New Year's Eve

 New Year's Eve (2011)

Starring Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Hector Elizondo, Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sarah Paulson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Til Schweiger, Hilary Swank, and Sofia Vergara

Along with James Belushi, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Matthew Broderick, Cary Elwes, Carla Gugino, Cherry Jones, John Lithgow, Ryan Seacrest, and Nat Wolff

Directed by Garry Marshall

Written by Katherine Fugate

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: F

The King of Comedy

The King of Comedy (1982)

Starring Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard, and Shelley Hack

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by Paul D. Zimmerman

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (1976)

Starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, and Cybill Shepherd

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by Paul Schrader

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  A-

Joker

Joker (2019)

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert DeNiro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, and Brett Cullen

Directed by Todd Phillips

Written by Todd Phillips

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

The Irishman

The Irishman (2019)
Starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, and Jesse Plemons
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Steven Zaillian

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Joy

Joy (2015)

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramírez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rosselini, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Rohn, and Bradley Cooper

Directed by David O. Russell

While I enjoyed The Fighter, David O. Russell's two subsequent well-received films --  Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle -- didn't register as successful to me as they did to others.  Considering the less-than-enthusiastic reviews for the writer-director's latest, Joy, my expectations were quite low.  However, I found myself pleasantly surprised with the tale which isn't without a few faults in its story, but manages to be Russell's most entertaining film to date.

Joy is the semi-biographical story of Joy Mangano (played here by Jennifer Lawrence), a divorced mother of two who invents an ingenious new mop in an effort to better her life.  Obstacles are certainly placed in Joy's way -- her live-in divorced mother (Virginia Madsen) refuses to leave her bedroom where she watches soap operas all day, her father (Robert De Niro) has just moved back in causing trouble, her ex-husband (Edgar Ramírez) lives in her basement -- but she's motivated by her grandmother (Diane Ladd) who has always believed that the high school valedictorian isn't living up to her potential.  With the monetary assistance of her father's new widowed girlfriend (Isabella Rosselini), Joy creates her mop and finds herself shilling the device on the shopping network QVC after convincing an executive (Bradley Cooper) of her wares.  

While I mentioned earlier that Joy is Russell's most entertaining film, that doesn't necessarily make it his best.  There are moments in Russell's story and in his direction of his actors where he loses some focus, opting for quirkiness rather than fluidity.  While this proves to be amusing at first, it does grow a little wearisome when we in the audience want the film to focus on Joy's passion, perseverance, and fortitude as opposed to her odd family.  De Niro, Madsen, and Rossellini are all good, but I sometimes felt they were in a different film as their characters felt more like "Characters" than actual people.  Also, although Jennifer Lawrence is totally engaging as the strong-willed title character, she has an accent problem here in that whatever she was trying to attempt vocally fades in and out throughout the film enough that it proves noticeable.

Russell's an intriguing director to me in that I appreciate his stylization -- his use of music is always unique, even if sometimes a bit pretentious -- but when he lenses his own screenplays, he lacks the focus needed to reel in some of his odd excesses.  His best film -- The Fighter -- wasn't penned by him and I can't help but think that the guy should open up to filming other peoples' stuff again.  Joy gets him headed in the right direction, though, and I hope he'll continue the upward trajectory.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - The Intern

The Intern (2015)

Starring Robert DeNiro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm, JoJo Kushner, Andrew Rannells, Zach Pearlman, Christina Scherer, and Adam DeVine

Directed by Nancy Meyers

As part of an outreach initiative, Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway), CEO of the popular fashion e-commerce website About the Fit, creates an internship program to bring in senior citizens to counter the youthful vibe of the workplace.  Recent widower Ben (Robert DeNiro) applies and earns an internship as Jules's assistant.  Despite her initial reticence, Jules soon finds Ben's demeanor and attitude to be a comforting and soothing aspect to her hectic and crazy life as she attempts to balance her work life with her home life being a wife to Matt (Anders Holm) and mother to young Paige (JoJo Kushner).

Writer-director Nancy Meyers' The Intern is full of clichés and silly side characters who bear no import to the overarching storyline, but at the center of the film is Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway who create a chemistry-filled dynamic that is irresistibly charming.  Color me surprised, but there is humor and heart in the father-daughter, mentor-mentee relationship that Meyers creates and DeNiro and Hathaway imbue.  While it's obvious where the seasoned, elderly Ben is going to lead the fresh, younger Jules from the very outset of the film, we in the audience don't really mind because of the interaction between the two characters and actors.

While the secondary characters are amusing in their own right, the film doesn't really know what to do with them.  Sure, they play into certain scenes during which the relationship between Jules and Ben flourishes, but in the end they can't help but feel superfluous.  Still, because of the dynamic between the two leads, The Intern manages to be a better, more watchable film than it probably deserves to be, so kudos to both DeNiro and Hathaway for achieving this.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - The Family

The Family (2013)

Starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dianna Agron, John D'Leo, and Tommy Lee Jones

Directed by Luc Besson

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

After a promising opening half hour, the family in The Family begins to wear a little thin.  Robert De Niro is patriarch Giovanni Manzoni, a mob boss who squealed on members of his crime syndicate.  For the past several years, Giovanni has been traveling through Europe with his family under various aliases while being protected by FBI agents (led by a gruff Tommy Lee Jones).  Unfortunately, Manzoni -- who has now taken on the pseudonym of Fred Blake -- can't quite leave his mobster ways behind which forces him to have to uproot his family often whenever he reverts back to his old ways, gets angry, and kills someone.  His family -- wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron), and son Warren (John D'Leo) -- have toughened up because of this and are starting to pick up some of their family patriarch's ways of revenge.

As we get to know the Manzoni/Blake family, things are actually pretty promising in Luc Besson's film.  However, we soon realize that the folks that Manzoni ratted out a decade ago are on a manhunt for him.  This, unfortunately, is when the film starts to falter.  Rather surprisingly, when it aims for humor, the film succeeds, but the mob revenge plot is a huge failure, lacking any tension or emotional impact.

Michelle Pfeiffer is game as a mobster's moll providing quite a few laughs and young John D'Leo is a true standout as the tough, New York-accented teen who doesn't quite fit in with the kids in Normandy, France (the family's latest hometown).  Unfortunately, the performances aren't enough to breathe life into a plot that nearly put me to sleep.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - American Hustle

American Hustle (2013)

Starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, and Michael Peña

Directed by David O. Russell

Quite simply, American Hustle is the most overrated movie I've seen as of yet that's gained prevalence during this awards season.  (Captain Phillips is a close second.)  For a movie that is inherently about backstabbing and thievery, there wasn't a moment of tension or excitement and the characters failed to make any impact on me whatsoever.

David O. Russell who directed and co-wrote the picture was also behind the lens and put the pen to paper for last year's Silver Linings Playbook, another film I found to be incredibly overrated and undeserving of the heaps of praise thrown its way.  There's something about Russell's writing style that just doesn't grab me in the slightest (and would also explain why I enjoyed his previous film The Fighter seeing as how he didn't write it).  Silver Linings Playbook felt like two disparate halves that failed to come together.  Similarly, American Hustle is a mishmash of different genres, none of which resonate.  When the comedy is culled from jokes about people's perms or comb-overs or the sassiness of a "New Yawk" broad, it makes me wonder if Russell has any original ideas.

But perhaps Russell wasn't going for original.  Much has been said about American Hustle being Russell's ode to the 1970s films by Scorsese and while that very well be true, that doesn't make this worthwhile.  While the film itself is fictional, it has its basis in true events.  Back in the 1970s, Atlantic City was looking to rebuild its name as the gaming capital of the world.  In order to do so, Camden mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) tries to bribe other politicians to help the city flourish.  You'd think that'd be the basis of the film considering it's a story that could have some depth to it.  You'd be wrong.

Instead, Russell (and co-writer Eric Singer) place the emphasis on Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a slimy owner of a collection of dry cleaning establishments who has a side business in offering fake loans to people.  At a swinging 1970s shindig, Irving meets Sydney (Amy Adams), a gal from New Mexico who moved to New York looking for a different lifestyle.  She immediately falls for Irving and shows him that she's quite game to help him with his "loan" business, willing to go so far as to create a new identity for herself -- Lady Edith Greensley whose English accent will instinctively make her seem more important to Irving's clients.  One of these clients just happens to be Richie DeMaso (Bradley Cooper), an undercover FBI agent, who manages to catch Irving and Sydney in the act of fraud.  After he arrests the couple, Richie agrees to free them only if they'll assist him in helping him track down even bigger folks committing fraudulent acts.

Throw in some love triangles, a brassy wife for Irving (played way too over-the-top by Jennifer Lawrence), and Robert DeNiro as a mafia kingpin, and American Hustle is just a mess in terms of story.  Much like Silver Linings Playbook, this film just doesn't know what it wants to be.  [I criticize Ms. Lawrence there, but her character's brashness was at least a breath of fresh air in this story, and her scenes, despite not having much to do in terms of advancing the film, were some of the film's best.  However, Lawrence is the one person that I felt you could "see" acting whereas the others embodied their characters more or less.]

Granted, I'll give Russell credit that he does manage to get some nice performances from his group of actors, but overall, the film is a mess.  The costumes were groovy, though!

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Chris Tucker, John Ortiz, Julia Stiles, Anupam Kher, and Jacki Weaver

Directed by David O. Russell

David O. Russell's last film, The Fighter, had a strong focus on family and his follow-up Silver Linings Playbook carries on that familial theme albeit in a bit more comedic tone.  In fact, the odd mix of humor and drama in this flick is the one problem in this otherwise pleasant romantic comedy diversion. Granted, Mr. Russell manages to almost find the proper balance between the two extremes by hour #2, but its first sixty minutes is a tiny bit slow and off kilter.  Still, thanks to a crowd-pleasing finale and some very nice performances, Silver Linings Playbook proves to be moderately successful.

Bradley Cooper takes on his best role since his stint on Alias as Pat, a Philadelphia native who finds himself recently released from a Baltimore mental hospital after eight months of court-ordered examination.  Locked up after he beat up his wife's lover, Pat returns home hoping to have regained control of his anger (and his diagnosed bipolar disorder) allowing him to rekindle his relationship with his wife.  Pat's parents, Dolores and Pat, Sr. (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro), try to convince Pat to move on with his life, but he's hellbent on proving he's a good guy to those he hurt in the past.  While out running one evening, he comes across his best friend Ronnie (John Ortiz) who invites him to dinner with his wife Veronica (Julia Stiles) and her recently widowed sister Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence).  Like Pat, Tiffany's a little off-the-wall, not quite all there mentally, and still emotionally hurt (on the inside) by her husband's death, but her instability creates a bit of an attraction for Pat.  As the two grow friendlier, Tiffany wants to take things a bit further, but Pat refuses her advances as he still believes that his wife will return to him.  Eventually the story shifts to the unstable duo competing in a dance competition, but it comes as no surprise that "dance" really is just a way of keeping these two centered, allowing themselves to grow into more spiritually, emotionally, and mentally steady people.

Silver Linings Playbook, unfortunately, lacks some groundedness.  Like its two main characters, it's almost searching for what it wants to be.  The first hour places quite serious with some nice comedic punches thrown in, but the last hour is almost sitcommy at times.  I understand David O. Russell was going for a bit of awkward quirkiness, but the film plays like two different movies and it never successfully melds into one cohesive piece.

That being said, the film rises above the average thanks to some great performances.  As previously mentioned, Bradley Cooper has finally stepped out of Douche-Land, a place where he's been stuck in ever since he became a "movie star."  He's still a guy with a hot-headed streak, but Cooper's finally allowed to give a character he portrays some quieter, emotion-driven moments and he succeeds.

It's also a complete pleasure to see Robert De Niro finally choosing a movie that has good intentions.  Just look at his 2011 -- New Year's Eve (which I started watching on a plane ride to Europe and couldn't complete), Killer Elite (which I started watching on Netflix and couldn't complete), and Limitless (which I shouldn't have allowed myself to complete) -- and you'll see how far he's slipped in recent years.  Here he plays a rough-around-the-edges die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan with complete accuracy (just listen to Philly sports radio stations and you'll understand the portrayal).  It was nice to see him commit to a role that isn't in a film that scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

But the true star of Silver Linings Playbook is Jennifer Lawrence.  Tough, strong, feisty, and sweet, Lawrence is fantastic.  She has a scene in which she essentially tells off Robert De Niro (not an easy thing to do with his strong onscreen presence) that is one of the best moments I've seen all year.  Her Tiffany recognizes her foibles and is attempting to better them, but Lawrence never once plays her as a victim which she so easily could have done.

This has been a very difficult review to write because the acting in Silver Linings Playbook deserves a film that better understands itself.  I completely understand the awards buzz for the actors, but the movie plays a bit like a really, really good Hallmark movie.  And maybe that's what it always wanted to be.  Sweet and charming.  And it succeeds at achieving those characteristics.  But I don't think that's all that it wanted to convey.  I think it wants to delve deeper than that, but when it tries, it doesn't really win.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Awakenings

Awakenings (1990)

Starring Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Julie Kavner, Penelope Ann Miller, and John Heard

Directed by Penny Marshall

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Awakenings is a pleasant enough film that I remember liking a little better the first time I watched it (probably fifteen years ago) than I did this time around.  Don't be mistaken...the true story of Dr. Malcolm Sayer's work with chronically ill patients is an interesting tale.  The problem lies in the fact that director Penny Marshall's film lacks a real momentum, taking a bit too long to get started and finding itself hampered by the fact Robin Williams's portrayal of Sayer is much too dry and bland to hold one's attention in the first third of the flick.

About forty-five minutes in, however, Awakenings takes a turn for the better as Dr. Sayer begins testing an experimental treatment on Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), a man whom as a youth became inflicted with encephalitis causing him to lose all bodily control leaving him in a nearly comatose state.  Sayer realizes that, like Lowe, the patients in the chronically ill ward still maintain their reflexes in their current state.  Despite being catatonic, their minds are "still present" despite the fact that, for the most part, they're unable to communicate.  Through this newfound special treatment, Leonard finds himself soon being able to function just like any normal human being and finds himself attempting to make up for the nearly thirty years he'd been unable to be "normal."

As I said, the biggest issue with the movie is that at its beginning, Robin Williams's Malcolm Sayer just wasn't a character worth crafting a film around.  He's nearly a "nervous nelly," uncomfortable in seemingly every social interaction he encounters, appearing almost wall-flowerish amongst a sea of more interesting characters.  Even the patients in the catatonic states were exhibiting more pizzazz than Williams.  Admittedly, I don't really think it's the fault of Williams.  The screenplay plays up his character as an unexciting homebody who likes to study plants in his spare time...not a whole lot to work with there.

However, once De Niro's Leonard comes into play, Williams's Sayer becomes much more comfortable in the role.  And that's partly due to the fact that De Niro is pretty great here and makes everyone around him even better.  As a grown man who hasn't really been alive for thirty years, when Leonard awakens for the first time, De Niro is forced to play a "grown up child," unaware of what happened in the three decades that have escaped him.  Perhaps it's just because I'm used to De Niro slumming it in his roles as of late, but it's nice to see that the guy actually has some acting ability to fall back on should his disastrous Focker roles dry up in the upcoming years.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Limitless

Limitless (2011)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Anna Friel, and Robert De Niro

Directed by Neil Burger

Was the world really asking for a PG-13 version of the gritty, harsh, and absolutely amazing drug addiction drama Requiem for a Dream?  Personally, I think not, but Limitless is kind of like a low-rent version of that 2000 Darren Aronofsky film complete with the same pulse-pounding music, rapid, fast-paced camera movements and edits, and "inside the body" glimpses of drugs entering someone's blood stream.  It's like a toned-down Requiem for folks like my mom (but she didn't like this movie either).  Try as he might and not helping matters in the slightest, I'm not quite sold on the concept of "Bradley Cooper -- Hollywood Star" despite the fact that his cache is certainly rising in the entertainment industry.  Add Robert De Niro into the mix continuing his trend of choosing rather ridiculous roles to garner a paycheck and Limitless just doesn't really have much going for it.

I was a fan of Bradley Cooper when he first appeared on my entertainment landscape via Alias, but I've never quite warmed to his smarmy attitude that's inhibited nearly every one of his movie characters to this date.  In this flick, Cooper is down-and-out writer Eddie who can't seem to get motivated to write his latest novel.  While roaming the streets of New York City, he meets his ex-wife's brother Vernon, a drug dealer who gives him a special pill called NZT that perks up all his senses and activates his brain into remembering nearly everything he's ever learned throughout his life.  Eddie is amazed and goes to meet his ex-brother-in-law for more pills, but finds him murdered and his apartment ransacked.  Someone was looking for NZT, but Eddie somehow magically figures out Vernon's hiding spot and finds a huge stash of pills.  Time passes and Eddie turns from a bum to a ladies man who finishes his novel and manages to become one of the best stock brokers in the industry, working for the famed Carl van Loon (Robert De Niro).

Perhaps I was a little harsh above on Mr. Cooper.  It's not that he's bad here, it's just that I don't quite see him as a "movie star" yet and this film attempts to put him in that role.  That being said, he comes off much better than De Niro who continues slumming it in his later years.  He's really just become a caricature of himself...there was a moment in this movie where his simple presence and squinty-eyed facial expression made me chuckle, ruining what should have been a rather serious moment.

Still, the biggest issue with Limitless is that is has no clue what movie it wants to be.  Is it a mystery surrounding who killed Vernon and why they did so?  Is it a drama about Eddie butting heads with new boss van Loon?  Is it a romance as Eddie tries to win back his ex-girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) who left him when he was a struggling novelist?  Or is it morality tale about our drug-addicted society?  While it tries to be all of these things, it doesn't succeed at any of them.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Machete

Machete (2010)

Starring Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan, Daryl Sabara, and Robert DeNiro

Directed by Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez

Having never seen the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez flick Grindhouse which apparently contained a fake trailer that spawned Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez' Machete, there weren't really any expectations going into this movie.  In the end, the story probably just should have been content with the kooky fake trailer and left it at that because this homage to the B-movies of the 1970s overstays its welcome by about 45 minutes of its hour-and-forty-five-minute runtime.  

The broad story is ridiculously simple.  The titular character, an illegal Mexican immigrant (played by Danny Trejo), is hired by a shady guy (Lost's Jeff Fahey) to assassinate a Texas senator (Robert DeNiro) who happens to pride himself on his creatively unjust methods on keeping illegal immigrants out of the country.  Little does Machete know that he's simply being set up in order to make the senator (who is experiencing a sharp downtown in the polls) become more sympathetic to the voting public.  Somewhere along the line, Machete discovers this double-crossing and eventually meets up with a sexy US immigration officer (Jessica Alba) with whom he teams up with to defeat his enemies.

What works here is the violence...and there's certainly plenty of it.  Excessive to the extreme, it's in these moments of massive bloodletting where the humor and fun lie.  Taking no prisoners, Machete is a man who'll chop off peoples' heads without pausing for a second, and there's something grotesquely fun about watching ludicrous decapitations and profusely spewing blood.  It's when the film decides to bog itself down with dialog and attempts to present a "pro-illegal immigrant" stance where the film falls apart.  Yes, yes, I'm a republican, but I didn't hate this film for taking the other side of the issue.  I disliked the movie for taking that stance in a silly, unsubstantial way.  I'm certainly not turning to a film like Machete for political advice, but even the final showdown between the Mexicans and the Americans just felt disappointing and unsatisfying after such a lengthy, talky build-up.  (There was actually substantial talk about this issue when the film was released and I think most of the Republican bloggers were giving more weight to the issue than it was worth.  In the end, the movie presents the whole thing in a tongue in cheek way...although it certainly does paint a caricaturish image of Republican senators.)

The film initially starts out visually grainy, looking like a film that's been run through the projector one too many times.  It's rather unfortunate that Machete abandons that look after the first scene because it would have been a little more optically appealing.  That older look screamed "B-movie" and it would've made the horrible acting by the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba seem more like it was horrible for a reason as opposed to the fact that the two women just can't act.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Stone

Stone (2010)

Starring Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, Milla Jovovich, and Frances Conroy

Directed by John Curran

When I saw the trailer for Stone last year, I laughed at a corn-rowed Edward Norton as he spoke in some country-urban dialect.  Fortunately, the accent didn't seem nearly as ludicrous in the midst of the actual film itself.  Unfortunately, there's no reason for this film to exist.  It's often worse to watch a film that just meanders aimlessly and never gets anywhere than a film that gets somewhere but does it horribly.  At least in the latter film, you can find reasons to actively despise it.  In a film like Stone, the story just sits there onscreen never eliciting any type of positive or negative emotion and that's a disappointment.

Part of the problem is that Robert DeNiro doesn't even seem like he's trying here.  As parole officer Jack Mabry, he's just coasting along, showing no emotion.  The storyline asks him to question his faith when convicted arsonist Gerald "Stone" Creeson (Norton) suddenly appears to find God via some unusual religion while in jail.  Not only is Jack contemplating his religious faith, but his faithfulness to his wife (Frances Conroy) also comes into play when Stone's wife, the alluring Lucetta (Milla Jovovich), attempts to do whatever necessary in order to get her husband out of jail.

Despite decent performances from Norton and Jovovich, the religious aspects of the tale bog down the whole film.  I'm guessing that there was an attempt made at offering some deep philosophical notions about the emptiness that faith can bring about in times of struggle and need, but the film just fails on that front.  For a film that appears to be denouncing the preachiness of organized religion, it ends up feeling like a Sunday sermon.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - Everybody's Fine

Everybody's Fine (2009)

Starring Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, and Melissa Leo 

Directed by Kirk Jones

Everybody's Fine was a big failure at the box office last holiday season, but after watching I can't understand why.  Sure, it's overly dramatic, but it's a lovely little film featuring some nice performances from all of the lead actors, particularly Robert DeNiro who has certainly slummed his way through movies in the last decade or so.

It's been a few months since Frank Goode's (DeNiro) wife has passed away and he is eagerly looking forward to a get-together with all of his grown adult children.  However, when they all bail on him, Frank decides to travel around the country and visit each one, hoping to reconnect with them and become a greater part of their lives.  

That's the story in a nutshell.  It's simple and it's kind of sweet and it surprisingly works.  Director and screenwriter Kirk Jones has crafted a really lovely film in both appearance and substance.  While he admittedly gets a tad heavy-handed towards the end, it never felt too sugary or overly sentimental.

The reason for that, in part, is the pleasant and understated performance from Mr. DeNiro.  In recent years, DeNiro has veered way over-the-top whether that be in the godawful Fockers movies, Analyze That, or pretty much anything else in his recent oeuvre.  Here, DeNiro throws aside the caricature of his former actorly self that he's been playing for the last decade and instead is simply an aging, hard-working father who misses his wife and wants to form a better relationship with his kids.  It was actually a surprising departure for DeNiro and a track I'd like to see him continue on in years to come. 

DeNiro is joined by the lovely Kate Beckinsale as his eldest daughter and Sam Rockwell as his eldest son and both of them make the most of the roles.  Beckinsale, in particular, surprised me.  Not that I've even seen the Underworld series of films, but that's what I associate her most with.  I keep forgetting that she gave a bravura performance in 2008's Nothing But the Truth (rent it...trust me), and while her performance in this flick didn't blow me away, it certainly made me remember that the lady can actually act.  [And, although the less said the better, even Drew Barrymore didn't annoy me in this as much as she usually can, although she is playing the same exact character she plays in every other movie...seriously, how is she still popular?]

I honestly watched this because it was the holiday season and I remember there being a tree on the poster...don't be fooled into thinking this is a holiday movie, however.  It's not in the slightest.  Nevertheless, despite that misleading advertising, Everybody's Fine is a flick that surpassed my middling expectations and actually won me over quite a bit with its charm.

The RyMickey Rating: B