City Island

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, 3:30 pm today

After the houselights came up, I was the last one in the number two auditorium at the Lyric. Ben came in to walk through to the projection room. As the last credits rolled, he asked me, "So how was it?"

"My kind of movie," I said. "It's a New York neighborhood-family movie, which I like a lot."

I added that Andy Garcia's performance was superb. "You know how every year the Academy nominates an Indie performance for the acting Oscar. Last year it was Richard Wright."

He knew what I meant. "Well, Garcia could be it for this year."

Then I added that the movie got a little goofy at the end, and got fairly Postmodern when Garcia's character actually goes from being a prison guard to an actor, and Martin Scorcese is explicitly invoked.

The story here has a Postmodern dysfunctional family that is healed by bold Classical honesty and courage. It occurred to me that in Scorcese's earlier films, and also in Saturday Night Fever, the New York Catholic Family that Screams (NYCFTS) was not so much Scorcese showing us a New York phenomenon (witness his own personal upbringing), but rather the Postmodern one, albeit in New York garb and patois. In City Island, it's come full circle---the New York screaming family now looks normal American, because we've all become that, somewhere along the way.

But like I said, some good performances by a great cast, and I learned a few things about the place where I dined on lobster on my 35th Birthday, having visited all five boroughs in one day of fun. The film did not let down any of my memories.