DVD
REVIEW: THE LAST RITES OF JOE MAY
4/15/12
Despite all evidence to the contrary, aging short-money hustler Joe May (Dennis Farina, Get Shorty, HBO’s Luck) always believed he had a glorious future ahead of him. Now in his sixties, Joe is released from the hospital after a long battle with pneumonia and forced to confront the harsh reality of his legacy: everyone he knew had assumed he was dead, and life had gone on around him without missing a beat..
Returning to his old neighborhood in Chicago’s “Patch” district, he finds his car gone, all his worldly possessions pawned by his landlord, and the apartment he’s lived in his entire adult life rented out to a single mother named Jenny and her eight year-old daughter Angelina . After a rough night’s sleep outdoors, Joe reluctantly moves in with the new tenants of his home – at least until he is able to get back on his feet..
The fifth feature film from writer and director Joe Maggio (Virgil Bliss, Bitter Feast), THE LAST RITES OF JOE MAY releases April 17 on standard digital platforms and DVD, following a theatrical and cable VOD release by Tribeca Film last fall..
Says Maggio: “I began writing more specific notes for THE LAST RITES OF JOE MAY shortly after seeing Di Sica’s Umberto D for the first time. The hero in his film had worked hard his entire life and now, in his retirement, when all he wanted was a warm place to sleep, a little food for himself and his dog, and perhaps a kind word now and then from an old acquaintance – somehow, even this was too much to ask for. Joe’s trouble isn’t that he fails to live up to this code, it’s that the world has changed to such a degree that in obeying these rules Joe is, in a sense, holding devalued currency.” When JOE MAY premiered in theaters last fall, The New York Times wrote “Mr. Maggio’s strengths are a sense of intimacy and textured place.” Film critic Roger Ebert praised Maggio as “a sure-handed director with a good eye.”
VIDEO:
Widescreen
AUDIO:
English
5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital Surround Sound
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Outtakes
An interview with Director Joe Maggio, presented by American Express
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