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.

Find it heartening seeing xyzzzz__ say all these nice things about Scorsese...Saw both documentaries years ago, don't remember specifics but thought they were very good.

― clemenza, Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I remember gloating about Godfather II's downfall at the s&s poll. Everything else is a blank. Don't remember being nasty about MS.

I love Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy and I will def get round to Casino and The Irishman.

Maybe you and I are being conflated ... I actually don't hate The Godfather and am fine with its canonical status

it's a perfect weird '80s movie, a spiritual cousin to repo man in some ways.

― omar little

I never thought about it this way. And a precursor to Something Wild.

My memory of it is that it's not so far removed from The Warriors

xpost to clemenza: don’t let ‘em get you down. It still is and will always be a great film. Enjoy!

Stay resolute!

Maybe you and I are being conflated

More likely I'm conflating Coppola and Scorsese. Anyway, my mistake.

I rewatched Raging Bull a few months ago for the first time in about 17 years. I do think it's slipped down a bit in the canon and I'd always put it off as a lesser Marty as its such a downer and Jake is such a pos but it's up there with his very best on the rewatch. The levels of ridiculous machismo are darkly comic like when he's asking his brother to punch him until his stitches come out.

I must rewatch Bringing Out The Dead again. I didnt like it at the time. It felt overdriven to the point of incredulity.

Marty's classics imo (in no particular order) - Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, After Hours, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Irishman, King of Comedy, Raging Bull

Bringing Out The Dead is good - and it’s close to my heart since I watched MS film a scene from it one night for over an hour - but it’s the only one that often feels like a slog to watch.

Look, I think we can all agree that, if you enjoy a movie, fuck all the other noise

Even if that movie is Raging Bull

"Floundering Bull: A Cinematic Fiasco"

quiddities and agonies of the ILX film community

i always found raging bull too offputting a prospect for all of the usual reasons but made myself sit and watch it last year and yeah no doubt there's elements that if youve seen done once youve seen done enough but im not sure the beauty and the hardness of it still dont earn it all the plaudits it tends to get, it is a capital M masterpiece that knows it in every frame

I've seen raging bull several times but I should probably see it again to reconsider it.

Love Bringing out the Dead, it's definitely a weird one, off-kilter humor and a Schrader VO-laced screenplay adapted from a novel, really frenetic and colorful. I wouldn't say it necessarily always works but I've always been enthusiastic about it.

xp to xxxyzzzzzz both are great, especially imo as studies of scorsese doing exactly what he does but in a different mode than he might usually do it

i still remember an ilx post about mean streets/goodfellas/casino/irishman being essentially a walk through of the mob from street level to serious players and imo it absolutely works

and gangs of new york is his hobbit trilogy

Its funny how DDL basically played the same character in Gangs and There Will Be Blood

and my left foot

and in the name of the father

one of the things I really admire about The Irishman is the genuinely bleak emptiness at the end of it, no deadpan flippancy with faux gallows humour - just: I've lived an empty, amoral, servile life and now I'm going to purchase my own coffin ... lol classic!

fucks sake calz no spoilers

The Colour of Money is a seriously underrated one. The camera twirling around the pool table and Tom Cruise with perfect hair showing off to the sound of Werewolves of London. PURE CINEMA.

The pure cinema of an Eric Clapton theme!

phew, I'm glad you were joking there d-mac. Because the whole concept of "spoilers" in movies is ABSOLUTE bollox anyway. Especially when said movie is based on stuff that might have happened more than 5 decades ago and the whole screenplay has been built around a lurid best-selling US mafia non-fiction book.

mods pls pre emptively ban this man from the titanic (1997) thread

spoiler: he pushes her off

wringing out the dead

Titanic Driver.

the departed

I remember reading a Badshaw review of The Departed where he was hailing the dialogue in this movie as being so fucking razor-sharp - it's absolutely abysmal

You don't wanna dip into ILX's The Departed thread then.

Gangs of New York his worst, if only for having a theme song by U2.

Rewatched GoNY recently and the entire thing feels like cosplay. I like it less each time.

phew, I'm glad you were joking there d-mac. Because the whole concept of "spoilers" in movies is ABSOLUTE bollox anyway. Especially when said movie is based on stuff that might have happened more than 5 decades ago and the whole screenplay has been built around a lurid best-selling US mafia non-fiction book.

― calzino, Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

When I'm at home I often start reading the plot section of the Wikipedia page halfway through. Doesn't everyone do this?

Yes, I also used to read the last few pages of a book first (not so much since I went 100% e-reader).

ppl really rating new york, new york itt. I had the same reaction to it that I did to Raging Bull - "christ it's boring to hear these terrible people shouting at each other" - but I was an impatient teen, perhaps there were Formal Aspects I was missing.

"Silence" is on Kanopy, btw

Kanopy

yes

You both still have access to that?

After I typed this I tried to watch something on Kanopy and ran into some sort of block - “your library is limiting access.” Are you getting that too?

I got that several years ago

Was just reading the NY-er piece on Marvel, earlier. The Marvel Scorsese says it's "not cinema". There is a continuity: the dominant form of Hollywood filmmaking for its time, like the epic might have been in the 50s, as detailed in the Scorsese doc.

Except that Hollywood doesn't make the huge profits back then (when TV came along), it has been one of a number of entertainment options for a long time. Still, you can see why MS said "it wasn't cinema". No directors, stars don't really count (except Robert Downey Jr.), acting seems more of a degraded form. Even so I think MS could talk about the role of visual effects in the way the NY-er piece does. Both the tech and the brutal working conditions have bought the costs down.

*said what he did

someone should ask MS abt animation-as-cinema, as that seems pertinent (all of MCU is basically in the tradition of bedknobs and broomsticks)

Yes I've seen the parallel between MCU and 50's biblical epics mentioned before and it makes sense to me (partic in how both are so fucking tedious).

I don't know that "not cinema!" is ever a useful lens of critique, same as "not music!" or "not art!".

I'd say there's some more stars that kinda "count" beyond Downey Jr: Chris Pratt (for better or worse), Chadwick Boseman, ScarJo to some extent. The parade of blonde hunks called Chris hasn't got much star power but then it's not like classic Hollywood was above blank whitebread white man protagonists.

I'd be amazed if MS didn't love Miyazaki.

xp - yes the NY-er piece went through all of those actors though Downey Jr. He is the one that kept coming up through the phases of Marvel -- and the description of what Downey Jr. bought to those films sounded like he was having fun (which is often like acting, to me). The others don't register as much.

Having said that they weren't like "stars" of old. The piece had a quote from someone talking about how all their non-Marvel films bombed.

lol i do actually have a theory abt why e.g. chrises hemsworth and evans can both be effective and funny actors within the MCU ensembles, doing good close-up facework against greenscreen backdrops they can't see as they act, and then can't transfer this to films without greenscreen or their usual foils (it's not even a very elaborate or contrarian theory)

Can you please share your theory with the rest of the class?

not right now