Was Bugsy Actually A Better

Gangster Flick Than Goodfellas?

     Every decade has had a standout gangster movie. As Philip Etemesi recently wrote for MovieWeb, the 1970s had The Godfather, the ‘80s had Scarface, the ‘90s had Goodfellas, the 2000s had American Gangster, and the 2010s had The Irishman. “Goodfellas is especially memorable because of the soothing voiceover narration and memorable lawbreaking characters, some of whom provide comic flavoring,” he says. “The film is considered Martin Scorsese’s chef-d'oeuvre and was nominated for six Oscars at the 63rd Academy Awards. In line with that, there is a consensus among genre fans that it is the best gangster movie of the 1990s. But is it?”

     Not necessarily. Etemesi makes a good case for Barry Levinson’s Bugsy, which was released a year after Goodfellas and stars Warren Beatty in the title role. “It received a whopping 10 Oscar nominations, and also earned a few dollars more than the Scorsese flick at the box office, suggesting it might be the superior film,” he says. “Interestingly, Bugsy has largely been forgotten as the years passed, leaving questions about why it didn’t remain a shiny jewel. Was it overrated? Did the Academy hype a picture that didn’t deserve it? Or is it truly a great movie that deserves more love than it gets?

     Both films are like two well-composed songs, Etemisi says, although one of them has a catchier beat, better bars, and a sing-along chorus. In the Scorsese gangster flick, almost every remark has a resonance that is eternal and overpoweringly moving. "The same cannot be said of the Levinson film, where pretty much everything is standard mob conversation. Occasionally, we are shown a heated couple’s argument, but that’s it."

Female Cops In Flim And TV: Why

Are Women Always the Rookies?

     Members of law enforcement are often the backbone of thrillers and mystery films, but have you ever stopped to think about how gender dictates the type of cop that anchors these movies? That’s the question Courtney Hunter-Stangler recently posed in Murder-Mayhem, noting that for all the films in which there’s seasoned cop, there’s only a handful in which young women are in the same position. Example: The Silence of the Lambs, in which Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is pulled from the FBI Academy at Quantico to interview the infamous, cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in hopes he will offer insight that might help her boss track down a new killer called Buffalo Bill. “While it’s arguably one of the greatest movies ever, with a rare ‘Big Five’ Oscar category sweep to prove it, throughout the film Starling is constantly subject to harassment because of her gender and her age. “

     Flash forward a few decades and not much has changed, Hunter-Stangler says. “Movies like Sicario (2015) quite literally do the same almost thirty years later,” she explains. “In Sicario, we follow Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), a young and idealistic FBI Agent, who is brought on to a joint task force hoping to take down a cartel boss. However, it doesn’t take long for her to realize that she’s nothing more than a pawn in her teammates' game. What’s different is that Kate doesn’t sit back and take it the way that Clarice did years before. She bucks back against the men who want to use her, and ultimately, this struggle for power and autonomy is what makes the film.”

     Other recent crime thrillers that use female rookies include Wind River (2017) and To Catch a Killer (2023). While they do a marginally better job in their treatment of women, they still leave you wondering why, decades later after such movies as The Bone Collector (1999) and Blue Steel (1989), the idealistic rookies are always women.

Prime Video Green Light’s Cornwall’s

Scarpetta, Starring Kidman And Curtis

     Prime Video last week announced it’s given the green light to two seasons of an adaptation centered around Patricia Cornwell’s best-selling Scarpetta book series. The series, billed as a mystery thriller, will follow the life of Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman), who returns home to Richmond, Virginia to pick up her career where she left off. As she tries to stay focused on her job, outside forces begin to bleed into her everyday life with grudges and secrets popping out of the woodwork. For Kay, untangling the web of these complicated relationships starts at home with her sister, Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis).

     “I have wanted to bring Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta to a screen, with my company, Comet Pictures, for a while,” says producer Curtis. “I’m particularly excited that Nicole Kidman will finally bring her to life, and I’m also looking forward to playing Nicole’s sister. I know the ardent fans of the books will be very happy, and the new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling.”

     Other A-list celebs set to star opposite the two Academy Award-winning leading ladies are Bobby Cannavale (The Watcher) as ex-detective Pete Marino, Simon Baker (Boy Swallows Universe) as FBI profiler Benton Wesley, and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Lucy Farinelli-Watson.

Amazon Orders 8-Part Young Sherlock Holmes; Guy Ritchie To Direct

     Variety announced last week that Guy Ritchie will direct an eight-episode series based on Andy Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes novels, with British actor Hero Fiennes Tiffin in the title role. This will be a reunion for Ritchie and Tiffin, who recently worked together on the feature The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; it’s t is also the latest Sherlock Holmes project for Ritchie, as he previously directed two films about the famous detective starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes, Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler.

     “In ‘Young Sherlock’ we’re going to see an exhilarating new version of the detective everyone thinks they know in a way they’ve never imagined before,” Ritchie says. “We’re going to crack open this enigmatic character, find out what makes him tick, and learn how he becomes the genius we all love.”

     Lane has written eight books in the Young Sherlock Holmes series, with the most recent debuting in 2015. The Amazon Studios series follows the adventures of Holmes who, at age 19, is disgraced, raw, unfiltered, and unformed, when he finds himself caught up in a murder mystery at Oxford University which threatens his freedom. Diving into his first-ever case with a wild lack of discipline, Sherlock manages to unravel a globe-trotting conspiracy that will change his life forever.

Citadel: Diana Stars Italy’s Matilda

De Angelis As Undercover Agent

     Also coming from Prime Video is Citadel: Diana, starring Italy’s Matilda De Angelis as Diana Cavalieri, an undercover agent fighting against an enemy syndicate set in a near-future Milan. The six-episode show is the latest installment of Prime Video’s high-concept Citadel franchise that debuted in April 2023. The series originally was meant to serve as a launch pad for multiple shows set in different countries that are all connected via plot and characters but, as noted by Screen Rant, ratings were low and reviews were equally middling, leaving the prohibitively expensive program twisting in the wind.

     With the show's premiere coming soon, the latest news arrives in the form of a full trailer for Citadel: Diana. The Italian Citadel spinoff has dropped a handful of exciting teasers thus far, but the full trailer offers the clearest look at the debut season. The lengthy trailer introduces Diana as she is recruited by Citadel to bring down a powerful crime family. However, her own motivation is to get revenge for fallen comrades, and she's willing to play both sides against each other to achieve her goals.

Now Available!

The Fall Of Vivaldi

On a rainy night across Europe, several seemingly unrelated

incidents unfold in quick order:

• In the City of Light, a beautiful young Parisian newscaster

named Gabrielle Lamoines is brutally murdered in her bed,

just as…

• A disgraced British billionaire takes a dive from the top floor

terrace of a luxury resort on the island of Cyprus, at the same time that…

• Reporter Carter Logan causes the death of a former lieutenant

of the Italian mafia in a narrow street in Rome, not far from…

• The Tuscan farmhouse where Alessandro Bortolotti, the head

of a hard-right neofascist movement, is plotting a deadly

attack on the G20 global summit, while…

• A notorious Russian oligarch named Georgy Sokolov plans to

auction off a kidnapped American teen named Abby Evans in

an online event streamed from his villa on the island of Ibiza.

Each of these random events has one thing in common: Retired assassin Ronin Phythian, once known as “the most dangerous man alive”...

Beyond All Doubt

[Reed Bunzel writing as Hilton Reed]

“Beyond All Doubt is an edge-of-your-seat fast-moving thrill-ride, kicked off by the reappearance of a dead man and propelling the reader along to the final bullet—and beyond.”— S.J. Rozan, best-selling author of The Mayors of New York

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“Beyond All Doubt is a taut, smart, and emotionally rich thriller. Reed has a sharp eye for character and a screenwriter's feel for action. This tale is sleek as a mink and fast as a bullet.”— T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Rescue and Desperation Reef

“Beyond All Doubt is not a 'who done it,' but a twisty, compelling 'who did what.' Cameron Kane is a sympathetic, yet unrelenting bulldog in his pursuit of the truth about his wife's death. Intriguing and intense, Beyond All Doubt is a winner!”—Matt Coyle, bestselling author of the Rick Cahill crime novels