The Florentine | |
---|---|
Directed by | Nick Stagliano |
Written by | Tom Benson Damien Gray |
Produced by | Francis Ford Coppola Nick Stagliano Steven Weisman |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Stephen Kazmierski |
Edited by | Plummy Tucker |
Music by | Marco Beltrami |
Production companies | American Zoetrope Nazz Productions |
Distributed by | New Films International |
Release date |
|
Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Florentine is a 1999 film directed by Nick Stagliano and produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. [1] It stars Jeremy Davies, Michael Madsen, and Chris Penn.
The film was shot in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania in the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and in the Lehigh Valley borough of Hellertown.
As the owner of the Florentine—a working-class bar in an economically depressed town—Whitey (Michael Madsen) dispenses drinks to a number of troubled locals. Among the regulars there are compulsive gambler Bobby (Chris Penn) and Whitey's sister, Molly (Virginia Madsen), who is preparing to get married when her old flame, Teddy (Tom Sizemore), returns to the area. Whitey and Bobby must contend with a no-nonsense mobster who is squeezing them both for money.
With a conspicuous heart on its sleeve, "The Florentine" can't break away from its verbose theatrical origins. Helmed by multifaceted industry vet Nick Stagliano, this paean to small-town American values is painfully earnest and determinedly old-fashioned in style and themes. While it's raised above the norm by a cast full of thesp heavyweights, pic is ultimately undone by a distracting spread of novelistic story strands and a deadly, repetitive series of two-character dialogue scenes. A distrib may end up going for this quaint, besotted bit of Americana, but the gabfest will be restricted to English-only markets, with betterafterlife on vid.
— Variety
The Luxembourgish film industry is quite small. However, many films have been made in the country, both by native filmmakers and by people from other countries.
Thomas Edward Sizemore Jr. was an American actor. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he started his career with supporting appearances in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Lock Up (1989), and Blue Steel (1990). These appearances led to more prominent roles in films like Passenger 57 (1992), True Romance (1993), Striking Distance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Strange Days (1995), Heat (1995), and The Relic (1997).
American Zoetrope is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.
Christopher Shannon Penn was an American actor. He was the brother of actor Sean Penn and musician Michael Penn. Noted as a skilled character actor, he was typically cast as a tough character, featured as a villain or a working-class thug, or in a comic role and had roles in such films as To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,The Wild Life, Reservoir Dogs, The Funeral, Footloose, Rush Hour, Corky Romano, True Romance, Beethoven's 2nd, Short Cuts, The Boys Club, All the Right Moves, At Close Range, Pale Rider, and Starsky & Hutch. During his career Penn had won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance in The Funeral. He also provided the voice of corrupt cop Edward "Eddie" Pulaski in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Hearts in Atlantis is a 2001 American mystery drama film directed by Scott Hicks and starring Anthony Hopkins and Anton Yelchin. It is loosely adapted from Stephen King's Dark Tower tie-in "Low Men in Yellow Coats," a novella in the 1999 collection Hearts in Atlantis after which the film was named.
A Prairie Home Companion is a 2006 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman in his final film. It is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. The film features an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin.
Pauly Shore Is Dead is a 2003 American mockumentary comedy film directed, produced, co-written by, and starring Pauly Shore. The film is depicted as a semi-autobiographical retelling of Shore's early success and dwindling popularity in the late 1990s, after which it documents Shore's (fictional) attempt to fake his own death in order to drum up popularity for his films. It features many cameos.
Sins of the Father is a 2002 American crime drama television film directed by Robert Dornhelm and written by John Pielmeier. It is based on an article by Pamela Colloff published in the April 2000 issue of Texas Monthly, chronicling the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four young African-American girls were killed while attending Sunday school. The victims were Addie Mae Collins, 14 yrs old; Denise McNair, 11 yrs old; Carole Robertson, 14 yrs old; and Cynthia Welsley, 14 yrs old. It was believed that there were 5 girls together in the church basement on that fateful day, but only one survived: young Sarah Collins, Addie Mae's younger sister. The bombing was racially motivated and carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was first aired on January 6, 2002 on FX.
The Great Gatsby is a 1974 American historical romantic drama film based on the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by Jack Clayton, produced by David Merrick, and written by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Bruce Dern, and Karen Black. The plot concerns the interactions of writer Nick Carraway with enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby (Redford) and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan (Farrow), amid the riotous parties of the Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City.
The Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Ensemble was an annual film award given by the Online Film Critics Society to honor the best ensemble of the year, given between 1998 and 2002.
The 2006 NCAA Division I men's soccer tournament was a tournament of 48 teams from NCAA Division I who played for the NCAA Championship in soccer. The College Cup Final Four was held at Hermann Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri. All the other games were played at the home field of the higher-seeded team. The final was held on December 3, 2006. UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, Virginia, and Wake Forest made the Final Four. UC Santa Barbara beat Wake Forest and UCLA defeated Virginia. In the final UC Santa Barbara won the title game overcoming UCLA, 2–1.
The Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cast is one of the annual film awards given by the Boston Society of Film Critics.
Witness Protection is a 1999 American crime drama television film directed by Richard Pearce and starring Tom Sizemore, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Forest Whitaker, Shawn Hatosy, and Skye McCole Bartusiak. The teleplay by Daniel Therriault is based on a 1996 New York Times Magazine article entitled "The Invisible Family" by Robert Sabbag. It was broadcast by HBO on December 11, 1999.
Scott Cooper is an American director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. He is known for writing and directing Crazy Heart (2009), Out of the Furnace (2013), Black Mass (2015), Hostiles (2017), and Antlers (2021).
Twixt is a 2011 American horror film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin, Alden Ehrenreich, David Paymer, Joanne Whalley and Tom Waits. The film follows a struggling novelist (Kilmer) who stumbles upon a murder mystery in a small town, in the process entering an alternative, dream world. The film's title refers to the two worlds explored in the film, the dream and the waking worlds.
Palo Alto is a 2013 American drama film written and directed by Gia Coppola, based on James Franco's 2010 short story collection of the same name. The film stars Franco alongside Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer, Nat Wolff and Zoe Levin. It concerns a group of disaffected teenagers in a California suburb dealing with lust, boredom, and self-destruction. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 2013 and later had a limited theatrical release on May 9, 2014.
Bordering on Bad Behavior is a 2014 comedy film, written by Ziggy Darwish. and directed by Jac Mulder, starring Tom Sizemore, Bernard Curry and Oz Zehavi. The film was produced by Chris Roland, Leigh Ferreira and Richard Lackey, and was executive produced by Yola Raydan and Ziggy Darwish.
Herschel Lee Sizemore was an American mandolinist in the bluegrass tradition.