Yahoo Picks: Martin Scorsese's back with 'Killers of the Flower Moon.' Here are his best pictures from every decade.
From "The Age of Innocence" to "Taxi Driver," these are Scorsese's five essential pictures.
New decade, same director. Martin Scorsese kicks off the 2020s with Killers of the Flower Moon, an expansive crime drama that's also one of the most expensive movies of his storied career. But all that money is there onscreen, along with the filmmaker's meticulous craft and career-long fascination with themes of faith, family and forgiveness.
Killers is Scorsese's 26th narrative feature in a career that's spanned five full decades and has also included short films, documentaries and even a TV episode or two. There are plenty of lists out there ranking his collected works, but if you had to assemble the five essential Scorsese pictures, it's only fair to go decade by decade. For me, this particular quintet encapsulates everything that makes "A Martin Scorsese Picture" stand apart from the crowd.
The '70s: Taxi Driver
Five movies into his career, Scorsese achieved a creative alchemy that most filmmakers spend their entire lives chasing. Taxi Driver represents a collision between three distinct artists — including screenwriter Paul Schrader and star Robert De Niro — that miraculously results in a cohesive whole. And that's largely because the trio give themselves over completely to Travis Bickle, whose apocalyptic vision of a hell-on-Earth Manhattan is so convincing that it's all too easy to confuse it with the real world. It's no accident that spending two hours inside of Travis's head and watching people through his eyes leaves moviegoers deeply uncomfortable. Still, I find myself drawn back to his checkered taxicab every few years for the opportunity to see what madness looks like from the rearview mirror.
Runner-up: The Last Waltz is about as perfect and joyous a concert film as you can see without a friendship bracelet.
Taxi Driver is currently available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu
The '80s: The Last Temptation of Christ
Given his Catholic upbringing and early priesthood aspirations, it was inevitable that Scorsese would make a Jesus picture. But The Last Temptation of Christ is less about Jesus than it is about what it means to believe in the idea that a mere man is capable of godliness. Scorsese's characters are almost always forced to confront the brutal realities of their worlds because of their own choices. So when his Christ is tempted with the opportunity to make a different choice — and the better life that comes with it — the fact that he proceeds his fate demonstrates his divinity. I'm not religious, but the closing moments of Last Temptation, accompanied by Peter Gabriel's soaring score, help me understand why those that are want so much to believe.
Runner-up: "Life Lessons," Scorsese's contribution to the underappreciated anthology New York Stories, is Ranging Bull in miniature — the portrait of a literal artist who finds self-destruction cleansing.
The Last Temptation of Christ is currently available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
The '90s: The Age of Innocence
I know, I know: Goodfellas is the obvious choice from Scorsese's '90s period. I still think The Age of Innocence is the better and bolder achievement, if not necessarily as endlessly rewatchable. Adapting Edith Wharton's Gilded Age New York story, Scorsese sublimates the passions that his 20th century characters generally put on front street, only for them to explode at inconvenient and potentially ruinous moments anyway. It's another film where the central character is tempted to abandon duty for love, but this time there's no grand accomplishment waiting on the other end of that decision — just the weary recognition that life is a series of moments... and once the moment is over, it's gone.
Runner-up: My Voyage to Italy is Scorsese's heartfelt love letter to the Italian films that shaped his sensibilities and also a vivid reminder of why he's arguably our most important cinematic historian.
The Age of Innocence is currently available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
The '00s: The Departed
Scorsese spent much of the early aughts seemingly at sea, wrestling with intermittently brilliant, but ultimately unwieldy mega-productions like Gangs of New York and The Aviator. By his own admission, he didn't expect The Departed to be an improvement, especially since he had little personal connection to the source material, the crackerjack Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, or the city of Boston, where the remake was set. But that distance ended up working his favor: Scorsese is in full craftsman mode, ensuring that all of the movie's individual pieces — from a manic Jack Nicholson to screenwriter William Monahan's hilariously on the (rat's) nose final shot — fit together for maximum effect. The Departed is Scorsese showing the industry that art can be commerce and commerce can be art.
Runner-up: Let's split the difference and say the opening scene of Gangs of New York and the final scene of The Aviator.
The Departed is currently available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
The '10s: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Scorsese and Dylan played it straight for their first collab, the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, which covered the early years of the folk-rocker's career. Fast-forwarding to the hazy days of the '70s allows both of them to mingle fiction and fact until you forget which is which. Mixing actual footage that Dylan and his band of troubadours shot during their Rolling Thunder Revue roadshow with real and invented present day interviews, the duo cheekily puncture the Boomer myths that persist about that era — aided and abetted, funnily enough, by actual historical documents like Scorsese's own The Last Waltz — and the increasingly self-important rockumentary genre. Based on Rolling Thunder Revue, Scorsese's inevitable take on Dylan's Jesus years is gonna be a doozy.
Runner-up: Hugo is perhaps a tad too long for a kid's movie, but it's delightful to watch Scorsese present his own account about how cinema was born.
Rolling Thunder Revue is currently streaming on Netflix.
