Both deliciously funny and scary as hell; Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy is a work of ingenious, prophetic wisdom and focus. Both grounded and elevated by one of Robert De Niro's finest performances, the film slivers and slides through different forms of deconstruction and satire until the final irony hits like a ton of bricks.

Martin Scorsese's direction is magnificent here. While not as classical as Raging Bull or as lush as Taxi Driver, It feels just as pure, mainly when the camera decides to watch Rupert Pupkin in all his mesmerizing and terrifying glory. Both hilarious and creepy, De Niro embodies this complex character with glorious quirkiness and a sense of childish playfulness. In particular, the scenes involving…

Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.
-Rupert Pupkin

Vito Corleone, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta and... Rupert Pupkin. Those names are not mentioned together nearly often enough. The King of Comedy is one of Robert De Niro's greatest performances and his most underrated collaboration with director Martin Scorsese. Sure people here praise the film, but it's overwhelming how many people have never seen this.

De Niro's performance is so genuine that there's several scenes in the film that I find incredibly hard to watch. It's like seeing a real person filled with desperation for validation and receiving nothing but rejection time and again. At first it just looks like Pupkin is simply obsessed with…

''Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.''

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro successfully teamed up once again in what probably was their most different and unique collaboration together. It is a wonderful and unsettling film with a great performance from Robert De Niro. I feel sorry for younger audiences who have only seen his recent work, because they are missing out on one of the best actors during the 80's and 90's. Here, De Niro plays a mentally unstable character who is obsessed with becoming famous. I don't know if our culture was so obsessed with celebrity and fame during the 80's as they are now, but The King of Comedy is very much…

From the many times Robert De Niro has collaborated with Martin Scorsese and created many of the director's most famous (and best) works whether they go from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull and Goodfellas, one of the least recognizable in that bunch is The King of Comedy. Yet the fact it feels so forgotten in comparison to many of Scorsese's most recognizable works has not been able to overshadow what was most important, The King of Comedy is also one of his finest efforts. Arguably his most demented work under his body of work, this deserves more recognition than what it has at the moment.

Robert De Niro now stars as Rupert Pupkin, a delusional wannabe standup comedian who idolizes…