Rat Pack flick can’t get out from behind the eight ball
OCEAN’S ELEVEN (Lewis Milestone, 1960)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
September 3-4, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series continues through September 4
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Ever go to a party and feel like an outsider? Well, you’ll feel like that for more than two hours if you sit through all of this vanity project that a bunch of Hollywood buddies call a heist movie. The only real heist is the money taken from people’s pockets who actually paid to see this oh-so-hip series of inside practical jokes and smug performances by Dino, Sammy, Frank, Joey, Peter, and the rest of the Rat Pack as they attempt to rip off five casinos on New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas. Nelson Riddle’s music seems to be part of the joke, as does Akim Tamiroff’s overdubbing. Even cameos by Red Skelton and Shirley MacLaine don’t help this self-serving mess. Who knew Christmas in Beverly Hills and New Year’s Eve in Vegas could be so tedious? Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 all-star remake, with George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould, and Brad Pitt, was much better, although you can pretty much forget about the sequels. The original Ocean’s Eleven is screening September 3-4 at the Museum of the Moving Image, concluding the “Films of Frank Sinatra” series, which included such classic Sinatra flicks as On the Town (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1949), From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953), Suddenly! (Lewis Allen, 1954), and The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962).