Martin Scorsese

[Beloved Aunt]

Me too! It's the film that made me fall in love with her talent. It's a wonderful and very memorable "ordinary person" performance. Lots of Scorsese films are well acted but Cape Fear's ensemble is to die for

[pianocrash]

Indiewire ranks Scorsese's films. Surely this will lead to dissent

Is it me or is the marketing push for the new film way bigger than for his last efforts? It's like these past few weeks I've seen Scorsese everywhere, from career retrospectives and best-of lists to interviews about Barbie and TikToks about sex slang. I don't recall a studio pushing his films as hard as this before.

Overrated Misses and Lacking in Lasting Value, but with lots of surface/incidental assets: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver

[Roscoe]

I always thought how the scene was done undermines the scenes that follow. Douglas’ refusal to press charges because she knows first hand that the system is rigged against rape victims rings pretty hollow after we just watched her get part of her face bitten off. If there’s one thing male police officers, judges, and juries would easily believe, it’s that a woman wouldn’t consent to having chunks of her face bitten off and her arm dislocated. That kind of obvious brutality transcends institutional sexism.

This. Very much. I found it hard to imagine that anyone who'd had a hole bitten in their face would decline to press charges. It was just too much.

[Roscoe]

Okay, maybe I can't really fault Scorsese morally for filming it the way he does, It just happens to greatly exceed my level of what I can tolerate when I'm enjoying a good relatively lightweight genre film, and I'm sure there were other filmmaking options, that could still be pretty horrifying, without being so sickeningly explicit.

Not to flog the dead horse, but Scorsese doesn't do "good relatively lightweight genre" anything ever.

[Tom Amolad]

Okay, maybe I can't really fault Scorsese morally for filming it the way he does, It just happens to greatly exceed my level of what I can tolerate when I'm enjoying a good relatively lightweight genre film, and I'm sure there were other filmmaking options, that could still be pretty horrifying, without being so sickeningly explicit.

Not to flog the dead horse, but Scorsese doesn't do "good relatively lightweight genre" anything ever.

It’s probably perverse of me, but that would be my exact description of Goodfellas. Go figure.

[domino harvey]

Welcome to the AGI Street Team, Scorsese

[hearthesilence]

I would've gone with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly instead of Birdman but otherwise, definitely with him on the choices.

[yoloswegmaster]

Scorsese set to shoot a documentary on ancient shipwrecks in Sicily

Hopefully this in preparation for an upcoming shoot for The Wager

[copen]

I've been confounded by the goodfellas release. i've tried vhs, dvd, bluray.
all of them have the ray liotta voiceover *extremely loud* in the mix, to the point where you can't hear what the other people are saying in the scenes. this is throughout the entire movie.
is there a better audio mix somewhere, where liotta's voiceover is lower in the mix?
if not, then this is a huge mistake by the person who mixed the sound, and by marty for approving it.
thanks

[flyonthewall2983]

Devil in the White City could very well be next

[Matt]

Sounds more like just a development deal than a greenlight. There’s not even a script yet.

[Matt]

I watched the Mr. Scorsese documentary all in one go last night. I didn't intend to watch the whole thing at once, but it really draws you in. And yet even at 5 hours, it barely scratches the surface of his life and career. It strikes a good balance between focusing on life and career, and indeed the first two hours which cover his earliest, most personal films are the best. A few of his childhood friends, now very old men, feature heavily in this part, and it really gives you a sense of the environment in which they grew up and how miraculous it was the Scorsese got out of it (and yet, in some ways, never left it).

I'm glad that he is not a revisionist like Lucas or Cameron, but there are so many films that were rushed or compromised, not completed to his satisfaction, that you really wish he had the opportunity to go back and recut them. Gangs of New York, a lifelong dream project, seems to cause him the most pain, and he says that "it will never be finished." But he is always about moving on to the next project, getting one more film made, so I don't expect that as long as he is able to move under his own power that he will ever revisit a past project.

One interesting piece of the doc is revisiting the ginned-up conservative furor over The Last Temptation of Christ. You can see how nothing has changed since then, media pundits still whipping up controversy over something they only have the vaguest notion about and that they haven't seen. It was personally satisfying that the succession of scandal-mongers appearing on screen have since died or become completely irrelevant: Bill Bright, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, Mother Angelica. I think the film itself still suffers from its reputation, but it's really one of the last great Christian movies that someone of a different religion or even no religion can be moved by.

Alas, everything from Gangs of New York to Killers of the Flower Moon gets shoehorned into the last hour along with his current marriage and youngest daughter and the Film Foundation. Hugo doesn't even get mentioned, nor do any of his documentaries post-American Boy. A life/career retrospective is always a little unsatisfying at the end when the subject is still steadily working, so there's no "final masterpiece" or capstone to end with. A main focus of the final hour is on him finally getting his Best Director Oscar, which is really such a minor thing in actuality.

[hearthesilence]

It's very commendable that once he's turned in a film, it's done. And it's not like he thinks his films are perfect - during the 2011 Lincoln Center discussion with Kent Jones about Mean Streets, Scorsese admitted it's tough for him to watch as there are now moments that make him "cringe." (I still think it's a great film, but I do have that feeling myself with at least one scene.)

I haven't seen the series yet, but I saw the talk Miller gave at the NYFF, and one remark that stood out was how Scorsese "knew how to talk to men in power" due to the environment he grew up in. I always wondered how someone who was known to be so shy could navigate Hollywood so well, and that really spoke volumes.

FWIW, when she asked if he wanted to see the film, all he requested was a transcript with the intention of fact-checking, and he did indeed catch some mistakes (like "okay, Thelma's wrong...")

[FrauBlucher]

Is this ripe for a Criterion release?

[ChunkyLover]

It's very commendable that once he's turned in a film, it's done.

New York, New York would like to have a word.

[Matt]

It's very commendable that once he's turned in a film, it's done.

New York, New York would like to have a word.

Interesting that the slightly extended re-release is not mentioned in the doc. Probably wouldn't have added much to the narrative, which is that Scorsese sunk into a deep depression after the film. He didn't want to make Raging Bull, but De Niro talked him into it as some kind of occupational therapy, and Irwin Winkler told United Artists they wouldn't get a Rocky 2 unless they made Raging Bull first.

I have only ever seen New York, New York with the "Happy Endings" sequence in it, and I can't imagine the film without it. Like the "Born in a Trunk" sequence in A Star Is Born—to which "Happy Endings" is a clear homage—it's the best part of the movie. There are a couple of films that Scorsese was given the ultimatum to cut it or the studio would take it away from him and cut it themselves. New York, New York especially is probably most crying out for a restored director's cut, but it seems pretty clear that it's never going to happen.

Is this ripe for a Criterion release?

I'd bet money on "no." The only Apple TV film to go to Criterion is The Velvet Underground and that wasn't produced by Apple. Though now that Apple has begun to embrace physical media (F1 getting a disc release from Warner Bros. and "Severance" also forthcoming on disc), perhaps there's a slight possibility.

Speaking of Scorsese's ability to handle executives, I do love how the doc portrays Harvey Weinstein as nothing but a thug. No nod toward his commercial instincts or ability to collect Oscars, just a total, thick-headed bully in an expensive, ill-fitting suit.

[aox]

First still from the upcoming, What Happens at Night:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comment ... /#lightbox

[tolbs1010]

Hoping this will be the first DiCaprio performance in a Scorsese film that doesn't feel forced or miscast. To be fair, I haven't seen Flower Moon yet.

[lazarus]

Hoping this will be the first DiCaprio performance in a Scorsese film that doesn't feel forced or miscast.

[Stefan]

DiCaprio being "forced or miscast" in Scorsese's films - this assumption I find interesting. Could tolbs1010 elaborate it a little bit more?

[FrauBlucher]

DiCaprio has become the latter day DeNiro for Scorsese. Scorsese likes working with the same actors for the most part. It’s a comfort zone I’m sure. Where I don’t love all their collabs but I definitely appreciate their connection

[tolbs1010]

DiCaprio being "forced or miscast" in Scorsese's films - this assumption I find interesting. Could tolbs1010 elaborate it a little bit more?

The collaboration has yielded very disappointing results. DiCaprio looks strained/adrift in a few of the films, and I don't know a single film lover that would place any of these films among Scorsese's best. I posted a more complete thought about their collaboarations on the Flower Moon thread a few years ago:

"Not a single one of the Scorsese/DiCaprio films have worked for me. DiCaprio always looks like he's trying way too hard (Departed, Wolf) or is badly miscast (Aviator, Shutter) in the Scorsese films. He looks like he's acting. Yet he has done believable, vibrant work for other Directors during this same period. Tarantino seems to understand that there is a sprightly comic vein in DiCaprio that allows him to come alive on screen. Scorsese's plodding, joyless 21st Century films (except Hugo) don't allow for that. Some would argue Wolf does that. To me that film is maybe the most joyless of all of them. Crushingly unfunny and depressing because it's about such a dull, depthless character."

This new film sounds unlike anything Scorsese has ever done before. Hoping it's great and allows Leo to shine.

[big ticket]

The collaboration has yielded very disappointing results. DiCaprio looks strained/adrift in a few of the films, and I don't know a single film lover that would place any of these films among Scorsese's best. I posted a more complete thought about their collaboarations on the Flower Moon thread a few years ago:

"Not a single one of the Scorsese/DiCaprio films have worked for me. DiCaprio always looks like he's trying way too hard (Departed, Wolf) or is badly miscast (Aviator, Shutter) in the Scorsese films. He looks like he's acting. Yet he has done believable, vibrant work for other Directors during this same period. Tarantino seems to understand that there is a sprightly comic vein in DiCaprio that allows him to come alive on screen. Scorsese's plodding, joyless 21st Century films (except Hugo) don't allow for that. Some would argue Wolf does that. To me that film is maybe the most joyless of all of them. Crushingly unfunny and depressing because it's about such a dull, depthless character."

This new film sounds unlike anything Scorsese has ever done before. Hoping it's great and allows Leo to shine.

It has been several years since revisiting it, but I have always found Wolf to be career-best work for DiCaprio and exhibits the very things you are hoping to see in his characters, but you acknowledge in your post that it doesn’t hit you as such, to which I say to each their own! (I would also say this probably doesn’t portend well for your enjoyment in the upcoming feature, but perhaps that’s all the better for the rest of us who aren’t on the same page as you.)

[MichaelB]

I haven't seen the series yet, but I saw the talk Miller gave at the NYFF, and one remark that stood out was how Scorsese "knew how to talk to men in power" due to the environment he grew up in. I always wondered how someone who was known to be so shy could navigate Hollywood so well, and that really spoke volumes.

That reminds me of attending a Q&A with Thelma Schoonmaker during which she observed that Michael Powell would have been eaten alive in Hollywood.

[domino harvey]

Who would have possibly been able to play Jordan Belfort as well as DiCaprio?