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"Psycho" Named Second Best Movie of All Time...What's the First?

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
82 replies | jump to latest

In my net surfing to find interesting Psycho-related topics, I found it in an article entitled:

"Chinatown named Best Movie of All Time."

Exciting news for Chinatown. Exciting news for Psycho.

But I clicked to see who was doing the choosing (and it was in 2010!!) and it seems to be a small group of critics working for ...two net papers? (The Observer and The Guardian.)

I mean, how many voters IS that? Six?

The group chose these as the seven greatest movies of all time:

1) Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
=2) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
=2) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
4) Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1976)
5) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
6) Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
7) Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

That's a pretty whack list. Just a paltry two foreign films on there. Oh, and Psycho had to share its Number Two slot with Andrei Rublev(outta nowhere choice, yes?)

2001 seems a natural for such lists; OK. I've never felt that Apocalypse Now ever added up to a fully coherent film(its been released in several versions), and Brando was anti-climax personified, but...it seems to have its lovers.

And with Polanski, Woody, and Hitchcock in top slots...well, that's kind of a Bad Sexual Man hall of fame right there(except, Hitchcock didn't actually physically DO anything, he's in for verbal fouls.)

OK, so the poll is minor, narrow in vote, etc.

But its a list to make one feel good in some ways.

There's Psycho. No Vertigo. I like Vertigo, but I love Psycho and I've always felt it is Hitchcock's most "something" film. I'll take: most important.

Chinatown and Psycho are next to each other on one other list, as I recall: the first AFI 100 Greatest Films of All Time List -- the one from the 90's. I'm guess-remembering:

17. Psycho
18. Chinatown

...but I'd have to go check the list.

Psycho and Chinatown are rather properly "paired" in certain ways. They are both thrillers, but very INTELLIGENT thrillers, though I would say that Psycho played better to less discriminating shocker crowds than Chinatown did.

Still, Chinatown is not without its own shocks. The incest in Chinatown is landmark like the shower murder in Psycho is. And perhaps even more linked to the knifeplay in Psycho is the scene where guest cameo Polanski sticks a knife blade into Nicholson's nostril and pulls up. Everybody FELT that, and it probably should end up on the list with Great Shock Violence Moments in the Movies (Shower Scene, Alien chest burster.......coke bottle in The Long Goodbye?)

Consider this: After that knife cuts through Nicholson's nostril(for being too "nosy" as a private eye), he finishes 2/3 of the remaining movie with either a big bandage on his nose(blocking his then-leading man handsome looks) or stiches hanging out when the bandage is removed. THAT's landmark, too.

And thus I'm reminded of something "Psycho" screenwriter Joe Stefano said about the knife victims in Psycho: "While they were being slashed, they may have been more worried about surviving with disfigurement than dying." Especially Arbogast. Imagine for a moment that he had survived his ordeal, after getting his face slashed, punched out Norma/Norman in some sort of fight at the top of the stairs. He'd still have that slash on his face; he'd go through life as "Scarface Arbogast."

But I digress.

Psycho and Chinatown rather "seesaw" in my estimation. With Psycho being made under "simpler writing rules" in Hays Code 1960, it can look more childish and "basic" than the complex, history-based Chinatown. But Chinatown rather hedges its bets and plays a bit too sedate and talky for its own good(contrary to popular belief, Chinatown got more than a few "meh" reviews in 1974, the Time critics and, I think, Roger Ebert, felt it was a weak riff on Bogart era noir.)

Still, I'm toying with these films; both are major favorites of mine. Which reminds me: a movie can be the greatest movie ever made and still have flaws: the TV-ish expository scenes in Psycho; the rather too-pat (to me) downbeat ending of Chinatown.

But the greatness of BOTH films far outweighs their weaknesses, which aren't really weaknesses at all. they are part of how these films WORK.

And this: Chinatown shares things with Psycho, but it also shares something big with Vertigo: both films are about a cop turned private detective who got somebody killed in his past, tries to help someone new...and gets THAT person killed. Both films end with the "hero" near-catatonic and emotionally destroyed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Nasty note in passing: When Chinatown opened in the summer of 1974(THAT was a summer movie back then), Paramount put a two-page ad in the LA Times with all the rave reviews piled up over the two pages. But the biggest headline from a review went right across the top of both pages: "FORGET HITCHCOCK - WE'VE GOT POLANSKI!"

i always thought that was mean -- Hitchcock was alive, living in LA and probably read the LA times. And he'd given Paramount some of its biggest hits and classics. I was a Hitchcock fan, and I was bugged by that ad.

Oh, well, forget it, Jake...its Hollywood.

[–] swanstep (2616) 5 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Yikes, did Paramount have young Friedkin writing their ad-copy? I assume that when you make an ad. like that/choose a quote like that part of what you're going for *is* an outraged reaction. Even people taking offense at your ugly gloating is still people talking about your movie.

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Its funny...I remember when I read it at the time(and I was young and not very sophisticated), I just saw it as overly zealous....hey, we've got a movie BETTER than Hitchcock to sell!

Still, that it stung me all these years later matters...

BTW...if you look at a 1960 Los Angeles Times on the day that Psycho opened in August of 1960 in LA(and I have), you will find that the ad barely took up half of one page...less than that.

But by the 70's, a big debut took up at LEAST two HUGE pages of the LA Times "Calendar" section. Usually festooned with every rave review the makers could find.

Paramount did this a lot. I recall how my favorite movie of 1977(Black Sunday, the blimp movie) got the two big pages...with lots of "This is better than Jaws!" reviews. The funniest(and it was serious): "The big silver blimp is like the shark in the air." Anyway, THAT two page Paramount LA Times ad didn't work. Black Sunday underperformed.

And this: alas, Universal could only see its way clear , even in the 70's, to buy a one-page ad in the LA Times for Family Plot on its opening day -- and less than that for Frenzy four years earlier. I've looked, and/or I kept them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Obviously too both shock-jocks and politicians like Trump seem to thrive on negative reactions to their verbal crudities and cruelties. Some people just have a talent for shading others & lots of other people dig the combativeness in Hollywood and media generally, and in politics.

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Its come to this. It was coming a long time, and yes, Trump has taken it to an art from the bulliest pulpit there is...but honestly, trolling and flaming and name calling is rather the coin of the realm these days. (Was it Samantha Bee who called Trump's daughter..."the c word"?) I mean, pro wrestling call-outs aren't this bad...

The coin of the realm for some. Not for many, many, many of us.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

(contrary to popular belief, Chinatown got more than a few "meh" reviews in 1974, the Time critics and, I think, Roger Ebert, felt it was a weak riff on Bogart era noir.)

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I didn't feel comfortable with that sentence after I wrote it, so I did some checking around.

It wasn't Roger Ebert who felt it was a weak riff on Bogart era noir. Ebert gave it four stars. It was Vincent Canby of the NYT (though even Canby wasn't quite as rough on the film as I remembered.) Conversely, Canby thought Hitchcock's Frenzy was Top Ten material -- maybe Canby should have written: "Forget Polanski -- We've Got Hitchcock!"

I can't find the Time review, but it WAS pretty rough. I recall phrases like "Faye Dunaway does a carry-out Blanche DuBois" or how "it looks great at a distance, but up close the seams are showing." Paraphrased, both of those.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But by the 70's, a big debut took up at LEAST two HUGE pages of the LA Times "Calendar" section. Usually festooned with every rave review the makers could find.

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I have to add this.

In the 80's, when, I think Michael Eisner took over management at Disney and created the adult "Touchstone division," the first Touchstone film(or one of the first) was "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

It was a modest production, purposely cast with lower-cost faded stars(Richard Dreyfuss, Bette Midler, Nick Nolte.) A "nice little movie."

But Eisner and Touchstone gave that baby big giant two-page ads in the LA Times calendar section for WEEKS. Maybe not every day, but definitely every movie-going Friday. Week after week, huge ads that conveyed the idea that "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" was the mega-comedy event of ALL TIME.

It worked. They got a hit. But I wonder what profit they got after all those ads ran...

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Ordered "best" lists always strike me as I've-got-nothing-better-to-do-with-my-time-today exercises. I have trouble with even the concept of a single "best" or "greatest" film. Equally as great as Chinatown or Psycho are Casablanca, The Best Years Of Our Lives, Sunset Blvd, Cabaret, The Life and Death Of Colonel Blimp, Singin' In the Rain and (yes) Citizen Kane, among others that don't happen to spring to mind at the moment (in my opinion, that is...because I've got nothing better to do with my time today). Just how is the measure of one taken against the others?

Is Chinatown a better film than Singin' In the Rain simply because it's serious and the latter is frivolous? Each is nearly flawless in concept and realization, succeeding every bit as well as the other in achieving its goals. What elevates Annie Hall, the only "light" entry of the bunch, over, say, The Palm Beach Story, arguably an equally funny yet more tightly-constructed examination - through an equally absurdist lens - of the trajectories of romantic relationships? Does the epic ambition of Tarkovsky's 3-hour-plus Andrei Rublev truly outshine Grigoriy Chukhray's stunningly beautiful and profoundly affecting hour-and-a-half Ballada o soldate?

All rhetorical and probably unanswerable questions, of course, reflecting only the arbitrary and subjective nature of such judgments.

Because I've got nothing better to do with my time today. Well, I have, but just don't feel like doing it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Ordered "best" lists always strike me as I've-got-nothing-better-to-do-with-my-time-today exercises

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I agree with you there, but I know my own "lists" (which I've shared quite a bit around here) organize in a somewhat different fashion:

Each year, I usually have a favorite movie of that year. And the list starts, more or less , in 1950 (because I simply don't have a lot of "depth" in the 20s,30s, 40s.) These lists ARE meaningful to me, because they tell me almost "instinctively" .."oh yeah, that year, most of the movies i saw are 'one and done' but I'll NEVER forget Wait Until Dark."

Or Psycho. Or Terms of Endearment. Or LA Confidential.

The "funniest" thing about my own ranking of favorite films "over all time" is that I determined a few years ago that only three get to be at the top , in order:

ONE: Psycho
TWO: North by Northwest
THREE: The Wild Bunch

and I "knew" that, without knowing WHY. Honestly, why isn't The Godfather up there, too? The answer as I determined it was:

Psycho, NXNW, and The Wild Bunch were all "massively" cinematic(in a way the nicely talky Godfather is not) and all of them felt like they were the "ultimate" in what was done in those genres.

But time matters. I was fascinated recently to determine that I saw NXNW and The Wild Bunch within two years of each other(September 1967; July 1969 and Psycho (the first time) and Frenzy, within SIX MONTHS of each other(fall 1971 versus June 1972.) And yet, Psycho was on my radar from 1965 on, and gets "first place" for all the years it haunted me unseen before I saw it. THAT's why it is Number One.

Beyond those top three? Well I've got almost 70 years of once-a-year classics to "browse" in no particular order.

And constructing THOSE into a list would be "nothing better to do with my time."

Still, Psycho, NXNW, The Wild Bunch...they hold top slots forever. Largely because of when they came into my life(very young) and how excited they made me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As to my OP, well, I guess it still matters that somebody somewhere put Psycho that high.

And that's it.

But wait: I guess each of the 7 is in a "category": mystery, horror, SciFi, War, etc...not necessarily meant to be put in order.

Oh, well...lists, what are you gonna do with them...

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

In the cold light of the next day, my original remarks suddenly seem contemptuous. Certainly wasn't my intention.

We all have our favorites: films for which we have affection, admiration and/or carry special meaning, which may or may not have anything to do with objective evaluations of their quality...if there can be such a thing. I guess the closest anyone can get to that is acquiring a broad, experience-based education - self-taught for most of us, I imagine - from which a sense of discernment may be developed, aided in the best of cases by film makers themselves explaining their creative processes and intentions of their craft. Those are always helpful in gaining insights into the hows and whys of what works, or doesn't. On the other hand, it's also what some people call "film snobbery."

You know that old saying about, "I don't know art but I know what I like;" a Perry Mason episode we saw a couple days ago had a nice riff on that, with Perry asking Paul Drake, "Know much about art, Paul?" Drake answered helplessly, "I don't even know what I like."

Perhaps it's been on my mind in the wake of those recent marathon sessions on the Bullitt board and the importance jasonbourne placed on "ratings." That's a process I've just never known how to negotiate or even wrap my brain around, and so wouldn't have the first clue whether Chinatown is a better film than Psycho, or if either tops Casablanca and so forth.

Rather than a man without a country, you can call me a snob without a list.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But time matters. I was fascinated recently to determine that I saw NXNW and The Wild Bunch within two years of each other(September 1967; July 1969 and Psycho (the first time) and Frenzy, within SIX MONTHS of each other(fall 1971 versus June 1972.)

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And my point here is that in terms of "actual release":

NXNW came out ten years before The Wild Bunch
Psycho came out 12 years before Frenzy

And yet I saw these films rather "all bunched together" at a key time in my movie-going life. I had "Psycho" newly fresh in my mind when I saw Frenzy. Probably why I have linked them so closely.

Odd: Psycho and The Wild Bunch are clearly linked by historic violence; but NXNW is rather sedate. Yet all three are EXCITING. I recall Joe Esterhas saying when he saw Psycho as a teenager in Ohio in 1960 on release, "it was the most exciting movie I'd ever seen in my life." Well, that goes for NXNW and The Wild Bunch, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

In the cold light of the next day, my original remarks suddenly seem contemptuous. Certainly wasn't my intention.

--

No worries. I get your point. Seriously, for me, no way I can construct a "ten best of the year" list, particularly given my mainstream tastes.

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We all have our favorites: films for which we have affection, admiration and/or carry special meaning, which may or may not have anything to do with objective evaluations of their quality...if there can be such a thing.

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Damn skippy. Capricorn One, Used Cars, The Magnificent Seven 2016...these are fun movies but on nobody's "best" lists -- though I did find a chapter on Used Cars as a great film in some film book recently.

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I guess the closest anyone can get to that is acquiring a broad, experience-based education - self-taught for most of us, I imagine - from which a sense of discernment may be developed, aided in the best of cases by film makers themselves explaining their creative processes and intentions of their craft. Those are always helpful in gaining insights into the hows and whys of what works, or doesn't. On the other hand, it's also what some people call "film snobbery."

--

Well, I steer clear of the phrase snobbery. I've said before that with regard to "true art films," I believe that the liking for them is likely something "genetic," that someone is born with and has a sensitivity to. The rest of us are caught up in entertainment, and, at best, good "craft," I suppose.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

You know that old saying about, "I don't know art but I know what I like;" a Perry Mason episode we saw a couple days ago had a nice riff on that, with Perry asking Paul Drake, "Know much about art, Paul?" Drake answered helplessly, "I don't even know what I like."

--

Ha. HERE's some weird personal trivia. Back in the 80's, I would watch b/w Perry Mason re-runs, often with a significant other,who revealed something to me: she had a lustful crush on...Paul Drake! aka William Hopper(Hedda's son), who, to me, had a somewhat overfed and early-aged appearance...was his hair blonde or white? Anyway, I'd turn on a Perry episode, and Hopper/Drake would come on, and she'd make swooning noises -- "Ohhh..there he IS!"

I found it quite funny. She's long gone in my past, but whenever I see Paul Drake on Perry episode today, I think: "What a handsome man."

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Perhaps it's been on my mind in the wake of those recent marathon sessions on the Bullitt board and the importance jasonbourne placed on "ratings."

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Well, its how things are done. I read recently that "Joker" has lost its "certified fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Oh no! But that means more critics dislike it than like it and that COULD affect Oscar chances.

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That's a process I've just never known how to negotiate or even wrap my brain around, and so wouldn't have the first clue whether Chinatown is a better film than Psycho, or if either tops Casablanca and so forth.

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Well, I tell ya -- I think that Chinatown is more well-produced and better photographed than Psycho, and with a more intelligent political/sexual script. But I DO think that Psycho -- in its historic, fantastic, scream-inducing way -- is a bigger deal than Chinatown, if not necessarily a better film.

I love them both!

--
Rather than a man without a country, you can call me a snob without a list.

--

Hah..but...nah. You ain't no snob.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

I didn't think you were snobby on Bullitt, but this post seems to be. Movie evaluations are subjective by most movie goers. I mean one should see it in a theater to really be able to have a good opinion on it. However, we can't do that with most movies, so rating a video is fine. It could be somewhat objective if one learns something about how to rate, describe, and evaluate a movie. Notice I said "rate." I suppose there is some film snobbery if they have learned the art of wriiting reviews and evaluations of movies.

With art, you start with what you like and then study art and then it's not as easy anymore. You may get to the point of you do not know what you like anymore. However, one eventually gets back to what they like, but are able to hold it back in order to try and objectively evaluate a piece of art.

As for Bullitt, you misunderstand what I meant by ratings. I meant just trying to understand your taste, what movies you like, and rate highly. It felt like I was trying to pull teeth just to find out if you liked Bullitt or not. I would think if someone likes a movie, even if it's crappy and got panned by most critics, then they would "rate" it higher. At least, I would understand better where you were coming from.

>>Rather than a man without a country, you can call me a snob without a list.<<

How can you be a snob, if you cannot rate a movie. Do you know how?

This link may help even though you are not writing a critique or movie review -- https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Movie-Review.

If you find you knew what you liked before, but now question it, then you are on your way to become a better movie evaluator and reviewer.

Maybe you are a No Country for Old Men -- http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/no-country-for-old-men-2007/large_6o0UWX2naW7HK45PDNYmoMIk5qs.jpg. No insult. Just a play on your words.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"...just to find out if you liked Bullitt or not... if you cannot rate a movie. Do you know how?"

- I believe I've made both of those explicitly clear.

"I would think if someone likes a movie, even if it's crappy and got panned by most critics, then they would "rate" it higher. At least, I would understand better where you were coming from."

- We simply happen to think differently about how we evaluate given films, that's all. I can't relate to how you "rate" or compare films, and you can't relate to how I evaluate each on its own terms, and that's okay.

There are any number for which I have great affection in spite of being not terribly good, and equally as many I recognize as being fine film crafting of the highest order, but which I don't like at all. That's being both subjective and objective.

"If you find you knew what you liked before, but now question it..."

- That rarely happens. Once I like something, it tends to stay liked, even when decades of experience might reveal its shortcomings. I'm comfortable with an ability to separate cinematic accomplishment from personal affection. One has little to do with the other.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

>>- We simply happen to think differently about how we evaluate given films, that's all. I can't relate to how you "rate" or compare films, and you can't relate to how I evaluate each on its own terms, and that's okay.<<

Yes, we are different. I sort of understand what you do now, but since I didn't know you, I did not know what you thought of Bullitt aside from explaining how you thought the story went. Thus, I didn't know whether you thought it was average, below average, or better than average. The wiki link states not to leave a reader guessing what you thought of a movie. It also says to move beyond the obvious plot analysis. Moreover, it says some movies do not have great or compelling plots, but that doesn't mean the movie was bad. That applies to me with Bullitt, and I discussed its cinematography, tone, music and sound (a little), and acting.

I'm not saying one has to write a review which the article was about, but it touches upon what to review.

When it comes to rating a film, I am rating it on its own merits. I can follow a rating system like IMDB which this forum uses or like the one on Rotten Tomatoes. I think I was able to explain what qualities people look for or gravitate towards in their films with the wiki link. It's more subjective imho for most moviegoers. We do not have the knowledge or writing skills of a professional movie critic. Thus, becoming familiar and using IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes is a valid way to let someone else know about your taste in movies. I mean if someone gives an 8 movie a 10, then I know it impacted them more favorably than the consensus of movie goers' opinions. I'd be interested to listen to them explain why they rated it so high.

Continued

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

After rating a movie on its merits like that shown in the wiki link, then I have something to compare with other movies using the same rating system. I can compare movies of the same or different genre, or some other grouping like award winning movies or palme d'or winners. That's explained here -- https://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Film-Buff#Learning-about-Film_sub.

>>There are any number for which I have great affection in spite of being not terribly good, and equally as many I recognize as being fine film crafting of the highest order, but which I don't like at all. That's being both subjective and objective.

"If you find you knew what you liked before, but now question it..."

- That rarely happens. Once I like something, it tends to stay liked, even when decades of experience might reveal its shortcomings. I'm comfortable with an ability to separate cinematic accomplishment from personal affection. One has little to do with the other.<<

I'm not a mind reader, so how would I know what movie you thought great (even if it was rated low) or bad (even if it was rated high) if I do not know your rating of it. One person's great could mean another person's mediocre. Anyway, I don't want to get into the rating thing again. All I can try to understand from you is your words to describe it.

Here's a way to pick a film. It's in depth, but sometimes, I just go by recommendation. However, I'll usually watch a trailer or read a review before committing to it. If someone who is close or a friend wants to watch a certain movie, then I'll usually go since I know their tastes or enjoy spending time with them. If their tastes doesn't agree with mine, then I may still go, but may try to get out of it if there's something I know will not agree with me or I'm not in the mood.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I'm not a mind reader, so how would I know what movie you thought great (even if it was rated low) or bad (even if it was rated high) if I do not know your rating of it. One person's great could mean another person's mediocre. Anyway, I don't want to get into the rating thing again. All I can try to understand from you is your words to describe it."

- Give ya three examples, all of which happen to be Scorsese films: Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; Goodfellas. Each one boldly and intelligently scripted, expertly produced and skillfully crafted and performed. All three are fine, highly regarded films, and deservedly so, for reasons I well understand. And I didn't enjoy a single minute of any of 'em. Saw each only once when new, and never care to see them again.

So: objective viewpoint...very good films; subjective viewpoint...I don't like them.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

>>- Give ya three examples, all of which happen to be Scorsese films: Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; Goodfellas. Each one boldly and intelligently scripted, expertly produced and skillfully crafted and performed. All three are fine, highly regarded films, and deservedly so, for reasons I well understand. And I didn't enjoy a single minute of any of 'em. Saw each only once when new, and never care to see them again.

So: objective viewpoint...very good films; subjective viewpoint...I don't like them. <<

Both are subjective viewpoints. One seems like a consensus of opinion as all three are rated highly on IMDB. Maybe you decided to go see them because they had good reviews. Then, you say, "Saw each only once when new, and never care to see them again."

The last sentence is what makes me say that I'm not a mind reader. What makes you not want to see them again? The director? The actors? The genre? Violence? Tone? Oh, I thought they were good movies, but my policy is to only watch a movie once? And so on.

Is that what you're going to put down on your review? You give a favorable and positive "objective" statement and then give a terse, negative "subjective" statement.

I have no idea as to why you "I don't like them." You're entitled to not watch them again and say "I don't like them." However, you also agreed that they were good worthy films based on what was supposedly your "objective" viewpoint. Why did you go see them in the first place? Are you going to avoid Scorcese movies? What about Shutter Island? The Wolf of Wall Street? The Departed? Hugo? The Last Temptation of Christ?

I'm not a Scorcese fan, but have seen several of his movies. I liked Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, but hated Raging Bull.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

- Give ya three examples, all of which happen to be Scorsese films: Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; Goodfellas. Each one boldly and intelligently scripted, expertly produced and skillfully crafted and performed. All three are fine, highly regarded films, and deservedly so, for reasons I well understand. And I didn't enjoy a single minute of any of 'em. Saw each only once when new, and never care to see them again.

So: objective viewpoint...very good films; subjective viewpoint...I don't like them.

---

A bit of surprise about Scorsese there, doghouse. I'm almost 50/50 "with you and not with you."

As a starter, no, I've never liked Raging Bull and I was shocked/bugged when some group of American critics named it "the greatest movie of the 80's" in an end of decade poll. First of all, Raging Bull came out in 1980 and seemed like more of a 70's movie anyway -- it really didn't "speak to the decade." Lucas/Spielberg did; hell, John Hughes(The Breakfast Club) did. But not Raging Bull.

But what I really didn't like was the film-long emphasis on DeNiro's loutish, cruel, violent, jealous, and especially DUMB portrayal of LaMotta -- including how bad he was to his wife and to his brother in law Pesci. I had trouble WATCHING these people, and the fight scenes -- however brilliant -- were little solace.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I guess I'd better confront my issues with Robert DeNiro seeming "dumb" in movies -- and a bit in real life -- for decades now.

First of all, I'm no brain surgeon myself(as my writing proves) and I'm often angry to read political screeds about how dumb the other side is. To me asserting one's own smartness as a winning quality is a losing quality. Not to mention, some "dumb" people are multi-millionaires, so how much does "smart" matter ?

I'm reminded of the final fight between smart psycho villain Dennis Hopper and good guy Keanu Reeves in "Speed":

Hopper: I'm smarter than you! I'm SMARTER than you!!
(Keanu manages to decapitate Hopper's head off his body.)
Reeves: Yeah? Well, I'm TALLER!

But DeNiro -- in many of his roles for Scorsese, and elsewhere -- has always sounded a little dumb to me. And I wasn't sure if it was an act.

DeNiro's BEST dumb guy is the sleepy deadpan ex-con in QT's Jackie Brown, who seems entirely harmless until he turns murderous ...but then returns to being sleepy and deadpan:

Samuel L. Jackson: Is she dead?
DeNiro: Uh..yeah..well..pretty much. Yeah.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So...Raging Bull. Not a favorite film at all. (Though hey: Scorsese has shown that he "cut" the one LaMotta/Sugar Ray fight EXACTLY to the shower scene montage.)

And this: for all of his articulate and wide-ranging knowledge of(and love of) films and directors of all types, Scorsese himself kinda/sorta makes the same dese-dem-and-dose violent movies over and over again. He has earned the cred to speak well of other directors by directing some classics himself and yet -- the true "winners" in his collection ARE crime movies: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver...(a leap to) GoodFellas....Cape Fear..Casino...The Departed....The Wolf of Wall Street....The Irishman.

With GoodFellas, Casino and The Departed, Scorsese found his groove: these movies are very violent AND very funny; the cinematics are dazzling, the soundtracks keep everything moving.

And in my case, I have watched(and can watch, and WILL watch) GoodFellas, Casino, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street again and again and again. I'm expecting The Irishman will meet this criteria, too.

Harder to watch have been: Alice, New York, New York(classic song, boring movie and DeNiro is DUMB and jealous again), that one with Nick Cage about ambulance drivers, The Age of Innocence(THAT struck me as a stunt -- "I can do Merchant-Ivory"), Shutter Island(Leo looks like a kid wearing a grown ups overcoat and suit.)

And there are some Scorseses I just haven't seen: Christ, Hugo, Silence.

I kinda liked the very weird 80's movies "The King of Comedy"(so famous in its way) and After Hours...but...they aren't as fun as his crime movies.

---

That said: Scorsese's crime films alone make him " a great director" to me; he earned his stripes(and with Raging Bull, too.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And this:

I separate "Taxi Driver" from:

GoodFellas
Casino
The Departed
The Wolf of Wall Street
The Irishman(sight unseen)

because...its an early, "separate" very arty, VERY sick movie in which Scorsese(guided by Paul Schrader's script and supplanted by Herrmann's final score) is reaching for greatness at an early age, Citizen Kane-style, and kind of nailing it.

Taxi Driver is funny, too -- the famous "You Talkin' To Me" scene, and Peter Boyle's hilariously banal struggle to impart words of wisdom to DeNiro -- have big laughs. But Scorsese hadn't yet picked up the "lighter touch" for humor that marks his gangster movies. Taxi Driver is a "gutter level" art horror film.

In anticipation of The Irishman debuting on Netflix, they are running a few Scorsese films free. I watched Taxi Driver the other night. I was reminded of its greatness, I was reminded of its squalor, I was reminded of the idiocy of the DeNiro character in taking Cybill Shepard to a porno movie -- and I also clearly decided: "Joker" is a Disney movie compared to the docudrama you-are-there sickness of "Taxi Driver."

And this chilling moment:

DeNiro has saved "child prostitute" Jodie Foster from baddies -- but we hear a letter written by her father who took her back from NYC back to the Midwest with her mother. And it is clear: these parents are creeps(and more the age of Foster's GRANDPARENTS.)

The chilling line read by the father from his letter: "I can assure you that we have taken steps to ensure that Iris never runs away AGAIN."

What, exactly, does that mean? I'm sure its not good....

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

I find very little with which to take issue in your remarks.

About Raging Bull: "I had trouble WATCHING these people, and the fight scenes -- however brilliant -- were little solace."

About Taxi Driver: "...a "gutter level" art horror film...I was reminded of its greatness, I was reminded of its squalor..."

I'm sure it comes down simply to matters of personal taste; there's just so little to which I can relate in these milieu in ways that made them accessible, and found I cared less and less as the films went on about what happened to or with these people, in spite of the cinematic artistry and skill with which they were depicted.

It's rather like westerns. I always say the only tools a director needs to create stirring cinema is a camera and some horses; nevertheless, most of that genre simply don't fall within my bailiwick. I can spot a good one, even when it doesn't get my campfire going.

And there's something about the way Scorsese wallows in the atmospheres of those three that induces disengagement on my part. There are other films portraying equally disturbed, violent, corrupt or otherwise unattractive individuals that open them up for intriguing examination and measures of understanding, if not empathy or sympathy, in even the worst of them. Both are valid approaches, but the first just isn't to my taste.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I find very little with which to take issue in your remarks.

--

Well, thank you.

I think the thing with Scorcese is that, in his initial "artist's heyday" with Mean Streets, Alice, and then the Big One(Taxi Driver) and then (less New York, New York) the OTHER big one (Raging Bull) , he was a critic's darling but turning in very dark unsavory material. Taxi Driver at least had psycho-horror elements and some comedy scenes; but Raging Bull was an unremitting downer with a very offputtng protagonist...and, dare I say, a pretty misogynist viewpoint(oh LaMotta was looked down on , but we still had to watch him beat his wife.)

Anyway, Scorsese clearly had incredible "cinematic chops"(how his camera moved, the fast edits, the narration, the music choices) but used them in the service of very unpalatable stories(with DeNiro anchoring the good and the bad among them.)

Came 1990 and "GoodFellas" -- I think -- its like Scorsese began a whole new career. Bigger budgets. More glossy(especially Cape Fear and Casino.) DeNiro sharing the screen with newbies like Ray Liotta, Nick Nolte, and Sharon Stone. But above all: more ENTERTAINING movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

About Raging Bull: "I had trouble WATCHING these people, and the fight scenes -- however brilliant -- were little solace."

About Taxi Driver: "...a "gutter level" art horror film...I was reminded of its greatness, I was reminded of its squalor..."

I'm sure it comes down simply to matters of personal taste; there's just so little to which I can relate in these milieu in ways that made them accessible, and found I cared less and less as the films went on about what happened to or with these people, in spite of the cinematic artistry and skill with which they were depicted.

---

That's exactly how I felt about...Raging Bull. Taxi Driver had more going for it (the Herrmann score; Cybill Shepard even as I didn't much LIKE her, Peter Boyle's bit), but it was really "down and dirty." (Again, Joker is a weak facsimile.)

And this: there's a bit with likely a "real street performer" in Taxi Driver. His hair is either wet plastic or slicked down with a drum of oil, but he's very, very creepy to look at, and he's a REAL GUY, just captured on the street in 1975. He's playing an improvised drum and he says something knowledgable about the song he's about to beat out but -- he's creepy. He's the essence of Taxi Driver. Brilliant, but a bit stomach-churning.

And no, I found it hard to care about DeNiro as EITHER Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta. Or Rupert Pupkin for that matter. DeNiro was a great actor who unfortunately connected all too well with these creepy people.

But soon, he was making Rocky and Bullwinkle and Meet the Fockers and he became safe for all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

A little "positivity" on Martin Scorsese.

I've talked about how in some years, my favorite is a movie I wait all year to see once it goes into production..I just KNOW its going to be my favorite, and usually it is.

So it was with: The Departed.

It was the cast, mainly: Jack Nicholson(in HIS first Scorsese film) young Leo and young Matt(I grudgingly knew they were top stars, and here, they are.) Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin(a supportive comedy cop team with a serious edge.) Martin Sheen as the head cop trailing Nicholson's gang boss. And a Big Guy British actor I really like -- Ray Winstone(Sexy Beast) as gangster Nicholson's main henchman.

I KNEW seeing all those guys (and Vera Farmiga crashing the Boys Club) in a Scorsese gangster movie would be fun -- and the plot(from the Chinese film Infernal Affairs) sounded like Pure Hitchcock: the cops have a mole in the mob; the mob has a mole with the cops -- which mole will be found out first? (And the mole in the mob face MUCH WORSE punishment if found out.)

The movie won Scorsese his much-delayed Best Director Oscar(and Best Picture to boot) and some felt this was silly with Taxi Driver and Raging Bull on his resume.

I'm not so sure. The Departed sure was more entertaining than those movies(and DeNiro's "dumbth" was nowhere in sight), and extremely intricate in the telling. Scorsese shot and edited the film with real sophistication, cross-cutting within scenes to other scenes. The musical soundtrack was great. (Yep, the Stones were great, as was my favorite Beach Boys song, Sail On Sailor.)

And Nicholson was great -- a "return to form" with his 100 different face muscles twitching here and there and his smooth-as-silk voice running the show.

Yeah, I think that The Departed was more worthy of Best Director and Best Picture than a LOT of Scorsese movies.

But this: even with all that starpower and the screws-tightening plot in The Departed...I like the similar and less starry LA Confidential better. Something about the "levels" in LA Confidential and less need to service the stars.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And The Wolf of Wall Street:

Violent murders are replaced with sex scenes, but the movie is still about a criminal enterprise(penny stock scams) and perhaps my attempt below at a description of just one stretch of the film will capture its "hilariously offensive greatness:

Leo DiCaprio is our narrator, and he ties together several disparate things into one breathless narration:

How one particular secretary in his firm was ready to orally pleasure men, in their suits, in front of everybody, to applause. And then pleasured both Leo and Jonah Hill(!!) at the same time(secretly, after work)...and THEN...MARRIED some poor sap in the firm who felt he could handle her as a bride(we see the wedding picture)..but that poor sap killed himself(we see the gruesome photo of his bloody bathtub suicide) as Leo says...

..."but...ANYWAY"

...and then we segue to Leo's description of his father(Rob Reiner, old and bald now) trying to watch The Equalizer show on TV and raging when interrupted by a call -- which he takes(Leo notes) in a fake British accent -- nice and calm -- before hanging up and going back to scream at his wife: "What happened? What did I miss?" about his TV show...with a cut to a clip from the show showing Steve Buscemi getting beat up.

Its a breathless, hilarious, sexual, gruesome(the suicide) unpredictable sequence of exhilarating narrative filmmaking(with script by "Sopranos" kingpin Terrence Winter) and its just five minutes of the movie that is on track to be my favorite of the 2010s.

Unless Scorsese's The Irishman of 2019 beats it. It could.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

...and then we segue to Leo's description of his father(Rob Reiner, old and bald now) trying to watch The Equalizer show on TV and raging when interrupted by a call -- which he takes(Leo notes) in a fake British accent -- nice and calm -- before hanging up and going back to scream at his wife: "What happened? What did I miss?" about his TV show...with a cut to a clip from the show showing Steve Buscemi getting beat up.

Its a breathless, hilarious, sexual, gruesome(the suicide) unpredictable sequence of exhilarating narrative filmmaking(with script by "Sopranos" kingpin Terrence Winter) and its just five minutes of the movie that is on track to be my favorite of the 2010s.

---

Since Wolf of Wall Street is on track to be my favorite of the 2010's, I'd like to further detail what really works about the above sequence:

ONE: How the anecdote about the sex-crazy secretary and her suicide groom inexplicably segues into...Rob Reiner watching The Equalizer?

TWO: How -- in milliseconds -- the sequence makes the sex seem very sick and tawdry indeed, the male sap MARRYING such a girl seems wrong for the two seconds of wedding photo before we see his suicide shot(gory, a Scorsese Taxi Driver moment), with Leo blissfully moving on(well....ANYWAY) and then

BOOM. The Reiner scene. Which would be funny enough if it was JUST about a man who hates to be called during a favorite show, and who yells at his wife "what did I miss" BUT the scene adds the weird hilarity of Reiner answering the phone (with accompanying Leo narration to warn us ahead of time that Reiner is going to use a dopey English accent) in that dopey English accent.

That's a lot to digest in about 40 seconds of film: sex, marriage, suicide, TV watching, fake accents...and I think the story of the sex-crazed bride and her suicide husband is classic "Scorsese moralism." People always pay for their sins.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

Excellent ecarle!!! I liked and agree with your takes on these movies:

GoodFellas
Casino
The Departed

I didn't have time to review why I thought the same to those three movies, but it sounds like you nailed it. And the troubling Raging Bull. The tone of RB is down and doesn't portray the sport of boxing even though it can be violent.

I wasn't The Wolf of Wall Street fan, but willing to see it again since you liked it so much. I'll read some positive reviews first, too.

However, I can't agree with the ending to Taxi Driver. It's newer film noir and I had the poster for the longest time, but sold it recently. It a tremendous poster that captures the loneliness of Travis as he fails to be able to socialize. We had two femme fatales with Cybill Shepard and Jodie Foster. I think they both had positive outcomes even though it appears that Travis gets to rebuff Betsy at the end by paying for her ride. I think some people think the ending was a dream sequence and that eventually Travis dies from bleeding out. That's one theory. Read Roger Ebert's review on it. The other is if he lived, then he's still a psychopath despite becoming a hero in the media. It's a comment by Scorsese on American media and who Americans consider as their heroes. I don't agree, but that's what he said he meant by the ending in an interview. The noirishness is that it appears to be a happy ending for Travis as it appears he gets to rebuff Betsy and saves Iris. He also ends up being famous for a while. However, Travis does not become sociable, and be able to make friends, and connect with people. He still drives his cab. He has Wizard to talk with. His worldview of his New York environment is still there. He's still Travis in the poster, all alone, in the harsh New York night -- http://www.impawards.com/1976/posters/taxi_driver_ver1.jpg, looking a bit scared, wondering where his life and thoughts will take him next. It's pretty much all he has.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

GoodFellas
Casino
The Departed

I didn't have time to review why I thought the same to those three movies, but it sounds like you nailed it.

---

Well, those are his three major "gangster films" and it looks like we are about to get the fourth: The Irishman. I have complained however about how DeNiro and Stone in Casino eventually turn into a mini-version of LaMotta and his wife. Again, DeNiro comes off (improvising) as dumber than Ace should be. But the rest of the movie is entertainment all the way.

And note this: Scorsese is very MORAL about his gangsters. Both GoodFellas and Casino find most of the crooks getting killed off in horrible ways or going to jail(DeNiro escapes in both films) but the message is: crime is glamourous and rich-making but no, it doesn't pay.

It is less "programmatic" but most everybody bad dies in The Departed, too. Again: Scorsese the moralist.

---

And the troubling Raging Bull. The tone of RB is down and doesn't portray the sport of boxing even though it can be violent.

---

Well, I don't think Scorsese was much of a boxing fan, didn't quite know the sport he was filming. But Scorsese was young and "arty" then -- he seemed to learn how to entertain by the 90s, and GoodFellas started that trend.

But this: I like DeNiro and Nolte in the Cape Fear remake, but the main women -- Illena Douglas as Nolte's girlfriend; Jessica Lange as Nolte's wife; and Juliette Lewis as Nolte's daughter are uniformly played as ditzy dolts(Lewis comes off as developmentally disabled in her abandoned theater room scene with DeNiro's psycho Max Cady.) None of the women take DeNiro's psycho rapist "cannibal" seriously(Nolte does) and they all pay the price. Its as if "Cape Fear" finds all women to be idiots, and I found that offensive.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I wasn't The Wolf of Wall Street fan, but willing to see it again since you liked it so much. I'll read some positive reviews first, too.

--

Well, it hit the spot for me. Reviewers seemed to love it or hate it. Leo himself called it a "modern day remake of Caligula" and that's about right.

I feel that our non-PC movies are dying out pretty quickly; WoWS is almost a last gasp for sex and profanity and allowing its characters to be disgustingly decadent.
And it had that usual Scorsese flash.

However, I can't agree with the ending to Taxi Driver. It's newer film noir and I had the poster for the longest time, but sold it recently. It a tremendous poster that captures the loneliness of Travis as he fails to be able to socialize. We had two femme fatales with Cybill Shepard and Jodie Foster. I think they both had positive outcomes even though it appears that Travis gets to rebuff Betsy at the end by paying for her ride. I think some people think the ending was a dream sequence and that eventually Travis dies from bleeding out. That's one theory. Read Roger Ebert's review on it. The other is if he lived, then he's still a psychopath despite becoming a hero in the media. It's a comment by Scorsese on American media and who Americans consider as their heroes. I don't agree, but that's what he said he meant by the ending in an interview. The noirishness is that it appears to be a happy ending for Travis as it appears he gets to rebuff Betsy and saves Iris. He also ends up being famous for a while. However, Travis does not become sociable, and be able to make friends, and connect with people. He still drives his cab. He has Wizard to talk with. His worldview of his New York environment is still there. He's still Travis in the poster, all alone, in the harsh New York night -- http://www.impawards.com/1976/posters/taxi_driver_ver1.jpg, looking a bit scared, wondering where his life and thoughts will take him next. It's pretty much all he has.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

However, I can't agree with the ending to Taxi Driver.

--

That's OK. And it will be OK if Wolf of Wall Street doesn't do it for you on second viewing. It got very good reviews AND very BAD reviews.

---

It's newer film noir and I had the poster for the longest time, but sold it recently. It a tremendous poster that captures the loneliness of Travis as he fails to be able to socializ

---

Yes, truly that poster "said it all" and captured the grit of Times Square(or maybe a coupla blocks over.) Lonely in New York City is LONELY.

---

We had two femme fatales with Cybill Shepard and Jodie Foster. I think they both had positive outcomes even though it appears that Travis gets to rebuff Betsy at the end by paying for her ride. I think some people think the ending was a dream sequence and that eventually Travis dies from bleeding out. That's one theory. Read Roger Ebert's review on it.

---

Its a hard call for me, whether or not that ending with Cybill is "real." A clue is that the scenes after the climactic shooting all seem a bit "dream-like" and separate from the rest of the movie.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The other is if he lived, then he's still a psychopath despite becoming a hero in the media. It's a comment by Scorsese on American media and who Americans consider as their heroes. I don't agree, but that's what he said he meant by the ending in an interview.

---

Its a little too "pat" isn't it? Travis fails as a political assassin(a villain) and succeeds as a killer of gangster/pimp scum(a hero but not quite, what with the Mohawk and vacant expression.)

On topic, I recall a Time magazine article about "Subway hero mugger shooter" Bernard Goetz in the 80's. Time wrote: "On examination, Goetz is less Charles Bronson and more Anthony Perkins."

Yeh, that's about right.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The noirishness is that it appears to be a happy ending for Travis as it appears he gets to rebuff Betsy and saves Iris.

---

Well, its always fun to rebuff a Betsy...but does he really "save" Iris? Sounds like she is going back to the home from hell. Still, better than NYC child hooking. Those parents don't look long for the world.

---

He also ends up being famous for a while.

---

15 minutes?

---

However, Travis does not become sociable, and be able to make friends, and connect with people. He still drives his cab. He has Wizard to talk with. His worldview of his New York environment is still there.

---

Yep, that's another message -- all that drama, all that bloodshed, all that "heroism" and he's right back where he started, the same guy.

---

He's still Travis in the poster, all alone, in the harsh New York night -- http://www.impawards.com/1976/posters/taxi_driver_ver1.jpg, looking a bit scared, wondering where his life and thoughts will take him next. It's pretty much all he has.

---

Great description of what the poster "says to us." Thanks.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"Hopper: I'm smarter than you! I'm SMARTER than you!!
(Keanu manages to decapitate Hopper's head off his body.)
Reeves: Yeah? Well, I'm TALLER!"

- Echoes of movies past: In Double Indemnity, claims manager Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) has just offered salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) a job as his assistant, figuring he's smarter than the other salesmen, enough so to work with his brain instead of "your finger on the doorbell," and been turned down. Looking up at the towering Neff, diminutive Keyes leaves with this affectionately insulting parting shot:

"I was wrong, Walter. You're not smarter. You're just a little taller."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

"I was wrong, Walter. You're not smarter. You're just a little taller."

---

Wow. I've seen both movies many times(Speed and Double Indemnity) but I never made the connection. Maybe because it is structured as a "grisly gag" in Speed (Hopper's head flies clean off) -- but still, I sense an "homage."

Thanks.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Your interest is appreciated.

And interest is perhaps the key point. If there's a single answer applying to all three of those films, it's that they depict atmospheres and characters generating little that's of compelling interest to me.

Just the same, after over 60 years of watching films, and nearly as long studying them and the various artistic and technical disciplines contributing to their crafting, from both outside the industry and within it, I've learned enough to recognize from an objective viewpoint when and how those tools are being used effectively to do such things as evoke mood, generate suspense, establish dramatic focus, maintain story momentum and integrity, rhythm and pacing, along with the 1001 other ingredients going into cinematic realization.

I can recognize all those things in a film, and still not like it. I don't have any such "policy" as seeing a film only once, avoiding ones directed by Scorcese or what have you, and my evaluations of others of his films would really bring nothing to bear upon those of the three I've singled out.

As you've gathered, I pay little attention to numerical "ratings," and in any event, I saw all three long before IMDB or its rating system ever existed. The first two were released at a time during which I went to see pretty much everything. How was I to know if I'd like a film until I'd seen it? I was young, had time and money on my hands and was eager to take in the range of what was on offer, not only for personal enjoyment, but to learn something about film craft from each, good, bad or indifferent, whether I liked it or not. I've never seen a single film from which there wasn't something to be learned about what does or doesn't work on the screen.

Not sure what else I can tell you about how I judge a film's quality or how I separate that from my personal like or dislike of it.

So may I ask you this: if you hated Raging Bull, does that make it a poor or ineptly made film in your estimation?

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

>>And interest is perhaps the key point. If there's a single answer applying to all three of those films, it's that they depict atmospheres and characters generating little that's of compelling interest to me.

Just the same, after over 60 years of watching films, and nearly as long studying them and the various artistic and technical disciplines contributing to their crafting, from both outside the industry and within it, I've learned enough to recognize from an objective viewpoint when and how those tools are being used effectively to do such things as evoke mood, generate suspense, establish dramatic focus, maintain story momentum and integrity, rhythm and pacing, along with the 1001 other ingredients going into cinematic realization.

I can recognize all those things in a film, and still not like it. I don't have any such "policy" as seeing a film only once, avoiding ones directed by Scorcese or what have you, and my evaluations of others of his films would really bring nothing to bear upon those of the three I've singled out.<<

This is probably why I feel like I have to reply to your takes. You left out the first sentence in your review for the three movies you mentioned. If you had put that in, then I would've understood,

That said, I'll also have to make time to review films again in order to refresh my opinions of these movies. ecarle certainly has a flair for being able to recall and express his review and opinion of a movie. I have to review and formulate my thoughts again, but right now other personal matters have occupied my time. It's more like a comment here and a comment there. Which leads me to ask what did you think of Hitchcock's Psycho? I plan to see it again at a theater on Halloween, but still have not gotten tickets. Still waiting to clear my personal matters up, so I can dress up and act like a kid again on Halloween lol.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

"This is probably why I feel like I have to reply to your takes. You left out the first sentence in your review for the three movies you mentioned. If you had put that in, then I would've understood"

- Those thumbnail characterizations applying to a trio of films were by no means what I'd consider "review[s]." I used to submit reviews to the IMDB site, but haven't done so in some years. In any event, when I did so, or want to put an evaluation of a given film into writing, my personal like or dislike of it, or even my interest in the subject matter, is of little relevance to such an evaluation, so I generally avoid including any such remarks. Of the 40 reviews I did write, I included them only twice, in the case of two documentaries that were so compellingly well crafted that they transcended my inherent disinterest in their subjects.

So, my feelings about the lives of a misfit cab driver descending into psychosis, a dysfunctional boxer or a group of Gotti wannabes are irrelevant to the quality or recommendability of those films. As I said, they're all fine ones, and whether I liked or enjoyed them needn't matter much to anyone but me.

What do I think of Psycho? It's an essential, not only for the artistry and skill of its craft and its place in the Hitchcock ouvre, but for what it can teach about the basic tools of just about every aspect of film making. After more viewings than I could count in fifty-two years, I don't think I could write an actual review of it if I tried. I know it too well and feel too close to it.

If you wouldn't mind, I'm still interested in an answer to the question about Raging Bull in my earlier reply.

I hope those personal matters aren't troublesome ones, and if they are, that they can be resolved satisfactorily.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

>>If you wouldn't mind, I'm still interested in an answer to the question about Raging Bull in my earlier reply.<<

>>So may I ask you this: if you hated Raging Bull, does that make it a poor or ineptly made film in your estimation?<<

Mine? ecarle did a good job of it. It has striking cinematography that makes you feel the moment. It does make you feel that you are back in 1940s, but the story wasn't what I was expecting. It's professionally done, written well enough to explain what's happening, but is it entertainment? Does it know what it's doing to the audience and give them relief? No.

To answer your question, it does not understand what the audience is seeing and feeling. There appears to be no let up. There isn't enough payoff emotionally to be subjected to it.

I would like some sports background as to the character, so I can relate to him, but that's not the side Scorsese presents. Maybe LaMotta didn't have that side. I don't know. He presents him as a bully in life and in the ring. That doesn't make for a sports story I want to see. It may not be a sports story. Boxing is supposed to be the "gentleman's sport" in regards to combat. I had a job where I carried a loaded gun. I couldn't stop a fight if it was somewhat equal combat. Why get yourself hurt on the job trying to break it up? Where I had to do something was if it was an unequal combat situation and one was going to get seriously hurt.

I don't want to see domestic violence scenes as it always makes you feel as if you're the person in the middle. It would be harmful to a child having to experience it. It's one of the most difficult to settle in keeping a marriage together or not. I'm Christian, so would want to keep the marriage together, but there is only so much one can take and stay safe.

That's what Scorsese presented and he's a rat of a director. He may know his craft, but his stories present some of the most crude, base, and deviant of humanity. Who wants to be subject to that for two hours?

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

"That's what Scorsese presented and he's a rat of a director. He may know his craft, but his stories present some of the most crude, base, and deviant of humanity. Who wants to be subject to that for two hours?"

- Seems to me you said something in some earlier post about trying to understand my thinking. The quote above indicates that you understand it perhaps better than you realized. It comes down to an ability to recognize accomplished cinematic craft without necessarily enjoying or liking a given film representing it. In other words, the objective vs the subjective.

The answer to your question quoted just above is: quite a few people, apparently, given the generally high regard in which Raging Bull is held within the contexts of Scorsese's work and '80s cinema. I just don't happen to one of them. And, I gather, neither are you.

It's both possible and reasonable to recognize a good film when you see it and still not like it, just as it is to have affection for a film that you know is not a particularly good one. It's really no more complicated than that.

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

It's both possible and reasonable to recognize a good film when you see it and still not like it, just as it is to have affection for a film that you know is not a particularly good one. It's really no more complicated than that.

Yes, there are a lot of different ways of getting at this basic point. E.g., you can reflect on how rewatchable you find different films. There are lots of great films that, with the best will in the world, are hard work to watch. Raging Bull just gives a *slight* taste of that in my view: the main characters are awful people, the domestic violence hurts to watch, etc.. I'n pretty sure I've rewatched it less than any of the other movies I rate highly from 1980: Elephant Man, The Shining, Mon Oncle D'Amerique, The Stunt Man, Empire Strikes Back, Stardust Memories.

The deeper you go into film, the more you run up against films that are unpleasant experiences but that are clearly very important or even masterpieces. Back in 2013, the three most amazing films I saw were Under The Skin, 12 Years A Slave, & The Act Of Killing. In 2015 the best film (by miles) I saw was Son of Saul. I haven't rewatched any of these that much, and certainly less than the best entertainments from those years (Gravity, Frances Ha, Inside Out, Ex Machina).

Mark Twain had a wittily cynical take on the extreme points of this phenomenon, suggesting that a (literary) classic is something that nobody wants to read, but that everyone wants to have read.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

I think I can say that, of the Scorsese films I've seen, only a few have not been what I considered ordeals.

Twain had something there, no surprise: it may be an even more extreme analogy, but some films can be rather like having wisdom teeth pulled or a root canal performed. No, let's make that more like, say, regular visits to the gym: you may not like them, but you're better off for having done it.

On my rewatchability scale, The Stunt Man scores the highest for 1980 films, and is the one for which I've the greatest affection. First saw it with two very intelligent and discerning friends back then, and exiting the theater, I was full of rhapsody over the slyly witty trickery with which it looked at the natures of truth and illusion, and the odd psychology of willing suspension of disbelief. Two great, big, affectionate winks: one in the direction of film making itself; the other at the audience sustaining it.

To my surprise at the time, one of those friends hated it, the other simply shrugged in mystification. In the intervening decades, those have described pretty much the only reactions to it I've ever encountered: love; hate; total confusion. Eccentric and challenging, it's clearly not to everyone's taste.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

"That's what Scorsese presented and he's a rat of a director. He may know his craft, but his stories present some of the most crude, base, and deviant of humanity. Who wants to be subject to that for two hours?"

--

That's sort of the funny thing about Scorsese, isn't it? He holds forth as a caring, informed, witty film professor about movie history and great cinema -- and yet a lot of his movies really get down and dirty in the subject matter even as the style is absolutely dazzling and -- despite all attempts -- pretty hard to duplicate.

Kinda like Hitchcock, yes? Certainly for their times, with regard to Psycho and Frenzy, but also encompassing Marnie(the final flashback), Torn Curtain(the killing of Gromek); Vertigo(the twisted obsession of Scottie and his domination of Judy); Rear Window(another bad relationship backgrounded by marital dismemberment), Rope(an opening "thrill killing" strangling of a young man by two others, with gay sexual undercurrents); Dial M(a strangling attack on Grace Kelly that is staged like a rape, and SHE penetrates the attacker with scissors), and Strangers on a Train(Bruno seduces and murders Guy's estranged tramp wife while she is on a date with TWO other men and pregnant with another man's child.)

Yep you could say that Hitch was "Scorsese a few decades early." And NOT Spielberg.

And yet Hitchcock was, and Scorsese is, just about the best handler of film out there in terms of sheer technique.

I think we can suggest that Scorsese "cleaned up his act" after the gutter-level perversities of Taxi Driver(which still had narrative entertainment value) and Raging Bull(which did not.)

His gangster stories are all very moral: the bad guys pretty much ALL die or go to jail or witness protection. And while Marty didn't abandon violence much(it SELLS, something else Hitchcock knew), he seems to have dropped the perversity out of GoodFellas, Casino, and The Departed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Wolf of Wall Street? Perversity, yes ...but its fun, consensual perversity and its really and mainly about sex as a function of success -- the men get it, the woman give it(and in one scene with some gay characters, the men get AND give it.)

And yet, Scorsese can't help but show us the bloody suicide that one sexual relationship leads to, and the way Leo loses two wives in a row over his philandering(and with his second, over his sudden brokenness.)

Key to The Wolf of Wall Street is its value as a COMEDY. I rank it alongside Dr. Strangelove, MASH the movie, and Animal House in the strength of its back-to-back comedy episodes. As with all of those other three films(my favorites of their years), you can pretty much run any individual scene as its own "comedy mini movie." The Matthew McConaghey scene. The dwarf tossing discussion. Leo's helicopter flying lesson. Papa Rob Reiner angry about how much of the expense account goes to hookers. The FBI guy's first interview with Leo. Leo's delicate discussion with Jonah Hill about the ramifications of his marrying his COUSIN. And of course, Leo trying to crawl and then drive home with bad qualludes in his system.

Also key to Wolf of Wall Street. It is very politically incorrect at times. But in a funny way. And movies like that aren't supposed to be made any more.

And thus, back to Scorsese for GIVING us "The Wolf of Wall Street." I think it is great film. Its a hilarious movie about a tragic subject, and its dazzling to watch and listen to.

I hear "The Irishman" is very funny too -- and Ray Romano's in it, clearly being funny in the trailer.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

"Kinda like Hitchcock, yes?"

- Hmmm. Now, that's a tightrope requiring careful thought before stepping onto. You're quite right, but somehow, there's a difference in there somewhere. How to define and articulate it?

First, I'm no kind of authority on Scorsese. I've seen fewer than half of his non-documentary features, the most recent of which was The Departed, and none more than once, so I'm left in most cases with only decades-old impressions of the sordid underbelly of urban life in which the director reveled. In spite of final reel morality, there's a sense of fascinated admiration on Scorsese's part for characters in whom I find little interest or attraction (admittedly, my problem more than his).

For all their eye-widening shock value, the Hitchcock themes and scenes you cite are couched in his "it's only a moooovie" thrill ride sensibility, and the colorfully theatrical nature of their perpetrators, victims and circumstances. While both directors were equally serious about their craft, the feeling in the end is that Hitchcock didn't want his audiences taking any of it too seriously, while Scorsese did.

That's my perspective, anyway, and about the best way I can put it.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

I've only seen it on DVD once completely. I guess it was in 1981 because it had mostly great reviews. I reviewed what Roger Ebert wrote in 1980 because I used to watch Siskel and Ebert and bought Ebert's book. I was going read Ebert's review again, but saw he had written another review in 1998 and put his "Great Movie" banner and olive leaves on it. Sick. The things he added, having more knowledge about the movie, was the whore-Madonna complex. He can explain it better than I can. He mentions Scorsese's joke about LaMotta's opponent not being good looking anymore. That could be a funny line in a different movie, but the way it's done in black and white with all the blood and fluids spewing forth to set it up is not that funny. It's a bit perverse and bizarre and it reminded me of The Big Shave. Scorsese overdoes the artsy camera close ups and then hits you with a bizarre bloody punch line (no pun intended). I think his film editor won an Oscar for Raging Bull, so he is somebody that needs someone to edit his movies. He can't do it as his early work shows and he tends to go overboard with the blood. In contrast, the guy who did the Dexter intro uses blood sporadically and presents a thematic effect with quirky music that people enjoyed over-and-over.

The reason I'm making a big deal out of this is that what we see as creative, different, immersive could be enough to make it a great movie for some, while I would beg to differ because of how it ends up creating the tone and mood of the film. There is no let up for the audience; they're caught in the middle. And that's why I had to present a contrast to it with Dexter. Of course, many critics overlooked their discomfort and wrote why it was a great movie.

Continued

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

So, you may think the description of the filmmaking makes it an objective view, but I don't think it accounts for the audience. Basically, we see a bully and no introspection or anything to make us connect with the protagonist. He could be the antagonist. I think that's why Scorsese, Schrader, and De Niro got together again to discuss doing it,

If you want to call Scorsese's writing and directing of the movie is objective, then you are welcome to it. I can't see it anything but subjective with Scorsese.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

While I understand my use of "objective" in that context is one with which you take issue, I wish to stress that it referred to an observer's (me in this case) analysis, not to Scorsese's approach.

I don't know how it could have been misconstrued, but it apparently was, so it's worth clearing up for the record.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

Well, what was the point of you using objective as in, "- Give ya three examples, all of which happen to be Scorsese films: Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; Goodfellas. Each one boldly and intelligently scripted, expertly produced and skillfully crafted and performed. All three are fine, highly regarded films, and deservedly so, for reasons I well understand. And I didn't enjoy a single minute of any of 'em. Saw each only once when new, and never care to see them again.

So: objective viewpoint...very good films; subjective viewpoint...I don't like them."

I was responding to the above. It sounds like you're for these films and against them. I would be surprised you didn't like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, but would agree with your opinion on Raging Bull.

Moreover, I would think you were discussing the filmmakers expertise when saying your objective view.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

I'm neither "for" nor "against" them. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it any more plainly, but they're only my characterizations of my own viewpoints, so it's really not important enough to merit any further attention.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

Scorsese is after your generation. I thought that you were from a skosh earlier than my parents generation who experienced both WW I and WW II. The Psycho connection is through Edward Hopper whom I've studied. Hopper was before Hitchcock. He was the inspiration for the Psycho house and he has a somber isolated view. Even when he paints people together in a social setting. Not as grim as Hitchcock made the Psycho house, but they all experienced WW I and WW II (Hitchcock through Britain). I'm sure Hitchcock felt the isolation and somberness from Hopper's art and that's why he modeled his house after it. Scorsese doesn't appear to be affected as much by WW II. He probably came at a time where rebellion and questioning authority was the norm. He came after Steve McQueen who did serve in WW II. I don't think he served in the military (Vietnam) as he's part of the new wave of cinema during that time and I don't think they cared so much about what the audience was feeling or watching. To me, that's what makes him a ratty person sometimes. No question, he was a major talent when he was in young, but he's 50/50 or 60/40 in terms of his movies. Maybe 70/30. He's made a lot of movies, but not with the view of an earlier generation.

[–] Doghouse (447) 4 years ago

"I thought that you were from a skosh earlier than my parents generation who experienced both WW I and WW II."

- Yikes! That would make me over 100 years old (which my father would be this year if still living). No, I'm from the first half of the Baby Boom.

For the record, McQueen didn't serve in WWII (he was only 15 at the finish), but was in the Marines in postwar years, although not in combat (discharged 1950).

I'm sure, as you say, Scorsese's early film making sensibilities were informed by the boundary-pushing rebelliousness of the '60s, but have been at least equally so by the figures he observed in youth in his Lower Manhattan neighborhood of Little Italy, who could be out raising Cain while his activities were limited by health issues.

But as I mentioned to ecarle, I'm no authority on him. While his mastery of craft is something I acknowledge, his style and choice of subjects, themes or atmospheres don't happen to be among those that float my boat. I usually feel the same way about westerns, military or combat stories and those involving mythical kingdoms or civilizations.

All purely matters of personal tastes.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

I was trying to point out Scorsese strengths with The Big Shave. For that time, there weren't too many pov shots like that. That's a lot more interesting than just watching a guy walk into a bathroom and shaving. He tends to overdo these type of shots, so having another editor helps him greatly. Then he has his punch line of the guy becoming a bloody mess, but it's all normal for the character. Some people like the excess and at times he does it well.

In contrast, Dexter's intro is more subdued, but we see and feel the blood theme and anger within as he gets ready to go to work in the morning. He uses close ups to immerse the viewer and you feel what the character is feeling, but doesn't go overboard. That's from Scorsese, but Scorsese likes to go overboard.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

Here is an example of Scorsese humor. I think it's one of his early shorts. It was supposed to have influenced the person who created the award winning Dexter tv show intro.

The Big Shave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1T93rJ9p-sv

Dexter's intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESicykvHUyk

One is tasteful and thematic. The other is weird and bloody although it may not be violent.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One is tasteful and thematic. The other is weird and bloody although it may not be violent.

---

Yikes! They both kinda made my stomach turn, though Scorsese's was worse. The influence of Psycho on the Scorsese seems pretty relevant, too.

I am willing to opine that certain filmmakers -- Hitchcock, Scorsese , QT, John Waters, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg come to mind -- may have certain psychological "glitches" that compel them to purvey very disturbing characters, themes, and scenes on screen. The "auteur" theory rather lets them in with welcome, but there can be no doubt that each of those men have "gone too far" in scenes of sick humor and violence.

And of course Hitchcock -- working largely under the Hays Code and for studios - in certain ways dared the most, even if his films never got as sick as that Scorsese short.

And again: I'd say that Scorsese has largely cleaned up his act since GoodFellas -- less a bloody murder in Cape Fear and eyeball scene in Casino and the cornfield scene in the same movie and --

well, maybe he HASN'T cleaned up his act...

But I can stomach those movies and these remain my favorites of their years:

GoodFellas
Casino
The Departed
The Wolf of Wall Street

on deck for judgment: The Irishman.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

>>Yikes! They both kinda made my stomach turn, though Scorsese's was worse. The influence of Psycho on the Scorsese seems pretty relevant, too.<<

I think you know Dexter is psychopathic, but the show displays much of his personal and work life as being normal, nice guy type who has relationship and work issues. His life is nothing like how Norman Bates is presented. Maybe Norman isn't that dark if we see him in the daytime more such as in Bates Motel.

I think early Scorsese is showing his humorous side. It's a bit bizarre and intended to be a bit nauseating if you think about it. I think he said he had to make Raging Bull in black and white because of all the blood and fluids.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the same way, but with excess sex, greed, drugs, and debauchery.

What? No Taxi Driver? I'd put that up on your list instead.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the same way, but with excess sex, greed, drugs, and debauchery.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

Too serious. You're entitled to your opinion, but lists are for fun. It lets others know what kind of movies you like and rate highly. Since you told me that you do not rate movies, then it would be what you like compared to others. For example, I rate Chinatown, Psycho, Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives (never heard), Sunset Blvd, Cabaret (it's okay), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (never heard), Singin' in the Rain, Citizen Kane above nothing better to do with my time. Ignore the never heard ones.

I like Chinatown better than Singin' in the Rain, but the latter is good, too. Annie Hall vs The Palm Beach Story (never heard) would be a pass.

I had nothing better to do with my time than read and respond to your post, so I guess that's something.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Thanks for chiming in.

I can add only that if you've never heard of (1) The Best Years Of Our Lives, (2) The Life and Death Of Colonel Blimp or (3) The Palm Beach Story, you have some great films to seek out, respectively encompassing (1) sensitive, mature and intelligent human drama, (2) bold and innovative cinematic technique and (3) a unique comic sensibility no other writer/director could hope to emulate.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

I'll try the first two, but will skip the last one. The trailer looks a bit like An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr (is it car or cur?), which I gave a 7, but more a comedy.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

I wouldn't try to talk anyone into seeing something they don't want to see, but I can say that The Palm Beach Story isn't remotely anything like An Affair To Remember, or its 1939 original version, Love Affair, both of which display director Leo McCarey at his most romantically sentimental (and nether of which I'd call comedy).

The Palm Beach Story, decidedly a comedy from start to finish, displays the Preston Sturges sensibility I called "unique," not only because it's like none other, but because it's so difficult to classify: slyly droll and subtle one minute; outrageously antic and slapstick the next; always with a sophisticated sense of the absurd. I'm not sure the Sturges sense of humor could be an acquired taste; I think it's more likely one that a viewer either gets immediately or won't ever.

By the way, I watched the trailer that IMDB has, and it's terrible, capturing nothing of what makes The Palm Beach Story such delicious fun.

"...(is it car or cur?)…"

- As far as I know, it's "car" for Deborah. And just to make things confusing, she costarred in Tea and Sympathy with John Kerr, who pronounced it "cur."

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

I agree. An Affair to Remember may have some comedy moments, but it's more a romance drama.

As for car or cur, I think it was Sleepless in Seattle which made fun of An Affair to Remember. I just found it on youtube -- https://youtu.be/coOYa4h98M4.

SIS isn't as funny as When Harry Met Sally and not as memorable. It was just trying to make money after WHMS as something like a sequel. Or was it You Got Mail? Both YGM and SIS weren't that good.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"...(is it car or cur?)…"

- As far as I know, it's "car" for Deborah. And just to make things confusing, she costarred in Tea and Sympathy with John Kerr, who pronounced it "cur."

---

Good work here, gentlemen.

I've never really been able to figure this out, myself. I just switch back and forth.

Bottom line: Both Deborah and John should have changed their names if they wanted us to be able to pronounce them.

[–] slimone (7996) 5 years ago

For me Some Like It Hot was the best movie of all time!

[–] [email protected] (1732) 5 years ago

I can't stand "Some Like it Hot."

There. Now that that's taken care of.

WHO writes these lists? It's ridiculous. There are far too many great films for ANY group of know-it-alls to say
in FACT what the "best movie" is.

Worse, it makes people rebel, with a "prove it" response, instead of just discovering a great movie.

Several years ago, the BBC named "Vertigo" the "best movie" of all time. I LOVE this film, and consider it one of
my very faves. But I can't honestly say it's the "best movie" of all time.

I have so many faves in several different categories. And within those categories, more categories.

Sorry, I'm not convinced that "Chinatown" is the "best movie" of all time, anymore than I'm convinced that "Psycho"
is number two. Maybe it's number 17, or 10, 3, or 98. Good grief.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Ha..my these lists do get heated discussions going...I guess that's one thing they are good for.

I must admit I've always been distressed that Vertigo is now "The Greatest Film of All Time" because I think it isn't even HITCHCOCK'S greatest film of all time, and anyone steered to it now will definitely have a "show me attitude".

I'm happy that Psycho is Number Two on a list(uh oh...there's a joke there) but if it is my Number One, that is for such a "perfect storm" of incredibly PERSONAL reasons that I wouldn't expect them to carry over to ANYBODY.

Which is what makes the movies great -- we take them in PERSONALLY.

Here's something:

The American Film Institute chose Some Like It Hot as the greatest comedy of all time(Number One.)
The American Film Institute chose Psycho as the greatest thriller of all time(Number One.)

Interesting that those films were released a year apart(1959 and 1960). And both feature cross-dressing. You have to figure that the AFI voters were of an age to really LIKE that 50's/60s cusp(I know I do) and perhaps of a mind to salute such early odes to men wearing dresses...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A bit more on my "personal fave of the year" ranking(which has never required putting them all in order, less three at the top):

Sometimes, there's one movie that just DOES IT for me in a year. Its the one I like on first viewing and keep tight to the end of the year and my choice. Examples: LA Confidential, Love Actually, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Sometimes, I spend the year waiting for a movie with great expectations, its THE one I want to see, and then it comes out and BOOM: its my Number One just as I expected it to be. Examples: The Godfather, Jaws, Batman, True Grit 2010.

More rarely, I have a year where I just can't choose (even though I do.) Case in point, 2001:

At different points of 2001, I loved

Moulin Rouge
Memento
The Royal Tennebaums(especially for the Hackman perf, one of his last.)
Ocean's Eleven(a very cool remake of a very cool original.

Tennebaums came in at Number One finally...only to be displaced by Moulin Rouge as I found myself watching that one again a LOT...and loving the sheer emotional brio of its key musical scenes.

So: Moulin Rouge(but always "shadowed" by the other three.)

Sometimes: I have a favorite and then over a few years, I replace it. Example: Mad Mad World has replaced Charade. Ferris Bueller has replaced The Fly '86. Moneyball has replaced The Desendents(Pitt replaced Clooney.)

Its come close in recent years, but IN recent years, I've been hard pressed to really HAVE a favorite for the year. 2018 was almost this way until I saw Buster Scruggs on Netflix(in 2019). The Magnificent Seven of 2016 is perhaps a weak choice, but I didn't like much anything better that year -- and I WAS excited when it went into production with A-list stars. I've re-watched it, and for the gunfight scenes alone, it stands tall.

And so forth and so on.

The strongest movies of my life are the ones that flat out won their years with no need for calculation on my part. I loved the movie...its the winner for the year.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A little bit on the "personal" aspects of Bulllitt, as it is popping up on this thread.

I saw "Bullitt" in a gigantic old palace theater, opulent inside and out. It was a few days after Christmas , and my family and I waited in a long, long, LONG line to get into that theater. (It was cold.) The house was full, packed, excited, and cheered the car chase, the final shootout and McQueen yelling "bullshit" at the evil politico played by Robert Vaughn.

But there was more: our family was moving hundreds of miles from one city to another, so I was very emotional when i saw Bullitt. We were staying in a motel while the parents went house-hunting over the Xmas holidays in that new town.

"Bullitt" ended up being the first movie I would see in "my new hometown." We saw Bullitt. Later that week, my parents bought the house, we returned to our previous town to sell THAT house. Then, I had to say goodbye to all my school friends -- leaving them behind by hundreds of miles -- and then go BACK to the town where I saw Bullitt.

So I'll never forget Bullitt. I was very emotional when i saw it -- my life was changing, one set of friends disappeared in the mist as I sought to find and make new ones.

And oh, a younger relative in our group threw up his dinner during the Bullitt car chase scene that night I first saw it.

THAT's an effective chase!

[–] [email protected] (1732) 5 years ago

For me, Curtis and Lemmon aren't even remotely convincing as "women", and as the trans movement becomes
more prominent, the film becomes even more difficult to buy.

And as much as I love Billy Wilder ("Double Indemnity" is to die for), I feel personally that several of
Preston Sturges' films are funnier, and far more clever. Yet, here, my own opinion opens doors to argue
the obvious: many find Sturges' films way too strident, slapstick and dated.

I personally feel Astaire's 1953 film, "The Bandwagon" is the most perfect musical I've ever seen. Yet I can't
honestly rate it higher than the breathtaking "West Side Story." And how can one compare? "West Side"
has the far greater score, yet Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer couldn't sing or dance and were dubbed!

I also have a fave list of films I KNOW are not great. But I love them, and wouldn't honestly know where to
place them in a numerical list.

The AFI list, which really started this whole "list" stuff with films, is only interested in $$$$ for more future
releases. Remember the video tapes that boasted, #4 on the greatest films of all time list!"

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The AFI list, which really started this whole "list" stuff with films, is only interested in $$$$ for more future
releases. Remember the video tapes that boasted, #4 on the greatest films of all time list!"

---

True, but I gotta admit it: it was fun to see Psycho land at the top. And fun to watch the TV special in which it became clear that it was going to BE the one at the top.

I don't have the list in front of me, but this was satisfying about the top four as I remember it:

1. Psycho
2. Jaws
3. The Exorcist
4. North by Northwest

I can't argue with THAT list, and there's Hitch twice in the top four. Right where he belongs....

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

For me, Curtis and Lemmon aren't even remotely convincing as "women",

---

I expect if they had looked too MUCH like women(and had they been, say, sexually alluring AS women), the censors would have stepped in. Its a bit of a joke how "UN-womanly" they are.

--

and as the trans movement becomes
more prominent, the film becomes even more difficult to buy.

---

Yes, and its funny. 1959 is a long time ago. It was Billy Wilder himself who said of his own films and other "classics": "You have to remember, we made these to last for a few weeks in theaters...not to last forever!"

Note in passing: I don't know if we will ever know if gay and trans people OF 1959 valued this movie in some way. Maybe it spoke to them...they were practically outlawed to the shadows.

Some Like It Hot was a "naughty" movie in a repressed time. The jokes always lead up to...and away from..the fact that these ladies have...penises. And the scene where Tony Curtis(NOT in drag, but doing Cary Grant) contends that he is impotent(without saying the word) and Marilyn Monroe foists a full-court breast press on him to stimulate action(she gets it)...must have felt almost X-rated in 1959.

The great ladies man David Lee Roth in the 80's told a tale of 1959 -- he was a little boy, and his father took him , the father told the mother --to see a Disney movie. But they didn't SEE a Disney movie. Roth's dad said, "boys, we are going to a Marilyn Monroe movie. I think you will like her."

It was Some Like It Hot. And David Lee Roth was set for lustful life...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

It's rather like westerns. I always say the only tools a director needs to create stirring cinema is a camera and some horses; nevertheless, most of that genre simply don't fall within my bailiwick. I can spot a good one, even when it doesn't get my campfire going.

---

Its funny about Westerns. As a kid on through adulthood, I never watched the ones on TV : Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The High Chaparrel, Lancer. Have Gun Will Travel was a bit before my time, but perhaps closer to what I like: tough action with a cool loner hero. But still, not enough.

I also tend to change the channel when a 50's Western comes on with Fred MacMurray , and though I know that Randolph Scott made some good ones(with guys like Lee Marvin and Richard Boone as the baddies)...nope. I make an exception for Joel McCrea and Scott in Peckinpah's Ride the High Country( a Western that can make me cry at at the end.)

BUT: John Wayne westerns. Loved them(problematic given some old quotes of his now out there, but I didn't know about them.) "Adventure Westerns with a team" -- The Magnificent Seven, The Professionals, Rio Conchos, The Wild Bunch -- loved them(and The Wild Bunch was something else -- scary and revolutionary.
All those "two stars in one movie" sixties Westerns: Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The War Wagon, Five Card Stud...loved them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Clint Eastwood? An acquired taste that I don't have. Even the great "spaghetti Westerns" seem to be a bit "amateur" about Western traditions(all that dubbing.) The key to Clint was: he was the "R-rated gunslinger." This is why John Wayne refused to make a movie with Clint that Clint offered with a script ready to go(it was never made.) Well, maybe also Wayne didn't want to work with his replacement...

Oh, Clint made some PG Westerns, but they were fairly mundane: Hang Em High, Joe Kidd.

His classic "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is good but not great to me: too sparse and laconic(Eastwood's desire to "make his movies cheap" always showed through), the conflict isn't as sharp as in a traditional Western, the gunfights just perfunctory in the Age of Peckinpah.

HOWEVER: even though Westerns are rarely made since the 70's, when they ARE, its been pretty special: Silverado, Pale Rider, Unforgiven, Tombstone, True Grit 2010; The Mag 7 2016, The Hateful Eight.

[–] AdamS (336) 4 years ago

Easy to name older movies better or best... nostalgia kicks in...

Raiders of the Lost Ark... totally new movie... less then 40 yrs old... barely.

[–] liscarkat (16483) 4 years ago

It's really impossible to say what "the best movie of all time" is. It's certainly neither "Psycho" nor "Chinatown", although they're both great movies. What it really boils down to is "my favorite movie of all time (or today, or this week)", which is almost as difficult to decide.

[–] AdamS (336) 4 years ago

Raiders, Empire Strikes Back, Aliens.....they alternate the top 3 spots

[–] AdamS (336) 4 years ago

Sometimes Wrath of Khan slips in there.

Kahn is barely outside the top 3... he nudges his way in once in a while.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Captain KHARK!

Raiders, Empire and Aliens puts you in a Spielberg/Lucas/Cameron 80's mode...and that should tell you a lot about your life and your tastes. In a good way. Raiders is my favorite film of 1981.

Speaking of favorite movies, the other night I found two playing pretty much at the same time:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance(1962)
Scarface(1983)

Neither is my self-selected "favorite of their year," but Scarface is close(second behind Terms of Endearment; go figure.) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is from 1962, a rather spectacular movie year(perhaps the last REAL year of the American studio system) with MANY of my favorites : The Manchurian Candidate(Number One), How the West Was Won, The Music Man, Lonely are the Brave, To Kill a Mockingbird, Cape Fear(the GOOD one, with Greg Peck's second b/w Universal lawyer in a year), Advise and Consent...

Anyway, I kept flipping back and forth from Liberty Valance to Scarface; b/w to color, old time stars(Wayne and Stewart) to new time star(Pacino.)

I'd watch Stewart shoot Liberty Valance(Lee Marvin) and then switch over to Scarface cutting his first deal with a Bolivian cocaine producer. Then back to John Wayne bitterly beating up some guys in a bar and then switch over to Scarface and his pal executing a rival Miami mobster and a crooked cop.

Back and forth I went, from one favorite movie to another, from one era to another, both with strong themes of macho and confrontation..tickled by getting the memories of TWO favorite films back to back, side by side.

I love the movies of my life.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

It's certainly neither "Psycho" nor "Chinatown", although they're both great movies.

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That they are -- and very different from each other, from different eras, different creative minds...

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What it really boils down to is "my favorite movie of all time (or today, or this week)", which is almost as difficult to decide

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But do you HAVE a favorite? One that pops into your mind when first asked to consider?

[–] hurricane (1907) 4 years ago

I wouldn't pay too much attention to lists like this. They're just somebody else's opinion.

Anybody could make a list of their ten favourite films, and it would be equally as valid as this.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I wouldn't pay too much attention to lists like this. They're just somebody else's opinion.

Anybody could make a list of their ten favourite films, and it would be equally as valid as this.

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Agreed, but there is also this:

A lot of these lists have been produced over the years. Perhaps the most "official" were the American Film Institute lists, which were first voted upon by a mix of "Hollywood workers" and "outside movie fans"(like President Clinton the first time. Ostensibly , this gives a pretty "realistic" assessment of the films considered "great" -- better than the Oscar Best Picture list(where only Rebecca can be found for Hitch), more "democratic" than the foo-foo Sight and Sound list (Vertigo? Really?)

The AFI lists -- and similar lists -- usually listed these movies in the top four:

Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Gone With the Wind
The Godfather

Though GWTW (pretty much the REAL highest grossing movie of all time) is fading because of racial politics, those others have held.

And Hitchcock usually gets these four on any of these lists: Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho.

So here's the thing: all of the above ARE great films. These lists have gotten it right, particularly with the big blockbuster classics(GWTW, The Godfather.)

Meanwhile: Whether critics or "people," nobody's ever voted Hitchcock's "Topaz" as one of the greatest films ever made.

So bottom line...some of these lists are right. Great films are like the great novels (Moby Dick, Great Expectations): we know what they are.