6th HOF-This Boy's Life

Nominated By: Hello101



I nominate This Boy's Life, it stars Robert De Niro and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. It's a family-drama and features great performances all round (especially from the two main stars). I found myself choked up when I first watched it, it's not dreary or dark but it does deal with family issues (like domestic abuse) and tends to fly under the radar when discussing those types of films and even the actors' best performances/movies, I think This Boy's Life is (at least) a top 10 for both Leo and De Niro. Enjoy!

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Letterboxd

“Except for markf, you’re all a disgrace to cinema.”

Wonderful film, my nomination. De Niro and Dicaprio in top form.

Great movie. My review for it is here.

This is a movie I've always had some interest in, but for whatever reason I never watched it. I like Hello's taste, and with SC also loving it, I think this is a movie that I will thoroughly enjoy.

I've seen This Boy's Life and I like it. I'll have to rewatch it to give a more definite opinion on it. It has been awhile.

I will say that I think Leo was a much better actor in his teens. I think his particular type of intenseness worked for him better as a teenager. I do remember thinking it was one of his better performances.

I don't recall ever hearing about this film so I'm interested

Yeah I know, for a De Niro/DiCaprio film, it's somehow unheard of.

This is an excellent film! The fact that is based on the youth of Tobias Wolff makes it even more interesting. I really need to read the book but I am afraid that it will ruin the film for me.

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You are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask.

Well, when it came out, Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't really LEONARDO DICAPRIO yet. This was before Titanic and even before What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Plus it was directed by Michael Caton-Jones, who went on to direct Basic Instinct 2.

This was just a movie with Robert De Niro and some kid when it came out.

I think it's better than both of those.

This is what I wrote about this movie in my logbook thread:

http://www.movieforums.com/community...59#post1254559

The acting in this movie was great, so it's easy to see why Leonardo DiCaprio became such a huge star, but I've never been a big fan of Robert De Niro, so I don't think I liked this anywhere near as much as most people will like it. It's an interesting story, but none of the characters are likable. As much as I wanted to root for DiCaprio's character to get away from there, and out of De Niro's character's house, at the same time, I didn't really care if he didn't get out. It was kind of the feeling of, if his mother didn't care enough to get him out of there, then why should I care?

I'm not saying that this is a bad movie. It actually held my attention throughout the movie, but I just didn't care what happened at the end. The only thing that I cared about was whether or not De Niro's character would get what he deserved. I didn't care what happened to DiCaprio's character and his mother.

For the most part, I found this movie kind of disturbing, and hard to watch, but I think most people won't agree with me on this one.

Dammit, I thought had your taste down with this movie, goodies. Ah well, at least you liked it somewhat.

It's hard to figure out my tastes. Sometimes I'm not even sure if I'll like a movie.

In fairness, I probably would have liked the movie more if Robert De Niro didn't star in it. I know he's a great actor, but I've never really seen the appeal to watching him. He usually plays very unlikable characters, and there's just something very annoying about him.

The only De Niro movies that I like are Bang the Drum Slowly and Analyze This. There are other De Niro movies that are good movies, but they're not really my type of movie, so while I acknowledge them as good movies, I have no interest in ever seeing them again. (This includes movies like Taxi Driver, The Godfather: Part II, and Goodfellas,)

I watched like 30-40 minutes of this once, and it didn't hold my attetion at all. I never got past those minutes but I still want to see see it mainly for DiCaprio.

This isn’t the kind of movie I usually go for but I found myself engaged enough throughout and thought it was a pretty solid flick. Nothing spectacular, but I don’t really have any gripes. I liked the places the story went. I give it a + for the second to last scene with the fight, which was intense as hell. Good nomination.

+

Agreed. I'm not the biggest fan of grown-up Leo, but he was pretty good back in the day.

Yeah, the last scene is intense. Glad you liked it, Swan.

I have this, but I turned it off while trying to watch it. That was a few years ago, though.

I'm not usually a fan of sports movies, but I like some baseball movies, and Bang the Drum Slowly is one of my favorite movies.

I enjoyed This Boys Life. Leo was great in in as was Robert DeNiro . I know you don't like him GBG, but I think he does that sort of man really well. Like a lot of men who wreak domestic violence, he appears affable to outsiders but is a controlling violent monster inside the house. The scene where you can see him wanting to listen to his records and boiling over when all that's going on is ordinary family life is fantastic. De Niro does that pent up rage really well.

At the end, thankfully Ellen Barkin had enough. It was lovely seeing them running away, the only thing that upset me is that they left that poor little girl Pearl behind. I kept thinking about that all night as from the first time you saw her when Toby and Caroline first met the family, she grabbed onto Caroline's hand and hung on in there. Looks like the relationship became close over the years. I know this is a real life story and I read at the end she has her own family etc, but what happened to the rest of her childhood?

I agree that De Niro plays that type of character very well. I don't deny that he's a great actor. I just find something annoying about him, almost in a creepy way. It seems to come out in just about every role he plays. I don't think I've ever watched any interviews with him, so I don't know if maybe that's just part of the real him coming through, or just something in his acting.