1 of 5 | Robert De Niro plays both Vito Genovese (L) and Frank Costello in “The Alto Knights,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
LOS ANGELES, March 19 (UPI) — The Alto Knights, in theaters Friday, is a mob movie in need of enlivening. Though Robert De Niro plays two roles, neither invigorate the sequence of historical events.
The film opens in 1957 New York with crime boss Frank Costello (De Niro) surviving an assassination attempt. He reflects on his lifelong friendship with fellow mobster Vito Genovese (De Niro) and the criminal enterprises that took them down separate paths.
Costello and Genovese were real-life figures of New York organized crime. In Costello’s telling, he ran speakeasies during Prohibition to provide alcohol to paying customers.
Genovese ultimately continued his underworld dealings long past prohibition and built his empire despite Costello’s warnings. Costello was in charge of the Luciano family while Genovese served in World War II, and by the time he returned, Costello had added legitimate businesses that took attention off the racketeering enterprises.
Furthermore, Costello refused to vacate his position as head of the families, to which Genovese felt entitled. Yet Genovese’s continued criminal activities still implicated Costello and his wife, Bobbie (Debra Messing).
De Niro distinguishes Costello and Genovese as separate characters. Costello is the more typical De Niro seen in Goodfellas, Casino and The Irishman, which impressionists love to impersonate.
Genovese, meanwhile, is more of a caricature, down to a James Cagney-style gangster voice. As Genovese, De Niro also wears a prosthetic nose and chin and covers his mole.
The script by Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote Goodfellas and Casino, covers the history from Costello and Genovese’s childhoods through the Kefauver Senate Committee Hearings and downfall of the families.
The epic timeline demands a kinetic approach like Martin Scorsese took with his mafia movies. While it is valiant not to imitate a master, Barry Levinson’s film collapses under the weight of its subject.
Costello narrates the film, sometimes speaking directly to the camera, like an interview subject in a documentary. Black-and-white still photo montages illustrate many of the events he summarizes.
In a dramatic film, this has the effect of skipping over major significant events and showing characters react to things the viewer barely got to see. Costello is describing the sorts of things that Goodfellas and Casino showed, though a few brutal acts of violence are depicted.
Genovese is the sort of character Joe Pesci played in previous mob films, but the actor apparently only comes out of retirement for Scorsese or Pete Davidson. Casting De Niro in both roles is potentially interesting, but the relationship lacks the connection that would make a betrayal feel poignant.
Costello and Genovese rarely meet in the film. Those meetings amount to little more than disagreements where Costello asks Genovese to go straight and Genovese says no. It does not convey the lifelong friendship of which Costello’s narration speaks.
The Alto Knights appears to be afraid to implicate Costello. The film portrays him as so passive he is rather unbelievable.
Costello stopped carrying a gun after his honeymoon and became a legitimate businessman. He still wants everything to blow over since he survived the assassination attempt, so vetoes the retaliation his associates are demanding.
It reflects documented history when Costello cooperates with Senator Estes Kefauver (Wallace Langham) in his hearings on organized crime while every other witness pleads the fifth. This is a good scene and livens up the film for a bit.
By the time Costello organizes a meeting of all the family heads at an upstate New York farm, the film devotes a lot of time to non sequitur dialogue about the history of Mormons during the long drive. That is cinematic real estate that could have been devoted to more relevant material earlier.
The Alto Knights has all the facts, with reasonable allowances for dramatic license to fit in a two-hour movie. It just lacks the emotion and viscerality of other dramatizations of mafia history.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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It’s summer blockbuster movie season and there have been a lot of new releases from many of the biggest studios and directors. Some of the biggest titles include “Supergirl”, “Disclosure Day”, and “Toy Story 5.”
GBH’s Morning Edition guest host Tori Bedford spoke with GBH correspondent and film critic Sarah G. Vincent, along with GBH’s Callie Crossley, an avid cinephile and host of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, for their take on some of the season’s biggest releases. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
SUPERGIRL
Tori Bedford: So one of the biggest movies to hit theaters lately has been the next installment in James Gunn’s new DC Universe, “Supergirl”, starring Millie Alcock. Sarah, let’s start with you. What did you think?
Sarah G. Vincent: I actually loved it. It’s the first summer movie where I didn’t have any disclaimers of “I liked it but…” I was very invested in the storyline because if someone hurt my fluffy baby, I would run around the universe and try to save him. Also, I like that it was like a superhero movie with a woman where she didn’t become a surrogate mother, where she wasn’t sexualized, where she was dealing with real emotion. The real emotion really hit me. I love the backstory. It was gorgeous. I understand that it’s a lot of jokey jokes.
Bedford: What do you mean jokey jokes?
Vincent: On the present day storyline where she’s helping Ruthye, they do try to keep it light because they’re dealing with a lot of heavy issues, and so there are a lot of like flippant jokes and one-liners and everything. And I didn’t mind that because this is still a blockbuster and I think that a blockbuster does need to have some like mass appeal. I’m not going for a Bergman film, right?
Bedford: Yeah, it’s summer. Like, chill out.
Vincent: Right.
Bedford: What’d you think, Callie?
Callie Crossley: I am the “but” — I liked it except some of the themes were so heavy, even though presented in an entertaining way. So, don’t take me wrong. You should see it. It’s a popcorn movie. But I was like, “OK…”
Bedford: You wanted more jokey jokes.
Crossley: Well, it was just to me, I looked at it and I thought, “Epstein Files” because we have a plot of young girls being trafficked to an island of crazy men. So that’s what came to me. But then I thought, I guess I’m just— I live in news, so this is what I would think of. But I can understand in the moment why it was there, but I’m not sure it resolved itself for me in the best way possible that sort of made it maybe not so uncomfortable about it. Now, she is great, Millie Alcock as Supergirl, and I loved her backstory. I really enjoyed that part. And there are some cameos from Superman. So you really get to see the difference between the two of them and why there is a difference, because now you know the backstory.
Bedford: I love their relationship, where he’s like, “This is why Krypto is not well-behaved” and she’s all disorganized.
DISCLOSURE DAY
Bedford: All right, next up — I can’t wait to talk about this. Steven Spielberg is back with an alien mystery thriller, “Disclosure Day.” This man is obsessed with aliens.
Callie, let’s start with you. What’d you think?
Crossley: I went because it’s Steven Spielberg, and I wanted everything. So again, this is a popcorn movie, and out of the gate, you are really on a ride, and you’re like, “What’s happening?” So, I would say the first part of the movie, you’re just caught up in trying to understand where he’s going with it, and it’s a lot of action, and it’s Spielberg-esque in that way. And that John Williams score is fabulous. What I had a problem with was the end of it. I’m going to use the word unimaginative because I am not giving away the plot, so no spoilers here, It’s unimaginative in how he resolves it because I think it’s old-fashioned in both how he presents some of the folk, and also in the methodology of how he wants to get the word out. So that sort of threw me off and I’m thinking, “That’s not a word I use with Steven Spielberg. I should not be using unimaginative.” I still say you should see it, but those are my thoughts.
Vincent: At 2.5 hours, I would say, I warned you. So as an action movie where people are being chased, like the bad guys are chasing the good guys, it’s a great movie. As a movie where it takes an alternate sort of sci-fi approach to the idea of possession and what it would look like, terrific. Actually, a really provocative, wonderful idea. Emily Blunt does a wonderful job.
Crossley: Fabulous.
Bedford: She’s great in the movie.
Vincent: I think she owns the movie, and if the movie was just about her character, I would probably give it like closer to a 90 than where I landed, which was probably in the 70s.
Bedford: I was just going to say … I got out of this, and I thought, “Am I stupid? Or was this really dumb?” It was fun though.
Crossley: This is not a Spielberg movie you’re going to remember, I say.
Vincent: No, yeah, you’re not.
Crossley: And there’s a lot of reviewers saying it’s fabulous. And I’m like, were we at the same place?
Bedford: Am I dumb?
Crossley: But still, it’s a popcorn movie. Got some really good stuff in there you could enjoy.
TOY STORY 5
Bedford: All right, finally: Woody, Buzz, and all their friends are back again for “Toy Story 5,” and this one is taking on big tech as a teaching tablet enters the toy box. Sarah, what’d you think?
Vincent: I loved it. It’s my favorite Toy Story. And I would say that what I loved about this movie is when you go to movies, usually technology is the bad guy, period. And this movie is much more nuanced. And no one is really the bad guy. It presents the pros and cons of everything. And it’s about authentic relationships and it shows how in the past, a relationship without technology was fraught, in retrospect, with problems for Jesse, with the trauma she endured by losing her person. Now in the present with their new human basically having this crisis of “how do I make friends?” So I think it shows the universal problem of how you make authentic relationships, and the technology is only showing how that problem persists. It embodies now, but it’s always been a problem.
Crossley: I think it’s brilliantly done in this way. It doesn’t demonize all the folks that usually get demonized. The tech gets demonized. Sometimes the parents get demonized. That did not happen at all. But for me, any story about friendship that’s told authentically is going to get me. And they know how to get you. It’s a really, really important story about finding your tribe, as Sarah said. Now, having said that, it’s still not my favorite. Toy Story 3 is my favorite. And I went back just to say, “Okay, let me just go look at the end of 3 again to see if I had the same response.”
Bedford: Oh, masochist, my God.
Crossley: Well, because I just wanted to see. I looked at my computer, watched only the end, and sobbed yet again.
Bedford: I know, that’s all I’ve got to say about this franchise. How much more crying do you want me to do?
Crossley: I misted up at the end of this. I did not sob, as I scared the children in 3 before in the theater. But this time I did mist up because really, they know how to get you. It’s so worth seeing.
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The Fetus, 2025.
Directed by Joe Lam.
Starring Bill Moseley, Lauren LaVera, Julian Curtis, Evan Towell, and Ariel Yasmine.
SYNOPSIS:
A couple become pregnant with a half-human, half-demonic fetus with a thirst for blood-and must uncover its terrifying origins before it’s too late.
In The Fetus, Alessa (Lauren LaVera) discovers she has accidentally gotten pregnant by her boyfriend Chris (Julian Curtis), but instead of this being a cause for celebration Alessa tells Chris that they must visit her father Maddox (Bill Moseley) instead of going to a hospital as Maddox insisted she do that if she ever got pregnant. Chris has his own reasons for not wanting a baby and goes along with her, but Maddox is not an easy man to get to know as he is blind and suffering from PTSD as a result of being in Vietnam.
However, there are bigger stakes here than just trying to impress your girlfriend’s father as it is revealed that Alessa’s baby is the result of a pact Maddox made with a demon decades before, and that his blindness was due to him not sacrificing Alessa to that demon. Now he has a second chance to appease the demon with the vampiric tentacle monster that keeps appearing to suck the blood of anyone who isn’t kin, and Chris has to step up and decide whether he wants to be a father or not.
Or something like that, as The Fetus is a little confused by its own mythology. Taking its cue from Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive!, The Fetus is a low-budget indie affair that has its star names to thank for lifting it up and out of the bin marked ‘utter nonsense’ and into the realms of watchable nonsense. What’s the difference? Well, there is no way to try and sell it as a serious horror movie as the premise is totally daft, the visuals give it the look of a Megadeth music video from the 1990s and it ties itself up in knots trying to tell us who needs to be sacrificed and why (although neither become very clear by the end of it), but Bill Moseley has made enough of these types of schlocky horror movies to know exactly what he’s doing and how to pitch it, plus Lauren LaVera has enough clout with modern horror audiences to give it some appeal and she proves once again why she is one of the best scream queens of recent times (although she is better than this movie), and so the combination of these two actors gives The Fetus more weight than it would have had if two lesser-known actors were in the roles.
Julian Curtis as Chris also lends an air of comic relief, although when the plot is as silly as it is you cannot help but deliver your lines with that sort of sarcastic smirk on your face (”You can’t get pregnant overnight” – well, she did and no one questions it). He plays off against Bill Moseley very well and, if nothing else, his character is the one that has the biggest arc, and if you wanted to dig deeper and salvage some sort of message about nature versus nurture, what it means to be a father, telling your girlfriend when the condom splits and that type of thing then it is there, but don’t stress too much if you just want to watch vampiric tentacles coming out from between Lauren LaVera’s legs because that is really what everyone is here for rather than social commentary.
The Fetus works because everyone involved knows exactly what kind of movie they are making, and that movie is a low-budget black comedy about a demonic baby with naff-but-passable effects and three lead performers who bounce off each other very well. Going into it expecting The Exorcist or The Omen levels of filmmaking quality is only going to lead to anger and disappointment, and you can’t really be angry at a movie that has a man sticking his you-know-what into a fiery hole in the floor to conceive a baby. Temper your expectations and go into The Fetus prepared to enjoy 84 minutes of diabolical baby B-movie hilarity and you’ll have a good time… maybe.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
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