Popular reviews

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  Review by BRÁT ★★★★ 13

  the fact that this vibrant collision of romanticism and realism is somehow considered a “lesser” marty picture is a testament to the man’s inability to miss. despite its box office failure and lukewarm reviews (musicalphobia is real…), its sonic impact has loudly and clearly reverberated throughout culture, decades and decades on. i’m talking specifically about when alex the lion sings New York, New York in Madagascar :) 

  more proof for my theory that 1977 was the greatest year for cinema

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★ 3

  When you're in love, everything feels like a movie, the sidewalks light up wherever you go and everything seems to be in perfect harmony. Then the relationship ends and after reality settles in again, you think back and it seems different, you realize you were kind of a dick and that the reason everything seemed beautiful was because you were too wrapped up in your own feelings to see what was really going on, how selfish and manipulative and cruel you were being even in the glow of new love. This movie is like a composite of both of those images, one layered right on top of the other, somehow making them fit together. Perfect harmony.

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  Review by russman ★★ 3

  Scorsese, I love you but you're bringing me down

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  Don't have a ton to add to the discourse on what does or doesn't work about this, except to say that it's a hell of a big swing, especially since once you strip away the astounding artifice and Hollywood metadata and those heavily improvised performances, this is a simple story about a woman struggling to escape an abusive relationship.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★½ 5

  62

  A forceful backstage musical that fails to reconcile its realism and its operatic momentum. I find about every element is at odds with another in this film, but it's not for a lack of trying. Many components, like the central relationship, are successful on their own, but when placed into an overbearing epic scope, it falls under the heft of its own weight. Not only is this too fucking long, it's juggling everything at a high energy when the subtle, gentle moments find the greatest resonance. There's still much to admire about this, and it certainly isn't the worst Scorsese film, but it's among his weaker works, and it's not necessarily one that I yearn to reclaim or prop up as a hidden gem in his filmography.

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  Review by a.

  robert de niro being hot and misogynistic for 2 hours and 43 minutes

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★ 3

  one of the best films about emotional abuse that there’s ever been.

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  Review by kailey ★★½ 11

  winter break watch-list

  martin scorsese one late night on the phone: wow, taxi driver is doing really well! okay, haha, get this… what if… i remade taxi driver but as a romantic musical?

  hehe and somehow managed to make the main character even more unlikeable?

  and there’s going to be no real narrative structure, we’re just gonna make up shit as we go along?!?

  oooh, and de niro can have a big romance with someone that he has absolutely no chemistry with????

  AND I’M GONNA MAKE IT THREE HOURS LONG

  the poor movie producer on the other side of the line: haha, sure marty.

  that same movie producer, circa 1977 when they are in fact making a romantic movie musical where robert de niro’s character is even more unlikeable than he was in taxi driver and it is in fact THREE HOURS LONG: marty, i thought that was a joke… marty… MARTY…

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  Review by laird ★★★★★

  A true backstage musical, where the humans behind the happy (sappy) songs and beautiful melodies are flawed and tragic. Jimmy Doyle is, to borrow an old chitlin-circut joke, the kind of guy who would fart in the bathtub, turn around and bite the bubble. As someone who grew up in a household with an emotionally manipulative abuser, I found Doyle (and De Niro's portrayal) to be painfully true. The classic Hollywood artifice around the central drama is like the masking of an iris or the area outside of a spotlight. It risks distancing the audience by calling attention to the craft, but somehow it intensifies and illuminates the drama. Movie magic, I guess.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  From its ferocious nihilism to its stylistic adoption by the likes of Joe Strummer, Taxi Driver has always had tendrils connecting it to the punk era, but I'd argue for including, of all things, this opulent tribute to, and travesty of, the MGM musical as one of Scorsese's unintended punk films. Punk's explosive return to zero balanced radical revision with reactionary aesthetic values, and Scorsese's simultaneously intricate recreation of the most opulent traits of the classic movie musical and vicious critique of its thematic implications might truly encapsulate the punk explosion and implosion even better than the director's preceding film.

  From the opening V-J Day sequence that joyously roams crowded streets before stopping with a spotlight and a literal glowing…

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  Review by siobhan ★★★★★ 3

  um i think i've found my new fav scorsese!!!! it blows my mind that this doesn't have a higher rating??? i loved seeing how much of an influence this clearly had on la la land in terms of plot elements (a jazz musician and singer with dreams of making it big embark on a rocky relationship - there is even a time jump and robert de niro literally opens a jazz club while liza minnelli makes it as a massive movie star...HELLO)!!! there were also a lot of near-identical visual cues and dialogue bits, although the relationship b/w jimmy and francine was waaaay more toxic. but comparisons aside, i also loved this bc it still managed to feel VERY scorsese…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★ 1

  73/100

  [originally written on my blog]

  Somehow never read much of anything about this one in advance, despite its eluding me for decades (until recently I saw older films only if/when a print screened somewhere in NYC), and so was utterly unprepared for its bracing amalgam of the abrasive and the artificial, pushed to a degree of potential discomfort rivaled perhaps only by Buffalo '66. First hour-plus is astonishing, right from the spectacularly witty V-J Day tracking shot that loses De Niro in a crowd of celebrating extras until he reaches his mark directly beneath a giant neon arrow pointing straight at him; Scorsese repeatedly creates an iconic shot or action only to render it absurd and/or ugly, as if…