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      Billie Holiday’s Story Depends on Who’s Telling It

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBillie Holiday’s Story Depends on Who’s Telling ItThere are almost as many interpretations of her short life and enormous legacy as there are books and films about her, including the new biopic starring Andra Day.Andra Day and Kevin Hanchard in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” directed by Lee Daniels.Credit…Takashi Seida/Paramount Pictures/HuluFeb. 18, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETFor the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the story of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer, came to her in dribs and drabs. When Parks was growing up, she said, “our parents would tell us, ‘She had a tragic story.’ And then, as we got a little older, ‘She used drugs.’ And then as we got a little older, my mom would start saying things like, you know, they got to her. But she didn’t really get into it.”In the forthcoming drama “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Parks, who wrote the screenplay, really gets into it, placing many of Holiday’s better-known battles — with heroin addiction, Jim Crow-era racism, and a seemingly endless string of swindlers and cads — in the context of her lesser-known struggles with Harry J. Anslinger, the unabashedly racist head of the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics.“The story is about how this woman, this icon, was much too outspoken, and so the government came after her,” Parks said in a phone interview. “It’s about how we African-American folks love this country that doesn’t really love us back.”Directed by Lee Daniels, the film reveals how Anslinger doggedly pursued Holiday (played by the Grammy-nominated vocalist Andra Day) ostensibly for her drug use, but really because she refused to stop singing “Strange Fruit,” the haunting and visceral anti-lynching anthem that has become one of the most famous protest songs of all time.The role, Day admitted, was daunting. Holiday was one of the world’s most gifted and celebrated jazz singers, her songs later covered by artists like John Coltrane, Barbra Streisand and Nina Simone, her influence felt by singers from Frank Sinatra to Cassandra Wilson to Day herself. And then there were all the others who had tackled the role before her. “I just had this idea running in my head that people would be like: ‘Billie Holiday’s so amazing, Diana Ross was amazing, Audra McDonald was amazing,’” Day said in a video call. “‘Oh, and then remember that girl, Andra Day, who tried to play Billie?’”Audra McDonald played the jazz star in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” on Broadway in 2014.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPremiering on Hulu on Feb. 26, the biopic is the latest in a series of portrayals of Lady Day and her music that date back decades. Day’s Golden Globe-nominated performance follows Ross’s star turn in the 1972 feature “Lady Sings the Blues” and McDonald’s Tony-winning performances in the Broadway musical “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” In addition, there have been biographies (“Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon”), children’s books (“Mister and Lady Day: Billie Holiday and the Dog Who Loved Her”), and documentaries (“The Long Night of Lady Day”; “Billie”). Over the years, portrayals of Holiday have become more nuanced, shifting focus away from her problems with addiction to include insights into her history and legacy as a musician, a pioneering Black female entertainer and, with “Strange Fruit,” a champion of civil rights.Looming over them all is “Lady Sings the Blues,” Holiday’s 1956 ghostwritten autobiography, which omitted many details of her life (the singer’s affairs with Orson Welles and Tallulah Bankhead) and fictionalized others (her place of birth; the marital status of her parents).The book formed the basis for the 1972 biopic, a film that, coincidentally, inspired Daniels to become a director. (His credits include “The Butler” and “Precious.”) “‘Lady Sings the Blues’ changed my life,” he said in a phone interview. “It was beautiful Black people. It was Diana Ross at the height of her everything. It was Black excellence mixed in with a little bit of pig’s feet and pineapple soda and cornbread. It was magic. I had never been so entranced by anything.”The musical “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” imagines a single set — but what a set! — during which the singer goes off the rails in a small nightspot in Philadelphia, the site of her previous arrest on drug charges. (“When I die,” she cracks, “I don’t care if I go to heaven or hell, as long as it ain’t in Philly.”) Holiday rails against the bad men in her life, including her first husband, Jimmy Monroe, and the anonymous attacker who raped her when she was a child.Since that musical’s premiere in 1986, a host of would-be Lady Days have tackled the demanding role in theaters across the country, including Lonette McKee and Ernestine Jackson. In 2014, McDonald’s rendition won the actress a record-breaking sixth Tony.Diana Ross as Holiday in the 1972 movie “Lady Sings the Blues.”Credit…Paramount PicturesTo bring the icon to life in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Parks read everything she could about the singer and immersed herself in her music. She reread “Lady Sings the Blues” but didn’t revisit the movie. (“Lee loves that film, so I was like, I’m going to let him have that.”) She also read several books by Anslinger, Holiday’s longtime nemesis (played by Garrett Hedlund in the film), who declared that jazz “sounded like the jungle in the dead of night” and declared that the lives of its players “reek of filth.”“Anslinger was fascinated with what he called the ‘jazz type,’ and saw himself as making America great again,” Parks said.Parks also studied up on Jimmy Fletcher, the Black narcotics agent whom Anslinger enlisted to help bring Holiday down. “That’s the situation we’re in as Black America right now,” Parks said. “Want to prove you’re not really Black? Put down some Black people. That’s the way to climb the ladder in the entertainment business. I’m not going to name any names! But you still see it.”In addition to Fletcher and Anslinger, a whole roster of bad men enter Holiday’s life, including the mob enforcer Louis McKay, the singer’s third husband. In the 1972 “Lady Sings the Blues,” McKay, as played by Billy Dee Williams, is Holiday’s super-suave, would-be savior, who struggles mightily (and fails) to get the singer off drugs. (The real McKay served as that movie’s technical adviser.) In reality — and in Daniels’s film — McKay was a pimp, a junkie and a wife beater.“The same woman who was so strong, who could see so clearly the injustices in our culture, just kept hooking up with the wrong guy,” Parks said. “But I guess that’s how it always is. Great people do great things, but then at home, they’re like —” and here the writer screamed.Even so, the singer who emerges in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is more fighter than victim, taking on Anslinger (near the end of the film, she tells him, “Your grandkids are going to be singing ‘Strange Fruit’”) and holding her own against Fletcher.“You get to see her as human,” Day said. “As Black women, we’re not supposed to show the ugly parts or the mistakes. Billie’s funny, she has this great magnetism, she can be crazy and self-destructive. But she can also stand up and be a pillar of strength when forces that are so much greater than her are trying to destroy her.”The singer as seen in James Erskine’s documentary “Billie.”Credit…Michael Ochs/Greenwich EntertainmentJames Erskine, the director of the recent documentary “Billie,” also wanted to move beyond the standard narratives of Holiday as victim. “I was really keen to show that she lived life,” he said. “There’s a sequence where she’s on 42nd Street and she’s having lots of sex and taking lots of drugs, and I really wanted that to feel very positive, that she was determining her own destiny.”Erskine’s film drew from 200 hours of audio interviews conducted by the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl in the 1970s. Many of the comments haven’t aged well: One psychiatrist declares Holiday a psychopath; others attribute her beatings by assorted men to masochism.The documentary also includes commentary about Holiday’s deep and platonic love for the saxophonist Lester Young, her unfulfilled desire to have children, and her sold-out 1948 concert at Carnegie Hall, following her stint in a federal prison in West Virginia.“The perception from ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ is very much Billie as victim and junkie, but I think that while she was victimized by people, she was really a fighter,” Erskine said. “And she was also a great artist, of course, which is why we’re still talking about her long after she died.”For Daniels, Holiday’s story will always be relevant. “It’s America’s story,” he said. “And until we’re healing, until American has healed, it’s not going to not be relevant.”In Parks’s view, “She was a soldier. Just the fact that she kept singing ‘Strange Fruit’! She was a soldier of the first order. Those mink coats and diamonds that she wore were her armor, and her voice was her sword.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Days of the Bagnold Summer’ Review:

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Days of the Bagnold Summer’ Review:Adapted from a graphic novel, this comedy pits a teen against his mother in a battle to get through a long summer together.Monica Dolan and Earl Cave in “Days of the Bagnold Summer.”Credit…Greenwich EntertainmentFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETDays of the Bagnold SummerDirected by Simon BirdComedy1h 26mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Regrettably, this motion picture does not chronicle a book club devoting a season to the works of Enid Bagnold. In fact, no reference is made to the author of “The Chalk Garden” and “National Velvet.”Instead, “Days of the Bagnold Summer,” adapted from the Joff Winterhart graphic novel by the screenwriter Lisa Owens and the director Simon Bird, is a coming-of-age story that aspires to winsomeness and wisdom, but only gets so far.The British Bagnold family of the title here consists of Sue (Monica Dolan), a shy middle-aged single mother, and her son, Daniel (Earl Cave), a teen of zombielike pallor and limp hair. Daniel has a trip to Florida looming; there, he plans to spend time with his father, who’s ditched him and mom. The trip is canceled and the chip on Daniel’s shoulder practically triples in size.[embedded content]Amiably anecdotal, the movie gets wry results from Dolan and other players, including Rob Brydon as a would-be ladies man and Tamsin Greig as a “hipper” mom than Sue.It also takes pleasure in deflating Daniel’s enthusiasms. In one scene, the aimless teen bicycles, at unimpressive speed, through suburban streets to the musical accompaniment of Pure Disgust’s “Agents of the Machine.” We get the irony, or rather, the sarcasm: Metal’s grandiose racket seems completely disconnected from the banal lives endured by some of its listeners. The overall song score is by the more dulcet-toned Belle and Sebastian — the implication is that this is what truly grown-up people listen to.Its reactionary aesthetic aside, the movie’s narrative trajectory is arguably too relaxed. By the end of the summer, it’s nice to see Daniel’s chip has diminished, but it’s slightly befuddling that it seems to have gone away by itself.Days of the Bagnold SummerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and virtual cinemas, and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Silk Road’ Review: A Digital Drug Kingpin’s Undoing

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Silk Road’ Review: A Digital Drug Kingpin’s UndoingTiller Russell’s new fact-based thriller about Ross W. Ulbricht could have been a nail-biter, but ended up a limp snooze.Nick Robinson as Ross W. Ulbricht in “Silk Road.”Credit…Catherine Kanavy/LionsgateFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSilk RoadDirected by Tiller RussellCrime, Drama, ThrillerR1h 52mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.This maladroit fact-based cyberthriller begins at a branch of the San Francisco Public Library in 2013. As Ross W. Ulbricht — the founder of an online marketplace called Silk Road, where illegal drugs were bought and sold — the actor Nick Robinson lays out, in voiceover, some bold anti-authoritarian sentiment. He mentions “the insurmountable barrier between the world as it is and the world as I want it,” and how his project was about “taking back our liberty.”The movie than flashes back several years. At an Austin, Texas, bar, Ross flexes his pickup chops on Julia (Alexandra Shipp). “You wanna dance?” he asks. “No one else is,” she observes. “Exactly,” he replies. Heavy, man.[embedded content]In many respects, “Silk Road” is an excellent examination of why you should probably never date, or maybe even socialize with, a libertarian. It comes up short in almost every other way, though. In the hands of David Fincher, Michael Mann, Olivier Assayas or Katheryn Bigelow, “Silk Road,” the story of Ulbricht’s outlaw project and how it came to ruin, could deliver thrills and food for thought. Under the aegis of the writer-director Tiller Russell, it delivers limpness.Here, two D.E.A. agents who themselves committed crimes in pursuing the actual Silk Road case are morphed into one composite character, played by Jason Clarke, the one-time star of Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” who looks appropriately befuddled by his current circumstance. Tiller also tries to do Fincher’s “The Social Network” one better, showing Julia’s ultimate rejection of Ross as a trigger for him to conspire to commit murder. Nice overreaction, kid. Compounding other story and directorial missteps are dialogue exchanges such as this: “What if you could create an Amazon for drugs?” “You despise Amazon.” “I love freedom.”Silk RoadRated R for despising Amazon but loving freedom, and other bold moves. Running time: 1 hours 52 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Sin’ Review: Man of Marble

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Sin’ Review: Man of MarbleThe second feature in recent months from the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky is a grimy, austere Michelangelo biopic.A scene from Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Sin.”Credit…Corinth FilmsFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSinDirected by Andrey KonchalovskiyBiography, Drama, History2h 14mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Sin” is the second feature from the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky to reach virtual cinemas in recent months, and it is not nearly as strong or vital as “Dear Comrades!” (still available to rent). An austere, demanding sit, “Sin” — a Russian-Italian coproduction with Italian dialogue — nevertheless has a stubborn integrity in exploring the competing forces of patronage and creative inspiration that Michelangelo confronted in the 16th century.The film depicts the period when Michelangelo (Alberto Testone) worked on the Tomb of Pope Julius II. After Julius dies, the movie’s Michelangelo agrees to make the commission exclusive, effectively setting up a conflict of interest: Julius belonged to the della Rovere family, a rival of the Medicis; and the Medicis, who now control the papacy, are ideally positioned to support Michelangelo going forward. (Those familiar with the players will surely get more out of the film.)[embedded content]Forever requesting money, promising to meet impossible deadlines and ranting about other artists (“He doesn’t know anything about sculpture!” he scoffs more than once of Raphael), Michelangelo appears to have more luck than strategy in pursuing his single-minded artistic ambitions. Half- or perhaps fully mad, and unfailingly surly, he talks aloud to Dante, his inspiration.The emphasis is on agony, not ecstasy — and definitely not on sanitation. Moviegoers may duck to avoid being hit by falling waste. The film finds its pulse, and an image that captures the magnitude of the artist’s obsession, when Michelangelo takes on the Herzogian task of conveying an intact block of marble from a vertigo-inducing quarry in Carrara to lower ground. Even others’ lives won’t stand in his way.SinNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hour 14 minutes. On Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Test Pattern’ Review: Refocusing the Lens on Race and Gender

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Test Pattern’ Review: Refocusing the Lens on Race and GenderShatara Michelle Ford’s lean, smart debut feature confronts us with our presumptions about what rape and victimhood look like — onscreen and in life.From left, Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill in “Test Pattern.”Credit…Kino LorberFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETTest PatternDirected by Shatara Michelle FordDrama, Thriller1h 22mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Test Pattern” opens with a bait-and-switch: An ominous glimpse of a man kissing a drunk woman in a dark bedroom cuts to a casual scene at a bar. The woman, Renesha (Brittany S. Hall), a corporate professional, now dances with a different man — Evan (Will Brill), her boyfriend-to-be. The first half of Shatara Michelle Ford’s debut feature, set in Austin, Texas, traces their relationship in an endearingly low-key, mumblecore fashion.But the unease of the opening scene lingers. Did that moment come before or after Evan and Renesha’s meet-cute? Was it an adulterous hookup or something more insidious? By the time the answers arrive, “Test Pattern” has forced us to question our presumptions about what rape and victimhood look like — onscreen and in life.In Renesha’s case it’s a series of subtle gestures. At a girls’ night out, two persistent men ply her and her friend Amber (Gail Bean) with drinks and weed, and one of them quietly takes a woozy Renesha home.[embedded content]That Renesha is Black and both her boyfriend and attacker are white adds unspoken subtext. Supportive but indignant, Evan drags a disoriented Renesha from hospital to hospital — it turns out to be surprisingly hard to find an E.R. with a nurse qualified to administer a rape kit. Evan’s faith in the bureaucracies of health care and law enforcement clash with Renesha’s (ultimately well-founded) resignation, and his actions unwittingly deepen the theft of agency that has left her reeling.“Test Pattern” achieves a lot with very little: The film’s nonlinear editing and cannily scored silences invite our interpretations, locating in them the entanglements of race and gender. Ford pushes us, if not to definitive answers, then to the right questions.Test PatternNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters and on Kino Marquee. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving It

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving ItDan Stevens stars as a writer taunted by the ghost of his dead wife in this grating adaptation of the 1941 play.Dan Stevens and Leslie Mann in “Blithe Spirit.”Credit…Rob Youngson/IFC Films Feb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETBlithe SpiritDirected by Edward HallComedy, Fantasy, RomancePG-131h 35mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A comedy that’s more screw-loose than screwball, Edward Hall’s “Blithe Spirit,” a ludicrous adaptation of Noël Coward’s 1941 stage play, reimagines its source material as little more than a slip-and-fall farce.Dan Stevens stars as Charles, a near-parody of a blocked writer who’s introduced literally eating the words he has just typed. Commissioned to write a screenplay of one of his best-selling novels, Charles is desperate: Bedeviled by bedroom dysfunction (“Big Ben’s stopped chiming,” he whines to a friend), he hopes to find inspiration by inviting a disgraced psychic (Judi Dench) to host a séance in his imposing Art Deco mansion.[embedded content]What gets released, though, is not what Charles expects as the ghost of his first wife, Elvira (Leslie Mann), killed in a riding accident years earlier, moves in and takes umbrage at her replacement (Isla Fisher). Elvira, visible only to Charles and the audience, and blessed with a well-stocked ghostly wardrobe, is anything but blithe: Wrecking the garden and throwing knives at the help, she proves as hard to get rid of — and about as entertaining — as black mold.Propelled by tiresome characters and tortured setups, “Blithe Spirit” (originally filmed by David Lean in 1945) is a dated curiosity. Merging upper-crust twittery with hocus-pocus nonsense not even Dench can sell, the dialogue encourages Elvira to nag and everyone to over-emote. Surplus buffoonery and a new ending add nothing to the original, leaving us with a movie that obsesses over death while showing all too few signs of life.Blithe SpiritRated PG-13 for spiked drinks and saucy dialogue. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play and Vudu. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the Steal

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the StealNasty people do terrible things in this wildly entertaining Netflix caper about guardianship fraud.Rosamund Pike in “I Care a Lot.”Credit…Seacia Pavao/NetfilxFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETI Care a LotNYT Critic’s PickDirected by J BlakesonComedy, Crime, ThrillerR1h 58mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Bookended by towering stilettos and a guillotine-blade bob, Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) strides through “I Care a Lot” with the icy confidence of the inveterate fraud. Her racket is guardianship: identifying powerless retirees, having them falsely declared mentally incompetent and herself appointed their legal conservator.A network of enablers — including an unscrupulous doctor and an oblivious judge — grease the grift as Marla and her personal and business partner (Eiza González) happen upon Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). With a healthy nest egg and no apparent relatives, Jennifer is a “cherry”; and one chilling, all-too-believable sequence later, she has been secured in an assisted-living facility and her considerable assets liquidated. Marla, however, is about to discover she has messed with the wrong old lady.[embedded content]An unexpectedly gripping thriller that seesaws between comedy and horror, “I Care a Lot” is cleverly written (by the director, J Blakeson) and wonderfully cast. Marla is an almost cartoonish sociopath, and Pike leans into her villainy with unwavering bravado. And Wiest is sly perfection: Watch as Jennifer, drugged and smirking, spits an unprintable curse at her tormentor before putting her in a headlock. But it’s the introduction of an inscrutable Russian gangster (Peter Dinklage, all cool intelligence and wounded-puppy eyes) that gives Marla a worthy foil and the plot a reason to climax.With its ice-pick dialogue and gleefully ironic title, “I Care a Lot” is a slick, savage caper with roots in a real-world scam (as an episode of the Netflix series “Dirty Money” recounts). An overlong, somewhat mushy middle section made me fear Blakeson was losing his nerve. I was wrong.I Care a LotRated R for killing, cursing and elder abuse. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Mafia Inc’ Review: The Business They Have Chosen

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Mafia Inc’ Review: The Business They Have ChosenThis Montreal crime saga is never dull despite a sense of déjà vu.Sergio Castellitto in “Mafia Inc.”Credit…Film MovementFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETMafia IncDirected by Daniel GrouCrime, Drama2h 23mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Mafia Inc” was officially inspired by a nonfiction book on the Canadian mob. The movie and its characters are fiction, though, and their unofficial inspiration appears to be other mob films. It takes brass to poach on turf decisively owned by “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” and the director, Daniel Grou, who goes by Podz, deserves credit for delivering a saga that’s never dull despite hitting overfamiliar beats.Sergio Castellitto plays Frank Paternò, a Montreal crime boss whose latest venture — a share in a bridge that will connect Calabria to Sicily — could make him legit. Frank has two sons: Giaco (Donny Falsetti), who has shades of Sonny Corleone (he disagrees with his father in front of associates), and Patrizio (Michael Ricci), who is engaged to Sofie (Mylène Mackay), the daughter of the family’s wary longtime tailor (Gilbert Sicotte).[embedded content]There is also Vince (Marc-André Grondin), who, we eventually learn, is almost like a son to Frank, although the way he is introduced — arranging for a bus carrying a youth soccer team to be driven off a cliff in Venezuela — makes the revelation of his ties even more horrifying. Who would welcome such a psychopath? Was he always that way?Apart from the multilingualism (the strong cast moves fluidly among French, English and Italian), the cruelty and ingenuity of the violence are what most distinguish “Mafia Inc,” which can be tough to watch even for this genre. For better or worse, Grau has a knack for staging brutality, and for having his movie rock out to a Joy Division track or two.Mafia IncNot rated. In French, English and Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 23 minutes. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More