Movie Review: The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

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One cannot help but wonder, while watching “The Only Pickpocket in New York”, about the mind of any person who has been a professional pickpocket anywhere in the world. In order to be successful in stealing a watch, wallet, or any number of other valuable possessions from another person, you have to practice for many hours in order to pull off taking the item without them noticing, and then quietly escaping. The next risk is them noticing too soon that they were robbed as you are trying to sneak away and then being chased down and physically beaten or even shot.

Then, if you get away with the stolen items, fencing them while risking being arrested and years of jail time. You also realize while watching this film that people like this have no feelings of empathy for their victims, possibly causing them great hardship, not to mention canceling credit cards and getting a new driver’s license.

The premise of this story is that the pickpocket Harry (John Turturro), robbed a young man who is connected to the Mob, who then tracked down Harry with cameras that were lining the street at the time of the robbery.

Harry is also living with his wife, who is incapacitated with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, which is also known as a vegetative state, and Harry is also estranged from his daughter, Kelly (Tatiana Maslany), due to his many years of not living with the family and his criminal history.

One of the best parts of this very well-made movie is Harry’s traveling to many different locations in New York City, to several boroughs, trying to sell his stolen items and then going to the fence to try and get this one item, “a USB card,” back. Harry visits his friend Ben (Steve Buscemi) to sell the items he received from a victim connected to the mob, and after this scene, Harry’s life becomes a desperate attempt to undo and repair the huge mistake he made. The many scenes of Harry traveling through the complex streets of New York City, visiting small shops, were impressive.

Harry also visits his friend in the police department, Detective Warren, played by Giancarlo Esposito, as we realize that these two have a long history, including the many times Warren has arrested Harry over the years.

At the end of this movie, there is a highly unexpected appearance of Jamie Lee Curtis as the mob boss Moira, which, for me, did not seem to fit into the flow of this movie and was more of an attempt to be different, or to surprise the audience, rather than being consistent with the story.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is extremely high at 97%, with my rating of 90% and a big recommendation.

Movie Review: Clayface

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One of the standout messages in the new movie “Clayface” is that people, especially in the precarious profession of acting, are like the friends and agents who support you when your career is going well, but will run for the hills when your career goes downhill.

Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) is an up-and-coming actor, just nominated for an Academy Award, who inadvertently gets involved with Theresa (Ruby Sear), the girlfriend of a powerful, sadistic mob boss, Markos Szabo (David Dencik), who takes revenge on Matt by cutting up his face. After this, Matt’s career as an actor is 100% over.

Then, by a miracle, Matt runs into a genius scientist, Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), who is on the verge of a fantastic discovery: intelligent cells that can be injected into the human body to fix damaged cells. At first, this solution works, but over time, things start to mutate, and Matt’s face changes into many different forms until he is able to make himself look like any other person. This then becomes an evil superpower.

The last part of this story is all about Matt getting revenge on all of his enemies, and there are many scenes of impressive special effects and an even more impressive ending, many of them extremely violent.

This is a good B movie, with average ratings of about 76%, which I agree with. For fans of the DC Comics that is the source of this screenplay and due to the solid acting and special effects, I do recommend this film.

Movie Review: You Can See Everything

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If the story of Elizabeth Holmes and the company Theranos, which started when Holmes was only 19 years old in 2003, were introduced to the world as a work of fiction, no literary agency or production company would have bought it. The reason is that this entire 15-year story of one young woman with a revolutionary medical breakthrough that never worked, who then became the youngest self-made billionaire, is so insane that it’s too bizarre to make a movie or publish a novel.

Holmes and some scientists she hired into her company believed they could create a machine that could perform any number of complex blood tests using only one drop of blood, no longer needing to wait days for the results. If this was possible, then the two largest blood testing companies in the world, LabCorp (14 billion annual revenue) and Quest Diagnostics (11.4 billion annual revenue), would cease to exist, and medical science would advance by decades. Unfortunately, Holmes and her top employees lied to all of their investors, many of them very wealthy and famous people, tricking them into investing in a machine that never worked as they said it would. The most insane part of this crazy story is why these intelligent, wealthy people did not insist on seeing this machine work throughout the entire process of testing the drop of blood, verifying the results using the latest medical science, and then validating the results with the aid of the federal government.

At its peak, in 2015, Theranos was worth 9 billion dollars, and Elizabeth Holmes was worth 4.5 billion dollars, all based on lies that were maintained for years and cheated investors out of billions of dollars. One year later, the value of Theranos was worthless. Six years later, Holmes was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The new documentary, “You Can See Everything”, is a film of an interview with director Nathan Fielder during the 34 days that Elizabeth Holmes spent in a small rented San Diego house with her boyfriend, Billy Evans, and her two children, prior to her going to prison for 11 years for her crimes as CEO of Theranos. Unbelievably, Holmes still believes that she did nothing wrong when she was questioned by Fielder about her many crimes. Holmes eyes are large and penetrating, and she seemed close to crying as she pleaded with Nathan Fielder to believe she was innocent. There was an insight into how Holmes mind works when she was shown the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First”, and she had no understanding of why this famous routine was funny.

Holmes’s fiancé, Billy Evans, also seemed about as insane as Elizabeth while talking with Fielder, with both Fielder and Holmes both still believing in Theranos and actually planning a second release of the company.

When Holmes was in prison, the actress who played her in the Hulu series “The Dropout”, Amanda Seyfried, reprised her Emmy-winning 2022 role, playing Holmes in scenes of Fielder interviewing her in prison. In other scenes, Seyfried was interviewed as herself by Fielder, discussing the accusations about the accuracy of the Hulu series ” The Dropout” and the many difficulties Seyfried had playing that part. This entire documentary had a very dark, slow, and unusual pace, and for that reason is very unique as a documentary. I also thought there was no reason why this movie needed to run almost 3 hours.

The reviews for this documentary are 99-100%, with some critics writing that this movie could win the Oscar for Best Picture. Due to some of the slow and boring parts and the too-long running time, I give this movie a 90% rating and a very strong recommendation.