# 22 Enough Said
Most people would say that the biggest loss of the year, actor death-wise, would no question be Philip Seymour Hoffman. Not me, though. I was devastated when, on June 19th, I found out that James Gandolfini had died of a heart attack on a trip to Italy with his son. Of course I was then prompted to revisit basically the entire Sopranos catalog, and there was a specific scene I watched over and over again: the famous scene in which the crew stages an intervention for Christopher "Chrissy" Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) for his heroin addiction. One thing that struck me was when, after Christopher goes on the defensive:
Christopher: There he goes, Mr. type-A personality!
Tony: We are here to talk about you killing yourself with drugs, not my f***in' personality!
Christopher: I'm killin' myself? The way you f***in' eat, you're gonna have a heart attack by the time you're 50!
Tony's weight was brought up plenty of times throughout the series, but I still couldn't believe that the fictional Christopher Moltisanti would become a harbinger for the real James Gandolfini's tragic end.
By all accounts, Gandolfini was an incredibly kind and generous human being. There were multiple reports of him taking a major pay cut during the last couple of seasons of the show so that HBO could afford to retain the cast. He would buy elaborate, expensive sushi lunches for all the members of the crew. And many actors who worked with him said that he was a great teacher and completely genuine.
Playing a character like Tony Soprano for so long wore him out and took him to some very dark places emotionally. Now that the world has embraced Breaking Bad and unabashedly declared it the best drama of all time, it is important for people to realize that there would be no Walter White without Tony Soprano. Period. Or Vic Mackey, or Don Draper, or, more recently, Frank Underwood. He set the bar extremely high as the antihero, and in my opinion, no one has given a finer performance in that capacity (though, to be fair-Bryan Cranston came pretty close.).
And now, onto Enough Said. Another HBO star, Julia Louis Dreyfuss (Veep) stars as Eva, an amicably divorced masseuse who meets Albert (Gandolfini) at a party. They hit it off and start falling for each other. At around the same time, she takes on a new client named Marianne (Catherine Keener), a new-agey woman who herself is reeling from a recent divorce. As the movie pushes forward, Eva start's to realize that the ex-husband Marianne has been kvetching about is, in fact, Albert. Against the wishes of her best friend Sarah (Toni Colette), she tries to keep both her blossoming relationship with Albert and her friendship with Marianne going strong. The problem is, Marianne's complaints about Albert are starting to get inside her head.
Both the leads in this film were great, and the mess that Eva created played out in a much more real way than I expected. Obviously for me, the appeal was seeing Gandolfini's second to last performance, and it was refreshing to see him be so normal, so scaled back, so non-Jersey. As two of the best in the game, Gandolfini and Dreyfuss made for a good couple.
#21 Frances Ha
"I can't tell if I think Greta Gerwig looks good or not. She's like the lady Jerry Seinfeld dates who only looks good in certain lighting," I told a friend not too long ago.
The rest of the indie world is smitten with Miss Gerwig. Rightfully so-she's got the right amount of awkwardness to match the perfect amount of cute. She co-wrote this movie with Noah Baumbach, who was in desperate need of a good flick; neither Margot at the Wedding or Greenberg struck the same emotional chord as '05's The Squid and the Whale. The movie follows Frances, a New Yorker who crashes with friends at an apartment (Adam Driver and Michael Zegen) and interns at a dance company. Her and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Gordon Sumner, known to the world as Sting) talk boys, play fight, and have a good time, until they don't. Frances is spontaneous almost to the point of obnoxiousness and at times comes off as an unrealistic character, but mostly she's just a joy to watch as she tries to figure out what she wants, where she's going and who she is.
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