Doomsday's Andrei Tarkovsky Love Fest

Nope, it's next on the list. I found the DVD on eBay for $5 so I can send it your way when I'm done

I will only accept Kundun.

I saw Taxi Driver last October for a 40th anniversary screening, very fun seeing it in theaters. I go back-and-forth between that, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas as to what film is Scorsese's best overall, but I agree that Taxi Driver is my personal favorite. I love how Travis is this dangerous oddball yet also charming, smart, and easy to root for. Also I really like how Scorsese films the cab sequences. Cool neon bokeh seen through watery windows and a safe place for Travis to distance himself from the filth he despises. It's a really good looking film, even if it doesn't implement the more daring and interesting camerawork and editing that Raging Bull and GoodFellas has. I love Taxi Driver, I think after The Godfather I and II and Apocalypse Now, it's the best film of the 1970s.

And now the continuation of....

Doomsday's Exploration of the Scorsese Filmography

New York, New York (1977)

View count: First time



Say what you will about LaLa Land, it has helped catapult the movie musical back into the spotlight. It had throwbacks to classic Hollywood musicals, it had song and dance sequences that aren't seen nowadays as often as they were and was generally liked by the movie-going public and critics alike. New York, New York is another movie that tries to capture all the same elements that helped make musicals of yesteryear so magical and put them on display for contemporary audiences. It's a film that's wildly different than any in Scorsese's body of work yet it's probably for good reason. It was a box office dud and received pretty middling reviews and may demonstrate why Scorsese hasn't revisited the genre since.

The film opens with a big V-J Day celebration where Jimmy (Bobby DeNiro) finds himself in a bustling club looking for women. He finds Francine (Liza Minelli) and ferociously tries to pick her up where she continuously turns him down. They come across each other the next day when Jimmy's friend spends the night with Francine's and she goes with Jimmy to a music audition. She accompanies Jimmy's sax-playing with her vocals and they become a successful act. As time progresses and they become focused on their careers Francine discovers she's pregnant. Jimmy, still wanting to be a saxophone player, departs on his own, opens his own club and becomes a popular musician. Francine, child in tow, becomes a famous performer and actress before they finally see each other in the film's finale.

It's fitting that I mention LaLa Land because there are many similar themes. In fact as you could probably tell the plot itself is eerily similar. Where New York, New York fails is that it's a seriously bloated and almost rudderless film. At close to 165 minutes it was Scorsese's longest film up to that point and much of the film follows Jimmy and Francine as they travel, perform, and live their lives on the road. I enjoy films of any length so long as their runtime is earned however much of New York, New York consists of scenes that ultimately don't further the plot in any way. Add the obligatory extended song and dance scene that needlessly features two back to back numbers from Minelli, almost three if you don't count a scene or two in between and it just demonstrates that there's a lot of filler in a movie that really suffers from excess baggage. Scorsese is a filmmaker who is extremely skilled at making even movies with long running times feel trim and lean (Goodfellas, Casino and Wolf of Wall Street) and I think New York, New York might have been a good learning lesson in discovering that less is not always more.

There's some good stuff in New York, New York. The musical numbers are well done, the camerawork is especially good when highlighting frenetic club scenes or slow solo pieces and Minelli gives a solid performance backed up by her pipes. The good stuff though is eclipsed by an almost tedious movie that makes you feel like you're on the slow train to nowhere which makes this a big, fancy looking misfire from a director who I hope learned his lesson.

Comparing a retro musical named after a city that involves a relationship between an aspiring actress and a jazz instrumentalist which ends with the former leaving the latter and becoming more famous and the latter left to wonder what could have been to La La Land is asinine?

No one's saying they're identical, just that they're worth comparing and contrasting.

And now the continuation of....

Doomsday's Exploration of the Scorsese Filmography

Raging Bull (1980)

View count: Second time



It's strange to think that it's been almost 40 years since Robert DeNiro won an Academy Award. In fact, he's only been nominated for an Oscar once in the past 25 years for Silver Linings Playbook. It's a little hard to fathom considering how he's one of the most celebrated film actors in movie history and the star of several classic films, from The Godfather Part II to Goodfellas to Heat. Perhaps his best known, most respected role is that of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, the film that many consider to be Martin Scorsese's best work. If you look at the top of this post you'll see that this was only my second time watching this movie. That's right, this is only my second time seeing Raging Bull. Much like my experience with Mean Streets, the first time I watched Raging Bull was when I was maybe 15 or 16, almost half my life ago. After so many years it was like watching it for the first time and it quickly became apparent that this was a much deeper and more complex film than the boxing movies that we're used to.

The opening scene introduces Jake La Motta standing in a dressing room rehearsing a monologue. He quotes Richard III (a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse) and reminisces about his life as a fighter before cutting to a match twenty years earlier, his first loss in a controversial decision to Jimmy Reeves. The next morning La Motta erupts over his wife giving him a well-done steak while his brother Joey (Joe Pesci in one of his first roles) tries to counsel and manage Jake with mixed results. Being released just four years after Rocky, Raging Bull isn't interested in being another movie with a sympathetic, lovable fighter whom you're cheering for the whole movie. La Motta is a selfish, jealous and wholly unlikeable character who commands respect from those who surround him. His boxing career and personal life intertwine throughout the movie and put his character on full display. His first loss is paired with the failing of his first marriage. His victory against Sugar Ray Robinson and subsequent victories are intercut with meeting his second wife Vicki and his blossoming personal life. In a great sequence we see color footage of his family combined with black and white stills of his fights at that period. When Vicki mentions how a new up and coming fighter is 'good looking,' La Motta dwells on her innocent and inoffensive comment and brutally dismantles his opponent in the ring. One of the main threads of the movie is how Jake is constantly searching for ways that his wife is unfaithful, regardless of the validity of his reasoning. This jealousy and rage soon ends his relationship with his brother, leads to his demise as a fighter and concludes with a failed marriage, an arrest and a weathered and overweight La Motta performing in comedy shows and entertaining audiences in a less glamorous fashion.

This is another departure for Scorsese as a filmmaker. It's also the film that helped cement him as one of the great filmmakers of his or any era. Reading more about the film it was intended at one point to be the last film that Scorsese would direct. It was also first brought to him while he was spiraling down a well of drug abuse and depression. You can tell that a lot of the darkness and pain that Scorsese carried with him was brought into the production. La Motta is a heavily flawed person who can't help but bring ruin to those that he cares about. Frenetic cuts of brutal punches and blood spattering the mat, the ropes and the crowd precede lingering shots of La Motta as he absorbs the punishment that's inflicted by his opponents, a reflection of his own self-destruction. You could interpret Raging Bull as a reflection of Scorsese at that point in his life, someone who was also at a crossroads and confronting demons of his own. Fortunately things turned out a little better for him.

I'll admit, I wasn't overly fond of Raging Bull when I first saw it and even today I tried not to let its reputation affect how I would watch it. After all, this is the movie that the AFI put at #4 on its Top 100 Films list. Roger Ebert said it was the best movie of the 80s. Admittedly, this still isn't my favorite movie. It's not even my favorite Scorsese movie. I did however read that it wasn't overly well received immediately upon release, it was only a little later and after some award nominations when people finally saw the movie for what it was. In a way I think that's a good way to describe how Raging Bull sat with me. It was a slow burn and something that really started to sink in over the coming hours and days. I really admire how it wasn't fashioned as a straight-up boxing film. In fact that was probably something that turned me off to it way back when. I raised myself on Rocky movies since I was in elementary school and had an idea that boxing must be these all-out slug fests and that a character in such movies be sympathetic and relatable. Raging Bull was a movie I probably wasn't expecting when I first saw it and as such wasn't one I was willing to regard as highly. Why would I want to watch a movie about a fighter who destroys himself? Why would I want to watch a movie that has great fight scenes mixed with not-so-great ones (to my credit at the time, there are several very obvious fake punches, soft landings and little or no reactions from fighters taking hits)? I was never in much of a rush to watch Raging Bull again but when I decided to watch all of Scorsese's films it was the one I was looking forward to rewatching the most. Although I can't say I flat-out loved the film I am much more appreciative of its themes and the great, sad, enormous and pathetic character of Jake La Motta. DeNiro's performance certainly is one of the best there is and at the end of it all it's much, much more than a boxing movie. I was an idiot to even begin to compare this to Rocky all those years ago. This movie is more of an anti-Rocky and that isn't a bad thing at all. It's certainly a movie I plan on watching again soon and I would expect that maybe after another viewing or two it I'll appreciate it even more than I do now.

It's a Roman Polanski adaptation of Tess of the d'Urbervilles which was meant as a bit of a tribute to his dead wife, it's in the Criterion Collection, it's not half bad. Coal Miner's Daughter is a much more egregious nominee.

Robert De Niro was nominated for Awakenings and Cape Fear.

21 years between Cape Fear and Silver Linings Playbook and those weren't necessarily strong years for De Niro. His heyday was the 70's and 80's with some sprinkles in the 90's.

I couldn't find the clip of James Woods talking shit about Robert De Niro, so enjoy this instead.

Raging Bull is outstanding. That, Taxi Driver, and Goodfellas are all very different films and yet all represent the very best of Scorsese as a filmmaker. "You never knocked me down!"

And oh my, those changing frame rates sure were a beauty.