Catherine Scorsese Movies

The inner-workings of a corrupt Las Vegas casino are exposed in Martin Scorsese's story of crime and punishment. The film chronicles the lives and times of three characters: "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro), a bookmaking wizard; Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), a Mafia underboss and longtime best friend to Ace; and Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone, in a role she was born to play), a leggy ex-prostitute with a fondness for jewelry and a penchant for playing the field. Ace plays by the rules (albeit Vegas rules, which, as he reminds the audience in voiceover, would make him a criminal in any other state), while Nicky and Ginger lie, cheat, and steal their respective ways to the top. The film's first hour and a half details their rise to power, while the second half follows their downfall as the FBI, corrupt government officials, and angry mob bosses pick apart their Camelot piece by piece. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi

Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Brian Selznick's award-winning novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret stars Asa Butterfield, as an orphan boy who lives in a Parisian train station. Sent to live with his drunken uncle after his father's death in a fire, Hugo learned how to wind the massive clocks that run throughout the station. When the uncle disappears one day, Hugo decides to maintain the clocks on his own, hoping nobody will catch on to him squatting in the station.

His natural aptitude for engineering leads him to steal gears, tools, and other items from a toy-shop owner who maintains a storefront in the station. Hugo needs these purloined pieces in order to rebuild a mechanical man that was left in the father's care at the museum -- the restoration was a project father and son did together.

When Georges (Ben Kingsley), the old man who runs the toy stand, catches on to the thievery, he threatens to turn Hugo over to the station's lone police officer (Sacha Baron Cohen, who makes every effort to send any parentless child in the station to the orphanage. But Hugo's run-in with Georges leads to a friendship with the elderly gentleman's goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who unknowingly possesses the last item Hugo needs to make the mechanical man work again.
~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

In this warm, funny, and illuminating documentary, filmmaker Martin Scorsese interviews his parents, Catherine and Charles Scorsese, in their modest apartment in New York's Little Italy. The casual and relaxed atmosphere of the film makes viewers feel as if they are eavesdropping on an intimate family evening. Catherine prepares tomato sauce and meatballs while explaining how she learned to cook from her mother and mother-in-law as a young woman. After looking at vacation photos while sitting on the plastic-slip-covered living-room sofa, the family shares dinner together. Much is revealed as son Marty gently guides the conversation with questions revolving around what life was once like for Catherine and Charles and their parents, and contemporary street scenes, archive shots, and family photos are interspersed among the responses. What emerges is a vivid personal view of history, a slice of life as it was lived during the first half of the 20th century in New York and in Italy. The film also indirectly sheds some light on the environment and the influences that shaped the creative vision of Martin Scorsese, a passionate, intense, and original filmmaker. The film's end credits include the recipe for Catherine Scorsese's tomato sauce. ~ Rovi

"You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bulls--t, and you know it." Returning to the autobiographical milieu of his 1968 debut Who's That Knocking at My Door? for his third feature, Martin Scorsese examined the daily struggles of a wannabe hood to keep his morals straight on the streets of Little Italy. Driven equally by his wish to become a respectable gangster like his uncle (Cesare Danova) and his desire to live his life like St. Francis, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) takes on his energetically unhinged friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) as his own personal penance, intervening to get Johnny Boy to pay off a debt to the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus). Despite his promises to his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) that they will move out of Little Italy once he strengthens his position in his uncle's world, Charlie's involvement with Johnny Boy further ensnares him in the neighborhood. When Johnny Boy decides to mouth off to Michael rather than pay him, Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa try to flee Michael's murderous anger (and an assassin played by Scorsese), forcing Charlie to realize that the rules of the streets do not mesh with absolution. Whereas fellow "film school generation" director Francis Ford Coppola transformed the Hollywood gangster movie into metaphorical epics about the Mafia and capitalism in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Scorsese revised the genre in the opposite direction, focusing on the gritty minutiae of daily life and drawing from personal memory. Combining documentary-style realism (even though most of the film was shot in L.A.); kinetic editing and camera movement; and expressionistic lighting, angles, and film speed, Scorsese presents an intimate picture of the trivial incidents and latent violence of Charlie's and Johnny Boy's world, naturalistically unfolding their experiences rather than simply explaining what motivates them. They lead a claustrophobic, petty existence that Scorsese and screenwriter Mardik Martin witnessed growing up in Little Italy, complete with a soundtrack of hit songs like "Be My Baby" and "Jumping Jack Flash" that had poured out of neighborhood radios. Mean Streets opened at the New York Film Festival to excellent notices and played strongly in New York but failed to duplicate that level of business elsewhere. Even so, Mean Streets established Scorsese and De Niro as formidable young talents and marked the beginning of a long-running and fertile collaboration that continued in such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese's exceptional grasp of the texture of day-to-day life, the rhythm and cadences of street talk, and cinema's visual and aural possibilities makes Mean Streets one of the pivotal films of the 1970s, as well as of Scorsese's career, and an influence on such future filmmakers as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

When there's a full moon over Brooklyn, anything can happen, and everything happens in the neighborhood where widowed bookkeeper Loretta Castorini (Cher) lives. First, Loretta agrees to marry a man she does not love, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), simply because he knows how to propose properly. Before the wedding can take place, Cammareri must visit his dying mother in Sicily. In his absence, Loretta is supposed to try to patch up the differences between Johnny and his brother, bakery operator Ronny Cammareri (Nicolas Cage). Having never forgiven Johnny for indirectly causing the accident that crippled him, Ronny flies into a rage whenever his brother's name is mentioned. He does, however, fall for Loretta like a ton of bricks. After a torrid affair, Loretta tries to avoid Ronny out of respect to Johnny, but he's just too fascinating to resist. Meanwhile, Loretta's father (Vincent Gardenia) is fooling around with his mistress Mona (Anita Gillette), while Loretta's mother (Olympia Dukakis) is wooed by a college professor (John Mahoney). These brief flings are forgiven and forgotten, but there's still the delicate situation of Loretta being in love with her future brother-in-law. A now-classic romantic comedy, Moonstruck won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis, and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Martin Scorsese's satirical comedy/drama caustically explores the lengths to which a nobody will go to be as famous as his idol. Practicing his patter in his basement with cardboard cut-outs of his favorite celebrities, mediocre aspiring comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) believes that one appearance on the evening talk show of the Johnny Carson-esque Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) will be his ticket to stardom. After he helps Jerry escape the advances of amorous fan Masha (Sandra Bernhard), Rupert takes Jerry's patronizing brush-off as a true promise for an audition and begins haunting Jerry's office. Provoked by Masha's needling and a rejection from Jerry's smooth production exec Cathy Long (Shelley Hack), Rupert makes a disastrous trip to Jerry's country house with embarrassed date Rita (Diahnne Abbott), then hatches an even more outlandish scheme to get ahead. With Masha's help, Rupert kidnaps Jerry and demands as ransom the TV appearance that he believes will turn his fantasy into reality. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

The "wise guys" referred to in the title, Harry Valentini (Danny DeVito) and Moe Dickstein (Joe Piscopo), turn out to be not so wise after all in this crime-oriented comedy. Harry and Moe run the risk of certain death when they steal money from a Mafia don (Dan Hedaya) and then try to multiply their ill-gotten gains at the horse races. Naturally, they lose the bundle and the next thing they know they're running from hitmen and trying to come up with enough cash to pay back their debt. Wise Guys' blend of comedy and action represented something of a change of pace for director Brian DePalma, best known for his offbeat thrillers and Hitchcock homages. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi