What is Scorsese's Worst Film?
Added 2023-03-17 02:42:18 +0000 UTCSo...I have had this weird things about Shutter Island, where the film really bothers me, and I've always wanted to go back and review it. It's a subject matter that really interests me just as a film topic: McCarthy era psychological thriller, trapped in a psych ward, never sure what's real or who to trust...all shit up my alley for cinematic exploration. But I feel it is one of Scorsese's weakest entries, and it really bums me out. And for someone I admire, it's interesting to pick apart why. But, what is your least favorite Scorsese film? I haven't seen all of them, and none of his films are without craft, but there are quite a few post Goodfellas, that do not land for me. Aviator, Gangs of New York, Hugo, The Departed, the list goes on.
Comments
I never cared for it but...I would need to see again to give you a better answer. It's been a while.
Deepfocuslens
2023-04-11 05:01:52 +0000 UTCI agree. New York New York is a bad film . The sets are very artificial and the relationship between Minelli and de Niro was unconvincing . I'm guessing that he was making a pastiche of old musicals. I know that you like musicals Maggie. What do you think of it?
anthony scully
2023-04-08 22:38:00 +0000 UTCI take it all back, I just watched New York, New York and it's an absolute train wreck, the worst film Scorsese has made by some margin IMO, Gangs is a masterpiece in comparison!
Ross Skilton
2023-03-25 18:43:27 +0000 UTCAll this is great. Thank you!
Deepfocuslens
2023-03-22 05:04:46 +0000 UTCI have not.
Deepfocuslens
2023-03-22 05:04:12 +0000 UTCThat's one I hear people are split on. But I admit I haven't seen Silence yet. Some say it's his best, and others agree with you.
Deepfocuslens
2023-03-22 05:03:59 +0000 UTCGoodfellas finally clicked for me on my last viewing of it. But I agree with you on Gangs. It's a little derivative, like many of his films around that time
Deepfocuslens
2023-03-22 05:02:21 +0000 UTCYou’re not alone. There are others out there who see it as one of his most underrated films. I know I’m in the minority for hating it but I really do. I think I was too annoyed with the script to appreciate any of the performances.
Stephen
2023-03-18 04:05:38 +0000 UTCNo worries dude, the beauty of film is in its variety - in terms of the films themselves and the opinions that are generated by those who watch them. The debate is as fun and important as the watching of them. I actually watched Caged Heat for the first time the other day and I did not like it much at all.
Ross Skilton
2023-03-17 23:29:53 +0000 UTCFair enough. I forgot that Bogdanovich made Targets under Corman. And that Coppola made Dementia 13. I was thinking more along the lines of Scorsese with BB, Jonathan Demme with Caged Heat, and Ron Howard with Grand Theft Auto when I made that statement. I know he’s a beloved guy amongst all those directors because he’s the one who gave them their first feature along with, so long as they stayed within budget, creative control. They got to learn the job and gain experience, but they were also making grade-Z stuff, which is why I said what I said. It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful, but nevertheless, as you helped me realize, it was an unfair, uninformed generalization of the people who worked for him as well as the man himself and his own films. So my bad.
Bennett Oliver
2023-03-17 21:25:57 +0000 UTCI have big gaps in my Scorsese viewing, I guess I'd probably say Gangs of New York - I remember being disappointed with it and I was glad to get out of the cinema once it ended but that being said (and I know this is a controversial take) I find Goodfellas rather dull, so who am I to judge.
Ross Skilton
2023-03-17 20:34:47 +0000 UTCI must disagree regarding your statement 'everyone did their worst work for Corman'. Peter Bogdanovich made 'Targets' which I think is a great watch and a really important piece of work. Also a bunch of directors made better films for Corman than the stuff they made later in their careers such as Jim Wynorski & Deborah Brock. Also Corman himself is often derided as a film-maker but some of his earlier work is really good such as The Intruder, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher etc.
Ross Skilton
2023-03-17 20:23:48 +0000 UTCI always felt that Cape Fear is underrated. That creepy, tense scene between De Niro and Juliette Lewis in the theater is, I think, one of the all-time great moments in a Scorsese film. I also think that Nick Nolte’s performance is underappreciated. But yeah, I also need to check out the original for comparison.
Bennett Oliver
2023-03-17 18:37:55 +0000 UTCAs for Shutter Island, I can understand why people write it off as one of Scorsese’s weaker films. It’s an unabashed genre movie, a paranoid gothic thriller with a twist ending that was heretofore uncharacteristic of Scorsese. It’s basically his auteur take on what would have been a B-movie premise in the ‘50s. And yet…Scorsese doesn’t often delve into the interiorities of his characters. He mainly focuses on subcultures (the Mob, Wall Street, the New York elite of the 1870s) and his characters’ relationship to those cultures. In Shutter Island however, Scorsese dives into the tormented mind of DiCaprio’s character, going into his dreams and flashbacks and in doing so enters a haunting, surreal psychic territory he has never gone to before. The scenes with his wife, set to Max Richter’s sublime composition “On the Nature of Daylight” (remember: he was the first to use that piece of music, before Arrival and The Last of Us got their hands on it), I find to be incredibly beautiful and moving, and a welcome departure for Scorsese. True, the film has its flaws. It sags in the middle, goes on for too long overall, and never quite transcends its pulpy genre roots. But I do believe that Scorsese overcomes the potentially cheap gimmick of an ending by rooting it in the film’s strongest element, that of DiCaprio’s troubled relationship with his wife and the shocking trauma it caused. Shutter Island may be far from Scorsese’s best, but it took him to haunting new places that I wish he would go to more often.
Bennett Oliver
2023-03-17 18:18:40 +0000 UTCShutter Island is definitely up there. I guessed the twist from the trailer, but thought "it's Scorsese, it's going to be worth watching anyway" and it just...wasn't. Such a shame.
Richard Lyth
2023-03-17 17:34:29 +0000 UTCSilence was dreadfully boring. Admittedly, a big part of that is that I am an atheist and have trouble connecting to stories of people struggling with their faith. I just kept wanting to say to Andrew Garfield, “Just denounce your faith and get out of there, man! God will understand! It’s all bullshit anyway!” Of course, that’s not meeting the movie on its terms, but it was very slow and did not earn its slowness. As always, this stuff is personal. A couple of people here are naming The Color of Money, which I love and find very affecting. Few things work for everyone.
Jim Barnes
2023-03-17 08:17:14 +0000 UTCHi Maggie Have you seen box car Bertha? It's one of the few films I have not seen. What is it like?
anthony scully
2023-03-17 06:47:31 +0000 UTCI echo your sentiments. I remember that movie was really popular here. So many of my friends used to ask me to recommend them a Hollywood movie with a twist ending just like Shutter Island. Gangs of New York is probably my least favorite of them all.
Harman Adi
2023-03-17 06:07:30 +0000 UTCSide Note: For anyone who wants a good laugh check out Scorsese's doc "American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince" which focuses on the guy who played the drug dealer in Taxi Driver. You won't be disappointed.
Stephen
2023-03-17 04:08:26 +0000 UTCEh I'd say he has plenty post-Goodfellas work worth checking out. They are not all masterpieces but there are a few like The Age of Innocence, The Departed and The Irishman. I also really love Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Stephen
2023-03-17 03:58:09 +0000 UTCBoxcar Bertha, the early film he did for Roger Corman, is the one that’s almost unanimously considered his worst film…but I’ve never seen that, so I don’t know. It’s probably low-hanging fruit anyways. Everyone did their worst work for Corman. For me personally, it’s Gangs of New York. It’s not a bad film because there are no qualities in it worth liking; it’s a bad film because it had aspects that could’ve elevated it to greatness, but it fails so spectacularly in bringing them together into anything at all organized and cohesive, let alone compelling. Those amazing Cinecittà sets…that fascinating time period and setting…Daniel Day-Lewis’ ferocious performance as the gangster who presided over everything…those could have made for a classic, a grand epic film about an overlooked pocket of American history. Quite simply, it could’ve been Scorsese’s magnum opus. But…I think he was more in love with the cultural and historical aspects of the Five Points, with all its violent 19th-century tribalism and racial animus, than any given story to be found in it, which is most likely the reason why he utterly failed to come up with a compelling tale to take us through the incredible world he built. Instead we get a half-baked, would-be Shakespearean revenge plot, a pallid hero in DiCaprio, an even worse love interest in Cameron Diaz, and what is, in structure and story, a mangled mess of a film. Maybe Scorsese has done worse than this, but he’s never had a bigger disappointment, which is why I find it so painful to watch the film even now. To get an idea of just how badly Scorsese failed, I suggest you go watch Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s great Brazilian epic crime drama City of God, released the same year as Gangs of New York. That film also tells the story of a notoriously crime-ridden neighborhood of a city and the assorted people who live in it (it too has something of a revenge plot that works far better than GONY’s), and does it with so much more streamlined finesse and live-wire energy than Scorsese manages. Watching the teeming life of Rio de Janeiro in frenetic, hand-held shots, I came to feel that a big mistake Scorsese made was he should’ve ditched the grand, formal camera movements he planned out, taken the camera off of the dolly, and shot his elaborate 19th-century New York sets like he was making an Italian neorealist film, like the way he made Mean Streets. That radical approach to making an historical epic alone would have enervated the movie but…it wouldn’t have even begun to smooth out the many storytelling flaws found throughout. Gangs of New York is, tragically, a great world (and antagonist) trapped in the mechanics of a bad story. I daresay it would’ve worked better as a limited series.
Bennett Oliver
2023-03-17 03:45:15 +0000 UTCI didn’t like Gangs of New York very much because I went into it totally blind and didn’t know a single thing about the setting. I watched it on an overnight flight from lax to auckland and by the end of it I was as in need of a shower as the people in the movie lmao. Probably is worth rewatch when I’m not sleep deprived. Shout out air New Zealand though best airliner I’ve ever been on
kron
2023-03-17 03:16:26 +0000 UTCThere’s a lot I haven’t seen. I know people tend to latch onto The Color of Money and Boxcar Bertha as his worsts, but for me, I agree with you about Shutter Island. For what an interesting premise it is, it’s surprisingly dull.
Jackson Littlewood
2023-03-17 03:08:13 +0000 UTCI'll never forget renting it with my friend and pausing it a few minutes in and correctly predicted all the twists and turns to him. As a Scorsese fan it's definitely among my least favorite but I remember really liking the cinematography and production design. My least favorite is Cape Fear. In a nutshell, I couldn't stand how stupidly the family behaves making it too easy for De Niro's villain. I plan to rewatch it again at some point to see if I overreacted and definitely need to check out the original film. As far as the recent ones that didn't land for you, I pretty much like all of them to one degree or another and can see why you might not enjoy them except for The Departed. I'd be curious to hear why you didn't like it?
Stephen
2023-03-17 02:59:28 +0000 UTCI've never seen any of his post Goodfellas work which I hear isn't on the level of his older stuff. Of his pre-Goodfellas work, I've heard The Color of Money is the worst but I haven't seen it either. All I know about it is that Siskel and Ebert both gave it thumbs down on their show.
Wolfman Brandon
2023-03-17 02:59:10 +0000 UTCScorsese has always been hot and cold for me — often in the same film. Of the ones you mentioned, I remember disliking Gangs of New York and The Departed but that almost entirely because of the final act which I didn't think landed. Compared to his earlier work like Goodfellas, Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver he's become way more inconsistent across a project. However, even with those stumbles he's always made movies that have some real high-caliber greatness. I've rewatched The Departed maybe 4 times in the past month since it's on HBO. I've convinced myself it should be among his classics. Silence and The Irishman are the two that stick out to me as being completely devoid of the Scorsese magic. Way too long and indulgent. Feels like he's in the part of the career where no one tells him "no" anymore to the detriment of everyone involved. There's just not enough going on in either of those movies to justify 3 hours. I agree with you Shutter Island was also pretty weak. I gotta rewatch Hugo because when I saw it I 1) didn't know it was scorsese and 2) didn't know it was about film history, so the experience was insane for me. But neither of those movies compare to what an absolute bore his past two films have been. Generally, I think Scorsese is simply the most consistently active filmmaker in the medium. He's been a presence in the industry for literally 50 years so he's become a favorite for everyone, but across his career I think most of his films are below average.
Arthur Augustyn
2023-03-17 02:59:08 +0000 UTCI have only watched mean streets one time, it was a uncomfortable watch but that may have been, down to my environment and state of mind, same with shutter Island found it tough going, but, the sound was playing up and again my environment. I don't have a real anti favourite
Simon
2023-03-17 02:53:14 +0000 UTC
