Best Martin Scorsese movie

In the interests of brevity I left out his shorts and video work but kept his more significant TV work. If you really want to vote for 'The Big Shave' or 'Bad' then use the Other option.

Or that noted short, "Gangs of New York" : )

The King of Comedy is really his most perfect work, like a better version of Taxi Driver without the violence and exploitation aspect. But the situations depicted in it are often so embarrassing it's almost unbearable to watch.

Love that film but it's not his best

xxxpost

Excuse me for a moment whilst I kill myself. Yeah put 'Gangs' in other too, though I can't imagine many voting for it.

Goodfellas, easy.

Looking at this list makes me realise that I only really like Taxi Driver, The King Of Comedy and After Hours. And The Big Shave.

I've seen every single one of these (even Other) cept for Lady by the Sea and Street Scenes, neither of which I've even heard of until just right now. And after suffering through an entire, semester-long grad seminar on nothing but the man himself (!), I feel more than qualified to state that The King of Comedy is his only masterpiece, that Casino >> Goodfellas, that Kundun, Bringing Out the Dead, and especially, After Hours are much better than anything he did in the 1970s, that Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull cannot bear the weight of their ecstatic reception histories, and that none of the films just mentioned are flat-out bad films.

So very easily, The King of Comedy.

Worst: Boxcar Bertha (much, MUCH worse than The Color of Money which is more inconsequential than just bad)

Film I seriously wish I liked more: New York, New York

I really like After Hours and Bringing Out the Dead too, those two and King of Comedy are the only ones I'd consider voting.

He's always been overrated, but it's not his fault. No perfect films, quite a lot of bad ones, especially in the mid eighties and mid nineties. Voted for Taxi Driver over Goodfellas, despite the Bernard Herrman score.

Most underrated: The Age of Innocence.

But the situations depicted in it are often so embarrassing it's almost unbearable to watch.

There's a fantastic essay on this very aspect: William Ian Miller, "'I Can Take a Hint': Social Ineptitude, Embarrassment, and The King of Comedy." If anyone wants a copy, let me know.

Even though I voted for King of Comedy, I fear Casino may not get its due. Yeah, it hits a lot of the same notes as Goodfellas, but it's so much more nuanced and knowing.

jeez, I thought I was the only King fan on this board. W'happen?

See? You DO have some nefarious influence.

Nice to see praise for Bringing Out the Dead.

astonishing rather than nice, I'd say

Casino >> Goodfellas

o_O

i liked Casino more than any of the others. his films leave me cold most of the time.

Casino just felt like GF2. Watching it that way, it fell way short.

^^ yes, with extra who-gives-a-damn

I think I'm one of the only people who likes the taxi driver score. that winsome little saxophone number is a perfect evocation of travis; a cheap, maudlin take on faux urban sophistication, nostalgia for a time that never existed. at other points the score sounds like a 50s monster movie, which I dig.

there's an interesting story behind that little wacko sound at the end that lets you know travis is still batshit crazy - herrmann had put in a bell ring at that point. it was the last night of scoring and herrmann was walking out the studio door. scorsese was complaining to him that he didn't like the bell and herrmann yelled back over his shoulder "play it backwards." herrmann died that night.

xpost

Yeah, Casino just felt like Goodfellas Redux but less focused, less tight.

I can't imagine it getting many votes but I really like 'Age of Innocence', it's quite brutal in the way that an apparently geneteel society can punish an individual who errs. I think he works best when dealing with the dynamics of a community and an outsiders place in it. Maybe that's why stuff like The Aviator and Color of Money didn't work as well for me as his other work.

I think I'm one of the only people who likes the taxi driver score

What?!??!

Goodfellas, easy.

-- nate woolls, Friday, August 15, 2008 7:07 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yeah Edward, Herrmann fans like the TD score just fine.

(he also inserted a Psycho quote under the end credits, a rumbling 3 notes on the cello)

Most underrated: Last Temptation
Most overrated: Goodfellas

Looking at this list makes me realise that I only really like Taxi Driver, The King Of Comedy and After Hours.

OTM. Kind of want to be a pain and throw a vote at The Last Waltz but I will go with KoC.

Goodfellas and King are at the top for me. Too different to choose between.

Morbz OTM. Bringing Out the Dead is a disaster, dunno what people saw in that one.

eez, I thought I was the only King fan on this board. W'happen?

you're completely insane, i've overheard you having fawning conversations with other ilxors (including myself) about this movie multiple times!

i dont think it's great or anything, but I do enjoy The Aviator a lot.

Most underrated: Last Temptation
Most overrated: Goodfellas

-- Eric H., Friday, August 15, 2008 2:32 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

silly. wouldn't most overrated go to say, taxi driver? or raging bull?

schef, I'm not insane, just senile.

Yeah, Eric who wrote "fuck Raging Bull"?

TD may be overrated, but on my last viewing it's better than I used to think.

i dig bringing out the dead, maybe mostly because it looks fantastic and i find it to be a genuinely weird movie w/r/t tone and acting.

in Joe Pesci Casino has one of the worst accent and performances I've ever seen. Is he speaking English?

i give him props for being the only one in the movie to attempt a chicago accent~

Pesci's a terrible actor

I guess I've read more people criticize the taxi driver score in recent times than I've read praise of it.

if you want to talk underrated scorsese check out his first full length, who's that knocking at my door. it's like a dry run for mean streets, and I'm always impressed by how many of his trademark tricks were already fully realized in the late 60s. from the opening montage you know you're watching a scorsese film. it's light on plot but there are a number of impressive sequences, including a rape scene played with no sound other than an incongruous doo wop song.

then again, I really like the color of money and never understood the general lambasting it gets. yeah, it's not the greatest movie in the world, but it's a solid flick. and forrest whitaker has a great bit part in it.

agree that boxcar bertha is his personal nadir. its sole cinematic moment of grace is keith carradine crucified to a boxcar.

if bringing out the dead was made by some up and coming director nobody heard of, I think people would give it more slack. again, not the greatest movie ever, but it's a quirky, small film with some interesting takes on redemption.

the scene of the drug dealer being sawed out of his impalement has this weird ecstatic quality to it.

omar otm.

and i like casino a lot too! some days i prefer it to goodfellas because some days i prefer its really grim tone (not that goodfellas is a comedy, but then again it sort of is in a weird way). i have a fair amount of admiration for his trio w/dicaprio as well. the obvious ones (mean streets, taxi driver, raging bull) are all great though i don't think raging bull's greatness really appeals to me as much as taxi driver's, and i prefer mean streets to both by a fair amount.

sole cinematic moment of grace is keith carradine crucified to a boxcar.

That's David Carradine, and Boxcar Bertha is certainly better than Cape Fear (or Kill Bill).

Goodfellas, easy.

-- nate woolls, Friday, August 15, 2008 7:07 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

-- rent, Friday, August 15, 2008 2:21 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

haha yeah david carradine. cape fear seems pretty dire but I actually haven't seen it in its glorious entirety.

imdb trivia on boxcar bertha
After he finished this film, Martin Scorsese screened the film for John Cassavetes. Cassavetes, after seeing this film, hugged Scorsese and said, "Martin, you just spent a year of your life making shit!"

tho I'm happy you're willing to rep for a movie with BOXCAR in the title

After Hours
Kundun

kundun's only redeeming feature is making mao a campy b-movie villain

Casavetes, (semi-)wrong again!

Fuck you.

Pay me.

Goodfellas, easy.

-- nate woolls, Friday, August 15, 2008 7:07 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

-- rent, Friday, August 15, 2008 2:21 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

-- Jordan, Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM (Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM) Bookmark Link

somehow still haven't seen Casino. Of the ones I've seen (which i guess is about 3/4 of them) my favorites are King of Comedy, Raging Bull, and After Hours.

I think the Age of Innocence is a really underrated film.

Most overrated: Goodfellas
-- Eric H., Friday, August 15, 2008 2:32 PM (2 hours ago)

silly. wouldn't most overrated go to say, taxi driver? or raging bull?
-- s1ocki, Friday, August 15, 2008 4:54 PM (1 hour ago)

Goodfellas, easy.
-- nate woolls, Friday, August 15, 2008 7:07 AM (2 hours ago)
-- rent, Friday, August 15, 2008 2:21 PM (3 hours ago)
-- Jordan, Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM (Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM)
-- Pleasant Plains, Friday, August 15, 2008 6:32 PM (6 minutes ago)

Taxi Driver is too great to be overrated.

otm

All I'm saying is that no president has ever been shot because the assassin had been watching too much GoodFellas.

that's some prime sub custos bait

(xpost) That's right. Which makes me feel even better for voting Taxi Driver.

I also enjoyed The Aviator which I guess makes me crazy.
Voting KoC.

"one day, a great rain will come and wash the scum BLAH BLAH BLAH FUCK YOU PAY ME.

Cassavetes, after seeing this film, hugged Scorsese and said, "Martin, you just spent a year of your life making shit!"

As if there weren't enough reasons already to worship JC.

Boxcar Bertha is certainly better than Cape Fear

Cape Fear is definitely towards the bottom of his oeuvre. But even there, Scorsese shows some remarkable subtlety. For the first thirty, forty minutes or so, his camera never meets a tripod, gliding all over the place as if it were resting on melted butter....until the scene where the killer and the daughter first talk (on a deserted stage, IIRC). And finally the camera calms down and we get a classic, even rote shot-reverse shot editing pattern during the conversation. Only now, after all that swirling, the rigid back-and-forth becomes unbearably intense.

There's nothing remotely like that in Boxcar Bertha.

No, but there is Barbara Hershey's tits.

Yeah but there is no De Niro's tits.

No, but there is Barbara Hershey's tits.

to be fair scorsese didn't have much involvement in producing those

at least he didn't spend a year of his life making A Woman under the Influence...

Hinckley's lousy aim is not Schrader & Scorsese's fault.

CONTROPS

"Marty! Kundun! I liked it!"

definetely After Hours, no contest at all.

(btw just watched the original Cape Fear and it beats the .. out of his remake, which, I guess was supposed to be funny)

at least he didn't spend a year of his life making A Woman under the Influence...

Oooh looks like a JC poll is up next if it hasn't been done already. That should bring out all the lovers.

wait til the box set comes out, KJ. (Chinese Bookie for me)

also, if King of Comedy wins this poll, Eric might watch it.

Looking at this list makes me realise that I only really like Taxi Driver, The King Of Comedy and After Hours. And The Big ShaveCape Fear.

fixed

Voted After Hours, anyway.

wait til the box set comes out, KJ. (Chinese Bookie for me)

Another Cassavetes box set is coming out? Links? (Love Streams forever and always)

Voting Casino in the absence of Gangs.

absence of gags

oh I'm sorry; they're releasing Cassavetes titles from an old Criterion box as singles. My mistake.

"Marty! Kundun! I liked it!"

lololololol

I like New York New York (first one I saw in a theater)

Italianamerican is a hoot

Ever see the Freaky Friday remake with Lindsey Lohan? Her waking up out of bed with her mom inside her body was straight up "Rubber Biscuit" Harvey Keitel.

Italianamerican is a hoot

wish this would come out on dvd already

but for now unfortunately and appropriately Italianamerican is a boot

i think these ones are great (to varying degrees): taxi driver, king of comedy, goodfellas

honorable mentions: mean streets, last waltz, after hours

ho-hummest: the departed

overratededest: raging bull

best film since goodfellas (challop): gangs of n.y.

other ones that i would watch again: new york, new york; last temptation; age of innocence

still need to see: casino

(voted taxi driver because i saw it at an impressionable age and it pretty well blew me away)

goodfellas.

King of Comedy. I was tempted by Last Temptation - I recently re-watched it and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I don't enjoy much of the rest of his work, even though I admire some of it.

Just a quick bit of love for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," which is devastating.

(and which I just fucked up and failed to vote for)

With apologies to Jerry Lewis, that's the Scorsese movie I'm most looking forward to seeing.

Casino just felt like GF2. Watching it that way, it fell way short.

I saw Casino in the theater, before ever having seen Goodfellas. That being the case, I've always perceived Goodfellas as sort of a rough draft and incomplete tale that was later retold and perfected with Casino. It's all about context I guess, but I think I'd even prefer Casino if I'd seen Goodfellas first. Casino has the meatier story.

Most overrated: Goodfellas
-- Eric H., Friday, August 15, 2008 2:32 PM (2 hours ago)

silly. wouldn't most overrated go to say, taxi driver? or raging bull?
-- s1ocki, Friday, August 15, 2008 4:54 PM (1 hour ago)

Goodfellas, easy.
-- nate woolls, Friday, August 15, 2008 7:07 AM (2 hours ago)
-- rent, Friday, August 15, 2008 2:21 PM (3 hours ago)
-- Jordan, Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM (Friday, August 15, 2008 12:45 PM)
-- Pleasant Plains, Friday, August 15, 2008 6:32 PM (6 minutes ago)

-- Eric H., Friday, August 15, 2008 6:41 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

o man, 4 ilx posters like this movie. i can see why you needed to get out there and shake up the establishment, that shit is stifling.

Ugh, Cassavetes. You people need to realize that 3/4ths of his catalogue is shit.

i'd post that in the RONG thread but someone already did that to me today so i'll end the vicious circle of violence

never been a fan of jc

haha -- I made my comment fully aware that it might go in the RONG thread.

Just ask yourself, Soto: WWJCD?

Casino:
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-SCARYTRAUMATICASFUCKHEADINVISESCENE-evenmorezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-SCARYTRAUMATICASFUCKBODIESINCORNFIELDSCENE-theend

Goodfellas was a much better movie, but the Pesci scenes aren't anywhere near as good. "You think I'm funny?" scene = way overrated.

Just ask yourself, Soto: WWJCD?

Hm?

I'm voting for No Direction Home.

What Would John Cassavetes Do?
xpost

He'd listen to Le Tigre.

All the Bringing Out The Dead lurve is pleasantly surprising. That's my pick. I've seen probably half of Scorcese's films and I generally find his stuff pretty underwhelming. I just think he's maybe not really my thing, and Bringing Out... is different enough from his usual shtick that he managed to move more into "my thing" territory.

Goodfellas and The Departed were "fun" enough. Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are two of the most overrated movies of that era. I can barely remember anything about the other Scorceses that I've seen, aside from the fact that they didn't leave much of an impression one way or the other.

o man, 4 ilx posters like this movie. i can see why you needed to get out there and shake up the establishment, that shit is stifling.

OK, when the results go up and GoodFellas gets no more than 4 votes, you can feel free to throw that back in my face. And I'll take it back and say no it's not his most overrated. Just his worst.

That said, I'm no big Scorsese fan in the first place. Taxi Driver and Last Temptation are about the only two films of his I really love.

Say what you will about one Best Picture nominee being more overrated than the five other Best Picture nominees, but to call GoodFellas his worst? you crazy.

it's contrarianism gone amuck!

how about this: whichever wins this poll is his most overrated unless it's the one i picked.

wow, Eric being a real Paulette re Goodfellas!

(Kael was cold about it not having a "gangster hero," which is kinda wtf)

and yeah Kundun is his last interesting one (aside from the film-history surveys)

I watched it so many times that I doubt I'll ever be able to fully enjoy it again, but After Hours. Then King of Comedy. Then Mean Streets, which is a much better film and De Niro performance than Taxi Driver and I can't figure why it's not getting more love here.

mean streets is really good. maybe i'd upgrade it to "great" on my list. but taxi driver i think is the apocalyptic american movie that nashville and, uh, apocalypse now and various other '70s heart-of-darkness excercises aspired to. dystopian sci-fi without the sci-fi. i saw an interview with scorsese talking about filming night scenes at 42nd and 8th, how much he hated being there and how scared the whole crew was the whole time they were doing it, like they were filming in a war zone or something. probably excessive paranoia, but it comes across in the movie, it's so nervous and jangly. but funny too, especially the scenes with de niro and cybill shepherd.

Goodfellas just shading Taxi Driver, with Mean Streets third.

I'm voting for No Direction Home.

Apparently he had fuck-all to do with that, other than doing a brief voiceover and slapping his name on it.

no. The Dylan interview footage was pre-shot. He was chief assembler, is my understanding.

yeah he was basically asked to direct the entire editing process

wow, Eric being a real Paulette re Goodfellas! (Kael was cold about it not having a "gangster hero," which is kinda wtf)

Nah, I just don't think it's any good.

It's a movie that shows how a subculture works, so I love it for the same big reason I love Paris Is Burning.

i voted Goodfellas.
i've never seen King of Comedy but i'm thinking i prolly should.

um, yes

Voted "Mean Streets" in the end, ya mooks.

i'll take deniro as smartass fuckup (mean streets, king of comedy, er, jackie brown) instead of wise man (everything else) any day

i've never seen after hours but i "obtained" it a week ago - it's sitting there, lonely and unwatched.

i remember being crazy impressed by sharon stone in casino. is that the only outsized, convincing female role in all of scorcese's movies?

"After Hours" is great

i remember being crazy impressed by sharon stone in casino. is that the only outsized, convincing female role in all of scorcese's movies?

Haven't seen Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, but I suspect you haven't either.

Correct

Sandra Bernhard is def "outsized" and great in tKoC.

Miriam Margoyles in The Age of Innocence too.

although Taxi Driver is better and prob. the best, i'll go with Mean Street, cause it's less of a boring answer.
personaly, i adore Alice as well.and i wanna see The Age of Innocence again

that's true morbs. her character's not exactly.. multidimensional but she is at least interesting (though i chalk this up mainly to sadra bernhard)

I've always perceived Goodfellas as sort of a rough draft and incomplete tale that was later retold and perfected with Casino.

I've always taken it for granted that Scorcese's mobster movies were made with an intentionally hierarchical construction - "Mean Streets" is the little guys, the low-level hustlers, the bottom-feeders of the mafia; "Goodfellas" is the next level up, the foot soldiers; "Casino" is the "captains"/capos, the guys who run crews and larger operations. But in each of these movies there's the guys in the backroom, the dons at the top, who are never really brought into the spotlight... which has always made me think he's got one more movie in him, closer in tone and scope maybe to "The Godfather". I initially thought "Gangs of NY" was gonna be this movie, but then it turned out to be a costume drama with Lenny D and I tuned out....

I liked Casino, but it seemed a bit more, I dunno, contrived. Like Scorsese was trying to make a Scorsese movie (which he did quite well, unsurprisingly enough.)

foot soldiers > capos

maybe he's just waiting til DeNiro is suitably old/fat enough

is that the only outsized, convincing female role in all of scorcese's movies?

outsized + convincing female roles? what are other examples of this fantastical animal? also not sure if there's a simple answer to your question, given the depth + breadth of his filmography.

scorsese's work is concerned primarily with the psychology of men, so the women do tend to get short shrift. he doesn't go out of his way to construct realistic female characters, however he does get out of the way if a woman character has a strong presence. thinking of bracco in goodfellas, burstyn in alice.

as the story goes, alice was a vehicle for ellen burstyn and she interviewed the relatively unknown scorsese for the director slot. she asked him what he knew about women and he responded, "nothing, but I'm willing to learn." that wasn't completely true - I'll rep again for his first movie, who's that knocking at my door, which points a critical eye at men's attitudes towards women (particularly the guys from his neighborhood, and most likely himself by extension).

you can look at jodie foster in taxi driver and say that it's some idealized portrait of a child prostitute, but couldn't the same be said of de niro or keitel's characters? there's a grittiness to taxi driver that people take as realism, but it's more of a hypergrittiness with heavy conceptual compenents. I'm not sure if by "convincing" you mean "realistic" though.

Both Goodfellas (Wise Guys) and The Age of Innocence are great American books. With Goodfellas, Scorsese maybe took a little too much at face value in that long rat squeal (Henry Hill later admitted to doing much worse shit, including murder, than portrayed in the film) but Scorsese adds all sorts of much-needed darkness and tension not in the book, including pretty much all the scenes you remember. I guess I agree with Kael that it lacks a strong central voice (enter The Sopranos), but it's so much more fun than Casino, which is like a long purge.

The Age of Innocence is an unusually faithful adaptation until the end, which Scorsese botches. In the book, there's a subtly wrenching scene left out of the film, where this guy who's given up his chance at a "real life" goes to Paris and takes in the art and culture he's missed--it's obvious that he's crippled and unable to even embark on that longed-for affair, where in the movie he's almost presented as being somehow honorable, and I think it's telling that Scorsese dedicated the film to his father.

Scorsese's most perfect movie is American Boy: A Portrait of Steven Prince--absolutely great short doc subject, filmed in Rouch-verite style with Scorsese on camera, with the kind of fight that got fictionalized in Mean Streets, and that adrenaline needle anecdote that got stolen and fictionalized in Pulp Fiction.

There are a couple moments in Taxi Driver that throw me out of that picture's fevered viewpoint: One is that slow pan (is that the right word?) over the crime scene at the end, and the other is the final scene in the cab, which (I'd think) would be super uncomfortable, and by some contrivance isn't (I don't quite buy that he'd be taken as a hero). Pelecanos rewrote the whole scenario so much more convincingly in Hell to Pay that the source material suffers by comparison, but Taxi Driver is still an amazing movie to me--and it gets me so much more inside its loneliness, alienation, and racism than King of Comedy gets me inside its insecurity and social ineptitude.

Raging Bull has a more compelling romance-gone-to-shit than either Casino or New York New York, and La Motta is a more striking figure all around; ItalianAmerican and Mean Streets are affectionate intros to that whole milieu. I also love the New York Stories segment, and the thumb-sucking scene in Cape Fear, and a couple suspenseful set piece in The Departed. I'll keep an open mind about the rest, but I find myself actively annoyed by how overrated it seems: Scorsese should have made The Last Waltz about the Clash.

the final scene in the cab, which (I'd think) would be super uncomfortable, and by some contrivance isn't (I don't quite buy that he'd be taken as a hero).

I thought the common interpretation was that the the whole post-crime-scene pan was Bickle's fantasy (similar to the final scenes in KoC)

er post-crime-scene pan sequence (ie, the "hero" newsclipping shots, the final cab ride, etc.)

in re the new york stories segment, this hbo documentary about the artist who inspired it (whose paintings are used in it) is partly interesting and partly pathetic. imagine that nolte character as a real person, 20 years past his market prime, 20 years more of drunk, and just as egomaniacal, and that's pretty much the story.

more of A drunk. altho "more of drunk" is accurate enough.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

goodfellas is his masterpiece and i suspect people who are saying casino is better, saw casino first.

the first hour or so of casino is quite good, but i agree with the conventional take that, by the end, the whole thing seemed pointless and like a goodfellas redux with diminishing returns

Not enough support for "Life Lessons."

taxi driver is really the only thing on the list that i could honestly call a masterpiece. the soundtrack is outstanding and i can't imagine the movie without it.

all the stuff about how king of comedy is somehow a superior take on the same material makes no sense to me -- apart from the fact that they're both about two rather unpleasant people, the two films have nothing at all in common. if anything, KoC seems like a 'safer' film to me -- you're not at all asked to identify with rupert pupkin the way you are with travis bickle, and the film holds you at arm's length all the way through. not that it's not a good film, but yeesh, enough already.

Never been able to stomach KOC, and it's not for lack of trying. It's just a grind to watch. De Niro isn't convincing as a schlub (yet).

man i used to love his movies as much as anyone, read bios, interviews, etc but increasingly more and more my estimation of him and his films goes further and further down and increasingly raging bull stands out more and more as the one raw nerve, the one time he poked his head out the movie theater. i'm sure i'd still love and enjoy most of the movies i loved and enjoyed then but there's almost none of them i NEED to see, need to revisit, i don't think most of them would shake me in any sense beyond the visceral/sensational. this isn't a slam, unlike his progeny - the andersons, tarantino, insert a million other names here - he actually bases his shots, cuts, choices on elements in the story he's trying to tell as opposed to 'this is something neat i saw someone do in another movie once' (though obv that element's there in spades as well), he's not illiterate, he's not an idiot, his interest in cinema goes beyond 'the shit i grew up with'. so i'm voting raging bull, w/ 'life lessons' and the age of innocence - the only flicks he's made in the past twenty years that haven't felt like treading water or flailing against his limitations (kundun over last temptation here btw) AND both also manage to convey how desperate manic agonizing and powerful love/desire can be as opposed to telling you 'man i loved this girl so much but she drives me crazy wtf but i love her what are you gonna do right? *cue 'love is drug', slow motion shot of sharon stone*'). my superfun rollercoaster willyagetaloadofthat scorsese pic is afterhours over goodfellas.

i might take koc over taxi driver if only cuz one has sandra bernhard and one has cybil shepard (looking like 'mussolini in drag' in john simon's words).

raging bull i have such mixed feelings about. i don't think there's anything wrong with it exactly, it's probably his best-composed, most thought-out movie. but i think he tries to invest something in the story that i just don't buy as being there. jake isn't sympathetic, ok sure, he's not supposed to be. he's not totally unsympathetic either. he's more pathetic than anything. he's also not very interesting, but that's ok too. i think my problem is theological. jake is this very fundamentally catholic figure, his redemption and his suffering are all bound up with each other and he can't have one without the other. (and actual redemption never really comes, the hallmark of the lapsed catholic.) i respect scorsese's theological complexity, i think he's one of the great catholic directors. but i don't share his struggles, so all the angst and pain are a little foreign to me. in mean streets and taxi driver the martyr figures don't require identification, just interest. but raging bull pulls in so close that if you don't on some level identify with jake's inarticulate existential torment -- and i don't -- then it becomes sort of a lot of distant moral pageantry. the passion of jake lamotta.

goodfellas is his masterpiece

I dunno. scorsese demonstrates masterful control over his materials which makes for some breathtaking setpieces, and it comes on strong during a first viewing, but goodfellas doesn't hold together completely and subsequent viewings aren't quite as satisfying. whereas taxi driver, raging bull, and king of comedy open up the more you watch them.

I'm was surprised by the lack of raging bull love on this thread. the scene in the jail cell is so wrenching.

what's interesting about raging bull is how it transcends its own martyrdom fixation - lamotta's a failed martyr, a cipher, an impenetrable lug, beyond or outside redemption, like a barnyard animal. other scorsese "heroes" experience some purgative/tranformative violent release but lamotta, he just fades away.

yeah. it just leaves me with kind of a shrug. i don't really feel that movie.

(t/s: raging bull vs. au hasard balthazar. there are moments in both that make me roll my eyes, but i care about the pain in bresson more.)

lamotta's like a bizarro willy loman - he's pathetic but he's not everyman. he possesses greatness but that can't save him, nothing can. he's too thick to be delivered, unworthy even of martydom.

but yeah, the feel thing is important. if raging bull doesn't grab you emotionally I'm not sure how far the aesthetics will take you.

I dunno if Goodfellas is Scorcese's best movie, but it might be his most entertaining.

Voted for Taxi Driver.

It's only appropriate to mention Manny Farber's very ambivalent review of Taxi Driver.

I did standup comedy (halfheartedly) for about 3 years, and naturalism be damned, I knew several comics VERY much like Rupert Pupkin.

Tho Raging Bull is brilliantly made, I sure can't identify w/ LaMotta. He is a fuckin' animal.

also, I find tKoC Kubrickian in that I don't think it matters if you can't identify w/ DeNiro or Lewis beyond the "have-not" and "have" level. It's primarily a cultural critique / anthropological study.

re: manny farber on taxi driver... it's actually a farber/patterson colloboration, and it's a great review, they really dig deep into the film. but the review misses a crucial point about bickle - farber/patterson take him at face value, which is an error when you're measuring up an antihero. for instance, farber/patterson on the "are you talkin to me?" scene:

The sneering monologue refurbishes two or three cliches, it sneers at anyone who isn't a gunsel or muscle boy, and puts a glamorous sanction, a good gunman seal of approval, on the movie's future holocausts.

glamorous, wait waht? the black humor of the scene is derived from the disconnect between bickle's self-image (I'm a cool tough guy, like in the movies) and the reality of his situation (he's a pathetic, desperate loner). but the chuckle gets shoved down your throat when the gun comes out - bickle truly is psychopathically dangerous. if you think the movie approves of his actions, you're buying into an unrealiable narrator's fantasies. if bickle successfully acted out his tough guy schtick during his violent rampage, and the film thereby endorsed his self-image, their criticism would hold water. but he doesn't and the film doesn't. the final rampage *isn't* like the movies, it's an ugly, chaotic confrontation stripped of cool bravado.

I guess de niro's starpower is the double-edged sword here; without it the movie loses the audience, but with it comes the possibility that people mistakenly see it as mythologizing or idolizing bickle. I have the same reaction to farber/patterson on taxi driver as I do to kael on a clockwork orange. it's as though they can't step outside these movies' fealty to their twisted main characters' world views, so they take them as endorsements of the characters' bad behavior. but that's like saying doestoevsky was on his character's side in notes from underground. taxi driver is very much like notes from underground; a loner rails majestically in his room, but his entry into the world demonstrates his complete disconnect from reality, exposes the depths of his self-denial.

this loops back into the raging bull discussion - raging bull goes that extra mile, it takes whatever charm and likability de niro had in taxi driver and grinds it into dust. it's a less romantic, more observational film, putting a final nail in the coffin of the 70s antihero. but while it "solves" the starpower problem of taxi driver it apparently alienates viewers right out of the movie.

but the review misses a crucial point about bickle - farber/patterson take him at face value

Well, in Faber's defense, he took EVERY film at face value.

if that's a defense.

farber/patterson also touch on something I marvel at whenever I watch taxi driver - how schrader & scorsese went into bad taste overdrive without losing the studio, the audience, or the movie's weird austerity; the store owner brutalizing the body of the dead stickup kid, sport's detailed description of what a potential client can do to iris, scorsese's foul + vengeful passenger. there's jarring violence in plenty of scorsese's films, but taxi driver practically drips with seediness. maybe I'm not jaded enough but 30 years on and it's still pretty bracing stuff.

and it was a box office hit.

I dunno if Goodfellas is Scorcese's best movie, but it might be his most entertaining.

OTM

tho a case could be made for after hours

yeah alfred that's what I was trying to imply by "not losing the audience"

to have a hit like that you can't just pull in people on the coasts, but maybe middle america was like lol nyc I knew it

I think a certain segment of the Taxi Driver audience couldn't distinguish it from Death Wish.

85%

would that make taxi driver the most successful prank ever pulled on a general audience?

see Edward, I was trying to avoid the "elitist" tag...

I think a certain segment of the Taxi Driver audience couldn't distinguish it from Death Wish.

-- Dr Morbius

Anyway, voted for Taxi Driver.

I guess de niro's starpower is the double-edged sword here; without it the movie loses the audience, but with it comes the possibility that people mistakenly see it as mythologizing or idolizing bickle.

So given this double-edged sword does it really matter then that "the movie (doesn't) approves of his actions" (no matter which entity we use to stand in for "the movie": Scorsese, Schrader, the apparatus, maybe DeNiro, whatever)? Or better still, if you wanted truly to critique or just merely disapprove of cool tough guyism or pathetic, desperate, psychopathically dangerous lonerism, then could you even use a star in the first place, esp. a star like DeNiro? And could you show scenes of carnage? These are some of the questions Resnais wrestled with long before with Hiroshima Mon Amour and Night and Fog. But I doubt Scorsese et al. were even asking them.

Also: the final rampage *isn't* like the movies, it's an ugly, chaotic confrontation stripped of cool bravado.

But that bravado is reinscribed in the way Scorsese shoots the final rampage. Which is one of many things that leads me to believe that Scorsese, at least, is more in thrall to Bickle than distanced from him.

the whole final arc of the movie is kind of a crazy joke

yeah i doubt that idiot martin scorsese had any idea that he was trying to play both sides by casting an incredibly charismatic actor as a desperate and pathetic loner

in fact he probably didnt even know how to use the camera!!!

In fact, to add to the questions above, could it even be a narrative (which, however loose, Taxi Driver is)? That's another question Hiroshima Mon Amour tries to answer.

the real question is obviously "was taxi driver as good as 'the happening'?"

see Edward, I was trying to avoid the "elitist" tag...

Given how the "Are you talking to me?" speech has been imitated and made a marker less of pathetic delusion and more of stone-cold badassery, I think you're probably more on the right track.

I really must watch it again, but I agree with some of Farber's reservations, especially about Bickle's relationship with Cybill Shepherd. Maybe it's part of Scorsese's craft that audience sympathy for Bickle gets jangled at key moments. I didn't know how to react, for example, to the scene with Shepherd in the theater. I mean, is Bickle so damaged that he couldn't realize his date wasn't the kind of nice girl you don't take to a porno? Wouldn't a woman of Shepherd's poise have noticed something funny about Bickle? Her last scene in the cab is pure cynicism: she's not allowed any dignity. Now that he's a hero, she no longer thinks he's a creep?

*wasn't the kind of nice girl you TAKE to a porno

LAST SCENE IS A FANTASY how many times do I have to say it

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...if you wanted truly to critique or just merely disapprove of cool tough guyism or pathetic, desperate, psychopathically dangerous lonerism, then could you even use a star in the first place, esp. a star like DeNiro? ...Scorsese, at least, is more in thrall to Bickle than distanced from him.

(for EC, compare this defense with my critique of unnamed Batman flick)

like I said upthread, the conclusions of both KoC and TD are so ludicrously unrealistic and so different from what has come before in their respective narratives, I do not understand how a serious viewer could come away thinking those events actually occurred/that the characters actually behaved that way rather than being clear depictions of the main characters wish-fulfillment fantasies.

One is that slow pan (is that the right word?) over the crime scene at the end, and the other is the final scene in the cab, which (I'd think) would be super uncomfortable, and by some contrivance isn't (I don't quite buy that he'd be taken as a hero).

morbs' observation about the death wish zeitgeist indicates how bickle's hero status would be plausible for an audience at the time. if death wish and dirty harry reflected the country's general feeling about urban crime, bickle-as-vigilante-hero is a logical outcome.

LAST SCENE IS A FANTASY how many times do I have to say it

interpreting the finale as reality is appropriate, I think. it turns the final scenes into 1) a cynical comment on how mass media distorts reality, 2) an indictment of the audience's own desire for vigilante revenge.

I'm thinking of the final scene in the cab, that moment with the weird discordant sound - if the whole scene is travis bickle's private fantasy then okay, it's just a random weird moment. but if it's reality, then it's a signal that although this guy is now a hero and therefore will get free passes all over the place, guess what HE STILL GOT THE CRAZY-CRAZY. a much scarier ending.

yeah not to mention the whole notion that if bickle has been a little craftier a few hours before the final shootout the dude would have been arthur bremer and not a vigilante hero saving a little girl.

see Edward, I was trying to avoid the "elitist" tag...

haha luckily contenderizer picked up yr slack there

I do not understand how a serious viewer could come away thinking those events actually occurred

-- Shakey

The movie's ambivalence and lack of clear moral didacticism are virtues.

That may be so. But that's not what Edward III is saying. He's saying that the movie flat-out does not endorse Bickle's self image. And that's what I was responding to.

serius haw

That may be so. But that's not what Edward III is saying. He's saying that the movie flat-out does not endorse Bickle's self image. And that's what I was responding to.

-- Kevin John Bozelka

I dunno in both KoC and TD the concluding "hey this guy's allright!" tone is so wrong and jarring. The shootout in TD seems of a piece with the rest of the film - but the pan across the news clippings and the scene in the taxi with Cybil play out like a fairytale ending that, given all that's gone before, seems REEEEALLLY unlikely (Foster goes back to her parents, Bickle's hailed as a hero by the cops and not as some psycho, Cybil doesn't really register who he is apart from his folk-hero status, etc.) It's all just so perfect and ridiculous.

KoC, same thing.

I agree that Scorsese is purposefully obtuse about it to great effect, but having seen this movie so many times I'm fairly comfortable that the fantasy interpretation makes the most narrative sense. But I tend to always fall for these "unreliable narrator" turnabouts in films.

de niro's always seemed far more like a desperate & pathetic loner than a charismatic leading man type to me anyway

For me, the film is most useful not in these games of is he/is he not endorsing or fantasy/reality (whether conscious strategy or pinned onto the film retrospectively) but rather in how it lives in the rhythms of work (fitfully so but it's there). As such, it's an entirely apposite film for Faber/Patterson to tackle. My favorite line from the review is this gloriously infuriating one: "No other Checker cab seems to be operating at night in Manhattan except De Niro's cab, which never stalls, needs gas, or runs into the delays and quick decisions which are the cabbie existence norm."

Thing is, Shakey, the movie means the same thing whether we see the ending as an in-fiction fantasy or as an extremely unlikely fictional reality. Same questions are asked, and the sense of non-rightness is communicated.

yeah I agree

My favorite line from the review is this gloriously infuriating one: "No other Checker cab seems to be operating at night in Manhattan except De Niro's cab, which never stalls, needs gas, or runs into the delays and quick decisions which are the cabbie existence norm."

It's a great line which makes no sense.

I mean, it's irrelevant. Who cares?

yikes thread is going fast

I mean, is Bickle so damaged that he couldn't realize his date wasn't the kind of nice girl you don't take to a porno?

he is! but the film leaves it open as to whether the nature of that damage is a) he can't contextualize his own behavior (aspergers?), or b) he is a person who tries to enforce his own ideas on the world no matter how misguided they are (hi dere stubborn dreamer), or c) on some level he realizes but he cannot help subconsciously sabotaging himself (lol freud).

initially I think shephard's character responds to bickle's straightforwardness and is disabled by his candor. she's out of his league but she admires his chutzpah. he seems like a charming guy, albeit a little off-center.

if you think the events are plausible, haven't you ever gotten to a 2nd or 3rd date before your potential significant other took off their human mask and O HAI WEREWOLF

I mean, it's irrelevant. Who cares?

Right. It's a completely fucking preposterous thing to even wonder about. But it's perfectly in keeping with the observational strengths of the film.

make that "if you think the events are implausible"

Edward OTM (re: CS not seeing Travis for what he is), but I still think DiNiro overplays Bickle's total freakazoid qualities in his early scenes with her. Watching the movie, you find ways to justify her accepting the date, but there's still a big NO WAI! involved. Don't think it hurt the film. People make bad decisions all the time.

i always thought the porn theater debacle was more aggressive...like he wanted to drag her down and shove her face in it. he's as much in thrall to the seedy elements around him as he is repulsed by them.

re the endings of TD and KoC, in the ensuing decades we have seen an upsurge in the public adoration of vigilantes (eg, Bernhard Goetz) and literally talentless "personalities" (turn on your TV).

amazing that circa 1980, scorsese was already able to preidct an era of vigilatne worship & cardboard tv personalities

I don't turn on my TV I'm afraid I might break the knob

i always thought the porn theater debacle was more aggressive...like he wanted to drag her down and shove her face in it.

-- ryan

crazy people are not rational and predictable and often don't seem crazy and other times seem totally bonkers

maybe you're right...hard to remember. but on the other hand im not saying he consciously wanted to do it...just that he was compelled to.

amazing that circa 1980, scorsese was already able to preidct an era of vigilatne worship & cardboard tv personalities

I'm assuming this is sarcasm cuz America has always worshipped vigilantes and empty personalities

yeah thats my point, theyre both intended to be social critiques

but i think taxi driver largely fails at it while being like 10x better as a movie

Well he got assists in the prophecy from Schrader and Paul Zimmerman (sp?).

I'll cede the vigilantes, except after the "official" excoriation of the Klan et al in mainstream '60s culture, the Nixon law & order zeitgeist made homicidal vengeance OK to talk about again.

By literally talentless personalities I meant people who become stars without being performers -- Kato Kaelin, Paris H**ton -- and, as with Pupkin, ex-felons. There were a few in previous eras, but not this many. Faster "news" cycle.

hey Kato Kaelin was an actor!

i voted for afterhours cuz i just saw it for the first time in ages and was blown away by how weird and tense it was.

but now i regret my vote, i should have voted for goodfellas.

granted he's no Fatty Arbuckle

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re: After Hours I too saw that for the first time only recently and really dug it. very weird tone throughout, took me awhile to catch on that the protagonist is actually more or less the "villain".

i think id actually stack after hours up w/ goodfellas these days - whoever said upthread about GF being blow your dick off good the first time through but diminishing returns after that was otm

after hours is so unheralded & unknown that it ends up scoring a lot of points that way

what is your beef with Roscoe Arbuckle, hater?

ehh you think so shakey? he was little uptight but had asolid everyman aspect to him, ive always identified with him

lolz I'm just ribbin ya - Fatty, like Kato, is more famous for being associated with a gruesome murder than his acting, that's all

Or better still, if you wanted truly to critique or just merely disapprove of cool tough guyism or pathetic, desperate, psychopathically dangerous lonerism, then could you even use a star in the first place, esp. a star like DeNiro? And could you show scenes of carnage? These are some of the questions Resnais wrestled with long before with Hiroshima Mon Amour and Night and Fog. But I doubt Scorsese et al. were even asking them.

Also: the final rampage *isn't* like the movies, it's an ugly, chaotic confrontation stripped of cool bravado.

But that bravado is reinscribed in the way Scorsese shoots the final rampage. Which is one of many things that leads me to believe that Scorsese, at least, is more in thrall to Bickle than distanced from him.

going back to the notes from underground comparison; the underground man is funny, he says a lot of prescient things, he is clearly intelligent, entertaining even. applying your reasoning, if the underground man is meant to be a reprehensible, unlikable character why make him funny, perceptive, intelligent? it's a reductive viewpoint that says "why make this grey, it will be much clearer in black and white." it sounds as if you wanted scorsese et al to make taxi driver: the afterschool special, with an appropriate and unmistakable level of disapproving handwringing.

here's a factiod; in schrader's original script the people bickle kills in the end were all black. scorsese convinced him to make them white to avoid bickle's actions being ascribed to racism. saying these guys weren't heavily involved in thinking through their aesthetic decisions is crazy talk.

amazing that circa 1980, scorsese was already able to preidct an era of vigilatne worship

scorsese nails vigilantism AND the psychology of spree shooters at the same time. if you want latter day echoes of travis bickle, look at dylan & klebold, or the phrase "going postal". schrader and scorsese perfectly capture the psychopathology of spree killers. this was something that had been addressed before in film - see bogdanovich's targets in '68 - but never so thoroughly.

the suggestion that scorsese et al were in total thrall to bickle rather than rigorously examing a certain kind of psychological disturbance prevalent in american society, well that misses the mark big time.

this was something that had been addressed before in film - see bogdanovich's targets in '68 - but never so thoroughly.

Gun Crazy, Bonnie & Clyde (sorta), lots of others

psychologically, its a good critique - socially its not, because the perspective of the film really is basically bickle's, & dude is fucking nuts

that doesnt mean theyre 'in thrall' with him though for sure

i think thats why the ending, while not necessarily bad, doesnt really seem to 'work' to any significant degree - the shot of bickle shooting a paranoid glance in the rear-view is A+++, but the whole "look everyone loves this guy" thing just seems kind of hamfisted & not very provocative

kjb's "no way scorsese was thinking as hard as alain renais" is pretty fuckin dumb frankly

I voted Casino because it uses Devo on the soundtrack.
But I think Departed is the only one of his I've been compelled to watch twice in a row.

this was something that had been addressed before in film - see bogdanovich's targets in '68 - but never so thoroughly.

Gun Crazy, Bonnie & Clyde (sorta), lots of others

kinda, but those are more traditional crime/noir films. granted, they do examine the criminal impulse from a more pathological perspective, but targets / taxi driver are more on about charles whitman style unmotivated slayings.

Or better still, if you wanted truly to critique or just merely disapprove of cool tough guyism or pathetic, desperate, psychopathically dangerous lonerism, then could you even use a star in the first place, esp. a star like DeNiro?

also this is such a corny formulation--oh if you want to TRULY critique something you have to make it so obvious the movie sucks, as though a thorough, intelligent and rigorous examination of these ideas and tropes isnt going to be in the end a 'truer' critique in its recognition of the difficulty of the questions being asked

the suggestion that scorsese et al were in total thrall to bickle rather than rigorously examing a certain kind of psychological disturbance prevalent in american society, well that misses the mark big time.

-- Edward III

Re Matt and Shakey on After Hours: great flick, almost as good as Taxi Driver and TKoC. Scorsese had an incredible run of films from '75 to '85, excluding maybe New York New York. He's done great work since, but nothing quite at that level.

After Hours I too saw that for the first time only recently and really dug it. very weird tone throughout, took me awhile to catch on that the protagonist is actually more or less the "villain".

it's been a long time since I've seen it.. and only once (and loved it)
anyway, if you like could you elaborate on this statement. :) (i mean the villain part)

taxi driver is a monster movie where you spend the entire time stuck with the monster instead of the victims.

^^beautifully said

Taxi Driver: Classic or dud

btw, at the time of TD DeNiro was a "new face," NOT a superstar -- he's won a supporting Oscar as Vito Corleone, but I think this was his first hit as the lead.

(I mean, he'd been in films for years but the early dePalma stuff made only a cult impression)

RFI: Classical Music in Scorsese's "After Hours"

"Gangs of New York": Profound Historical Epic or one the worse pieces of crap I have ever sat through--three hours!--nobody told me it was going to be three hours long! (Spoilers)

anyway, if you like could you elaborate on this statement... i mean the villain part <re: After Hours protag>

-- Ludo

lol. yeah all i remember he's, err, quite unlucky ;)

re: After Hours - the protagonist (I don't even remember his name, is it anything as goofy as Pupkin or Bickle?) spends most of his time being alternately confused and abused by his city. its a different kind of urban alienation than in KoC or TD, but its definitely alienation - but instead of it being of the lower-class and/or psycho variety, its of the upper crust variety. iirc the first few scenes are all of him hanging out being lonely in his well-furnished apartment, but the real key is I think there's a couple lines right at the beginning (as he's leaving work?) where some casual disdain is expressed for the city's "freaks and weirdos" (I'm paraphrasing, don't have the script in front of me lolz). The subtle implication being that the protagonist is basically a guy who does not engage with the environment around him, he keeps the city at arm's length. The subsequent events can all be interpreted, in a way, as the city taking its revenge on him for this attitude.

that's what I got from it anyway. Its a funny film. I've only seen it once.

come anticipate 'The Departed' with me

The love for KOC and After Hours is inexplicable. AH is the comedic version of The Color of Money, all flash and surface.

goodfellas
goodfellas poll cuz i'm bored
BEST SONG IN GOODFELLAS

martin scorsese's THE AVIATOR

the Last Temptation of Christ: C/D?

the protagonist is basically a guy who does not engage with the environment around him, he keeps the city at arm's length. The subsequent events can all be interpreted, in a way, as the city taking its revenge on him for this attitude.

-- Shakey

it's a reductive viewpoint that says "why make this grey, it will be much clearer in black and white."

But I thought that's what you were saying. I mean, you did say that Scorsese (or "the film" or whatever) does not endorse Bickle's self-image. That sounds pretty clear and unmistakable to me. But perhaps I misread you. [to be read with no sarcasm]

Also I never said that saying "these guys weren't heavily involved in thinking through their aesthetic decisions." I said they weren't asking particular questions about star, the filming of violence, and narrative.

Nor did I suggest "that scorsese et al were in total thrall to bickle rather than rigorously examing..." I said "(Scorsese et al. were) more in thrall to Bickle than distanced from him."

I'm well aware for Scorsese the De Facto Film Scholar [no sarcasm] so I'd never say he wasn't thinking heavily about his aesthetic decisions. And just for the record, if you scroll up, I do have love for Scorsese and a fair amount of affection for this film in particular.

And fwiw, Resnais never comes to any black and white conclusions on these matters in the films mentioned above.

what the fuck

delete "saying" xpost

we did actually have a thread on Raging Bull but it was on ILF
Raging Bull: C/D?

Also, "I'm well aware OF"

The King of Comedy
The King Of Comedy: c/d

bozelka, postmortem edits of your own grammar are not going to get you any more respect after that equivocating point-by-point backpedal

also, lol

yeah villain is a little strong, hence the scarequotes. I think Scorcese had some inherent sympathy for the city as the protagonist, but knew that to keep the comedy/audience engagement working he had to make the lead guy's plight sympathetic as well.

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shakey the guy did data entry for a living

KJB define 'in thrall'

ive definitely never read the movie as remotely -sympahtetic- to bickle, its actually the opposite - bickle is a total joke at every single point throughout

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

bickle always seemed a joke to me, the line me and my friends quoted all the time was the 'damn, i gotta REMEMBER stuff like that', still c'mon in the wake of dirty harry and death wish and esp JOE and the reactions to them no way did schrader and scorsese not know exactly what they were doing. the critique aspect interests me less than the searchers homage and the (probable schrader selfportrait) picture of the lonely city dweeb which is deadon, you still see these freaks and they aren't marty, they're fucking bickle - this bizarre ball of anger and ego (with some horniness that's never gonna be resolved hidden in there) buried underneath timidity and a windbreaker. even that doesn't interest me too much though and the whole 'o man times are dark lemme tellya times are dark' sheen, even if it was the 70s and times were dark this still manages to turn that into silliness (quoting john simon again, for some reason, i can remember him quoting the 'every night i wipe cum off the back seat' and writing 'every night?'), somewhere david fincher was watching.

cape fear gets a vote and raging bull only manages a tie w/ the departed - ye gods. shoutout to whoever voted for american boy though.

this thread makes me want to see bringing out the dead again. i can't remember that one very well.

It's Taxi Driver in an ambulance, with Nicolas Cage and Ving Rhames.

it doesn't have anything in common with Taxi Driver

(besides the screenwriter)

(and the 'times are dark lemme tellya times are dark. *HOW DARK ARE THEY?* so dark i might just LOSE MY MIND. but i met this one girl, she's nice, i should help her, help her from these dark dark times. also i drive around a lot.)

travis custos

hahahaha

but seriously I hated that movie

John-Goodman-backwards-snow-scene notwithstanding

o i hated it too and have almost completely forgotten it (totally forgot ving rhames was in it). at the time i was selling myself on 'he's biding his time til gangs of new york' - JOKES ON ME!

i had a friend that was a huge nic cage fan and was primed for botd to be some sorta redemption/return to form after the bruckenheimer stuff. NOPE!

I loved Bringing Out the Dead! Don't understand the animosity at all.

re: After Hours - the protagonist (I don't even remember his name, is it anything as goofy as Pupkin or Bickle?) spends most of his time being alternately confused and abused by his city. [..]in a way, as the city taking its revenge on him for this attitude.

interesting thought, it sounds plausible.

if DiNiro and Scorsese weren't at least in partial thrall to Bickle, the movie would be half as good, honest or challenging.

I have to agree. I seem to remember the filmmakers saying in a documentary somewhere that they made TD because they wanted to put onscreen a particular way they all felt about New York. I honestly wouldn't put racism and paranoia past either scriptwriter or director, but do think they at least deal with it and don't romanticize it. The weirder twist, for me, is the anti-racist Paul Simonon and the Clash quoting the "some day a great storm" speech in their song heroizing... the Guardian Angels?!?!

how in the hell could anybody vote for Shine a Light?

The weirder twist, for me, is the anti-racist Paul Simonon and the Clash quoting the "some day a great storm" speech in their song heroizing... the Guardian Angels?!?!

yeah i've never understood the p.o.v. of "red angel dragnet." then again in interviews around that time they all seem completely hopped up on god knows what, so they may not have been thinking clearly. probably they just liked the berets.

the Clash loved a good uniform, no doubt about it

"no direction home" would've been my no. 2.

Cape Fear is such a goddamned silly movie. 2/3rds of must be close-ups of Nick Nolte's sweaty face. Love all the hammy acting tho

yeah on the 'how do you pronounce lawyer' thread i was tempted to post a clip of 'COWN-SUH-LUH'

still can't believe raging bull's poor showing up there

in the words of Lou Reed, "there's just so many favorites to choose from"

kinda most surprised by the high showing for After Hours. Which is great and all.

Cape Fear was where it all went south. Above and beyond the fact that it was a film that just didn't need to be made--the original's quite good enough--it was absolutely hysterical. Those scenes near the end of De Niro ranting and raving...There'd just never been anything remotely so embarrassing in a Scorcese film up to that point.

The Color of Money was pretty lousy. That's the point where I was like "okay Martin's maybe running out of ideas."

Raging Bull is my jump-the-shark moment.

Other than Goodfellas, "Life Lessons" is probably my favorite post-86 Scorsese thing.

There's a lot that I like about The Color of Money, starting with Cruise's performance and the "Werewolves of London" set-piece. Not as good as The Hustler, and Newman's Academy Award was strictly a lifetime-achievement thing--I think he's mostly pretty good, though--but I was still with Scorcese at that point.

i'm sure Cape Fear was just fine to the kids raised on those stinko '80s horror films

Scorsese--I've only written the name 10 zillion times, so it makes sense that I'm misspelling it.

Other than Goodfellas, "Life Lessons" is probably my favorite post-86 Scorsese thing.

^^^^ The guy has a couple of great films and a handful of good moments.

I say five for sure--the four that are too obvious to list, plus King of Comedy--and maybe Who's That Knocking at My Door, although I think that's more a film of great sequences than a great film.

Plus two or three great documentaries the past decade.

holy moses did i enjoy watching shutter island again at the cottage some weeks ago... this movie is MADE to be watched on home video, all the b-movie-ishness just makes so much sense

ditto to 'life lessons' love - i think that was the official entry to my scorsese love (and to my dylan love also)(procol harum love never set in though), i remember seeing that and some clips from a not yet released goodfellas on some pbs thing and just getting instantly obsessed w/ the guy. will rep for age of innocence also though i haven't seen that since it was in theaters and to be honest what i remember most is the saul bass credit sequence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi65QJW-c6o. weird that casino, which combines basically the two good scorsese themes - mob story plus story about a guy with woman issues - was such a misfire.

casinowned

I'm excited about Hugo Cabret –- Paris, mystery, automata, Méliès, train crashes...

I would just like to point out that in Cape Fear, Joe Don Baker drinks Pepto Bismol mixed with Jim Beam

and why not?

that was from the behind the scenes footage, right

I thought The Color of Money was bleh for many years until I saw it again last night: man, the first nine minutes, with Newman scoping out Mastrantonio and Cruise while "One More Night" plays in the background, is superbly edited.

I'd say the first 59 or 69 or 79 minutes are pretty solid. However long it is till Newman and Cruise split.

Christopher Moltisanti: [to Martin Scorsese] Marty! "Kundun", I liked it!

Nobody's gonna rep for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore?

I don't remember if I voted but woulda voted Bringing Out the Dead

I've watched Alice a couple of times, years apart. It's so different from everything else; I have a hard time remembering specifics, except maybe Mott the Hoople over the opening credits. Bringing Out the Dead is such an unusual choice...not for me, but I did love the few seconds you get of "Rang Ting Ding Dong."

love the credits and opening to Alice.

Happy 68th!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RyqtrGnicc

watched Mean Streets for the first time in I dunno 20 years last night. He never really made another movie like this, did he?

he's tried though

Mean Streets and Taxi Driver both really stand out to me as films from a different (more interesting) director.

Mean Streets didn't have enough focus. It almost felt like reality TV.

I guess Bringing Out the Dead is maybe closest to Mean Streets? that sort of dreamy, episodic, highly stylized approach (I hated BOTTD though). can really see the Kenneth Anger influence in Mean Streets as well, in the way it marries pop music to feverish, striking images. And unlike a lot of his other films, MS is definitely lacking in the plot/narrative department. it just drifts along from one setpiece/vignette to the next. very little of it is actually mean or threatening in any way.

I did lol when I recognized chubby, long-haired Richie Aprile though

it just drifts along from one setpiece/vignette to the next. very little of it is actually mean or threatening in any way.

Which does make the end death scene ever more of a shock (It just seemed inevitable that somebody would die, but it was up for grabs who and when). Which I guess is a merit, but not a reason I'd triumph lack of cohesion any more over even just a semblance of some.

yeah by the time I saw this originally I had already seen Taxi Driver and Goodfellas etc and was expecting more of the same so I was more surprised by the LACK of violent outbursts than anything elese

shine a light could also use some violent outbursts imo

lol yeah god that is awful

x xpost

Kinda reminded me of Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward... oh fuck it. Like the name, the movie was pretentious and didn't really get interesting until the last 10 minutes in which Jesse James is actually, as the title struggled to deliver, assassinated. I kinda wonder whether it's my Gen. X ADD mentality or movies that dwandle and diddle around on purpose are really worth a shit in the first place.

watched Alice again for the first time since i was 15 this weekend. so, so wonderful.

tbh i've never understood why people love goodfellas so much. it verges on self-parody, it's sooo corny, the soundtrack is oppressive...everything is overly telegraphed

no one likes new york, new york?

that's a nice one-two punch of opinions there

the people who love goodfellas otm

it's not any of those things by accident you know dell

he set out to do self-parody? i guess i need to read the book it was based on.

well i though you might be referring to the arch potrayal of gangsters and their speech and behavior and and trappins. the movie is a spectacular more than a crime drama or an epic.

trappings

like i get that ray liotta's character was just one of the boys next door who somehow got mixed up in martin scorcese's mob jerkoff fantasies...and i get the cocaine paranoia layla helicopter scene or whatever. i just don't understand why people love that movie so much. it may as well have been a made for tv movie special of the week. taxi driver, say, otoh is real "ARt". there are more compelling snl sketches featuring joe pesce. meet the fockers is better than goodfellas. or that movie where billy crystal is deniro's guidance counselor/spiritual advisor.

the movie is a spectacular more than a crime drama or an epic.

fair enough. it's appeal eludes me.

dell otm

Well, excepting I never sat thru Meet the Fockers.

I'm not crazy about Scorsese generally and I understand the hesitation. I'm not bonkers over The Godfather either.

Is True Grit or High Noon corny and on the verge of self-parody? What about Spartacus?

You're not filling in any holes here, so I'm assuming you're basing this on Jimmy Two Times or Pesci's character wondering aloud why a Jew broad is prejudice against Italians. How do you say that the soundtrack is oppressive, but you "get" the 1980 bust sequence? Do you like the Fockers and Analyze This better because you think DeNiro's performance in GoodFellas is worse? Really?

If that's all you see in GoodFellas, I don't know what to tell you.

otm

lol

I'm going to close this thread close this thread.

I probably would have voted for Mean Streets but I'm bummed to see Alice got nothing

who the hell voted for Shine a Light anyway

meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.meet the fockers is better than goodfellas.

Mean Streets/Alice/Taxi Driver might be my favorite run of three movies by any director

very heartening to see Raging Bull in its proper place here

meh, even Raging Bull > Goodfellas

del (and Pauline Kael) rong.

if you think Goodfellas is self-parody, what would you call Casino?

tragedy

Can't remember if I voted in this but GF and TD would have been my top two followed by R Bull - probably. I've still never seen Casino.

Actually Goddfellas would both prob be in my top 10 movies of all time.

that should have said "and Taxi Driver"

if you think Goodfellas is self-parody, what would you call Casino?

― your generation appalls me (Dr Morbius), Monday, May 2, 2011 12:35 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

something

I've seen more acknowledgment of The King of Comedy's power in recent years.

So Marty and Souleymane Cisse had a sitdown at the Tribeca fest:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/04/scorseseciss%C3%A9-apres.html

still haven't figured out what foreign dialect Pesci uses in Casino.

You're not filling in any holes here, so I'm assuming you're basing this on Jimmy Two Times or Pesci's character wondering aloud why a Jew broad is prejudice against Italians.

just EVERYTHING about it. the whole, "i used to play stickball in the streets with my friends, what a great gang they were. also we killed people and made marinara sauce in prison". again, i just think it's part of martin scorcese's j.o. fantasies about organized crime...which for me do not necessarily translate into good film. i guess i prefer it when he focuses on weird paul schrader-ish loners or the rupert pipkins of the world.

i feel like the soundtrack is oppressive at least in part b/c it paved the way for people to do movies in which you don't have to communicate things through characters or dialogue, but instead just insert pop song here. which is fine, i mean i love vh1 specials, too, but...

i don't have a problem w/deniro's performance in goodfellas. i think he was great. but i just think he burned out really quickly. or something. and i probably shouldn't harsh as much on the film; more its fans...

del (and Pauline Kael) rong.

if you think Goodfellas is self-parody, what would you call Casino?

i watched Casino recently and enjoyed it. tbh maybe i just don't like ray liotta.

i feel like the soundtrack is oppressive at least in part b/c it paved the way for people to do movies in which you don't have to communicate things through characters or dialogue, but instead just insert pop song here. which is fine, i mean i love vh1 specials, too, but...

I think Goodfellas is overrated, but this feels a bit ironic if you dug Casino, where voice-over narration communicates everything for like the first hour.

del, whatcha think of the first Godfather? talk about yr collective American JO fantasy about the mob (not entirely Coppola's doing).

I mean, GF is told at least on the surface in Henry Hill's voice, tho it's subverted by the time he becomes a coke freak. You hafta show what he found irresistible about the lifestyle.

still haven't figured out what foreign dialect Pesci uses in Casino.

― ginny thomas and tonic (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 2, 2011 1:40 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha, i thought it was a game attempt. at least he tried, its not like nypd blue where brooklyn cop andy sipowicz constantly sounds like a chicago hot dog vendor

The movie requires Henry Hill's passivity to communicate the allure of his world, but there's this unresolved tension between the energy of Liotta's performance, the voice-over, and the character as written.

I think we're all forgetting this.

http://rlv.zcache.com/goodfellas_painting_poster-p228333512157444550tdcp_400.jpg

del looking one way, thread lookin the other

lol otm

On a completely different topic, I think Scorsese's doc on George Harrison is due out this fall.

too bad the title No Direction Home is already taken.

The movie requires Henry Hill's passivity to communicate the allure of his world, but there's this unresolved tension between the energy of Liotta's performance, the voice-over, and the character as written.

oh, come on, now.

I'm kinda agreeing with you, fool.

del, whatcha think of the first Godfather? talk about yr collective American JO fantasy about the mob (not entirely Coppola's doing).

i've never seen the godfather.

I mean, GF is told at least on the surface in Henry Hill's voice, tho it's subverted by the time he becomes a coke freak. You hafta show what he found irresistible about the lifestyle.

if you spend a million dollars on making a movie about the mob, or anything else, then you are glamorizing it.

If you spent five years writing a novel about a pair of serial killers, then you are glamorizing them.

"Glamorize" and "demonize" are two of the worst words in the language, btw -- meaningless.

well... actually, yeah.

I feel like the choice of music and the way it's used in Mean Streets must be something people either love or hate. I fall firmly in the former camp on this one. So perfect. Am thinking of the opening to Be my Baby and then later Jumping Jack Flash in particular.

agreed, altho i never wanna meet someone who hates the music in mean streets (or, indeed, any scorcese).

watching his persona journey thru movies over a couple of nights at the moment. i would like to go to the pictures with martin scorcese.

I haven't seen Mean Streets for about 15 years, but Harvey Keitel staggering around drunk to Rubber Biscuit is the one that sticks in my mind.

Yeah, of course. I watched it last night and remembered a conversation where a friend said it was too "distracting". I think he was probably clearly just wrong in this case.

it's probably been mentioned that he didn't pay in advance for the rights to any of the Mean Streets music! wtf

I hate most of the music in The Departed (Dropkick Murphys ftw).

it's probably been mentioned that he didn't pay in advance for the rights to any of the Mean Streets music! wtf

I saw him quoted as saying that it took several years to pay off all the licences (cough Allen Klein cough). Scorsese went on to say that some of the songs were mastered for the s/t directly off original singles from his collection.

about to watch new york new york for the first time

do i go short or long version?

actually eff this. two and half hours? some of us have jobs. not me, admittedly.

if you've got this out on lovefilm, could you send it back promptly? because its been on my list forever.

I watched the long version; still didn't care for it.

if you've got this out on lovefilm, could you send it back promptly? because its been on my list forever.

― his name was rony. rony from my cage. (stevie), Monday, June 27, 2011 11:38 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

im sure i replied to this, weird...

fraid it might not be till friday, sry bro

:(

does this mean you decided to watch the long version?

im afraid i didn't watch it at all. i watched the last adam curtis ep. i'd had a long day. i'll keep you posted but i just don't think i can do it today or tomorrow. but you never know.

that's okay its just nice to be in the loop you know

NYNY was the first of his films I ever saw (in a theater, at least). I think it's fascinating, and God knows better than anything he's churned out lately.

also, must watch the long version not only for "Happy Endings" but De Niro and Lionel Stander saying "Huh? What?" to each other for about 90 seconds.

Rankings courtesy Morbs:

http://rupertpupkinspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-favorite-scorsese-films.html

c'mon, that guy has post-Kundun stuff in his top 14, and no Age of Innocence

Thought there might be a separate Casino thread, but apparently not. Just watched it for the first time in a number of years; I saw it a few times in the decade after its release. I've always had very mixed feelings on it; there's much that's good, some greatness, and moments that seem to me like the beginning of a permanent downward slide. The thing that struck me most this time was how good De Niro is. I don't know that it's an especially challenging role, and age-wise he pushes credibility a bit, but I don't think he hits a false note the whole way. There are a lot of good performances--Stone, Rickles, Alan King, the guy who plays Remo, the Vegas sheriff and his lunkhead brother-in-law, etc. Pesci...comes perilously close to self-caricature. He's fun to watch, but next to what he did in Raging Bull and Goodfellas, it's just schtick--he also looks like he still has his David Ferrie makeup on in a couple of scenes. Always disliked the opening, with that bombastic music and less-than-vintage Saul Bass credits, and there's a line in De Niro's introductory voice-over that still makes me wince: "It was like a morality car wash." Music's up and down: love "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," "Love Is Strange," and Jeff Beck's "I Ain't Superstitious."

you left out James Woods in yr list of good performances...

at the time I reaallllly hated Stone's role, so vapid and one-note (I get it, she's a golddigger! sheesh), and her OD scene is ridiculous, but I've kind of softened to it over time. De Niro is really funny overall though, he's great. Agree that this is like 2/3rds of a great movie, but it overreaches at several points.

Stone feeling compelled to give Pesci a blowjob, for ex.

Sharon Stone stole an Oscar nod from Nicole Kidman and that's all there is to it.

last time i saw it i was struck by how there's no breathing room on the soundtrack - the songs just keep coming and coming and coming

I love the wall-to-wall soundtrack in Goodfellas--it's like a throwback to Scorpio Rising--but yeah, again I think, "You've already done this." (On balance, I think there's less music in Casino.) Woods is definitely good and slimy--reptillian. I like Stone a lot. She's super glamorous early on, vulnerable and hysterical towards the end.

But if that was the year of To Die For, that'd be a tough call for me.

I love that Woods is also totally pathetic - fighting with the kid, etc.

The scenes with the kid are priceless. His coddling of Stone is a lot like the creepy sweet talk Sport lays on Iris in Taxi Driver--much creepier there, for obvious reasons.

OK, wtf?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148205/

Fortunately, it may not happen.

Watched Alice last night on TCM -- Burstyn is great, but I had a huge problem with the script. So much of Alice's motivation is in Tommy's constant whiny bratty "when are we gonna get to Monterey, you promised we'd be in Monterey by my birthday, Monterey Monterey Monterey wah wah wah!" And then at the very end he says "what? Monterey was your deal, not mine!" allowing them to drop anchor. How convenient. Fuck a deus ex machina.

was 70 on Saturday

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-scorsese-70

rewatched casino pretty recently and i still think that cornfield scene w/pesci is probably the toughest scene to watch in any of his films.

SPOILER

the way he gets done in feels absolutely right for a movie which is basically from the perspective of the two main characters. we never see it coming, really, and neither does he. we don't know what happened for his crew to turn on him like that, but i don't think it's a drawback, it's pretty f'in chilling. super nightmarish, it's more "horror movie" than anything in 'shutter island.'

otm. the sound of the aluminum bats plinking off their skulls is so fucked up

Aka, Frank Vincent's Revenge (cf. Raging Bull and Goodfellas).

man I had no idea how many little details in this movie were based on actual events

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYBjOywJwLI

baseball bat scene still IMO the single most explicitly violent scene in a hit movie ever. by hit i mean something that made over a million dollars on release. can't think of anything else that comes close. would any other director have gotten away with it even?

what's great and fucked-up about the scene is the point of it isn't pesci dying a horrible death but being forced to watch his brother get beaten to death and his crew just revealing themselves to him like that, his whole life's meaning evaporating on every level before his eyes.

hell yeah

you make me pop your fucking eye out of your head to protect that piece of shit you dumb motherfucker

pesci's 'moddafuckas' in this are world class

That Spector clip was the highlight of a fantastic documentary. "Who's this guy Skeezy?"--cracks me up.

Get this through your head, you Jew motherfucker, you! You only exist out here because of me! That's the only reason! Without me, you personally, every fuckin' wise guy still around will take a piece of your fuckin' Jew ass! Then where you gonna go? You're fuckin' warned. Don't go over my head again, you motherfucker, you!

[Door Slams, Tires Squeal]

I'm Greek, Omar.

I always found the "head in vise" scene much more traumatizing than the cornfield scene. Scared the living shit out of my 15-year-old mind. I should not have been allowed to see that movie.

The "head in vise" scene also gets bonus scary points because it actually happened in real life. The cornfield scene did not. The Spilotro brothers were shot to death in a basement (if Wiipedia is to be believed).

one of my favorite MPAA-baiting stories is how scorsese so desperately wanted to have the vise scene as it appeared in the movie that he went OTT in the first cut and had the vise thoroughly crush the dude's head and then he "acquiesced" to demands to tone it down.

Jesus! Is that on the DVD?

before seeing casino i saw the vise scene parodied in a mad TV claymation sketch about rudolf the red nose reindeer. rudolph takes an elf and put its head in the vise and a clay eyeball popped out. i was like 10 and i loved it

this EW article is what i remember reading, made me so psyched for this movie:

Martin Scorsese is making the Las Vegas Mob story Casino, but who knew that the director was such a cagey gambler?

According to makeup and effects people who helped rig some of Casino's startling gory ''gags'' (that's what filmmakers call shots involving fakery), Scorsese has a few extra cards to play when the film goes before the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board this fall. He's contractually obligated to deliver a R picture, but should the board cry NC-17, no problem. The Oscar-nominated director of GoodFellas is ready to drop some of his most outrageous Casino shots because he never intended to put them in the finished film anyway.

It's a game directors play but don't talk much about, offering up sicko sacrifices to Hollywood's unofficial board of censors. The idea: Shock the MPAA in round one so that later trims will appear to make the difference. A Casino case in point: Enforcer Nicky (Joe Pesci) puts a hood's head in a vise and, as described in a script draft, ''spins the vise handle until suddenly the [man's] head explodes, splattering the room with blood and brains.''

''That was fun to shoot, but it was an exercise,'' says makeup wizard Howard Berger of Kurtzman Nicotero Berger, the firm that landed the exploding-head concession partly on the strength of earlier work done for Quentin Tarantino. ''Scorsese wanted to shoot it so there was blood spraying out of the eyeball, and then the whole eyeball would pop out. He said, 'It's ridiculous but I have to put it in so I can cut it and keep what I really need.'''

MS writing about home video in 1990:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/02/martin-scorsese-at-the-time-of-goodfellas.html#more

http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-fanmade-poster-captures-the-essence-of-martin-sc,93636/

http://media.avclub.com/images/426/426031/original/627.jpg?2308

they're all wearing pants = fail

Love yr hierarchy theory above

hard to rate his stuff in this way b/c some of the most stylistically accomplished stuff (e.g. raging bull, casino, even goodfellas to an extent) is among the more banal otherwise. i think his recent run has been pretty dreadful. he's had mediocre-to-terrible scripts to work with. hugo for me was an inert waxworks, scorsese going full-tilt Prestige, just dreary and awful. but for all that it's not even his worst movie...

The King of Comedy
After Hours
GoodFellas
Taxi Driver
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Mean Streets
The Color of Money (feel this might be a little underrated)
Who's That Knocking at My Door
The Last Temptation of Christ
Casino
Raging Bull
New York, New York (I still find this kind of fascinating, even though more than half of it doesn't work; I'd probably watch this again sooner than Raging Bull or Casino)
The Age of Innocence
Shutter Island
The Departed
The Aviator
Bringing out the Dead
Cape Fear
Hugo
Gang of New York

Not listed:
Boxcar Bertha (never seen)
Kundun (have only seen this once, 15 years ago, so I'm not really sure what my opinion is)

I wish it actually had been Gang of New York--I might have had some clue as to who was killing whom in the big final brouhaha. Agree with everything you've got near the bottom (except Hugo, which I haven't seen); I do think Raging Bull and Goodfellas are anything but banal. (Which we've discussed, so I also know who'll come on and say, "Yes, they're banal.")

ha, yeah i think "gang of new york" or perhaps "gang leader of new york" would have been better movies

well goodfellas is kind of sublimely put together as a narrative, casino too...

I have a soft spot for some of his recent stuff: Gangs, Departed, even the Aviator... although I tried to watch Shutter Island twice and turned it off before the 2nd act (I think... definitely <halfway)... rating Shudder Ibland (c)MorbiusMD above all of the films I listed is pretty bold imho.

Cape Fear reboot also not horrible, certainly not the 3rd worst Scorcese film.

i remember shutter island having some good build-up and i liked the use of music, the climax and resolution are crap though. maybe i'm just not remembering the other ones too well. i fell dead asleep during the aviator. one great scene, the rest felt like baz luhrmann or some shit. mostly shapeless, formless overbudgeted garbage.

i can't give any credit to hugo though, i wanted to bolt the theater after 30min and only stuck it out b/c i'm too polite. what a piece of shit.

i actually thought 'hugo' was quite good and was kind of shocked at how much everyone else seemed to hate it. agreed on the awfulness of 'gangs of new york,' though, and am more or less on board with your top 5 (would probably switch 'goodfellas' with 'taxi driver').

I haven't seen After Hours since it was first released, I think, but don't understand why ppl think it's more than a good little nightmare comedy. Back then you could have a much weirder RL experience any night in Soho.

(God knows it's better than anything he's done lately tho)

i actually thought 'hugo' was quite good and was kind of shocked at how much everyone else seemed to hate it. agreed on the awfulness of 'gangs of new york,' though, and am more or less on board with your top 5 (would probably switch 'goodfellas' with 'taxi driver').

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, June 15, 2013 1:09 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everybody else loved hugo! it had great reviews!

i watched raging bull again recently. i appreciate it as pure cinema or w/e but i dont really connect to it. it was funnier than i remembered though

i actually like the aviator a lot

I like Cape Fear and Gangs. It's Casino I hate.

the only thing i really like about cape fear is the long scene between de niro and juliette lewis

I'm prepared to move The Age of Innocence into the low reaches of the top ten.

I'm with Morbius on After Hours. I rewatched it a year or two ago. It's well made--I heard Scorsese say somewhere that his objective was to make a movie quickly and bring it in under x-millions of dollars; it'd probably be a career film for lesser directors--but feels slight. Allowing that there are isolated moments that feel vintage, or that have some urgency to them (there's a striking shot when he goes back to Linda Fiorentino's studio...forgetting specifics), plus some great music (favourite: Robert & Johnny's "We Belong Together"), it feels slight; even more than Alice, it's the first genial Scorsese movie up to that point, and it represents the start of something new and (I think) lesser. Like a lot of people, I count Goodfellas as the only truly great film he made after that.

Apparently it feels slight, so I had to use that phrase twice.

I'm with h4a on raging bull, which I guess i recognize as a technical achievement and really enjoy as such but it's second tier scorz for me. Also really like the aviator. I think his post goodfellas run is generally pretty impressive, if not consistently great. casino the best of that era by a fair distance, departed or maybe age of innocence second imo.

after hrs & alice would def be closer to the bottom of my rankings than the top

After Hours is still my fave Scorsese, though it certainly has its challengers.

Hugo was exactly the movie that "Martin Scorsese making a 3D family film" sounds like it would be.

after hours finds a really unsettling mix of comedy and horror and just keeps upping the ante. it's perfectly modulated. i always leaves me feeling somehow both exhilarated and totally stressed out.

obv king of comedy treads that line too

Hugo was exactly the movie that "Martin Scorsese making a 3D family film" sounds like it would be.

― The Butthurt Locker (cryptosicko), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not the biggest scorsese fan, but even i think there were basically no precedents in his filmography for how fucking boring that movie was

Alice is just wonderful

after hours was the first time i heard bad brains, so thats the main thing i remember about it

c'mon that's pretty important right there no?

Post-"Goodfellas," "Cape Fear," "Age of Innocence," "Kundun" and "Casino" kind of a fascinating period in his filmography, two totally in his wheelhouse, two totally not, "Kundun" and "Age" kind of amazing, if you think about how they look on paper.

I've pretty much not liked anything he's done from "Bringing Out the Dead" onward, to various degrees of dislike. "Hugo" was perfectly fine, but I don't like any of his Leo movies. And his Dylan and George docs are pretty dubious.

The Harrison doc was almost as boring as Hugo.

i couldnt even finish the harrison doc. such a snooze. maybe if i cared about the beatles it'd be better

i never saw that, why would I watch two hours of the most boring beatle?

next up, a HBO miniseries about a guy who was the small faces's bass player for six months

its 3 and a half hours!

George = Small Faces' bass player for six months? (I know--jokes.)

I love the Dylan film. How much it has to do with Scorsese, I don't know--very little, apparently.

just a joke about the steadily diminishing significance of the people MS makes extra-long documentaries about

I've pretty much not liked anything he's done from "Bringing Out the Dead" onward, to various degrees of dislike. "Hugo" was perfectly fine, but I don't like any of his Leo movies. And his Dylan and George docs are pretty dubious.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:44 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought Dead was OK for the most part, and then suddenly he was all, "Oh right, I'm Catholic. Better shoehorn some of that in here."

Possibly the last truly great use of music in one of his films, though ("Bell Boy," "Janie Jones," whatever that Van Morrison song was).

can't wait for relevant Marty doc on Kanye-Kardashian baby

also when is he finishing his History of Britfilm?

Speaking of the most boring film project imaginable.

:p

as long as he leaves Hammer out, obv

his next movie sounds completely pointless http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/

Possibly the last truly great use of music in one of his films, though ("Bell Boy," "Janie Jones," whatever that Van Morrison song was).

Bringing Out the Dead is pretty turgid, I think, but it does have "Rang Tang Ding Dong (I Am the Japanese Sandman)."

Entertainment Weekly did a soundtracks issue years ago, and they interviewed Scorsese. One of the questions was 'what song have you wanted to use, but haven't been able to?" His answer was "Transfusion" by "Nervous" Norvus; he added that he almost got it to fit into BOTD.

Great song--obviously should have replaced "Jumpin' Jack Flash" in Mean Streets when Johnny Boy walks into the bar in slow-motion.

his next movie sounds completely pointless http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAjFESb6WGk

this looks terrible

except for matthew macconaheyhey

Looks hilarious to me, in a good way.

my nephew just tweeted that, raving about it. i think it looks like a bloody comic book film.

but generally I'm just tired of the 'guy becomes big shot in city and has quirky friends' formula

the tone feels off, jokes feel flat

Written by Terrence Winter, hmm.

Bringing Out the Dead also had "You Can't Throw Your Arms Around a Memory." Great trailer, too. Lottla cool camera moves in the flick as well, for such a bust.

"Gangs of New York," aside from Day-Lewis, is totally worthless. Might as well be shot in Disneyland. I hate when filmmakers build these sets so massive and elaborate they never leave them.

Before I opened that trailer, just looking at the still image, I started hearing Rupert Pupkin: "I'll give you anything, but don't ask me to do six weeks! I can't take over the show for six weeks...I can't even take over my own life for six weeks!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PAjFESb6WGk

― Number None, Monday, June 17, 2013 5:48 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

ahh! im hot! im big!

shoulda been wahlberg. sorta despise leo these days

Scorsese belle lettres:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/aug/15/persisting-vision-reading-language-cinema/

I'll put this here rather than the proper thread. Some film posters I like have written about how much they liked The Wolf of Wall Street, and I don't want this to seem in any way like a response to their posts.

I really hated it--so much so, I'll keep this short. I liked the quiet ending, liked the FBI guy, liked five seconds of somebody dancing to Bo Diddley. Three long, shrill scenes where I felt embarrassed for Scorsese: DiCaprio's speech before the Steve Madden IPO; the quaalude overdose; the divorce argument. A couple of films into their collaboration, I used to think Scorsese needed to ditch DiCaprio. I've really changed my thinking on that.

just curious, do you like any movies where people scream a lot

Good question--can't think of any offhand. I checked a list of favourites I made a few years back, and while there are definitely such scenes scattered about, it's just something I tend to recoil from when there's a lot of it.

http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/dog_day_afternoon.jpg

True! It's even more of an exception in that I love the famous screaming scene, then find the movie starts to drag halfway, when everybody's stopped screaming.

tsk tsk, DDA "dragging"!

I wonder what you think of the last 25 years of Pacino

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090827221735/uncyclopedia/images/8/8f/Pacinoshout.jpg http://www.dreamagic.com/vivianrose/devilsAdvocate.gif

An ordeal, most of the time.

Reverse Shot has retooled, and has a Scorsese symposium going -- NYU shorts, Boxcar Bertha, Who’s That Knocking at My Door etc:

http://reverseshot.com/symposiums/33/martin-scorsese-he-is-cinema

on "the best thing i've ever done"

http://reverseshot.com/archive/entry/1858/italianamerican

I wish I could see American Boy

thanks for those links, morbs; the piece on italianamerican is nice, & it's so endearing that he's as proud of it as he is. i really love that film, though can't quite make it as important as reichert does; that said, it does feel like an interesting precursor to some similar films that came a long while later. berliner's nobody's business, say. hey Οὖτις, american boy is on youtube. i always meant to watch it.

I saw a double-bill of American Boy and Italianamerican years ago. I wonder if there's any way to see this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1372718/

Nothing for sale on Amazon that I can see.

You can get half of it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8INAkGwEYhk

I thought at first it was complete--skip to the end and there are credits--but the clip runs 50 minutes, and IMDB has the full film listed at 104. I'll hold out in hopes of finding it.

"It is has been 15 years since the last true Scorsese film."

http://thequietus.com/articles/16528-bringing-out-the-dead-revisited

Happily, it's only been a dozen since the last true De Palma film.

I would respect that sentence more if it was followed by a conspiracy theory about Scorsese having a heart attack and being resurrected by a voodoo cult led by a shadowy figure known as Papa Leo, rather than someone's blinkered idea of what a Scorsese movie TRULY is.

That's the exact reason we haven't had a true Malick movie in 36 years!

i like this as an auteur theory endgame - now that we've established the cliches of the greats, what was the last movie a director did where they successfully displayed your favorite cliches of theirs (i.e. bringing out the dead being his last film where someone saunters through a ny hellscape to a boomer anthem)

Even now, viewing after viewing, Bringing Out The Dead, Mean Streets, really any of his seminal works have the unrelenting power to be mad and captivating and utterly impossible to watch without a dropped jaw and a sensation in the pit of your stomach that burns and broils long after you’ve finished watching.

kind of amazing he's had a long career after causing so much utterly impossible to avoid indigestion

I didn't like BOtD very much the one time I saw it, but it didn't have the Time to Make Real Dough vibe of everything since.

I posted bcz of the idea, not the prose, cuz tldnr. I knew croup wd take care of it cuz what else is he doin on Sunday morning?

1999 ... the year Fincher, PTA, Jonze, and Payne were born. The year Scorsese died.

I knew croup wd take care of it cuz what else is he doin on Sunday morning?

laundry, so thanks for the entertainment (both the article and the idea of "lol you had nothing better to do than read a link i posted" as a zing)

ok now that i've noticed when the link was posted i'm even more entertained by the zing

i did the laundry too btw

yeah cancer-induced insomnia is a bitch

well at least you weren't driven to read the article

happy i could do you the solid of telling you it's straight-outta-undergrad pomp

bye cunt

i will quit this motherfucking board before i play with you again, just so u know to make other plans

i'm sorry if i was glib. it's hard to know how to respond when someone tries to zing you for reading an article on a sunday morning, and then says "well i have cancer" when you note its far odder to post said article without reading it late on a saturday night.

honestly at this point i think you might want to quit the board, because it's unclear who here you would want engaging with an article you post

'bringing out the dead' is definitely unusual. it's probably closer to 'after hours' in some ways than any other scorsese film, just replacing the weird nyc nightlife aspects w/haunted sickly or dying or dead people all over the city being attended to. cage is really good here. arquette is alright. cliff curtis, mark anthony, sizemore, rhames, goodman, the emergency room doc...all great.

kinda agree with part of the premise of the piece, but i disagree on the assessment of the quality of scorsese's 21st century output. imo everything he's done since is either really remarkable or at the very least entertainingly crazy. out of those 'gangs of new york' is probably the closest to his heart and it's also in retrospect the weakest, but it's just a really admirable film in so many ways.

an article mourning the lack of a new york/schrader toned scorsese film since dead would make sense, if excised from the idiocy about what defines a "true" scorsese film

though even then the article would be a highbrow version of an imdb comment reading "gee i love joe pesci, when is he gonna make another movie with joe pesci".

“In addition to the (HBO) show he’s developing alongside Mick Jagger about the New York music scene in the ’70s, the director is also working on a prequel series to Shutter Island set in the early 20th century. And now Scorsese is teaming with Benicio Del Toro for Cortes, a series about the conquistador who overthrew the Aztec empire.”

http://www.avclub.com/article/martin-scorsese-and-benicio-del-toro-are-developin-212026

Articles from early this year said he would be shooting Silence this fall; can't tell if that happened.

All I can find is that Andrew Garfield has a beard going, it's sposed to be released end of next year, and Howard Shore will compose...

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/howard-shore-to-score-martin-scorseses-silence-and-more-soundtrack-news-20141106

More on the HBO series:

Despite the recent finales for series such as Boardwalk Empire, The Newsroom and True Blood, HBO appears to be building up its arsenal of promising hourlong dramas. After placing a series order for the Anthony Hopkins-starring Westworld a few weeks back, HBO has picked up an as-yet-untitled project with a musical slant. Boardwalk Empire creator Terrence Winter is teaming up with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and Boardwalk producer Martin Scorsese to bring a rock ‘n’ roll-based drama to the premium channel. Bobby Cannavale will star as Richie Finestra, a record label exec in the drug- and sex-fueled music scene of 1970’s New York who always has his ear to the ground in pursuit of the next big sound. The cast is also set to include Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Juno Temple and Mick’s son Andrew Jagger, among others.

The series, which was created by Winter and has been in development since 2010, will be executive produced by Scorsese and Jagger alongside Rick Yorn, Victoria Pearman, Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Breaking Bad’s George Mastras.

so sounds like approach will be Almost Famous-style fictionalized musicians

This'll be playing here next month; looks great. (I'd just as soon he abandon narrative altogether.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3510820/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_6

that looks like a documentary narrative to me

also the New Republic became shit at least 35 years ago

I thought The 50 Year Argument was just okay, and not as good as Arguing the World from 1998. Scorsese seemed more interested in the venerability of the New York Review of Books than the personalities and skirmishes that made it famous. You got a little of that in the Mailer section, but I'd already seen the Dick Cavett footage in the Vidal documentary. I drifted a bit during the Vietnam section, so maybe I missed something good there.

new doc iced by Clinton goodfellas

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-martin-scorsese-documentary-bill-clinton-stalled-20150123-story.html

my comedian friend has a role in VINYL, which is funny cuz he grew up a largely rock-free kid.

“Martin Scorsese has extended his overall feature deal with Paramount Pictures through 2019.” According to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock, this means he’s signed on to direct a Leonard Bernstein biopic, an adaptation of The Devil in the White City with Leonardo DiCaprio and The Irishman, which’ll feature Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorsese-renews-deal-paramount-835026

"Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." - Joe Pesci, from The Godfather Part 3 (dir. Martin Scorsese)

at least Leo can't play Lenny B (tempting fate)

I really wish him and Sweaty Bigface would break up

clive owen would make a solid lenny b

hmmm, worth considering...if it's the LB early years, maybe JoGo?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Leonard_Bernstein_-_1950s.JPG/220px-Leonard_Bernstein_-_1950s.JPG

whoa

http://lindaeder.com/voice_archive/voice_summer05/voice_images_summer05/LB_young_shot.jpg

hmm maybe jon bernthal, he worked with marty before too

we need a star, people

i assume 1945-60 would be the timeline, or some chunk of that... marty likes that era and lenny was on fire

NY, London retros

With Silence opening on December 23 and the first reviews now coming in, Martin Scorsese, an exhibition exploring his “remarkable half-century of filmmaking within the context of his personal history and his love of cinema,” has opened at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. It’ll be there through April 23, and naturally, it’ll be accompanied by “a comprehensive retrospective of the director’s work, with the best available film prints and restored versions of his films, supplemented with personal appearances.” The first part of that retrospective, Martin Scorsese in the 21st Century, runs from December 16 through 30.

On January 1, the day Silence opens in the UK, a two-month-long Martin Scorsese season opens at BFI Southbank in London. The sidebars are plentiful. Martin Scorsese curates presents the man’s hand-picked selections from the over 750 films that the Film Foundation (set up in 1990 by Scorsese and several other leading filmmakers) has had a hand in restoring, including Jean Renoir‘s The River (1951), Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948) and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger‘s The Red Shoes (1948). There’ll be a course, Martin Scorsese’s Films and Influences, taught on ten consecutive Wednesdays. On January 26, Ian Christie will talk about “Scorsese as Cinema Historian.” And there’ll be special screenings, such as Taxi Driver (1976) on January 6 with Bernard Herrmann’s score performed live by the BBC Concert Orchestra.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/martin-scorsese

http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2016/12/11/detail/martin-scorsese/

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=scorsese&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=

you seen Silence yet, morbs?

nope! along w/ everyone else here at month's end when it opens, i suspect.

I went to the MOMI exhibit, and not having read a lot about it was surprised to see, along with De Niro's hack license and boxing gloves, and Raging Bull and Taxi Driver storyboards (and 11yo Marty's crayoned imagined Roman-epic credits), the bouquet from Vertigo and slippers from The Red Shoes.

(also his family's kitchen table)

“In a sign of the ongoing power shift in Hollywood, Martin Scorsese’s $100-million gangster movie The Irishman, his ninth starring Robert De Niro, has been scooped up by Netflix,” reports Anne Thompson. “Steve Zaillian adapted The Irishman screenplay from Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses, which details the life of Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran, a mob hitman whose illustrious career is today best known for a supposed involvement in the death of Jimmy Hoffa.....

In “The Irishman,” De Niro will be made to look 30 again by the effects masters at ILM, “Benjamin-Button”-style. His “Heat” co-star Al Pacino and other talent are still in negotiations. One possible boon for Scorsese: at Netflix, there will be no strictures on length."

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/02/martin-scorsese-the-irishman-robert-deniro-netflix-paramount-1201785658/

https://68.media.tumblr.com/842ce6c7d9219519927ab6278c5cf32f/tumblr_n5ox688qSZ1smsmqro1_500.gif

this sounds like a horrible idea

it's weird that anyone would think the only difference between a 70yo man and a 30yo man is *how they look* and not, like, how they move or speak or anything else

why do you think they'd think that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RONkAEMduSc

Not sure of the exact formula (vectors and prime numbers are involved), but the Scorsese Curse--Frank Vincent, Chuck Low, Jerry Lewis, and Jake LaMotta within two months of each other--is now officially more lethal than the Wizard of Oz curse.

I don't want to watch a Scorcese movie on fucking Netflix

FInally watched The King of Comedy and, indeed, it's the only movie that would've given me something to think about against Taxi Driver.

I still need to follow up on my first, baffled viewing from when I was 13. I suspect I'll love it now; neither Raging Bull nor The Age of Innocence did anything for me until i gave them fresh viewings as an adult.

yay Eric

a Curse when guys between 75 and 95 start dying

I mentioned vectors and prime numbers, and compared it to the Wizard of Oz curse, where people between, what, 90 and 150 started dying. So it's good that you clarified no such Scorsese curse actually exists.

you're welcome

An unexpected admission from the maestro pic.twitter.com/XI9yYhByrS

— Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) October 16, 2017

lol

I love Goodfellas, but it goes waaaay too far with the voice-over narration (Casino is even worse). Scorsese is at his best as a visual storyteller — Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, even After Hours. So yeah, good film but also one of his most overrated.

It's hard not to have voiceover in a biographical drama covering 30 years, so i disagree. You wouldn't be able to dramatize all that stuff about how the crew operates; plus there's tons going on visually while we're listening to Henry.

Hadn't read Pauline Kael's takedown of KoC until after I finally watched it.

https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/film/the-king-of-comedy/1/

xp

plus the juxtapositions between Henry's narrative and the events as portrayed on screen work ironically

i should maybe say, a bio-drama where you're meant to relate so closely to the protagonist's POV

yeah, i thought Kael was wrong in '83... still do, but i admit i'm a little puzzled about why he has Diahnne Abbott filch something from Jerry's house. Everybody needs a piece of success?

xxp

the GoodFellas narration is great. The Casino one as well. i think it's much easier to hate the movies that try to ape that style, because they don't have the humor or intelligence or snap of those two films. i like the misdirection, especially in GF. Henry narrating how he managed to save Morrie's life right before Morrie goes for a very short car ride with Tommy DeVito and Frankie Carbone, etc. which also shows Henry being taken out of the loop and foreshadows the danger he'll find himself in later.

that tKoC passage about Jerry Lewis is probably the most praise Kael ever ladled on him, by far.

Nomar: Agreed on the Morrie scene. That was brilliant, although it confused the hell out of me the first time I saw the film. "Wait, didn't he just say Morrie was going to be safe?"

Yeah, I almost wish more of the movie focused on Langford, if only for more of these moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjaKdtYbTto

my fave Jerry moment might be "You've got a blank card..."

I used to think TAOI had too much over clever voice-over, but Scorsese's pace and images complement it superbly.

PK's lamenting over there not being "fun" and sexiness in tKoC seems so thickheaded. How would it work, then? Same when she criticized Goodfellas for not having a charismatic Cagney type at the center.

PK's whole riff about de niro's performance being "anti-acting" is kind of bizarre

she seems to have no truck w/ his "hollow men," ie lead characters who are sociopaths or permanently maladjusted. Those are for villains, I guess.

My complaint about KOC rests on De Niro's performance – I can't stand it, I want to run from the room, it's a one-note performance of a one-dimensional character. I can accept the ridiculous concept if Scorsese had cast someone who can play schmucks like Charles Grodin or even a George Segal.

Wouldn't get the same level of malevolence there. Dabney Coleman?

certainly the early '80s = Coleman ubiquity

Bruno Kirby might've worked, too.

andy kaufman! that would have been pretty demented.

Or now it would be....Steve Carell.

Or, to complete the circle of irony, Ben Stiller.

Sorry, de Niro can play schmucks, at least one. Pupkin reminds me of several regulars at comedy open mikes in Manhattan, 1987-90 (although their jokes were worse than his).

christopher walken would have been good.

xp Pretty sure I've seen a few of them on the Stairway To Stardom.

Christopher Walken had a great part in Jonathan Demme's Who Am I This Time? when The King Of Comedy came out, and Andy Kaufman would have been perfect for that too.

Funny how Alice... gets ignored. Watching it on Netflix for the first time since the mid '90s, I savored again Burstyn's fully lived-in performance, the details of Mel's Diner (I tend to forget that Mel was in the CBS sitcom too), the conversations between Burstyn and her son on the road.

I shouldn't be surprised I've never contributed to this thread. I'm not much of a Scorsese fan, or much of a detractor, either. I can take him or leave him, and usually leave him.

He strikes me as a director whose early box office success means he gets to make films about his personal interests, but what interests him enough to spend thousands of hours on, interests me only moderately, and I rarely think it worth spending two hours on. His long association with DeNiro, who I also find limited as an actor in ways that I respond poorly to, hasn't helped me like his films much, either.

Mean Streets!
Just kidding
G-fellas
“Keep him here!”

Karen

https://thefilmstage.com/news/watch-martin-scorseses-long-unavailable-first-documentary-street-scenes-1970/

a roundup of Marvel- and aesthetics-related matters (ie he wrote a NYT opinion piece)

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6673-scorsese-and-the-state-of-the-art

This editorial may indeed be Martin Scorsese's finest movie.

Alongside WIZARD OF OZ and DUEL IN THE SUN, Scorsese mentioned this Alan Ladd western WHISPERING SMITH as a great childhood Technicolor experience. pic.twitter.com/amAzU4EE1b

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) November 5, 2019

As I mentioned seven years ago on this thread, I saw American Boy on a double-bill once with Italianamerican. I don't think it was a normal theatre--I recall it being in something more makeshift, like a community centre or something. Makes me irrationally nostalgic for a time when such things were actually hard to see, and the great satisfaction that came with finally getting the chance at these oddball screenings.

Didn't seem very special when I watched it tonight off one of the movie networks I get. "Time Fades Away" is great, and Prince's one story was obviously cribbed for Pulp Fiction (some of his wording, even). The rest, even Scorsese looked bored at times--Easy Andy in Taxi Driver is, for me, a much more compelling distillation of Prince than Prince himself. George what's-a-mook Memmoli's presence is interesting.

I need this: https://teenagestepdad.threadless.com/designs/marvel-scorsese/mens/t-shirt/regular?color=black

I like that much better than the Scorpions-inspired Scorsese T-shirt a friend bought me.

Not sure if someone else posted this on one of the many Scorsese threads:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/martin-scorsese-125-favourite-films-of-all-time/

Health!

Is this just some old list they dug up and reprinted? I don't remember seeing it myself, but doesn't make sense that it stops in '92.

Looks like it's a compilation of 85 movies from a 2012 fast company profile and 40 from a 2006 letter he wrote to some blogger.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/567952/martin-scorsese-favorite-movies-list

Thanks...showed up on my FB wall, publication date was new, I got fished in.

Excellent interview about The Age of Innocence.

Edith Wharton published the book in 1920, recalling a society that no longer existed after the war. Did you feel that you were showing Americans a period which most of them did not know existed?

Of course. And it was even more sumptuous than we show. I felt the film had to show a modern audience the blocks they put around Newland and people like him. But there’s also an irony and a sarcasm in the presentation of that lifestyle – both in the way I tried to do it and in the way Wharton did it in the book. The decor had to become a character for me.

Jay Cocks showed the film to an audience of Wharton specialists which included R. E. B. Lewis, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. And he told me that their reaction was extraordinary, because every time a dinner service was shown or when Mrs Mingott selected the silver plate, they laughed. They knew what the presentation of that particular piece meant. So when the Van der Luydens create a dinner for Countess Olenska, they are making a statement and daring people to go against them.

In the book there’s a fantastic build-up to that dinner that tells you just how important the Van der Luydens are and how everyone in New York society acknowledges their status.

I tried to convey that by the attention given to the dinner itself – the centrepiece, the Roman punch – which is like having a triple high mass for a funeral rather than a regular low mass. They are saying, “Not only will we defend you, but we are going to do so on the highest level. If anyone has a problem with that, they are going to have to answer to us.”

Just like in GoodFellas…

Exactly. It’s a matter of “You have a problem with that? Then you have a problem with me and let’s settle it right now.” Or in this case, “Oh very well. We’re going to have to bring out the Crown Derby, aren’t we?” I remember in The Razor’s Edge, when Gene Tierney throws a plate at Herbert Marshall, he says, “My goodness, the Crown Derby.”

Happy 80th to Marty

after hours

Happy 80th. Dude's a treasure.

I may not love many of his recent movies, but I love his opinion on what aren't movies

Dumb poll result, Casino is so much better than GoodFellas

and The Age of Innocence not earning any points is a rank embarrassment.

Casino rules, it’s true. These days it’s top 5 of his for me (so is Goodfellas tho.)

xp ditto The Last Temptation of Christ and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and New York, New York, all of which I prefer to f'n The Aviator

and The Age of Innocence not earning any points is a rank embarrassment.

I could see complaining about a really low finish for Age of Innocence in a ranked poll--I wouldn't, but I can see where someone might--but this is #1-or-nothing poll. There are maybe six or seven #1 votes that make sense to me for Scorsese, and that isn't one of them. (Nor are four or five of the films that did get votes.)

noticed hbo max has scorsese's early shorts & italianamerican up

Cape Fear earns its scares. That 12-minute De Niro-Lewis scene, which I was old enough to make the theater audience gasp at the time, is a masterpiece of tone, pacing, performing. De Niro is often awful and good, sometimes in the same scene (I wish Robert Mitchum had been young enough to play him). The camerawork and editing are "stylish" in the cool ways and the garish ways. It's helpful comparing it to The Silence of the Lambs, a movie that's all of a piece but more restrained about its erotics.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) (TV)

This is on MUBI. It's over three hours long, half an hour and I am loving it.

Yeah it's great! It'd be overstating it to say it was my "introduction" to classic Hollywood, I was already a budding enthusiast, but it hipped me to dozens and dozens of great films and directors.