Best Martin Scorsese movie

It wasn't until I saw the original Cape Fear a year or two ago that I realized how bad Scorsese's remake is. Crude and sloppy.

I haven't watched it in a while, but last time I did, I felt like he was stylistically going for a Hitchcock homage but laid it on way too thick. In its defense, I think some of the new elements Scorsese brought to the material was promising, and the cast is terrific, but that potential doesn't come to fruition.

I remember the original Cape Fear being reactionary in a way that isn't shocking if you've seen enough anonymous b movies of the era but when I saw it I'd mostly seen stuff from the auteur A list and as a consequence it felt quite disgusting.

I used to despise Cape Fear, but watching it again in April set me straight. It's a compelling mess. The parts I was most afraid to re-visit (i.e. anything with Juliette Lewis) were the most compelling.

Cape Fear is among the Marty joints I haven’t gotten to yet.

Not sure if watching the 1962 original first would be better or worse for your experience. (I definitely saw the 1991 version first, though it was fine. Watched the 1962 version, then the 1991 version again a few months later, and realized I dislike it a great deal.)

I don’t know if I will see it, in part because it doesn’t seem like my jam. (This is also why I didn’t see Taxi Driver until very recently.)

It wasn't until I saw the original Cape Fear a year or two ago that I realized how bad Scorsese's remake is. Crude and sloppy.

Not sure whether I'd seen the original at that point or not, but Scorsese's was just standalone terrible either way.

I saw taxi driver when I was younger and thought it was great but every subsequent viewing just moves it higher up in my personal top ten. It's iconography and college dude movie rep don't help expectations but it's an unexpectedly beautiful film. I think Scorsese is maybe at his best when he doesn't give you exactly what you think he'll give you. As great as he often is at doing his "usual thing."

Yeah, it's been way too long since I saw Cape Fear (and I suspect it was an edited-for-television version) to know whether I think it's as bad as all that. Shutter Island is his better thriller no doubt

for my thanksbirthday i received the criterion 4K of Mean Streets. it's a film where so much of his thing is already there, especially the seemingly improvised street humor. that backroom conversation between DeNiro and Keitel is such an A+ scene in that respect.

there's a vv good interview w/Scorsese in the new issue of Esquire (which was delivered to us, addressed to a fictional-sounding name: someone who doesn't apparently exist) and he's aware he's entering his final stretch (i mean obv, he just turned 81) and is hoping to get several more films made.

Did you know that "mook" is acceptable in Scrabble? This is true. And, if you play it, also sets up exactly the response you want from your opponent.

https://scrabble.merriam.com/finder/mook

The Raging Bull thread is on I Love Film...Can someone identify the music here for me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2xD-HYTPPI

Pietro Mascagni's Barcarolle from the opera Silvano.

Many thanks.

Is “mook” an ethnically offensive word, or does it just have that association because the guys in Mean Streets say it? I ask that because I occasionally use the word IRL.

According to that link to the Scrabble dictionary, it just means "a foolish or contemptible person," no ethnicity involved. Which is how I always took it from the film too.

Good to know. I will be less self conscious about calling people mooks going forward.

A mook is a mook is a mook. The word cuts across race, ethnicity, gender, everything. They're everywhere.

And they all worship the same god.

https://i.postimg.cc/0QQjhWKg/mook.jpg

Watched Who's That Knocking at My Door? for maybe only the second time in my life (the DVD I used was a still-sealed $3 copy I bought at least 10 years ago). Whatever I may have posted in the past working from memory, didn't think it was great at all--one incredible four-minute musical cue ("El Watusi"), some technical interest, a very good performance from Keitel (also Zina Bethune, who basically disappeared from movies afterwards), and not a lot else. Endless conversations that go around in circles--which anticipate the same in later films, but they're not at all funny here. I can understand why someone like Ebert would have made a fuss over it in 1969, and there are other directors where I prefer early rough work to polished later stuff--and honestly, I'd take it over Killers of the Flowers Moon. But not over Mean Streets, which is exponentially better.

We posted the first of these on May 18, 2020 (20th Century Women), the early days of the pandemic; we've got two more to go after this one, on three Scorsese films:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAuMg5zjgIo

Some confusion over whether the "Steppin' Out" in Mean Streets is John Mayall's or Cream's. I guess it is Cream (not on any of the studio albums)--I always thought it was from the first John Mayall album.

Cream did a long version of "Steppin' Out" on Live Cream II, an archival release from '72.

It was initially mistitled/credited as "Hideaway", which IIRC carried over to some prints of Mean Streets.

Both songs being instrumentals first recorded by Clapton during his time with Mayall.

That's it--I distinctly remember seeing "Hideaway" in the music credits more than once. Mystery solved, thanks.

The song in question (1:45):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2XMiK12VQ

We talk a lot about this, which--dead serious--I think is the greatest four minutes of any Scorsese film ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVIA1vqQfb8

(I may have posted this clip upthread--if so, that link is broken.)

Just watched The Age of Innocence for the first time. It was a pleasure to be sunk in that milieu for a couple of hours. There is a sense that with such strong source material, it's your set designers and casting agent you're going to rely on most of all but I thought it was handled well. I think it's aged well (a bit like DDL. tbf), albeit the editing in the final scenes in the Paris courtyard is kinda clunky.

Curious whom Alfred would have cast instead of Pfeiffer...

Right?!?

Sigourney Weaver?

I appreciate that Marty is this level of nerd. With staff helping of course.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/25/martin-scorsese-vhs-video-collection-archive

Looks like he was cool using SLP