Scorsese is stupid

D

DannyL

Wild Horses
Re. Taxi Driver (and I suppose Mean Streets), I think it kinda caught or helped define the zeitgeist at the time. Those gritty images of edgy New York street culture that you later see added to by hip hop. Updating noir from the 50s to something relevant.

I rewatched King of Comedy recently. The performances and script are brilliant but I found the central premise hard to relate to 'cos celebrity and entertainment culture has changed so much. It felt a bit like something out of the ark.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Both those movies are still relevant IMO. You can see 'evidence' of this in the success of Joker, which rips them both off.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The other thing that Sopranos did brilliantly was bring his family into it. In The Irishman there's quite a few scenes where DeNeiro's daughter is staring at him so as to suggest she's judging him, but she never actually says anything. The Sopranos explored that feeling of moral ambiguity in his kids, and in his effect on them, and the hypocrisy of his firmly Catholic wife.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
i watched mean streets again recently and have to admit i got a bit bored by the end. i think scorsese is great at the odd sequence (there's a good few in goodfellas! somethingh about that bit where he does a line of coke and you get the blues song coming in at the same time... i tihnk that's his thing, the odd perfect marriage of sound and vision), but over time, you realise a lot of his films don't hang together so well as stories. he's never written his own scripts, which i think makes a difference.

taxi driver, for me, is as much a schrader film as it is a scorsese film.
but then filmmaking should be a collab effort anyway - only really kubrick in that era who was a proper auteur i would say?

i much prefer abel ferrara to scorsese, although he is of course patchy as hell. scorsese famously said of 'bad lieutenant' that it's the film he wished he could have made out of 'last temptation' (absolutely awful film).

i think scorsese's spiritual dimension is a bit lacking. he's kinda just a kid excited about filmmaking, rather than someone doing deep transcendent things, even if that's what he wants to do (wouldn't we all).
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
His films are one thing, but I don't think he's stupid 1) because he's an enthusiastic advocate of Mario Bava and 2) he's a very important person in the rescue and restoration of the films of Powell and Pressburger.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
that's definitely true. he's a proper cinephile alright. i guess he's just not lived enough outside movies.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
i think scorsese's spiritual dimension is a bit lacking. he's kinda just a kid excited about filmmaking, rather than someone doing deep transcendent things, even if that's what he wants to do (wouldn't we all).

Mean Streets, maybe? Though this is mostly Catholic guilt. I remember that scene still with Harvey Keitel and the flame.

I watched a couple of Ousame Sembene (Borom Saarat/Black Girl) films recently that were both Scorsese restorations.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's interesting - a filmmaker has to have a spiritual dimension?

I think that would be the criticism aimed at his movies - that they are just pure sensation. (I've not seen that "Silence" one.) But pure sensation has its good points.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
nah, of course not. filmmakers don't have to be anything. but i think he doesn't quite have one, but maybe he thinks he does.
what do i know anyway.
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
There's a specific group of people who I follow on Twitter who have been lauding him at every turn for a while. I don't get it either. He said the Marvel thing and they were praising him for standing up to a distribution form that was draining the life from the film industry, but he never said any of that, he just thought the movies were shit. I don't know what it is with him.

Taxi Driver, Raging Bull I thought the stories was good novellas. But novels, and masterpieces at that? Never.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
DannyL said:
i think scorsese's spiritual dimension is a bit lacking. he's kinda just a kid excited about filmmaking, rather than someone doing deep transcendent things, even if that's what he wants to do (wouldn't we all).

Mean Streets, maybe? Though this is mostly Catholic guilt. I remember that scene still with Harvey Keitel and the flame.

I watched a couple of Ousame Sembene (Borom Saarat/Black Girl) films recently that were both Scorsese restorations.
Click to expand...

actually a better example would be 'who's that knocking at my door?' than mean streets maybe. i remember the first time i watched it i was totally blown away. but i bet it would be pretty painful to watch again now. it's the film he did before mean streets i think.

but yeah, mean streets definitely does have this very overt dramatic issue that charlie has, in terms of who he wants to be etc. i guess it's just not as good as it could be? or rather, the other bits of the film, like the pool room fight, or the bit where he gets pissed in the club, are more memorable than the flame incident?

dunno. i do really like that film, was just less impressed with it this time around.

whereas i never have that issue with 'king of new york' or 'bad lieutenant'
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
catalog said:
i guess he's just not lived enough outside movies.
Click to expand...

I don't think he's quite as bad in that sense as Tarantino, who also has a really interesting, eclectic, iconoclastic take on film (I've said before that it's a shame he made Django Unchained rather than finish the book he was supposed to be writing about Sergio Corbucci).

I actually think Goodfellas is great and full of life, but how real it is I don't know, and does it matter? It's got its own aesthetic, and fabulous, extravagant performances, etc.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
no, doesn't matter at all. sometimes you're in the right mood for what i would call a proper popcorn movie. i saw 'once upon a time in hollywood' recently at the cinema and had a great time. tried to recreate it with 'joker' but that evening didn't go as well. apart from anything, we were late going in so i couldn't get my usual pink and blue ice blast.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I mean look at the "story" in 2001. If you can make sense of it, that is. (Without reading the cheat sheet.)
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Some of my favourite movies are pretty stupid or light on story. Not to excuse stupidity but movies are more akin to music than novels in some ways.

Take Vertigo, too. Ridiculous story. Sublime movie.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Having said that, I was put off joker by its shallowness. Perhaps because it was trying so hard to appear deep. It gave all the signals of depth without offering any actual depth.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top