Best Martin Scorsese movie

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

x-post

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?