Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 17/03
CITY ISLAND "Terrific Comic Entertainment"
There are those who believe that once you get married, you and your spouse should open yourselves up completely. Let it all hang out. But many a guru will tell you that we all have skeletons in our closets which are best to leave there along with the mothballs. In a movie which could have been entitled "Secrets," writer-director Raymond De Felitta seems to have his own ideas: that relationships can be strengthened only by revealing those intimate details that we hide from one another, the deeds that we’ve done that we’re ashamed of as well as the stuff we’re proud to reveal. We in the audience are lucky. Without the tensions held by people who are afraid to open themselves up, we’d never get all the laughs that De Felitta evokes not only by his clever dialogue but by the performances of a group of actors who appear to have been living together for years. "City Island" is a fun movie.
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CITY ISLAND
Overture Pictures
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Raymond De Felitta
Written By: Raymond De Felitta
Cast: Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Ezra Miller, Emily Mortimer, Steven Strait, Alan Arkin
Screened at: Dolby88, NYC, 2/10/10
Opens: March 19, 2010
It’s set on City Island, which is part of the Bronx and yet a special place, one which lifelong resident Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) anoints with the prophecy "You never want to leave." (I’m ashamed to say that as a lifelong Brooklynite who has been to India, China, Russia and Chile, I’ve never set foot on the title place.) Simulating a New England fishing village (yes, right here in the Bronx!), the one-mile isle is the home of a stereotypical Italian-American working-class family headed (or so he thinks) by Vince who works as a correction officer at the local prison. His good wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) has a job answering telephones, his daughter Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) is supposed to be in college but her (secret) is that she works as a stripper, his (secret) son from another woman, Tony (Steven Strait) is a jailbird inhabiting the jail worked by his dad, and his teen son Vinnie( Ezra Miller) is a pro at wisecracks who has a (secret) passion for morbidly obese women such as his 350-pound neighbor. Vince has a (secret) desire to become a movie actor, taking classes with Michael (Alan Arkin), a drama coach who pairs him up for an assignment with another student, Molly (Emily Mortimer), who has a (secret) family upstate. Several family members (secretly) smoke.
Plenty of skeletons in this City Island closet, all of which play havoc with relationships that find the dinner table a hotbed of shouting and stomping out before the Chianti is half-finished.
The story is loaded with twists, information that we in the audience know about but subject to misinterpretations by the members of the family. For example, what wife would believe that the number belonging to Molly which she finds inside one of husband’s books is for a woman who is nothing more than Vince’s fellow student? And what can Joyce make of the book itself, which is about acting? For a prison guard? Fans of Julianna Margolies’s work as the title character in the TV drama "The Good Wife" will marvel at the way make-up artists Jorjee Douglas, Joseph Farulla and Pamela May transformed Margolies from a restrained, upper-middle class lawyer to a working-class ethnic.
The film is loaded with, dare one say, ethnic energy, the characters’ dialog bouncing off one another as though everyone were aware of the drama coach’s stern advice, "No pauses." Obviously Alan Arkin’s Michael is no fan of the late Harold Pinter. This is an entirely upbeat film that floats easily as though skimming the waters of the Long Island Sound, a terrific comic entertainment that may even motivate some of us world travelers to visit City Island: no passport or visa required.
CITY ISLAND (Overture Pictures)
Rated PG-13. 103 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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