God's Pocket

May. 09,2014      R
Rating:
6.1
Subscription
Rent / Buy
Subscription
Trailer Synopsis Cast

A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as  Mickey Scarpato
Richard Jenkins as  Richard Shelburn
Christina Hendricks as  Jeannie Scarpato
John Turturro as  Arthur 'Bird' Capezio
Eddie Marsan as  Smilin' Jack Moran
Caleb Landry Jones as  Leon Scarpato
Eddie McGee as  Petey
Lenny Venito as  Little Eddie
Peter Gerety as  McKenna

Reviews

CommentsXp
2014/05/09

Best movie ever!

... more
FirstWitch
2014/05/10

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

... more
Brenda
2014/05/11

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

... more
Juana
2014/05/12

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

... more
steveo122
2014/05/13

Like a Bukowski poem set to music and sung by Tom Waits, a rancid, deep dark comedy of errors in an urban hell. An amazing ensemble of great actors. Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Richard Jenkins, Eddie Marsan and many more of some of the finest drunks and lowlifes you'll see on film. Christina Hendricks, unfortunately, is out of place and out-skilled. The script walks with a limp and probably has a disease.

... more
ian
2014/05/14

I've just watched this again a couple of years after my first viewing. This time I feel I must do the movie justice by writing a review.This is an absolute gem, almost poetical in its description of the working-class neighbourhood of God's Pocket. The film shows the events following a death and in that showing describes the lives of the people. Those lives are also examined by an outsider, an ageing and world-weary reporter, who is given to drinking too much and finds his libido drawing him too deeply into the world of which he is writing.At the heart of the story are Mickey and Jeanie Scarpato portrayed to perfection by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christina Hendricks. It is the death of their highly unpleasant son that sets the plot in motion which rolls inexorably towards its close taking in moments of tragedy, high comedy and pathos on its route.In sum a beautifully conceived and realized movie which among much else drives home to us all just how much the incredibly talented Philip Seymour Hoffman will be missed.

... more
TxMike
2014/05/15

A found this on Netflix streaming movies. I was anxious to see one more PS Hoffman movie.First a note about the title. There is a 3 square block area of mostly Irish-Americans in South Philadelphia called "Devil's Pocket", said to have originated with a local priest saying the neighborhood kids were so bad they would steal a chain out of the devil's pocket.So for this fictional story they used the name "God's Pocket" but it is a loose reference to the same area. The story involves men who steal to make their businesses profitable. For example Philip Seymour Hoffman as Mickey Scarpato runs a meat market but in one scene he and his friends intercept a refrigerated truck to steal the sides of beef. They don't seem like crooks, it is as if that is just a way to do business.The running theme in this movie involved Mickey's stepson mouthing off at work in his construction job and being killed by an older man hitting him with a pipe on the back of the head. Everyone lies and says it was an accident, a piece of equipment swung and hit him. But the mother, Christina Hendricks as Jeanie Scarpato, just "feels" that a cover-up in involved.This gets the local newspaper man involved, and he gets involved in more than the story. Then Mickey has an issue with the local mortician who convinces Jeanie that he needs the $6000 casket, for which Mickey can't pay. So the body ends up in the back of Mickey's refrigerated truck until he can somehow raise the cash.What makes the movie worthwhile is the script and the acting. It is a madcap, quirky, somewhat dark comedy, where the con men have to run off to Florida in the end and hope the cops never find them.

... more
thelasttwohundredyears
2014/05/16

Mickey (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an outsider and man of uncertain means, finds that his stepson, Leon, has died in a construction accident. As an outsider, Mickey tries to work with reality in Devil's Pocket, Pa. His wife (Christina Hendricks), however, knows the hood, and feels that her son's death was not an accident.Mickey loves Jeanie, so he's willing to get his underground buddies to help him calm Jeanie down; besides, he has money troubles of his own.Along the way, town tribune and echo of sentiment/voice of morality Richard Shelburn (Richard Jenkins) haphazardly, but ultimately self-interestedly, connects the dots.This is one brutal take on the true America—cash only, lacking health care or basic human dignity or unions or any sense of community beyond cheap whisky. Futureless Leon apes DeNiro like any al-Quaeda fighter. Florida and more guns are the only hope for 'Bird'; Jeanie glimpses only an unbuilt plot the rotting Shelburn is a skeleton upon. With a truly telling fact, the movie isn't even shot where it's about, Devil's Pocket, Pa. Actually, it was shot in New York—not even the desperate people it was about could get any jobs out of it.A curious factor about this movie, and pretty well any other ones, is that all American reviewers seem to want to judge it on its "comedy" quotient. In other words, if it doesn't make you laugh (laugh at the killing and the poverty and racism and hopelessness and lack of education, and so on), then it just ain't doggone no good of a fillum. From the Marx Brothers' "why I oughta" to _I Love Lucy_ to now, some Americans should query just what they're supposed to find so funny about hurting or killing often defenseless others (women, children, non-whites). There's a moment or two of dark humour in _God's Pocket_, but those aren't the moments that are supposed to define the movie. For American reviewers, however, they are, because Americans can't see their own destitution in any ways but laughter or money—normal human emotion/sentiments simply don't apply, or constitute currency.Here's a hint, or a tip, for those who really want to follow this film, but are too bored. The tortured drunk Shelburn isn't just put there for comic effect at the beginning, and the voice-overs later aren't there just for hapless loser commentary at the end. Americans know that they can't be un-American, even if it means losing to the rest of the world. In life and love, and in the town he owns, this is Shelburn's conundrum, and he attacks it with words, drink, a booty call, and probably being beaten to death.I don't know; I don't see how anyone, outside of America, could call this anything but a pretty good and ambitious, if hopeless, film.

... more