Martin Scorsese

The Irishman (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2020) To anyone closely keeping track of Martin Scorsese’s career, The Irishman arrives as a clear late-career entry – the kind of film that plays as much as a narrative as a reflection of the films previously made under his direction. At first glance, it does look like many of Scorsese’s celebrated crime epics: a multi-decade odyssey through the murky world of east-coast union corruption, organized crime and veteran hitmen. It features Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, with special effects technology used to portray them from the 1950s to the 2000s. It has flashes of Scorsese’s directing style at its most vivid, with individual sequences playing like virtuoso riffs on the content of the film: There’s a particularly good sequence midway through in which a hitman ponders his choices for an upcoming hit, prepares and executes it despite not exactly going to plan. But, at the same time, The Irishman does play like a pre-retirement capstone, as the director deals heavily in themes that make more sense from an older filmmaker’s perspective. There is a moment where the narration sends nearly every single character to death or retirement, and you’re sure that this is the end of the film. But there are still thirty minutes and an unresolved framing device to go, and that’s when The Irishman strikes out in its own territory – telling us about the uneasy retirement of an accomplished hitman, the estrangement from his family, the gradual disappearance of his friends and the inevitable press of time, transforming a stone-cold killer in a frail old man liable to be taken out by even the slightest health problem. That’s what transforms The Irishman into something special, and something that befits Scorsese’s evolving filmography: he’s not putting together Mean Streets anymore. Of course, there’s a price to pay for such a substantial epilogue: the film is very long and feels even longer as the years go by and we dig ourselves out of no less than two framing devices and various flashbacks. There are a lot of characters to follow, and the way the film fits in history, often in oblique detail, is meant to be interpreted by those who have a decent grasp of post-WW2 American history, and specifically everything about Jimmy Hoffa. Some will argue that The Irishman would have done best as a miniseries, and, curiously enough, I only half-agree with that statement: Scorsese makes movies, not episodes of a TV show, and while that’s a distinction increasingly irrelevant to anyone but purists, it’s still a significant difference in matters of filmography. I enjoyed it, but I was really wishing for faster pacing at times. Still, The Irishman is an important milestone in Scorsese’s ongoing work: while we may wish for him to keep working forever, it does feel like the kind of work that can stand as a capstone.

Shine a Light (2008)

Shine a Light (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2020) Look, if you’re going to shoot a concert film for **The Rolling Stones**, obviously you’re going to get **Martin Scorsese** for it. Legends to present legends, right? It makes more sense than most picks—Scorsese, after all, has directed concert films before (most notably The Last Waltz) and considers the Stones a formative influence. It certainly helps that The Stones, as of 2008, were still incredible performers: Mick Jagger can’t just stand still and sing when there’s dancing and crowd-hyping to do. Combined with behind-the-scenes footage, celebrity testimonies (the recorded concert at New York’s Beacon Theater was a benefit for the Clinton Foundation, so you’ll never guess who shows up), archival footage and swooping moving cameras, Shine a Light is at once majestic and intimate. Inevitably, the music is iconic, the energy is infectious and Scorsese clearly knows how to package everything into one great package.

New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2020) My working theory at the moment is that all 1970s movie musicals were terrible and/or depressing, and New York, New York only adds more fuel to it. There’s some logic to that theory—the 1970s were marked by excess, as Hollywood found itself freed from the constraints of the Production Code and compelled to look again at past Hollywood successes. But in typical Hollywoodian/American fashion, they went too far with their newfound freedoms and the result feels incredibly dated rather than timeless to twenty-first century audiences. There are other very specific problems with New York, New York: Director Martin Scorsese wanted to go big in an homage to musicals, to New York City, to jazz standards… and was largely (ahem; reportedly) fuelled by cocaine throughout the shooting of the film, upsetting the fine control a director should have over that kind of production. But then again, the project was flawed from the start: the entire thing revolves around an abusive, depressing relationship between rather unlikable characters. Robert de Niro is miscast here—while he’s fine as an explosive terrible man (essentially rehearsing Travis Bickle), there’s no world in which he feels right as a saxophonist. Liza Minelli does better because she can sing and her character is meant to be more pitiable, but her long wig here does nothing to make me like her more than usual. (I used to think that her short hair was what I didn’t like about her, but at least this film proves me wrong.) As for the rest, New York, New York is a depressing exercise, as it charts a doomed romance between two volatile characters. The tale’s darkness definitely fits the 1970s, but also limits the film’s more exuberant goals. The “Happy Endings” number is a blunt lie considering the rest of the movie, and for a film that tries to celebrate classic Hollywood musicals, it’s a self-limiting move. But it’s not a complete loss, and I don’t loathe it nearly as much as Cabaret—For better or for worse, this is a Scorsese film and it does have lavish sequences, striking images, untapped potential as a stylized musical, and it coasts a long way on its rousing rendition of the classic “New York, New York.” But as far as homages to classic musicals go—no. New York, New York is far too long, loose, glum and rarely as purely likable as the best of the genre that he’s trying to honour. What 1970s Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out in its rebellious adolescent phase is that sometime, happy funny romance is exactly what audiences want.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, December 2019) I’m old enough to remember the furor accompanying the release of The Last Temptation of Christ—the controversy, the editorials, the protests. Of course, with some distance, it’s yet another demonstration of why you can’t trust conservatives when they create their own moral panic—the film ends up being a powerful examination of the subtleties of faith by presenting a compellingly human portrait of Jesus Christ. Written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese (both devout Christians, as further demonstrated by their later films), the film dares to take a non-mythological look at the character of Jesus Christ, balancing his own human desires with the fate that awaits him as God’s emissary/sacrifice. It’s a surprisingly realistic take on a familiar story, bringing a considerable amount of dramatic tension to something that’s often glossed about in religious teachings. It’s a film that makes the essential point that faith is hard—it’s not supposed to be easy, it’s meant to clash against human desires and it requires sacrifice. As someone raised Catholic before turning to atheism, I found considerable power and depth to what The Last Temptation of Christ attempts to do—and in daring to consider a tainted portrait of Jesus, the film ends up being approachable to a wider variety of audiences than the ready-made audience for religious-themed films. I have no trouble watching The Last Temptation of Christ next to Jesus Christ, Superstar and then The Greatest Story Ever Told—all of those have something to say.

The King of Comedy (1982)

The King of Comedy (1982)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Google Play Streaming, December 2019) The tricky paradox of dark comedy is that you can manage to handle everything perfectly from a technical viewpoint, only to have audiences shrug and dismiss the result. It’s part of the deal—dark comedy pushes people out of their comfort zone and they don’t have to like it. That’s how I feel after watching The King of Comedy: I can’t fault director Martin Scorsese’s work here—he gets the material’s ironic darkness, executes it as well as it can be, and delivers a pretty good New York City movie as part of it. Robert de Niro is at his iconoclastic best as a psychopathic loser who hatches a plan to get his spot on a major TV show. Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard also do well in the other main roles. But at the end, The King of Comedy plays its cards: the audience feels their heart sink as they realize that the psychopath is actually pretty funny, and that he gets rewarded for his actions. That may be just a bit too much to take, and perhaps just as dispiriting now than it was forty years ago. Great movie—but I’ll use my reviewer’s right to shrug and dismiss the result.

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) In many ways, Boxcar Bertha isn’t particularly remarkable: As a better-than-average production from the Roger Corman filmmaking school, it heavily draws upon Bonnie and Clyde for inspiration at it shows a depression-era couple turning to crime in between love scenes. But here’s the thing: It’s Martin Scorsese’s second feature film, his first professional feature one after his quasi-student film Who’s That Knocking at My Door. As such, it’s practically mandatory viewing for fans. But it also shows what a good director can do with familiar material: While most movies produced by Corman had trouble even settling for capable B-movie status (“crank them out fast and cheap” seem to have been his American International Pictures’ unofficial motto), Boxcar Bertha does manage to become a decent genre picture. Despite a blunt script and low production values, it’s handled with some skill and meditative intent, reflecting Scorsese’s approach to the material and destiny to execute superior genre pictures. Barbara Hershey and David Carradine also do quite well in the lead roles. I’m not sure contemporary audiences will appreciate the film as much at the 1970s one did—after all, there’s practically a 1970s “violent couple picaresque journey” subgenre by now-famous directors in between Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, arguably Beatty), Sugarland Express (Spielberg), Badlands (Malick), and Boxcar Bertha fits right into what was then New Hollywood’s most salacious appeal. Decades and a few more Natural Born Killers later, it’s not as new or invigorating as it once was. Instead, we’re left with something far different: the movies as juvenilia, interesting not as much for what they were, but what they foretold.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) The 1970s were a melodramatic time for everyone, including directors better known for straight-up genre fare. In Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, here we have Martin Scorsese tackling a romantic drama, looking at lower-class Americans through the eyes of a new widow trying to make it as a singer. Of course, money is scarce, there’s her son to consider, and new romantic relationships are a path fraught with peril. As befit a New Hollywood film, it’s all dirty, grimy, realistic and depressing. We’re stuck around Phoenix, Arizona for most of the duration. Scorsese’s usual sense of style is muted here (well, other than a very stylish opening and a long tracking shot) but considering that he took the job in order to bolster his credentials as an actor’s director, he over-succeeded at his ambitions at the moment Ellen Burstyn (looking impossibly young here) won an Oscar for the role. Other than Burstyn, there’s a fun number of famous actors in the cast, from Kris Kristofferson to Diane Ladd to Harvey Keitel to Jodie Foster (plus Laura Dern in a cameo if you know what to look for). Still, the star here is Scorsese, who delivers a very atypical film by his later standards but was able to parlay his experience here in later more memorable projects.

The Color of Money (1986)

The Color of Money (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) I’m one of those weirdos that doesn’t particularly care for the original The Hustler (1961), so I was coming to The Color of Money with low expectations. Which may have worked to the later film’s advantage, as I found it more interesting than its predecessor. It helps that this follow-up does what sequels often loath to do—use the previous film as back-story while telling a new story in which returning characters are developed in interesting ways. Much of the credit for this creative intention goes directly to the authors of the novel from which The Color of Money is adapted, who conceived it as a sequel to the novel that spawned The Hustler. Paul Newman is back as a former professional pool player, now more interested in staking bets for younger players. Playing against him is Tom Cruise as a younger, more impulsive player, and the great-looking Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the third party in their merry crew. (Plus, John Turturro as an evil hustler.)  The relationship between the three characters is what sustains The Color of Money on its way to the final tournament in Atlantic City, with everyone changing and allying themselves differently every few scenes. The middle of the film even sees a significant plot rearrangement, as the mentor/mentee relationship gives way to the mentor getting himself back into the game. While not quite as dramatic as its twenty-five-year distant prequel, The Color of Money nonetheless makes for fascinating viewing. Director Martin Scorsese being Scorsese, there are a few technically impressive shots here, as well as new ways of showing familiar things—most notable being the pool-as-tennis sequence, and some shorts from the perspective of the ball. The ending isn’t particularly cheery, but it does work to cap off the film in a satisfying way. It’s not quite as ambitious or universal as The Hustler, but The Color of Money does feel more enjoyable.

The Last Waltz (1978)

The Last Waltz (1978)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Being in a rock band is cool and all, but who can claim to be cool enough to have a documentary about them directed by Martin Scorsese? Well, The Band is that cool enough, and they even get street credentials from roping in post-Mean Streets Scorsese before he became The Scorsese. Watching The Last Waltz, for me, is a bit of a strange experience as I know practically nothing about The Band itself (who does, these days?), and am so free to appreciate the film and the music itself without any prior emotional attachment. Much of the documentary is structured along the lines of the group’s last concert (with their original line-up, it should be said), intercut between interview footage with band members and a few testimonials. The audience barely figures in the film—it’s all about the band itself, special guests and the performances. Fortunately, the music itself is up to the weight placed on it. There have been other concert films since then, some of them also from Scorsese, so the newness effect of The Last Waltz is diminished compared to 1976. Still, everything is very well handled, with good music and interesting interviews even if you’re not familiar with The Band.

Italianamerican (1974)

Italianamerican (1974)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2018) Martin Scorsese takes a camera back home in Italianamerican, a look at his parents’ history and daily lives in the early 1970s. If you’re not a Scorsese fan, the film won’t mean as much as it does to those who are curious about the celebrated director’s origins. We get a solid look at the family history as Italian immigrants in New York City and young Martin’s living conditions, but it’s the look at an old married couple bickering affectionately that remains the film’s highlight. Mama Scorsese tells us about her meatball recipe as she argues with her husband. As a capture of a specific kind of people at a specific time, it’s quite heartwarming and charming even if you don’t know anything about Scorsese-the-Director. Italianamerican is short (it was made as part of a larger project), but it’s the kind of thing you leave on while doing other things, simply to eavesdrop on another family having its own discussions.

Silence (2016)

Silence (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, August 2018) Martin Scorsese’s Catholicism has always informed his movies, but seldom as much as in Silence, the story of two missionaries travelling to Edo-era Japan to spread the gospel and being persecuted for their beliefs. While such a plot summary would suggest a dull drama, Scorsese keeps even a slow-paced story moving through good performances and a focus on a period of history that usually gets short thrift in western cinema. Along the way of the protagonists’ suffering, Scorsese also gets to play with themes that are dear to him and inspiring in their own way—how closely you adhere to your beliefs can be measured to how much pain you’re willing to endure for them, even as others may reach accommodations with persecution. Andrew Garfield is quite good in the film’s main role. It’s worth noting that there is seldom any explicit discussion in Silence of the absurdity of religious oppression: it exists, immovable, and can either be resisted on a personal level (at the risk of destruction) or surrendered to. In Scorsesian terms, this is a pure passion project and far closer to his spiritual biographies than his crime drama—it’s certainly not as flashy or purely entertaining as other films, but it may be more important to him than others. I approached Silence with some skepticism (I’m really not in the target audience for the film) and dread at the film’s advertised characteristics (length, setting, subject matter…) and yet ended up appreciating the result far more than I expected.

Cape Fear (1991)

Cape Fear (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, September 2017) If you’re going to remake a classic film, you might as well get Scorsese to direct, and get the original film’s two main actors in minor roles. That’s as close to a stamp of approval as you’ll ever get, although a title sequence by Saul Bass and reprising the original’s music score by Bernard Hermann also helps. Suffice to say that overall, the 1991 version of Cape Fear is a good movie and a successful remake of its predecessor. It updates the story, adds more details for savvier audiences (including the whole “restraining order” stuff missing from the original), cranks up the violence, doesn’t shy away from details that would have been too intense for audiences of the original 1962 film, and uses every trick of then-modern cinematography. With Scorsese at the helm, the direction is intentionally jarring, and the actors are following a coherent plan. While Nick Nolte is solid as the father trying to defend himself and his family against a dangerous ex-convict, it’s Robert de Niro who steals the spotlight as the villain Max Cady, with some assistance from Juliette Lewis as a teenage prey. The only problem in de Niro’s performance is that it’s based on an overcooked character: Not only is Cady dangerous in the criminal sense, he’s also implausibly well informed in matter of law and literature, making him seem less real than the rough and canny bruiser in the original. I’m also not terribly happy at the way the film dispenses with the character as compared to the original in which the family got to keep some of its innocence. Some artistic choices do date the film more precisely than I’d like—the credit sequence and some gratuitous recolouring of some sequences now seem more ridiculous than threatening. Still, all in all, Cape Fear is a good thriller by a master of the form, a decent homage to the original while polishing some of the first film’s most disappointing aspects. See it, but see it alongside the original.

After Hours (1985)

After Hours (1985)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2017) If anyone ever wonders what Martin Scorsese’s version of a comedy would look like, remind them of After Hours’ existence. It starts on a note familiar to countless teenage sex romp, as a young man heads to a strange woman’s apartment in hope of, well, you know. But the odds are against our hero as he loses his money, meets increasingly hostile people, suffers the worst luck imaginable and seemingly can’t manage to get himself out of trouble. It may be a comedy, but it’s shot like a horror thriller and written even more darkly. There are a number of deaths in the film, to the point where it’s the kind of film where you can comment “the murder was funnier than the suicide” and not feel like a complete psychopath. After Hours is a very strange film, compelling on the sole basis of seeing how bad things will get for the protagonist, yet repellent in content and unsatisfying in its abrupt conclusion. (To be clear: the last shot of the conclusion is just about perfect, but what leads to it seems arbitrary and far too quickly resolved to feel right.) Griffin Dunne is oddly sympathetic as the justifiably paranoid protagonist; meanwhile, Linda Fiorentino shows up in an early role as a kinky artist, Teri Garr is amusing as a vengeful waitress and Roseanna Arquette as a young woman with an entire newsstand of issues. (New York City also plays itself in its most alarming state, as a dark labyrinth in which everyone is out to get you.) If After Hours is Martin Scorsese goofing off, they maybe we should be thankful that he hasn’t made more pure comedies … or that his far funnier films usually belong to other genres.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, on Cable TV, July 2016) As an entry in Martin Scorsese’s filmography, Bringing Out the Dead is often forgotten alongside his classic movies. Which is weird, considering that it’s a drama featuring Nicolas Cage as a paramedic at the height of the New York City crime epidemic of the early nineties. Directed with some of Scorsese’s flamboyance, it portrays NYC nights as barely repressed war zones in which paramedics are helpless to help their dying charges. Crime, drugs, heart attacks and accidents kill scores of victims, while Cage’s character goes crazy knowing that he hasn’t saved anyone in ages. As a Cage performance, it’s a rare blend between his Oscar-winning dramatic intensity and his borderline-insane grandiosity. The overall nightmarish atmosphere of the film seems just as unhinged as its lead actor, with the film taking place nearly entirely at night, in-between a hospital where everybody’s is shouting and bleeding, and the streets where the only people they meet are doing badly. Cage’s paramedic colleagues (the pretty good trio of John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore) are even more screwed up than he is and what’s more, he can’t quit even when he asks. Stripped of its showy hallucinatory sequences (including a flipping ambulance that should have been held in reserve for later during the film) Bringing Out the Dead isn’t much more than the story of a protagonist undergoing a nervous breakdown and picking himself up thanks to romance and a few ironic epiphanies. Set to Scorsese’s own rhythm, it’s a bit more than that, even though the pacing of the story severely slows down at times. It’s worth noting that the film was written by Paul Schrader, and fits squarely in the rest of his filmography as well. Scorsese’s affection for his city is obvious even when he’s portraying it as its lowest (and who doesn’t have a soft spot for the hellish NYC of the 1970s?), and it’s that kind of pairing (alongside Scorsese/Cage and Cage-the-actor/Cage-the-scenery-chomper) that makes Bringing Out the Dead interesting to watch even fifteen years later, perhaps as a time capsule yet unseen by many.

Hugo (2011)

Hugo (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On-demand video, March 2012) Watching Hugo became mandatory after its five-Oscar performance at the 84th Academy Awards, but such success was predictable given that Hugo is a movie celebrating movies; Hollywood loves patting itself on the back (as further proved by the night’s other big winner, the silent-film homage The Artist) and Hugo is less about its plot that it is about seeing Martin Scorsese deliver a paean to the beginning of the film industry and, in the same breath, the tradition perpetuated by Hollywood. Which isn’t to say that Hugo is overrated: As a flight of fancy honoring Georges Meliès and the beginning of film-making as a dream factory, it’s perfectly-controlled, lavishly produced and almost heartfelt.  It tells an enchanting story and does so with the best and latest feats of technical wizardry.  Even seen in two-dimensions, Hugo benefits from having been shot in 3D: The opening half-hour, in particular, shows a Cameronian understanding of how to move a camera through space, creating a depth to the film that will delight anyone interested in great cinematography.  The special effects are used wisely, and 1931 Paris comes alive in a way that somehow feels different from any of the many versions of the city seen on film so far.  Hugo doesn’t avoid feeling a bit long, especially toward the end, and wallows in its own sentimentality, but the result is still a film that combines emotion and technology in efficient fashion.  Ben Kingsley is remarkable, and the film allows itself a few moments that, while not strictly necessary, show how much wonder you can create with a big budget and decent craftsmen.  The 2011 epitome of Hollywood at its most lavish, Hugo will speak most clearly to cinephiles willing to embrace “the magic of movies”.