Sharon Stone – Memphis Flyer

Robert De Niro as Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein

Casino (1995; dir. Martin Scorsese)—Heavily edited, poorly dubbed, grotesquely commercial-breaked TV versions of Casino sadden me. I’m happy that Scorsese’s best film continues to rumble across the basic cable landscape in various shapes and sizes at various times of day because exhibition and syndication play a major role in pop-cultural canon formation. But a sanitized version of Casino makes little sense because indiscretion and tastelessness are two of its cardinal virtues.

Trade secrets about the gaming industry and the workings of the Midwestern mob, violent confrontations involving power tools and baseball bats, an endless parade of pastel-colored custom suits so gaudy they threaten to burn out your rods and cones —there’s simply too much in this vulgar American epic to absorb in one sitting. Add in the dueling voiceover narrations, the hold-your-breath instances when the camera rushes at characters like an attack dog, and the car-bomb explosions of raunchy absurdist wit, and you’re likely to feel lost.

Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna

The soundtrack does its best to disorient you, too; Casino’s nonstop music (62 songs are listed in its closing credits) is analogous to the constant electronic chatter of slots and video poker machines cluttering nearly every real casino floors. Given so many opportunities to choreograph miniature music videos within the frame of his story, Scorsese engineers perhaps his greatest pop epiphany—a long sequence where a pair of card cheats get taken down as Jeff Beck’s “I Ain’t Superstitious” wails in the background.

But give the movie the time and attention it needs and you’ll start to get it. Then you might start to love it. Casino is Scorsese’s Physical Graffiti, his 2666, his three-hour, thirty-course tasting menu that will set you back an entire paycheck if you add the beverage pairings, which you might as well because you’ve come this far. It is also a vision of craps-table capitalism unfolding in a multicultural American frontier where mobsters, bookies, cowboys, Italians, Jews, Arabs, Irishmen and anyone else who wants a piece of the pie can get in on the action if they’re willing to play.

Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro

Although the three principal characters—gambler/casino boss Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro), mobster/hellspawn Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) and hustler/addict Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone)—are assholes, their long, painful falls from grace matter because their bosses are much, much worse. Which is why Casino now plays as an apt and timeless statement about the apparently untouchable gangsters responsible for the current (and no doubt future) financial crises bilking us out of our money whether we like it or not. “It’s a pity in this state that we have such hypocrisy,” says Rothstein late in the film. “Some people can do whatever they want; other people have to pay through the nose. But such is life.”

Grade: A+

Throwback August: Casino

Sofia Vergara and John Turturro

The Man Who Loved Women

The florist does not believe women will find him attractive. “I am not a beautiful man,” he says, and he’s right. His eyes are a little out of alignment, he has a big schnozz, and his mouth doesn’t quite close all the way. His friend, a former bookstore owner, disagrees. Although the florist may be getting old, he is trim and confident, and there’s a precision and care in his movements that certain women might find irresistible. He works with his hands for a living, and it shows; as the former bookstore owner says, “You’re disgusting in a very positive way.” So why not call up this woman who’s looking for a ménage-a-trois and see what happens? And why not make a little extra money into the bargain?

John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo is the warmest and sexiest of the recent string of romances starring middle-aged actors whose most glamorous days might be behind them. His film takes place at the beginning of autumn in New York, and the city’s golden glow envelops and dignifies everyone wishing to trade Manhattan’s gifts of privacy and solitude for some provisional human contact.

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Turturro, who wrote and directed Fading Gigolo, also plays Fioravanti, the florist turned male prostitute; Woody Allen, acting in a film he hasn’t written or directed for the first time since 2000, plays the bookstore owner turned pimp, and he’s looser and funnier here than he has been in a long time. (At first glance, the movie could pass for a minor Woody Allen trifle, but Turturro likes his characters more and allows them greater freedom.) But as engaging as both men are, this is a film about beautiful women who, as one of them asserts, are meant to be looked at.

Fading Gigolo worships its women like the goddesses they are; few recent films have shown as much sensitivity to women’s bodies, and fewer still have photographed them with such voluptuous tenderness. The perfectly preserved Sharon Stone plays Fioravante’s first client. Sometime after he begins his romance with her, there’s an overhead shot of a bare-breasted Stone that’s like the moment in the Bhagavad Gita when Arjuna gets a glimpse of Krishna in all its splendor; it’s shocking, thrilling, and perhaps too powerful for mere mortals to confront for more than a few seconds. How she must have enjoyed the scene when she’s sitting in her apartment without any pants on, eating dark chocolate and trying to figure out why she’s so into this guy.

Sofia Vergara, who plays her friend, is equally magnificent, mainly because she acts nothing like the screeching, braying Latina cartoon she plays on ABC’s Modern Family. While she’s still an exotic sex fantasy, she has her spike-heeled feet firmly on the ground. Then there’s Avigail (Vanessa Paradis), a Jewish widow who spends an afternoon in Fioravante’s company and also finds herself drawn to him. She matches Fioravante’s quiet confidence, and they begin a most unusual courtship.

The summer blockbusters and superhero epics are already at the gate; see this film before it’s swept away by the tsunami of origin stories, marketing tie-ins, and explosions.