Once Upon a Time in Staten Island

The tone had me excited for another coming-of-age teen drama, centered in NYC; a real slice of life.

What I saw instead-right up until I turned it off-was a typical virtue-signaling Hollywood pander that tries to edit history. So many things were tweaked to reflect today's overly-progressive viewpoint. The casting is heinous, and the writing is not representative of how things were, but how some Millenial THINKS they were, or should have been.

Enough of Hollywood's revisionist and pandering faux-morality. This could have been a charming slice-of-life, but is just a flat, clichéd, inaccurate snooze fest.

Heartfelt 80s dramedy with the release of Rocky III at it's center. Multiple storylines are almost too much but the director makes them work. Watts and Cannavale give their usual solid performances but Frank Grillo shines. I have become very impressed with the way Grillo can make seemingly impossible acting tasks look believable and he really comes through again. Keep 'em coming Frank.

One family, three completely separate plot lines. Not a bad concept but somewhat disjointed. Yes, the acting was pretty good. Question though, would a mother actually react to her son the way she did in this movie? I disagree with some of the other reviewers, though. Anyone who uses terms like "liberal agenda" or "woke" would seem to have an agenda of their own.. Frank Grillo and Bobby Canavale were excellent.

If you don't understand that Rocky is life, don't watch this film. If you do, it's terrific. Bravo to the writer. The acting is solid. Cheesy when it needs to be, heartfelt as well. Beautiful scene between mother and son. It's worth a watch.

Rocky IS life.

The story of "This Is the Night" is deep, but is delivered in a light hearted manner. The film spends a lot of time portraying the consequences of commenting on Rocky, which I think distracts attention from the beautiful subplot of the other son's journey of self discovery.