Weekly Top Ten Part II: The Ten Director/Actor Combos I Want to See

10. David Fincher/Robert DeNiro
As anyone who has been following my blog knows, I am currently making my way through all of Martin Scorsese’s movies, which means that I have seen Robert DeNiro at his best many times in the past few months. But, it has been more than a decade since DeNiro has delivered a truly great performance, and I really want to see him do something great again. I think that Fincher could be the director to give DeNiro a great role again. I envision something along the lines of Seven or Zodiac – a police procedural where DeNiro plays an old school detective frazzled by a case. Fincher is great at these, and he doesn’t except people sleepwalking through his movies like DeNiro has done in a number of films in the past 10 years. He’ll make him work – and may just draw a truly great performance out of my favorite actor again.

9. Alexander Payne/Seth Rogen
I dearly love Seth Rogen, and in the recent Observe and Report, he proved he could play a character outside of his normal comic persona. But what I would really like to see is Rogen playing a more realistic character – someone who isn’t an exaggeration of a type, as much as someone you may actually meet on the street. Alexander Payne is a master at character based comedies his four films, Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, all took established actor and made us look at them in a completely different way. The way I figure it, if Thomas Haden Church can get a deserved Oscar nomination by working with Payne, then so can Rogen.

8. Darren Aronofsky/Edward Norton
Both Norton and Aronofsky have a reputation for being slightly difficult to work for. Yet I think for Norton to truly get back on track – delivering the type of performances he did early in his career – he needs a director to challenge him, and push him. For his part, Aronofsky can sometimes go a little far over the top (as was the case in The Fountain, a film I admire more than I love), and someone like Norton arguing with him the entire time could certainly help. It’s a myth that all collaborations have to be harmonious to be good – and these two could seriously help each other.

7. David Cronenberg/Robert Downey Jr.
I’m not quite sure why I struck upon the idea of these two working together, but the more I think about it, the more better suited I think they are for each other. Cronenberg has reached a new place in his career, and although his work with Viggo Mortenson has been amazing, I would like to see him have a new leading man. I would also like to see Cronenberg venture back into more “mind fuck” territory than his last two films. Downey is an actor who isn’t afraid to go over the top, and will throw himself headlong into pretty much any role – and he’s always great. Also, his added star power in the last few years would make Cronenberg’s film reach more viewers than he normally gets.

6. Todd Field/Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is one of the great actresses of her generation, and yet she is no longer getting the kinds of roles that show that. Last year, she was great in both Savage Grace and Blindness, but the movies themselves were far from her equal. If she’s going to win an Oscar, she’s going to need another great role. In just two films, In the Bedroom and Little Children, Todd Field has proven that is a great director, one capable of getting great performances from his actors, and in addition offer truly wonderful, different types of female roles. Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly and Phyllis Somerville have all been wonderful in his movies – Moore could be next.

5. Oliver Stone/ Christian Bale
I loved. W, but I still want Oliver Stone to return to his truly strange, crazy mind trip movies that completely and totally screw with you. And right now, no one does bat shit crazy and scary quite like Christian Bale does. Bale reminds me at times of an actor like Val Kilmer or Woody Harrelson, who have both worked well with Stone in the past. If Stone ever returns to Natural Born Killers terrain, and God do I ever hope he does, than he simply has to cast Bale. We already know they have similar taste in material, since Stone was originally slated to direct American Psycho (with DiCaprio in the lead, but whatever), and I would love to see what these two come up with.

4. Joel & Ethan Coen/Kate Winslet
Winslet mainly does dramas – and heavy dramas at that. Coming off of an impressive 2008 where she starred in Revolutionary Road and The Reader, Winslet needs to lighten up a little bit. When she does, in something like John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes, she is just as good as when she does drama. The Coens, I think, have the perfect sensibility for her. It would allow her to let loose and have some fun, while still being a part of a intelligent movie, and not having to resort to doing silly romcoms (like she did in The Holiday). It would also perhaps force the Coens to build a movie around a female character again – something they really haven’t done in a while.

3. Michael Mann/Daniel Day Lewis
Michael Mann’s movie are always about masculinity and violence. Having delivered two of the best performances of the decade, and ones that mixed those two elements terrifically well in Gangs of New York and There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis seems to me to be a natural fit for Mann’s world. Mann has, I believe, always worked best with rugged, masculine types – James Caan in Thief, William Peterson in Manhunter, DeNiro and Pacino in Heat, Crowe in The Insider – and I think that Day Lewis is perfect for him. Plus, I’d love to see Day Lewis in pretty much anything, and Mann can usually be counted on to deliver a great film.

2. Paul Thomas Anderson/Mickey Rourke
Anderson’s last two films, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, both focuses on a single male character. I would love to see him take Mickey Rourke, now that he has resurrected his career, and build an entire movie around him. I also happen to think that Rourke’s new found sensitivity, and wounded machismo, would fit in perfectly to the world that Anderson has created in his films so far. I worry that Rourke, one of the most gifted actors around, is simply going to coast again this time around, taking parts solely for the money, but with a director like Anderson at the helm, he may actually win the Oscar he deserved this year.

1. Martin Scorsese/Johnny Depp
If you read my piece yesterday, then you know I am fully on board with the current Scorsese/DiCaprio relationship of recent years. Still though, I think that Scorsese would benefit, as he has in the past, from reaching out and throwing someone new into the mix. Think Griffin Dunne (and for that matter the entire cast) in After Hours, Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ, Nick Nolte in New York Stories, Daniel Day Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence, Sharon Stone in Casino, Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out the Dead or Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg in The Departed. We all know that Scorsese has his pet favorites, and more often than not, they do terrific work. But when he casts someone he hasn’t used before, the effect can be just as, if not more, powerful. Depp is an actor who never does the same thing twice, who is capable of doing just about anything that Scorsese could possibly want him to do. I would love to see the twisted brilliance these two could come up with together.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XIII: After Hours

After Hours (1985) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Joseph Minion.
Starring: Griffin Dunne (Paul Hackett), Rosanna Arquette (Marcy Franklin), Verna Bloom (June), Tommy Chong (Pepe), Linda Fiorentino (Kiki Bridges), Teri Garr (Julie), John Heard (Thomas 'Tom' Schorr), Cheech Marin (Neil), Catherine O'Hara (Gail), Dick Miller (Diner Waiter), Will Patton (Horst), Robert Plunket (Street Pickup), Bronson Pinchot (Lloyd), Charles Scorsese (Club Berlin Patron), Martin Scorsese (Club Berlin Searchlight Operator).

Poor Paul Hackett. All this office drone was doing was reading “Tropic of Cancer” when the worst night of his life started. A beautiful young woman starts to talk to him about the book. The flirt, they laugh, she gives him the number of an artist who makes Plaster of Paris, Bagel and Cream Cheese paper weights, if he’s interested. She’ll be staying there for a while, she tells him. Later that night, he gets home and decides to call. She tells him to come right over, even though it’s 11:30 on a weeknight. He does. Why would a girl invite you over to her place at 11:30 if she didn’t intend to sleep with you? And this is where things start to go horribly wrong for Paul.

Martin Scorsese’s After Hours is a surrealistic comic nightmare of a movie, where poor Paul (Griffin Dunne) suffers one humiliation and piece of bad luck after another. Throughout the course of the night he will lose all his money, get creeped out by the girl he went to see, not be able to get on the subway because the fare went up as of midnight, be caught in a rainstorm, flood a bartenders apartment, be pinned down and have people try and shave his hair into a mohawk lose his keys, confront a pair of burglars, get mistaken for those burglars and have an angry mob chase him, and essentially meet one crazy person after another, all of whom seemed to put in his way just to make his life even more miserable. Oh, and he is probably responsible for the young woman he came to see committing suicide. Only in New York would this story seem plausible.

After Hours was made at a difficult time for Scorsese. Filming The King of Comedy had not be an overly positive experience for him, and after devoting a few years of his life to his passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, the studio pulled the plug on the project (we all know that Scorsese did eventually get the movie made a few years later, but he didn’t know that at the time). He simply wanted to make a movie quickly and cheaply, and rekindle his love of making movies. When he was handed the screenplay for After Hours, he decided this would be that movie.

After Hours is the one movie in Scorsese’s career that you could rightly say was style over substance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because a movie like After Hours either lives or dies by its style. If the tone of the movie is quite right, the visual look not right, the performances are off, and what turned out to be a black comedy masterpiece could have instead have turned out to be a painfully unfunny, unbelievable mess of a movie. But Scorsese pulls it off.

From the opening scenes of the movie, we know this movie is going to be different from most of Scorsese’s films. For one thing, his “hero” is a milder mannered, normal guy than we normally see. This isn’t a guy with masculinity issues really, just a regular office drone doing a job he hates. When Paul leaves his apartment and catches a cab into Soho, the cab driver drives like a complete maniac, and Scorsese speeds up the action, as the cab zips in and out of the lanes, eventually causing Paul’s money to fly out the window. The apartment that Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), the girl Paul goes to see, shares with Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), is one of those huge lofts where everything echoes. Kiki’s art is all around, and its strange and surreal. He gets there and Marcy has stepped out to go to the drug store. He talks with Kiki, he seems strange – she is somewhere between coming on to him, and being disgusted by him. Like Marcy, Kiki responds to Paul sexually – and so does every other Paul will meet that night. But there is something off about everyone. Kiki is a little too strong and assured, maybe too comfortable (later in the movie she will talk to Paul while topless as if it’s completely normal), Marcy seems to have mental issues, and could in fact be covered by scars. Julie (Teri Garr), a waitress Paul later meets, is hugely insecure, and trapped in the 1960s – playing Monkees albums and having a beehive hairdo. Gail (Catherine O’Hara) is simply trying to be nice and funny, but she is somewhat deranged. June (Vera Bloom) simply appreciates the company, but soon he realizes she too is messed up. Poor Paul meets no one normal at all during the course of the night.

After The King of Comedy, where Scorsese’s camera uncharacteristically seemed to be bolted to the floor, he and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus just let loose in After Hours. There is hardly a shot in the film where the camera isn’t moving all over the place. Take a brilliant shot where Kiki drops the keys to Paul off the balcony for example. We get a point of view shot from the perspective of the keys, but really it’s simply Scorsese and Ballhaus dropping a camera off the roof tied to bungee chords. After one take, they realized how stupid and dangerous this was (had something gone wrong, Griffin Dunne could have been killed), but they got the shot. In many ways, After Hours is perhaps Scorsese’s purest visual movie. The visuals help to set the tone for the movie, but all by itself, the movie is a treasure to watch. It’s no wonder Scorsese won the best director prize at Cannes that year for this film.

In a very real way, After Hours is Scorsese at his most playful. After two tough experiences, Scorsese felt he had something to prove – to himself more than anyone else. After Hours is Scorsese recharging his batteries, rediscovering why he loves making movies so much. Often when a director does a film like this – and many do at some point in their career – the result is a much more personal film, but one that means more to the director than anyone else. But After Hours is a film that simply grows in my mind as the years have gone by. Each time I watched (and that’s been at least four times by now), I like it even more than the time before. After Hours is one of Scorsese’s lesser known, lesser praised efforts, and yet it is a comic masterpiece. This is a filmmaker who knows New York City better than any other director in history, and in each one of his movies, the city becomes a character. It has never seemed more alive than it does in After Hours.

Weekly Top Ten Part 1: The Ten Best Actor/Director Colloborations

It seems like every week, I find an excuse to do two of these Weekly Top Tens, that are somehow related. I just enjoy compiling them too much. This week, I focus on director/actor colloborations. Today's is the ten best in history, and later this week (probably tomorrow), I will do the top ten wishful thinking colloborations - that is the 10 current directors and actors I would love to see work together that have not at this point. In case my write-ups today don't make it clear, the poster I included for each is what I think the pairings best films was.

10. Spike Lee/Denzel Washington (Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man).
Spike Lee is a talented director and every movie he makes is a cause for celebration, even if it ends up being a movie like Miracle at St. Anna or She Hate Me. Denzel Washington is never less than interesting on screen, and is frequently brilliant. But when they team up, they seem to push each other farther then they often go by themselves. Although I certainly wouldn’t call Mo’ Better Blues a great film, it certainly is an interesting one, and helped to establish Washington as a leading man. Their next pairing was their best – Malcolm X – a film that neither would have been made as good without the other. In He Got Game, Denzel dared to be a little more unsympathetic and stubborn, and yet grounded Lee’s film. The bank robbery thriller was elevated because of Washington’s commanding performance, and because Lee infused it with his own unique viewpoint. Apart they are both great. Together, they are amazing.

9. Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island).
Okay, so I haven’t seen Shutter Island yet, but I think that with each passing film, these two have simply gotten stronger. DiCaprio was solid, if not spectacular, in Gangs of New York, but in The Aviator, he did an amazing job at convincing us he WAS Howard Hughes. In The Departed, DiCaprio was like a trapped, wounded animal struggling to break free. In Scorsese, DiCaprio has found a director who is willing to push him to be as good as he can be. In DiCaprio, Scorsese has found someone who allows him to tap into a new generation of men. I hope we see quite a few more out of these two.

8. Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Fortune Cookie, Avanti, The Front Page, Buddy Buddy).
Billy Wilder is perhaps the best comic director in history, and in Jack Lemmon he found the perfect star. Lemmon wasn’t afraid to look like an idiot dressing in drag for Some Like It Hot, but was also able to dial it down for a more realistic/cynical performance the next year in The Apartment. He went over the top – wonderfully – in Irma La Douce, and helped to balance out his frequent collaborator Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie, The Front Page and Buddy Buddy. In Avanti, he kept a subpar film interesting. These two just seemed to be on the same wavelength in every film they did together – I don’t think either ever found a better collaborator.

7. David Fincher/Brad Pitt (Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).
In just three films, Fincher and Pitt have created a lasting body of work. In Seven, Fincher allowed Pitt to disrobe his pretty boy image for a grittier screen persona, and Pitt delivered a performance that was truly memorable, and helped put Fincher on the map. In Fight Club, they collaborated to make Tyler Durden one of the most memorable, lasting characters of the 1990s. And last year, in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pitt delivered a subtle, soft performance, that set the tone for Fincher’s entire movie beautifully. They have never made the same film twice, but they have always made great films together.

6. Alfred Hitchcock/James Stewart (Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo).
You could have put a number of actors together with Hitchcock, but to me, James Stewart will always be the quintessential Hitchcock hero. He was the type of star Hitchcock loved to use – the audience already loved him when he came on screen, so Hitchcock didn’t need to do too much “set-up” to get the audience to go along. This worked quite well in Rope and The Man Who Knew Too Much, where Stewart is essentially playing a “good” guy. But it’s in Rear Window and Vertigo where the two really shine. Hitchcock twisted Stewart’s image in those two films, making him a voyeuristic peeping tom in one, and essentially a necrophiliac in Vertigo. If the roles had have been played by someone else, the audience might resist going along for the ride – but because it was Stewart they did. For his part, Stewart was never better than he was in those two movies – he dove head long into them. I just wish they had worked together more often.

5. John Ford/John Wayne (Stagecoach, The Long Voyage Home, They Were Expendable, Fort Apache, 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Wings of Eagles, The Horse Soldiers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, How the West Was Won, Donovan’s Reef).
The 14 films listed above don’t even mention some of Ford’s early work where Wayne worked in the background as a bit player. But you can pretty much track the progression of the Western simply by watching the films these two did together. From 1939’s Stagecoach, where it was all romance and fun, to the “calavry trilogy” of Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, which were about isolation and sacrifice, to The Searchers, where the whole genre turned dark, to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which offered a more realistic view, these two made some of best the genre had to offer over the years. That doesn’t even mention their war films, action films and of course their drama – The Quiet Man. Quite simply, these two just knew each other so well, that whatever they tried to do, they succeeded at.

4. Akira Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune (Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, Stray Dog, Scandal, Rashomon, The Idiot, Seven Samurai, I Live in Fear, Throne of Blood, The Lower Depths, The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low, Red Beard).
Akira Kurosawa is one of the few directors to work in a language other than English who truly broke through to Western audiences. A large part of the reason he did, was because Toshiro Mifune acting was so strong. Through 16 films together, they pretty much covered all the bases. They did Japanese noir in Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, a complex rumination on the nature of truth in Rashomon, adapted Tolstoy in The Idiot, Shakespeare in Throne of Blood (and to a certain extent The Bad Sleep Well), Gorky in The Lower Depths, did several samurai films, like Seven Samurai and the dual films Yojimbo and Sanjuro, and finally drama in Red Beard. No matter where Kurosawa decided to go, no matter what genre he worked in, Mifune was like a rock, grounding all his films in a realism rarely seen. Together, they made some of the greatest films ever seen.

3. Ingmar Bergman/Liv Ullman (Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage, Face to Face, The Serpent’s Egg, Autumn Sonata, Saraband).
Sometimes, a director simply finds his muse in an actress. Such is the case with Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman – who was once his lover, and the mother of one of his children. Even after that ended, they continued to make great movies together. In their first film, Persona, Ullman was a mute actress, who finds her other half in a talkative nurse. In Hour of the Wolf, she was the wife of a painter who goes crazy. In Shame, she wanders through a desolate landscape. Then things kept getting darker. Her best performance was in Scenes from a Marriage, where she plays the wife of intellectual, who sees her marriage go from bliss to torment, and then back again almost, and Ullman keeps the whole thing real. In Autumn Sonara, she reconnects with her mother (Ingrid Bergman). Even in the last film of Bergman’s career, Saraband, Ullman was still there, going to dark places for Bergman. He was a director who had many great collaborations with actors – but none moreso than this one.

2. Elia Kazan/Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, On the Waterfront).
Kazan and Brando may have only made three films together, but in those three films they forever changed the face of screen acting. Brando may not have been the first “method” actor, but it brought it to an entirely new level in his films with Kazan that made him a star. When the studio didn’t really want him in A Streetcar Named Desire, Kazan convinced them to go with him, and the result is one of the best performances of all time. In Viva Zapata, even though Brando is playing a Mexican, you believe him in every scene. In On the Waterfront, he raised it to an entirely new level, making the down and out boxer Terry Malloy, and turning him into a tragic hero. In Kazan, Brando found a director willing to let him do what he wanted. In Brando, Kazan found an actor capable of delivering the raw emotion he so desperately wanted to have. Like most of the others on this list, they would never have a better collaborator.

1. Martin Scorsese/Robert DeNiro (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, GoodFellas, Cape Fear, Casino).
Was there ever any doubt that these two would be my number 1 pairing? Through 8 films together, DeNiro and Scorsese have constantly elevated each other’s game. Five of the films are masterpieces, one a great film just a shade behind, one a gripping thriller, and one a flawed but ambitious musical. If you’ve been following along with my films of Martin Scorsese series, you already know that I think that DeNiro has been brilliant in every Scorsese film – anchoring films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The King of comedy, and making their complex “heroes” come to life. But DeNiro is great in all of these films, and he pushed Scorsese to be great as well. There has never been, and probably never will be, a more fruitful director/actor relationship in history.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XII: The King of Comedy

The King of Comedy (1983) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Paul D. Zimmerman.
Starring: Robert De Niro (Rupert Pupkin), Jerry Lewis (Jerry Langford), Diahnne Abbott (Rita Keane), Sandra Bernhard (Masha), Shelley Hack (Cathy Long), Ed Herlihy (Ed Herlihy), Catherine Scorsese (Rupert's Mom), Cathy Scorsese (Dolores), Tony Randal (Himself), Martin Scorsese (TV Director).

Remember that scene in Taxi Driver where DeNiro is on the phone getting rejected by Cybil Shepherd, and the camera slowly pans away because the rejection is too painful to watch. Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy is like the scene played out over the course of an entire feature, except this time his camera never looks away. Adding to the pain is the fact that Rupert Pupkin (Robert DeNiro) in The King of Comedy doesn’t seem to realize that he’s being continually rejected. He keeps thinking that there must be some sort of mistake or misunderstanding.

Pupkin is a 34 year guy who tells people he works in “communications”, but what that really means is that he delivers packages to people. He lives at home with his mother, and spends most of his time in the basement. He fancies himself the next “King of Comedy”, and wants to be just like Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), a late night talk show host on TV. So convinced Pupkin is of his genius, that he doesn’t feel the need to actually work on his material in front of a live audience. He doesn’t attend open night mike nights at comedy clubs, and or anything like that. He wants to be on TV.

One night, Pupkin is actually able to talk to Langford. A crazed fan, Masha (Sandra Bernhard) is able to sneak into Langford’s limo, and while security is dragging her out, Langford is stuck on the sidewalk being swarmed by fans. Pupkin helps to hold the crowd back, and when Langford jumps into the limo, Pupkin follows. While in the car, the two talk, and Pupkin tries to convince Langford to put him on the show as a comedian. It is immediately apparent to the audience that Langford is simply humoring Pupkin, telling him what he wants to hear in order to get rid of him, but to Pupkin this is a bonding moment between these them. He imagines himself and Jerry as “friends” now. Langford tells him to stop by the office to see his assistant Cathy Long (Shelley Hack) to see about getting on the show.

So that’s exactly what Pupkin does. He keeps phoning the studio and asking for Langford, and then he continues to stop by to try and see him. Cathy is nice to him – a lot nicer than perhaps she should be – and humors him when he drops off a tape. When she says that he’s not ready for the show yet, he gets angry, but unlike most Scorsese characters, he doesn’t explode into rage, but rather just sits down and waits to Langford to come see him. His escorted out of the building by security, heads make in, and then is thrown out by security. He keeps thinking that everyone has made a mistake, and if only he could talk to Jerry, everything would be fine. He’s wrong.

In high school, Pupkin had a crush on Rita (Diahanne Abbott) and after he and Jerry become “friends”, he tracks her and down and brags to her about it. That is something flattering to Rita, now working in a dingy bar, that this guy from high school, even if he was a loser, still remembers her and still likes her. She agrees to go out with him, but on their date, again it becomes clear that she thinks he is pathetic. She flirts with a guy sitting behind Rupert, who sits their mocks him without him knowing it. But when Pupkin insists that he and Jerry are friends, and to prove it, invites her to come along with him for a weekend at Jerry’s beach house, she agrees. The scene that follows is perhaps the most painful in all of Scorsese’s films.

Pupkin and Rita arrive at Jerry’s beach house, even though, of course they have not been invited (except during one of Pupkin’s fantasy sequences. At different times, he imagine Jerry begging him to take over the show for him, while a beautiful young girl asks Pupkin for an autograph and ignores Jerry, being on Jerry’s show, where Jerry has arranged for Pupkin’s old high school principal to marry him and Rita and apologize on behalf of the school for treating him so poorly, and of course Jerry praising Rupert as a genius, and telling him to come out that weekend so the two of them can work on the material). Jerry’s butler doesn’t know what to do, and tracks Jerry down on the golf course to tell he must come home right away. Jerry does, and he’s none too pleased with Rupert. He remembers him from the limo, and undoubtedly heard about what he did at the office, and he wants Rupert out as soon as possible. This scene marks the change in the movie – the rejection is now so painfully clear, that even Pupkin realizes it (although he fights it for a long time). Pupkin now realizes what he has to do – kidnap Jerry and force his producers to let him on the show. That he does, with the help of his Masha, the crazed fan from the opening scene, who is similar to Pupkin, but much more outgoing. She is love with Jerry – not because he is physically attractive (this is, after all, Jerry Lewis), but because if she was with him, she would be someone – instead of a nobody, which is what she is.

That is essentially how Pupkin feels as well. Neither of these characters really “loves” Jerry, as they claim to. They want to use Jerry for their own gain. In fact, Pupkin doesn’t really want to be Jerry’s friend, or even be Jerry – he wants to be better than Jerry. He wants to bury Jerry and become even more famous than he is. Jerry is simply a means to an end for him – and when he can’t get what he wants one way, he resorts to another.

Pupkin in his way, is just as deranged and violent as Travis Bickle is in Taxi Driver. But unlike Bickle, he doesn’t direct his rage outward, but keeps it bottled up inside. Every line DeNiro delivers in the film is full of hostility and hatred, even when h seems to be outwardly polite. Watch how he talks to Cathy Long, Jerry’s assistant, when she tells him he won’t be on the show. “Do you speak for Jerry?” he asks, which of course is a nice way of saying “Who the fuck are you to tell me I can’t be on the show?”. Like Bickle, Pupkin spends most of his time by himself in his house, lost in his own fantasy world. He has life sized cutouts of Jerry and Liza Minelli set up on chairs there and he conducts his own talk show from there. He’s scenes there are disturbing, as he sits there and laughs at the jokes that Jerry tells that no one, other than Pupkin, can hear.

Scorsese has said that this is DeNiro’s finest performance, and it is easy to see why he feels that way. This is not a performance where DeNiro gets to let out his rage – like in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull – but has to keep it locked inside. He is not a wounded, masculine character, but rather a geek, and DeNiro fully embraces the character, and makes Pupkin disturbingly real. I don’t think Jerry Lewis has ever been better in a film – in a role not that far from himself, and one he must have instantly indentified with. When you’re famous, you meet people on the street, who profess to love you, but you got to be always thinking what they really want from you. Watch a scene where a woman on the street tells Jerry he’s a national treasure, but when he refuses to take the phone to talk to her sick nephew because he’s running late, she yells at him that she hopes he gets cancer. It can turn that quickly. Bernhard is scarily intense as Masha – and seems completely deranged. You are never sure just what she is going to do next. And Diahanne Abbott has a hard role as a woman who feels sorry for Pupkin, but gets humiliated by him. Much like Cybil Shepherd in Taxi Driver, she is the object of the hero’s affection, even after she no longer wants to be.

Scorsese has admitted that he was depressed while making The King of Comedy, and at times, he didn’t really want to be on set. Whether or not this explains the difference between the visual style of this film compared to his others, what I will say is that the style works for this movie. Normally, Scorsese’s camera is restless and alive, while here it rarely moves. The effect of this is twofold – one it mirrors the visual look of TV, where the camera seldom moves, and two it traps the characters inside the frame of the film, much as they are each trapped in their lives in a real way. Pupkin is very much like other Scorsese characters, except he never gets to have a cathartic explosion like Bickle or LaMotta do. By not giving us this catharsis, Scorsese forces us to simply sit back and observe, and it makes us uncomfortable. In a way, this makes the film all the more impressive, if a little bit less satisfying than some of his other films. The audience, much like the characters, crave that catharsis, and when it doesn’t come, we get uneasy.

Upon its release in 1983, The King of Comedy was viewed as a bomb by most critics and audiences stayed away. But in the years since, it has become a cult classic. It’s influence can be seen everywhere, most recently in Observe and Report, about a delusional mall security guard. The film has also become rather prophetic about the age of celebrity we now find ourselves in. Like Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), what was once seen as a satire, or perhaps even a paranoid fantasy, has now become all too real. In 1983, people questioned whether the end of the film was real, or just another one of Pupkin’s wild fantasies. In 2009, I doubt very much that audiences would find the end of the movie a stretch at all. It’s now something we see every day.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XI: Raging Bull

Raging Bull (1980) ****
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Written By: Paul Schrader & Mardik Martin based on the Book by Jake LaMotta & Joseph Carter & Peter Savage.
Starring: Robert De Niro (Jake La Motta), Cathy Moriarty (Vickie Thailer), Joe Pesci (Joey La Motta), Frank Vincent (Salvy Batts), Nicholas Colasanto (Tommy Como), Theresa Saldana (Lenore), Charles Scorsese (Charlie), Johnny Barnes (Sugar Ray Robinson), Martin Scorsese (Barbizon stagehand).

It is easy to see why many critics consider Raging Bull to be Scorsese’s finest film. It is, quite simply, one of the best films ever made and it may in fact be Scorsese’s one “perfect” film. There is not a misstep in the whole movie. Each individual scene is perfect in and of itself, and adds to the fabric of the overall film. It is the most brutally bloody boxing film ever made, but it’s not really about boxing. It is a story about jealously, and yes, rage. Many critics have called the film an Othello for our times. It is not faint praise to say the film is just as good as Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro) is a middle weight prize fighter in the 1940s and ‘50s. When we first meet him, he’s already fairly famous and successful – married to Leonore (Theresa Saldana) and managed by his brother Joey (Joe Pesci). Because of his record, and reputation, he should have a shot at the middleweight belt, but boxing is as much politics as it is fighting, and LaMotta has angered the wrong people. Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto) runs things in New York and wants Jake to come over to him – but LaMotta refuses. He wants to do things his way. He’s like this is every aspect of his life.

When Jake first sees Vicky (Cathy Moriaty), time seems to stand still. Scorsese shoots the scene in slow motion (much like he does in Taxi Driver and Casino among others, and much like Hitchcock used to do when he introduced his blondes). She is a gorgeous 15 year old girl, and although Jake is married, it doesn’t matter. He moves in for the kill. He is strong, powerful, has lots of money and seems glamorous. Soon Jake has left his wife and married her. And soon the jealously starts.

LaMotta is a man who is sexually insecure. He cannot imagine that a woman who would be willing to sleep with him would not be willing to sleep with everyone else. Vicky knew Tommy, and his associates – namely Salvy (Frank Vincent, a Scorsese regular making his first appearance in a Scorsese film here) before she knew Jake, and it angers him that she still wants to hang around them. Why would she want to do that, unless she was sleeping with him? It never occurs to Jake that the answer maybe that Vicky is a teenage girl looking for some excitement, and he keeps her at home with their kids all the time. No, she must be cheating. When Vicky comments that a young fighter Jake will be going against soon is “good looking”, Jake tears him apart in the ring. Pummeling his face so bad that it is likely he won’t be good looking after the fight ever again. “He ain’t pretty no more” Tommy says to his friend in the crowd. LaMotta seems glares at Vicky in the crowd, a satisfied look on his face.

LaMotta’s jealously and rage effects every relationship he has in the film. His brother Joey has been his one loyal friend through everything – he manages him and tries his best to keep him out of trouble. When he sees Vicky out with Salvy and some friends, Joey reacts swiftly and violently, dragging Vicky from the club, and beating Salvy brutally. He doesn’t tell Jake any of this, because he’s afraid of what he’ll do to Vicky – with good reason. Later in the film, Vicky comes home to find Jake and Joey trying to get a new TV working, and she walks over and kisses Joey and then Jake, and walks upstairs. LaMotta reacts immediately, questioning Joey about their relationship, eventually coming to perhaps the film’s most famous line “You fuck my wife?”. Over and over again he asks Joey, who is so offended, he won’t dignify it with a response, and storms out. He then questions Vicky, who is so fed up with all the crap she has to take from Jake that she says she did – even though she didn’t – just to anger him. The beating he lays on Joey after will forever end their relationship. It’s like this throughout the movie. LaMotta drives everyone away. Anyone who tries to help him, everyone he cares for, and who cares for him, he will eventually alienate with his jealously. Because he’s a boxer, Jake doesn’t really know any other way to express his rage except through violence. When he becomes violent, he is scary.

The boxing scenes in the films, that took almost half the shoot to film although they make up a fairly small part of the running time, are brutal and unrelenting. Scorsese’s camera gets right inside the ring from LaMotta, and we feel every punch he both delivers and receives. The audience is often obscured by billows of smoke coming from them – it’s like we’re in hell. The film is shot in stark black and white, and this works for several reasons. Firstly, it does a great job of making us feel in that time and place – movies of the era when this one was set were in black and white, so although the film is more brutally unrelenting then they were at the time, it still creates the same air. As well it keeps all the blood in the film from being overwhelming – the blood here, which at one is point is simply dripping off the ropes, appears black. In color, it may have been comical, but in black and white it is somehow more brutal. Scorsese and his cinematographer Michael Chapman have made one of the most distinct visual films ever made.

I am not sure how many movies can also claim to have the same caliber of performances as this one does. DeNiro justifiably won an Oscar for his portrayal of LaMotta. It is one of the greatest screen performances of all time. From the time LaMotta is a young man – a muscular 155 pounds at that – to the time when LaMotta is much older, and grossly overweight, DeNiro never misses a beat. His performance is filled with subtle ticks, and as well as grandiose posturing. He captures LaMotta’s inner turmoil perfectly. Pesci, in his first major role, is also brilliant as Joey. People who remember Pesci mainly as a psychopath in later Scorsese films GoodFellas and Casino, maybe surprised by his sensitivity here. True, there are elements of those later characters in this one, but Joey is essentially a good guy who is trying his best to keep his brother in check, but eventually simply gives up. Cathy Moriaty is also great as Vicky. She starts out as simply a sex object to Jake, and Scorsese’s camera views her with the same sort of lust that LaMotta does, but gradually she gets deeper and deeper. How an actress as young as Moriaty was at the time was able to play her scenes as a middle aged woman tired of all the physical and emotional abuse she suffers is beyond me – but somehow she does.

I realize that I have made Raging Bull sound an unrelentingly bleak film, and in many ways, it is just that. And yet, I the film is not a complete downer. It is a movie that observes its characters in all their ugliness, but also their more sympathetic side. You watch the film, and you feel bad for LaMotta, as he never realizes that he has it all, and should be happy. But he doesn’t recognize that at any point in the film – until perhaps the last scene. Now that LaMotta has driven away everyone in his life, you would he would be completely miserable, but instead in that last scene he seems almost at peace. This doesn’t mean that LaMotta is happy, or that he’s really learned anything during the course of the movie, except perhaps who he really is. By the end of the movie, he seems to accept the fact that he cannot change who he is. The poor bastard is all by himself by that point, and in truth that is what he deserves, but he has found some sort of inner peace. In a Scorsese film, perhaps that counts as a happy ending.

Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine ***
Directed By: Gavin Hood.
Written By: David Benioff & Skip Woods.
Starring: Hugh Jackman (Logan/Wolverine), Liev Schreiber (Victor Creed/Sabretooth), Danny Huston (William Stryker), Will i Am (John Wraith), Lynn Collins (Kayla Silverfox), Kevin Durand (Frederick J. Dukes/The Blob), Dominic Monaghan (Chris Bradley/Bolt), Taylor Kitsch (Remy LeBeau/Gambit), Daniel Henney (David North/Agent Zero), Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson/Deadpool), Scott Adkins (Weapon XI), Tim Pocock (Scott Summers).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a solid movie. What it does, it does fairly well and it remains consistently entertaining throughout. If it doesn’t rise to the level of recent superhero movies like The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Iron Man, or for that matter X2: X-Men Unite, we can be grateful that it doesn’t devolve into something as terrible as Catwoman or Fantastic Four. It may not be a masterwork, but it is an entertaining action film – and sometimes that’s enough.

By this point, even if you’ve never picked up a comic book, you probably know who Wolverine is. He is the X-Man who really cannot be killed, because he heals pretty much instantaneously. In the previous three X-Men movies, Logan cannot remember what happened to him – how he became what he is, which is a powerful mutant with a metal compound fused to his skeleton, and three giant claws he can extract from his hands at will. In X2, we met William Stryker (there played by Brian Cox, here by Danny Huston), who knows what happened to Wolverine, and offers us a few glimpses. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we get the complete story.

Logan (Hugh Jackman) was born in the mid-1840s, and was a sickly child. His lone friend is Victor (Liev Schreiber), who as a child he finds out his really his brother. After a murder, the two flee their Canadian home and end up in America, fighting in the Civil War, WWI, WWII and Vietnam. It’s sometime after Vietnam (but supposedly before the Gulf War, which we do not see), where most of the action in the movie takes place. Logan has grown tired of all the wars and all the killing, but Victor has started to feed on it, and love it too much. The two get in trouble with a court martial, but Stryker offers them a way out – if they join his team of mutants, they can go free, and will essentially be above the law. Victor loves it, Logan not so much.

The main thrust of the plot deals with Logan leaving the team, and going back to Canada where he meets and falls in love with Kayla (Lynn Collins), a modest schoolteacher. Stryker shows back up in Logan’s life when old members of the team start to die. We know, well before Logan does, that it is Victor behind the killings. And he’s coming for Logan next.

The director of the movie is Gavin Hood, who is an odd choice for this material. His film Tsotsi won the foreign language film Oscar a few years ago, and he followed that up with Rendition, a political thriller about the war in Iraq. But Hood proves himself adept at directing action (or, perhaps, has a good second unit director who knows how), as the action sequence in Wolverine are fast paced, and well cut together. This is not quite the Michael Bay school of action filmmaking where we the edits are so fast, we often have no clue what’s going on. Rather, the action seems to make sense, no matter how implausible it all is. What Hood doesn’t do nearly as well is special effects. Wolverine’s claws never quite look right when they are seen in close-up. But it’s a minor gripe.

It’s really the performances that make Wolverine work as well as it does. At this point, Jackman has now played Wolverine four times, and although this time the major difference is that he DOES remember what happened to him, it doesn’t really change his personality. He slips into the role like an old glove, and while he is no longer a revelation in the role, he is solid and dependable. Schreiber has a lot of fun playing Victor/Sabretooth, and because he does, we have fun watching him. Huston plays the slimy, amoral Stryker just about perfectly. Solid in support of these three are Collins as the girl Logan loves and all too briefly Ryan Reynolds as another member of the team. Not so good is will.i.am who is an embarrassment as another member and Taylor Kitsch as Remy LeBeau/Gambit. Perhaps it’s not really Kitsch’s fault that I didn’t really like him as Gambit – I have after all been anxiously awaiting his arrival on screen since the first X-Men movie almost a decade ago, and perhaps my expectations were too high. Why they felt the need to make him into an Ashton Kutcher look-a-like, I’ll never know though.

Overall though, X-Men Origins: Wolverine does what it sets out to do. It is an entertaining summer action movie anchored by strong performances. Perhaps by the end of the summer, this wouldn’t be enough for me to recommend it – I am on the fence about it right now – but at this point, when it’s been so long since we had a movie like this, it is. Make of that what you will.

May Preview

May marks the official beginning of the “summer movie season” which is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good, because even though I act like a movie snob, I truly do still enjoy blockbusters if they are done well. It’s bad because, studios seem to conspire to stay out of each other’s way, so we get fewer movies in wide release. In the five weeks of May, we only get 9 new wide release movies. Here is how they break down.

May 1st
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
Is there a more vacant actor alive than Matthew McConaghey? Seriously, the guy is about as deep as a puddle, and his rom-coms are always insufferable. With the exception of Juno, I’ve never really liked Jennifer Garner either. The whole movie, which has a terrible preview, would be a complete pass for me, but I do love the adorable Emma Stone (Superbad, The House Bunny), so maybe I’ll check it out on video. Anticipation Level: 2.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I’m not really sure we needed a Wolverine Origins movie, especially since X2 already kind of gave us one. But I do love Hugh Jackman as the character, and Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston are personal favorites of mine. And I always did love Gambit, so I’m excited to actually see him in a movie. Having said that, is director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Rendition), really the best choice? And word has leaked that the movie isn’t exactly a masterpiece. Still, I can’t wait to see it. Anticipation Level: 8

May 8th
Star Trek
I don’t think I’ve watched a whole episode of any of the Star Trek movies in about 20 years. And I’ve only ever seen one of the movies – and I really wasn’t a fan of that one either. Having said that, JJ Abrams is a talented guy, and the trailer does look really impressive. So while it’s hard for me to get over excited about a Star Trek movie, I admit that I am intrigued. Anticipation Level: 7

May 15th
Angels and Demons
I hate The DaVinci Code – both the book (which I never actually finished, it angered me so – not because of the subject matter, but because it was so poorly written that my brain rejected it) and the movie. But I did actually enjoy Angels and Demons (not a great book by any means, but compulsively readable), and I still believe that this type of story works better as a movie than a book. The cast – Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Armin Mueller Stahll and Stellan Skasgaard among them – is quite good. I am not expecting the movie to be that good – but if it’s not better then The DaVinci Code, then I will be disappointed. Anticipation Level: 6

May 21st
Terminator Salvation
If this movie had not been directed by McG, my anticipation level would be even higher. Terminator 2: Judgment Day remains one of the best action movies ever made, and the first installment is also a minor masterwork. I am even one of the third installments few defenders. I have always liked this series, and I cannot wait to see what they do with this one. Christain Bale is a great actor in this type of role, and the previews so far have been great. Anticipation Level: 9.

May 22nd
Dance Flick
It was only a matter of time before someone made one of these damn spoof movies on all the dance movies in we’ve seen in the last few years. The Wayans brothers are behind some of the best this genre has produced – I’m Gonna Git Ya Sucka! Don’t Be a Menace While Drinking You’re Juice in Da Hood and the original Scary Movie – and also some of the worst – Scary Movie 2. But this movie looks downright horrid, and I’m still trying to figure out why they are using Save the Last Dance – a movie made a decade ago – as it’s blueprint. Anticipation Level: 1.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The first Night at the Museum movie was hardly a masterpiece, or even that good, but it was an amusing little diversion. Ben Stiller can play this type of role in his sleep, but I’m hoping he doesn’t this time around. And I am glad that they are bringing back Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan – who were after all the best part of the original, and I’ll watch anything with Amy Adams. But I can’t say I’m overly excited about this one. Anticipation Level: 4

May 29th
Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi returning to horror movies for the first time in more than a decade? I am there, no matter what. Raimi is a gifted director, and some of the best moments in the Spider-Man series come when he let his inner horror maven out. I am glad he’s doing something other than a Spider-Man movie this time around. I love Alison Lohman, and the trailer is genuinely creepy. I cannot wait. Anticipation Level: 10.

Up

4 of the 6 Pixar films this decade have ended up on my top ten list at year’s end, so how can I not be anticipating this one? The first trailer was great, and although I am a little disappointed in the subsequent trailer, where we find out that they actually GO somewhere, I have faith that Pixar has made another great film. Out of everything this month, this is the one I most want to see. Anticipation Level: 10.