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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Hey, Charlie, let's go to the movies.", August 26, 2004
Director Martin Scorsese pops up in so many different places - speed-rapping in every third documentary about film history, supplying voices for cartoons, sending up his auteur image in a recent television commercial - that it's sometimes easy to forget he's one of the top five directors still working in movies.
But a batch of his best films has finally been issued on DVD, three of them for the first time, and they're a good example of how great his past and later work really is. The big coup here is that Scorsese offers commentaries for some of his best movies but there's a slight catch: the commentaries are presented scene specifically (meaning he only comments on certain scenes and the player automatically skips from one to the next; also, Scorsese tends to talk more about the movies as a whole, rather than what we're actually seeing onscreen, which is fine but most people who've read anything at all about the guy already know a lot of what he's saying and would probably prefer nuts-and-bolts discussion; I know I would). The movies, however, are classic regardless.
The big kahuna of the bunch, "Goodfellas," is arguably Scorsese's masterpiece and a film that encapsulates everything he does well as a director. It's rough stuff, lurid and violent and told with equal measures of dreamy nostalgia and nightmarish detail. Even 15 years after its release, it's definitely not for everybody, but it's a great American movie anyway, filled with so many vivid details, great performances and excellent tunes that it actually improves on a second and third viewing.
"Goodfellas" was issued on DVD before but only as a hastily thrown-together "flipper" disc that split the film into two parts. Now it's been done right, with the entire movie on one side, two commentaries, some decent documentaries and great remastered stereo - I'm not an audiophile by any means so if something sounds particularly good as it flows out of my ailing old stereo system, then it must be pretty amped up.
"Mean Streets" and "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" almost seem like early drafts of "Goodfellas." They, too, are about low-level crooks whose lives consist mostly of hanging out and shooting the breeze - like "Diner" or Fellini's "I Vitelloni," except with occasional bursts of brutality and larceny.
"Who's That Knocking" was made on the serious cheap when Scorsese was a student at New York University in the late '60s (it's actually three different shorts, involving the same characters, woven into one story). It gave Harvey Keitel his first screen role as a kid trying to romance a troubled girl (Zina Bethune) from outside of his Little Italy neighborhood, and it's good but not great; it's slow and a little knuckleheaded but shows Scorsese's early potential; watching it is almost like listening to early Beatles recordings, hearing the familiar voices but knowing how much better the band was going to get.
Within that comparison, "Mean Streets" (1973) is the director's "Rubber Soul" - not quite the complex "Abbey Road" of "Goodfellas," but still a heartfelt classic. Even though the setting and story are similar, it's a big leap forward for Scorsese who, in five years, had drastically improved his use of the camera and actors. Again, Keitel plays another not-half-bad gangster who, this time, copes with Catholic guilt and peer pressure and tries to protect his chronically irresponsible cousin (an amazingly youthful and hyperactive DeNiro) from a loan shark. It's loose and weird and driven by the characters instead of the story, but it's also infectious, frequently brilliant and, though underseen, it spawned dozens of imitations.
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" stars Ellen Burstyn as a housewife who, after the death of her husband, winds up working in a Phoenix greasy spoon called Mel's Diner. Sound familiar? Yes, it became the basis for the TV show "Alice," but it's much less lighthearted than the sitcom it spawned. Scorsese was, to a degree, trying to do something different (namely: direct a hit movie) and while his heart doesn't completely seem in it, it's a solid drama with a strange, intense flair to it.
"After Hours" is a dark comedy set in SoHo in the early '80s, starring Griffin Dunne as Paul, a shy word processor who gets roped into the Date From Hell and then spends the rest of the movie trying and failing to get back home. Everything gets in his way: a subway fare increase, a pair of burglars, evil evil women and general dumb luck. It's a twisted satire about half-truths that spiral into disastrous lies, and the movie's grimace-inducing episodes are almost its undoing: It's so successful in painting Paul into a corner that it's almost too frustrating to watch. But for those who appreciate their comedy black with no sugar, it's a wry cult favorite and, according to a documentary on the disc, it almost became Tim Burton's first film. Burton heard Scorsese was interested, backed out and went on to debut with another twisted classic: "Pee-wee's Big Adventure."
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Correction, July 14, 2004
By A Customer
In reference to complaints registered by other reviewers, I just want to point out that this collection only features Scorsese's films for Warner Brothers - which is why, for example, seminal Scorsese films like "Taxi Driver" (Columbia) and "Raging Bull" (MGM/UA) are not included in this box. On the other hand, "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," "After Hours," and "Who's That Knocking" are all terrific, and have never before been released on DVD in any form, making this an absolutely essential purchase for fans of the director (if the special editions of "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas" were not inducement enough!).
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary debut of America's greatest living director, June 21, 1999
By A Customer
"Who's that knocking at my Door", Martin Scorsese's debut film is almost plotless. J.R. (played by Harvey Keitel, brilliant by the way) is a young Italian American living in Little Italy, who after wooing a WASPish girl (Zina Bethune) with his love of John Wayne westerns, is disgusted by her well intentioned admission that she's not a virgin and consequently their relationship ends..."Who's that knocking..." has all the excesses of a first feature. It's uneven and episodic, sometimes terribly naïve with some overt religious symbolism. These are minor complaints however as the young Scorsese has created a movie that resonates a manic energy, extraordinary style and a rare sense of eroticism. Very important in the Scorsese cannon, the film looks forward to later films ( "Mean Streets", "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas") with its anthropological feel for the males codes his later characters would explore. Equally important, the film shows how American cinema became colonised by the European ethic of film-making. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, more specifically Jean-Luc Godard, the film also revels in Scorsese's love for American movies. There are references to Howard Hawks, the intense cinema of John Cassavetes (recalling his milestone "Shadows") and the explosive soundtrack reminds one of Kenneth Anger's underground epic "Scorpio Rising". As impressive a debut as you are likely to see...
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