1978 - THE LAST WALTZ, the last time I watch this.

The third time on this film for me and it will be the last.  The Band, in their supposedly last appearance on stage performed  a concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.  Robbie Robertson a guitarist with the band got Martin Scorsese involved in filming  this bash.  Scorsese brought along a team of professional cinematographers and filmed in 35 mm instead of the usual grainy 16mm these kind of shows were shot in.  The result was a film with some pretty sharp images that looked unlike anything that had been seen in a concert film before.

Half the fun this time was reading up on the behind the scenes shenanigans that went on during the concert.  Levon Helm apparently was extremely pissed at Robertson and felt the film was mostly a Robbie Robertson ego trip.  Helm felt that Scorsese was entirely focused on Robertson and one thing for sure is that Scorsese seems to have a major man crush on Robertson with all of the closeups of him inserted throughout the film. 

Well how's the film?  I have the same issues that I had with it the first time I saw it.  The Last Waltz is too damn long.  It's fun to see a lot of the guest stars such as Dr. John, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.  But really, Neil Diamond come on.  Also Scorsese's interviews with The Band are kind of stupid and incoherent with their talk of the number of skirts they chased and just some general incoherence that pervades all of their supposedly deep thoughts about music.  Apparently the drugs flowed freely during the making of this film.  

Still, the film is kind of a must see concert film.  The Last Waltz is well made and the musical numbers filmed in a studio are extremely well done.

117 minutes.

2011 - HUGO a lesson in film history from Marty Scorsese

An orphan in a train station in Paris has a lot of adventure and learns about the history of early silent film.

When  it was announced that Marty the Great would make a children's film and in 3D expectations were high.  The resulting film Hugo is not going to appeal to the Madagascar audience.  This is a very specialized film, made more for film buffs than the general public.

Scorsese shot the film in 3D and does employ some clever imagery with this gimmick but overall it's difficult to see what 3D actually adds to the story besides giving me a headache and forcing me to pay more than usual for a movie ticket.

 It's hard to find fault with the cast.  Ben Kingsley probably has the best part that he's had in years.  The kid Asa Butterfield is in just about every scene and is very good.  Christopher Lee show up in a small part and overall the whole cast is up to the usual high Scorsese standard.

The film also looks great too.  Scorsese has a group of collaborators that work with him on just about every film he does so the viewer can expect a high degree of technical skill.

Hugo is a personal film for Scorsese.  The problem is that it will mostly appeal to film historians and buffs hardly the crowd that is going to make this a commercially successful film. 

128 minutes.

2007 - THE KEY TO RESERVA, 2010 - A LETTER TO ELIA, two short films about filmmakers from Martin Scorsese.

A couple of short films from Martin Scorsese about filmmakers and filmmaking.  These two minor films say a lot about his attitudes towards a couple of major filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan.

The Key to Reserva is an extended sparkling wine commercial about Scorsese discovering some lost script pages from an unfilmed Hitchcock script.  Scorsese's really the whole show at his motormouth best.  He blathers on at 100 miles an hour talking about preserving a film that was never made in the first place and carries on about recreating the lost scenes to Greed.  His short film The Key to Reserva does a pretty good job of mimicking Hitchock's style and contains enough in jokes to amuse just about any film nut. 

10 minutes.

A Letter to Elia is something very different from The Key to Reserva.  Scorsese is again the star in this film. This time he's much more serious as he discusses the career of director Elia Kazan a filmmaker he clearly feels a lot of kinship for.  Scorsese does a brief overview of Kazan's life and career focusing on some of the highs and lows of his personal life.  Towards the end of the film Scorsese speaks movingly about his friendship with Kazan, his appearance at the Academy Awards to give Kazan his honorary Oscar and in particular, Kazan's late 50's and early 60's films which had a personal resonance for him.

60 minutes.

Scorsese clearly enjoys Hitchcock's films but seems to have a more emotional connection to individuals like Kazan or Cassevetes.

These films are an interesting insight into what makes Scorsese tick film wise.  The Key to Reserva is floating around the Internet, but don't bother with You tube which for some reason has suppressed the audio track on this film.

1983 - THE KING OF COMEDY, Scorsese's extreme comedy of discomfort

Weirdo Rupert Pupkin wants in on the world of show business and along with fellow weirdo Masha,  kidnap talk show host Jerry Langford.

The King of Comedy is the film that showed that Jerry Lewis could give a very serious and straight performance as the Johnny Carson like talk show host.  It also shows DeNiro developing and playing a character who is even stranger than Travis Bickel from Taxi Driver.

Robert De Niro's creepy uber celebrity fixated nerd Rupert Pupkin is really something to see.  Many critics commented on the similarity between the equally obsessed Travis Bickel, but I think De Niro was attempting something different here.  Say what you want about Travis Bickel, but at least he had a persona even if it was a messed up persona.  Rupert Pupkin is a man so obsessed with celebrities and the lure of show business  that he has completely channeled his character into that of a mediocre reprocessed TV personality.

The writer Paul D. Zimmerman was extremely unhappy that Scorsese got most of the credit for The King of Comedy, but this is a Scorsese film through and through.   The King of Comedy also closes out Scorsese's somewhat traditional film making technique.  After this film he really ramps up his style with an even more flamboyant camera and editing style starting with After Hours.

Because they couldn't top the crazy Rupert Pupkin character, Scorsese and DeNiro  never filmed a story about such a disturbed character again.  The King of Comedy was also a box office disaster which probably didn't help. 

 109 minutes.

1988 - THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, could have used a few more jokes.

A long haul of a film about Jesus from Martin Scorsese.  This was a personal project for him and it got him into a lot of trouble,  as he focused on the more secular aspects of the life of Christ.  This was pretty unfair criticism of The Last Temptation of Christ.  Scorsese certainly didn't turn the film into some sick sex and drugs fest.

A more fair criticism would have been was that the film was really boring.

The film does sort of follow the life of Christ.  But there are a lot of scenes of people aimlessly wandering around the desert for what seems like very little purpose.  A lot of the theological arguments in the film could have been just as easily played in a Caribou or Starbucks with a bunch of seminary students having coffee rather than having people standing around in the middle of nowhere.

There are a few laughs to be had with the casting of the film.  William DaFoe and Harvey Keitel with their New York accents are Jesus and and his good buddy Judas.  Judas spends a lot of time yelling at Jesus to do the right thing and get on with this Messiah business instead of sitting around drowning in all his angst ridden doubt about himself.  Their scenes together are like listening to a couple of Yankees fans argue about the baseball season.

The fact that Scorsese got funding at all for such a hot button film is a tribute to his ability to get it made at any cost. Unfortunately the film probably wasn't worth his time or the amount or crap he took over it.

If you want to read about the life of Christ, I would recommend the Gospel According to John, it's the shortest book in the New Testament.


164 minutes.

1997 - KUNDUN, story of the Dalai Lama is pretty and pretty boring

The life of the Dalai Lama the spiritual and religious leader of Tibet.  Directed by Martin Scorsese a guy who grew up in New York hanging around Italian American gangsters. 

Kundun, is a sincere attempt to tell the story of a holy man caught up in 20th century politics but Scorsese also seems interested in paying tribute to Powell and Pressburger, particularly their film Black Narcissus.  The film looks very pretty and the intention of Scorcese was to tell this story on an epic scale and probably garner some awards.  The film is slow, stately and deliberate in it's pacing.  For the audience this all adds up to boring.

The life of the Dalai Lama appears to be the story of a young man who was not prepared to deal with the Chinese communists and their annexation of Tibet.  The Dalai Lama seems mostly a reactor than a participator in his country's history. 

Kundun should be the story of a spiritual man, but what it comes off as is a film of very pretty pictures which has a guy sitting around on a mat spouting half baked Charlie Chan proverbs.

134 minutes.

1977 - NEW YORK NEW YORK, no fun, no fun or Travis Bickel learns to play the saxophone

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro drag Liza Minnelli along for  A Woman Under The Influence meets A Chorus Line or Guys and Dolls or something.  The idea of the film seemed to be to make a mainstream musical drama and mix it with contemporary improvisational techniques. 

Working mostly on sound stages, Scorsese goes for that old Hollywood look, he even edits the film to look like a 40's movie, with old fashioned montages and camera angles.  Trying to update the musical genre, Scorsese has De Niro and Minnelli perform long improvisational scenes which in theory should give insight into their relationship. But method actor De Niro and the more old school Liza Minnelli don't really mesh together with all their "good acting" scenes which only make this long film seem longer.

This is just not a good Scorsese film even with Robert De Niro in it.    He's supposed to be a hotshot musician wheeler dealer, but he mostly comes off as a psycho.  De Niro seems all wrong for the part with his mister intense acting style.   One thing to Scorsese's credit, he manages to keep Liza Minnelli under control which was probably no small challenge, she keeps her special brand of hysterical acting in check for a change.  However, it seems pretty tasteless to have her dress and look like her mother Judy Garland towards the end.  

This film is an ordeal to sit through.  You're better off watching The Helen Morgan Story with Paul Newman and Ann Blyth instead.

163 very long minutes.