The following is presented as part of the 5th Annual Supporting Actress Blogathon hosted by StinkyLulu #6 — Patricia Clarkson as “Rachel Solando” in Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) Sticklers about such things might insist that Patricia Clarkson’s performance in … Continue reading Greatish Performances #6
#1 — Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) For me, the moment that best demonstrates the brilliance of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas isn’t one of the most commonly cited. It’s not Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito asking “Funny how?” to Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number One
The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009). So poorly conceived that it borders on tragic. Jackson and his regular collaborators adapt Alice Sebold’s acclaimed and beloved 2002 novel about a murdered teenage girl, demonstrating such a bizarre lack of empathy that whole film takes on an off-putting robotic sheen. The movie is senseless in every definition of the word, over-directed and utterly tone-deaf. The actors all seem to have stumbled in from other movies with Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci approaching satire in their broadly drawn roles, Rachel Weisz looking bored and Mark Wahlberg thoroughly perplexed. It is cluttered with garish … Continue reading Banksy, Jackson, Parker, Scorsese, Wright
Separate Lies (Julian Fellowes, 2005). Following his Oscar win for scripting Robert Altman’s exemplary Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes made his directorial debut with an adaptation of an an old novel by Nigel Balchin. The film focuses of a busy, distracted solicitor whose marriage begins to fray, a situation compounded when the death of a local man in a hit-and-run car accident brings secrets to light and sets everyone reeling into a series of moral compromises. The stuff of high drama is certainly present in abundance in the story, and with Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett at the head … Continue reading Almodóvar, Argott, Butterworth, Fellowes, Scorsese
Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, 2008). The Oscar-winning documentarian turns his attention (and his Interrotron) to the appalling abuse of prisoners inflicted by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. The resulting film is exhaustive and exhausting, laying out the ugly details of the matter with an appropriate relentlessness. Morris corrals interviews with most of the principals, and their collective testimony seems painfully honest if sometimes buffered down in the name of understandable self-preservation. Morris inserts a handful of subdued and yet entirely unnecessary recreations. It’s a tactic that he’s notably employed before, but this time out it’s just intrusive. The … Continue reading Benedek, Lang, Morris, Scorsese, Wilder
By now it should come as no surprise to anyone that’s paid even cursory attention to these digital dispatches that I like the way Martin Scorsese makes movies. I concede this in advance not to cast doubt upon my opinion … Continue reading I’m on an island and I’ve got nowhere to swim
#49 — The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) The most famous and justly revered films of Martin Scorsese’s career are notable for their muscular rawness, their willingness to dive headlong into the toughest territory, those streets that will never … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Forty-Nine
#4 — The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006) Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is a powerhouse, a movie that announces itself immediately as unusually kinetic and dynamic. One of the earliest sequences sets the tone as the film rushes through the development of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Four
#29 — The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004) I suspect that Martin Scorsese loved making The Aviator. I have no inside information to back up this theory, no nuggets gleaned from the DVD commentary track or tales relayed about pervasive happiness … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Twenty-Nine
#38 — Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) There is a contingent of film observers that met Gangs of New York with the perspective that Martin Scorsese’s professional narrative had eclipsed that of his films. Gangs wasn’t about the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Thirty-Eight
Coffee for Two 