Some people apparently haven't ever seen a Martin Scorsese film, and they really should. There are lots of Scorsese film options, but it is important to select the right one, and to actually see something he directed. For instance, his voice acting performance in that fish cartoon with Will Smith was certainly missable. With that in mind, here is your guide to the films of Martin Scorsese, or at least the ones I've actually seen.
I've never gotten around to seeing Mean Streets, Scorsese's first noteworthy film, which began a series of films with similar themes with a familiar cast, this one starring Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro. I also haven't seen any of his documentary work, and I can't really comment on that Michael Jackson video he directed (for "Bad", as I recall). I also missed a fair bit of his work in the 80's, like The King of Comedy and The Last Temptation of Christ, but I'm working on it.
I have however seen some of his legendary work in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, both of which arguably center on Robert DeNiro's unflinching portrait of a sociopath. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is pretty explicitly a man with no real grip on the real world around him but a haze of sex and violence, but the image of Jake LaMotta Scorsese presents in Raging Bull is a man with no capacity to understand why he cannot fit into a normal life with the people around him. The violent rage that tears into every facet of his life leaves him with one remarkable ability: he is the only person in the world not afraid to step into a boxing ring with Sugar Ray Robinson, and there's an incredible tragedy to seeing a career that has to end with most of his life left to live but all his friends and family long since driven away. Raging Bull is such a beautiful film as well, which captures the romance of 1940s boxing that was killed by fixed fights, Mike Tyson, and pay-per-view, it's definitely a significant piece of Americana. Both films have some of the most quoted film lines of all time, but my favorite is still the bruised and bloodied LaMotta approaching Sugar Ray after their last fight, grinning with bloody teeth and a black eye, to say "You never got me down, Ray. You never got me down."
I've never seen The Color of Money or Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear all the way through, but I have to like the challenge represented by both films, because of their reference to earlier material, so I'll rave about them anyways. Taking the story of Fast Eddie Felson from The Hustler and telling us what happened when Eddie got older and lost his edge, and tries to vicariously relive his days of glory through a younger protege, is daring in its way, even as an adaptation of Walter Tevis's novel. There's something about film that's unforgiving when we revisit images, like George Lucas found trying to humanize Darth Vader, because otherwise Fast Eddie can stay back in the 50s forever. Cape Fear takes on an icon as well, revisiting Robert Mitchum's performance in the 1962 film, as well as invoking Mitchum's evil preacher from Night of the Hunter. Scorsese and DeNiro recapture Mitchum's eerie mix of charm and violence, but DeNiro's Max Cady is a step beyond. Where Mitchum is sharp and his relentlessness and sociopathy are not obvious to the society around him, DeNiro is quite clearly operating by a completely different set of mental and emotional rules. There's a clear moral order to the 1962 film, where Scorsese's film presents its victims quite differently in a much more morally and sexually flexible world, and the far more insanely scary version of Cady is part of what allows him to do so. Plus it gave birth to that great Simpsons parody where Sideshow Bob stalks the family like Max Cady.
Then there's Goodfellas. This is like a quintessential piece of American movie culture, and the classic Scorsese film in its use of music and slow motion, as well as the usual profanity and violence. (I really don't know what to make of you not having even seen this, P.J., seriously.) This was the defining American gangster movie for a specific era, like the true story behind the Godfather, adapted from Henry Hill's memoirs of his own criminal enterprises. In Casino, Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro reunited with Scorsese to tell the story of the rise and fall of the mob in Las Vegas in the same style. Seriously I don't know how Goodfellas didn't penetrate that rock in the Swiss Alps you've been hiding under.
Other than Casino, A lot of Scorsese's work after Goodfellas didn't generate the same kind of response, but there's some quality work. The Age of Innocence was horrendously boring and did a lot to kill Winona Ryder's career, since her performance was also truly horrendous, and I never quite got around to seeing Scorsese's take on the exile of the Dalai Lama, Kundun. I did enjoy quite a bit Bringing Out the Dead, a black comedy which stars Nicholas Cage as an ambulance driver whose life is crumbling, desperately searching for a life to save, which serves for him like a sexual experience, directly comparing it himself to falling in love. The scene where his partner Ving Rhames goes through a dramatic faith healing ritual holding hands with the crowd over the body of an overdose victim calling for him to rise up, knowing that Nicholas Cage is quietly administering medical care and seeing how many stupid club kids will let the faith healing take the credit, just killed me.
The big return of Martin Scorsese was supposed to be his epic Gangs of New York, which is an interesting recreation of a particular place and time in history, even if unfortunately the main characters and the primary story are not particularly gripping. Daniel Day-Lewis is tremendous as Bill the Butcher, and Scorsese should be credited with bringing him and Leonardo DiCaprio out of retirement. The Aviator is also ultimately a forgettable film other than its recreation of a certain era and certain personae, and the real highlight is DiCaprio's expertly captured descent into madness as Howard Hughes, and Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn.
However, and here's the thing, The Departed is his best movie in over fifteen years. The fantastic performance Leonardo DiCaprio gives as an undercover police officer unraveling under stress is simply fascinating, and a spectacular cast delivers the most amazing and brutal crime film I've seen in years. It's absolutely captivating, and likely to be a highlight of a lot of careers, and possibly the film that wins Scorsese his first Oscar as a director. I raved about The Depahted (alternate pronunciation) in detail here, and I can't believe you haven't seen it, or any other Scorsese movie. My god man, would you please quit torturing me with this Scorsese boycott and please see this movie?
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