Martin Scorsese is the best director working today. My admiration for him goes beyond that of a mere fan, as a film student I can more or less trace where I am now because of Scorsese. For me he is part spiritual guru, part favorite uncle I’ve never met. And I'm pleased to say he's knocked it out of the park again with The Departed. A film which I can only call the Irish Godfather.

Nearly every film he has ever made has been a masterpiece, so it's not surprising that a few fall through the cracks every once in awhile. As the number one Scorsese fan on the site I’d like to take you through a chronological journey through some of Scorsese’s lesser known, but still fantastic, films... and maybe one or two that ought to stay buried.

The Best

Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1969)

I’m not going to spend too much time on this one. It's rough and Mean Streets made it more or less redundant. Still it’s a good film, and amusing how well it embodies Scorsese’s manner and obsessions so early on. It opens with a shot of a religious statue, cuts to the preparation of a traditional Italian dinner, and then cuts to a savage beating, followed shortly by a scene of Harvey Keitel talking about The Searchers. Think of it as the Cliff Notes for Scorsese.

The film concerns Keitel as JR, a young hoodlum who falls in love with a “class girl” and deals with his own hang-ups and Catholic upbringing, just like Mean Streets, except there's no pitbull era De Niro. I’m being unfair to the film though. It is quite good and Harvey Keitel in his debut shows no signs of shakiness. As a Rosetta’s stone to Scorsese’s work this one is pretty damn invaluable.

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

“America in the 30's was a Free Country. Bertha was jes' a little bit free'er than most. “

The tagline really tells you about everything you need to know about the film. This is Scorsese’s first film. Made for exploitation king Roger Corman, it is pretty maligned, although even a lot of hardcore Scorsese fans haven’t seen it. Its best known for the sobering assessment John Cassevette’s gave it, telling his eager pupil, “you have just spent two years of your life making a piece of shit.”

However, I’m here to tell you that the film is not only not bad, but, on the contrary, quite good. Sure it's not MUCH more then your standard 70’s exploitation movie. But it’s a really cool standard 70’s exploitation movie. Aside from the pleasures therein, the film is an invaluable guide to the emergence of Scorsese as an artist. It's surprising just how much of his themes and style is present here: from the roving camera, to the religious symbolism, to the gritty violence, and of course utter reverence for film (with agents named Powell and Pressberger, a funny bit of Wizard Of Oz homage, and the silent film style credits).

The film follows Bertha (Barbra Hershey) who joins up with a union man played by David Carradine at his wolfish best, and then proceeds to form a gang and go on a crime spree with him. Being an exploitation film, there is plenty of nudity and violence, including one sequence near the end that is almost Wooian. A lot of the film's fun comes from watching Scorsese’s already artistic sensibilities clash with the demands of the trash genre. The film is fun, loose, and as I’ve mentioned pretty damn good. I’ve revisited it a surprising amount of times, and always enjoy myself. As a movie there are several worse ways to spend a Saturday Night rental.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Scorsese is usually considered to be a “man’s” director (whatever the hell that means) so it's usually a surprise to most that he made this “women’s" picture in the 70’s. The film follows Alice, a housewife whose husband suddenly dies, leaving her with no money and an unHollywood (read uncute) kid. She travels across the country trying to achieve her childhood dream of being a singer, and meets strange and dangerous folk along the way. The film includes Harvey Keitel as a guy whose charm masks his deep insanity and brutal nature (for a change of pace).

The film has a funky hippie "go with the flow" style attitude. Coupled with its Altmanesque “Just like let the story find itself man” style the film is a low key, cool comedy, which puts it sharply in contrast to Scorsese’s usual intense way. Special props to a young Jodie Foster as a street kid who gets most of the biggest laughs.

After Hours (1985)

After Hours has the special distinction of being the only Scorsese film that I have only been able to watch once (Yes I include New York, New York in that count). This does not mean that it’s a bad film. On the contrary it does what it does all too well. It's simply the most nerve-shredding, uncomfortable viewing experience I’ve ever had.

The film is a “comedy” in the same way that Bush is a “President"; it vaguely fits the description of the title but is not what anyone was thinking of. The film follows a white collar wage slave, who meets a pretty girl in a café and follows her home. For this minor sin he is sent to hell. Not hell literally, but for the next hour and half everything bad that could possibly happen to him, or anyone for that matter, does. I don’t want to go into a lot of details, not because it would spoil it for you, but because talking about this film is actually giving me a headache right now. The tension is creeping up on me again just from the mention of it. It is a film that I will, without a moment's doubt, defend as truly great, but at the same time I never want to see it again.

See After Hours. You’ll never forget it.

Cape Fear (1991)

There’s no better time then now to see Scorsese’s first remake. Cape Fear follows Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) , a rich lawyer in the deep south. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro), a convict Bowden defended, has just been released and he’s not to happy about the defense he received. The original Cape Fear was a cool old school movie with a snakelike performance by Robert Mitchum, and Gregory Peck in full Atticus mode. The original let the two clash at their respective points, but, this being Scorsese, Bowden finds himself sinking down to Cady’s level, and that’s saying something. The remake is a sort of a Gonzo nightmare; the fact that this was made by a mainstream studio, and became (adjusted for today) far and away Scorsese’s most financially successful film, is nuts.

The film is a hard "R" rating, and I do mean hard. When Cady decides to warm up before raping Bowden’s bound assistant by biting bloody chunks out of her face, you know that you are in some seriously fucked up territory. Still, there’s a strange sort of joy in the movie that keeps it from ever being too disturbing. There are shots and scenes here that you can tell Scorsese has been wanting to do since he was a kid. When Cady starts in a long shot from across a field and strides up through the camera. You know you’re in the hands of a master movie geek nearly cackling with glee. This is more or less the closest we’re ever going to see to Scorsese doing a Kill Bill.

The Age of Innocence (1993)

Scorsese is so often involved in violent films that people often don’t know how to act when he does something else. The Age Of Innocence was definitely something else. The film follows Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer as illicit, would-be lovers in late 19th century society. No one gets their head blown off but there’s enough emotional violence and repressed passions for a dozen Ang Lee films. The two lovers learn the hard way what happens when you go up against a group with rituals and codes as strict as that as the Mafia.

The film is a boon for most guys. Their girlfriends get all the period drama, romance, and costumes that they could want, and the guys don't feel the need to shove steel spikes through their eyes. It's a win-win situation.

Casino (1995)
(or, as most Jackasses like to call it, Scorsese’s other mobster film)

As Scorsese made Goodfellas, apparently he isn’t allowed to make any more mob films without being “derivative”. Did John Ford ever have this problem? Venting of the spleen aside, the movie is badass. The film follows the rise and fall of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (DeNiro), a gangster who finds himself let in on the ground floor in Vegas as it changes from a dusty desert Podunk to a gleaming sin city before descending into the Neon Disneyland that stands today. In the meantime he has to deal with his psychotic childhood friend (Joe Pesci), who threatens to destroy the whole racket with his greed, and his wife (Sharon Stone), for whom self destructive is a light term. Its like watching a car crash for three hours in glorious slow motion, with perfect style and music. It’s a rush.

Kundun (1997)

Rarely does a director ever create such a wonderful counterpoint to a previous work as Scorsese created with Kundun. Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (which you should also see, as it's possibly the greatest work of spiritual art ever made) was about a man struggling to live a normal life as everyone around him and indeed even God insisted on his divinity. In contrast, Kundun is about a man who knows himself to be divine but finds that the world is no longer concerned with spiritual matters.

Kundun tells the story of the Dali Lama, who is told since his childhood that he is the reincarnation of the Buddha of compassion and thus it is his destiny to lead Tibet. He soon finds his world spinning out of his control as Mao’s China rises and destroys his peoples political freedom and religious beliefs, with himself as the primary lightning rod.

The film was shot with non actors in India, and has an emotional nakedness that somehow works. When the Dali Lama dreams of his dead family and pleads “None of you please don’t die” it has a honesty and pain that drives away any hint of cheese. The film is beautifully shot and, accompanied by Phillip Glass’s hypnotic score, it’s a true example of film as meditation and yet another example of why Scorsese remains the most important artist working in film today.

Bringing Out The Dead (1999)

I can understand why some Scorsese films have failed to find an audience, I do. I can understand why mainstream audiences felt no great desire to watch Robert DeNiro and Liza Minelli argue in front of fake trees. I get why they didn’t feel like watching comedies pitched at the level of tension of the dentistry scene in Marathon Man. But why film geeks and audiences alike turned their back on this one I’m literally baffled. I just don’t understand.

Scorsese turned to the mean streets of New York for a descent into hell just as potent as anything in Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. The film follows Frank Pierce, a paramedic who is on the verge of losing his mind, through three hellish days driving an ambulance through a pre Giulianni New York that strongly resembles Hell’s 9th circle.

The film reunited Scorsese with his longtime partner Paul Schrader and set them loose. They brought back a harrowing haunting film, as they follow a tortured soul who only wants to do good but finds no semblance of hope in the world around him. The reaction was typical, Critics ignored it, audiences didn’t go, and the studio tried to market it as ghost story.

Huh?

The film is simply Scorsese at his best. Without question, the film is dark, but it's darkly funny to. You have to laugh at Ving Rhames aggravation at finding he has been charged with reviving a goth clubber who answers only to “I.B Banging” and the clubbers astonishment when Rhames provides his “resurrection." The film is filled with haunting images, from Frank pulling the dead he’s lost out of the pavement to the amazing reverse-motion death that haunts Frank as the snow flies up into the sky and he watches a young girl die in front of bitterly ironic sides of beef.

This is one of the top ten films of the 90’s.

Gangs Of New York (2002)

Gangs of New York is the best film thus far this decade. No I don’t care what you think. The petty complaints I’ve heard about this movie are enough to drive me insane. There are too many characters, the plot is too confusing, _____ isn’t convincing, it’s too violent. Just stop it. Scorsese delivered not just a movie, but an entire world to us.

In a time when films are given to us as small easily digested three act games, Gangs Of New York comes on with a Dickensian imagination and intensity. The film is incredible; a fever dream of American History. Bill The Butcher is the most incredibly realized character in the last couple of decades. Whether he’s torturing a would be assassin, riding into a brawl on a fire truck designed by Satan, or tenderly feeding a poor widow, Bill is always magnetic.

I have already seen Gangs Of New York perhaps 50 times, and writing about I can hardly wait to see it again.

The Bad

Silly human, there is no such thing as a bad Scorsese film. Now, go back to the above list, find these movies, and watch them.