Product Details

• Actors: Lola André, Joan Bud, Marvin Chatinover, Larry David, Annie Joe Edwards
• Directors: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Touchstone / Disney
• VHS Release Date: April 21, 1994
• Run Time: 124 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301578813
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,632 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Three views of life in the city of all cities comprise this film, withsegments directed by Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. The best of the three is "Life Lessons," directed by Scorsese, about an artist (played by Nick Nolte) who uses his hypersuccess to lure beautiful young aspiring artists to serve as his assistant/lovers. The segment is an astute portrait of the nature of the New York art world. In "Life Without Zoe," Coppola portrays the life of the privileged Zoe, the daughter of a world-renowned flutist, whose adventures on the Upper East Side (in the upper echelons of society) play like something approaching a cartoon. Woody Allen finishes up the film with his "Oedipus Wrecks," a typical Allen number about a successful New York lawyer who's still hounded by his mother--the title tells you all you need to know. Though stronger segments to complement Scorsese's would have made this film much more interesting and enjoyable, it does provide an accurate glimpse into this wondrous city and is a must-see for anyone fascinated by New York. --James McGrath

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 2/3 of a good film, May 11, 2004

By 

Rocco Dormarunno (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New York Stories (DVD)

There are two-thirds of a good movie in this movie, as New York's three most famous directors each contributed a short film about an aspect of New York life. The opening short, "Life Lessons" by Martin Scorsese and starring Nick Nolte and Roseann Arquette is a unforgiving look at the competitive, abusive, almost cannibalistic world of a megalomaniacal painter. I read somewhere that this short is flawed because Nolte's character doesn't change. That is not a flaw; that's the point. The ego of a successful artist, according to Scorsese, will not soften, will not learn what a conscience is, will not admit that there are other artists in his/her world. Even when the artist recognizes talent in someone else, it is quickly dismissed. The ego lords over all.

The final short film, "Oedipus Wrecks" by Woody Allen is typical comic genius. The plot is simple. Woody takes his overbearing mother to a magic show, and the magician makes her disappear. Completely disappear. The magician himself doesn't know how he did it. When mom appears as an apparition in the clouds, and speaks to the entire population of Gotham about her son, the laughs are endless.

In between these two films is one directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I can't tell you what it's about. I have yet to sit through more than ten minutes of it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life With Zoe is good too, April 23, 2002

By 

Howard Ross "Howard Ross" (Ocean City, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New York Stories [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I just wrote because I didn't see any appriciation of Life Without Zoe mentioned...I loved the piece - it was innocent and precocious in an endearing way - the girl plays at being an adult like many adolescent girls...Zoe is still learning how to be an adult and she's excessive in some ways...I think Coppola lovingly depicts her character...it had a lot of charm...I wonder if other reviews expected a different tone from Coppola...I also really liked Life Lessons ...Oedipus Wrecks was entertaining but wasn't one of Woody Allen's stronger pieces...and im a big Woody Allen enthusiast.
Incidently Woody Allen uses adolescent girl charaters similar to Zoe often: including in the movies Everyone Says I Love You and Crimes and Misdomeanors

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New York, the unperishable, April 29, 2002

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New York Stories [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Three directors to approach the diversity of New York.
Scorsese depicts the life of a painter in this city. He is a cannibal and needs to possess a younger woman, slightly artistic to find his momentum and his inspiration. He is the absolute vampire who sucks life out of her till she rebels and goes away, but he needs this resistance for inspiration to work.
Coppola looks at the city through the eyes of a young girl, the daughter of an internationally famous photographer, her mother, and an internationally famous flutist, her father. She lives in that rich world without any parents with her most of the time and finds a sudden pleasure when she can take a plane with her mother to fly to a concert of her father's somewhere in the wild wide world. Is that a life for a child ? It sure is the life of the children of that class of world-wide artists and celebrities and New York is an excellent base for them to grow somewhat normally.
Woody Allen goes back to his obsession of a Jewish possessive mother who cannot accept her son to be an independent person. She meddles and the trick is her disappearance and reapparition in the sky of Manhattan talking for weeks to everyone in the street and developing a consciousness of everyday life problems. New York, in that vision, is seen as the ultimate mother and the primeval family.
New York is thus shown as a multifarious entity where people live in a world of their own, a world suspended in mid air, somewhere in another space and time. Outlandish, eerie and fascinating. Nothing can destroy a city like this, and the vision of the twin towers of the WTC are there to remind us of that absolute perennity in resurrection if necessary...