Shattered Politics #39: Taxi Driver (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

We’ve never had a President named Charles. We’ve had several Presidents named John and a quite a few named James. We’ve even had three named George. But we’ve never had a Charles. We’ve come close. Charles Evans Hughes nearly beat evil old Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was nominated two times in a row by the Federalists but lost to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison respectively. We’ve had three Vice Presidents names Charles — Fairbanks, Dawes, and Curtis — but never a President.

And, if we ever do elect a President named Charles, he’s probably go by either Charlie or Chuck. The United States has always liked to think of itself as being a country that has no official royal family and, as a name, Charles probably sounds far to aristocratic for most voters.

That’s why I’m sure that, once U.S. Sen. Charles Palatine won the Democratic presidential nomination back in 1976, he probably insisted that people start calling him Chuck. Of course, Sen. Palatine probably had no idea how lucky he was to win that nomination. If not for a few secret service agents, Sen. Palatine could very well have fallen victim to a psychotic taxi driver named Travis Bickle.

Sen. Palatine’s presidential campaign is a major subplot of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece of paranoia, Taxi Driver. As played by an actor named Leonard Harris, Sen. Palatine appears to be the epitome of a politician. He may smile at the right moment but his eyes are always shifty. Even his campaign slogan (“We Are The people!”) is vapid in an all too plausible way. (How different is “We Are the People” from “We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For?”) For the most part, Palatine remains a remote figure, giving speeches and appearing in television commercials. The only time that we get to know Palatine as a person is when he gets in a taxi being driven by Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro).

Travis recognizes him immediately and tells him that he tells everyone who gets in the cab that “they gotta vote for you.” Palatine smirks a little as he asks Travis what he thinks the most important issue of the election is. Travis goes on a bit about how someone needs to destroy all of the scum and filthy lowlifes who seem to populate Travis’s section of New York. As Travis rambles, Palatine’s smile disappears and it becomes obvious that he’s realized that he is essentially being driven by a psycho. Oh shit, Palatine is probably thinking, this guy is telling people that they gotta vote for me? However, Palatine quickly regains his composure and assures Travis that the wisest people that he’s ever met have been taxi drivers.

Of course, what Palatine doesn’t realize is that Travis only knows about the campaign because he happens to be obsessed with a Palatine campaign worker named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd). And Betsy even goes out with Travis a few times. But then Travis, who spends the majority of the film showing how little skill he has when it comes to understanding and relating to other people, takes Betsy to an adult film.

With Betsy refusing to take his calls, Travis’s attention shifts to Iris (Jodie Foster), a teenage prostitute. Obviously seeing himself as being a knight in shining armor, Travis tells Iris that she has to go back home to her parents. As Travis talks, it becomes apparent that he’s simply repeating talking points that he’s heard on TV. (If Taxi Driver was made today, Travis would be one of those people constantly sharing “inspirational” Facebook posts.) Iris laughs at Travis and goes back to her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel).

And, of course, Travis goes even crazier than before.

38 years after it was first released, Taxi Driver remains a disturbing and powerful film. However, what makes it effective is that, in many ways, it’s perhaps the darkest comedy ever made. Throughout the entire film, Travis essentially tells everyone that he meets that he’s disturbed and potentially dangerous and, throughout the entire film, everyone seems to be determined to ignore all of the signs.

Critics always talks about the scene where Travis points a gun at his mirror and asks, “You talkin’ to me?” And that’s a great scene. It deserves to be famous, just as De Niro deserves all of the praise that he’s gotten for his iconic performance in Taxi Driver.

However, for me, there are two other scenes that are just as brilliant. The first is where Travis attempts to get some advice from an older cabbie named Wizard (Peter Boyle). Travis says he’s been having a lot bad thoughts. Wizard shrugs and says that everyone has those. What makes this scene particularly memorable are the lengths that Wizard goes to in order to avoid acknowledging that Travis is obviously disturbed.

And then, there’s the scene where Travis buys a gun from Easy Andy (Steven Prince). Andy is such a salesman and is so nonchalant about all of his weaponry that, for a few brief minutes, Steven Prince actually manages to steal the spotlight from Robert De Niro.

Whenever one thinks about Taxi Driver, one automatically pictures Robert De Niro. That’s why it’s all the more interesting that De Niro was not the first choice for Travis. When Taxi Driver was in pre-production and a pre-Jaws Steven Spielberg (of all people) was thinking about directing it, Jeff Bridges as briefly attached to the role. And while it’s always tempting to think about what a Spielberg/Bridges version of Taxi Driver would look like, I think we’re all right to be happy that the actual film was directed by Scorsese and starred De Niro. They truly made Taxi Driver into one of the most memorable films ever made.

Let’s Say Goodbye to 2014 with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, 2014 is nearly over.

Soon, it will be 2015.

Soon, the present will become the future.

2014 will not go down in history as one of humanity’s finest moments. Considering all that’s happened over the past year, it’s hard for me to be surprised by the fact that several of my favorite films of the year were films that I would normally describe as being entertaining escapism.

In 2014, we needed to be entertained. We needed to escape.

Will 2015 be any better? What will be the way of the future? It’s a question that Leonardo DiCaprio asked at the end of Martin Scorsese’s 2004 film The Aviator and it’s a question that we’re still asking today.

Documentary Review: Seduced and Abandoned (dir by James Toback)

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recently watched James Toback’s 2013 Seduced and Abandoned on HBO. This documentary failed to seduce me but it certainly left me feeling abandoned.

Seduced and Abandoned follows James Toback and Alec Baldwin as they wander around the Cannes Film Festival, interviewing filmmakers and attempting to raise money for Toback’s latest film. That film, incidentally, is a remake of Last Tango In Paris. Though neither Toback nor Baldwin goes into too much detail about the film (and I’m not exactly convinced that they’re all that serious about it to begin with), we do learn that this remake would be set in Iraq. Alec Baldwin would play a right-wing CIA agent while Neve Campbell would play a leftist journalist. We watch as Baldwin and Toback pitch this film to a countless number of potential producers and ask for twenty million dollars. Without fail, every producer replies that he loves Alec Baldwin but he’s not willing to spend that type of money on him because Baldwin is not a bankable star. As Baldwin and Toback frequently lament, nobody seems to care what the film is about. Instead, they’re only interested in making money.

And this brings us to this documentary’s main problem. It would be easier to agree with them about businessmen sacrificing art for greed if not for the fact that the movie that Toback and Baldwin are talking about making sounds like perhaps the worst fucking film ever pitched. A remake of Last Tango in Paris starring Alec Baldwin, directed by James Toback, and taking place in Iraq? Are you freaking kidding me? I would never pay money to see a movie that sounded that pretentious. I would never ask anyone else to buy me a ticket for this movie. If I saw this movie on HBO, I would cancel my cable subscription. Seriously, no way.

And yes, I do understand Baldwin and Toback’s point. They’re arguing that a politically-themed, Iraq-set remake of Last Tango In Paris could not be made today because the system has been set up to silence the voice of artists. The industry is more concerned with making money than making an artistic statement. I happen to agree 100% but that still doesn’t change the fact that Toback and Baldwin’s film sounds terrible.

Toback and Baldwin interview everyone from Ryan Gosling to Jessica Chastain to Martin Scorsese to Francis Ford Coppola and the one thing that every interview has in common is the sound of Toback’s braying laughter. It’s a very forced and calculating laugh, one that seems almost as fake as Toback’s pseudo-intellectual persona. And that’s the other big problem with Seduced and Abandoned. Toback and Baldwin never really come across as being the rebels that they obviously believe themselves to be. Even when Toback is talking to the financiers that he and Baldwin appear to blame for ruining the movies, it’s obvious that Toback wants us to impressed by the fact that he knows so many fabulously wealthy people. In the end, the film feels self-congratulatory in the most undeserving of ways.

And yet, there are occasional moments where the film, almost despite itself, manages to escape from the suffocating egos of James Toback and Alec Baldwin. The section of the film that deals with the history of Cannes Film Festival is fascinating and Martin Scorsese is such a lively and sincere artist that it’s impossible not to enjoy his interview. (In many ways, Scorsese seems to be the anti-Toback.) For a few seconds, Alec Baldwin stops being insufferable long enough to do a reasonably humorous impersonation of Woody Allen. If you’re a student of Italian cinema, you’ll be happy to see a brief appearance from Mark Damon, a former actor turned producer who appears in several Italian spaghetti westerns in the late 60s. Damon is the first producer to have to sit through Toback’s pitch and its fascinating to watch just how indifferent he is to idea of remaking Last Tango In Paris with Alec Baldwin and James Toback.

Mark Damon aside, Seduced and Abandoned is a documentary that fails to do the former and will probably inspire many viewers to do the latter.

44 Days of Paranoia #28: The Departed (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For our latest entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take look at the film that the Academy named the best picture of 2006, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.

The Departed takes the plot of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and transports it to Boston. For years, crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) has ruled South Boston with an iron fist. However, police Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his assistant, Sgt. Dignan (Mark Wahlberg) think that they have finally found a way to take Costello down. They recruit police academy trainee Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) to go undercover and infiltrate Costello’s organization. To help establish his cover, Costigan drops out of the academy and does time in prison on a fake assault charge.

Meanwhile, Costello has an agent of his own. Years earlier, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) was specifically recruited and trained by Costello to become a mole inside the Massachusetts State Police. Sullivan soon finds himself also working under Queenan.

While the amoral Sullivan finds it easy to deal with his dual role of being both a cop and a criminal, the far more emotionally unstable Costigan has a much more difficult time of it. Not helping is the fact that Costello turns out to be a legitimate madman who spends half of his time dismembering people and the other half serving as a secret informant to the FBI. While Sullivan smoothly works his way up the ranks, Costigan pops pills and becomes more and more paranoid.

Eventually, both Costigan and Sullivan are ordered to uncover the double agents in their respective organizations. What they don’t realize is that, even as they both attempt to learn the other’s identity, they are both seeing the same woman, psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga.)

In the scene below, which happens to be my favorite from the entire film, Costigan and Madolyn make love after Madolyn assures Costigan that she doesn’t have a cat. That makes sense when you consider that Costigan is essentially a rat.

I have to admit that, as much as I did appreciate certain parts of the film, I was still disappointed the first time I saw The Departed. It wasn’t so much that the movie itself was bad as much as it was the fact that it didn’t live up to the standard set by previous Scorsese films. The film seemed to somehow be both conventional and overly busy at the same time, with the constantly moving camera and the propulsive soundtrack feeling more like they were more the result of a director trying to be like Scorsese than Scorsese himself. While I appreciated the comedic relief of Alec Baldwin’s performance as Queenan’s rival on the force and I thought that Matt Damon made a compelling villain, both Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Sheen seemed to have been bitten by the overacting bug. It was hard not to feel somewhat disappointed that, after waiting for over three decades to be honored by the Academy, Scorsese finally won his Oscar for The Departed.

However, with subsequent viewings, The Departed has grown on me. Once I was freed up from the expectations that come from watching a Scorsese film for the first time, I was able to enjoy The Departed for what it actually was, a very well-made and entertaining crime drama that occasionally flirted with being something more.

Watching The Departed for a second time, I was better able to appreciate the sly humor of Jack Nicholson’s performance. As played by Nicholson, Frank Costello becomes both the devil incarnate and a somewhat pathetic relic who is incapable of understanding that his time has passed. Watching Nicholson for a second time also led to me better appreciating Martin Sheen’s performance. Since Nicholson and Sheen are meant to the equivalent of the angel and the devil sitting on Damon and DiCaprio’s shoulders, it was necessary for Sheen to be as virtuous as Nicholson was demonic.

By the time that I watched The Departed for the third time, it was a lot more obvious to me that the entire film was, more or less, meant to be a satire. What Nicholson’s criminal empire and Sheen’s police force have in common is that neither one of them works the way that they’re supposed to. If there’s anything to be learned from the film, it’s that nothing means much of anything. (The Coen Brothers would be proud.)

Finally, after multiple viewings, it becomes obvious that The Departed is very much a Scorsese film. Even if his direction isn’t quite as showy as viewers have come to expect, there’s still enough little touches and details that remind us that this film was made by a master. To cite the obvious example that everyone cites, just watch for the X’s that always somehow manage to appear on the wall or the carpet before anyone in the film dies. With multiple viewings, It also became obvious to me that even if this film was set in Boston and not New York and even if the characters were Irish and not Italian, this film was still thematically pure Scorsese, dealing with themes of guilt, identity, punishment, and martyrdom.

Like all worthwhile films, The Departed is one that grows better with subsequent viewings.

Other Entries In The 44 Days of Paranoia

12 Years A Slave Wins In Boston

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Boston Society Of Film Critics voted earlier today and 12 Years A Slave — which, so far, has been underperforming with the critics’ groups — swept the awards. The Wolf of Wall Street came in second for most of the major awards.

BEST PICTURE
“12 Years a Slave”
Runner-up: “The Wolf of Wall Street”

BEST DIRECTOR
Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”)
Runner-up: Martin Scorsese (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)

BEST ACTOR
Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”)
Runner-up: Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine”)
Runner-up: Judi Dench (“Philomena”)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
James Gandolfini (“Enough Said”)
Runner-ups:
Barkhad Abdi (“Capt. Phillips”) and Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”) tie for second.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
June Squibb (“Nebraska”)
Runner-up:
Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”)

BEST SCREENPLAY
Nicole Holofcener (“Enough Said”)
Runner-up:
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“Wadjda”
Runner-up: “Blue Is the Warmest Color”

BEST DOCUMENTARY
“The Act of Killing,” Josh Oppenheimer
Runner-ups:
“Blackfish,” “Leviathan,” “At Berkeley,” “Crash Reel,” “20 Feet from Stardom ”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
“The Wind Rises,” Hayao Miyazaki
Runner-up:
“Frozen”

BEST NEW FILMMAKER
Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”)
Runner-up: Josh Oppenheimer (“Act of Killing”)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Emmanuel Lubezki (“Gravity”)
Runner-up:
Phillippe Le Sourd (“The Grandmaster”)

BEST EDITING
Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill (“Rush”)
Runner-up: Thelma Schoonmaker (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)

BEST USE OF MUSIC IN A FILM
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
Runner-up: “Nebraska”

44 Days of Paranoia #13: Quiz Show (dir by Robert Redford)

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, I want to take a look at a film that I recently caught on cable — 1994’s Quiz Show.

Directed by Robert Redford and based on a true story, Quiz Show was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture but lost to Forrest Gump. Among those of us who obsess over Oscar history, Quiz Show is often overshadowed by not only Forrest Gump but two of the other nominees as well, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption. When compared to Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show certainly feels old-fashioned. At the same time, it’s not quite as much of a sentimental crowd-pleaser as Gump or Shawshank. Perhaps for those reasons, Quiz Show never gets quite as much attention as some other films that have been nominated for best picture. However, taking all of that into consideration, Quiz Show is still one of the best films of the 90s.

Quiz Show takes us back to the 1950s. The most popular show on television is 21, a game show in which two contestants answer questions, win money, and try to be the first to score 21 points. The American public believes that all of the questions asked on 21 are locked away in a bank vault until it’s time for the show. What they don’t know is that the show’s producers have instead been rigging the show, giving the answers to contestants who they feel will be good for ratings.

When Quiz Show begins, nerdy Herbie Stempel (John Turturro) has been the champion for several weeks. However, both the show’s producers and sponsors feel that the untelegenic Herbie has peaked. Hence, the handsome and charismatic Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) is brought on the show and Herbie is ordered to lose to him. Reluctantly, Herbie does so.

Charles is initially reluctant to cheat but, as he continues to win, he finds himself becoming addicted to the fame. Charles is the son of the prominent academic Mark Van Doren (Paul Scofield) and his success on television finally gives him a chance to escape from his father’s shadow. Indeed, the film’s subtle and nuanced portrait of Charles and Mark’s loving but competetive relationship is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Herbie, however, is bitter over having to lose and has subsequently gambled away all of his winnings. When 21′s producer (David Paymer) refuses to help Herbie get on another TV show, Herbie reacts by going to the New York County district attorney and publicly charging 21 as being fixed. Though the grand jury dismisses Herbie as being obviously mentally unbalanced, his charges come to the attention of a congressional investigator, Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow).

Goodwin launches his own investigation into 21 and discovers that the show is fixed. (As the ambitious Goodwin puts it, he wants to “put television on trial.”) Along the way, he also meets and befriends Charles Van Doren and finds himself torn between his desire to expose the show and to protect Charles from the bad publicity. Again, the film is to be applauded for the subtle way that it uses Goodwin’s investigation of both Charles and Herbie as a way to explore issues of both class resentment and class envy. Goodwin may have come from the same ethnic background of Herbie but it quickly becomes obvious that Goodwin has more sympathy for the genteel (and very WASPy) world that produced Charles Van Doren. When Goodwin tries to justify protecting Charles, his wife (played by Mira Sorvino) responds by calling him “the Uncle Tom of the Jews” and it’s hard not to feel that she has a point.

While I greatly enjoyed Quiz Show, I do have to say that, on one major point, the film fails. Try as he might, director Redford never convinces us that a rigged game show is really as big of a crime as he seems to be believe it to be. Perhaps in the 1950s, people were still innocent enough to be shocked at the idea of television reality being fake but for cynical contemporary viewers, it’s hard not to feel that the “scandal” was more about Richard Goodwin’s ambition and less about any sort of ethical or legal issue. Towards the end of the film, one character suggests that television will never be truly honest unless the government steps in to regulate it. “What?” I yelled back at the TV.

Seriously, it seemed like a bit of an overreaction.

As I watched Quiz Show, I found it hard not to think about the reality shows that I love. For instance, I know that The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are largely staged. I know that the previous season of Big Brother was largely set up so that Amanda could win. (And, believe me, if Amanda hadn’t sabotaged her chances by turning out to be a mentally unstable racist bully, she would have won and she would probably would have been invited back for the next all-stars season.) I know that shows like Storage Wars and Dance Moms are “unscripted” in name only. I know that reality shows aren’t real but my attitude can basically be summed up in two words: “who cares?” Perhaps I would be more outraged if I lived in the 50s which, to judge from both Quiz Show and a host of other movies, was apparently a much more innocent time.

That said, I really enjoyed Quiz Show. A lot of that is because I’m a history nerd and, therefore, I have a weakness for obsessively detailed period pieces. But even beyond that, Quiz Show is a well-made, entertaining film that features three excellent lead performances and several strong supporting turns. If you love to watch great actors playing great roles then Quiz Show is the film for you. Rob Morrow lays his Boston accent on a bit thick but otherwise, he does a good job of suggesting both Goodwin’s ambition and the insecurities that lead him to desire Charles’s friendship even as he tries to expose him as a fraud. John Turturro brings an odd — if manic — dignity to Herbie Stempel while Johann Carlo is well-cast as his wife. Best of all, Ralph Fiennes makes Charles Van Doren into a sad, frustrating, and ultimately sympathetic character while Paul Scofield is the epitome of both paternal disappointment and love as his father. The film is full of great supporting turns as well, with David Paymer and Hank Azaria perfectly cast as the show’s producers and Christopher McDonald playing the show’s host with the same smarmy charm that he brought to a similar role in the far different Requiem For A Dream. Perhaps best of all, Martin Scorsese shows up as the owner of Geritol and gets to bark, “Queens is not New York!”

Even if Robert Redford doesn’t quite convince us that the quiz show scandal was as big a deal as he obviously believes it to be, Quiz Show is still an uncommonly intelligent film and one that deserves to rediscovered.

Other entries in the 44 Days Of Paranoia:

Trailer #2: The Wolf Of Wall Street

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, originally, The Wolf of Wall Street was the movie that everyone was expecting to dominate the Oscar race. Then, a few months ago, it was announced that the film might be held back until 2014 while director Martin Scorsese put the finishing touches on the film. And then, just as suddenly, it was announced that The Wolf of Wall Street would be released this year, on Christmas Day to be exact.

And with that announcement comes a second trailer!

To be honest, neither one of the film’s trailers really feel like trailers for a Scorsese film. Then again, that’s the same thing that many of us said about Hugo.

Trailer: The Wolf of Wall Street

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Seriously, how can you not be excited about this film?

Lisa Marie Picks The 50 Best Films of The Past 3 Years

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As of this month, I have been reviewing films here at the Shattered Lens for 3 years. In honor of that anniversary, I thought I’d post my picks for the 50 best films that have been released in the U.S. since 2010.

Without further ado, here’s the list!

Black Swan (directed by Darren Aronofsky)
Exit Through The Gift Shop (directed by Banksy)
Hanna (directed by Joe Wright)
Fish Tank (directed by Andrea Arnold)
Higher Ground (directed by Vera Farmiga)
Shame (directed by Steve McQueen)
Anna Karenina (directed by Joe Wright)
The Cabin In The Woods (directed by Drew Goddard)
127 Hours (directed by Danny Boyle)
Somewhere (directed by Sofia Coppola)
Life of Pi (directed by Ang Lee)
Hugo (directed by Martin Scorsese)
Inception (directed by Christopher Nolan)
Animal Kingdom (directed by David Michod)
Winter’s Bone (directed by Debra Granik)
The Artist (directed by Michel Hazanavicius)
The Guard (directed by John Michael McDonagh)
Bernie (directed by Richard Linklater)
The King’s Speech (directed by Tom Hooper)
Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (directed by Thomas Alfredson)
Django Unchained (directed by Quentin Tarantino)
Never Let Me Go (directed by Mark Romanek)
Toy Story 3 (directed by Lee Unkrich)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (directed by Niels Arden Oplev)
Young Adult (directed by Jason Reitman)
Sucker Punch (directed by Zack Snyder)
The Master (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
Incendies (directed by Denis Villeneuve)
Melancholia (directed by Lars Von Trier)
Super (directed by James Gunn)
Silver Linings Playbook (directed by David O. Russell)
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (directed by Edgar Wright)
The Last Exorcism (directed by Daniel Stamm)
Skyfall (directed by Sam Mendes)
Easy A (directed by Will Gluck)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 (directed by David Yates)
The Avengers (directed by Joss Whedon)
How To Train Your Dragon (directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBois)
Win Win (directed by Thomas McCarthy)
Les Miserables (directed by Tom Hooper)
Take This Waltz (directed by Sarah Polley)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (directed by Werner Herzog)
Rust and Bone (directed by Jacques Audiard)
Cosmopolis (directed by David Cronenberg)
Ruby Sparks (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valarie Faris)
Brave (directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (directed by Sean Durkin)
Jane Eyre (directed by Cary Fukunaga)
Damsels in Distress (directed by Whit Stillman)

Film Review: Casino (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Minor spoilers below)

Casino, Martin Scorsese’s epic, Las Vegas-set film from 1995, is one of my favorite films of all time. It seems to show up on cable every other week and, whenever I see that it’s playing, I always make it a point to catch at least a few minutes.

Casino opens with veteran Las Vegas bookie Ace Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro) getting into a car. He starts the engine and the car explodes. The rest of the movie is an extended flashback as both Ace and his friend and eventual rival Nicky (Joe Pesci) explain how Ace went from being the most powerful man in Vegas to getting blown up in his car.

We are shown how Ace was originally sent to Vegas by a group of mobsters who are headquartered in the far less flamboyant town of Kansas City. Ace keeps an eye on the city for the bosses and, as long as the money keep coming in, they leave Ace alone to do whatever he wants. When Ace isn’t bribing government officials (including one particularly sleazy state senator who was reportedly based on future U.S. Sen. Harry Reid) and breaking the fingers of the unlucky gamblers who have been caught trying to cheat the casino, he’s busy falling in love with the beautiful prostitute Ginger (Sharon Stone, who was nominated for Best Actress for her work in this film). Though Ginger warns Ace that she doesn’t love him and is still hung up on her manipulative pimp Lester Diamond (James Woods, who is hilariously sleazy), Ginger and Ace still get married.

Everything’s perfect except for the fact that Ace’s old friend Nicky (Joe Pesci) has also moved to Vegas. As opposed to the calm and low-key Ace, Nicky has a violent temper and soon, he starts drawing unwanted attention to both himself and Ace. When Ace attempts to control Nicky, Nicky responds by turning on his friend and soon, the two of them are fighting an undeclared war for control of the city. Meanwhile, the bosses in Kansas City are starting to notice that less and less money is making its way back to them from Las Vegas…

There are so many things that I love about Casino that I don’t even know where to begin.

First off, I love the film’s glamour. I love the way that the film celebrates the glitz of Las Vegas, presenting it as an oasis of exuberant life sitting in the middle of a barren desert that, we’re told, is full of dead people. I love seeing the tacky yet stylish casinos. I love seeing the inside of Ace’s mansion. And Ginger’s clothes are just to die for!

I love that Scorsese’s signature visual style perfectly keeps up with and comments on the natural flamboyance of Las Vegas. Consider how the film starts, with the shadowy form of Ace Rothstein being tossed through the air and then descending back down to Earth. Consider the image of Ace standing in the middle of the desert and being submerged within a thick cloud of dust as Nicky’s car speeds away from him. Consider how Scorsese’s camera glides through the casino, letting us see both the people who cheat and the people who are watching them cheat. Consider Nicky standing outside of his jewelry stare and freezing the movement of the camera with his reptilian glare. Consider the scene of cocaine being snorted up a straw, seemingly filmed from inside the straw. Casino is a film full of the type of images that all directors promise but few ever actually deliver.

I love that Casino is built around a brilliant lead performance from Robert De Niro. De Niro gives a performance that mixes both tragedy and comedy. My favorite De Niro moment comes about halfway through the film, when Ace finds himself hosting a wonderfully tacky cable access show called Aces High. Ace interviews “celebrities” like Frankie Avalon, introduces the Ace Rothstein Dancers, and even finds the time to do some juggling. De Niro makes Ace into an endearing and awkward character in these scenes, a permanent outsider who has finally managed to become something of a star.

It’s easy to compare Casino to Scorsese’s other classic mix of gangster film and social satire, 1990’s Goodfellas. Both films feature De Niro, Pesci, and Frank Vincent. (In a nice piece of irony, Casino features Vincent getting a little revenge after being attacked twice by Joe Pesci in two different Scorsese films.) Both films are based on nonfiction books by Nicholas Pileggi. Both films feature nonstop music playing on the soundtrack. Both films feature multiple narrators who explain to us how the day-to-day operations of the Mafia are conducted. When Scorsese shows us Ace and Ginger’s wedding day, it feels almost like a scene-for-scene recreation of Henry Hill’s wedding in Goodfellas.

At the same time, there are a few key differences between Goodfellas and Casino. Whereas Goodfellas was all about being a low-level cog in the Mafia, Casino is about management. Casino is about the guys who the Goodfellas made rich. Goodfellas was about the drudgery of everyday life whereas Casino is about the glitz and the glamour promised by the fantasy world of Las Vegas. Whereas Goodfellas was almost obsessively anti-romantic, Casino is a gangster film with heart. No matter what else you might say about him as a character, Ace’s love for both Ginger and Las Vegas is real. On a similar note, when Nicky turns against Ace, it’s because his feelings have been hurt. In the end, Ace and Nicky come across like children who have, temporarily, been given the keys to the world’s biggest playground.

Casino is a glossy, flamboyant film that literally opens with a bang and ends on a note of melancholy and loss. Not only is Ace reduced to being an anonymous old man working out of a nondescript office but our last two views of Vegas are of the old casinos being dynamited and an army of overweight tourists emerging from the airport like the unstoppable zombies from Dawn of the Dead. This, then, is Scorsese’s view of the apocalypse. The world isn’t destroyed by a cataclysm but instead by an invasion of terminal middle American blandness.