''Abe & Phil's Last Poker Game'' is a 2017 American comedy-drama film directed and written by

Howard L. Weiner Howard L. Weiner (born December 25, 1944) is an American neurologist, neuroscientist and immunologist who is also a writer and filmmaker. He performs clinical and basic research focused on multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurologic diseases suc ...

and starring

Martin Landau Martin James Landau (; June 20, 1928 – July 15, 2017) was an American actor, acting coach, producer, and editorial cartoonist. His career began in the 1950s, with early film appearances including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's ''North ...

Paul Sorvino Paul Anthony Sorvino (, ; April 13, 1939 – July 25, 2022) was an American actor. He often portrayed authority figures on both the criminal and the law enforcement sides of the law. Sorvino was particularly known for his roles as Lucchese cri ...

and

Maria Dizzia Maria Teresa Dizzia (born December 29, 1974) is an American actress. Dizzia was nominated for the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in ''In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)''. Early lif ...

. It is about a character named Dr. Abe Mandelbaum, played by Landau, who is placed in a

retirement home A retirement home – sometimes called an old people's home or old age home, although ''old people's home'' can also refer to a nursing home – is a multi-residence housing facility intended for the elderly. Typically, each person or couple in ...

while incapable of managing his wife's decaying health. It was the first feature film by Weiner, a neurologist. It debuted at the 2017

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. Tribeca was f ...

, before Landau's death in July 2017. It received mixed reviews, with some positive assessments of Landau's performance.

Cast

as Dr. Abe Mandelbaum *

as Phil Nicoletti *

as Angela Donadio * Ann Marie Shea as Molly Mandelbaum * Pamela Dubin as Sheryl * Alexander Cook as Richard Grollman * Lyralen Kaye as Sister Elizabeth

Production

''Abe & Phil's Last Poker Game'' was the first feature film written and directed by Professor

, a neurologist. Weiner stated that in medical school, he made his own

music videos A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...

about

The Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developmen ...

, and viewed cinema as another medium to pursue truth. He forwarded the screenplay to an Emerson College cinema instructor, who saw promise in it and gave him advice. Weiner's son, television writer

Ron Weiner Ron Weiner (pronounced ) is an American television writer. He has written for several shows, including '' 30 Rock'', ''NewsRadio'', '' Futurama'', ''Arrested Development'', ''Father of the Pride'', '' Help Me Help You' and Silicon Valley. Weine ...

, contacted producers and had some scenes shot in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. It was filmed over five weeks. Howard Weiner also produced it for Premiere Entertainment. Landau chose to take the role, saying "It was unusual, and it kept unfolding in unpredictable ways".

Release

The film screened at the

under the title ''The Last Poker Game'', the only directorial and writing debut of a septuagenarian at Tribeca that year.

attended the spring festival, for his last film released before he died in July 2017. A trailer was published in November 2017 ahead of the January 12, 2018 theatrical and

video-on-demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...

release.

Reception

the film has a 67% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 9 reviews.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

also gave it a score of 48, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Pete Hammond, writing for ''

Deadline Hollywood ''Deadline Hollywood'', commonly known as ''Deadline'' and also referred to as ''Deadline.com'', is an online news site founded as the news blog ''Deadline Hollywood Daily'' by Nikki Finke in 2006. The site is updated several times a day, wit ...

'', assessed it as "not only a touching, funny, quite raunchy (especially in its depiction of senior sex) dramedy, it is exceptionally well made". ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' critic Joe Leydon assessed it as "low-key and deeply felt", and hailed Landau for his best performance since 1994's ''

Ed Wood Edward Davis Wood Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker, actor, and pulp novel author. In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films that later became cult cla ...

'', commenting Landau's death could also influence viewers' perspectives on him playing a character close to death. Ben Kenigsberg in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' criticized it for "flat direction", adding Weiner at least incorporated his medical expertise, "however awkwardly presented". ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

''s John DeFore called it "tepid" but said Landau "delivers with dignity in an uplift-oriented project". In the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', Michael Rechtshaffen judged Landau "effective" but said the film was on "a wobbly line between melancholic and mawkish".

References

External links

* * 2017 films 2017 comedy-drama films American comedy-drama films Films about old age Films shot in Los Angeles 2010s English-language films 2010s American films {{2010s-comedy-film-stub