Motherless Brooklyn 2019

      This film is based on a novel by Jonathan Lethem.  The setting is the 1950’s in New York.  Lionel Essrog is a lonely private detective and he has Tourettte’s Syndrome plus obsessive-compulsive disorder.  This causes him to shout out words and he can’t stop doing it.  He also remembers tons of information.  He sets out to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna.  Frank was shot in the back and the bullet came out his stomach.  He was taken immediately to the hospital but he had lost too much blood and he died.  The city of New York has a lot of closely-guarded secrets that apply to everyone living in the city.

    People in New York are living in homes but they were declared to be slums and they had to move out.  Moses Randolph is based on real life city planner Robert Moses.  He is largely to blame for the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles. He also had more than a dozen simultaneous city commissioner jobs.  He operated large on WPA grants plus massive revenues from the toll roads he had built.  Characters curse constantly, Lionel smokes pot to calm his symptoms and many characters smoke.  Bloody violence comes from guns, beatings, a long fall.  Allusions to sexual activities and kissing.  Lionel does pursues the truth in the death of his friend.  He has curiosity, courage and perseverance.  The story is fiction but it’s based on real instances of housing discrimination from the city government.  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)  

144 min, Crime, directed and written by Edward Norton with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Edward Norton, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis, Ethan Suplee, Cherry Jones, Bobby Cannavale, Dallas Roberts, Josh Pais, Radu Spinghel, Fisher Stevens, Peter Gray Lewis, Robert Wisdom, Michael Kenneth Williams.

Note:  Imdb 6.8 out of 10 with 34,970 reviews, Roger Ebert 3* Matt Zoller Seitz, Rotten Tomatoes 63% with 213 critics 80% with 2,591 ratings, RollingStone 4* out of 5* Peter Travers, empireonline.com 3* Kim Newman, The Guardian 3* out of 5* Wendy Ide, Common Sense Media, Tara McNamara, age 16+, 3* positive, 4* role models, 3* violence, 3* sex, 5* language, 1* consumerism, 3* drinking, drugs & smoking.

Special Note:  A Doris Day parking spot is mentioned when Lionel and Laura pull up to the King Rooster night club and park right in front even though the club is packed.  Norton met and consulted with many members of the Tourette’s Association of Americas to prepare for his role.  This is Norton’s second directorial project and the principal major stars all worked without pay!!  It took 45 days to shoot the entire movie.  The setting of the novel is 1999, the year it was published.  At the advance screening, wine and food were served beforehand in the “VIP” cinema area of a cinema in Vancouver, Canada.