Again, Scorsese

Max Macks: I had never seen Taxi Driver until last year after getting
a VCR .
I thought it was crap.
How many people really think Scorsese is great just because
so many others rave about him.?

It helps to think of Taxi Driver as Scorsese's Dostoevsky piece.

I think Scorsese's great, and no, it's not because of what people write about him; I see the films and respond to them. Call it the lapsed Catholic in me that thirsts for blood and guilt and violence and beneath all that, the whispered possibility of redemption.

If there's a difference between him and Mad Mel, it's that his films have the visual and rhythmic feel of an drug-crazed Impressionist artist playing with a camera, while Mel is like a monomanic masochist stabbing the same spot on his thigh with a penknife, then showing everyone the blood.

Not everything Scorsese makes is violent or has Italian gangsters in it, tho everything does deal at some level or another with an inner, sometimes spiritual anguish. Throw in New York, New York and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore as relatively non-violent (relatively), non-Italian movies. New York is I think an underrated great musical. And King of Comedy is a dark, dark comedy about obsesson and privacy that tends to stay with you.

Age of Innocence, for all the lack of blood, Scorsese describes as one of his more violent films. The violence is more emotional and psychological than merely physical--which is really what Scorsese's all about.

After Hours may be Scorsese's most unsettling film--a comic view of Hell, set in the Soho area.

He doesn't make pleasant, feel-good movies, which bothers a lot of Academy mo--sorry, voters. And as far as I know, he's never been accused of good taste.