Danny Aiello Movies
An Italian-American character actor with a beefy physique, no-nonsense expression, and intimidating presence, Danny Aiello came to acting late in life, having been a bus driver, a transport labor official, a night-club bouncer, and (he claims) an occasional thief. He began performing at an improvisational night spot. As he was approaching middle age, he appeared in a regional theater production of Jason Miller's That Championship Season, for which he won a Most Outstanding Newcomer award. Aiello made his screen debut in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), and he went on over the next 15 years to play a succession of tough guys, cops, brutes, slobs, and "ordinary guys" in a wide variety of movies, but broke out of that mold when he portrayed Cher's fiancée in Moonstruck (1987). For his portrayal of a pizza parlor owner in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing two years later, Aiello received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He went on to become one Hollywood's more prolific character actors; between 1989 and 1996, he appeared in 26 feature films. The actor's first lead role came in the title part of Ruby (1992). In addition to his screen work, Aiello has also appeared frequently on Broadway, and in 1976, he won a Theater World Award for his Broadway debut in Lampost Reunion. His work in TV movies includes the acclaimed A Family of Strangers (1980). ~ All Movie Guide
- 1996
This 1996 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Danny Aiello and features musical guest Coolio. ~ Skyler Miller, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Coolio, (more)
An average middle-aged guy finds himself in an extraordinarily weird situation in this off-beat romantic adventure that begins when 53-year-old car salesman Al goes to a local coffee shop with his friends and ends up escorting voluptuous oversexed jailbait Ellie back to the desert trailer she shares with her mom Julie and her brutal psycho boyfriend Boyd. While Boyd and Ellie take off for a while, Al ends up dancing in the moonlight with sweetly seductive Julie. The moon that night is extraordinarily large and the two end up falling asleep. Eventually Al awakens and tries to go home, but unfortunately, his car will not start. Julie then informs him that most cars have trouble starting there. Still he manages to leave. Stopping at a filling station, he is appalled to discover that someone has stuffed a corpse in his trunk. That turns out to be only the least of his troubles. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Three A-list screenwriters -- (Nicholas Pileggi, Bo Goldman, and Paul Schrader) -- contributed to the script of this idealistic political drama. John Pappas (Al Pacino) is the popular, ethical Mayor of New York; Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack) is his even more idealistic and principled deputy. When a detective and mobster kill each other and an innocent six-year-old black child in a shootout, questions arise about what the cop was doing meeting with the gangster in the first place. The Mayor and his staff handle the situation ably, but Calhoun digs deeper and finds troubling evidence that even his seemingly incorruptible boss has not escaped the shadier aspects of political life. The Mafia boss (Tony Franciosa) whose nephew was the dead gangster, along with a Brooklyn political boss (Danny Aiello) with his own agenda, come into the story, becoming part of a series of larger links, secret relationships, and bonds of "honor" between men who, on the surface, would have no reason to be in business with each other. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Al Pacino, John Cusack, (more)
A variety of crooks, losers, and working stiffs living in the shadow of Hollywood find their various personal crises overlapping in this intricately woven melodrama. Lee Woods (James Spader) is a cold-blooded hit man and Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello) a soft-at-heart gangster; they've been sent to murder Roy Foxx (Peter Horton), the former husband of also-ran Olympic skier Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher). Lee's girlfriend Helga (Charlize Theron) is unhappy about his habit of killing people, and she attracts the attention of Alvin (Jeff Daniels) and Wes (Eric Stoltz), two cops who've been put on vice detail but don't have the heart to bust the prostitute they've been trailing. Alvin dreams of becoming a homicide detective, so when he discovers that he might be on the trail of a murder, it's like Santa Claus showed up in mid-July to hand him a present. Dosmo manages to escape the crime scene, only to foil a murder attempt by Lee, forcing him to hide out in the home of Hopper, a pretentious English art dealer (Greg Cruttwell), whom Dosmo holds hostage along with Hopper's long-suffering assistant, Susan (Glenne Headly). In the midst of all this, a down-on-his-luck television director (Paul Mazursky) contemplates suicide (the main stumbling block is finding someone to take care of his dog) while also being pestered by an actor with equally bad luck (Austin Pendleton) and meeting a compassionate nurse (Marsha Mason) on a visit to a cemetery. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Greg Cruttwell, (more)
This Spanish-American production stars Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, whose romance on the set helped the film set box-office records in Spain. Director Fernando Treuba, who won an Oscar for Belle Epoque, made his English-language debut with Two Much, an updated screwball comedy. Banderas plays a con artist appropriately named Art Dodge. Joan Cusack plays his assistant, Gloria. They specialize in convincing recently widowed women that their husbands ordered an expensive painting before their death. One day, Art tries to work his scam at the funeral of mobster Gene Paletto's (Danny Aiello) father. Gene is outraged by Art, even more so after he steals away his ex-wife, Betty Kerner (Melanie Griffith). Betty quickly falls for the handsome Art and plans to marry him, but he is soon distracted by her beautiful sister, Liz (Daryl Hannah). In order to woo both women, Art disguises himself as fictional brother Bart by removing his ponytail and putting on glasses. Art/Bart switches identities and hops from bed to bed while being pursued by Gene and other mobsters. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, (more)
As visually stylish as it is graphically violent, this thriller directed by Luc Besson concerns Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a 12-year-old girl living in New York City who has been exposed to the sordid side of life from an early age: her family lives in a slum and her abusive father works for drug dealers, cutting and storing dope. Mathilda doesn't much care for her parents, but she has a close bond with her four-year-old brother. One day, she returns from running an errand to discover that most of her family, including her brother, have been killed in a raid by corrupt DEA agents, led by the psychotic Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Mathilda takes refuge in the apartment of her secretive neighbor, Leon (Jean Reno), who takes her in with a certain reluctance. She discovers that Leon is a professional assassin, working for Tony (Danny Aiello), a mob kingpin based in Little Italy. Wanting to avenge the death of her brother, Mathilda makes a deal with Leon to become his protégée in exchange for work as a domestic servant, hoping to learn the hitman's trade and take out the men who took her brother's life. However, an affection develops between Leon and Mathilda that changes his outlook on his life and career. Besson's first American film boasted a strong performance from Jean Reno, a striking debut by Natalie Portman, and a love-it-or-hate-it, over-the-top turn by Gary Oldman. Léon was originally released in the U.S. in 1994 as The Professional, with 26 minutes cut in response to audience preview tests. Those 26 minutes were restored in the director's preferred cut, released in 1996 in France as Léon: Version Intégrale and in the U.S. on DVD as Léon: The Professional in 2000. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Reno, Natalie Portman, (more)
This large, sprawling comedy directed by Robert Altman concerns a variety of romantic and personal intrigues that intersect against the backdrop of Paris's annual "Pret-a-Porter" fashion extravaganza. With 31 principal characters and a number of cameos from well known models, designers, actors and actresses, there's far too much going on to describe the film in a limited space, but Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins get stuck in a hotel room together, Danny Aiello wears a dress, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni reignite their old passion (or at least try to), Stephen Rea humiliates a number of female journalists, Kim Basinger often looks dumbfounded, and Lyle Lovett plays a Texan (talk about imaginative casting!). Originally called Pret-a-Porter, this underwent a last-minute title change when the distributor discovered very few Americans understood what the French phrase means, with the English translation taking its place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, (more)
A wealthy young boy is kidnapped by thieves who rob his home, but the crooks are in for a surprise when the kid becomes a pest . ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Alex Zuckerman, (more)
Paul Mazursky directed this comedy, which blends a broad satire of the film industry with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man looking back on his life's failures. Harry Stone (Danny Aiello) is a film director who desperately needs a hit -- so desperately that he gets talked into directing an inane sci-fi film about a group of farm kids (led by Ally Sheedy) who grow an enormous pickle that they turn into a spaceship, allowing them to visit the planet Cleveland (ruled by Little Richard and his right hand man, Griffin Dunne) where everyone eats nothing but meat. Convinced that the film will flop, Harry is in a state of panic as he returns to New York with his Parisian girlfriend Francoise (Clotilde Courau), a mere 20 years his junior, and visits his ex-wife Ellen (Dyan Cannon); his mother Yetta (Shelley Winters); and his son Gregory (Chris Penn). Meanwhile Harry flashes back on his childhood and the film he could have made of it, and pitches his dream film (a historical epic about the life of Montezuma) to studio executives, who instead want him to make a movie kids can relate to. The Pickle was filmed in 1991, but only received a token theatrical release two years later. Actually, the sci-fi story with Little Richard as the undisputed ruler of Cleveland looks like it might have been an ideal vehicle for Edward D. Wood Jr.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, (more)
Based on the play by Ivan Menchell, this drama concerns three friends, Doris (Olympia Dukakis), Lucille (Diane Ladd), and Esther (Ellen Burstyn). All three live in the same Jewish community in Pittsburgh, are in their mid-to-late 50s, and have become widows within the past few months. Once a week, they gather to visit their husbands' graves and meet at a deli afterward to talk about their lives. Doris remains fiercely devoted to her late husband and takes her responsibilities as a widow seriously. Lucille is eager to get her feet back in the waters of dating, partly as revenge against her late husband, who often cheated on her, and partly because she's very lonely by herself. Esther is also not used to being alone after 39 years of marriage, but she doesn't feel ready to start dating again, at least not until she meets Ben (Danny Aiello), a former cop turned cab driver who gradually but firmly eases his way into her life. Doris is appalled when she discovers that Esther is dating again and loudly protests that she's being disrespectful to her late husband, while Lucille is more than a bit jealous that Esther snagged a good man before she could. Jerry Orbach and Lee Richardson appear in a brief prologue sequence. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis, (more)
A hybrid cross-pollination of a Martin Scorsese and Frank Capra film, this feel-good comic fantasy is loosely based on the real-life story of a New York lottery winner. Anthony LaPaglia stars as Frank Pesce Jr., a New Yorker with a good-luck streak that is unmatched in his Little Italy neighborhood. When Frank throws a pair of dice in a game of chance, he doesn't just toss a winning hand, the dice land on top of each other. When he's stabbed in the chest by a girlfriend's brother, his doctors find a pre-cancerous tumor. Although he tries again and again to get rid of a vehicle he no longer wants, it is retrieved every single time by the authorities. So when New York announces its first statewide lottery in 1976, Frank buys one ticket and immediately becomes everybody's best friend. Unfortunately, Frank's good luck is matched by the equally bad luck of his hard-working father, Frank Sr. (Danny Aiello), who has run up a gambling debt to a local mobster. The wise guy is willing to forgive the note if Frank Jr. will just hand over his sure-to-be lucky ticket, leaving the city's luckiest Italian-American in a bit of a moral quandary. The real Frank Pesce Jr. executive produces and co-stars in 29th Street as his own police officer brother, Vito. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Anthony LaPaglia, (more)
Here's a fictionalized account of Jack Ruby's perspective of the events leading up to his assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Danny Aiello appears convincingly as the nightclub-owner Ruby who (according to this telling) points the finger at an FBI conspiracy as the force behind the Kennedy assassination. The film includes some actual footage from Ruby's Oswald shooting. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Sherilyn Fenn, (more)
- 1992
- R
Successful character actor Barry Primus spent seven years trying to get financing for his feature debut as a writer-director, Mistress. In the film, a once-promising writer-director, Marvin Landisman (Robert Wuhl), who now directs instructional videos, is sitting home one night, watching his own print of Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, when he gets a strange phone call. A producer, Jack Roth (Martin Landau), formerly a bigwig at Universal, tells Marvin he was cleaning out his office when he came across Marvin's old script, "The Darkness and the Light." Jack claims he can get financing to make the film, and agrees to Marvin's stipulation that he be attached to direct. They "take a meeting" at a low-rent diner, and Jack brings along a gung-ho novice screenwriter, Stuart (Jace Alexander), to help Marvin polish the script. They meet with three potential backers, played by Eli Wallach, Danny Aiello, and Robert DeNiro, each one more meddlesome than the last, and each with a girlfriend (played by Tuesday Knight, Jean Smart, and Sheryl Lee Ralph, respectively) whom they demand be cast in the film. At first, Marvin adamantly resists changing his serious, downbeat, and very personal script, about an painter who commits suicide, rather than betray his ideals. But eventually, Marvin gets caught up in the momentum of actually getting his dream project made, and starts compromising. He agrees to cast the three women; he agrees to make the script funnier and sexier; he even agrees to change the painter to a photographer to please his backers. Laurie Metcalf plays Marvin's long-suffering wife, and Christopher Walken has a cameo as a tortured actor. Mistress was the first film produced by DeNiro's independent production company, Tribeca Films. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Wuhl, Martin Landau, (more)
Michael Lehmann directed this post-modernist hash of To Catch a Thief and The Naked Gun starring Bruce Willis as Hudson Hawk, a cat burglar who wants to go straight, but the circumstances won't allow it. The story begins in a pre-credit sequence that takes place in the renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci (Stefano Molinari) is rushing through his Mona Lisa painting to work on his latest invention -- a machine to turn lead into bronze. But Da Vinci makes a mistake and, instead of bronze, the machine turns the lead into gold. Realizing the danger of his invention if the contraption gets into the wrong hands, he hides three parts of the apparatus inside three of his other works. Four hundred years later, Hudson Hawk, the world's greatest cat burglar, is being released from jail after pulling a ten-year stretch. He wants to retire from the profession of cat burglary and drink some cappuccino, but two screwball billionaires -- Darwin and Minerva Mayflower (Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) -- won't let him. Their nefarious plot is to steal the three Da Vinci works, restore Da Vinci's gold-making machine, and destroy the world's monetary system. They blackmail Hawks into working with them to steal the Da Vincis by threatening the life of Hawks's pal Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Along with the power-mad billionaires, Hawks has to deal with the CIA, in the person of George Kaplan (James Coburn), breathing down his neck. He also has Vatican art restorer Anna Baragli (Andie MacDowell) falling for his smirk. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, (more)
Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom made his American movie debut with this romantic comedy, starring Holly Hunter as Renata Bella, an aimless Bostonian thirtysomething who attends a seminar for aspiring condo salespersons. Here she meets hotshot salesman Sam Sharpe (Richard Dreyfuss), who immediately falls in love with her. After the marriage, Sam's well-meaning but obnoxious insistence on insinuating himself into every aspect of Renata's life rubs the rest of her family the wrong way. Though the script occasionally veers into both cliché and sentimentality, Once Around ends up a thoroughly charming experience, thanks to Hallstrom's knowing direction and the marvelous chemistry between Hunter and Dreyfuss. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, (more)
- 1991
- R
In this actioner, a third-world drug lord seeks to monopolize the narcotics trade in the recently disbanded Soviet Union and post-Communist eastern Europe. To stop the mayhem he is causing from his fortress in Colombia, US agents team up with Russian agents. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lance Henriksen, Lyle Alzado, (more)
- 1990
- R
Businessman Chester Grant (Danny Aiello) will do anything it takes to get the sale, but finds himself getting older and must choose a successor. Instead of the logical man for the position (James Karen), Grant decides that he will invite two rival salesmen to dinner and then make a decision. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Michael Paré, (more)
A tortured man finds himself caught in a middle-ground between hallucination and reality in this supernatural thriller, scripted by Bruce Joel Rubin of Ghost (1990) and My Life (1993).
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a soldier stationed in Vietnam who undergoes a traumatic experience on the battlefield - the nature of which is initially unclear. The film then moves into his post-Vietnam experience in 1970s New York, where he feels consistently traumatized, but can never quite remember exactly what happened to him in Southeast Asia or to free himself from his anxieties over the recent tragic death of his young son (Macaulay Culkin). Though well educated, Jacob works as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service and has become romantically involved with one of his co-workers, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), after divorcing his wife. Soon, Jacob's tenuous hold on reality starts to slip as horrifying events befall him; he is nearly run over by a subway train, pursued by faceless demons in cars, and spots reptilian tails and horns protruding from the bodies of those he encounters. Jacob also suffers severe panic attacks related to the chaos that may be reality, or may exist only in his mind. He seeks counsel from Louis (Danny Aiello), a kindly chiropractor, as his ex-wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember), fellow Vietnam vet Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince), and enigmatic stranger Michael (Matt Craven) all try to help the tortured soul. Jason Alexander, Ving Rhames and Eriq LaSalle highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a soldier stationed in Vietnam who undergoes a traumatic experience on the battlefield - the nature of which is initially unclear. The film then moves into his post-Vietnam experience in 1970s New York, where he feels consistently traumatized, but can never quite remember exactly what happened to him in Southeast Asia or to free himself from his anxieties over the recent tragic death of his young son (Macaulay Culkin). Though well educated, Jacob works as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service and has become romantically involved with one of his co-workers, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), after divorcing his wife. Soon, Jacob's tenuous hold on reality starts to slip as horrifying events befall him; he is nearly run over by a subway train, pursued by faceless demons in cars, and spots reptilian tails and horns protruding from the bodies of those he encounters. Jacob also suffers severe panic attacks related to the chaos that may be reality, or may exist only in his mind. He seeks counsel from Louis (Danny Aiello), a kindly chiropractor, as his ex-wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember), fellow Vietnam vet Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince), and enigmatic stranger Michael (Matt Craven) all try to help the tortured soul. Jason Alexander, Ving Rhames and Eriq LaSalle highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, (more)
Eddie Murphy, in addition to starring as Quick, the son of 1930s Harlem gambling-house proprietor Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor), also wrote and directed the film. The plotline details the combined efforts of Quick and Sugar Ray to prevent white gangster Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner) from muscling in on their operation. The supporting players include Redd Foxx, Danny Aiello and Jasmine Guy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, (more)
This offbeat police thriller with heavy doses of humor was written by John Patrick Shanley, the former playwright who wrote Cher's hit romantic comedy Moonstruck. Kevin Kline stars as Nick Starkey, a brilliant former New York City police detective who has been exiled to the fire department because of his unorthodox ways. He's called back to service by his police commissioner brother Frank (Harvey Keitel) in the hopes that he can find a bizarre serial killer who's been murdering one woman a month. Nick's condition to agreeing to help is that he gets to cook dinner for Frank and his snooty wife Christine (Susan Sarandon), a former girlfriend of his. Ultimately, Nick uses his Zen-like intuition and some high-tech computer hardware (with prominent product placement plugs) to find the killer, pausing to have an affair with the mayor's beautiful daughter Bernadette (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. In the improbable conclusion, Nick figures out the exact day the killer will strike and the exact apartment! January Man is too tongue-in-cheek to be taken seriously as a thriller. In addition to Keitel and Sarandon the stellar supporting cast includes Rod Steiger as the mayor and Danny Aiello as a tough police captain who rails against Nick's "beatnik" ways. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, (more)
- 1989
- R
In this spooky political thriller, the world seems on the brink of a nuclear holocaust when an old agreement between the Kremlin and the Vatican comes to light. It is an American tourist (at least he seems like a tourist) who exposes the potentially deadly "Third Solution," and now only one diplomat can save the world from destruction. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Treat Williams, F. Murray Abraham, (more)
