Going against the thread title ("good movies") technically: anyone see that Many Saints of Newark thing? Woof, what a confounding mess. Movie that very perfectly encapsulates why prequels based on long-running entities are so difficult -- its very hard to balance the desire to make a film that's interesting as a standalone to one not familiar with the source material and also commit the requisite fan service. The plot of this film is in no way interesting to anyone who hasn't seen Sopranos, AND YET, it also doesn't really tonally match the original show.
I feel like people who loved Sopranos aren't going to like this -- it has neither the dark humor or pathos of the original, nor seemingly much of a message compared to any random hour of the original. It has fucking voiceovers from ghosts, for cripe's sake. And it's ostensibly this character study into this major figure in the lives of all the mob guys on Sopranos and the character is wafer thin. Just wafer thin. I come away knowing nothing interesting about Dickie Moltisanti. Nothing. But it had a twisty/reveal-y ending and I guess that's going to carry the day in the filmmakers mind.
(The poster tells us we're going to learn how Tony Soprano came to be Tony Soprano. No we don't. Like not at all. Tony Soprano seems shoehorned into a story about a dude with no understandable motivations or personality to which his connection is TENUOUS at best.)
I truly don't understand why David Simon made this. What was the point? Bad. Some OK acting performances -- young Tony's mom was awesome -- but this script was a dog.
