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jeremy
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 6:02 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Taxi Driver is a great film. Iconic, serious, discomfiting, compelling, salacious...

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Earl
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:55 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 09 Jun 2004 Posts: 2621 Location: Houston
billyweeds wrote:
This orgy of damning Scorsese with faint praise is somewhat annoying to me. He's one of the two greatest living American film directors--IMO, the other being Spielberg--and deserves respect even for his flops, which are ambitious and interesting.


Going back to our Third Eye's TOP 100 FILMS forum, I see that I had three Scorsese films on my list of fifty: Goodfellas at #3, Taxi Driver at #8 and Raging Bull at #14.

I'm struck again, as I was at the time I compiled that list, how prominent New York City is in it. Perhaps some N.Y.C. residents could comment on why it's a place where fascinating movies are so often set.

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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:01 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
marantzo wrote:
GoodFellas an average movie? I must have seen a different GoodFellas.


I guess you and I saw the same one, and Joe was somewhere else.
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Rod
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:15 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/03/whos-that-knocking-at-my-door.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/03/boxcar-bertha-1971.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/03/mean-streets-1973.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/03/taxi-driver-1976-1.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/04/new-york-new-york-1977-1.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/04/raging-bull-1980.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/05/the-color-of-money-1986.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/05/the-last-temptation-of-christ.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/05/goodfellas-1990.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/06/the-age-of-innocence-1993-1.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/06/casino-1995.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/06/bringing-out-the-dead-1999.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/07/gangs-of-new-york-2002-1.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/07/the-aviator-2002.php

http://ferdyonfilms.com/2007/07/the-departed-2006.php

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yambu
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:20 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Earl wrote:
....Perhaps some N.Y.C. residents could comment on why it's a place where fascinating movies are so often set.
You want, mebbe, Des Moines?
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mo_flixx
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:12 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533
Earl wrote:
billyweeds wrote:
This orgy of damning Scorsese with faint praise is somewhat annoying to me. He's one of the two greatest living American film directors--IMO, the other being Spielberg--and deserves respect even for his flops, which are ambitious and interesting.


Going back to our Third Eye's TOP 100 FILMS forum, I see that I had three Scorsese films on my list of fifty: Goodfellas at #3, Taxi Driver at #8 and Raging Bull at #14.

I'm struck again, as I was at the time I compiled that list, how prominent New York City is in it. Perhaps some N.Y.C. residents could comment on why it's a place where fascinating movies are so often set.


NYC sure beats the locations of "Fargo" or "Lars and the Real Girl."

My all time favorite location is movies about movies that are _really_ shot in Hollywood (preferably period Hollywood).
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
marantzo wrote:
GoodFellas an average movie? I must have seen a different GoodFellas.


Clearly you missed the one directed by Scorsese. The movie is nowhere in the category of Taxi Driver.

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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:07 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Joe Vitus wrote:
marantzo wrote:
GoodFellas an average movie? I must have seen a different GoodFellas.


Clearly you missed the one directed by Scorsese. The movie is nowhere in the category of Taxi Driver.


IMO Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Mean Streets are excellent but somewhat overrated. GoodFellas is where all the chickens come home to roost in a highly commercial, fiercely entertaining, and still magnificently artistic bundle.

My second favorite Scorsese is The Departed, and my third The King of Comedy. I obviously deviate from the majority Scorsese-wise.
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jeremy
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:25 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Goodfellas is a marvellous exploration of time, character and place, but it is relatively narrow in scope and answers most of its own questions. In my opinion, Taxi Driver is much more open-ended and interesting.

_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:28 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Billy,

I'm not arguing about what Scorsese you and I might enjoy most. I enjoyed After Hours. What I'm saying is that the movies Scorsese made up to Raging Bull explored new territory either psychologically or in terms of technical composition.

Anyone could have made GoodFellas, and with its by-the-numbers crime high life/dangerous friends/pay the price script, it pretty much did what every gangster movie does. And fed the nation's love-of-crime-from-a-distance without any new insights or even any insights at all. There was nothing adventuresome or unique about it.

That places it light years away from the detailed exploration of Travis Bickle's inner life or the uncomfortable nature of King of Comedy, or the stylistic challenges of Alice Doesn't Live Here, Anymore, Raging Bull, and yes even the deplored New York, New York.

GoodFellas wasn't a step forward. It wasn't even standing in place. It was a movement backwords in his aesthetic development.

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yambu
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Joe Vitus wrote:
....Anyone could have made GoodFellas, and with its by-the-numbers crime high life/dangerous friends/pay the price script, it pretty much did what every gangster movie does. And fed the nation's love-of-crime-from-a-distance without any new insights or even any insights at all. There was nothing adventuresome or unique about it.....
What was unique and insightful about it was showing the parasite nature of those scumbags. In this respect it is far above the fairy tale Godfather or any other gangster movie, pre-"Gangsters". Moving goods into the night club and taking them right out the back door, leaving the poor schmo owner with the bill, then torching the place for the insurance. Also, the depiction of the soldiers and their wives as less than prosperous. (Those mols with bad teeth.) These were the strengths of the book "Wiseguy" by Nicholas Pileggi, to which Scorsese was faithful.


Last edited by yambu on Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:04 am; edited 1 time in total
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:02 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
I don't think, after De Palma's Scarface, that GoodFellas did anything particularly unique in picturing mobsters as parasitic scumbags. Even if they were pictured as middle-class rather than super rich scumbags.

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yambu
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:05 am Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Scarface was shit.
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jeremy
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:23 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
yambu wrote:
Joe Vitus wrote:
....Anyone could have made GoodFellas, and with its by-the-numbers crime high life/dangerous friends/pay the price script, it pretty much did what every gangster movie does. And fed the nation's love-of-crime-from-a-distance without any new insights or even any insights at all. There was nothing adventuresome or unique about it.....
What was unique and insightful about it was showing the parasite nature of those scumbags. In this respect it is far above the fairy tale Godfather or any other gangster movie, pre-"Gangsters". Moving goods into the night club and taking them right out the back door, leaving the poor schmo owner with the bill, then torching the place for the insurance. Also, the depiction of the soldiers and their wives as less than prosperous. (Those mols with bad teeth.) These were the strengths of the book "Wiseguy" by Nicholas Pileggi, to which Scorsese was faithful.


I'd agree that Goddfellas was a needed antidote to the romantacism of theGodfather films, which I always felt usurped the essential nobility of the immigrants' story for its own ends.

For all its ridiculousness, I quite liked Scarface though.

_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.
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billyweeds
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:26 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
My truth:

GoodFellas is great.

The Godfather is greater.

Scarface is shit.
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