two minute napin woke up and still not much had happened. The one shining light in that movie was wonder Woman, and from that she got her own movie, which actually has one of the highest ratings for any superhero movie ever made. So when this one, she's fighting not one but two villains. One is her former friend turned villain played by Kristin Wig and the other is this business guy villain played by Pedro Pascal, who you know from The Mandalorian. He was also in Narcos and Game of Thrones. So it's called wonder Woman four because it takes place well in nineteen eighty four, and you also have Chris Pine coming back as the love interest. So initially what DC was gonna do was the same thing Marvel was doing, where everybody would have their own movie and it would lead up to like Everybody joined together and like the Avengers. So they had Justice League, which turned out to be a major flop, and wonder Woman again was the only good part in that. And with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill backing out as Batman and Superman, you're left with really just Wonder Woman and Aquaman. For them to rely on. Not only that, but now Galga Dot is getting paid, which there was a lot of controversy with what she got paid for the first one, where she only made three hundred thousand dollars compared to Henry Cavill who got paid like twenty million dollars to play Superman. She was making a fraction of that. So here she's getting ten million dollars to come back as Wonder Woman, which is a pretty significant bump in pay. But I think that the fact that she's really carrying DC right now, they need to give her more money, like double that for a Wonder Woman. So I'm just excited to see the continuation of Wonder Woman's story with Galgha Dot and that is why I put it as my number one most anticipated movie of That is my top five list of the week. Let me know what you thought about my picks, and if there's a movie you're looking forward to one that maybe I missed, let me know. All right, gonna get into it now. My review of The Irishman, which you can watch on Netflix. That is, if you have an extra three hours and twenty nine minutes to spare well, the movie is actually three hours and twenty minutes. There's an entire nine minutes of just credits because this movie is so long, so I set aside some time to really take in this movie. From Martin Scorsese, who is a legendary director, which you would know from Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street and my favorite Good Fellas. This movie is actually based on a real story. It's based on a memoir called I Heard You Paint Houses, and it's about a mob hitman played by Robert de Niro and its possible involvement with the killing of a guy named Jimmy Hoffa. I got a lot to say about this one, so before we get into it, here's a clip of the irishman only tweet people in the world I wanted ease and only one of them as Irish and how strong I made you. So I did a lot of research on this movie, not only on how accurate it is to portraying the real events, but also how long this movie took to be made, because it was actually in development since two thousand and seven, and it kind of had a whole different plot in the beginning, Like Tara Reid was supposed to be the love interest in this glad they didn't go with her. Joe Petchy, who's in the movie, who you would know from also in Good Fellas. He was also the bad guy in Home Alone, but he said no to Martin Scorsese fifty times before finally agreeing to be in this, And he hasn't been in a movie in over ten years. And not only is it Martin Scorsese's longest film to date at two hundred and nine minutes, it's also one of his most expensive movies ever, with the budget of a hundred and fifty nine million, which is pretty expensive. And it finally got the green light from Netflix, which I think it's so long because it's essentially a director's cut because Netflix, I don't think they're gonna tell Martin Scorsese, hey, you need to trim it down a bit. They're pretty exciting to get a Martin Scorsese film the directly on Netflix. So at three hours and twenty nine minutes, that is the director's cut, Martin Scorsese saying, if you want my movie, you get it in its entirety. As a director, I'm a fan of the guy, but personally I think he's just maybe a little old and cranky because he's the guy who said Marvel movies aren't real movies, that they're non films. And I get it. If you're making really epic crime dramas like Martin Scorsese, and then you see movies like The Avengers making tons of money, you may feel like your craft is taking back a bit because people are seeing these is like really big blockbusters. But for him it's like, no, it's an old school storytelling, very cinematic, you know, all these other just classic movie telling elements, and when he sees those big things, he wants to take a stab at them, And I think it just makes him look old and kind of dated. And I also think it's just kind of interesting that he had agreed to put it solely on Netflix. I think if you're arguing that movies like Marvel, I think if you're making the argument that Avengers movies are films, and you're putting something directly on a streaming service, well you could argue, well, then you could kind of say, if a movie doesn't go in theaters at a full release, is it really a movie? Martin Scorsese because he was even getting mad at people and telling them not to watch his movie on your phone because Netflix. It's available on your phone. People are gonna watch this wherever. And he's like, no, you gotta sit down and know, Martin Scorsese, if your movie is on Netflix, people are gonna watch it on their laptop, on their phone. That is the beauty of Netflix. So really, my only problem with his is he can't pick and choose how he feels about changes in cinema. Okay, so that's my quick Martin Scorsese ran before I get into this review. I actually enjoyed the movie. So the backstory on this it's based on a guy named Frank Sharon, a k a. The Irishman, who was an American labor union official accused of having links to the Buffalino crime family. And the whole movie is based on a book called I Heard You Paint Houses and told from the perspective of Robert de Niro's character, who was involved in all these crimes in the movie. So the book was written by a guy named Charles Brandt who wrote the memoir about Frank Sharon, who claimed that he killed between twenty five and thirty people, although he couldn't remember an exact number, so he basically confessed all this stuff. And this guy put it in a memoir, and the guy, Frank Shearon, actually died the year after this memoir came out, and it was never actually revealed how accurate everything he confessed to was because he was never actually convicted of any murder. Because it covers a lot of history in the movie, everything from like the Mafia and Washington Ties, also touches on Castro's rise in Cuba and the CIA's attempts to overthrow him. It also talks about the mob connection between JFK's assassination, and then it kind of wraps up in the mob wars of the nineteen sixties and seventies. It's basically like the mobster version of Forrest Gump, told in the style of Good Fellas. The cast is also amazing, and they're all in their seventies. You have Robert de Niro at seventy six, Joe Pesci also at seventy six, and Albacino at seventy nine. The problem I did have with them being so much older is they do the flashback scenes, but in the flashback scenes they d aged them, so essentially they're playing the same age as they did in Good Fellas, but now they have digitally reaged them to make them look younger, and it's been used in movies before. I remember whenever Robert Downey Jr. Showed a younger version of himself as Iron Man, they were able to do that in a way where it was okay, unbelievable, but it was also for a shorter amount of time that was like maybe a two minute scene, where in this movie almost the entire thing is Robert de Niro as a younger version of himself, So it's just a bit distracting, like seeing his face like with the wrinkle smooth out. I think the real story kind of comes out in the last hour of it. I think underneath the surface of the movie, what you get is a story about a guy aging, getting older, dealing with lost sin and regret. So while it was a daunting three hours in twenty nine minutes, I think the movie was entertaining. Now I'm not gonna say that it didn't feel like three hours in twenty nine minutes. No matter how entertaining it was, it did feel that long. So I think that takes a little bit away from it. I think it could have been chopped down. There were some parts of the story that just really didn't need to be explored. I felt it was just kind of boasting that really long run time. But it is an entertaining movie. You kind of have to take it in as like you're binge watching an entire TV showed once. So maybe breaking it up into like our increments would kind of make it a little easier to chew and maybe more enjoyable. I watched it all at once, just because I wanted to take it all in, but I did find myself at points of like an hour and a half in thinking Okay, this movie has to be wrapping up by now, and no, there were still a solid two hours left. So I would rate at three point five out of five Hitman, which if it were an hour lesson runtime, would easily bump it up to four. But I think it's just too long. So if you're a fan of Wolf of Wall Street, if you're a fan of good Fellows, I do think you will enjoy this movie. My suggestion is just to kind of break it down into more watchable chunks. The beauty of it is it is on Netflix, so you can kind of pick it back up and start as you want, and if you really want to stick into Martin Scorsese. Watch the entire thing on your iPad. All right, and that's the show for this week. Thanks so much for checking out this episode. It really means a lot when you guys are tagging me in your Instagram story. So I'm gonna give a shout out over the week to at Lauren Elizabeth three sixteen, who tagged me that she was listening to the show last week. Oh yeah, do to get a shout out is tagged me in your Instagram story, just a screenshot that you're listening. I'll repost those throughout the week and then give you a shoutout on next week's episode. If you're listening on Apple Podcast, it would really mean a lot to me if you rate and review the podcast because as a brand new podcast, it gives me a little boost for other people to discover it and hop in on the action too. So if you don't mind doing that, And if you're listening on I Heart Radio, just hit follows. You get brand new episodes every single Monday. I also have an email that I'll start taking questions on next week. It's movie Mike d at gmail dot com. Any movie questions you have or topics you think I should cover. I'm gonna pull something from that to talk about next week, so send them in now. I'll talk to you again next Monday. Thanks so much for listening. Later, Tilt Ti