Best Martin Scorsese movie

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.)