Category: Scorsese, Martin

Reel 87: Semi-Autobiographical Movies

Some directors like to look to their own lives, or to their hometowns, for material for their films. And few are more prolific at it than Martin Scorsese (New York) and Barry Levinson (Baltimore). Come to think of it, we could have stayed in Baltimore and covered Levinson and John Waters. Missed opportunity, dangit.

At any rate, we open the episode with a look at Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS (1973), which Scorsese also co-wrote. It’s an episodic look at some folks in New York who may not entirely be on the up-and-up. Scorsese didn’t yet have the clout to get enough budget to shoot in New York City, but Los Angeles makes for a fine stand-in this time around.

From there we move to Levinson’s DINER (1984), a film that didn’t tear up the box office but it was a critical darling and has been cited by many people as a huge influence on their own work. And lucky for you (or for him), Claude gets to flex some of his Baltimore geography skills.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

Next time we’ll be doing a follow-up to Reel 12, with more Backstage Drama, with a slight twist. We’ll start with TOPSY TURVY (1999) and move on to THE CLOUDS OF SILLS MARIA (2014). Join us, won’t you?

Reel 35: Scorsese and Christianity

Martin Scorsese has never shied away from the fact that he is a Catholic, and that his religion oftentimes informs his work. There are few places where it’s more overt than in the two films we cover this week. 
First we have 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which portrays a side of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) that many of us suspected he had, but most of which is never portrayed in the Bible. Roughly the last third of the film gives us a “what if” scenario that had a lot of religious conservatives up in arms for awhile–and that was before anyone had even seen the film. 
From there we jump forward to 2016 (and from the first century AD to the seventeenth), for Silence, starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson. It’s not an especially famous title in the Scorsese catalog, at least not to the casual movie fan, but it’s a powerful piece of work that will have you questioning your faith and that of the characters in the film. 

COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Episode 36 is the first in a series of episodes featuring films that critics seem to think you can like one or the other but not both. Well, we argue that you can, indeed, like both, and we show you why. We start with a pair of Westerns: beginning with 1952’s High Noon, and then it’s on to 1959’s Rio Bravo. The plots are similar enough to echo one another, but you won’t think “remake” when you see the second film. 

Reel 31: Pacino and DeNiro Together

It’s not our worst title, but it does get to the point. 

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro appeared in four films together. And that’s if you count The Godfather Part II, in which they shared zero screen time because they appeared in separate timelines. So that really makes three, including a 2008 movie called Righteous Kill, which was bad enough that even Robert DeNiro regretted making it. And he was in What Just Happened the same year, so. 

Maybe 2008 just wasn’t Robert DeNiro’s Year of Quality Films. 

At any rate, in this episode we check out 1995’s Heat, starring a couple of guys of whom you may have heard, directed by Michael Mann, and Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman, which was made for Netflix but also spent about six hours in theaters so it would qualify for Academy Awards contention. We have two very different films here which still manage to have a lot in common other than the stars. But, of course, that’s the point of this podcast, isn’t it.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

In Reel 32, the good guys and the bad guys team up, coincidentally in Hong Kong both times. First on the projector is 1989’s The Killer, and from there we move to So Close, from 2002. The Killer is a tough one to find, but fortunately we found it on YouTube for you. Just go to this link and turn on the English captions.

Reel 15: Foreign Exchange, Part 2

Our look at non-English language films and their English counterparts continues. First up is our review of the film Infernal Affairs (2002), co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. Then we turn our attention to its American cousin, The Departed, the 2006 film directed by Martin Scorsese.

In this case the films aren’t clones of one another to the extent that we saw in the last episode, but the storylines remain quite close despite the big cultural jump from Hong Kong to Boston. But whether you watch it in English or in Chinese (or both—no reason not to watch both!), you’re in for a tension-filled good time.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Next time we get to Part 3 of this mini-series, as we look at The Seven Samurai (1954) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). Brace yourself, those are a couple of lengthy films, but well worth your time. And in-between Reels 15 and 16, there’ll be another bit of bonus audio as Claude takes some time to complain about the American educational system with regard to Arts programs.