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"Psycho at 60 -- Goodfellas at 30"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
18 replies | jump to latest

Fun with math:

Its 2020. Goodfellas came out in 1990. The distance back to Goodfellas today (30 years) is the distance back FROM Goodfellas in 1990 to ...Psycho.

Psycho has gotten a FEW "Psycho at 60" articles on the internet; Goodfellas(a fall release in '90, hence the articles are now), has gotten a LOT of articles on the internet.

More articles than Psycho, and its only fair. Martin Scorsese is still with us and working(when COVID-19 lets him, he'll direct Leo and DeNiro in that "Native American Murders" movie.) DeNiro is still here, active. Joe Pesci is still here -- mainly retired, but he came out for The Irishman last year.

And mob movies are still popular.

Another thing: Psycho and Goodfellas are "0 year movies": 1960. 1990. "The start of a decade"(even though decades usually start about two or three years in, like JFK blown away = the 60's.) As "O year movies," both Psycho and Goodfellas "launched a decade" and ended up both changing movies and influencing later movies(or a cable TV show in Goodfellas case -- The Sopranos.)

Another "0 year" movie is MASH. 1970. Advancing the cause of nudity, sex, and gore(operating room style) one decade past Psycho. Influential in ITS own way.

And what of 1980? I suppose we could give the honors to Scorsese again: Raging Bull(which features one bloody prizefight in b/w cut to the shower scene images.) But Raging Bull really wasn't much of a hit, it wasn't FUN like Psycho, and MASH and GoodFellas, Maybe I should pick Empire Strikes Back as the definitive 1980 "0 movie" (Or The Shining.)

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Goodfellas announces its connection to Psycho in its opening scene: three gangsters in a car at night. They hear a "BANGING" in the car. They are worried, then joking: a flat tire? The sound is coming from the truck.

They pull to the side of the road. They open the trunk. Inside: a man, gagged and bound and bloody and making a real commotion.

The solution? One of the gangers(Joe Pesci) pulls out a big butcher knife and proceeds to stab the trunk victim in his chest, ALMOST until death. (Robert DeNiro steps in with a gun and blasts away to finish the job.)

The youngest, most "innocent' gangster -- Ray Liotta -- shuts the trunk on the now-dead victim. Freeze-frame. Narration from Liotta: "As far back as I can remember, I've wanted to be a gangster."

Goodfellas begins with a bang. And a stab.

You can see how Psycho is relevant here. The big butcher knife. The stabbing of the powerless male victim. Its Arbogast on the foyer floor but -- as I always note -- Hitchcock kept the actual stabbing OF Arbogast below the frame, off the screen. In our imaginations.

30 years and and R rating later: No more. We see that butcher knife go into the victim's chest over and over again, drawing considerable blood. We see his panicked dying face. Its funny: fellow schoolkids who reported to me on Psycho back in the 60's THOUGHT they saw the knife going into Arbogast. They didn't. "It was all in their minds."

"All in their minds" was good enough once upon a time, and actually, that shot of the knife into Arbogast(unseen) was very violent for its time, and even cut by censors(too many stabs -- like too many thrusts in sex scenes can get you an NC-17 rating. Thrusts, stabs...its all the same.)

As we know, many directors in after Hitchcock would take up where he left off(in Psycho, The Birds, Torn Curtain, and Frenzy) with violence and blood. Peckinpah. Kubrick(in A Clockwork Orange.) DePalma(but of course.)

And soon enough, Scorsese -- with a certain amount of blood in "Mean Streets" and a LOT of blood in Taxi Driver(with a Bernard Herrmann score that includes the "three notes of madness" from Psycho.)

Scorsese would make other types of "gentler" movies(That one about the Dali Lama; The Age of Innocence), but when he was on gangster duty (Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Casino, The Departed)...boy did the blood flow.

And the explosively violent killing that opens GoodFellas set that tone from the start. I don't remember screams from the audience; I don't remember walk-outs. But I do remember shouts of protest and groans of nausea. "Goodfellas" laid out its violent nature from the very beginning(unlike Psycho, which waits 47 minutes before killing anybody, and only kills one more after that.)

Another Scorsese Psycho connection: Goodfellas is one of the last films with a Saul Bass credit sequence, and its really a "Psycho derivative" -- names flying past us on a black screen(but with the sound of fast moving cars rather than Herrmann music.)

I don't think it is "too wide afield" to note that perhaps the MAIN connection of Goodfellas to Psycho is that -- unlike The Godfather -- Goodfellas posits these gangsters AS psychos. Especially Pesci(running "hot") and DeNiro(running "cold.") They have hair-triggered tempers; they kill without remorse. They are willing to "do the wetwork"(bloody) and willing to chop up bodies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Goodfellas makes the case that "organized crime" is really "organized psychopaths" -- as if, by some alchemy, the most deranged members of a society(in this case, Italian-Americans, but not ALL Italian-Americans) have grouped together to use their psychopathy in "business like ways." It happened with the Nazis(many psychos running the concentration camps.) It happens here.

More than anyone in The Godfather, these Goodfellas gangsters are SCARY. They are psycho. They aren't really very smart. You would just want to stay away from them.

And yet -- they make a lot of money. They get women(wives AND mistresses.) They get power and respect. That's why Ray Liotta's Henry Hill WANTS to be a gangster. And it all goes way up for him..and then crashes way down.

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It has been noted that there is a strain of comedy running through Psycho(the twist ending is kind of a gag; Arbogast interrogating Norman is kind of funny) but there is a BIG, horrific sense of comedy running through Goodfellas.

Consider: in that opening, as horrifying as it is to see Pesci stab the victim repeatedly, DeNiro suddenly pulling a gun and blasting away gets a LAUGH. Its literal overkill -- who ARE these guys? Ultra-violence can be FUNNY.

And it happens again:

Pesci is given a chatterbox dumb guy sidekick to help with two murders. Pesci and this dumb guy trade comedy barbs BEFORE Pesci kills someone -- then the murder happens -- then the jokes keep coming AFTER the murder. And they are pretty horrible murders. One guy's brains are blown out(superstar in waiting Samuel L. Jackson), the other gets an icepick driven into his brain from behind by Pesci from the back seat of a parked car. And yet: the jokes keep a coming; the murders are "enwrapped in comedy." (The dumb guy after the icepick murder, in the car: "Should I drive?" Pesci: No let's let HIM drive. You idiot!" )

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Gruesome and gory as all this is -- it harkens back to the funny violence of Bugs Bunny and The Three Stooges(especially the latter.)

Indeed, this "comedy murders" theme continues on to Scorsese's "Casino" (1995) when Pesci(under a new character name, but still psychotic) tortures a guy and puts his head in a vise to pop an eyeball. Jokes Pesci to his henchman: "I tell ya, if this guy doesn't give us a name soon, I'm gonna give 'em YOUR name!" After the victim gives up a name(Something like "Larry M") Pesci has the guy's throat slit and stomps off growling ""Larry M! Larry M! All this trouble for Larry M!" as if irritated but uncaring of the torture and murder he has carried out.)

Back up to Goodfellas. The victim we see in the trunk in the beginning(a flash forward) finally enters the movie about mid-film(flash-back): The victim is Billy Batts(Frank Vincent, eventually Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos), celebrating in a closed, near-empty bar after getting out of prison - -and dead set on humiliating current Mafia underling Joe Pesci about his days as a shoe shine boy. We get:

Pesci: You been gone awhile. I don't shine shoes anymore. Not in a long time.
Vicent: Hey, I'm just bustin' your balls, I don't mean nuthin by it.
Pesci: Well, just drop it.
Vincent: OK...but...(with cool, real anger) why don't you go get your f'in shoe shine box.
Pesci: (Yelling, going ballistic) You MFer!

This is a scene known to many of us. Its written and plays like a comedy scene: Pesci's final explosion gets big laughs...but of course it leads to the brutal killing of "made man" Billy Batts -- and killing a "made man" without permission in the Mafia is a big "no no" -- which leads to problems later on.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

If Psycho kept its comedy "below the surface" of the horror movie it mainly was, Goodfellas got the ball rolling(perhaps with some influence from MASH 20 years earlier) in putting the comedy right up front WITH the violence and gore. Modern audiences could take it. Men especially(Articles on Goodfellas at 30 say it is one of the great "guy movies of all time." Yeah, I guess so -- Sons of the Three Stooges.)

The other connection of Psycho to Goodfellas is that of the makers of the films. Hitchcock in his time and now Scorsese in his , are "great handlers of film" -- great purveyors of technique and the ability to make movies that don't look or sound or FUNCTION like "regular directors." Actually, I've got Hitchcocks effects better figured out than Scorsese's. The "hangning camera" that follows Norman on the stairs with Mother in Psycho -- I can understand. Exactly how Scorsese orchestrates quick in your face camera moves and freeze frames and photographic change ups and zoom ins -- along with(in Goodfellas, Casino and "honorary Gangster movie" The Wolf of Wall Street -- narration and music) - I don't know how he does it.

Goodfellas IS famous for a long, long continuous camera shot of Liotta and his glrl (Lorraine Bracco, also Sopranos-bound) going from the street to the basement to the kitchen to the flooroom of the Copacabana nightclub. Its "Rope redux," and done with Steadicam technology that Hitchcock never had...but its still impressive(just like the camera going backwards down the stairs in Frenzy or -- lesser known -- the lone one-take of Rusk and Babs walking through Covent Garden to Babs doom.)

Also, famously, there is how the "Rat Pack cool" of Goodfellas dissolves into a final half hour of a "cinematic panic attack" that matches Liotta's cocaine-fuled paranoia(except, the cops and their helicopter really ARE after him), all scored to Nillson's crazed "Jump into the Fire."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Which reminds me: the music in Scorsese's gangster movies. Scorsese is quite older than me(yay, sorry Marty) and his musical tastes seem to run "Boomer urban 60's." A lot of Rolling Stones. A lot of Motown. Harry Nilson? "House of the Rising Sun" for the final killings in Casino. Jazz. Some Sinatra. Some Dino. Some Bobby Darin("Beyond the Sea" in Goodfellas.) The Departed make a big deal of "Comfortably Numb" (which in turn ended up accompanying the death of a key character in The Sopranos.) I LIKE Scorsese's music. It is both of my generation and a bit before. And Goodfellas is riddled with it -- and how and when and where the music turns up (like Donovan's 60's "Atlantis' over the murder of Billy Batts) is part of Scorsese's "cinematic genius, too." Hitchcock never had the luxury of using current songs in his movies. Scorsese did.

And Quentin Tarantino does too. Just like Scorcese(less The Hateful Eight with its Morricone score), Tarantino likes to put rock songs of a certain age on his soundtrack. Or Motown. Let's Stay Together in Pulp Fiction. The Delfonics in Jackie Brown. Some sort of RAP over a gunfight in Django Unchained.

Indeed, Tarantino rather took inspiration from Scorsese, didn't he? The "comedy bloody murders" in Goodfellas and Casino are rather emulated when Travolta accidentally blows off a Black kid's head in "Pulp Fiction" and the bloody death becomes comedy body disposal fodder for a half hour.

But it ALL rather traces back to Hitchcock(whose TV introductions were always quite funny about murder) but with more urban influences.

Indeed, when Scorsese is making Mafia movies, his forbears are Cagney and Bogart and Eddie G. and "gangsters." Not to mention The Godfather. Hitchcock said "I don't make gangster pictures." OK. (HIs TV series , though, had a LOT of gangsters on it.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There are a ton of "Goodfellas at 30" articles on the net if you'd like to read them. I won't try to copy their content. I will say that if the question is "Which is the greatest gangster movie between The Godfather and Goodfellas" -- I pick The Godfather, and I DON'T make Godfather II be attached to the original. Indeed, my ranking would be:

The Godfather
Goodfellas
Godfather II

...and in reality, I probably like Scarface, Casino and The Departed better than Godfather II(which is quite arty and dull to me in parts.) Though this: DeNiro is in both Godfather II and Goodfellas, which links them directly.

And what OF "Casino" -- the movie that Scorsese made five years after Goodfellas(with all its "Oscar heat") that somehow seemed a "weak retread" of Goodfellas?

Not to me. I concede that Goodfellas got there first and is the more famous and Oscar-worthy movie than Casino, but I like Casino as much as Goodfellas and even a little better in some ways.

Goodfellas was made "on the cheap" when Scorsese was struggling out of a difficult 80's. Casino was made much more expensively once Scorsese had Goodfellas, Cape Fear(a botched thriller, but a thriller) and The Age of Innocence on his resume. Its more lush and plush than Goodfellas, it has that great "Vegas atmosphere," it has Sharon Stone(at her peak) and it has side elements like James Woods delightfully smarmy pimp(Stone's boyfriend; husband DeNiro's thorn in the side.)

I'll put it this way. Goodfellas is my favorite movie of 1990. Casino is my favorite movie of 1995.

But LA Confidential (1997)is my favorite movie of the 90's(its a more "classical," sweeping, multi-levelled film than the Scorcese films -- and it doesn't have DeNiro going off-course into dumb-brute improvs.)

And The Godfather is my favorite movie of the 70's.

And Psycho is my favorite movie of the 60's.

Its been a great ride so far.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Side-bar on Joe Pesci.

Joe Pesci and Martin Scorsese seemed a weirdly matched pair in this way:

In 1980, both were "the toasts of the town" thanks to Raging Bull. Both Oscar nominated and "on their way."

And yet: Scorsese rather struggled in the 80's. The King of Comedy was good, but no Taxi Driver. After Hours was small and quirky. The Color of Money was a studio job(Oscar winner, finally, for Paul Newman) but too much for hire and not as good as "The Hustler" from whence it came. And then his controversial "Last Temptation of Christ" film -- great on paper, little seen.

Meanwhile: Pesci just seemed to sort of disappear for the duration of the 80s.

So, the 80's weren't good to Martin Scorsese and Joe Pesci, but ...1990 made them big again.

for Pesci, he benefitted from a "one-two-three" punch that actually started in 1989:

1989: Lethal Weapon II(big hit, Pesci was great comedy relief)
1990: Goodfellas(Scorsese, prestige, and an Oscar win.)
1990: Home Alone: The biggest blockbuster of the year...and Pesci entertains "the kids" (he had to fight his cussing when delivering lines.) Funny thing, though: Home Alone in its own way, is as violent as Goodfellas -- Three Stooges style(well, Two Stooges.)

Pesci parlayed his 1989-1990 trifecta into a few leading roles, including one in my favorite movie of 1992(My Cousin Vinny.)

And then things started to turn against him. Rather like Christoph Waltz modernly, that "Joe Pesci schtick" seemed to go from "critical rapture" (Oscar, like Waltz) to "critical hatred" (kinda like Waltz.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And Pesci pretty much walked. I think he pretty much retired in the 2000's and he's only been back a few times since:

2020: Love Ranch(I saw it; he's pretty good as real life Nevada brothel owner Joe Conforti, married to long-suffering Helen Mirren.)
2011: The Good Shepard(A DeNiro directed movie about the CIA; Pesci did the movie as a favor -- ONE scene only.)
2019: The Irishman( Dragged out of retirement again by DeNiro -- and GREAT, surprisingly low key in contrast to his psycho firebrands in Goodfellas and Casino.

As far as I'm concerned, for an Oscar winner with good chops...that's a pretty REAL retirement. Pesci has pretty much been gone since the 90's, those few films aside.

Good for him. Its a dream we all have: make a ton of dough and retire to play golf.

Indeed, the one time I saw Pesci in real life...he was in a celebrity golf tournament. Totally friendly and available(quietly) to all who approached him. Very short.

And one of my cinematic heroes, of sorts. He's been too good in too many of my favorite movies not to be.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Psycho has gotten a FEW "Psycho at 60" articles on the internet; Goodfellas(a fall release in '90, hence the articles are now), has gotten a LOT of articles on the internet.

I've seen a few 'Almost Famous at 20' articles too.

I think that what gets remembered/memorialized in articles turns not so much on quality per se or revolutionariness or anything like that but on how pleasurable & *rewatchable* something is. Lots of very high quality films just *aren't* that pleasurable or rewatchable, e.g., in 2000 a lot of the best films are stuff like Haneke's Code Unknown or Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor or Requiem for a Dream or even American Psycho or Amores Perros or Memento or You Can Count On Me. All of these are, in various ways, quite hard work. Much more pleasurable & rewatchable stuff from 2000 includes Gladiator, Cast Away, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Wonder Boys and, yes, Almost Famous. AF is flat-out better than G or CA and has much broader appeal than CTHD or WB so it 'wins the year' at least in the likely-to-be-memorialized stakes.

I agree that, among -0 years neither 1970 or 1980 seemed to deliver a super-pleasurable & rewatchable. 1950, of course, delivered two ultimates in that regard: All About Eve & Sunset Blvd.

Arguably Psycho has to split the honors for 1960 with The Apartment, Breathless and maybe even Spartacus. Great year.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Psycho has gotten a FEW "Psycho at 60" articles on the internet; Goodfellas(a fall release in '90, hence the articles are now), has gotten a LOT of articles on the internet.

I've seen a few 'Almost Famous at 20' articles too.

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That's cutting it close, decades-wise.

Which reminds me: for the first decades of my life, "the year 2000" was this distant, futuristic date.

Now its 20 years behind us. Time is truly a fascinating thing.

I recall that Almost Famous -- about rock stars, their groupies and their critics in 1973, in 2000 went up against a theatrical re-release of The Exorcist "with new footage" (principally, Regan's "spider walk.") The Exorcist did better at the box office than Almost Famous, and director Cameron Crowe quipped, "My movie ABOUT 1973 got beaten at the box office by a movie FROM 1973!"

Well, 1973 was a helluva year at the movies! I'd guess that a LOT of 1973 movies would clean up today, too.

Meanwhile, how about some nostalgia for, say, True Grit at 10? (The remake; my favorite movie of that year; doesn't really work, does it?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think that what gets remembered/memorialized in articles turns not so much on quality per se or revolutionariness or anything like that but on how pleasurable & *rewatchable* something is.

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I'd tend to agree. Look, those of us who take movies seriously not so much "SERIOUSLY"(with proper study of both the art and the literature of a film for adults) take the movies seriously for the pleasurability of these movies both in the years we saw them and...in all the "rewatchable years" thereafter. We take the movies seriously for how they become a part of our lives.

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Lots of very high quality films just *aren't* that pleasurable or rewatchable, e.g., in 2000 a lot of the best films are stuff like Haneke's Code Unknown or Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor or Requiem for a Dream or even American Psycho or Amores Perros or Memento or You Can Count On Me. All of these are, in various ways, quite hard work.

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Agreed. Interestingly to me, I saw about half of those. At the movie theater. Respect, they get. Warm feelings, not so much.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Much more pleasurable & rewatchable stuff from 2000 includes Gladiator, Cast Away, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Wonder Boys and, yes, Almost Famous. AF is flat-out better than G or CA and has much broader appeal than CTHD or WB so it 'wins the year' at least in the likely-to-be-memorialized stakes.
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I like Almost Famous...after all, it IS about 1973, and for me personally, 1973 was a great young year. Writer-director Cameron Crowe is/was an interesting auteur. Starting out as a Rollnig Stone record critic, he went on to go undercover at a high school(which gave us Fast Times a Ridgement High), and Almost Famous is about HIM...as a teenage Rolling Stone critic. Then there is the profoundly weird "Jerry Maguire," which to me is schizoid: a tough comedy about being a "sports agent"(its hard work) mixed with a way-too-sappy love story(I'm sorry but "STOP! Stop!...you had me at hello..." is one of the worst "famous lines" (with excreable crybaby delivery by Ms. Zellwegger) in movie history. Well, that's off my chest. Weirdly, Crowe is a huge Billy Wilder fan(he did a Hitchcock/Truffaut like book with Wilder -- when Wilder was way too old to give clear answers) and says "without The Apartment, you wouldn't have Jerry Maguire." BUT "Shut up and deal" at the end of "The Apartment" is like, 180 degrees away from the schmaltz of "You had me at hello."

All "had me at hello" fans -- I'm sorry.

I also like how Cameron Crowe's "rock bona fides" won him a genuine Rock Star wife -- Nancy Wilson of Heart. "Mission accomplished." They may be divorced now -- but he GOT her. Once.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

My favorite movie of 2000 was "The Perfect Storm," and I can tell you off the bat EXACTLY why.

The score. By James Horner. It comes on strong over the opening credits -- emotional, sweeping, exhilarating (on the open seas) but ominous and melancholy when it settles down. That music STAYS enwrapping the movie, in a very old-fashioned "pulling out all the stops" way throughout the entire movie -- wonderfully covers the tragic climax (a sinking of a fishing vessel with all aboard) towards which the film is moving(like "Psycho," this is a movie about doomed people who make the wrong decisions and die for it)...and then powers out in tears at the end. Its probably as schmaltzy as "you had me at hello," but its my kind of schmaltz. Oh, and over the end credits, the sad title music becomes a sad song with lyrics -- sung by John Mellencamp.

Those "in the know" knew what was going on here. James Horner did the score for Titanic, Celine Dion got a big hit sad song out of ITS credit music -- and The Perfect Storm was an attempt to do "the guy version" of the Dion song(via Mellencamp.) I like Horner's score and song for "The Perfect Storm" better than his score and song for "Titanic," but that's just me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I agree that, among -0 years neither 1970 or 1980 seemed to deliver a super-pleasurable & rewatchable.

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Well, 1970 was on a "different cusp" that 1960 a decade before it. Famously at the Oscars, we had "new fangled movies"(MASH, Five Easy Pieces), two very old fashioned movies(Love Story and Airport -- both blockbusters but neither as good as Psycho) and Patton in between(an old-fashioned war movie with a new fangled skepticism about warriors.) I pick MASH as most evocative OF 1970(and where the movies would go that decade), but "its personal."

Its 1980 that causes me trouble. My favorite movie of 1980 was Used Cars, a rather obscure comedy even if it DID come from Robert Zemeckis(soon of Back to the Future and Forrest Gump) and a producer named Spielberg. But it sure didn't run the decade. It DID come in a summer of 1980 comedies that gave us Airplane("classic" but silly) and Caddyshack(cultish for decades, but not quite as good as Animal House.)

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1950, of course, delivered two ultimates in that regard: All About Eve & Sunset Blvd.

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Another one of those ways that "each movie year delivers its theme" sort of things. Two big and entertaining movies -- with a dark side -- about the entertainment world. One about Broadway and one about Holywood. Each centered by a female star whose age has betrayed their sexual power. Each with great lines and fantastic final shots(and music.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Arguably Psycho has to split the honors for 1960 with The Apartment, Breathless and maybe even Spartacus. Great year.

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I'd throw in The Magnificent Seven, with ITS great score, its pack of newbie stars(McQueen, Bronson, Coburn, Vaughn) and a finale that every 60's schoolboy knew by heart(in playground games, everybody wanted to die like Coburn does.)

Psycho is far more "slight" in the playing than the epic Spartacus, and less "humane" than The Apartment, but surely it rocked 1960 down to the bone(Bosley Crowther of the NYT wrote "the biggest thing other than the political conventions this summer is Psycho" -- in 1960, political conventions MATTERED.) I also note Psycho's continued power through the decade, with the 1965 Psycho re-release("Its BACK! If you were too scared, or too young, or the lines were too long...") the aborted 1966 CBS showing(the first movie to be banned from network TV), the local showings that dominated certain cities in America in 1967, and the SECOND re-release right at the end of the decade in 1969 ("Psycho! Complete and uncut! The version TV dared not show!")

That's a legacy. Plus all the sequels. There was no "Apartment 2" (though there were many Mag 7 sequels.)

1960 had a great crop of movies. So did 1959 the year before (you know I love that cusp.) Hitchcock and Wilder hitting home runs both years(NXNW, Psycho; Some Like It Hot, The Apartment.) Otto Preminger, too -- though of Anatomy of a Murder and Exodus, I love only the first one.

Hawks was there in 1959 with Rio Bravo.

Oh to imagine going to the movies in those two years!

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Meanwhile, how about some nostalgia for, say, True Grit at 10? (The remake; my favorite movie of that year; doesn't really work, does it?

TG is my fave from 2010 too, but I think you're right that, for whatever reason, it hasn't ended up as beloved as Lebowski, Fargo, No Country, A Serious Man ( and maybe a few other Coens films).

From 2010, the film that seems to have built up a massive following so that people *love* to talk/write about it, is Fincher's The Social Network. It's never done much for me but I seem to be an outlier. Nolan's Inception also seems to have grown on people generally in a way it never has for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Meanwhile, how about some nostalgia for, say, True Grit at 10? (The remake; my favorite movie of that year; doesn't really work, does it?
TG is my fave from 2010 too, but I think you're right that, for whatever reason, it hasn't ended up as beloved as Lebowski, Fargo, No Country, A Serious Man ( and maybe a few other Coens films).

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Well it WAS a remake -- and for much of its running time almost as shot-by-shot, line by line as Van Sant's Psycho -- and thus perhaps not as "original" as the other Coen classics. That said, I think it was among their biggest hits, and yet another surprise "re-birth of the Western." Well -- when the story is as great as True Grit....you get a rebirth.

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From 2010, the film that seems to have built up a massive following so that people *love* to talk/write about it, is Fincher's The Social Network.

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Funny thing: I see The Social Network as more of an Aaron Sorkin movie than a Fincher film -- its got Sorkin's patented rat-a-tat-tat mean comedy scripting. I love that in Charlie Wilson's War(favorite of 2007), Moneyball(2011) and Molly's Game(2017)...but The Social Network to me was simply depressing...showing us how a combination of supersmart people and super ruthless people got superrich and pretty much took over America. Its not even a political thing. (There is an article out there this week entitled "Why are Silicon Valley CE0s all psychopaths?" -- psycho again.)

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It's never done much for me but I seem to be an outlier. Nolan's Inception also seems to have grown on people generally in a way it never has for me.

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I found Inception to be a fun "mind game" (a movie within a movie within a movie within a movie) but...it got tiresome and too enwrapped in its own gamesmanship to "matter." Compare the people in The Social Network and Inception to the people in The Apartment and Spartacus. The latter are people of humor, bravery, evil, and sadness. The former are rather "automations."
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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One more visit to "Goodfellas":

There's an internet article out there about the great comedy scene in Goodfellas in which Pesci, DeNiro, and Liotta stop by Pesci's mom's house in the middle of the night with Billy Batts still in their trunk. Pesci is a psychopath, but as we know, psychopaths have mothers, too. And Pesci's mom cooks food for everybody, producing that big butcher knife which Pesci "borrows"("We need that to cut a deer's paw off our fender.") . Mom tells Pesci "you should settle down with a girl." Pesci tells mom "I settle down with a girl every night."

And then Mom(Scorsese's own mother in real life) , pulls up a painting she has done -- an old man with a beard and two dogs, on a boat. This turns into high comedy as Pesci describes the painting: "One dog goes this way...one dog goes this way...and this guy here is asking "whaddya want from ME?")

The article points out that David Chase took THIS scene as his whole inspiration for The Sopranos -- psychopathic gangsters and conversational comedy.

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One more: in a movie of a few years ago called "The Family," DeNiro plays a Mafia man in witness protection with his "gangster family"(mama Michelle Pffeiffer and two dangerous kids). They are in Italy; mob killers are coming for them. But in a scene near the end, DeNiro as an American is invited to a movie screening at the local library so he can lecture about NYC. The movie: "Goodfellas." We even get DeNiro watching the Saul Bass credit sequence....

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

in 2000 a lot of the best films are stuff like Haneke's Code Unknown or Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor or Requiem for a Dream or even American Psycho or Amores Perros or Memento or You Can Count On Me. All of these are, in various ways, quite hard work.

Hah! well "Requiem for a Dream at 20" is getting some late attention.

The cast and crew did a Zoom-reunion Q&A for MoMA in NY recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtR-uepL_mQ

and there's a new 4K Blu-ray release being trailered as 'the one you swore you'd never see again':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20YzUO_RLS0

On the 1960, 60th anniversary front, La Dolce Vita has ended up being competition for Psycho. Restored prints have screened in quite a few places though not in nearly as many places as it would have without Covid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BeWEPXWDX4

Note that La Dolce Vita was a genuine break out, commercial hit worldwide. It made $35 million in 1960 (not as big as Psycho, which grossed about $50 million, but still huge). And LDV *is* a sensationally entertaining and beautiful film, mysterious at times but never overwhelmingly so. Fellini's famous follow-up 81/2 (1963) was a different kettle of fish altogether. Much harder to follow and overtly symbolic and free-associative (Fellini never had a script!), 81/2 covered costs and won lots of awards (and in the long run has been much more influential) but at the time it never broke out of the the arthouse/film school crowd, grossing an order of magnitude less than LDV did (about $3.5 million).