Martin Scorsese

In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first time. As American attitudes continued to evolve, so did the American film industry; as costly big-budget blockbusters nearly brought the major studios to the brink of collapse, smaller and more personal films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces demonstrated there was a ready audience for bold and challenging entertainment. As the '60s faded into the 1970s, American cinema moved into an exciting period of creativity and stylistic innovation, which led to such landmark films as The Godfather, MASH, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, and new freedom for directors and screenwriters. Ironically, however, it was another pair of big-budget blockbusters directed by students of the new wave of filmmaking -- Jaws and Star Wars -- which brought the studios back to power and put an end to Hollywood's flirtation with offbeat creativity. A Decade Under the Influence is a documentary which explores the rise and fall of new American filmmaking in the 1970s, and features interviews with many of the key directors, screenwriters, and actors whose work typified the movement, including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Roger Corman, Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, and Julie Christie. A Decade Under the Influence received its world premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and an expanded version of the film was later shown on the premium cable outlet The Independent Film Channel; the documentary was the final work of co-director Ted Demme, who died shortly before the film was completed. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Martin Scorsese's After Hours is a dark, tragi-comic tale of a fish out of water, centering on an uptight, white-bread computer consultant from uptown Manhattan who finds himself in the nightmarish and incomprehensible (to him) world of Soho after dark. The ordeal begins when Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) gets lonely and decides to leave the posh East Side and search the Soho streets for some loving from Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), the pretty young woman he met in a downtown cafe. He has her phone number and works up the nerve to call. She wants to see him, and so Paul grabs $20, hails a taxi and sets out. The weirdness begins when he loses his money during the high-speed cab ride. His visit to Marcy's loft, where he meets her crazed artist roommate Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), is a disaster, as is his encounter with the beehive-wearing retro waitress Julie (Teri Garr). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood studio production also marked his first (and only) foray into a woman-centered story. Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn), a resigned Southwest housewife, takes advantage of her trucker husband's sudden death to hit the road with her bratty son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) and pursue her childhood dream of a singing career. She finds a job as a lounge singer, but after a horrific encounter with an abusive new beau (Harvey Keitel), she flees and winds up taking a waitress job at Mel's Diner, run by gruff cook Mel (Vic Tayback). With her career on hold, Alice soon finds strength and self-worth through her friendship with the other waitresses, saucy Flo (Diane Ladd) and spacy Vera (Valerie Curtin). When sensitive rancher David (Kris Kristofferson) starts courting her, Alice wonders if she wants to abandon her goals for domesticity again. To contrast Alice's dream life with her reality, Scorsese created a stylized opening sequence of Alice as a child reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, Duel in the Sun and Gone With the Wind, before shifting into the present-day atmospheric immediacy of location shooting and scenes built out of improvisations. That opening sequence alone cost over twice as much as Scorsese's debut feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door?. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Martin Scorsese's American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is both a documentary and a tragicomedy, in which the personal experiences of one twentysomething Jewish gay man are rendered universal. Surrounded by friends in a cozy living room, the sensitive and humorous Prince (Taxi Driver's gun salesman, Handy Andy) recounts his personal history, from his run-in with a gorilla, to his relationship with his parents, his childhood bagel delivery business, his coming out, his addiction to drugs, his job as Neil Diamond's road manager, and his father's falling ill. One of Prince's most exciting tales, an account of his reviving a friend's overdosing girlfriend by injecting stimulant into her heart, was re-created almost to a tee by director Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. As wild and theatrical as the young man's accounts are, Scorsese intersperses them with childhood pictures of Prince that could be of any American, quickly reminding the entire audience of their common humanity. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide

This biographical film -- a bit long for most viewers, even in its cut version -- is made especially for ballet aficionados. Focusing on the short life of the remarkable Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1882?-1931), it features several dance sequences and provides a backdrop of the historical events in the Soviet Union and Europe during her life. Pavlova (Galina Belyayeva, better as a dancer than an actress) was born in Saint Petersburg and her interest in the ballet began early. As a little girl (Lina Boultakova), Pavlova would watch the ballet students in training, and she eventually entered the Imperial Ballet company, quickly rising to the position of prima ballerina. Before long, she perfected a style especially evident in her dancing of Giselle and Swan Lake. In her brief tenure at the Ballets Russes established in Paris in 1909 by the famed Russian expatriate impresario Sergei Diaghilev, Pavlova was inspired by dancers like Vaslav Nijinsky and obtained further training under a master, traveling extensively with the company. But the famous ballerina was not without personal problems, and at one point had to take a two-year advance on her salary in order to pay off her husband's debts so he would not go to jail. There are several intriguing aspects of this biography that would recommend it to general viewers: varied locations from Mexico to Cuba to Europe and the USA, good ballet performances, some noted bit players (Martin Scorcese as Gatti Cassaza) and a critically recognized Michael Powell, the director of Red Shoes in his last professional role, as an editor. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The genuine love felt by the people of France for American comedian Jerry Lewis has become something of a topic for incredulous humor in the United States over the years, but if there was any doubt as to whether the many jokes overstated the case, this exhaustive six-hour hagiography from director Robert Benayoun quickly erases it. Nothing less than an adoring outpouring of idolatry, Bonjour Monsieur Lewis is simultaneously affectionate and reverential toward its subject, presenting hundreds of rare clips, outtakes, interviews, and tributes from Lewis' estimated six million feet of tape and film housed in his obsessively complete basement library, a collection of nearly everything he has ever done. In between highlights of his film career, there are talks with Martin Scorsese (who directed Lewis in 1982's The King of Comedy), Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Mel Brooks, and Louis Malle, among others. There are also a number of rare films of Lewis on-stage at French venues, singing "Sonny Boy" with his own father and son, reuniting with Dean Martin at a Muscular Dystrophy telethon, and engaging in some raunchy ad libs cut from his early films. The film clips are varied and fairly thorough, even excerpting Lewis' rare TV version of The Jazz Singer, but, alas, virtually ignoring the Holy Grail among Lewis completists, his aborted concentration-camp project The Day the Clown Cried. Other segments deal with his highly praised charitable efforts and relationship with children. More of a tribute than a real documentary, the film is nevertheless a treasure trove for anyone remotely interested in this talented and enigmatic comedy legend. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

As originally screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at the Cannes Film Festival, and on Turner Classic Movies, the mammoth, epic-length documentary Brando chronicles in encyclopedic detail (and with a consistently reverent overtone) the life and career of the man widely regarded as the most formidable American actor of the 20th century - famous for not only reshaping, but reinventing the craft of film acting and teaching audiences how to view a motion picture performance. Divided into chronological, thematically-unified segments, the film first treats Marlon Brando's dysfunctional upbringing - his alcoholic mother, his abusive father, his stint at a military academy - before charting his acting tutelage at the behest of Stella Adler and his early cinematic and theatrical roles, including work for Elia Kazan, who famously made many aggressive (and unsuccessful) attempts to discipline the headstrong actor onscreen. Throughout this segment, many Hollywood A-list actors appear - among them, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp and Robert Duvall - expostulating at length on Brando's influence over their approaches to performance, and attempting with great effort to define the elusive style known as "method acting" that Brando helped to create. The second half of the documentary moves into Brando's career during the '70s, '80s and '90s, covering the production of The Godfather, the actor's noteworthy political activism, and his tumultuous personal life. Francis Ford Coppola, who of course teamed with Brando for the first Godfather installment and for Apocalypse Now, is noticeably absent from the proceedings. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

This tense urban drama stars Nicolas Cage as Frank Pierce, a paramedic on the brink of physical and emotional collapse. Frank has worked for years in one of New York's most brutal neighborhoods, and the pressure of his job has taken its toll; plagued with self-doubt, he is haunted by the spirits of the people he couldn't save, and while he desperately wants to quit his job, outside forces won't let him walk away. Bringing Out the Dead brought director Martin Scorsese back to the streets of contemporary New York, one of his favorite locations, after three films set elsewhere: Kundun, Casino, and The Age of Innocence. The film also reunited Scorsese with screenwriter Paul Schrader, who scripted Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. The supporting cast includes Patricia Arquette as the daughter of a heart attack victim that Frank has fallen in love with, and John Goodman and Ving Rhames as two of Frank's fellow drivers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Paul Bartel rips off his own Death Race 2000 in this mindless car-crash saga, containing more twisted metal than a bombed-out steel mill. The nominal storyline concerns an illegal auto race from Los Angeles to New York that promises the winner 100,000 dollars. David Carradine is Coy "Cannonball" Buckman, the race leader who drags his girlfriend, Linda (Veronica Hamel), along for the ride. Cade Redman (Bill McKinney) tools around in a loud red Trans Am, while Cannonball's nemesis barrels along in a big, black Plymouth, trying to outsmart Cannonball at every turn and exit ramp. The pile-ups keep building, and the cameos (Roger Corman, Martin Scorsese, Sylvester Stallone, Joe Dante, Paul Bartel) keep coming, but Cannonball must make it to New York to collect his winnings. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Two people recently spurned in their love life come together amidst their urban lifestyles in New York City in this drama from writer/director Daphna Kastner (Spanish Fly). The CP Productions picture is especially notable for reuniting Harvey Keitel and Martin Scorsese, who are handling various producing duties on the film. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

A documentary about the iconic career of actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows traces its subject's work from his earliest days in Hollywood to his award-winning (and career-salvaging) films of the 1990s. Directed by Bruce Ricker, who also made the lauded jazz films The Last of the Blue Devils and Thelonious Monk - Straight, No Chaser, the documentary combines archival footage with interviews from the likes of Sergio Leone, Curtis Hanson, Rip Torn, Meryl Streep, and, naturally, the man himself. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide