Raging Bull

1980 boxing movie

Rating: 20/20

Plot: The story of boxer Jake LaMotta and how Jake LaMotta leaked all over the floor.

Ok, I know I just called it a boxing movie, but it's not really a boxing movie. It's a movie about a boxer. There's a difference, and that difference is what elevates this to its status as one of the greatest movies of all time. This has scenes that take place in boxing rings. They're filmed in a way that puts the audience right in the ring. The use of slow motion, the black and white grime, a camera that just leers, background sounds and the way those background sound (including birds?) are recorded just forces you to focus, and that's true of the scenes in the ring as well as outside the ring. Scorsese has this way of making this movie stuff, in some weird way, more real than reality, and that's even with the boxing scenes probably not looking all that realistic. But again, it's not a boxing movie, and Scorsese and company aren't all that interested in creating realistic boxing scenes. No, they want to create a picture of a self-destructing man's soul, the colors of that soul's bruises, the depths of its creases, and the shapes of its scars. It's not necessarily a soul you want to spend much time with, but this, maybe more than any other biopic, just traps you in there and almost forces you to watch. After a couple hours with LaMotta, you really almost feel like you've been pummeled for fifteen rounds. And there's such a range of emotions you feel with this subject. You hate the guy, you sort of feel bad for the guy, you laugh at the guy, you're scared for the guy, and you're scared of the guy. A lot of the power in this character and this movie comes from De Niro's otherworldly performance, that ability to crawl inside LaMotta's skin. De Niro likely had to take extra long showers after some of these scenes. LaMotta's character is one that doesn't make a lot of sense, but De Niro makes him make sense, makes all his flaws real. It's one of the greatest performances of all time, the kind of performance that is so good that it could almost kill a movie if that makes any sense. The kind of performance that could completely overshadow what everybody else is doing. I remember seeing this as a kid and actually believing that old flabby LaMotta was being played by a different, chubbier and older actor. Still have trouble believing that transformation. With De Niro's brilliance, it's remarkable that anybody else in this movie can float, and the fact that they do is evidence of their own abilities. Pesci can freak out like the best of them, and every single scene that Pesci and De Niro share has this great rhythm to it, as well as this electricity that you just don't see with a pair of actors all that much. Part of it might be the writing, but the words didn't stand out so much. They could have been reading grocery lists back and forth to each other, and it still might have worked. And Cathy Moriarty's performance is simply stunning. In a movie about men, she manages to not be completely swallowed up. Her eyes cut through the screen, blink right in your living room. She and her character have this power, and it's amazing to me that can deliver this type of performance since A) she was only 19 or 20 when it was filmed and B) it was her first movie. Just amazing. Scorsese's directing tricks are subtle, but he's a master, here squeezing this raw intensity on the screen. A terrific, exhausting movie.

Nicolas Cage Birthday Celebration: Bringing out the Dead

1999 Scorsese movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A paramedic in New York City loses his mind as he watches ghosts and tries his best to save souls. John Goodman changes his mind about the Chinese food.

"What's that?"

"It's three legs."

"That's too many!"

 

Nicolas Cage should consider himself lucky. There's only one person who gets special birthday recognition on this blog, and that's Cory. This, in fact, might be the highlight of the man's career. I wanted to watch a Cage movie on his birthday, and I hadn't seen this one. Now that I've seen it, I have no idea why I went over 13 years without seeing it. 

 

I'll get my gripe out of the way right off the bat--there was way too much music in this. I dug the Van Morrison played along with Scorcese's flashy images of New York bathed in colors. Van Morrison (I think just one song) fades in and out like you're losing radio reception, and wherever he pops up, it's appropriate. I could have done without the REM or Janes Addiction or The Who or 10,000 Maniacs though. That music might be timeless, but for me, it cements this in a very specific time and place. Plus, there were so many snippets of these songs that it sounded like somebody flipping the radio dial in the middle of songs just to be mean. Or in the case of 10,000 Maniacs, to be nice.

The first thought I had while watching this was, "What? A Nicolas Cage movie with narration?" The narration in this is especially poetic though and paints this wonderfully abstract picture of the character's mind. 

 

"Saving someone's life is like falling in love, the best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterward, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth. Everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there, why deny that for a moment there, God was you?"

 

It's stylized 1st person narration for a stylized movie. I like it. And it just perfectly captures the thoughts of this poor dude wandering in this nightmarish limbo, an urban purgatory with ghosts, well-lit ghosts that occasionally boogie to Van Morrison songs. This movie looks so good, crisp when it needs to be crisp and more viscous when it needs to be viscous. Sometimes, the buildings and streets and skies and people are oily and indistinct, and you just have this white ghostly ambulance cutting through it all. Sometimes, things focus on the worn expressions and bad postures of these damned souls. It's all beautifully hideous, and Scorsese isn't shy about using the tricks of his trade to show us this world or how one man's mind is deteriorating as he moves through it. At times, it feels like too much, but it's an experience and a half. The birthday boy's performance is one of his better ones. Combined with Scorsese's trickery, Cage's acting perfectly shows this character's descent into madness. It's a more careful performance than you might expect from Cage although there are a couple of Nic Cage freak-outs ("Why's everything a cardiac arrest? Come on, people!" or his laugh after an accident involving the ambulance), but watching a Cage character gradually lose his mind is about as perfect as it gets for a fan of his work. Also shining in this E.R. on hallucinogenics: Ving Rhames as raucous Marcus with his sweet-talkin' and cries to Jesus; John Goodman as Cage's partner on the first night, a guy who just wants some food; Tom Sizemore as his absurdly vicious co-driver on the third night; an unrecognizable Marc Anthony, a guy I probably wouldn't recognize anyway; Arthur J. Nascarella, the barking (literally) captain; Mary Beth Hurt as a sarcastic nurse; and of course Afemo Omilami as Griss, a guy super-cool enough to be allowed to speak about himself in the third person. "Don't make me take off my sunglasses" might be my favorite line ever spoken by a guy named Griss in a movie. It all adds up to something that is devastating but at the same time enormously entertaining. There's a dark humor that's impossible to miss. Scorsese himself provides some of the chuckles as a dispatcher, sending the ambulance to help people with roaches in their ear, a man setting his pants on fire, a three car accident with "two taxis and a taxi," an elderly woman abducted by her own cat, and a man at the bus terminal who was shot three years ago but now says his arm hurts. 

 

I don't completely understand what this movie's about, but I'd love to see it again to piece things together. Three nights? A guy trying to save people? Is Cage's character a Christ figure? 

 

Other things I liked: 

 

1) I.B. Bangin. What a name!

2) The volcano art in that dude's apartment. I wonder if my wife would let me put something like that up.

3) As much as I hated the music, the song by The Cellos where a guy claims that he's "the Japanese sandman" is bitchin'.

Hugo

2011 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An orphan living in a train station tries to repair a robot that his father found in storage at a museum. He befriends the daughter of a crotchety old toy shop owner and tries to avoid being caught by the station inspector while he keeps the train station's clocks running.

Just a stunningly beautiful work of art and a lovely ode to silent cinema, especially the work on a director I won't mention even though it doesn't seem to stop anybody else who writes or talks about the movie. Now the big surprise in this was already spoiled for me because I'd read Brian Selznick's beautiful novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Knowing the story's secrets didn't ruin it for me, and I still teared up, probably because of Ben Kingsley's wonderful performance as that director whom I will not mention. This is a touching movie with plenty of humorous bits, mostly provided by Sacha Baron Cohen's station inspector. The movie's got whimsy and heart, and it's also gorgeous. France is France, but I also loved the way the camera maneuvered around the clock gears or the people packing the train station. I also really enjoyed the recreations of the early films, too. This is a great adaptation of a very cool young adult book and a movie seemingly made for fans of movies.

Buster and Chaplin footage is in this, and Django Reinhardt also makes an appearance. Well, an actor playing Django Reinhardt.

Taxi Driver

1976 movie

Rating: 20/20

Plot: Travis Bickle gets a new job driving a taxi, makes a few buddies, starts a hobby collecting guns, gets involved with politics, gets a pretty girlfriend, and decides to experiment with his hair.

I may have given bonus points for this for being indirectly responsible for nearly getting Ronald Reagan assassinated. Just think about how powerful that is for a moment. Yeah, I know that The Cat in the Hat could probably drive a person to kill, too, but that's different.

Some questions for my readers who have seen this:

1) Is Travis Bickle a hero?
2) Isn't Travis Bickle dead at the end of this movie? Is that meant to be ambiguous or am I missing something? If he's not dead, is it a happy ending?
3) Is this a war movie?

Here's the most disturbing thing, for me at least: Travis Bickle is relatable. Think about that, too. He's a lonely figure in one of the most crowded cities in the world. He's trapped in this insomniac pessimist fever dream. He can't understand why his date isn't happy about being taken to a pornographic movie theater. It's almost like this story was ripped right out of every man's diary.

I love how that Bernard Herrman sax-heavy score and the filthy backdrop of New York City's prettiest bits almost sexualize the parts of a taxi cab at one point in this movie. I was aroused, and I don't even really find cars all that attractive. I think it might be the color yellow. Then again, Cybill Shepherd's hair didn't do much for me at all. Oddly, Albert Brooks' hair did.

Another question: Did Jodie Foster have good parents?

Harvey Keitel and Peter Boyle's characters should have gotten spin-offs or prequels.

Love Gene Palma as "Street Drummer" enough here to check out every other film he's ever been in. That's only two movies, one a documentary about pornography and one a John Ritter movie. He should have also gotten a spin-off.

I love the linearity of Bickle's story. Every scene is a step in the direction this character is going. And every single scene, arguably, is important.

Here's a question for discussion: If you could invite any six movie characters to have dinner with you, which six would you invite? For me, it would be Travis Bickle, Mary Poppins, and four others. I haven't finished my list yet.

Goodfellas

1990 gangsta movie

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Henry Hill rises up the gangster ranks and marries his sweetheart.

I don't think gangsters are very good influences. Just look at all the curse words in this movie! I do like the influence that I think this had on movies that followed it. Sure it's got some impersonators that pale in comparison, attempts at carbon copies that lack the distinctive voice that Goodfellas has. But for the most part, I think this did more good than harm in Hollywood. Minor quibble though: Shouldn't it be Good Fellows? This movie is electric from start to finish--from the in medias res buffoonery dealing with the contents of car's trunk to a conclusion where Henry's selfishness is more depressing to me than surprising. Electric. Most electric is Joe Pesci's off-kilter performance. That guy's best when he's completely losing control, and he gets plenty of chances to show off here and help create these iconic moments that become those movie moments that everybody remembers. Everybody else--and I mean everybody else--is also great. DeNiro's performance is as flawless in this as in those Fockers movies, but it's that kind of performance where he doesn't even look like he's doing anything special, deceptively so. The other guy on the cover, wide-eyed Liotta with his aw-shucks face makes a likable enough protagonist but he really works more like a straight man to a lot of wackily-inflated caricatures. And then there's the periphery characters, each adding a little shading or color to this consistently entertaining look at the [under]world of gangsters. I never realized how funny gangsters were. Technically, Scorsese's a master. The guy knows how to tell a story visually without getting in the way of things, but there are some standout scenes where his camera maneuvers in ways that shouldn't be logistically possible, like during Henry's first date when the camera follows them from their car to the table or a scene from Henry's point of view where he walks through a restaurant and we're introduced to all these colorful figures, including the guy who says everything twice. I also really like how this is all humanized a bit, or maybe softened, by focusing a little on the female characters including Pesci's mother (the one with an awesome painting that I'd love to hang in my house) and Mrs. Hill. The duo-narrators really give this story another dimension about 1/3 of the way into the film. This is one of those movies that seems about half as long as it actually is.

Note: "Beyond the Sea" is in this. For those of you who care about the numbers, that's the 27th movie I've watched this year with that song in it somewhere. This movie has a big soundtrack, by the way.

Another note: When I am beaten to death by a guy with crazy eyes, I don't want it to happen a while a Donovan song plays in the background, especially a wussy lame one like "Atlantis". Well, wait a second. That song does kind of rule. I'd prefer being beaten to death during a playing of "Atlantis" than "Mellow Yellow," I guess.

If I got to pick a song to be beaten to death to, I think I'd go with Sammy Davis Jr.'s version of "MacArthur Park" or something by Sonny Terry. How about you?

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

2011 biographical documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An exhaustive look at the life, the work, and the spirituality of the best Beatle.

There's an honesty to this film that I really like. I know George Harrison didn't make this documentary about himself, but the accumulation of all this previously-unseen footage was his, so although the decision to not hide a lot of the scars just feels like his decision to me as much as it was his wife's or Scorsese's. And yeah, a lot of this does almost feel like a 3+ commercial for George Harrison, almost like a visual essay detailing all the reasons why George should be Saint George Version 2.0 or something. The one who wouldn't dare hurt a dragon. But instead of only painting a picture of Harrison as this mystical figure and focusing on how spiritual he was, it refuses to hide his shortcomings. Still, I would think it would be nearly impossible to watch this and not respect and like the guy, maybe the best example of a human being who is so perfectly flawed.

I thought this seemed a little scattered at the beginning, and I wasn't really sure where Scorsese was going with things. We had a description of George's Beatles "audition" on a double-decker bus, stuff about the break-up, and a little about his boyhead in the first ten minutes, and I wondered if this whole thing was going to be this frustratingly disjointed. It isn't though, just straightforward chronological stuff that thankfully ignores a lot of the stuff that's been covered or shown again and again in other Beatles documentaries. There are a lot of touching moments, especially the stuff at the end about his death and the relationship with his wife, and since George was the funniest Beatle, there are a lot of funny parts, too. My favorite moment might have been Ringo's joke: "How many Beatles does it take to change a lightbulb?" Pause. "Four!" Lots of Ravi Shankar. I love that guy and the other "giggly little Indian guy" too, and I really enjoyed Ravi's description of god and devil music. Also the applause after sitar tuning at Bangledesh. Oh, my other favorite moment was a story Tom Petty told about ukuleles. "He had a lot of ukuleles in his trunk."

I'm not sure there's anything all that revealing in this documentary, and it is really long. Beatles fans, and especially fans of the best Beatle, will like it just fine. I did learn that Phil Spector might be the ugliest lesbian that I'll ever see. See? Maybe if I had learned to be a better person by watching this documentary about a guy I'm convinced was a really good person, I'd have given this a 20.

By the way, there's this quick footage of a random guy wearing a bow tie and manically singing a song where he asks "Who wants to die?" I'd love to know who that is.

After Hours

1985 riddle

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Paul's ready to unwind after another boring day at his boring job with Balki Bartokomous. While reading at a coffee shop, he strikes up a conversation with an attractive girl and calls her up later that night. After hours. When he decides to meet her for a date (after hours), it sets off a surreal chain of events that all add up to one really crappy evening for poor Paul.

About halfway through this movie, Jen walked into the room, watched for a little bit, and then asked what was going on. This is the type of movie that makes questions like that nearly impossible to answer which is one of the reasons I love it. So much happens to poor Paul, the protagonist being a sort of straight man for one giant cosmic joke. There's an exquisite randomness to the proceedings, but at the same time, some parallel moments, some recurring imagery, and some self-referential gags fool you into thinking there's a method to the madness. Is there? I'm not sure it matters. This is a nearly-hilarious black comedy, something you can only watch late at night (after hours). It also works as a sleep-deprived absurdist noir, as a goofy Hitchcock homage, and as a cartoonish suspense flick. Very much in the like-it-or-lump-it category of movies, I think it's easily one of Scorsese's most fun movies.