God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie Review

Loose Change

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 14, 2014

Passion projects are born when a subject or a story seizes someone's imagination and won't let go. Actor John Slattery, better known to the world as "Roger Sterling" on television's Mad Men, experienced such a sensation when he first read Pete Dexter's first novel, God's Pocket, which was set in a fictionalized version of Philadelphia's Schuylkill neighborhood and drew on Dexter's experiences as a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News. Dexter has adapted several of his novels for the screen, notably Paris Trout (1991) and The Paperboy (2012), as well as writing several other screenplays, both original and adapted. But God's Pocket is the kind of tricky character piece that isn't an easy sell to movie studios, especially in today's hit-driven environment. Its story meanders and can't be easily expressed in a pitch meeting. Yet Slattery found himself so taken with the book that he began writing a screenplay even before he knew whether he could acquire the rights. Several years later, and after multiple drafts and the addition of co-writer Alex Metcalf, the script was ready for the cameras.

Slattery's only directing experience was several episodes of Mad Men, but his deep roots in the acting community allowed him to assemble a cast of acting greats to fill out even the small parts—and as many top directors have said, casting is 80% (or more) of directing. In what would turn out to be one of his final roles, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman anchors the film with another superlative performance as Mickey Scarpato, an immigrant to God's Pocket, someone who has lived there for many years, but because he wasn't born in the neighborhood, is never truly accepted by the natives. Lurching from one crisis to the next, Mickey watches his life unravel in just three days. But as dark as the film gets, Slattery never loses sight of the fact that, at bottom, it's a pitch-black comedy.

God's Pocket opens with a funeral for a young man who will shortly be identified as Leon Hubbard (Caleb Landry Jones), the son of grieving mother Jeanie Scarpato (Mad Men's Christina Hendricks) and stepson of her second husband, Mickey (Hoffman). The exact circumstances of Leon's death are a key element of the interwoven plots of the film, as is the strain it puts on the marriage of Jeanie and Mickey. For now, however, the funeral serves as an introduction to the neighborhood, as Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins), a famous columnist for the local paper, is heard on the soundtrack reading part of an article about God's Pocket. Shellburn's description is crucial to everything that follows:

Everyone here has stolen something from somebody else, or when they were kids, they set someone's house on fire, or they ran away when they should have stayed and fought. They know who cheats at cards and who slaps their kids around. And no matter what anybody does, they're still here. And whatever they are is what they are. The only thing they can't forgive is not being from God's Pocket.

As if to illustrate Shellburn's words, a fight breaks out at the funeral between "Mole" Ferrell (Jack O'Connell) and the undertaker, "Smilin' Jack" Moran (Eddie Marsan). We never learn the nature of the dispute, but as we come to know Smilin' Jack, it isn't much of a surprise that someone has a grudge.

As Slattery explains in his commentary, he had originally scripted a montage of vignettes introducing the daily life of God's Pocket, but the existing opening was "found" during post-production, making it a classic example of how movies can be rewritten in editing. In the case of God's Pocket, the rewrite is a great improvement, because the funeral scene and narration perfectly capture the film's distinctive tone of wincing comedy and resigned tragedy (though "tragedy" may be too grand a word for characters who expect so little from life). When the film winds back three days before Leon's funeral, you've already been pulled into its mood.

Leon's death is a large stone cast into a pond where the waters are already troubled. He is killed in an incident at his construction job, but the actual circumstances are far different from what the foreman (Glenn Fleshler) reports to the police. Only Jeanie, Leon's grieving mother, insists that there's more to the story, probably because she knows her son, who was a punk and a troublemaker. She wants her husband to do something.

As it happens, Mickey is "connected" (or thinks he is), because, even though he's not from God's Pocket originally—a fact that no one lets him forget—his closest friend in the neighborhood is Arthur "Bird" Capezio (John Turturro), with whom Mickey is currently involved in a scheme involving stolen beef, along with an authentic mobster, Sal Cappi (Domenick Lombardozzi from The Wire and Boardwalk Empire). What Mickey doesn't know is that "Bird" needs the proceeds from the crime to pay off a big debt to Sal, and getting Sal's help to investigate Leon's death will add to the debt. "Bird" is already having problems making the payments, because the power keeps going off in the flower shop of his Aunt Sophie (the wonderful Joyce Van Patten), where they're trying to cut up the stolen beef for sale.

Mickey has his hands full trying to make the arrangements for Leon's funeral, for which "Smilin' Jack" wants to charge him thousands of dollars and will not accept credit. Perhaps Jack would be more flexible with someone who was originally from God's Pocket, but with Mickey he makes no allowance for bereavement. Indeed, Jack seems to go out of his way to be heartless. Since we've already seen the funeral take place, we know that Mickey eventually finds a way, but it's not by a route that anyone would predict.

In another part of the city, columnist Richard Shellburn coasts on his reputation while he daily drinks himself into a stupor. He recycles prior columns, when he bothers to turn in any copy at all, and beds young graduates from journalism school who admire his early work. But then his editor tries to shock him into doing some real work by sending him to write about Leon. Expecting to encounter a plump Italian housewife, Shellburn instead finds Jeanie Scarpato (who looks like Christina Hendricks). When he recovers from the shock, Shellburn begins a boozy, inept seduction that, on a normal day, wouldn't stand a chance with a woman of Jeanie's experience, but this isn't a normal day. Emotionally vulnerable from the loss of her son and the disappointment in her husband, Jeanie lets circumstances overwhelm her. You can literally see each step as she surrenders. (Hendricks is brilliant, as always.)

By the time God's Pocket reaches its conclusion, Leon's death will have had far-reaching consequences, radically altering the lives of many characters, both major and minor. The only thing that hasn't changed is the neighborhood itself. It remains exactly as it was, and it will stay that way for as long as the buildings stand.

God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

God's Pocket was shot on the Arri Alexa by cinematographer Lance Acord (Adaptation and Being John Malkovich), who also helped produce the film through his company Park Pictures. According to director Slattery, Acord shot as often as possible using available light, which is part of the freedom allowed by digital capture and the ability to adjust the image in post-production on a digital intermediate. (Effects work was used to remove satellite dishes and other modern details inconsistent with the film's late Seventies period.)

MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files, and it displays the sharp and detailed but still film-like image for which the Alexa is known. The worry lines in Mickey Scarpato's face, the grimy interior of the neighborhood bar overseen by McKenna (Peter Gerety), the worn interiors of houses that have seen better days and the refreshingly green countryside where Richard Shellburn takes Jeanie Scarpato for a ride are all shown in realistic detail. Nothing in God's Pocket is exaggerated or stylized. Even the sides of beef look plain.

Since this is a digitally originated project without any analog stage in the process, issues of filtering, sharpening or grain reduction do not apply. MPI has mastered God's Pocket with an average bitrate of 25.94, which is very good for a digitally photographed film and avoids any compression issues.

God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, creates a subtle sense of the city's continuous presence all around the residents of God's Pocket, as well as the distinctive environments when they venture elsewhere, whether for a heist or a jaunt in the country. There are several noteworthy sequences where sound effects play a key role that cannot be described without spoilers, but suffice it to say that the soundtrack's dynamic range is fully up to the task of creating the desired impact (though not with volume; it's the particular quality of the sound that matters). The dialogue is always clear, and the moody score by Nathan Larson (Margin Call and The Messenger, among others) sets the appropriate fatalistic tone.

God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director/Producer John Slattery: The commentary is listed as a soundtrack option under "Setup". One of the running themes in Slattery's commentary is the need to remain flexible when making an independent film on a tight shooting schedule, because cast members may suddenly need to be replaced at the last minute, locations may be lost, shots may have to be dropped, etc. A second theme is how intuitively Slattery embraced directing, for which his only "training" was a long career as an actor. He picked material that appealed to him; cast people who seemed right for the part (or, in some instances, happened to be available) and trusted their performances; chose locations, mostly in Yonkers, NY, that looked right; and left his DP to make the image look good.



• Deleted Scenes (480i; 2.35:1, enhanced; 2:49): These brief scenes are not separately selectable, but each is preceded by a title card.
• Mickey and Leon at bar
• Jeanie receives mystery call
• Shellburn and Jeanie at Bookbinders



• TV Spot (1080p; 2.35:1; 0:32).



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:22).



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Lucky Them, Cold in July , Hellion and Venus in Fur, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

God's Pocket Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

On his commentary track, Slattery reveals that he originally wanted Philip Seymour Hoffman to play the journalist Shellburn but that Hoffman was much more intrigued by the character of Mickey. The choice was typical of Hoffman, who was routinely attracted to characters who did not (or could not) express themselves through words, so that the actor would have to challenge himself to find other means of expressing the character's inner state. One of the most extreme examples was the character of Jack in the only film that Hoffman directed, Jack Goes Boating, a role he originated on stage. Even his Oscar-winning performance as Truman Capote was that of a writer who ultimately suffered a kind of verbal breakdown and ceased to write. In God's Pocket, Hoffman, for one of the last times, demonstrated his gift for communicating with tiny gestures and shifts of expressions. He speaks little but says volumes in every scene. The film is dedicated to his memory. Highly recommended.