FOKER'S MOVIE REVIEW - CITY ISLAND (From Your Local Guardian)

MARK FOKER'S MOVIE REVIEW - CITY ISLAND

10:36pm Thursday 22nd July 2010 in Your Say By Mark Foker

Staring: Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Steven Strait, Emily Mortimer and Alan Arkin.

Written & Directed by: Raymond De Felitta

Produced by: Andy Garcia

Certificate 12A

Every once in a while a nice little Independent movie comes along from nowhere and leaves you with a big smile on your face. Now I’m not saying that this film is going to make you laugh out loud but it will give you that satisfaction of witnessing an intelligent comedy in the similar vain of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’.

Middle aged New Yorker Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) and his dysfunctional family live in a quiet picturesque fishing community called City Island which is situated in the “nicer part of the Bronx” as Vince calls it. He has lived there all his life and works as a corrections office,(that’s prison guard to you and me). He believes in traditional values and wants what is best for his family but underneath this strong façade is an emotional man with a big dream.

Vince has a secret. He has a lifelong ambition to be an actor but he feels too embarrassed to admit this to his family and concocts a cover story about going along to a weekly poker night with the boys when actually he is taking acting classes in Manhattan. His fiery wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies, remember her? George Clooney’s love interest in the early days of ER) can see through the smokescreen but assumes Vince is covering up an extra marital affair.

It turns out that every member of his family has a secret of some kind. Joyce is suppose to have given up smoking but still has a puff when her husband is out. Their eldest daughter Vivian (played by Andy Garcia’s real daughter Dominik) has problems at college and their teenage son Vinnie has an unhealthy obsession about large, and I mean large, women. But it’s when Vince takes pity on a young offender Tony (Steven Strait) and brings him into his family home on a sort of foster parole trial basis that unsettles the status quo and there is a danger of everyone’s secret being exposed.

This is Andy Garcia’s film through and through and he was the producer as well as the star. He was also responsible for bringing the brilliant Alan Arkin on board as the acting instructor who pretty much steals every scene he appears in which is probably no more than five minutes of screen time.

Some of the most touching scenes are with Vince and his acting partner Molly (Brit actress Emily Mortimer) who helps Vince to discover his inner confidence. You really feel for him when he attends his first open audition with his naive approach to this strange new world and the embarrassment of bumping into his teacher going for the same part.

Personally I think this is one of Andy Garcia’s bet roles and he seems to have matured into a great actor and is no longer the poor man’s Al Pacino, although I think if this film was made twenty years ago Al would have been the first choice.

This movie is 100% feel good factor yet a very simple story. It gets a well done and 5 stars from Foker.