Motherless Brooklyn

[Greg]

A detective suffering from Tourettes and OCD tries to unravel the mystery at the center of the rebuilding of New York in post World War 2. Edward Norton stars as Lionel Essrog who was given the nickname Brooklyn by his boss Minna and he's an orphan so.....

Norton also wrote, directed, and produced this movie so there weren't a lot of people to tell him to maybe cut back on the actor's speeches. It's long. It feels long. And at 2 hours 24 minutes, it is long. I was kind of engaged for most of it. The story wasn't very compelling. You can see the center of the mystery early on so I was just waiting for them to finally get to figuring it out. There's also an unbelievable love story floating in there. It does have echoes of Chinatown but not as sure handed.

I think my biggest complaint was that for a film noir it was very clean. Especially the cars. They had all just been waxed right before they were delivered to the set. The set dressing looked like set dressing. You could almost see the fresh paint on the new signs. You did get any grit in the atmosphere except for the jazz club. Of course, that could just be my issue. I expected New York in the fifties to be sleazier.

No sword fights. The supporting cast is strong with Bobby Cannavale, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. Lots of acting testosterone on set.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

The book was completely different from the mivie. I recommend the book highly. Jonathan Lethem wrote it

[Greg]

That is what I heard. The main one being time change. I was tempted to check it out and now I will do so.

[cranefly]

When I saw the trailer for this some time back (on DOOM?), Ed Norton looked so messed up at the start that he couldn't do anything, but then as the trailer revealed the later goings on of the movie, we're seeing an almost unafflicted Ed going great guns.  Was the evolution of his character handled better than what the trailer suggested?  It looked very much like an amateurish vanity project.

Not that I'd ever tell him that to his face (and tic him off, no doubt).

[Greg]

Hmmm. He was pretty messed up throughout the film. But when he needed to be cogent to serve the plot, he could be cogent. But the filmmakers set up a lot of his coping mechanisms to show that if he worked really hard he could control himself. The premise is that underneath the freak show was a very smart man. It kind of worked.

[Drunk Monk]

It was alright. I luv Dafoe in anything. Norton is alright and I liked his quirkiness although Tourette’s isn’t quite like that and the idiot savant is hackneyed to me. That car was a sweet ride, worth keeping clean. And I dug the Jazz. Good ol’ Wynton blows a mean horn.

It didn’t feel long but I had a lot of interruptions - Yuki was a pest barking and biting, my mom called randomly and seemed to want to chit chat randomly, and usps texted me with some random survey. I just wanna watch the damn movie, okay? I should’ve guessed at the mcguffin but I had a hard Time following it with all the distractions.

No sword fights but Ed gets a lot of beat downs. Enough of you’ve seen this already so no DOOM rec needed.

[thatguy]

I just saw this too. I enjoyed it, although I couldn't stop seeing Trump whenever Alec Baldwin was on screen (maybe that was intentional?). Not fantastic, but better than a lot of things I've seen recently. yeah, lots of speeches....

Nice sets, tho. Those tiles at that swimming pool are awesome. It was a good role for Michael Kenneth Williams. His voice worked for the part. I laughed when the horn got bent.

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

although I couldn't stop seeing Trump whenever Alec Baldwin was on screen (maybe that was intentional?). 

Baldwin has become the king of playing powerful assholes.