Casino

Rating:
Summary: Typically brilliant Scorsese
Review: Once again--no big surprise--Scorsese makes a wonderfully-entertaining, tough, honest, and brilliantly-acted film. He is simply without peer as a director, capable of hurling you into an alien environment like an 80's casino and make you come out feeling far-more enlightened and entertained. I must say, however, that this film is pretty tough to take more than once in a while. The characters and behavior in the film are often so repulsive and unsympathetic, you feel grateful for the honesty even as you cover your eyes. I still remember when they found the real Spilottro Brothers in that cornfield. Now i feel like I know exactly how they died and it ain't pretty. Any fan of film artistry must at least see this one. Whether you own it is a matter for your wallet and your stomach.

Rating:
Summary: Great Film
Review: This has got to be the best gangster film yet. DeNiro and Pesci are both awesome!

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie
Review: Casino is a great movie - it really lets you in on 1970's Las Vegas. Also featuring great acting performances by DeNiro, Pesci & Stone, the plot & charactars really come off as believable (this much can not be said of 90% of other movies made in the 90's). The animorphic widescreen transfer is far from perfect - there's lots of dancing pixels - but since it was transferred in 1997, it's excusable (it's not bad by any means). The audio in inexcusable, as they should have called it "5.1 channels of MONO." If you're looking for extras, you're not gonna get them; only the trailer & cast bios are present. Poor DVD treatment for one of the best movies of the '90s. This one gets 4 stars for the movie alone.

Rating:
Summary: entertaining
Review: It has a lot of action making you stay on the edge of your seat

Rating:
Summary: Place a bet on this one -- You won't lose
Review: Where to begin! This movie had just about everything you could possibly ask for. Great cast, great storyline, great soundtrack, great everything! From the start of the movie where you get a behind-the-scenes look at life in the casino, to the end when everyone starts to tumble, it is one great scene after another. I myself am not really big on gangster type movies, but this one really won me over. Take a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and spend the 3 hours running time to watch this one. I guarantee you'll find it in your VCR or DVD player more than once.

Rating:
Summary: Keep Your Pens Away From Joe Pesci
Review: This is an entertaining Scorsese mafia take. With a brutally entertaining story and top notch acting, this film is stabbingly great. This movie easily fits in with the Big ones- the Godfather's and Goodfellas. This is a must own for fans of the organized crime genre.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This is the best movie I have ever seen. It is beautifully made and is Martin Scorcese's best work. I highly reccomend this movie. Watch this movie!

Rating:
Summary: great video and sound
Review: While I usually like to review the quality of the DVD itself, this is a very good film besides. I love De Niro and Pesci, but the star of this show was probably Sharon Stone. Although I'm not a huge fan of Stone's, she did a remarkable job. De Niro as a Jew was a bit far-reaching, but believable. Pesci, as usual, was Pesci. 'Nuf said. The DVD quality is great - beautiful picture and great sound. Besides the obligatory trailer, actor bios, and production notes, there are no noteworthy extras. That's a shame, but doesn't take away from this Scorsese masterwork! The best part of this is seeing the maybe-true aspect of corruption in gambling casinos.

Rating:
Summary: Being in the Mafia is not always a pretty thing,
Review: I have read many of the reviews for this movie on amazon and I have to say that I agree that this is one of the best movies of all time. As for the violence, well, what do you expect? This is a gangster movie for crying out loud. It is not like they killed everyone that they saw, police officers or the like. This movie displays the directors brilliance and truth to his art. For those who can not handle the violence.... I hope that you do not choose to visit a large American city, or for that matter, read the newspapers on a regular basis.

Rating:
Summary: The best film of the 1990s, and one of Scorsese's finest.
Review: As far as underrated films go, Casino is the one that has been overlooked most unfairly. Shallow critics were quick to jump on this film for being "too similar to Goodfellas", for its measured pace, for its perceived coldness. These guys are way off base. Obviously this film is similar to Goodfellas on only a couple of superficial levels: it's a crime film, it has DeNiro and Pesci, there's narration, etc. Fine, I'll give 'em that. But this film's tone and story arc are so completely different that you end up realizing that those critics are nitpicking, and unable to handle a director who makes a film that is a distinct variation on a theme dealt with in an earlier film. I doubt these same critics would jump all over John Ford for making western after western with John Wayne, Ward Bond, and others. These critics can't take the film by itself, so they resort to shallow critiques. As far as the film goes, it's absolutely brilliant. DeNiro hasn't had a better role than this since then, and at the time it was his best role in years. Joe Pesci, by my estimation, exceeds his performance in Goodfellas by presenting a more three-dimensional character here, one who is at once a brutal thug, family man, and conflicted friend. Sharon Stone isn't quite as good as those two, but she is still great, concealing her cold heart with a mask of charm in the first half of the film, and then falling into drug and alcohol addiction and showing her true nature. The supporting cast is right on the money - Frank Vincent as Pesci's loyal right-hand man (he also provides the film's most terrifying twist), Alan King, Don Rickles, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones, and John Bloom are all wonderful in their roles. And what can one say about Martin Scorsese's direction? Phenomenal as always. His camera is constantly moving, not for the sake of moving (like some young turks like P.T. Anderson) but to show things, gives us information, to show the flow of money and how it and the mob control Vegas. I like this film a shade more than Goodfellas, if only for this film's total unwillingness to compromise itself, for its sheer ambition, for its scope, and for its terrible beauty. And it's interesting to note how in a recent poll by Film Comment magazine, Casino was one of the top vote-getters for film of the decade. I think this is a truly great film that will be properly appreciated once the short-term hyperbole of idiotic critics has lost its ability to influence.