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In an earlier draft I sent Tyler 87 different movies so this is my favourite of those 87 movies. House of Games is a perfect movie about confidence art, which really is the same as visual art. My dad was a con artist, so I like this nonviolent way to revisit my childhood. Joe Mantegna (I smoked a joint with Mantegna in 1994 on the set of a film I was working on) and Lindsay Crouse are perfect, the writing is perfect, tight as a fucking trampoline like all Mamet stuff but not as sweary and unnecessarily verbose as his other stuff.I like seeing anything where smart people get played by people they think they’re smarter than. I like confidence art (The Grifters also v good) because (at least ideally), the victims are just idiots who want an easy buck, not fundamentally vulnerable, although that clearly happens also, and really this likely isn’t an accurate take on con-art but just some romantic reimagining on my part. Also Ricky Jay was one of the greatest character actors of all time.
Mar 29, 2022
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I am very struck by this film. I think the performances are stellar. Unflinching, mean, and cruel at times. Also, messy and cliche, but I love it. There is something to be said about this poster, too. I totally see why others might not feel the same, though. Definitely of its time. Even so, wow. This is my Mike Nichols' pick, tbh.
Mar 9, 2025
90s robert altman entertainment biz satire/thriller - v good viewing after last year’s writer‘s strike. tim robbins plays a hollywood exec who’s receiving death threats from disgruntled screenwriters. great snapshot of LA in this era (tho altman gets LA right in every movie he does) and endless massive cameos. one of my fav little details is the background conversations, they have nothing to do with the plot - they just add to the ambience and enhance getting immersed in the show biz deal schmooze-control zone.
Jan 26, 2024
It’s easy to know what to focus on in the Goodfellas Christmas scene, as Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway is bursting with gleeful charm at the sight of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill. There’s many times during the 1990 classic where Jimmy is annoyed, frustrated, full of rage, but he’s never more merry than he is when Hill walks into the bar in that scene. Goodfellas is not a Christmas movie, it’s a movie that spans someone’s entire life, but the Christmas scene in Goodfellas is might be my single favorite Christmas scene in cinematic history. With about halfway through the movie, you can feel the wheels turning, and although the gang has just completed what is supposed to be a score for a lifetime, there’s an obvious anxiety still permeating through the scene. Henry Hill talks about how the Luftanza heist was supposed to be the score for a lifetime, but it wasn’t, because when you do crime, there’s always loose ends and backstabbers that hold your comfort captive. The anxiety of crime — and all the hoops you must go through to stay a free man in spite of it — renders the crime itself moot. That’s what Goodfellas is all about — the chaos of human emotion, decision-making, and how the entire status of your financial security or strictly, your security as a person in the world can change in a New York minute.
So, it is wondrous to see De Niro capture those emotions so well. There’s obviously been a ton of great De Niro roles, so it is almost futile to discuss what his best performance is, but I’ve always been attached to his acting in Goodfellas, one of the best, if not the best, supporting roles in the Scorsese canon. Jimmy Conway is a man who turns the movie on its axis, despite the livewire charisma of Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito and Ray Liotta’s sleekness, every major tide in Goodfellas is turned by De Niro embodying many emotions at once: the greed of the mob, the rage, the efficiency, and lastly, the scary anxiety. (He does some of his best work in the phone scene when the old gangsters tell him that Tommy was executed when he thought he was going to become a made man. De Niro is incensed, begins to cry, and throws the phone booth down like the Hulk would because it means their entire dream is dying. All there is now is him and Henry, two outsiders that will always be middlemen). Jimmy is so tightly-wound — struggling with his lack of trust in everyone around him, including and epsecially Morrie, the token Jewish wig store owner, that it feels startling that he is happy to see Henry. When he yells at Johnny and Carbone for buying gifts for their wives and for themselves — he’s yelling at them in long-winded run-on sentences — his gut instincts about the group of jokers he did this heist with are proven right. They’re not to be trusted; there is no crime family, just people who are a means to an end. Indeed, Jimmy Conway’s Christmas spirit doesn’t last long after this.
I made a list of my favorite things happening in this scene for my Substack. So, subscribe to the blog, and check the rest of that out. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
Dec 25, 2024
Top Recs from @brad-phillips
Feb 18, 2024
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Refutation is exhausting. What if everyone was right and everything was true? Big load off my back honestly
Jan 31, 2024
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I play this 12 hours of applause when painting or writing it helps me feel encouraged. Nobody applauds at an art show which has always been a bummer to me
Jan 21, 2024