Film Popism

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Put some of Scorsese's works against a Marvel film and I struggle to see this big qualitative difference. Marvel is dumber, less demanding and you don't give a shit who actually made the movie, but if you're looking purely at the pictures, what do you actually take away from Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall St other than being entertained for x amount of time? Not even much at that with Goodfellas, as it's one of the most boring movies I've ever seen.

Raging Bull or Taxi Driver obviously have substance and that impregnates the technical stuff with some kind of transcendent meaning. There you feel a real artistic vision and not just that someone has paid attention in film school.

It's really interesting that you thought that about Goodfellas. I'm not a Scorsese fan at all, and sympathetic to a critical view of him, but I thought Goodfellas was nothing if not entertaining. Raging Bull was aggressively dull on the other hand. Mean Streets might have been good at the time but I found it virtually unwatchable.
 

version

Well-known member
I love De Niro's entrance in Mean Streets, but I can never be bothered to rewatch the rest of the film.

 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
ah yeah, that was good, but the rest of it was just like watching the minutiae of the lives of petty crooks in 1970s Little Italy
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
The King of Comedy I absolutely *loved* first time around, but the second time it was kinda dull, though Sandra Bernhard is still very funny. What did she ever see in multimillionaire megastar Madonna, etc?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I never really understood King of Comedy, found it pretty boring if I'm honest. Maybe I was too young when I saw it... and now I'm too old. Gangs of NY though, fuck that was awful, one of the few films I've been unable to finish.
 

version

Well-known member
I remember thinking The Aviator was decent, but haven't seen it in years so dunno what I'd make of it now.
 

sus

Well-known member
But up until around the 70s, most of my favourite films are in some way crassly commercial
Well, to be fair, there wasn't even independent US cinema until New Hollywood in the 70s. I don't know what the situation was like in Britain, tho obviously French New Wave had been around for a while, but my impression is that a great deal of the Orson Welles hagiography is predicated on him being a lone outsider of vision at a time cinema was just plain old commercial

What do you think Owen?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Well, to be fair, there wasn't even independent US cinema until New Hollywood in the 70s. I don't know what the situation was like in Britain, tho obviously French New Wave had been around for a while, but my impression is that a great deal of the Orson Welles hagiography is predicated on him being a lone outsider of vision at a time cinema was just plain old commercial

What do you think Owen?
I believe that the directors who led that New Hollywood thing were influenced by European film from France mainly but also from some independent films from England in the 60s I believe and probably other countries too - Italy I'd guess.
 
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sus

Well-known member
I'm gonna say really nice things about Zoomers in the Zoomer thread so that when the next wave on-boards in a few years they'll worship me, they'll think I was a god
 
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