The Most Memorable Oscar Moments

The Most Memorable Oscar Moments (2)

Remember Ben Stiller as Joaquin Phoenix? How about when Reese Witherspoon became Best Actress? Take a look back at some of the biggest moments in recent Academy Awards history here.

(Photo By Getty Images)

 

William Monahan, winner Best Adapted Screenplay for ?The Departed? congratulated by Martin Scorsese during the 79th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre on February 25, 2007 in Hollywood, California.
(February 25, 2007 - Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment)

See some more pics next page...

6. Martin Scorsese (2007)

Martin Scorsese finally got his Oscar gold in 2007. The director was passed over for the Best Director prize time after time, but finally walked away with the win for his flick The Departed. "Could you double-check the envelope?" he told the presenter upon getting up to the mic.

***NO ONLINE, NO INTERNET, EMBARGOED FROM INTERNET AND TELEVISION USAGE UNTIL THE CONCLUSION OF THE LIVE OSCARS TELECAST*** Writer Diablo Cody winner of the award for Best Original Screenplay for the movie "Juno" poses in the press room during the 80th Annual Academy Awards held at the Kodak Theatre on February 24, 2008 in Hollywood, California.
(February 24, 2008 - Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images North America)

7. Diablo Cody (2008)

Stripper-turned-scribe Diablo Cody won her first Oscar (Best Original Screenplay) in 2008 for her flick Juno. She flashed a little leg and even shed a tear onstage while thanking her cast and family. "And most of all, I want to thank my family for loving me exactly the way I am," she said.

Kate Ledger (C), sister of late Heath Ledger, accepts the award for Best Supporting Actor for "The Dark Night" with father Kim (L) and mother Sally (R) during the 81st Annual Academy Awards held at Kodak Theatre on February 22, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Kim Ledger;Sally Ledger;Kate Ledger
(February 23, 2009 - Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images North America)

8. In Memory of Heath Ledger (2009)

In 2008, Heath Ledger became the second actor in Academy Awards history to win a statue after his death. The Dark Knight actor's mother, father, and sister got up on stage to accept the Best Supporting Actor prize on behalf of the late star. His sister Kim said: "This award tonight would have humbly validated Heath's quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here – his peers within an industry he so loved." It was a very bittersweet moment in Hollywood.

Director Kathryn Bigelow accepts Best Director award for "The Hurt Locker" onstage during the 82nd Annual Academy Awards held at Kodak Theatre on March 7, 2010 in Hollywood, California.
(March 6, 2010 - Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images North America)

9. Kathryn Bigelow (2010)

Kathryn Bigelow's 2010 Best Director prize was one for the history books: She became the first woman to ever win the honor (for The Hurt Locker) in 81 years of Oscar history AND beat out her ex-husband James Cameron and his flick Avatar. "This really is… There's no other way to describe it, it's the moment of a lifetime," she said.

(Photo by Getty) 

10. Halle Berry (2002)

Halle Berry became the first African American woman to win an Oscar in 2002 for her role in Monster's Ball. She was in tears while accepting the statue, and gave a very emotional speech. She began: "Oh, my god. Oh, my god. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

Zimbio

"Boardwalk Empire"...the best film of the year?

[I'm hoping to do these quick and dirty posts on what I liked most about each episode every Monday. For detailed episode recaps, which these posts of mine will not be, you should read Edward Copeland's wonderful blog. His summation of the pilot episode can be found here.

Keeping in the spirit of what Jim Emerson has been proposing over at his blog (essentially that television is doing cinema better than cinema these days), "Boardwalk Empire" may just be the best "film" I see this year. I'm extremely excited to see where it goes from here.

A few notes about the pilot episode after the jump...




- I naturally thought of Shutter Isalnd (Martin Scorsese is one of the executive producers of the show, as well as the director of the pilot episode) during the opening sequence (a boat sits in the fog waiting to illegally unload its whiskey onto smaller boats); however, the iris shot of a pocket watch (the show's first image) made me think of The Age of Innocence and how Scorsese toyed with that particular cinematic trope in that film ("Boardwalk Empire", appropriately, closes with a reverse iris). I loved seeing the flashes of the Scorsese aesthetic (irises, freeze frames, jump cuts, title cards) throughout the episode. It really is the most interesting thing he's done in a long time...and I'm someone who loved Shutter Island.

- I love, love, loved the tracking shots...again, making a television show feel more like a film. I especially loved the way the camera just kind of swept over the boardwalk to give us a sense of place (and to notice the amazing set design).

- Speaking of those amazing sets: this reminded me a lot of "Deadwood" (I hope they don't cancel this show based on its costs, too) in how the setting is just as much a character as the interesting people that inhabit the town. I also like the way that Scorsese, like Milch did with "Deadwood", uses the logistics of the town to introduce us to all of the characters, and their connection to each other and the setting (the boardwalk).

- The casting is superb. Another home run by the people at HBO for shelling out the money not just for the construction of the fantastic sets, but for getting another show with quality acting. I like the casting of Steve Buscemi as Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, making me think of the innovative casting of shows like "Big Love", "The Sopranos", and "Deadwood" in how they used character actors (Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny, James Gandolfini, Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, John Hawkes, et al) to really carry their shows. Buscemi is really only known to the public as an oddball character actor who sometime appears in Adam Sandler comedies. However, as most cinephiles know, he is so much more than that as an actor (one of my favorite performances of his is Ghost World)  and I'm glad that Scorsese (who apparently had a lot of say in the casting of the show) and show creator Terence Winter ("The Sopranos") saw an actor who could more than carry his weight as an ambiguous character. There's  a lot we don't know yet about "Nucky", and I'm really interested in seeing where they go with this his character (will he be Al Swearengen, Bill Henrickson, or Tony Soprano to continue the HBO comparisons...all three different types of "leaders" who eventually go through varying degrees of madness by having too many responsibilities).

- Speaking of the acting: Michael Shannon as Agent Nelson Van Alden is fantastic, and Shannon continues to be the best and most interesting actor working today. His line about the feds doing a "God[ly] pursuit" was my favorite line of the episode. And everything he says sounds so damn ominous...it's great! Why wasn't he cast in Public Enemies as T-Man Melvin Purvis, by the way? Oh, and Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody, "Nucky's" right hand man, is also quite good. His character seems to have a lot of levels being introduced in the pilot, and I'm excited to see where they go with his character, too.

- I didn't see the trailer, so Al Capone's (Stephen Graham) reveal was a genuine surprise, and a great moment.

- Finally, it's so amazing to see a piece of entertainment use visuals as a means of exposition. Nothing felt superfluous in the pilot episode, and I loved that Scorsese and Winter decided to let the audience try and fill in the blanks, instead of using the pilot in order to lay a foundation of context through needless exposition. As beautiful as this episode of television was to look at, the two scenes that stood out the most to me where the quietest.  These moments were when "Nucky" stares into the windows of two boardwalk businesses (an Incubator store where nurses are treating pre-mature babies, and a Fortune Teller) obviously thinking deeply upon something he's done, or needs to do. So rarely do you get these moments where the character's moment of contemplation washes over the audience, permeating the screen so that we are contemplating just as much as "Nucky" is. It's the best kind of mystery I've seen in a movie or on a television show this year, and Scorsese and Winter do a brilliant job trusting the audiences abilities of inference in trying to figure out the, ambiguous context for "Nucky's" past (he briefly mentions in the episode that his wife died, after that moment he walks on the boardwalk for some "fresh air" and this is when he stops by the window where he can see the nurses tending to the babies), as well as his present-day motivations. I hope the way they mete out the background information for "Nucky" is as good as the first season of AMC's "Mad Men" where we slowly became privy to the things that shaped Don Draper.

This is easily one of the best pieces of entertainment I've seen all year.

Shutter Island

Perusing the various reviews and thoughts on Martin Scorsese's latest Shutter Island I found a lot of varying opinions among those I respect in the blogosphere. Based on these polarizing takes on the film I decided to needed to do something I rarely do and head out to the theater to see for myself what to make of Scorsese's film. Usually when something is this polarizing it means it's at least trying to attempt something beyond a mere genre exercise – which came as a surprise to me considering the film was advertised as nothing more than another example of Scorsese dabbling in a genre he was merely interested in only having fun with a la Cape Fear – and this had my interest piqued as I read reviews that claimed the film was an attempt at a horror film by a master, like Kubrick's The Shining; was another in a long line of Scorsese's favorite theme of guilt, a protagonist who is haunted by their memories; or, was nothing more than exploitative attempt by Scorsese who seemed out of his league with a story that contains a reveal not worthy of the importance Scorsese seems to think it deserves. Despite all of these varying thoughts – a lot of which, both negative and positive, I agree with – I really liked this film. I found it absorbing and hypnotic; powerful and affecting, successfully evoking the dread and fear that Scorsese aims for. I didn't think the big reveal ruined the film, I thought it added to it, and the only complaint I can think of is that film feels a bit repetitive towards the end; however, the aesthetics are so strong that they more than carry the viewer through the somewhat monotonous patches of exposition to create a film that has the energy and élan we haven't seen from Scorsese since Bringing out the Dead.




There are countless reviews that offer up a synopsis of the film and discuss its successes and problems.  I'm just going to discuss some of my favorite moments and some of the themes and metaphors that caught my attention.  For more professional reviews and better articulated thoughts (these are essentially my notes I scribbled down in the middle of the night after seeing the movie) I highly recommend the linked reviews above.

EXPECT TO SEE SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT:


Unreliable Narrator/Projected Reality:


I like that Scorsese uses the projected backgrounds as not just a nice homage to the noir films that inspired him, but also as a metaphor for how what we're seeing is just a projected reality…characters going through the motion of their role playing game in order to convince Teddy/Andrew (DiCaprio) that he's really a patient on Shutter Island. It also makes sense in this context why Ruffalo's doctor acts the way he does during the role play as Chuck, Teddy's partner. It makes sense that the types of movies these characters would have seen after the war were film noir, and so we understand the doctor's interpretation of what he's seen in movies, a kind of projection of this mystery world into his very real world based on what he's seen in film. The projected backgrounds beautifully underscore these metaphors, but they also serve a function visually…again not just as a nice homage, but as a way of displacing the viewer making us more aware of the false world/reality we're looking at while Teddy "investigates".

Classic Tropes:


Andrew from Gateway Cinephiles says: "Shutter Island feels for all the world like a florid imitation of a Wes Craven delve, and it's only in the final twenty minutes that the curtain is pulled back to reveal that Scorsese tell, the strand of private Christian torment that stretches all the way back to Mean Streets."


I think that what Andrew is getting out is what is polarizing so many people who have been discussing the film. I don't think the reveal is necessarily all that bad, I just think that the reveal shows us that we didn't get what we thought we paid for: a fun genre exercise by one of America's masters of the cinema. However, Scorsese's use of pastiche again makes sense when we find out it was all in Andrew's head. These are projected realties that have a context in what these characters would have been familiar with at the time: war nightmares/memories, pulp novels, and film noir. Watch the way "Teddy" responds when "Chuck" asks what kind of prison Shutter Island is, and "Teddy" squints out the line: "for the criminally insane." It's all done gloriously in an old Hollywood and 1940's noir style. Some complain that Scorsese's use of these tropes "lessens" the power of the punch the ending intends to deliver, or "exploits" the images of the holocaust and WWII, but I just don't see it that way because Scorsese isn't playing it as a straight genre exercise…he's playing it as a distorted reality in the same way he did with Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

Much like The Shining I also think Scorsese is trying to say that this particular genre is more flexible than the general public believes. Horror doesn't have to be zombies or stalk-and-slash type thrillers, it can be cerebral. As a fan of the genre I'm grateful for that point of view, and one of the things I love that Scorsese does here is his use of relentless ominous music to open the film (especially when they first enter through the gates of the island), or the way he references The Shining with the Ward C stuff, or the way I was reminded of King Kong and the feeling of doom as the boat carrying "Teddy" and "Chuck" approaches the island.  The Ward C stuff had interesting moments with the lights going on and off (another metaphor) and moments evoking that haunted house feel Kubrick made so ethereal in The Shining. The film doesn't go all the way like The Shining does, but it succeeds in the sense that you have a master director here as well using some classic horror tropes to evoke a very effective mood.


 

Guilt:


Glenn Kenny says: "it's a chronicle of a man who simply cannot stop hurting himself, cutting himself open. And as such I found it terribly moving."


That sentiment above is definitely palpable in the first dream sequence where "Teddy" refuses to let go of the memory of his dead wife. Shutter Island is definitely less "weighty" as some of his other films about troubled protagonists who can't shake their demons (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Bringing out the Dead), but it's still his most moving film, and the one that feels most like Scorsese, since Bringing out the Dead. Again there seemed to be a lot of outcry about the tracking shot of the German guards being mowed down. I took it as a visual correlative that this was a nightmare, a catalyst for Andrew's guilt, which just keeps playing over and over in his head. It's something he can't shake, and that's why Scorsese uses such a long track to shoot the scene. If Scorsese was just interested in the visceral nature of the scene he could have shot the scene wide, or focused more specifically on Andrew shooting the guard, or pulled back and shot the scene from a bird's eye view. But I like that he shoots the scene with that long tracking shot because it feels repetitive (which it should since we're in Andrew's memory) and it feels unrealistic…meaning soldiers shoot the guards in front of them only when the camera tracks over to them. If Scorsese was going for realism every guard would have been shot at the same time, and again, he probably would have shot it using a long shot. The massacre of the guards and the first dream sequence were the two most powerful scenes for me, and showed that Scorsese was making a Scorsese film, not a genre exercise.

I also quite liked the Vertigo reference at the end with the use of the spiral staircase in the lighthouse. I knew something was askew when Scorsese has his character going up instead of down, suggesting enlightenment or some kind of epiphany was on the horizon, as opposed to a spiral into madness – into a personal hell – by showing him descending the stairs. Plus the location of the lighthouse figures to be as generic (albeit effective) a metaphor: the lighthouse reveals things, acting as a guiding light for ships. The stairway is also, as previously stated, a clear homage to Vertigo where Jimmy Stewart's Scottie also ascends a spiral stairway towards a major revelation that alters his life, and gives new context to the memories that haunt them.



A Minor Quibble/Conclusion:

Sure the film could have been Vertigo-lite had Scorsese and the usually reliable editor Thelma Schoonmaker put Andrew/Teddy's nightmares at the beginning of the film. I suppose I understand exactly why Scorsese tells the story in the fractured way he does (who remembers things in a linear way?), but I still think a straight-shot narrative would have more than been able to hold the power of those flashback moments and would have cut back on the repetitiveness at the end of the film. That is my only quibble with the film.

As for the basics like acting and cinematography: Watch the way Scorsese films the boat approaching the island, and tell me you're not reminded of King Kong; or the way Robert Richardson's camera 360's around Michelle Williams and Leo and tell me you're not reminded of Vertigo; or the way ghosts appear and reappear down eerie halls a la The Shining. Like Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds last year, Scorsese's film is filled with cinematic allusions that are bound to elate film buffs everywhere. Remove the Scorsese-ish subtext and you have a film that stands on its own as a rewarding visual experience.


The acting is great across the board, especially the always fantastic Mark Ruffalo who nearly out acts Leo in every scene they share together. It's always good to see Elias Koteas pop up in a movie, and here he deserves Judi Dench-type Oscar recognition for his brief appearance (eerily resembling the burn Cady from Cape Fear). So too does Ted Levine who nearly steals the whole film with his line: "If I bit into your eye right now, do you think you'd be able to stop me before I blinded you?" It's one brief scene, but it's one of the most memorable of the movie. And how about that ambiguous ending? Did he lie about being Teddy again? I wondered if the end suggested that Andrew would rather be lobotomized – erasing the memories that haunt him – than face having to be "sane" but deal with his past demons. It's a coda the 1970's Scorsese would have been proud of.

Marketed as a horror film – more specifically a genre film – Shutter Island is something completely different. It's about as much a horror film as The Shining is. It takes as familiar a genre as there is and uses the audience's familiarity of the beats and rhythm of a horror movie to its advantage, pulling the curtain back and revealing something that is much more exhilarating and powerful, albeit in a cerebral way instead of a visceral way, than we expected. It's a film that's interested in the horrors of the mind, and on that level it's as effective as any horror movie I've seen recently. It's a classical filmmaker attempting to art-up the horror genre with deeper subtexts than we're used to seeing in the horror film – as an unabashed fan of said genre I don't whether to be grateful for the master's attempt, or insulted by the very idea that the genre needs someone like Scorsese for validity – but nevertheless I found Shutter Island to be a total surprise, a film that sideswiped me with its power and deeply affecting subtext.

Revisiting 1999: The Top Ten Films of the Year, #2 --- Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese)

Here's what I've covered so far...
 

The Top 10 Films of 1999:

Intro: Introduction: The Best Films of 1999

10 - The Limey (Steven Soderbergh)

9 - Affliction (Paul Schrader)

8- American Movie (Chris Smith)
7- Rosetta (The Dardenne Brothers)

6- Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)

5- The Insider (Michael Mann)
4- Three Kings (David O. Russell)
3- Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson)


In a decade (specifically the years 1998 and 1999) most memorable for the new wave of American filmmakers, Martin Scorsese reminded all of us that even though the kids (Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell) may be sitting at the adult table, this old master won't be relinquishing his seat at the head anytime soon. Bringing Out the Dead is one of Scorsese's most memorable and manic pictures; filled with countless energy and the director's particular élan that reminded me of his 70's films that introduced the world to a crazy actor named DeNiro, needle drops, and a new way of looking at editing and camera movement. I admire a lot of Scorsese's films of the mid-80's (After Hours, King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ) and early 90's (Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, Casino), but it seems like Bringing Out the Dead is (arguably) his most energetic film since the 70's, and (again arguably) his most misunderstood and underrated film of the past 20 years.

The film is a manic two hours of smash cuts, zip pans, crazy tracking shots, an energetic soundtrack, and crazy performances…surprisingly not by Nicolas Cage. Cage gets a bit batty in some scenes as the overworked Frank, but for the most part he dials it down here as he plays a weary paramedic who is haunted by a pregnant teenager that died on his call. Throughout the night he rides with three different partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore), each crazier than the last. Scorsese and his screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) decide to script the film with any "real" plot, as the paramedics often have no real beginning or end to their long days on duty. This tactic works well in making us not just feel the craziness of the job, but also Cage's weariness as he is often bathed in shadows and donned with makeup that makes his eyes look sunken in.

Like any good Schrader/Scorsese collaboration the film is rich with religious allegory (the number three is prevalent as Frank has three co-pilots – or personalities – and we follow Frank through three days of his life, each inhabited by a different partner; and Frank befriends a drug addict named Mary, played by Patricia Arquette, who is shot in the Madonna pose at the end of the film comforting Frank), and one can't help but think that the writer and director aren't trying to evoke the same feeling they did with another film of theirs that took place in dingy streets of New York City, Taxi Driver. Like that film Bringing Out the Dead also has its lead actor narrate the story and lead the viewer through the streets of Hell's Kitchen, giving us an inventory of the destitute and hopelessness that inhabit the streets. Frank is like the river man, ferrying people to hell. However, even though the similarities are there, Schrader himself stated that the film wasn't exactly a sequel to Taxi Driver but more of a "bookend".

The aesthetic is typical Scorsese: harsh lighting, sped-up film, disorienting editing techniques (this is some of the best editing his longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker has done), and ethereal scenes that appropriately displace the viewer because the characters often don't know what's going to happen next. One of my favorite ethereal moments is where Frank, after taking some drugs, hallucinates that he is helping all of the ghosts of the people he's seen die rise up from under the ground.  As that scene ends Scorsese then gives us a drug-induced flashback to the one person Frank couldn't save, the aforementioned pregnant teenager Rose.  Scorsese employs a neat trick here where he films the scene backwards so it looks like the snow is fluttering towards the sky, instead of falling on the ground.  I couldn't help but think of James Joyce's "The Dead" during this scene, and Scorsese is obviously going for the same kind of effect (just in reverse): as Frank tries to save her life he is trying reverse death, hence the "backwards" snow.

 

  

  

 

In another one of my very favorite moments Frank is sitting next to Mary's dad who keeps dying but is being ordered by the family to remain "alive" because they want to "believe in miracles", even though it would make more sense to let the man pass on without the pain of having to be shocked back to life.  Frank can see that the man doesn't want to live anymore and to make things worse he begins to hear the man talk to him telling him to quit resurrecting him with the defibrillator.  Frank has had enough and seeks to ease Mary's pain that comes with waiting for such a miracle.  When Frank looks at her father one last time (Scorsese evokes another literary master who wrote about death, Dylan Thomas, by giving the scene a green hue to it) he finally lets him go in a scene of great power. Scorsese does something very subtle at first in this scene that compounds on the powerful moment: he dims the lighting on the old man and keeps the same lighting in tact on Frank. It's a masterful way of shooting someone's passing on, and at first I didn't quite notice it until I realized the scene had gotten darker, but when I went back and watched it again you could see Scorsese slowly dimming the lighting in the scene. It's a great effect that reminded me of the superimposed zoom he did in Goodfellas where Liotta and DeNiro are talking to each other in a diner and at first the scene just seems kind of "off", but then we realize that the characters are staying in the same shot in the foreground, but outside in the background the image is being zoomed in. It's moments like these that make Scorsese the king.

Bringing Out the Dead is the embodiment of what made 1999 such a memorable year. The film is teeming with energy. It's a joy to watch because like Goodfellas we're never quite sure where the camera is taking us and we're almost always energized by the music that accompanies each scene. The film has appropriately manic performances delivered by Tom Sizemore and Ving Rhames (there's a great scene where Rhames "resurrects" someone) and one of the better performances by Nicolas Cage as a man who clearly is burnt out and tired of a job he took because he thought he was going to be saving lives, not losing them. Scorsese shows Frank and his partners as glorified taxi drivers at times, and at other times they play a role that is more "consoler" than "life saver"; and that's what fascinated me about the film: it gave me a glimpse (a heavily stylized glimpse, but still a glimpse) into the night-to-night operations (the film is based on a book by Joe Connelly who was a NYC ambulance driver) of a profession I knew nothing about. It's one of Scorsese's most entertaining pictures, and I think it's a crime that it often goes forgotten when people discuss the great films of the master's oeuvre. It's the last great film Scorsese has made, and even though I know he has another great one in him, nothing has come close to the energy of Bringing Out the Dead.

Extra Stills:

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Quick Thoughts on Scorsese's Cape Fear

The first 20 minutes of Cape Fear is hilariously manic and are some of the best sequences Martin Scorsese has created. Scorsese's A.D.D gives the viewer the sense that anything can happen in this remake of the classic thriller starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck (both who have cameos in this film). Like Scorsese did with his other early 90's film The Age of Innocence, he punches up this rather ordinary thriller with all kind of visual trickery that distract from the fact that what you're watching doesn't seem like a Scorsese movie. Scorsese uses everything from deep focus to smash cuts to tilted shots/Dutch angles, to low angles, to bird's eye view…everything seems lovingly homaged here by Scorsese as he gleefully picks his favorite parts from the likes of Hitchcock and Laughton and others to create a fun, exhilarating experience for any cinephile. I have the feeling this year's Shutter Island, another genre exercise for Scorsese, will have the same feeling.


More thoughts, with screencaps, after the jump...




In Cape Fear Scorsese wisely kept the original music by Bernard Herman – one of the best scores I've heard in a thriller – and makes his main character played by Nick Nolte (in one of my favorite Nolte performances) just as guilty as DeNiro's ex-con Cady. What makes the film so enjoyable is the fact that it is such a throwaway film for a master of American cinema like Scorsese. Because of that you can sense the director and his actors – especially DeNiro in what is clearly the last role where he showed any interest in making his character manically memorable – having a lot of fun here (I especially liked Scorsese's absurd metaphor for Cady's obtrusiveness: his giant-ass cee-gars). Cape Fear isn't anything revolutionary (in truth it's probably more well known for being famously parodied on "The Simpsons" than anything the film succeeds at), and it's not even one of the best films in the master's oeuvre; however, it's an interesting experiment from Scorsese that shows the man knows how to play with the conventions of a genre film.

I forgot how much fun Scorsese's remake is. The film is so manic and visceral that the viewer is left wandering what this old master hasn't revealed yet. The film definitely has a soggy middle, but by that time we could use the breather; and it all leads to an ending that is hilarious in its exuberance. Scorsese would make better films after this, most notably The Age of Innocence and Casino, but I don' think he made one as gleefully exhilarating as Cape Fear until his 1999 masterpiece Bringing Out the Dead, another film like Cape Fear where Scorsese's camera is restless, and you can really sense the director having fun moving his camera freely. That film is a joy to watch because like Cape Fear you just can't predict the film's beats.


Cape Fear is an interesting precursor to Scorsese's recent back-to-back releases of The Departed and Shutter Island (I'm basing this off of the trailer, of course) because with these films he's not interested in his usual themes of personal anguish, religious allegory, or tragic downfalls. That's both a good thing and a bad thing as I liked what he did with The Departed – in the same way I like what he did with Cape Fear – even it was clearly one of the directors lesser works; however, I feel like we haven't had a really personal film from the man since Gangs of New York. Perhaps, like after Goodfellas, he needed a break and decided to make The Departed (The Aviator was really Leo's project and passion, and I realize I'm omitting his rock documentaries, No Direction Home and Shine a Light) and Shutter Island…the former which was good popcorn fun and the latter which should follow in the same vein. 

If my recent viewing of Cape Fear has taught me anything it's that even these throwaway Scorsese pictures are worthwhile additions to the master's résumé because they're examples of the director's love of cinema. These films seem like excuses for him to toss in everything he wasn't able to fit in to his more "serious" endeavors. I like that in 1991 Scorsese was willing to not just try his hand in thriller/horror genre, but to tweak it and put his own touch on it; and if Shutter Island is even half as kinetic, experimental (read: arty), and visceral a horror film as Cape Fear then I'll be more than happy to go along for another ride.


More stills: