Debbie Jhoon: Last News

Angelique Jackson Bleecker Street has secured North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s new action-comedy, “Mafia Mamma,” starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci and Rob Huebel.Collette stars in the film as a suburban American woman, who inherits her grandfather’s mafia empire and must learn navigate her new role as the head of the family business, defying everyone’s expectations.Based on an original idea by acclaimed French novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker Amanda Sthers, Hardwicke directs from a screenplay written by Debbie Jhoon and Michael J. Feldman (Peacock’s “AP Bio,” Hulu’s”Deadbeat”).

Cocaine Bear, or see limbs, heads, and a face torn off by Nicolas Cage’s Prince of Darkness in Renfield. Funny thing is, those films actually elicit laughs by flaunting gruesome violence that, while outlandish and in some cases flat-out gross, fits the circumstances and gonzo energy that rules those joints from start to finish.Audiences for the seemingly breezy mob action-comedy Mafia Mamma (★★☆☆☆), however, might really not expect to see Toni Collette — starring as suburban American mom Kristin, tapped to succeed her deceased Italian grandfather as the head of a Calabrian crime family — plunge a stiletto heel into some guy’s eye, then wriggle the heel around in the socket good and deep before gouging the eyeball out and watching it roll across the floor.Director Catherine Hardwicke, of Twilight and Thirteen fame, working from a script by TV writers Debbie Jhoon and J.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In her own home, Italian American working mom Kristin Balbano Jordan (Toni Collette) is hardly the boss. When her deadbeat hubby isn’t cheating on her, he calls the shots, and her independent-minded son can’t wait to leave for college. At work, her male colleagues undermine her every idea. What Kristin doesn’t realize is that it’s not her destiny to be a doormat. Far from it. Come to find, she’s next in line to run Italy’s well-connected Balbano clan, and though Kristin couldn’t have imagined she was heir to an organized crime family, taking charge amounts to an offer she can’t refuse. A fun fish-out-of-water farce with “Godfather” DNA and a clever female-empowerment kick, “Mafia Mamma” makes inspired use of Collette, who’s never better than when playing women we oughtn’t to have underestimated. Here, using stiletto heels to brutally stab a rival clan’s top assassin, first in the crotch and then in the face, demonstrates that Kristin’s better suited to the job than her enemies could have imagined. While such a graphic scene may come as a shock in a movie that’s more “Under the Tuscan Sun” than “Scarface” (“He had bits of his scrotum stuffed in his eye socket,” reports Monica Bellucci as Bianca, Kristin’s seen-it-all consiglieri), it more than proves that Donna Balbano deserves some respect.

Bleecker Street has acquired North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s action-comedy Mafia Mamma, starring Toni Collette (The Staircase, Nightmare Alley), Monica Bellucci (The Matrix franchise, The Man Who Sold His Skin) and Rob Huebel (The Descendants, The Goldbergs), which is heading into production in Italy in May.