We’ve been trained by Coppola and Scorsese to expect mobster movies to follow epic story arcs, so it might feel a little odd to watch one that’s more tightly wound around a small series of events. Or maybe “Billy Bathgate” (1991) isn’t all that good. It didn’t do much for the career of Loren Dean (Billy), who carries this Depression-era story headlined by Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Bruce Willis. Kidman sleeps with all of them while being married to Xander Berkeley, a more interesting subplot than the main gangster boilerplate. Billy’s a young wannabe. Maybe this film was, too.
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There’s a comfort-food satisfaction about a rom-com – if the actors in it are decent enough. Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. are decent enough, and “New in Town” (2009) is like a sweet bowl of tapioca. Supporting cast Siobhan Fallon Hogan and J.K. Simmons are more than decent enough and what is basically an empty-calories, color-by-numbers story (career-minded female executive is fish out of water at rural Minnesota food processing plant, what with the townsfolk’s Flyover Country ways and all, but everybody learns a little something about themselves, yada, yada, yada). Like scrapbooking and other hobbies, it’s time well wasted.
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