MOVIE REVIEW: THE ALTO KNIGHTS

 

In the 1950s, notorious New York crime bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese vie for control of the city streets. Once the best of friends, petty jealousies and a series of betrayals place them on a deadly collision course that reshapes organized crime forever.

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli

Release Date: March 21, 2025

Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama, History

Rated R for violence and pervasive language

Runtime: 2h 3m

Review:

The Alto Knights is a solid, if unremarkable mafia tale from Barry Levinson with the main draw being Robert De Niro playing dual roles.  Levinson's film is efficient enough to move through Costello's life at a steady pace even though it suffers from an unshakeable sense of familiarity due to the sheer glut of mafia stories that have hit the screen.  It lessens the effect of this true-life story since there are very few surprises in store as we  follow Costello's retelling of his friendship and feud with Vito Genovese.  Robert De Niro is still more than capable enough to carry dual roles and does it fairly effortlessly here.  He seems to be enjoying himself playing back in the mafia sandbox as he cycles through variations of characters, he's played in the past along with a few hints of Raging Bull thrown in for good measure.  It’s hard to deny how fun it is to see De Niro perform against himself when the characters come face to face, but you can't shake the feeling that the film would have been better off casting someone else as Vito, Joe Pesci would have been perfect for multiple reasons.  It doesn't help that the script from Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote Goodfellas and Casino, is surprisingly thin in terms of fleshing out the characters across the board.  Costello and Genovese are always at arm’s length as we never really get much insight into their minds outside of one's perchance for violence in contrast to the other's more measured, less brutal, approach.  The supporting characters suffer even more as we get painfully little to flesh them out leaving solid performers like Debra Messing and Cosmo Jarvis with very little to work with.  Adding a bit more depth to the characters across the board would have made The Alto Knights far more engaging than it ends up being once everything is said and done.

C+

MOVIE REVIEW: THE BAY

Three years after a massive government cover-up involving a parasitic outbreak in a small seaside town, a reporter unearths chilling footage that reveals the terrifying truth in this ound footage-style shocker from Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson. On July 4th, 2009, the town of Claridge, Maryland experienced an unprecedented biological disaster. An isopod parasite typically found in fish somehow found its way into a human host. As the town gathered for its annual Independence Day celebration, the parasite began to spread at unprecedented speeds, consuming its victims from the inside out. Now witness the terrifying events that unfolded that fateful holiday weekend as captured on the security cameras, mobile phones, and webcams of the people who witnessed them firsthand, but never lived to tell their stories. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Christopher Denham, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Kether Donohue, Kristen Connolly

Release Date: Nov 02, 2012

Rated: Bloody Images, Language and Disturbing Violent Content

Runtime: 1 hr. 24 min.

Genres: Horror

Review:

I remember seeing the trailer for The Bay and being vaguely intrigued by it because I’m a sucker for found footage films plus Barry Levinson was directing it. Strangely it came and went with very little fanfare. Thankfully it pop up on Netflix streaming recently which, truth be told, made me wonder if it was just a bad film. I was rather surprised at how effective it was and am still rather left wondering why it was mostly ignored. The premise is kind of a hodgepodge of found footage, suppressed footage in this case, plotted with a sprinkling of Jaws and Contagion. It’s fairly graphic once the infection / infestation starts spreading. It does its job well enough to leave you feeling kind of icky afterwards and wondering about your drinking water. Its green message isn’t very subtle which might be a turnoff for folks looking for a straight up horror film. That being said it works most often than not, rarely relying cheap scares. The whole thing feels rather authentic throughout although there are a few people in the town taking the whole thing far too well. Its overall authenticity is probably aided by the fact that Isopods are real albeit living in their natural habitat, the deep ocean.

B